A few days ago, I decided that the new medicine I’ve been taking was worse than the original disease. It made me sleepy and unable to write or think or even speak with my normal wit and snark. I’d only been on it for a month and I’d only been on the full dose of it for a week. So I stopped taking it.

The first day was great. Then the dreams started and I felt like I spent all night watching horror movies instead of sleeping. The second day I spent in a fog, but I figured it was just because I didn’t sleep well the night before.

Then yesterday I spent the curled up on the couch wondering if this is what schizophrenia feels like. Everything was both fuzzy and too intense at the same time. When the Kid and I walked to the store to get dinner, I thought the bright lights were going to kill me. It’s freezing here and I was hot and sweaty like I’d been hiking through a jungle in August. Sounds were freaking me out. I thought my head would explode when a car alarm went off and the Kid talking to me was like being swarmed by every mosquito in the world. It took every ounce of concentration to put one foot in front of the other and get home.

I came home and called a dear friend with massive drug knowledge. She’s taken this drug before and had the same problem.. “Take a pill now. You’re in withdrawal”. It took her two months to ween herself off a drug she had only been taking for two weeks. As it is, I’m having a problem just getting through the everyday stuff on medication. The idea of spending two more months on it is depressing. I hate having a brain that won’t do what I tell it to. I hate it even worse that I am stuck on a drug that doesn’t work because the withdrawal from it makes me think that a padded room in a mental hospital is an ideal vacation.

My doctor wants me to stick with this drug for another month. I want off it now. So do I play nice and do as the doctor says, or do I try to ween myself off it and hope that I don’t go nuts in the mean time?