Brain Zaps of the Future

And I feel like this is my just desserts for having issues with anxiety.

Several months ago I found myself at one of those major life junctures—I graduated from a master's program—and I had to say goodbye to the therapist and psychiatrist I had been seeing through school to start fresh with a new ones.

The new therapist was easy enough to find and start seeing. Hell, I was able to start seeing this guy the week after I called. The psychiatrist front was different though. I was given a few names by my brand spanking new therapist to try but, for some reason, anxiety got in the way and I put off making the simple phone calls.

And now I'm at the point where I have a little more than a month's worth of meds left—my last psychiatrist gave me three month's worth to give me the time to find a new doctor—and I still don't have a new doctor lined up. Of course, all the doctors I've now been trying are scheduling two or three months in advance.

So here's where I am, sitting here typing away with brain zaps faintly nipping at the edges of my body. I'm spacing out my doses, taking not even half of my prescribed regimen, with the hopes that I can survive till an appointment that still doesn't exist. Maybe I'll try seeing a general practitioner to get new scripts to tide me over till then.

But really, I just want off of all these meds—Effexor, Wellbutrin, and Lamictal. I've been on them for over seven years and I don't even know what I'd be like without them, which makes the idea of getting off of them scary. They were really helpful when I started them but, let's face it, I'm still depressed and anxious and wondering vaguely if I'd be better off dead. And the side effects I'm having from all these drugs—major sweating, light headedness, weight gain, receding gums, sexual dysfunction in several flavors, and more—make sane life look pretty damned unattractive.

I'm tempted to not even bother with a new psychiatrist, to just go alone and taper off everything at once using the last month of meds at my disposal. I know this would be disastrous, but I still have trouble imagining any kind of better life after all these years. Something does need to change.