This Is What Happened When I Tried To Quit Antidepressants

In a recent New York Times article, “Many People Taking Antidepressants Discover They Cannot Quit,” the authors detail how the withdrawal effects can be so severe, Americans would rather keep using these drugs than suffer the consequences of getting off of them. This finding may come as a surprise to many, but not to me. I had recently tried to sever my own six-year affair with my antidepressant of choice, Zoloft, and the consequences were nearly tragic. 

My doctor prescribed Zoloft to me after a deep bout of postpartum depression and anxiety following the birth of my first son. It was, for me, a miracle drug. After weeks of crying for more hours of the day than not and irrational thoughts spanning from, “Does my baby want to kill me?” to “Is my baby evil?”, I was a person again. I had every intention of staying on the drug forever (why mess with a good thing?), until a surgery earlier this year required that I cease taking any SSRI’s to decrease the risk of a hematoma. 

My psychiatrist put me on a somewhat abbreviated weaning schedule to time with my surgery — which we knew would be risky, but I still was not prepared for what was to come. As the authors of the aforementioned New York Times article point out, the medical profession lacks scientifically backed guidelines or strategies for people struggling to stop taking antidepressants.

My doctor prescribed Zoloft to me after a deep bout of postpartum depression and anxiety following the birth of my first son. It was, for me, a miracle drug.

One morning, I woke up feeling like I was at the bottom of a black hole coated slick with oil, and couldn’t crawl out. I couldn’t will myself to leave the house. My children couldn’t make me smile. Sometimes my own voice felt like it was coming from somewhere eight feet below the ground whenever I spoke. I tried to tell my children that I wasn’t feeling well, because that’s how you explain when Mommy is Weaning Off of Zoloft to people under seven. 

If it were possible at the time, I would have laughed at how much my symptoms made me feel like an advertisement in a magazine – some sad sack woman sitting on a park bench, staring at her kids having fun in a park. The text above her head says something like, “You’re not yourself when you’re not on [insert drug of choice here].” 

By week three or so, things were abysmal. My whole body ached, like the worst flu I ever had, and no pain reliever could alleviate it. Several times a day, I wanted to tear off my flesh, or rip off my head – anything to take away this bad feeling. 

One morning, I woke up feeling like I was at the bottom of a black hole coated slick with oil, and couldn’t crawl out. I couldn’t will myself to leave the house.

Around that time, my family and I were walking down the avenue by our house. I’d made the mistake of finishing my husband’s Greyhound at brunch, hoping it would help take the edge off a little. My older son was being kind of a jerk that day, and as we were walking home, we were fighting about his iPad time and I lost it. My younger son started joining in on the whine-fest, and I screamed at them both, and they both continued not listening to me, and all my pain felt amplified. I walked ahead of them a bit, trying to relieve them of my wildness.

I looked at the cars and trucks rushing frantically down the avenue, leaving a slight tremble under my feet in their wake. The most bizarre idea came into my head: What if I just turned to my left, and began walking, Virginia Woolf-like, into the flow of traffic? No announcement, no farewell, just a straightforward decision to turn away from everything else and turn instead towards nothing. I could see my body as if I were observing from some distant place, like the tree next to the overpass where I had been standing, and could picture myself walking onto the avenue. In that fantasy, there was no suffering – no crushing limbs, no gore, no grieving family – just the feeling of being freed from pain. The option seemed so straightforward.

It was one of those feelings like when you’ve been sick for so long, you forget what healthy feels like, and then you finally feel healthy and you can finally say, “Wow. Life feels so damn good.”

But before I could dip my toe off the edge of the sidewalk, my older son came running up to me, asking about when he would get his iPad minutes back. Bam. My strange impulse and vision from moments before was gone, and I was reminded of my purpose and duty – to continue to be a mother and wife and child and friend – in spite of my own personal pain. I’d never before that moment, imagined in my wildest dreams, taking my own life.

After my surgery, I was given the go-ahead to go back on Zoloft. At first, I resisted – thinking, well, I made it this far. If, for some reason I ever needed to go off of this drug again in the future, I would never be able to face the withdrawal effects that go with it a second time. When I told my doctor about my “Virginia Woolf” moment, she insisted I go back on it immediately. And since martyrdom never looked good on me anyway, I took her advice. Within a week, I was back to myself. A whole person. It was one of those feelings like when you’ve been sick for so long, you forget what healthy feels like, and then you finally feel healthy and you can finally say, “Wow. Life feels so damn good.”

I am in good company when it comes to failing at quitting antidepressant use. As Carey and Gebeloff note in their New York Times piece, a recent study of 250 long-term users of psychiatric drugs revealed that nearly half of those in the study who tried to quit could not do so because of withdrawal symptoms. In another study, 130 of 180 long-term antidepressant users reported withdrawal symptoms. 

As mothers, we need all the help we can get by way of support systems. This system can look different for many people. My support system includes antidepressants – a fact of which I am certain won’t change for me anytime soon if ever. I’m frustrated that I don’t seem to have a viable way out of getting off of this particular antidepressant, and fully switching to something else. But that likely still would not have changed my original decision to have gone on it in the first place. All things being equal, this isn’t all a bad story. Zoloft saved my life once, back when I first became a mother; when I thought it wouldn’t be possible to see the brightness in motherhood. Zoloft allowed me to experience joy again and helped me finally fall in love with my baby. And when I tried to walk away from Zoloft, the effects of that nearly ended my life. So I guess, like many kinds of relationships, ours is complicated. 

Please seek medical advice before taking any antidepressants. All opinions in this article are those of the author.

Originally published here.

What Do You Do All Day?

We've all been on the receiving end of the question. #MINDRMAMA Alexis Barad-Cutler reports. 

When you’re not in the trenches of early motherhood, it can be hard to grasp the kind of mental and emotional work that it entails. From the outside, it seems like a cushy job that lets you work from home, nap during the day, and maybe even watch some daytime TV. But as any new mom eating over a sink and calling that lunch can tell you, early motherhood has little to do with rest and relaxation. It’s hard work, full of sour milk, boob sweat, and lots of tears. And yet, any new mom constantly gets asked the question, “So what is it that you actually do all day?”

The first time I remember being asked the “what do you do all day” question was during a trip to visit family in Florida with our first-born. We were walking through town, trying to get our then-infant son to nap, when my mother-in-law spotted some family friends in one of the outdoor cafes. We went over to say hi, and all I could think was, “Can we just keep walking?” (As every mom knows, babies not in motion don’t stay asleep.) Suddenly everyone was staring at me, and that’s when I realized the husband was asking me a question:

“So what is it you do all day now that you’re a mom?” he asked, an amused look on his face, like he expected me to melt in a pile of maternal bliss just thinking about how great my days were. “Do you guys, just, you know . . . hang out?”

I stood there, speechless, and my brain started to overload with the millions of things that my baby and I did during the day that did not by any stretch of the imagination feel like “hanging out.”

I wanted to scream about the four times a night I was still waking up to soothe my baby back to sleep, which made my attempts at napping during the day a necessity and not a luxury. But then I would also have to mention that the terror of waking to the sounds of a cat being skinned from chin to tail – i.e. my child’s shrieks anytime he was put down in his crib – didn’t really make the naps seem worth it. I wanted to tell him about the hours per week I spent hooked to a wheezing, huffing breast pump. And how pumping while taking care of a baby is like trying to chew gum and walk, except instead of chewing gum, you’re trying to hold a baby out in front of you so that you don’t knock your pump shields off your nipples and you’re walking to the changing table to deal with a poop situation.

And that wouldn’t even have touched the daily logistics of caring for a baby; like the fact that the minute you get them changed into a clean outfit, they’ve already managed to pee up the back of it and you need to start all over again. Or what about the Amazon orders, or signing up for baby music classes and movement classes, scheduling doctor’s appointments (there are so many in those first few months), doing laundry, washing bottles, cleaning breast pump parts, and making sure to never, ever run out of diapers. It is monotonous. Relentless at times.

It’s not easy to be with a child all day. The ones who are too young to move or talk have very big needs – the feeding, the diapering, the swaddling. By the time a baby is mobile, you can’t even think about sitting down or looking away. Every moment feels like you’re playing defense against “Team Death.” And when your child is older, it sometimes seems like they never stop talking – to the point that there’s no room for a single thought of your own. It can make spending a day with a kid feel like you’ve been trapped inside a free-association method acting exercise – except that’s just how elementary school aged kids talk.

So, hanging on by a thread? Yes. Hanging out? Absolutely not. The good thing is, as time goes by, and you earn more of your parenting stripes, the logistics get a little easier to manage, but of course, they get even bigger. I have two boys now, and I work part time, but a huge chunk of my day is spent managing my children’s schedules. It’s like I’m a personal assistant to two very important, high-up execs. For example, sometimes it takes ten texts to various nannies or several rounds of emails before I land a play date for one of my kids because Yes I Live In New York City and we are crazy here.

I’m not alone, or special. Women – moms – are mostly the ones who carry the mental load when it comes to the care of their children. Even when they are at work, the mother is the one doing all the stuff behind the scenes – advocating on behalf of their child with a learning disability, or seeking out support for a child with an emotional problem, or a medical issue – society has decided this is women’s work. Personally, I think women would take it on either way. 

There was something else that troubled me about this stranger’s question, more than the fact that he asked me and put me on the spot to explain my day (I could easily have asked how he spends his retirement, but I didn’t). His question felt like an accusation. “You must have it good. What could you possibly have to complain about, Miss I Get To Stay At Home With My Baby?” When I was finally able to respond, I was grasping at anything I could think of that others would deem “important work” and muttered something about random freelance projects I was doing in my spare time.

But why did I do that? It was because I knew – from his question, his tone, and from the look on his face – that he didn’t think my life as a mom was difficult, or important. Unfortunately, he’s not an outlier in his perception of motherhood. Women must continue to share their stories of motherhood, and to speak about their important work. I wish I didn’t give that family friend the satisfaction of any stumbled or insecure answer, all those years ago. Mothers shouldn’t have to defend or explain their days to anyone.

Photo credit: Stylish & Hip Kids.

Originally published here.