Myndfull's Success Story

[myndfull]

Today is my sixty-second birthday. It is also close to the date five years ago when I joined this website and began my taper off of Celexa. There is a great deal I could say here about how to survive a long taper. I could give advice. But withdrawal is a personal journey. Read what you find on this website judiciously and then do what you think is best for you.

 

As you know, withdrawal makes your head spin. It disorients. It creates a fever. Your body clenches and your nerves prickle and pound. The negative is raised up, the positive is fleeting. You're told in terrible whispers to the heart that you will never be whole again, that your disorientation will be the condition under which you will exist forever.

 

But to that whisper you should stand firm: No! I WILL return.

 

And you will. In my own return, I've watched the changes from a front-row seat. With greater and greater clarity, I saw the road ahead. What I see today is a place, or a state of mind, where a kind of unity within me is possible.

 

The cycling of withdrawal reveals this possibility in a slow unwinding paradox: That as each negative in the cycle of withdrawal peaks the positive increases. (Without pain there can be no gain.) And then there comes a series of tipping points when the positive takes over and the negative begins to fade.

 

I may never get back to who I once was. But so what! I don't want to be that person again, anyway. Time and experience change us all in ways that we cannot predict. I'm fully aware of the fact that whatever comes my way is neither mine to control nor something I should ignore. I accept the ways of the world but refuse to let those ways bowl me asunder. I will accept what is, yet seek-out quiet, sun-lit places where presence and calm are the order of the day.

 

The plasticity of the CNS is a wondrous thing and makes these changes possible. The body wants to be whole. Someday, when the positive and the negative in me merge they will then both fade from consciousness and I'll be whole, I'll be present. In some mysterious though endlessly interesting way, I will have found the bedrock upon which I exist. Something like that.

 

I'm not religious. But I do put a lot of stock in the messaging of good metaphors. One of the books that has sustained me in my journey back from the insanity of withdrawal has been the "The Gospel of Thomas." I've read and studied it as the atheist I am and the former English teacher I was. I'd like to leave you with some of its secular wisdom as a kind of commentary on the growing self-awareness that I believe will come to you, too, as you make your own return to self:

 

Logion 18: Where the beginning is, the end will also be.

 

Logion 58: Good are those who have undergone ordeals./They have entered into life.

 

Logion 61: ...when people are open,/they are filled with light./When they are divided,/they are filled with darkness.

 

Logion 70: If you bring forth what is within you,/what you bring forth will save you./If you do not bring forth what is within you,/what you do not bring forth will destroy you.

 

Logion 84: When you see/your true likeness,/you rejoice./But when you see your true self,/those that were before you existed,/and that never die and never manifest,/what grandeur!

 

Logion 90: ...you shall find repose within you.

 

Logion: 111: Whoever has self-knowledge,/the world cannot contain them.

 

 

Myndfull

[India]

@myndfull Beautiful, poetic. Gives me much hope. 

[Hibari]

Thank you for that beautiful post.  Giving me hope today.  

[Nena59]

Thanks for sharing! It gives me hope today! I hope your positive journey continues.

 

[intothewoods]

 

On 7/10/2019 at 4:25 PM, myndfull said:

As you know, withdrawal makes your head spin. It disorients. It creates a fever. Your body clenches and your nerves prickle and pound. The negative is raised up, the positive is fleeting. You're told in terrible whispers to the heart that you will never be whole again, that your disorientation will be the condition under which you will exist forever.

 

But to that whisper you should stand firm: No! I WILL return.

 

And you will. In my own return, I've watched the changes from a front-row seat. With greater and greater clarity, I saw the road ahead. What I see today is a place, or a state of mind, where a kind of unity within me is possible.

 

The cycling of withdrawal reveals this possibility in a slow unwinding paradox: That as each negative in the cycle of withdrawal peaks the positive increases. (Without pain there can be no gain.) And then there comes a series of tipping points when the positive takes over and the negative 

 

I just love this. Thank you for describing so well what the drugs want us to believe will never happen. 

 

Much continued healing to you, @myndfull. 

[FarmGirlWorks]

On 7/10/2019 at 1:25 PM, myndfull said:

Logion 18: Where the beginning is, the end will also be.

💛💛💛 Thank you!

[TurkeyCold]

On 7/11/2019 at 10:57 AM, India said:

@myndfull Beautiful, poetic. Gives me much hope. 

#2

 

Thank you, myndfull 😌

[juelli]

Thank you for this. 💕

[myndfull]

Only a year and a half has passed since I wrote my success story, yet it seems like a lifetime ago--decades.

 

If you're a regular user of SA.org you won't find anything I have to say today that will be original. But I think anyone in withdrawal needs to hear again that things DO get better, that the trajectory of withdrawal is toward healing.

 

I'm still in recovery. Each time I have a difficult time of it I come out changed, subtly different, yet always essentially more like the person I used to be: calm, centered, sensible, honest (especially to myself), kind, forgiving, generous, grateful. Anti-depressants took those very human characteristics away and gave me in return a hollow, self-centered unhappy man.

 

Here's a little of what's happened since I was last here:  

 

My physical and psychological issues have greatly diminished, though are not completely gone; I no longer have awful IBS-like symptoms; I no longer get debilitating headaches; I rarely get the intense flu-like paresthesia (body aches--what I've called the "clench" or the "buzz") that plagued me; I'm able to sleep for six hours straight, tho' I still have insomnia--something I've had off and on since I was thirteen; I don't have much of the sinus sensitivity that, coupled with the headaches, made sleep sometimes impossible; I don't have anhedonia, though I can get a little down and dispirited; I don't get withdrawal's hamster-wheel effects, the brain fog, spinning, spinning, spinning in my brain; I don't have paranoia; I don't rage anymore; I don't get emotionally upset about little things; I can read books again and listen to music with great absorption and delight (I'm listening to Coltrane's "Ballads" album as I write this); I'm generally hopeful now about the future. Etc. -- I've had so many symptoms, detailing any more of them here would be laborious and unhelpful.

 

I'm better!!!!

 

I've said to my wife lately that I feel like I'm waking up. Waking up. I've been asleep or deadened to so much. My ability to feel the world, to sense it with a richer contextuality, has increased exponentially. It increases each month. From week to week I am not the same person. I feel things now about the world, myself, etc., that I didn't or couldn't feel or see before, or did but as though through a glass darkly. For example, lately I'm feeling a renewal of the love I felt for my wife when we had just met, and I'm rediscovering her and that love--something I've always felt but under the effects of my SSRI couldn't express very well. I'm in love! I can understand now just how smart I was to have chosen her so many years ago, back when I wasn't taking an SSRI, back when I was sensible and strong, yet distrustful and wary of my emotions.

 

So, before I go, here's a weird take:  These SSRI's actually work! I'm cured!  Hear me out:  First, you have to take them for a number of years. Then you have to taper off them for a number of years. Then you have to wait a number of years to regrow your "whatever" (don't ask; I don't know; your CNS?). As you do, you begin to feel like you've been upgraded, version 2.0 (1.0 being buggy and clumsy to use; a prototype, used with caution, but abused with unnecessarily emotional turmoil).

 

Before I go, I have a warning for some of you. You may feel that you'll never be whole/better/good again. You are saying essentially that you are different. Don't feel that way. You're not special. You're not. You'll heal like the rest of us did. It's the way of it. You may lack the patience to be able to see that now, but if there's one thing your re-growth will teach you it's patience.

 

I may be back in a couple years when I'll be shiny new. 3.0? I hope I live long enough. One can't be too optimistic, but after withdrawal one can certainly feel justified in casting caution to the wind and hoping for the best.

[Erell]

20 hours ago, myndfull said:

Before I go, I have a warning for some of you. You may feel that you'll never be whole/better/good again. You are saying essentially that you are different. Don't feel that way. You're not special. You're not. You'll heal like the rest of us did. It's the way of it. You may lack the patience to be able to see that now, but if there's one thing your re-growth will teach you it's patience.

 

I love it ! ❤️ 

Thank you for taking the time to remind that I'm absolutely not special

And enjoy the 2.0 life version !