withdrawal

Thursday, Feb. 17, 2011 | 12:43 AM

Hello hello. I am writing this on david's computer, and the text editor I'm using is capitalizing my letters for me. Fancy stuff.

Anyway.

I haven't updated in a while, primarily because I have been working on making a new blog elsewhere. It will be a continuation of this blog, but hosted at a better place with more features. For example, you don't have to pay to have comments, which is just about the stupidest thing ever.

So you can be looking forward to that sometime in the future. I have lots of pictures and stuff that I will be posting there.

In the meantime, I should probably update here.

For those of you who don't know, i've been taking a prescription medication called trazodone. I take it for insomnia, but it is also an antidepressant. I've been taking it for a few years.

Since I moved to california, my doctor kept refilling it for about six months. Then she cut me off. She wanted me to get a doctor here, which of course I can't afford. So, after putting it off due to extreme phone anxiety, I finally called a place here for uninsured people. I have an appointment for friday, where I will find out if I qualify for any programs to help me pay my doctor bill. If not, it's a sliding scale thing. I have to do this before I can make an appointment to see a doctor.

My last trazodone refill is running out, so i've started taking half a pill at night and skipping it entirely every few nights. The problem is, trazodone has very bad withdrawal, and if one wants to actually go off of it, they wouldn't start by jumping down to half a pill. They would start with more like 3/4 of a pill, or even more than that.

So i've been feeling very sucky.

Here is a list of trazodone withdrawal symptoms:

aggression, anxiety, balance issues , blurred vision , brain zaps, concentration impairment, constipation, crying spells, depersonalization, diarrhea, dizziness, electric shock sensations, fatigue, flatulence, flu-like symptoms, hallucinations, hostility, highly emotional, indigestion, irritability, impaired speech, insomnia, jumpy nerves, lack of coordination, lethargy, migraine headaches / increased headaches, nausea, nervousness, over-reacting to situations, paranoia, repetitive thoughts or songs, sensory & sleep disturbances, severe internal restlessness (akathasia), stomach cramps, tremors, tinnitus (ear ringing or buzzing), tingling sensations, troubling thoughts, visual hallucinations / illusions, vivid dreams, visual changes, worsened depression

...which is pretty much every bad thing you could think of.

so far i've been feeling generally icky, sick, nauseous, achy, and kinda restless. I've been having temperature issues, feeling hot and cold at the same time, while sweating a lot. I can't sleep very well. Last night, I had this weird feeling where I felt like I was going to die within the next few minutes. I didn't though.

So, after friday, I will find out how much longer I have to wait before I can get my prescription refilled. If it's too long, my pills will run out entirely and then i'll really be in trouble.

I'll let you know.

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