Not So Much A Failure As A Data Point
May. 19th, 2011 12:06 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
deaneA little over a year ago I stopped taking paxil. While it had helped with my problems with anxiety it never really did anything for my depression. In the 11 years that I'd been on paxil I had learned other ways of dealing with anxiety so I decided to give them a try.
After the initial mood swings I settled down and things were pretty good for a few months. Then, slowly, the anxiety started to return. At first I could chalk it up to one-off events and, most recently, to an enormous amount of stress at work. But that's all several weeks behind me now yet my levels of anxiety have only grown and become more frequent. For the past two weeks my gut has been in a near continuous state of turmoil and I often feel like I'm on the verge of vomiting. Tonight I was having dinner with a friend when I broke out into a cold sweat, something which in the past has presaged a panic attack.
So tonight, when I got home from dinner, I went back onto the paxil. When I was coming off of it, a year ago, I found that at a quarter does I didn't experience any ill side-effects, so I'm starting out at just a quarter dose. Hopefully that will be enough to rein in the anxiety. I should be able to tell in a couple of weeks if it's working.
After the initial mood swings I settled down and things were pretty good for a few months. Then, slowly, the anxiety started to return. At first I could chalk it up to one-off events and, most recently, to an enormous amount of stress at work. But that's all several weeks behind me now yet my levels of anxiety have only grown and become more frequent. For the past two weeks my gut has been in a near continuous state of turmoil and I often feel like I'm on the verge of vomiting. Tonight I was having dinner with a friend when I broke out into a cold sweat, something which in the past has presaged a panic attack.
So tonight, when I got home from dinner, I went back onto the paxil. When I was coming off of it, a year ago, I found that at a quarter does I didn't experience any ill side-effects, so I'm starting out at just a quarter dose. Hopefully that will be enough to rein in the anxiety. I should be able to tell in a couple of weeks if it's working.
