Detox

I’ve been throwing up, off and on, here and there, for a little over three weeks now, and although I’d love to report that I’m pregnant with cute little monobrowed babies, because that’s seriously what I’d love to report, I have to confess, sadly, that I’m not pregnant.

I am so not pregnant that my biological clock refuses to talk to me anymore. She used to wake me up in the in the middle of the night and say, hey, it’s me again, where are the babies? And I’d say, girlfriend, tell me about it!

Now my biological clock ignores me. I hate her.

I hate that I can’t blame her for the nausea, although I’m pretty sure I can blame her for craving those goddamn French fries. What is it with the goddamn French fries? They’re like orgasms, only more starchy.

So my doctor told me that if I wanted to lead a more active lifestyle I should switch depression medications. Crazies like me, crazies who have to pop a pill everyday to connect certain chemicals in the brain, have few options when it comes to stopping the insanity. We can:

1) ignore that weird “sad” feeling
2) do what my father once suggested and just be happy, for crying out loud
3) overeat in hopes of drowning the sorrow
4) pray real hard that, like, God will make all the bad thoughts go away (this involves having your entire family pray real hard as well, particularly out loud at the dinner table when guests are in attendance)
5) shut the fuck up and try the meds already

Seven years ago on the brink of dropping out of college I finally tried number five, and folks, if there’s any evidence that medicating an illness might actually medicate the illness, whether the illness be asthma, diabetes, or (gasp) depression, your beloved Dooce is living proof that science is a wonderful, wonderful thing. My hair color is also good proof, but that’s another post entirely.

Unfortunately I’ve been taking the medication with the worst documented side effects, the nadir of which is fatigue. I’m a tired motherfucker, all the motherfucking time.

The co-worker who’s asleep in the car? That’s me. The co-worker asleep in a ball under her desk? Me. The co-worker with the snooze bruises on the side of her forehead in the shape of those zig-zag tiles on the floor in the bathroom? That’d be Dooce.

So here I am, seven years later, 2,557 pills later and I’m attempting to switch. At least, that’s what the doctor called it, switching. I’d like to call it Re-enacting that Scene from Trainspotting. You know the scene, the one where the dead baby is crawling across the ceiling and Renton is all, oh god, oh god, please, please, make it stop, and the walls and bedspread are all 1978 and he’s really sick but still really, really cute.

I’m looking at that dead baby right now. It’s crawling across the ceiling and its rigor-morted head is twitching from side to side and it’s getting closer and closer and I’m like, please, this is so not fair, Ewan McGregor at least got paid to go through this.

And you know the worst part? The worst part isn’t the constant urge to puke my spleen out my nose, or the itching, or the dizziness, or admitting that this is really fucking hard.

The worst part is throwing up chocolate pudding. I really liked chocolate pudding.