been awhile
wish I was able to update a little more often. but there’s so little time sometimes, and then when there is… the last thing I want to do is write about my hair-pulling problem…
anyway, I went off the Zoloft because of a few things. 1, I was starting to feel a little “weird” … a side effect of being on anti-depressants. The sexual dysfunction issue was a problem. I thought I didn’t mind it at first but it started to get to me. And finally, I wasn’t noticing any change in the hair pulling frequency… although the Dr. recommended that I try doubling the dose to get the desired effect… I just didn’t want to do that.
Then I spiraled into an uncontrollable and very fast decline over the last month which has left me with about 30% of my hair intact. At first I tried to disguise this as a mowhawk, but the mowhawk only lasted about a week before that was half gone, too. It was so bad in this last week that it’s all right in front of my crown and pretty impossible to hide even by wearing a headband in front. I pulled so much there that it caused these weird, irritated and itchy little bumps on my scalp. (wtf??) … the skin is all sore and scaly feeling there. :[ I’m trying not to be too hard on myself, as I’m going through a very traumatic and trying time. (I lost my father at the end of Jan… then a whole bunch of other bad shit started happening… getting evicted… loosing what I thought were good friends… etc etc) even my therapist (the lovely Dr Sarah Markowitz at MGH) agreed that now may not be the best time to be very concerned over the hair stuff. so… we’re going to work on more pressing issues for awhile and then get back to the hair issue.
In the meantime… I’m now trying Naltrexone. My partner is actually on Naltrexone to fight his alcoholism. My Harvard psychology professor recommended that as an option awhile back… and now I’m trying it. It’s an opiod blocker … helps with addictions… what I’m hoping it will do is decrease the urge to pull, and also take away the pleasurable feeling that I am addicted to. It’s been 3 days, and the first 2 days I was extremely tired. But already the pleasurable feeling seems to be decreasing, so that’s a good sign.I guess we’ll see how this goes…… here’s hoping for some better results than the anti-depressants…
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