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A week into my Chantix usage, I started to feel as if the city landscape had imperceptibly shifted around me. Mundane details began to strike me as having deep, hidden significance. The neon arch above McDonald’s: The lights blinked on and off in some sort of pattern, and I needed to crack the code. One of my co-workers was messing with some papers: What is he trying to imply with all that damned crinkling? Sitting in the subway: A man hurries to get inside. His hand, holding a cup of coffee, gets stuck in the closing door. I watch the hand wriggle. The lid bursts open and steaming brown liquid hits the floor. Fingers twitch and splay. Coffee splashes in crisscrossing slats through the subway car. It was a sign—something bad was going to happen. It felt as if the essential barrier between reality and my imagination had eroded. Was it because I wasn’t getting enough R.E.M. sleep, so my dream life was rebelling, pouring into daylight, insisting to be attended to, one way or another? Meanwhile, smoking cigarettes had become an exercise in futility. At work, I’d put on my coat, head out, and light up—but there was no pleasure to be found, just a truly nasty taste. One afternoon, I was typing away at advertising copy, and as I did so, I began to wonder how I had succeeded in fooling myself that my life had any sort of value at all. Writing? Sure, it was what I’d wanted to do since I was 6—but at the end of the day, who cared? Maybe I should just go downstairs and leap in front of a tour bus. Or launch my head through the computer screen. All this seemed logical, but also weirdly funny, even at the time: I could see how crazy these impulses were, I could recognize them as suicidal clichés. But I couldn’t make them go away |
This is exactly what was happening to me.
I woke up from a nap Friday afternoon looked in my closet, and my robes one pink one white were trying to strangle each other. I went straight to the ER. Dr verified the chantix suicidal psychotic reaction. My heart rate was 125 I was sweating all over nothing looked right, people too big and rooms too small. I wanted to scream and bash my head in, instead I just cried and cried. They took me back right away, I explained all the symptoms I have been having lately and all the stress I have been going through, after talking to me for at least an hour (so comforting) he gave me sleeping pills and told me never to take chantix or any drug like it again. The sleeping pills were to help me actually sleep without the suicidal nightmares while the drug got totally out of my system. He told me to rest and relax for the weekend, take the klonopin, and do fun things.
Enter Saturday. Jolene and her sister decide its girls day out and drag me to the mall. I am in a daze, tired groggy still having suicidal thoughts, don't care about buying anything even though her sister is paying for everything. So its decided that i NEED coffee to "perk" me up. They go to order and I sit down at a table alone, feeling like a zombie in a circus. I can't stop the morbid suicidal thoughts, so I write them down in the form of a text message I sent to my friend in Florida, I guess this was my way or reaching out.
This is what it said: "Life is all around me, swirling with its ebbs and flows. Life flows through me, but finds no home. It has nothing to cling to. Although my heart still beats and my eyes still see, inside I'm already dead rotting flesh. I can feel like maggots eating me dead."
Finally while sipping my coffee and watching the people bustle around talking, laughing, arguing kids crying bags fluttering, I just kinda snapped. Everything was in slow motion and I felt like this was all some fake show for me like that movie the Truman show. "Look at us Quinn, don't you see? Everyone is playing their part in pretending there is a point to living!" I started laughing/crying hysterically, Jolene and her sister looked at me with freaked out looks in their eyes, because I had not said a word to them this whole time except that I was drinking my coffee. We should go they say.. Then I spotted this man pushing a 5-6 month old baby in a stroller which the man parks near us and sits down. Takes the baby out and plays with him, the baby is bald except for one long lock of hair in front. The baby and dad are smiling at each other the baby grabbing the dads face and giggling.
Then CRACK suddenly I am back in reality, sitting at Caribou coffee at the mall, tears streaming down my face. I was shaken and scared and after smiling at the dad and the baby told Jolene I was ready to go and walked away. After that we went out to eat, to a salon where I had my hair straightened, and except for feeling a little dazed I was in contact with reality the whole time and have been since. I love my hair, I think i am going to keep straightening it. Later we went out for a few drinks, had fun, danced came home and passed out. Today, i had no out of reality episodes, which is good because the kids are home, I am so glad this particular part nightmare seems to be over. Drugs are scary things, never will I again confidently pop a pill in my mouth I haven't researched.
Isaiah is still a bit unstable, spring break is here, but so is Mommy, and that is a very good thing. I think i might be needed around here or something LOL
