It Doesn't Take Long

I've gone off the Celexa. My prescription ran out around the 13th, and it took me a few days to get a refill phoned in and filled. In the meantime, I noticed a dramatic drop in weight, which was interesting because lately it seemed like nothing I could do could get weight off, and in fact it just kept creeping on until I was at a lifetime high. Suddenly the weight was going. I was off Celexa for probably 4 days and lost around 10 pounds.

I got back on the Celexa, and in two days I regained four pounds. I Googled, and found forum after forum dedicated to extreme weight gains on Celexa, many as much as sixty pounds.

I'm already very overweight, and I *cannot* be on a medication that makes me gain that much weight. I just cannot. No antidepressant in the world is going to get me in the right place if I have to deal with that kind of side effect. So I decided that I was going to stop the Celexa, and talk it over with my psychiatric nurse on my appointment on the 5th. This was around the 20th.

It does not take long for the effects of the antidepressant to wear off. I started noticing a bit of irritability a few days ago. Yesterday I was pretty grouchy. And today I am just bonkers. I have been edgy, irritable, snappy, and just generally unpleasant. I have been acting unreasonably (in particular with a huge blow-out screaming fight with X on the phone tonight). I actually broke down into tears just a few minutes ago. Just for a moment, but since it has been many, many months since I have cried, it was a bit shocking for me.

I have these racing feelings that I just feel like my brain is whirling. I feel literally sick to my stomach with it. I can't settle down, I can't relax, but I can't focus on anything really productive, either. I'm badly impatient.

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Just had to take a breather. While I was doing that, I actually called X and apologized for my unreasonable behavior and offered to accept a compromise. I explained that I'm going through a rough time right now and I took it out on him and that wasn't fair. I think I floored him for a minute, but he bounced back really quickly and offered his own apologies and thanked me for making the effort. It was very weird to be so civil so quickly after we had been so truly awful to each other. But I feel better about it.

I've also made a decision that for the next two weeks, I will go back on the Celexa. Whatever happens in those two weeks with my weight, happens, but I just cannot live feeling the way I have been today. So I'll go back until I can talk to the p.n., and work out a different game plan.

I forget when I am on even ground just how horrible it is to be off the meds. It's an incredibly awful way to feel at all, and for it to be so constant is just horrific. I was feeling so amazing, so positive, so level, while I was on the (three) antidepressants, and now it's like it was never there.

So I go back, and hopefully the reinstatement of the emotional stability won't take long. God, people, wish me luck. mk