A Medication Change

The last week has been one of the hardest I have ever experienced. I've heard that some people experience an uptick in anxiety when they start on an SSRI, and maybe that's what happened to me. But I was a mess this week. Barely functional some days. I did make it into work, and I'm happy about that.

I was able to get an appointment for today with my primary care doctor, who wrote me a prescription for lorazepam. I'd had a prescription back in 2006, but I never took it. If you've read my blog for any time, you'll know I've been a reluctant medication taker, although that's changing. Anyway, it was clear to me this week that waiting possibly another month or more to see if the SSRI would work was simply an untenable solution.

So I took half a lorazepam today. I can't quite say how well it worked. I did feel much better as the day wore on, but that's generally true. Regardless, I think it worked somewhat. Tomorrow I'm going to experiment with a whole pill, since I don't need to leave the house if I don't choose to.

Overall, I feel like the cloud of doom that followed me all week is lifting. But I still have a lot of rumination about things that happen during the course of my day. And then today I stopped in briefly at work to make a copy of a key. Oh, my. I had to test the key on the cabinet, and it's a cabinet with all the important stuff in it: checks, spare keys, accounting records. I cannot even tell you how many times I checked that it was locked. More than I think I've ever checked anything, ever. And it wasn't even quite like I didn't believe it was locked. More like I wanted to have so many memories of checking that I couldn't doubt it later- although of course OCD doesn't work that way.

I came home and joked with a friend that I sure hope there's not some unknown security camera in that office. And then of course I spent some time ruminating about that possibility. Haha, OCD won this round.