more on welbutrin…
My ears have been ringing off and on since Thursday. They seem to be much more sensitive now. Another reported side effect…. weird..
My ears have been ringing off and on since Thursday. They seem to be much more sensitive now. Another reported side effect…. weird..
it feels at the moment almost like I’m even more anxious than before. Small things are setting me off and making my heart pound. Getting irritated this morning over something was suddenly feeling very extreme.
something frightening happened on my way to work in the afternoon. A friend was driving me, and we were in a rush since I was on the late side. He was going maybe 40 miles an hour? The road is sort of a freeway - but there was a light, turning yellow ahead of us. I felt like we were SPEEDING towards this light that was going to be red by the time we went through it. I thought, “we’re never going to make it!!” and suddenly the stress and anxiety of this felt SO horrible and uncomfortable that I felt this weird, strong jolt/shudder through my entire body and I felt my hands clamp down the arms of the seat as if I were going to fly out of it. It was *almost* similar to the feeling one gets on a roller coaster the minute it starts to drop down. It was NOT cool at all. VERY unpleasant… and scared the living shit out of me. I felt for a moment like I’d die!
Can’t imagine that was very good for my mind.. or body.. =/
Then I remembered that I’ve gotten these jolts before.. .and I think it was during another time I was on an SSRI, although I’m not 100% sure on that. But it was always when in a car and stressed out. (I have fairly moderate anxiety when driving or being a passenger in the city, due to a number of accidents I’ve been in)
I hope this isn’t gonna continue =/ I know it’s still very early and the first couple of weeks are unpleasant. I really hope the good will eventually outweigh the bad.
Wednesday morning, on 9/21, I cut off all of my hair extensions. I decided to go back to being bald for awhile. I kind of missed having a shaved head, since I’m one of the few girls it seems to look good on. I’ve gotten a lot of compliments on it already!
I had mixed feelings during the process. Halfway through, I struggled, looking at myself in the mirror and thinking back to all of the times in the past when I’ve shaved my head because I HAD to. I didn’t “have” to this time, although after cutting the extensions off I never would have been happy with the short hair underneath. So in a way, all of the old feelings of failure came back while I was doing this.
But I’ve decided that since there seem to be no more interruptions in my treatment in sight, I’m going to give it all I’ve got, with a big push and instead of having the temptation right in front of me and struggling the whole way, I would simply remove the temptation and make things easier for myself. Now, my plan is to keep the hairstyle for a few months until the bald patches fill in, go forth with my CBT training plan, and hopefully begin to grow the hair by Jan or Feb.
I have also decided to try giving medication another shot, because recently, in the last several months I have developed another repulsive behavior… Dermotillomania .. it started with scratching my scalp because there was dandruff… I would look for this under my fingernails afterwards and eat it afterwards. Then I began causing sores because of the intensity in which I was scratching, and that soon led to searching for scabs, pulling them off, and eating them. Never in my life have I had this problem, and I am 29 years old right now. The fact that at this age, I have developed this kind of problem, signifies to me that my obsessive grooming issues are only getting worse, and that medication is not only a good idea, but could be necessary at this point. I am causing more self-harm than ever before, and I haven’t been able to get on top of it even with psychotherapy. I’ve also had to remove my acrylic nails for work over the last few months, and my nail-biting has become quite extreme again. So, I am going to try and work on all of these issues at once, with the help of my wonderful therapist.
And so I am meeting with my doctor on Tuesday to discuss a treatment plan and decide what medication to try next…. now that I’m no longer in a close relationship, the sexual side effects of the antidepressants won’t bother me … in fact, having a lower sex drive might actually be a GOOD thing for me right now, since I’m not in a relationship.
That is all for now… I hope to begin writing in here regularly again to keep track of my progress.
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…