What a Difference a Pill Makes!

Sometimes I will write a particularly despairing and pessimistic blog post in hope that it will represent a nadir that I came back from rather than representing a horrifying new normal. 

Even when everything feels hopeless and overwhelming there’s still some part of me that holds onto optimism as a lifeline to get me through the worst of times. 

That’s how I felt when I wrote a blog post bluntly titled “Broke” about being in such a terrible place financially, professionally and emotionally, and for so long, that it legitimately felt like I would never get out of it. 

As I wrote in a previous, less depressing blog post, sometimes I am too goddamned depressing even for myself. I would feel less self-conscious about the bleakness of “Broke” if it was not merely one in a series of blog posts that I have written about the free-floating existential despair that has dogged me since I had my teeth removed and dentures created at the end of April. 

I want this website to be popular enough to become economically sustainable at some point. So I feel self-conscious about writing blog posts that are unrelentingly bleak even if they are also unrelentingly honest. 

And as someone who has wrestled with depression for pretty much all of his 47 years on the planet I know as well as anyone that, while it may not seem like it at the time, depression is cyclical. It ends at a certain point or at least fades and becomes less overwhelming and more manageable. 

Sometimes the universe provides an essential assist in helping you get through an especially debilitating depression, the kind of thing that makes it feel like you just can’t go on. 

That assist can come in many forms. It might be a lucrative freelance assignment. It might be a book deal. It might be strangers believing in you when you don’t believe in yourself. 

Or it can come in pill form. 

I am a big believer in better living through chemistry. I have no idea why I didn’t start taking anti-depressants until I was in my twenties when I was damn near the poster boy for Depression and Anxiety as a child but it’s no exaggeration to say that the right medication, when combined with therapy, has changed my life and made an often cruel world seem manageable and survivable. 

Even when I am at my most pessimistic, some Pollyanna part of my psyche reminds me that wonderful, unexpected things have happened to me before. I got hired at The A.V. Club at twenty-one. I got a six figure advance from Scribner to write my memoir. “Weird Al” Yankovic asked me to write his coffee table book. Almost every crowd-funding campaign I’ve launched for a book has been at least a modest success. Robert Evans invited me to spend a weekend at his home. I was asked to speak at the Juggalo March on Washington. Criterion asked me to write the liner notes for Mikey & Nicky. I was a panelist on a nationally television movie review show hosted by an Academy Award winner. My wife said yes when I asked her to marry me. I have two wonderful children. 

The world has been almost perversely, excessively kind to me in the past. It could be kind to me in the future as well. That’s the furthest things from an inevitability but it is a definite possibility. 

Or that invaluable help can come from a doctor. I was recently prescribed Wellbutrin to help me with my depression and anxiety but also my sluggishness. 

Depression had robbed me of much of my energy and focus along with my optimism. I drank between eight to twelve Mountain Dews a day yet was exhausted all the time, to the point where it could be hard to both get out of bed and stay out of bed. 

That’s where Wellbutrin comes in. It gives you energy, baby! Sometimes it gives you TOO much energy. 

At various points in my life Wellbutrin has been a life-saver that pulled me out of a deep Depression and set me on the road to happiness and a life-ruiner that has threatened to destroy everything that I had built. 

I remember a particularly stressful stint at The A.V. Club and how every night for an hour or so my brain would do this wonderful thing where it replayed every stressful event of the day with bonus commentary about how my never-ending screw-ups would soon result in the kind of catastrophe I would never come back from. 

I realized then that Wellbutrin was not doing good things for my mental health and I should probably go off it. 

So when my doctor mentioned Wellbutrin I knew damn well how bad the side effects could be. But I was desperate so I said yes and I am pleased to report that my life has been markedly different since I’ve gone on Wellbutrin. 

It’s given me the energy and optimism I desperately need just to get through the day. I’m not sleepy and lethargic all the time the way I was before. Also, on my doctor’s advice, I have reduced my daily Mountain Dew intake from double digits to just three a day.

My bed no longer calls to me at all hours, silently pleading with me to give up all home so I can spend all day inside it. 

Of course Wellbutrin can always stop working. That is a very real possibility but right now I feel focused and energetic and not so weighed down with misery that I can barely move. 

I am profoundly grateful for this gift from the universe and vow to make the most of it. 

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