The Bitch is Back (Please, Elton, don't sue me!)

We're taking a little break from the Crohn's -- kinda. I mean, the entire reason that I started taking anti-anxiety meds in the first place was not because I wanted to treat my anxiety, but because there was a certain logic to the idea that if I could do something to control my anxiety, my gut would be a little easier to deal with.

Now,though, we have a problem. I was on Celexa for about 2.5/3 years and it worked well for the most part. Toward the end we kept having to bump the dose to get the same response, and it came time for a change.

I tried Effexor. I was a good girl, tapered up on the dose, but had some pretty unacceptable side effects. Random heart palpitations, blood pressure spikes and crashes, high potassium levels...they just weren't part of what I had envisioned going on my life. So we took the dose back a little, and a little more, and still I was having the side effects. Not so much. Usually only when I was really exerting myself, but I do that cleaning, because I can't seem to approach anything half way. And I wanted to get back into dance, or take martial arts, or something -- no way that was going to be happening.

Finally it came to this: in the doctor's office, doc looked at me and said, "you aren't turning cartwheels over this one, are you?"

Well, no, not really. I mean, it works, I suppose. I'm not crazy. I'm not lobotomized. But the side effects were more physical than anything, and I wasn't liking it.

We decided that if I were to actually get off the sample bandwagon, this one was WAY too expensive if I wasn't utterly thrilled with it. So off I go. This is a process with Effexor. Look it up anywhere on the internet, and you'll find entries for Effexor withdrawal and most of them say it's the worst or second worst experience they've ever had.

I was a good girl, I tapered down. The first night without a pill was absolutely insane though, and I wimped out at about 8:30 pm the next night -- four hours early from the next dose. I'm okay with that. It didn't take me long to come back down from the ceiling, it was amazing. Kerry is wondering how this shit got through the FDA with a withdrawal and response like that. I wish I had an answer. Maybe some money changed hands. Maybe an intern "hid" under someone's desk. Who knows. All I know is it sucked.

The thing that seems to be the most consistent, though, is my temper. Hence the title of tis entry. The bitch? Oh, yeah, she's back. She's been hiding under a load of serotonin reuptake inhibitors for the last few years and she's got a lot to say. She's got loads of bile for people who honk their car horns and yell out their windows. Little things get under her skin and make her crazy, like not being able to open a jar. And when something really warrants getting pissed off? Good gawd, it's all I can do to keep her contained.

My temper has always been like this. It's always been bad. I always knew that seeing red literally meant that. I knew that when I get pushed so far, I would black out and come out of it really not knowing what had happened, which is really pretty scary. I know that my first response to anger is physical. It's a powerful feeling, physically; it's an instant adrenaline shot. I can feel the muscles in my arms and legs tighten up, and there's no flight response. It's all about fight.

So I'm stuck. I'm fundamentally a non-violent person. I dealt with that temper for years by just burying things, and ignoring them, or finding ways to blame and thus get pissed at myself rather than someone else. Better to hurt myself than lash out at others.

Okay, so that wasn't so healthy. Apparently I'm outta practice, anyhow, because I can't find the ways to blame myself, and I can't squash it. You know what they say about us Scorpios? That we deal with things on a more intense level than most of the world at large? That we're passionate and loyal and occasionally violent, and an overall handful for anyone else to deal with? And last, that we hide all that from the rest of the world? Well, whatever you think of astrology, that is an absolutely apt description for me.

The bitch just won't stay in her box anymore, so I have to figure out how to let her out without causing total havoc everywhere I go. I've had the urge to destroy things so often this week it's actually startling. How do I contain that? How does anyone?

I don't want to be that person who is calm on the outside and full of dislike for myself anymore. Or the person who lays everything down for everyone else without ever thinking of herself. And I don't want to be caught up in this useless cycle of feeling panic over my temper that made me start burying it in the first place. I don't want the whole world knowing my business, but I don't want to be the Ice Queen anymore. I don't want people thinking for years that they know me when they really don't.

There's gotta be a middle ground. On the one side, we had better living through chemistry. On the other, I was self-destructing even though I didn't realize it, and I kept on going until my body physically got ill and made me stop.