Ninety-six, 97, Ninety-eight, Ninety-nine

Last day on Paxil.

Insomnia, moodiness, irritability, forgetfulness (speling?). Not much else to report.

"99 Days To Become Paxil Free". Hitting book stores this fall.

Eighty-two to Ninety-five (including 83 and 89)

I have set aside four 5mg chunks to me taken this week starting tomorrow. Those will mark the last doses of Paxil I (hopefully) will ever take.

As of today I have only really experienced four notable side-effects (again, accompanied by my completely subjective 10 point scale of how annoying each one is):

• Irritability (8)
• Insomnia (6)
• Memory Loss / Forgetfulness (9)
• Emotional Wreckedness (7)

Interestingly enough, my last dose of the drug comes on day 99 of the journey. It's really not that intersing now that I read that again. I guess I could always write a book now, "99 days to becoming Paxil free". Sounds better than "100 days to becoming Paxil free" doesn't it?

Seventy-eight, 79, Eighty, Eighty-one, Eighty-two

Nothing to report except that I'm unusually emotional. I watched Extreme Home Makeover the other night and was basically a wreck. All I needed was that commercial with the kid talking to his grandpa on the phone ("Grandpa, I'm not in Paris... I'm in Dieppe") and it would have been the end of me.

The other symptoms are still going strong, but nothing worth worrying about. I plan on sticking at 5mg for this week and the next 2 after that, then nothing. I'm looking forward to it.

On a side note, here are a few things I think my wife has an unhealthy obsession for:

1. Shoes
2. Children's Clothes
3. Broth (both chicken and beef)

Seventy-two to Seventy-seven (including 73)

It's been about a week at 5mg now and everything is pretty much as expected. Much like NASCAR though people don't watch (or in this case, read) unless there's a wreck. I'm sorry everything's going so well and don't have any horror stories to report. I do however have a short list of withdrawl symptoms and their relative annoyance (on a scale of 1 to 10 where 1 is "barely noticeable" and 10 is "I'm going insane"):

• Irritability (8)
• Insomnia (6)
• Memory Loss / Forgetfulness (8)

The interesting part about that last one is that I hadn't really noticed it until recently. At least once a day I find myself just standing seemingly in the middle of nowhere wondering what the hell I was doing. The other day I actually had to call out to my wife and ask her why I went into the kitchen (apparently it was to get a wash cloth for the baby). Toady I was actually standing with the foil from the top of a wine bottle in my hand and I picked up a tin to read the label for whatever reason. After I put the tin down I turned to Jodi and asked her what I was just doing. The wine bottle was right in front of me ready to be opened!! Maybe I should have rated that last one a 9.

Sixty-nine, Seventy, 71

Started 5mg 3 days ago.

So far you can add poor sleep to the short fuse as the side effects of the reduced dose.

Actually, as it was with 15mg the biggest pain in the ass is trying to chop up a 20mg pill into 4 pieces. We lose more good pills that way... good thing I've got a decent prescription volume.

Fifty-seven to Sixty-eight (including 59, 61 & 67)

So (knock on wood) the baby appears to be sleeping with some sort of consistency. There was a brief lapse last week but we're all OK now.

I am still at 10mg and can see only the short fuse as a notable side effect. I didn't go down to 5mg as I wasn't sleeping and then I got sick.

I feel fine now and tomorrow morning I'm going down to 5mg. First time in over 7 years at a dose less than 10mg. We'll see....

Fourty-four to Fifty-six (including 47 and 53)

It's been a while, so let's recap:

Holidays went well even though Alex didn't sleep through the night once.
Christmas was entirely too excessive.
The detox is going just fine.

I did have one night over the holidays that I can only describe as "a moment of heightened anxiety". I awoke from a pretty good sleep to a screaming baby and after getting him settled I couldn't get back to sleep. Had I been drinking or more tired it most certainly would have resulted in a full-blown panic attack but as it was I was just uncomfortable and, for lack of a better word, uncertain. It lasted about 10 minutes and then I fell asleep.

Aside from that the only side effect I seem to be experiencing is a considerably short fuse. I've never been the most patient man in the world (thanks for that lovely genetic gift dad!) but I am surprised at how easily I get frustrated now. Apparently I'm supposed to breathe.

I'm dropping down to 5mg this weekend - probably Friday morning.

Thirty-nine, Forty, 41, Forty-two, 43

Another 5 days at 10mg and no ill/side effects to speak of. If everything keeps motoring along at this pace this will end up being a very boring blog. Don't get me wrong, that's a good thing :-)

Thirty-five, Thirty-six, 37, Thirty-eight

Another four days at 10mg and everything is fine.  No headaches or any other symptoms of withdrawal and so long as the baby sleeps I do too.  The tentative timeline will see me finish out the year at 10mg and start the first week of January at 5mg and we'll see how that goes.

Twenty-seven, Twenty-eight, 29, Thirty, 31, Thirty-two, Thirty-three, Thirty-Four

Well the rest of last week carried on without incident.  I started feeling better on Thursday before I left for my company Winter business meetings at the Farimont Montebello Resort.  This weekend marked my last at 15mg and I waited another couple days just to be sure.  Today was my first day at 10mg and I feel great.  I've been at 10 before but not for at least 3 or 4 years.  I'm confident all will go well and the new year will see me hit 5mg for the first time.  All is good.

Twenty-two, 23, Twenty-four, Twenty-five, Twenty-six

Took the weekend and went to Toronto.  No ill effects from the reduced dose.  I thought I had the dreaded "Paxil Flu" as I went to bed last night and woke up at some point with a nice panic attack.  The morning brought other "flu like symptoms" and the 5 hour drive home was just wonderful.  I'm sporting a 101 fever now and have kept down toast, crackers and some soup.  I'm fairly certain this is an actual flu and not the Paxil one.  Part of me is relieved.  Most of me feels like shit.

19, Twenty, Twenty-one

OK, well overall I'd say 15mg is going just fine.  I'm not feeling sick like the past weekend and am generally not feeling any dizziness or noticing any problems with my sleep.  One thing I have noticed however is I have a really short fuse.  Not that I was a pillar of patience in the past, but lately I appear to be annoyed or frustrated all too easily.

 

About 10 more days at 15mg and then I'm going to drop it down to 10.

Sixteen, 17, Eighteen

I figured daily updates weren't necessary seeing as I had nothing to report.

 

Over the last few days though I have started to experience mild nausea and headaches.  I haven't been sleeping well either, but that could be due to a number of factors.

 

So it's been more than a week at 15mg and overall I'd say it's been going really well.  We'll keep this up for 2 more weeks and then drop it down to 10mg.  I'll really enjoy that simply because I'm tired of having to quarter a pill every 4 days.

Fifteen

Hello.

Another day at 15mg and nothing to report. Seriously, I feel fine. Great actually.

In other news, the baby breast fed before bed last night and work up at 4:30am screaming. We went back to a bottle after tub time and before bed tonight so we'll see how that goes.

And finally, I'm posting via email (which is really cool) and I'm about to see if adding this picture works. It's a photo of our fine country with my current place of residence proudly displayed as the capital city.



(FYI... the image didn't work from the email, so I added it afterwards)

Fourteen

Another day at 15mg and nothing to report.  I had a couple glasses of wine tonight so we'll see how that works out.

 

The baby has been sleeping well lately and as a result so have I.  Sleep is good.  Very good.  I love sleep.  Speaking of which...

13

Another day at 15mg. Honestly, over the past few days I have felt better than I have in a long long time.

Nothing to report today other than I've been really thirsty lately. I've been trying to combat that by drinking lots of fruit juice, which I love, but my wife informs me that even tough the sugar in those juices is natural sugar, it's still quite high; so maybe water is the better option. She drinks like 3 or 4 litres of water a day so she would know. I'm trying to get in 2L but it's hard 'cause it just makes me want to piss all the time.

I was at a seminar last week and the dude mentioned that it takes 21 days to form a habit - or to break one. So, sounds like my 3-week plan to drop the dose is right on target :)

Thirteen is my favourite number.

Twelve

Third day at 15mg is in the books. I feel fine. I slept really well last night, but I'm certain that correlates precisely with the amount of sleep the little one gave us. Not a perfect night, but headed in the right direction (knock on wood).

11

Day 2 at 15mg. I actually feel pretty great.

Slept OK last night. No headache or dizziness either.

Wish I had more to report (I guess no news is good news, eh?)

Ten

First day at 15mg and I feel pretty good. The toughest part about it was getting the pill cut. It snapped in half easy enough to give me two 10mg chunks but I pretty much butchered the second cut to get me a 5mg chunk. I'll go to the clinic right beside work to get a doc to transfer my current script from 20mg pills to 10mg ones, or better yet, liquid.

I'm pretty tired as it was a late night last night after curling but that should improve as we switch up our carpool to save a few of us that extra 30 minutes or so.

Nine

Despite potential objections by my new physician, and possibly my wife, I've decided to switch my plan. Rather than this on-again off-again business I'm going to try a gradual reduction in dosage over a period of weeks.

I subscribe to one of the many message boards on this topic and there are countless numbers of people who swear up and down that the on-off method is completely terrible, at best. Add to that the advice from a physician who is a close friend of the family also suggesting a slow wean off the drug and I've pretty much made up my mind.

It's true, many many people come off the drug with minimal fanfare, but we can't ignore the possibility of some strange, adverse and even quite serious affects occurring. It is with this in mind that I will begin to taper starting tomorrow.

The new schedule:

Weeks 1 - 3, 15mg
Weeks 4 - 6, 10mg
Weeks 7 - 9, 5mg

This amounts to 2 weeks longer than the originally scheduled 7 weeks and I would also assume that I could go from 5 to 2.5 if I can find a knife sharp enough to eighth a pill (quartering will be tough enough as it is).

If life starts to become hell I can always stick on a level for longer until I acheive some sort of balance again. It's a marathon, not a sprint.

Anyway, today was the 2nd of two days at a seminar. With no pill I was skeptical but it went alright. Dizzy as usual. Headache as usual. Grumpy (as usual - pill or no pill). I went curling and after the carpool guys dropped me off it was already late. I'm not tired but I feel like crap.

Tomorrow I'll take a pill, only it will be 15mg instead of 20. I'll take another one (technically 0.75) on Sunday and do this for 3 weeks and see how it goes.