All Too Clear

Posted on March 30, 2006 in Depression Psychotropics PTSD

Shannin writes of the fogginess she feels when she takes her meds. You know, I can’t relate, but then I think I know the reason.

I take Effexor, a norepinephrin/serotonin reuptake inhibitor. The key is the norepinephrin. It’s the brain’s form of adrenalin. The whoosh factor is high. Not only does it cause the brain to speed up, but it has an important part in memory. So I am more awake than the average drugged bipolar and have a better memory.

Don’t count the latter as a plus.

Norepinephrin figures in the fight or flight or fright response. Large amounts of it are released when you come under threat. It powers your brain’s response to the threat. The stuff burns — and I mean burns — the event into your brain’s crevices. The neurotransmitter is why soldiers can’t forget seeing their buddy’s head blown off and why adult children can’t forget their beatings or other traumas. The adaptive function of norepinephrin is that it allows you to remember dangerous situations and avoid them. It stands as a rebuttal of intelligent design because it can paralyze you in situations which are not dangerous, too, as when a shiny doorknob looks to you like the glint of a rifle barrel.

I can testify to the fact that when you attempt suicide while on it, you remember Every. Bloody. Detail. Many of my friends don’t remember their suicide attempts. They blank out. “My husband found me laying on the kitchen floor,” they might say. Or “my wife didn’t want to tell me about the scratches on the dining room table.” Effexor helped me remember what I didn’t want to remember. To this day I can see the log I was sitting on, remember the content of the text messages that I sent to my wife. Oh for one of those blissful segues out of reality that others enjoy. Oh for a dissociation!

Then I read of the frustration others have because they cannot recall simple facts or focus on simple tasks or the arts they used to enjoy.

Damn this illness. Why does it have to be so hard?