  Suicide. For nearly as long as I can remember, the compulsion to kill myself has stalked me like my own shadow. I've made two attempts over the years — the first half-hearted, the second whole-hearted but mysteriously unsuccessful — and yet I still live. Among the many mental oddities that plague me is the hyperactivity of my brain; at all times I am subjected to an unending internal barrage of thoughts, images, sounds, songs, memories, noise and moment-to-moment emotional peaks and valleys. I can't shut it down, even when the horrific nature of the imagery and ominous suggestions inside my head make me sick with panic. More and more lately, the image of me putting my pistol into my mouth pops up throughout the day.
"Shoot yourself," says the Id. Now, I don't want to shoot myself. I mean, I'm pretty much back on the bottom of the social pile at this point — flat broke, out of work for nearly a year, separated from Wife #2, two broken cars, one broken motorcycle, health problems, rent coming due, no air conditioning in my third-floor apartment, one pair of pants to my name, balding, riddled with psychic damage, etc. — but still, the natural instinct to survive at all costs remains strong within me. I don't want to give in. Today I drove over to Dag's tattoo shop and he paid me for minding the store while he was out of town; he even gave me more than we agreed upon, a godsend.
I immediately rushed to the bank to make a deposit, hoping to outrun a check I wrote the other day. Fortunately I made it, and nothing bounced. Whew. I've been revamping a website for a locally-based corporation, and have spent the past several weeks waiting anxiously for a check from them. Today I found out they didn't have a copy of the invoice I sent, so I had to e-mail a copy to a friend who has a printer (mine is still over at the ex's place, buried in the rubble of our failed marriage), have him print it out, and drive it to the corporate office.
If all goes well, they'll issue a check this Friday, which should reach me just in time to pay my rent next Tuesday. Cross your fingers for me, eh? Curtis, the guy whose house I'm supposed to be helping repaint, still hasn't laid his hands on the power washer needed to blast the old paint off, so once again I'm in limbo. The sooner we get that done, the sooner I'll have some cash in hand. Another day wasted on that front, as was yesterday. Which sucks, because Monday (when we worked) it was 94 degrees outside, and the past two days we haven't worked have been pleasant and overcast. Ah, cést la vie. All these little frustrations add up on me after a while, as they would most anyone.
But I'm afraid I'm just ill-equipped to handle the stress. Driving around in my ex's beat-up little Honda today I could feel the dark, desperate cloud of depression looming over me. It's so familiar to me, it's tangible. Walking around with a shopping basket in hand at the local grocer's this afternoon I felt the urge to sit down next to the shelves of vegetable oil and shortening and just plant my head in my hands and cry. I caught sight of myself in the mirrors behind the bread display and saw myself hunched as in pain, my face contorted into an ashen mask of grief. I straightened and consciously made an effort to look more pleasant, but the story was still there in my eyes.
Even the girl at the checkout counter gave me a look of concern when I entered her aisle. This happens to me over and over in life, and no course of medical treatment has properly addressed it. Over time I've begun to agree with those who criticize treating depression as a medical issue rather than an emotional/spiritual one; the medical paradigm mandates that the "patient's" brain chemistry be manipulated with chemicals, while the emotional/spiritual approach places more importance on the "talking cure. " Rarely has a psychiatrist seemed interested in the events in my life that shaped me; so long as I'm taking the pills, they're happy.
But so long as I'm taking the pills, I'm unhappy. Unhappier, in fact, than I am when in my "normal" frame of mind. By the doctor's parameters, I may appear to be "improved", but living as a corpulent, ineffectual zombie is not my definition of improvement. I'd rather be depressed and overwhelmed with the torrent of static in my head. I'd rather keep on counting my steps, compulsively chanting and praying, being obsessed with symmetry. I'd rather be unable to stop meowing, barking and making pirate noises. I'd rather not have the incredibly frightening anxiety attacks in the middle of the night, but I'm afraid those are episodes that I never had until I took the fucking medicine in the first place. I've had it with modern medicine, at least insofar as it applies to treatment of the mind. The saddest thing of all is that I used to be a "genius".
I just recently found my standardized test scores from elementary school, and noticed that I scored in the 99th percentile in almost every area of study. I heard the word "potential" constantly as a child in reference to my brainpower. I was in the Gifted program in my small-town school system, got high marks on the SAT when I was in seventh grade (and was offered a scholarship to Duke University on that basis), and did so well on the ASVAB (Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery) test in high school that I had every branch of the U.S. military hounding me to enlist as an intelligence officer. Now I'm a burned-out husk of a man crash-landing on Skid Row, living hand-to-mouth, unable to pay back hundreds of dollars to friends who have kindly bailed me out in the past.
I own nothing of value, my credit is decimated, my checking account never has $100 in it. I watch my friends prosper all around me, raising families, buying decent houses, driving functional automobiles. I'm not talking about gated communities and Hummers, just basic getting-along-in-life — I have always been grossed out by materialism, status symbols and conspicuous consumption. But my friends are making it, and all the hard work I've put in over the years has come to naught. The moral of the story is obvious to me: I'm all fucked up. When I first started the antidepressant treatments three years ago, I had timid hopes that maybe the stuff would clear my head, dispel the eternal cyclone of noise inside me and help me get my life together.
How could I have known that the stuff would make everything worse, maybe permanently? I guess I should have done my homework. Once I started tapering off the drugs, I poked around on the internet and found numerous bulletin boards where users of Paxil and similar drugs posted messages to one another in a sort of ad hoc cyber-support group. Through reading lots of information on the subject of SSRI withdrawal, I discovered that many annoying physical problems I started having around this time may be connected to use of the drugs. Among the reported aftereffects of Paxil, et al that I have personally experienced (and continue to experience) are: intense insomnia; extraordinarily vivid dreams (often dreadful nightmares in my case); intense fear of losing my sanity; steady feeling of existing outside of reality as I know it (referred to as depersonalization at times); memory and concentration problems; panic attacks; severe mood swings, esp. heightened irritability/anger; suicidal thoughts; the feeling of shocks, similar to mild electric one, running the length of my body; an unsteady gait; profuse sweating, esp. at night; breaking out in tears; hypersensitivity to motion, sounds, smells; chills/hot flashes. (Symptom descriptions here taken from urlLink QuitPaxil.info . ) Anyway, it was hard for me to hold a job and keep a steady relationship going before all that, with just the chronic up &amp; down of manic depression and the annoying manifestations of OCD.
Now I've got the whole mess. On top of it all, I can't express myself any more the way I used to. Writing is a difficult task, whether it's a news story, an e-mail to a friend, this blog or a song. I can't be sure, of course, but I think that's all connected to the drugs, too. Ironically the years I spent taking LSD and smoking tons of pot were among the most freely creative of my life. It's like Bizarro World — the illegal stuff is less harmful than the legal stuff. Several years ago I started a song called "Suicide", but never finished it.
There's one verse: Suicide, I've loved you from afar How many times you've caught my eye Standing across the bar I feel a pang of envy Each time you take a friend So hold me in your loving arms And let my misery end. I've tried to add more since then, but it's never worked out. This blog's getting to be a bummer, eh? Come back next time and I promise I'll tell you a happy story with lots of sex, drugs and rock &amp; roll. Keep on smilin'! Brannigan 
