On Zoloft

I've been thinking about this post for weeks and every time I think of the title I hear the strains of "On Broadway" from Little Shop of Horrors in my head. My bran is a funny place to live.

So Zoloft. Anti-depressants. SSRIs. I started taking 25mg per day back in August when the girls came home from the NICU. I wrote about it here at the time and got many responses from women who had also experienced, suffered from, post-postpartum depression. It didn't feel like a big decision to me at the time--it felt clear and necessary. The idea of being left alone with my four children gave me paralyzing anxiety. Then again, wouldn't it make most people feel that way? Does it matter what most people would do? This is an ongoing question in my life--comparing myself to others as though that will help me come up with the answer of what I should do. What is ok to do. As though there is a mean of human behavior that determines when you can ask for help or when you need to work harder. One of the benefits of having four small children is pretty much no one questions the decisions you make. There is almost a carte blanche, a do-what-you-must! My joke at the time was that everyone in my OB's office was just waiting for me to call and ask for meds. Two sets of twins in two years? Here you go!

I felt reassured and taken care of by my doctor. She was the one who had delivered the girls, the one on the team of female OBs who finally started listening and paying attention to me towards the end of the pregnancy. About my age. Indian. Calm and smart and pretty. The thing she said that sticks with me is "You don't want to get through these early months and realize that you can't remember anything about it." The Zoloft would help with that, she said.

All of this is on my mind because I recently tapered off the Zoloft and it was not a good experience. No one told me to get off of it (but yes, I did have a doctor's advice on how to taper off). In fact, most people and doctors (who are people too) reacted with surprise and a "What's the rush?" I didn't feel a rush to stop taking the pills. For the first several months I didn't even notice them, except for the fact that I no longer had crushing anxiety. You would think that would be very noticeable but for me the absence of anxiety just felt regular. I didn't miss it. I would sometimes wonder how I would know it was time to stop taking the Zoloft--if it felt so normal on it, what would indicate to me that it was time to stop?

Why did I even think about stopping? I am not someone who feels strongly about living medication free. I've been taking pills daily since I was eleven--it's a part of my life and probably will be forever. I don't hesitate to take Tylenol for a headache. I wasn't judging myself for the Zoloft, I was just curious about how I would feel without it. I never considered that I would take it forever though so I picked the girls' 1st birthday as the time to stop. But then I signed up for this cool, deep women's retreat at my yoga studio--a three month intensive with all-access to the yoga classes and lots of group work, meditation, journaling, inward focus. The night before it started, which was also a week after I turned thirty-eight, it popped into my head clear as day that I would start tapering the Zoloft when I started the retreat. It would be a good container in which to change my body chemistry.

The first few weeks were so great. I felt myself coming back to myself in warm, full waves. Powerful. Deep. Emotional. Clear-headed. I also started crying and it felt so good. I hadn't even noticed how long I had gone without tears until I found them running down my cheeks. I'd missed this, I'd missed me. What a surprise that coming off of the meds would be such a big experience when going on them hadn't been.

Then it got hard. Really, really hard. Unbearable? I would say yes, for me it was unbearable. And that feels embarrassing and scary and shameful to admit. I was not being a good mom to my kids, at least not in my estimation. I was so cranky, impatient, snappy. The days stretched on endlessly. I would sit in my messy house, surrounded by small children who would not stop touching me, and wonder how on Earth I was going to make it through the next ten hours. I wanted to scream at every other driver on the road. I got in a big fight with my mom. I just felt pissed all the time. I even took a pregnancy test, thinking maybe that was the reason for my huge mood swings--except are they swings when you don't go up? For the first time in my life I sat waiting for a result on one of those tests thinking "Oh God, please please please please be negative." It was.

Other things happened all at once, as is often the case with life and its refusal to be easy to figure out. The little girls got way more mobile and suddenly I found myself unable to take the four of them anywhere by myself. I felt stuck and resentful, looking around at my parenthood experience thinking this was not what I had imagined. I had a big colitis flare--sick and exhausted for two weeks. It was rough. And for me, when things get rough, I climb into my hermit cave and don't come out. I don't write. I don't call to talk about it. I put my head down and watch TV, read, eat, avoid. Wait it out. Blech.

I started back on the Zoloft about three weeks ago. Maybe a month now. I didn't feel like a failure but I felt so afraid. Is this coping medicine I am taking? Do I need these meds to allow me to get through the reality of my life? That feels bad. It doesn't feel right. I voiced some of these concerns in the tiny kitchen at Bloom, my yoga studio, and some of the women in my group hugged me and laughed with me and encouraged me. Reassured me. The best response was from a woman named Kim who, when I was going on about worrying that it was only the Zoloft that kept me able to bear what was going on around me, made me see things in a positive light, said "It's not acid!"

Hahahahahaha. Good point.

What kind of help is ok? Would it be better if I asked for more support from other people so that the daily life wasn't so hard? Lived more of the "It takes a village" lifestyle we talk about missing as a community? Would that make it easier to not take an anti-depressant? I'm not sure. Perhaps both are needed.

The thing is, whatever the catalyst(s), I am finding myself looking around wondering what happened. I blinked and in that time moved out of San Francisco into the suburbs, got married, did IVF, had twins, did the NICU, gave up my full-time management position, bought a house for the first time, had more twins, did the NICU again, and got laid off from a company where I'd worked for thirteen years. Every aspect of my life is different. Who am I? Can I still be the me I was and the me I am now? What even makes us who we are? Our work? Our family? Our day-to-day?

I have lived in my head for as long as I can remember. The words are always going, the ideas are always being turned over and over, I'm always watching, observing, thinking, wondering. For most of my early life I thought everyone was like that. Now I know that's not the case. We all have helpers we go to when it feels too hard to stay put--drugs, prescribed or otherwise, sex, food, shopping, alcohol, yoga, nature, cigarettes, meditation. Being a person is a lot. I am someone who wants to really do it--be a person, feel it, live it, think about it.