Meds and Me, part 1, Wellbutrin
Editor’s note: the following was written in 2022, and I am not taking Wellbutrin anymore. I had always imagined it as a piece of writing I’d put up early on Acethetics, and so I’ve decided to include it unedited.
I started taking medication in January of 2014[1]. Initially I took Wellbutrin[2] on its own, beginning at 150mg and then moving up to 300. I might rummage around my old hard drives and see if I can find any of the writing I did way back when, there’s also a few interesting facebook conversations I could probably find.
Wellbutrin is a weird antidepressant, part of why I was initially prescribed it was due to me being terrified of SSRIs. Wellbutrin works through both norepinephrine and dopamine, and then decays into different compounds that have their own effects. I don’t know if they used this metaphor, but I swear my psychiatrist at McGill basically said “it’s a shotgun that blasts a bunch of different parts of your brain, we don’t really know why it works but it helps a lot of people.”
The initial experience of taking Wellbutrin-- or any stimulant--was clarity. The first thing I noticed was my sense of smell perking up quite a bit. After noticing that, I realized objects I focused on had more distinct outlines. There was a sense of being more alert and awake, and falling out of the malaise of depression, in which things tend to muddle together in a fog. Next was a sense of capability in my mood. It wasn’t that I didn’t still have negative thoughts overwhelming me, and I was actually growing more anxious than I had been in the past, but at the same time, I was able to escape the endless lack of intensity and sensation that characterizes depression.[3] In particular, I started running, which really got the ball rolling[4]. Within a year of taking Wellbutrin, I went from thinking I was doomed to fail all my courses at McGill[5] to switching from chemistry to arts and getting around an A- average in ten courses I took in that faculty. Not too shabby.
The Other Shoe
Unfortunately, Wellbutrin has some pretty serious side effects. For about a year or so I kept dealing with anxiety by upping my dose of Wellbutrin, until at one point I was on 450/day, which is fucking wild. I don’t know if anyone else noticed this, but I swear to god there was a shift in my 20s where 3/10 people I knew had jaw pain and got a night guard. I think it’s possible an increase in Wellbutrin scrips was related, perhaps some time I’ll chase some numbers in that rabbit hole. Regardless, I started grinding my teeth at night, and didn’t stop until my canines were no longer pointy. From that point onwards, though my work at a meat factory in summer 2013 still played a role, I began to have serious TMJ, Neck, and shoulder pain. That pain’s basically just part of my reality now. I’ve lowered my dosage to 150. I try to wean myself off completely around once every two years, but every time I end up getting pretty damned depressed during this weaning, and deciding that living with the side effects is preferable. This acceptance is what this series will be about.
[1] Actually, I think I was prescribed a tricyclic as an immediate sleep aid in December, but I hated that dinosaur shit and only took it for a week or so. Kept the old pills around as sleeping pills for years. Used to make me feel like I was in a boat on the ocean in bed, like there was a swaying sensation, and then totally wiped the next day, yuck.
[2] AKA Buproprion HCL AKA The Happy Horny Skinny Pill
[3] I like Andrew Solomon’s line “the opposite of depression is not happiness, it’s vitality” or this section on anhedonia in infinite jest.
[4] Exercise deserves its own full post as a medication.
[5] The full catastrophism was “and move to fort mcmurray, where I will live a miserable life working on the rigs until I die of some kind of cancer from chemical exposure at the age of 40”
