So I've been on Prozac
for a long time. I'm sure I'm one of a multitude out there in the same situation. My dad is on it. My grandpa should have been. My son is heading that direction. Talk about depressing. I almost got fired from my job just before I was diagnosed. Making mistakes just wound me tighter and led to more mistakes and nearly a trip to the unemployment office.


So I went to my EAP, and was referred to a psychiatrist, and she tested me, diagnosed clinical depression, and ever since then Prozac, or its generic twin, has been my constant companion. Going on ten years now. I actually think my main problem isn't necessarily depression but rather a whole quiver full of anxiety issues. The treatment for that is essentially the same so it doesn't really matter.



Ten years down the road and I don't really know how I feel about it all. Sounds stupid but there it is. So much of my life still seems dominated by anxiety that in many ways I can't tell how much it has helped. One of my fears, irony of ironies, is that the med helps more than I realize and if I stop things will fall apart. One thing I am sure it has helped with. Panic Attacks. I have had such issues dealing with mortality that I like to say I've been having a midlife crisis since I was nine. One way this has historically manifested is at night when I am trying to sleep and my brain insists on travelling down a path that visualizes death and nothingness and oblivion. It causes me to panic and yell and thrash and when I get myself under control I am sweating and palpitating; wide-awake and terrified of trying to go back to sleep. This invariably leads to a session of reading until I am so exhausted I nearly fall asleep mid-sentence. I had initially started out at a 10mg prescription and had raised it to twenty when I realized that these episodes (which I can remember having all the way back to my pre-teen years) might actually be related to my problem. So my doctor and I tried kicking the dose to 40mg and suddenly, the panic episodes stopped. Whodathunkit. So this is the level I'm at now, worried about stopping, worried about attenuation of the effects, worried that the whole thing is just some stupid character flaw and it's all my fault really. Having no idea how it will affect my future.

I have people around me who care. My wife, my parents and sister, a brain doctor and a therapist. But nobody else gets it, right? You know what I'm talking about. It's all still locked up inside my skull banging around and battering to get out. You can't share it really. Sometimes its nearly paralyzing. But it seems that this is all there is, riding the Prozac dragon, hanging on by its ears, hoping there isn't a crash in the offing.