The first time I was sedated, I was 18 and having my wisdom teeth extracted. I don’t remember much about that procedure except a brief moment of panic and hyperventilation as they inserted the IV into my arm, explained I would experience a “tinny taste” in my mouth, and asked me to count backwards from ten. I barely choked out the first two numbers behind the tears before I was being gently shaken awake in the recovery room and being told it was time to go home.
I don’t know where my fear of interventions came from, but I have always hated being out of control. While most of my friends were drinking themselves into oblivion at high school parties or smoking themselves stoned under the bleaches (cliched but true), I was slowly sipping warm soda from red solo cups and having a blast, stone sober and hyper aware of what was happening at every given moment.
It wasn’t until my 30s that I first experienced psychotropic drugs. Blissed out, I let the bills, the papers, the responsibilities slip away for a few hours that felt like days. I had never allowed myself to so utterly and completely let go of control and trust that nothing terrible would happen in my absence. Perhaps it was this one-night stand with drugs that made it easier the next time I had to be sedated for a medical procedure several years later. I’m not sure what the anesthesiologist used, but it was stupendous. I was asleep before I knew what was happening, and waking up twenty minutes later, I felt like I’d slept on a cloud for three days.
Still, I resisted medication unless it was absolutely necessary. A migraine sufferer, I often waited until the third day of a migraine cycle to finally admit that maybe I should have taken a pill. I refused an epidural when both my children were born, and panicked when I was told I’d need to have an IV antibiotic drip when laboring with my second. PMS was a psychological disaster every month. Yet my pain tolerance was high enough that I had to be vomiting before I would admit it was anything worse than a five when asked to rate the pain on a scale from one to ten. So when my marriage began to crumble, I patched the pieces back together as best I knew how: I trained for two half marathons, then a marathon. I fell in love with someone. I took on a second, then a third job. I fell in love with someone else. Eventually, as I was forced to face facts, I began to feel the feelings. And the feelings were heavy.
The feelings were heavy enough and scary enough that I reluctantly began thinking I might need help dealing with them. When I asked my therapist if there was something she could recommend that would help me deal with the anxiety, panic, and sleeplessness, she sardonically recommended alcoholism over Xanax. I laughed and called my doctor to ask for a prescription anyway. Turns out, I should have taken my therapist’s advice more seriously. The first night I took it, I nodded off to sleep within twenty minutes, slept soundly all night, and woke up refreshed (rather than with the hangover the wine would have produced). I was hooked.
After about a week, however, I noticed that an hour or so before I was ready to pop a Xanax and get into bed, I started to get anxious. My chest would start to tighten, and it would become hard to catch my breath, to the point where I was biting my tongue during bath time, clenching my jaw while reading bedtime stories to the children, and rushing to finish packing lunches by shoving some granola and yogurt into their lunch bags so that I could finally take a pill and calm down. The old “tried and true” methods of relieving stress were almost instantly obsolete: going for a walk made me anxious to be home; running made me hyperventilate; wine gave me a hangover before a buzz. Yoga made my skin crawl. I couldn’t focus enough to read a book or write.
I began smoking again, then drinking on top of the medication. I saw how in less than a week, I had become the stereotype I’d mocked throughout my teenage years: a miserable suburban housewife who was masking her feelings with medication and self-medicating. I knew I had a choice, and I was grateful for it. Not everyone can function without proper medication–I can’t function without proper clarity. I flushed the pills, crushed the cigarettes, felt the feelings, laced up my running shoes, and charged the computer. I was lucky; my self-determination was all I needed to regain control of my life. Instead of masking the feelings, I owned them, gave them their proper respect, and let them pass peacefully. Allowing them to rest in peace rather than languish in purgatory has allowed me to move forward in peace, even if the pieces may have had to shift a bit along the way.
(mostly) full disclosure 