FAQ #1,421: Brant, does your brain currently feel like it's been zapped by a series of electric shocks?
A: Why yes, actually.
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I'm "tapering" off a drug. "Tapering" is pleasingly clinical term for "Brace yourself, chump." "Tapering" means I can't turn around without getting seasick, and it feels like my brain is attached to jumper cables. Zap.
I've written about my little problem before, and a drug I hoped would help...? It isn't. I hoped it would give me energy. It instead gave me a rare superpower: I am now NapMan. I can't NOT take a nap. And it doesn't ever help. I'm still sleepy. I'm not sure, yet, how to fight crime with this superpower.
It's also given me the ability to quickly gain weight, but I see that there are plenty of other SuperHeroes with this power. At Wal-Mart.
"My" "doctor" asked me how it was going. I told him the medication was at least helping with my anger toward myself, which I've always had, and I appreciated that. That was too deep for him, so he referred my to a psychiatrist.
I didn't want to go to a psychiatrist. I have no faith in the psychiatric community, putting it mildly. I imagined it had devolved from dispensing Freudian silliness to simply dispensing drugs. But I went. Perhaps I'd be surprised.
I walked in to a tiny waiting room. The coffee table was completely covered by stand-up drug literature boxes, each one asking a question. "ADD/ADHD?" "Trouble sleeping?" "Sexual problems?" "Bi-Polar?" -- there wasn't a spare inch on the table.
They called me in. The lady doctor asked me a quick checklist of questions. I think she looked at me once. She asked, "Issues in childhood?" I said, "Well, yeah, I mean I...yeah..." Okay. She checked that. Then she said I should try Lexapro.
I told her fluoxetine was cheaper. She said, okay, sure, and wrote a prescription, told me to taper off the old stuff, and I left.
