Antidepressants and A Broken Life

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In the early 1990s, I was living in Chicago, having moved there to take a job as a technical writer, but that didn’t work out, and I soon found myself shuffling between unemployment and short-term temp jobs. This didn’t put me in a good mood, and I struggled with the feelings this caused. I had been counseled for depression before, but my therapy had never involved medication.

Despite my sketchy situation (at this point, I described my employment status as not so much a career but a careen from job to job in the manner of a drunken sailor), in 1994 I actually managed to latch onto a girlfriend who saw more in me than I did myself at the time. She helped me get into a free program of counseling, where for the first time I was getting therapy from a psychiatrist instead of a counselor or social worker.

For the first time, I was prescribed medication for depression. It was Wellbutrin, a brand of bupropion made by Glaxo Wellcome. It was considered an innovative drug at the time because, unlike most other antidepressants, it had a low instance of certain side effects, particularly weight gain and loss of libido. My psychiatrist chose it primarily for the latter reason since I was in a newly minted relationship and sexual problems could only make things worse.

I was on the Wellbutrin for about seven months, then I discontinued it because my psychiatrist moved to New Zealand and I finally found full-time work which left me no time for counseling. The usual procedure for withdrawal of antidepressants is to wean the patient from the drug, but I ended up going the cold turkey route. I hadn’t noticed any change in my general mood anyway, but as it turned out, my previous troubles were a mere bagatelle.

On a couple of occasions, my former girlfriend (by now my wife – so that, at least, worked out) found that I was apparently sleepwalking, wandering about the apartment, and, once, in the building’s basement, with no apparent awareness of where I was or what was going on. She even threatened to lock me in for my own safety. I later learned that I also zoned out briefly from time to time, but our friends never mentioned it out of a false sense of politeness.

Some things got even worse. On one occasion I “woke up” in my car, not knowing where I was or how I got there, and somehow managed to find my way home. When my wife found me on the couch, I had no memory of anything that happened after leaving the house in the first place.

The year 1999 rolled around, and so began the worst year of my life. It started with a bout of bronchitis in January. Then, on 1 March, my wife died suddenly of a blood clot that occluded her aortic valve. A week later, our favorite cat died and at the end of that month, I was evicted and had to find a new place to live.

In early October, I had another, much more serious memory lapse. I left my apartment at around 7:00 one night to go to a nearby convenience store for some soda and snacks. When I returned, it was nearly midnight and I had no memory of anything that had happened – leaving, going to the store, returning – and no explanation for where I was and what I had been doing for almost five hours (I did, though, have the soda, some chips and a receipt for the purchase). Some time later, I described this incident to a friend. She told me it might be a form of epilepsy. Her husband had been on anti-seizure medication since he was twelve, and had experienced episodes similar to mine.

She suggested that I get tested, and I passed this on to my doctor. I didn’t think that things could get even worse, but they did. My doctor’s request for an EEG was declined by Blue Cross of Illinois on the grounds that there was not sufficient grounds to consider it medically necessary enough to justify the cost.

A month and a half after the test was denied, I had another blackout, but this one happened while I was driving to work. I hit and killed a pedestrian, and somehow managed to keep going and get to my office, again with no memory of how I got there. Later that day, I was arrested, charged with vehicular homicide and sent to Cook County jail. I later learned that the police had attributed the incident to drug use without running any tests to verify that conclusion.

When I was finally released on bail four days later, I had no job to go back to and was facing arraignment and what ended up being a court case that dragged on for more than two years.

Finally, in February of 2000, I experienced what most people think of when they hear the word “seizure”. I collapsed while grocery shopping and lay twitching on the floor. As I came to, I was being lifted onto a stretcher and taken to a nearby hospital. There I received the tests that Blue Cross had previously denied me, and I was finally diagnosed as epileptic. The attack that hospitalized me was a tonic-clonic seizure (formerly called grand mal). My previous episodes had been partial complex seizures. It was the first time the ER doctors had ever seen a patient actually relieved to be told he had epilepsy, but it explained everything that had been happening for the last few years.

When the doctors asked me about my medical history, I told them everything I could, including all prescriptions. When I mentioned having been on Wellbutrin, lights flashed and bells rang.

Epilepsy is more of a condition than a disease; it cannot be caught, and usually shows in childhood or the teen years. Medical opinion is divided over whether it can be caused by an external event such as a traumatic head injury. The most common reason for it to show up later in life is that something lowers an epileptic person’s seizure threshold. Sometimes this is a result of aging and other times it can happen because of drug interaction.

In my case, it was the Wellbutrin that was the probable trigger For the first thirty-seven years of my life, unknown to me or any of my doctors, I had been an undiagnosed epileptic. There had been a few sleepwalking incidents when I was very young, but they seemed to be connected to nighttime bathroom use and I apparently outgrew them Wellbutrin, however, is a drug that is contraindicated for anyone prone to seizures and is known to make such people more susceptible. Since I had never shown symptoms, there was no apparent risk. The risk became evident,though, since the seizures continued for at least four years after I stopped using the drug.

Finally, in 2007, under the treatment of a different doctor and with Medicare on my side, a second EEG showed that my epilepsy had gone into remission. I have not had a seizure since the one that hospitalized me, and I have been withdrawn from anti-seizure medications (which have their own troublesome side effects).

People who did not know this part of my past sometimes wondered why I was so passionate on the issue of universal health care and the public option. The reason is that for the sake of the bottom line, and, probably, the CEO’s 1999 bonus, a bean counter at Blue Cross turned me into a killer, cost me a job and a home and, because the Chicago Police never removed the label “drug-related” from my record, caused my driving privileges to be revoked for life, something which has made it nearly impossible to find decent employment. That is the sort of thing that would not happen with a national health system. But of all the things that happened during those years, the one that still bothers me the most is that my wife died not knowing there was an explanation for my erratic behavior. I sometimes wonder if she, like the police, suspected me of drug use.

There are many people who cannot do without medication, but my own experience makes it impossible for me to accept it for myself. I now refuse all antidepressant medication. If I can’t deal with my problems with therapy alone, that’s tough; I learned a very harsh lesson, and I’ve been told that I was lucky that I didn’t consider suicide. Others may tout the benefits of antidepressants and some people need them, but this is my choice and my current doctor agrees with me.

About Post Author

E.A. Blair

E.A. Blair is the 'nom de commenter' of someone who has been a teacher, game designer, programmer, logistic support officer and technical writer at various times in his life. Most of the hits in a search on his real name predate the internet; it appears exactly four times in Wikipedia and six times on IMDb.
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7 years ago

Man hugs mate. Life can be a bitch but we get by and, after all, if we are alive we’re winning eh? x

Bill Formby
7 years ago

E.A. The one thing about we folks at MMA is that we all have things have diverted our lives, goodly or badly, and generally at some the rest of the regulars get to read about some and become aware of new information. I guess in one sense your finally finding out about the root of your physical problems. Like you I am actually disgusted by the fact that this country cannot seem to understand that health care is a right not a privilege. I have been fortunate that most of my problems have been relatively small except for the strep infection of my liver which almost killed me. It is a national tragedy that so many people in this country, as a whole, have been convinced that medical and mental health care is not something to put on the market as a free enterprise commodity. Your “bean counter” cost you lost time in your life as healthy as you might be. Society has been brainwashed to think that cost is relative when, in fact, it should be that life and health are far more relative. Health and medicare should not be for sale in this country.

Marsha Woerner
Reply to  Bill Formby
7 years ago

Hear hear

MDavis
Reply to  Bill Formby
7 years ago

Grr! – E.A.’s bean counter cost an innocent bystander’s life in addition to the bs that E.A. went through. Blue Cross should be in lock up for reckless endangerment (and stuff like the destruction of E.A.’s reputation and ability to make a living as should be…), but that’ll never happen.

Marsha Woerner
7 years ago

One of the nice things about being a commentor on a site like Mad Mike’s is that your allowed a group can take you at face value, and not – I don’t know, PURSUE? – for the past! You, at least, sound like a reasonable guy, and I’m happy that a final diagnosis has actually been reached! There’s nothing as bad as knowing that SOMETHING is not right, but having no Dr. willing to diagnose what is really wrong! Good luck

Marsha Woerner
Reply to  Marsha Woerner
7 years ago

Oh, and I agree insurance SUCKS! Single-payer all the way!

E.A. Blair
Reply to  Marsha Woerner
7 years ago

In this case, Marsha, the problem was not with a doctor unwilling to diagnose me; the insurance company did not let him order the needed tests. My Chicago doctor, who was treating me during these crisis years, wanted to help but was prevented from doing so. My current doctor was not hampered by such constraints because I was no longer covered by private sector insurance.

I have been able to find some humor in the situation. I told a group of friends about all the things that happened during the year of hell that was 1999, and I said that I was less inclined to be suicidal back then than I am now at the prospect of a President Trump.

Marsha Woerner
Reply to  E.A. Blair
7 years ago

🙂

E.A. Blair
7 years ago

Subscribing to comments.

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