Dullness and Lexapro

At the end of last week, I was feeling less depressed than I was previously, but I was very numb to any positive emotions. Lexapro, as with any SSRI, can do this. A lot of the strange, emotion-manipulating side effects of these medicines can be temporary or can last for as long as they are used, and the patient needs to wait and see to decide what to do with them. I'd been feeling this dullness intermittently since I started taking the maximum dose of Lexapro two weeks ago, but it was pretty consistent from Wednesday to Saturday.

This dullness was even worse than the depression. On a depressed day, I could try some things that might cheer me up. I at least had a strong negative emotion that I felt like I could respond to and fight against, I had something to be in tension with. When I feel dull, though, I just have trouble making myself care about anything. It's really sad for me, because I have a lot of things that are important to me, relationships, creative work, research, books, but to not be able to feel anything about these things made me afraid that I'd abandon them.

I love the opening scene of Garden State. An airplane is about to crash, and everyone on board is screaming in terror, except for the guy on lithium.

Sunday, yesterday, I woke up feeling a little depressed, and I was excited to be feeling something. I'm in a really good mood today. I'm actually feeling very hyper and fidgety. I'm afraid I might have trouble getting to sleep.

I refilled my prescription for Lexapro today. At first, that seemed like a tough decision; it' thrown me into one of the toughest spells, psychologically, that I've had in about two years. I'm feeling about average, now, though. It might turn out to be an amazing thing for me; I generally feel a little low, and have one or two days a month where I have really intense anxiety. If that disappears, that would be fantastic. A lot of psych meds take a long time to take effect; Lexapro takes anywhere from one to four weeks; I'll have been on it four weeks this Friday.

If you have problems with depression or anxiety, and you try taking medicine to treat that, you may find it worthwhile to endure a very difficult adjustment period to a new brain chemistry. I'm still wanting to see how I do over the next month or so.