Northward Midget

Author: Quinn

  • MAOI Stage 1

    The first four days are done.  Tomorrow I start 10mg twice a day.  Four days of that, then the (presumably) final thrice daily.  I suppose I won’t really have 20mg in my system until tomorrow evening.

    So far, the only ill effects have been an upset stomach in the morning that goes away after breakfast and towards noontime.

    I’m keeping track of my food and drink intake at the MAOI Ingestion Log above.  No “hypertensive crises” yet, but I’m being pretty cautious about what I eat and drink.  Still haven’t tried the Pepsi Max.  We ordered Chinese for the sickies last night (everyone but myself has a cold) and I was afraid to eat anything lest MSG or soy overload cause my head to explode.  I had a few hot tuna salad sandwiches instead.

    As for positive effects?  None of those yet, either.  I’m still feeling the SNRI withdrawal and a bit of anxiety and the usual depressive rifts in the fabric of sane reality.  It takes a few weeks to see a change, so stay tuned.

  • MAOI and Me

    They’ve tried every other class of anti-depressant.  Only the MAOI remain.  Today I started the first 10mg titration round of tranylcyprom (generic of Parnate), after a two-week “washout” period wherein all other anti-depressants (Pristiq, in my case) had to be out of my system.

    The washout wasn’t as bad as I’d feared.  Maybe two weeks wasn’t enough to fling me into the pit of despair that landed me into BryLin and ECT over the summer when I foolishly attempted a cold-turkey quit.  There were the usual SNRI withdrawal symptoms.  Well, I suppose there’s just the one, colloquially dubbed “brain zaps” by its sufferers.  For me, it manifested itself as a kind of whooshing when I moved my eyes laterally.  It’s actually still happening, but far less severely than when I first went off.

    The worst thing about an MAOI, and why they don’t prescribe drugs of its class more often, is the dietary restrictions.  My doctor downplayed them, saying most of the things on the restricted list “we don’t eat much of in America.”  He was highlighting Chianti and fava beans and banana peels, glossing over the star criminals of aged meats and cheeses.  That means sausage, cheddar, and pepperoni.

    What happens if you ingest one of these verboten items while taking an MAOI?  If you’re lucky, nothing, but you’ll probably have a “hypertensive crisis.”  That is, your blood pressure will skyrocket.  Your head will feel like it’s being split apart.  For that, he prescribed nifedipine capsules.  I break one of them in my mouth, wait fifteen minutes, break another, and if that doesn’t cause the symptoms to go away, I go to the ER.

    Scary stuff.

    But, hell, if the drug makes me happy, I’ll give up pepperoni pizza, and cheesesteak pizza, and sausage pizza, etc.

    If that were all, if it were just some small list, it wouldn’t be so bad.  However, when you start Googling MAOI dietary restrictions, you get a whole hell of a lot of stuff.  Caffeine.  Aspartame and phenylalanine.  That’s my beloved Pepsi Max right there.

    So, today I woke up, took the single square red pill (along with Simvastatin and a 0.5mg Klonopin), left the house without breakfast.  Once at work, I had a Smores Pop Tart and maybe three cups of coffee through the day.  At least that much caffeine didn’t have an effect.  I had my usual 300mg of Provigil at noontime, but with water rather than Pepsi Max.  I didn’t want to push it.  Add in a handful or four of shredded wheat.  I figured a box of it would be a cheap and relatively healthy snack.

    Someone on the Intarwebs had written that an MAOI heightened the effects of their cigarettes.  Nothing for me with my RYO Drum sticks.  Indeed, nothing really “good” at all, but it’s the first day on the lowest dose, so one can’t expect much.

    For dinner, the wife made spaghetti and meatballs.  It was very good, and nothing in it seemed to bother me.  I had some salad, but skipped all the dressings, as they were creamy and certain creamy things are on the restricted list, so why take chances?

    With luck, I’ll lose weight just because I’m afraid to eat anything.

    That brings us to now, with me sitting down after finally getting the girls to sleep, and figuring it was my duty to chronicle my own run with this exotic class of anti-depressants.  In another four days I go to two pills a day, and four days after that, the full three daily.  Unfortunately, that’s one each morning, noon and night, not just three at once.

    I think I’ll have a peanut butter sandwich and some milk, then go to bed.

    Speaking of going to bed — that may be different tonight.  I’ll say no more lest I jinx what could be the happiest development since 2009.

  • Lest I Forget

    I refilled my Provigil and Clonazepam (AKA Klonopin) scripts today over lunch.  After a trip to Subway, pulling into the office lot, shutting off the car, I shook two Provigil tablets into my hand and went inside, then slugged them down with a shot of Pepsi Max.

    I felt better that afternoon than I have in a long while.  My boss (the bestest one on Earth) had been looking for me in the interim, and when I asked, he had a new project for me.  It’s the usual maddeningly vague request, but I’m happy to get something concrete to work on.  Yeah, that’s it, I was actually happy to have that thrown on my lap.

    I love working.  I need to work.  So much of the time, I can’t decide what to do, so I sit there.  Sometimes I sit on the couch at home and stare off into the middle distance.  I’ve mentioned that before, like Puddy on Seinfeld.  Well, it drives my wife crazy and I can’t blame her.

    Anyway, it’s because I can’t decide what to do.  The girls’ rooms need cleaned, the laundry needs done, there are chores I should be doing around the house.  What to do?  Which to do?  I’m crippled with indecision.

    The work problem is similar but opposite.  Often, there is nothing specific to do.  I chase bugs and squash ’em right and fine.  Sometimes I’ll latch onto a technology (“NoSQL” lately) and whittle together something vaguely practical.  But there’s no real direction.  No projects for me.

    Well, now I got one, but this is getting way off topic.  Suffice it to say I’m glad I got it.

    What I’m meaning to say tonight is that that 400MG of Provigil made me into the man I’m supposed to be.  I’m quick-witted, generally happy, and good to be around.  So much so, in fact, that when I came home the wife was angry with me.  She thought I was foolin’ at it, and said it was cruel of me to play “happy” with her, that it fucks with her head, and if I want to do it, do it with the children.

    Well, I was doing it with the children, but I also tried to make conversation with her.  Anyway, I understand why she’d be pissed.  For all she knows, for all she’s been through with me, I’ll slip back into a zombie again tomorrow.

    And I might at that.

    On the downside, the Provigil seems to have increased my anxiety.  I’m considering downing a couple of the Clonazepam to get me to sleep, but my logical mind is doing well enough warding off the bogeymen for now.  It’s the typical stuff: how to pay the bills, worry of getting deeper in debt, of paying for what the kids need and what I want to give everyone.  Why am I, in a pretty good-paying professional job, not able to make ends meet?  Why are we living paycheck-to-paycheck?

    Heh.  I’m not helping myself by writing about it, am I?  Maybe I am.  I know we’re a fuck of a lot better off than most of the country is right now, that I’ve got a great boss (and friend) and a great job at a company that really seems to care about its employees.

    Our holiday party is this week.  We do a “Secret Santa” schtick.  Last year, my contribution was a Kiss Snuggie.  A Kiss Snuggie.  Perhaps the most brilliantly ironic brainchild of the Gene Simmons licensing empire.  How am I gonna top that?  So, I was close to opting out.

    Then, in my Provigil-induced euphoria, I remembered the gift I got last year.  It was a Jack Daniel’s gift box — accompanied by a framed portrait of one of my co-workers.  We’re pretty sure it was proffered to the pile by the president and founder of the company, who’s also one hell of a guy.

    So, this year, my gift will be a Jameson gift box accompanied by that same picture.

    Which reminds me: I was supposed to wrap it tonight.  Maybe I’ll just buy a gift bag from Wegman’s and tape it closed to protect the gag.

    It’s no Kiss Snuggie, but I think it’ll go over pretty well.

    So here I am typing up a storm, the primary purpose of which is to be able to go back to this entry when my next psychiatrist appointment comes due, and know what worked for this one day.  Tomorrow I’ll maybe try a Provigil in the morning and another at noon, to thin out the hyper.

    So many times, I go into that office (after waiting a half hour past my appointment time), and everything goes blank.  I forget how I’ve felt for the past month.  I can’t come up with a number from one to ten, ten being feeling pretty good.  I remember last time it was four.  I was gonna go with three on the next visit, and it’s been at best a three this month, but if I can ride this Provigil for the rest, it might up to a six.  I just need to remember to tell him why, or why I think it is, which is the Provigil, and not the Seroquel, which I’ve ramped up to 400MG each night.  That’s making me tired, and its introduction coincided with feeling slightly better last time, but I was also taking two Clonazepams before leaving work each night.  I think it was those tranquilizers that were helping me — not the Seroquel.

    Pristiq does seem to be a good foundation drug for me, but I may want to go back on the Abilify booster instead of continuing with the Seroquel.  I’ve had a lot of trouble waking up since starting it.

    Alrighty then, almost a thousand words that nobody but the spam-bots are gonna read, but they’ll be typed, and I’ll have reference to them when I see the shrink again next month.

    The bigger girl was a rascal tonight.  She wanted to play, and I couldn’t get her to calm down.  Finally I took both her hands and told her to breathe with me.  Deep breaths.  Well, of course that boloney didn’t work worth a pig’s ass.  However, she did entertain herself trying to kick me in the nuts for a few minutes, and eventually forgot her playthings and crawled up into bed.

    Lights were out and we’d started the drift off to sleep at 8PM sharp.  Little girl went to bed within a half hour.  It was another hour after that before I lifted myself up out of bed, leaving both sleeping.  She was just so danged full of energy tonight.

    And get this: she had a bloody lip and was painting herself with the blood.  Little smears all over her bare chest and around her mouth.  She climbed up on the dresser and cooed, “I look like a zombie!”

    She let me wipe off her mouth (which I suspect she re-smeared after lights-out), but insisted on keeping her chest marked up.  I’m trying now to catch the wife to warn her about it before she goes to bed, so she doesn’t find our eldest covered in blood tomorrow morning and freak out.

    I think I’ll close with that.  Goodnight, friends.