Medicated Madness

Bare with me, people. I’m a bit more mental than usual and I’d like to say it’s a joke, but if it is a joke it’s about as funny as simultaneously stubbing my toe on a marble coffee table while jamming my head in to a meat grinder as a Shania Twain song blasts itself repeatedly inside my head. Jesus, that last part makes me want to jump off a bridge…if I could get to said bridge.

So why am I here? Why so frazzled and dazzled with a brain backfiring on all cylinders? Well there’s a few reasons, but the main one is an ‘accidental’ not-so-brilliant (and not-so-willing) cold turkey decision to go off of certain meds.

And god help me, I wish those meds were just your typical, super addictive, kinda deadly opioids. But nooooo….this idiot is going through severe withdrawals from Gabapentin and Cymbalta. Yep, the stuff doctors put you on so that you don’t get hooked on those nasty narcotics. P.S. I fucking love narcotics. Please, someone, bring me narcotics! Or anything, really….even a hammer and a shovel. And if you have to ask, then we can’t really be friends.

Now that I’m pushing through a few days of what some people call ‘mild symptoms’ of physiological withdrawals — those people are what I like to call ‘pure fucking evil’ — I have realized the bigger part of my journey is probably the one I shouldn’t have started in the first place. No, not the falling out of bed and breaking two thoracic vertebrae journey but the one that put me on these meds in the first place. I just thought I was being such a good person for avoiding painkillers and for dealing with ‘depression’ and my chronic pain like a good little patient. For those who know me, the words ‘good’ ‘little’ and ‘patient’ don’t ever belong in a sentence  when describing me. This tells you how bad my current mental state of affairs really is.

For those of you who are lucky enough to never experience withdrawals from Cymbalta and Gabapentin simultaneously, I will try to describe it for you. It goes something like this:

Getting out of bed after a third night of bizarre, almost nightmarish dreams that started in an old trailer that looked suspiciously like the one I lived in years ago, but also different, with highschool chums and neighbours I haven’t seen in twenty plus years moving furniture that was gorgeous and white and definitely not mine; I saw a baby in a bathtub only it wasn’t a real baby, I think it was the monkey from the “Hangover” movies and it was all lit up from the reflection off of the avocado green bathtub and the crystal chandelier above the toilet; orange shag carpet was swaying like tall grass and Keith Richards is in a toga on my front lawn….you get the picture….my mind is mush. There’s more, but lucky for you I can’t remember much and what I do remember is pretty fuzzy. Back to getting out of bed. That’s when the fun begins. All of a sudden my head is on fire, there’s noises going off that I swear are alarms in my hallway but they’re not…and my entire body, right down to my toes, is being ZAPPED. Like lethal little shock waves that create a type of vertigo as I attempt to go about my morning routine.

Scrap the morning routine. Sit down. Don’t move. Okay….I can do this. Zaps are gone and the ‘broop broop’ notifications going off in my brain have stopped.

Attempt to pick up my phone off of the coffee table: ZAAAAAP Broop broop ZAAAAPPP!!

Well, fuck.

And if that weren’t the best way to spend a morning, my brain will also not slow down. It’s like words and ideas and song lyrics and movie quotes are circling the drain and I can’t stop them. If I could just grab one or two and type them out I’m sure I’d have a Pulitzer on my mantel. Genius ideas that taunt me with their magical ability to float so close to me that I swipe at the air impotently. Laughter comes as tears stream down my face and I forget what I was even doing in the first place. More laughter, more brain zaps.

From the puzzled yet amused frown on my husband’s face as he watches me, I realize that I look as crazy as I feel.

I walk in to the kitchen to make myself something to eat; my body is drenched in sweat and my hands are shaking so bad I look like Charlie during his Warlock episode.

 

You get the idea.

And I am definitely not WINNING.

I wish I could say this is a post about how I fought through the horrible withdrawals from two drugs that, although have helped me with my chronic pain and all of the issues that come with that, have also been the cause so many problems they have their own ‘syndromes’ –but it’s not. After suffering for almost a week, my doctor and I came to an agreement (Mexican stand-off, really) and I reluctantly went back on them, at least until I see the neurosurgeon. If I ever get ‘fixed’, or at least find something that helps with pain and mobility, then my doc will put me on a program to help me get off these meds. That’s the deal.

Until then, I am back to having a gazillion pills and tablets and supplements to remember to take throughout the day.

Almost unbelievably, I’m only half-way in to the second day of being back on Cymbalta and Gabapentin and the brain zaps are almost gone (and less severe when they do happen), I no longer look like I ran a marathon to nowhere and I’ve stopped talking to people who apparently aren’t really here. My actual physical pain is through the roof but that is something I can live with at the moment.

So what was the point? What did I get out of all of this? Well, I thought it would be a triumphant tale of patient versus pharmacy but it wasn’t. Instead, I found out that the medications may be nasty in so many ways, but at this point in my life, they are needed. Without them I am a physical mess, not just with severe pain but also loss of mobility as my leg and arm just won’t work as well without those medications. For this patient, unfortunately, the medication benefits outweigh the risks. But I learned that when I do want to go off of them there are ways to do it so that I won’t be seeing my dead mom in the living room while stars and bells go off in my head every time I move. I also learned that I’m not alone in my struggle and that the more I open up about it, the more I am rewarded with kind, supportive people who offer more than just encouraging words; they offer opinions and advice that are truly invaluable. I’m beyond grateful and to all of you who read me, listen to me and just offer support in any way, I want to say THANK YOU.

If you got to the end of this post, you deserve an award. Any award. Or at least ice cream and a shot of tequila.

Unfortunately, I don’t have any tequila (also, I ate the ice cream); instead I will share some links regarding the facts surrounding drugs like Cymbalta and Gabapentin.

https://www.peoplespharmacy.com/2012/10/15/cymbalta-duloxetine-side-effects-withdrawal/

https://www.healthline.com/health/gabapentin-oral-capsule#other-warnings

Full disclaimer: this post took me 4 days to write. And ‘finishing it’ started at 10:30am. It’s now 10:22pm. My brain is officially “Out Of Order”. You’re all angels if you got this far!