Mmm...withdrawal...

I have been on a fab little dose of antidepressants for almost a year now. I say fab because they really did help...along with switching therapists three times. They were mainly for my anxiety, panic attacks and also played a nice little role in chilling out my OCD tendencies...ahem...handwashing...irrational fear for people's lives...all that jazz. Along with this new calm (which scared the crap out of Mark) came a whole plethora of side effects. My very smart, very trustworthy doc told me there was potential, but I would ultimately need to weight the risks against the benefits. I weighed feeling better about the world and possibly gaining weight and not feeling very romantically inspired...I chose feeling better. And better I became. Within a few weeks I decided that I needed to further myself, that I was completely unsatisfied with the level of knowledge that just lingered in my brain, especially when people were willingly placing their lives and the lives of their unborn directly into my hands. I decided that I also needed to contribute to the financial growth of our family, rather than just be satisfied with where were currently were at the moment. I decided in an instant...I was going back to school. It may have been a bit of a hasty, manic decision, but it is one I have stuck with. 

Fast forward across the months of attending classes with most students a decade my junior. Pre-reqs are finished. And it is time for me to jump the Celexa ship. As lovely as it was to my emotions and my dealings with others, it has done a number on my body. I have literally packed on 15-20 lbs. I did a solid month and a half of hard core one hour workouts, six to seven days a week! Took the entire family to the fine little land of Veganisim...eating a plant based diet the entire time! And I LITERALLY stayed the exact same weight as when I started the working out! The only thing that comes to mind is WTF?!! I thought, there must be something that I was doing wrong. Nope...just these brain-f-ing drugs! 

So I have a handful of tools and techniques to chill out when I'm feeling my anxiety creeping in and I'm ready to drop off of this crap. I've done this before. When I dropped off of Zoloft. That was pretty intense. I'm hoping that since I've been here before, I can do it again...I know what is about to happen with my spinny brain and my grumpiness. But I'm hopeful that since my stress level is at a much different level than it was after Zoloft, this time won't be nearly as difficult. 

This is day three of splitting my tiny pink pills in half...it's going pretty well so far. We will see how this mood is on day 33. Ha.