Chapter Thirty:
Impending Doom
In May 2015, I had a crisis. It was a crisis within a crisis and it was beyond anything I had ever imagined to be possible. It came about when I tapered off of my antidepressants and then after a short period, began taking them again. There were constant cold feelings, the sweats, nausea,..., a lack of appetite, insomnia, terrible nightmares, and the unshakeable feeling of extreme anxiety and a kind of unease,...,coupled with the recurring thoughts that I would never get better, and, sudden intense feelings and thoughts of Impending Doom that lasted for months, among other physical symptoms…. But, what is even meant by the phrase “Impending Doom?”
The dictionary defines Impending doom as :
impending
/imˈpendiNG/
adjective
(of an event regarded as threatening or significant) about to happen; forthcoming.
doom
/do͞om/
noun-death, destruction, or some other terrible fate. 1"
According to Wikipedia, the sense or feeling of impending doom is:
“… a medical symptom which can have a psychological or a physiological cause. Psychological causes can include an anxiety disorder[OCD], depression, panic disorder, or bipolar disorder. Physiological cause could include a pheochromocytoma, heart attack, blood transfusion, or anaphylaxis”2 .
The feeling of Impending Doom, to me, was the overwhelming feeling that all was unwell, in a very bad way, and that it would never change. Add an overwhelming sense of urgency and apprehension to consciousness and the complete dominance of doubt and fear and an overall lack of confidence in the psyche…. Couple these feelings with the physical symptoms of nausea, an indomitable chill, and a nonstop stream of thoughts that I might never feel “ok” again, and my conscious experience was a constant blitzkrieg of anxiety about someone being killed, electrocuted, or, suffering some bizarre catastrophe, and the disturbing, yet undeniable fact, that nobody understood or inquired about my situation, that they were uninvolved, and the alienation that was felt, because of this, was excruciating. It was during the throes of this crisis, that silence itself from family members, was a loud, deafening, and painful message, in its own way, for it underscored the reality that I was, for the most part, on my own.
Feelings of impending doom happened to me in a sudden way and I gathered, through research, that many other people had experienced similar symptoms when they had stopped taking antidepressants, after being on them for a long time (I had been on them since 2002- so 13 years). This phenomenon has even been given a name and is called ADS, or, Antidepressant Discontinuation Syndrome. It's a cluster of symptoms and feelings that happen simultaneously and if you never experienced it, you would never imagine or believe that such a condition was possible! However, the condition is possible, I know this, because I experienced it first hand, for about three months in the early summer months of 2015…. This is how it came to pass:
I finished working at Agrium in the month of December, 2014 and prepared to go to Millwright classes in January of 2015 (remember, I had been “run off site…''). I had also been studying for the LSAT, (Law School Aptitude Test) at that time, for about 6 months. I went and completed my first block of millwright classes successfully in Burnaby, B.C. At BCIT, and, I also, shortly after that, wrote my first LSAT.
When I finished the millwright class, I had to find work, and I took a job at a fabrication shop in Maple Ridge. The job was in a “fab shop” for a piping and technology 2 Wikipedia company that was building high tech power generators. I was hired with the understanding that I would be put in with the millwrights after 2 weeks’ time.
It was a miserable place to work. I was cutting out stainless steel pieces (manifolds) with a zip cut disc and a grinder, for 10 hours straight, and they wanted me to get so many pieces done per hour…. If you’ve never used a zip disc you have to know that they are extremely dangerous as they can shatter, and become several airborne projectiles that can pierce a welders’ helmet, cut your face or neck or eyes and seriously harm or kill you.
I Worked from 6pm till 2AM. I worked for about 4 weeks and then, I inquired about our verbal agreement, and my placement with the millwrights, but the management denied that they had made that promise. I quit. I was angry. I hated liars. I wasn’t sticking around to see if things would turn around…, I knew they never would.
I had been feeling, mentally, and physically, quite well, during those times. My mind had been calm, and I had a good amount of mental bandwidth (available concentration). I had been studying for the LSAT and I had written it, and I was waiting for my results. During the weeks and months in which I had been studying for the LSAT I had been working up until the last few weeks. I also went to the gym in Kerrisdale, to do weight lifting and I drank protein shakes. I kept track of what I was eating, and how much I was exercising. I wanted to be physically and mentally stronger. I got stronger. For a while I was experiencing many days of overall calm, a sense of well being, and very little OCD.
I enjoyed a few weeks like that. A few months earlier, I had chosen to switch back to paxil, as there were no benefits to Annafril, but it did make me terribly sleepy. So, I switched back to paxil (with the doctor’s permission, -of course… not that really matters…).
I was often reading articles (still), about the side effects of SSRI antidepressants and all things OCD. Many people wrote of their experiences while taking paxil and I eagerly read their testimonies. There was a general consensus that paxil really lowered one’s sex drive. That was one recurring comment. Decreased empathy was another. The rest were a smattering of different things which included, side effects like Vertigo, dizziness, electrical shock sensations (zaps), and dry mouth. In all honesty, I had experienced these phenomena so many times, by this time, as side effects, that I was very familiar with it all. But,..., what if I didn’t take paxil anymore? What if I stopped taking it, and I felt way better, and my OCD was tolerable and all of those side effects were gone? What would happen to my libido? How would I feel? Couldn’t It maybe be glorious? (a healthy libido?!) Couldn’t it maybe be unlike anything I ever thought possible? And how about my productivity levels? How about my everyday quality of life? I was 38 years old and I had been trying so many tactics, and taking 40mg of paxil for 12 years, and what had I been missing out on, while on antidepressants? I was feeling well and, what if I was one of those rare individuals who could have OCD, but not take meds and still function reasonably well?
I thought about it. I could taper slowly off of paxil…! I had done the same thing with benzodiazepines in 2013. I had gone completely off of them, by slowly tapering. It hadn’t been that hard, and it was a great thing to be off of them (They are highly addictive, and the body does become dependent on them…). They were pushed by doctors in Japan, but frowned upon by doctors in Canada. I went to my general practitioner in Vancouver and discussed my idea, to slowly taper off of paxil and see what happened. The doctor was all for it, and it was decided!
I started cutting back on paxil, dropping my daily dose by about 5 milligrams each week. Several weeks later I was at the 10 milligram per day mark. I cut the pills in half, and took the “5” mg dose. Then after a couple more weeks I stopped taking paxil altogether,.... It was something very unique, in those initial weeks being off of paxil. My libido sprang to life, and also, at night when I layed down to go to sleep, I would listen to music, and it was so beautiful I would be, literally, moved to tears,.... It was a very intensely beautiful and remarkable experience, but that subsided gradually over time.
I had only been off of paxil for a few days, maybe two weeks, and I experienced some uncomfortable thoughts and panic/anxiety. “It was happening!” I thought,.... It was OCD, and I felt concerned that I had made a big mistake in discontinuing the medication. I was flooded with anxiety. I began researching, and many people said that it was usually better to stay on antidepressants for life…- I panicked and I doubted! (As usual…) I went to the doctor and talked to him about it, and in short, I decided to go back on the meds. I had only been off of them for about 2 weeks so I thought I would simply start off on 30 mg immediately, because I wanted to feel less panicked, and I thought it would be fine to go on that 30 mg dosage because I had taken that dose for years and I could surely handle that, I thought (this was, in hindsight, probably a big mistake).
I was, at that particular time, being called to go back to a construction site up in Northern Alberta, near the Mckay River. I went, and I had my medication packed in my bags. I flew from Vancouver to Fort McMurray airport, and then I had to find a bus, and wait until a certain time, when the bus left the airport. It was a charter that ran up to the camp near the project. Camp was about a two hour bus ride and it was a place where it was clean and warm and you got your own room to stay in. The rooms were not too big but they were clean and private and they had a desk where you could sit and write, as well as a private toilet, and a shower and a small fridge and a tv and single bed.
I got to camp and I took my meds and went to bed. I set my alarm for about 6 am. I would normally get up and then I would go and have coffee and eat breakfast in the cafeteria. I would always take a few minutes to ponder my day and think about just one thing that I wanted to focus on that day, in particular. Usually, it was the same thing, to work as hard as I possibly could…. To work as diligently and steadily and as efficiently as possible. I wanted to earn more money, and to be promoted through the ranks, and I thought if I could just prove my loyalty to the company by my diligence and reliability, that I would be able to achieve my goals.
I did the same thing that day. I got dressed and began to contemplate the day. I usually wore denim pants, and steel toe work boots. On that particular job, I was wearing Red Wing boots and I had treated them with a special tuff toe brown coating on the toes– they were nice and light, and they were smart looking too. I always tried to be early for my shift and very well prepared, with an ample lunch including snacks and drinks as well.
The job at that time was at a big construction project for an oil refinery and I was a labourer, assigned to the labour crew. I was placed in a runner truck with a fellow named Jake. Jake was from Ontario and he was a younger guy than I was by maybe 16 years, I was 38 and Jake was about 22. We went about our day, which consisted of taking calls on a radio from labourers across site, and picking up tools and equipment for them and then delivering it to them in the runner truck. We went about our day and things seemed alright, except,in the afternoon, I noticed a little bit of an “off feeling.” It was like a trace of nausea. I was also anxious. It was a new job, and there were people from the previous job in Saskatchewan. Remember how I got “run off site?” There were some of the people on this job that had been back on that job. That really scared me. I was thinking about so many different things,..., and, I didn’t realize it, but I was having the beginnings of some kind of a reaction to SSRI (Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors) medication. The paxil that I had begun to take, again, was causing a reaction, l…, my system, was in shock, in hindsight, perhaps because I was taking 30 mg suddenly, because it had been flushed out of my system, and now my system wasn’t used to it, or,..., I don’t know,..., nobody knew…. But what actually happened?
That night, I layed down for bed at 9 pm and I was tired. I fell into a deep sleep and woke up wide awake and agitated but to my disbelief it was still only 10pm! I was completely awake and very anxious– paranoid almost. But what is paranoia? paranoia is when you are anxious particularly about people being out to get you or plotting to harm you either physically or emotionally -. This is an important thing to note–or rather this introduces a very important topic, which is, the problem of definitions, labels, and diagnoses. It’s easy to focus on labels and definitions but it is sometimes, many times, in my opinion, a complete waste of time, because the real issue gets cast aside as the focus turns to technicalities…. What is the correct term for the “anxiety?” Who really cares! It is anxiety, and it is causing a lot of distress, and that should be the main focus. I have spent a lot of time contemplating whether or not I was actually paranoid. In the end, it doesn’t matter…. If you are anxious, then you are anxious. Whether you are anxious because of an idea about people scolding you, or laughing at you, or you are anxious about a mole on your arm potentially being cancerous, it really is the same thing, which is anxiety. Anxiety is stress itself– it is not pleasant. It is adverse. It can be extremely adverse. If you have extreme anxiety and you feel like you are going to die, because of your anxiety, people(including doctors, of course) may not have much empathy because they are not having the same experience that you are, and they have no idea how you are feeling. When that happens, and it happened a lot, it is very frustrating–. When you are extremely anxious, the only thing you care about is calming yourself down. Whether you are extremely anxious about people causing you harm in some way, or about your own mind causing you harm in some way is the difference between you technically being correct in using the word “paranoid'' to describe your situation. It is the same type of thing with the word psychosis. With psychosis, you are experiencing perceptions of things that really aren’t there. That’s it. With OCD, there is no psychosis, at least there wasn’t with mine. But that doesn’t mean that psychosis is harder and OCD is easier. Psychosis is a term that people usually associate with madness, or craziness, but when you have OCD you don’t have psychosis, technically, but you feel … crazy.
OCD is like madness. It is entirely real, and it involves unbearable anxiety. You become bombarded by thoughts and unpleasant feelings, you feel like you’re out of control, like, “your mind is not your own” (Robert Palmer song, addicted to love). For all intents and purposes, a lot of the times I have felt obsessive thoughts or urges, or had obsessive ideas, I would tell you that it felt as if I was going absolutely crazy. This is because I could be in a peaceful setting, with nothing but my thoughts, and then, with the mere thinking of a thought, I would feel myself begin to become anxious and then panicked, and then, sometimes, to be on the verge of hysteria.
That night, I woke up in an ominous state after only one hour’s sleep. It was 10pm. I lay there, and I thought and I worried, acutely aware that I was highly anxious and actively thinking about all kinds of severe (albeit unlikely) outcomes:
“ I might have a panic attack that is so bad that I die!
I might not sleep anymore tonight and then be so sleepy in the morning that I can’t work!
I might lose control of my mind!
I might get laughed at by the other workers, because they might somehow realize how insecure I am ! ....”
I turned on the T.V. and tried to stay calm, telling myself that everything was ok,.... But I felt like a lost child, small and fragile, frantically searching for his mother amongst throngs of dirty and scary people, in a vast carnival ground, with loud music and foreign sounds screeching at me, suddenly, out of the darkness, without any kind of warning. My entire body felt overwhelmed with tension, nervousness, and an indomitable chill.
The night wore on and I remained in that unpleasant and disconcerting state. Now 2:01 am! Now 3:17am! Now 4:48am…! I lay in the small room, up in the middle of nowhere surrounded by rooms occupied by sleeping men. It wasn’t an atmosphere where I felt psychologically safe, especially in that weakened state. Around 5:00 a.m., I started to contemplate my course of action. I wanted to call someone, but who?
In the old times, I would have reached out to my mom. She had been my person to go to in times of doubt, however, we had an argument, in fact we had several arguments back in about 2008. I felt angry toward her since then and I had clung to that resentment steadily over the years. I refused to forgive her, for what I felt she had done that had been “wrong.”
OCD thrived off of resentment. I would work as hard as I could, and then even while I was working I would think of a time I had felt hurt by someone and then I would think that there was no point in forgiving and letting go because I had been forgiving in the beginning and still this fate of OCD and mental illness had befallen me, and so therefore God was a myth, and prayer was for naught, and love was just a notion, and all there really was was physics, and chemistry, and biology in an anonymous, infinite, and completely random universe. That’s how I saw the world from a spiritual standpoint. I didn’t believe in love. I believed in pain.
But that morning I wanted to call my mother, despite my grudge. She was the one that I felt comfortable with, still, after all that….Did it mean I was giving in? Did it mean I was weak?.... I sat there and thought,....
“My life is so…,”
And…
“success is,...,”
And
“I shouldn’t ... ,
And
“What if,...”
And
“why is … my fault…–?”
And memories and imaginings and feelings flashed and fizzled and sensations surged and I sat and contemplated it all,....
At 7 am I called my mother. My voice was trembling and high pitched.
“Hi mom,...”
I half-whimpered, and half-sobbed….
I was ashamed of my situation and ashamed of myself. “I -I know I haven't called you in a long time, mom,” I whispered and choked out the words,..., “and I’m sorry,…, but, I need your help….” I was in a serious situation and I was asking for help…. But I knew in my heart that my mother would listen and she would help me, and she did…. I tried to explain my circumstances to the best of my ability. My mother listened compassionately, and told me not to go to work. I was relieved,.... I still craved that support and reassurance,....
Back in January of 2013, after I had finished the first airport demolition job, there was a special celebratory dinner. Shay, a middle aged man with an Irish accent, was present at the dinner, and he was the human resources contact in that company. The dinner gathering had been very small and it consisted of myself and the two other workers who completed the demolition with me, and another gentleman, a Construction Manager named John. Construction Managers are high ranking individuals in the construction world. At that dinner, John, Shay, and I visited and I had made a point of sincerely thanking both of them for the opportunity to work at the airport and earn money for my family. John had given me his business card and told me that he would help me with my application on future jobs with the company. Both men had a kind and sincere manner about them which was very comforting.
That morning, sitting in my camp room, after speaking with my mother, I called Shay, with great reluctance,.... I knew I had to call him…, because I had to leave the camp. Shay had hired me and I had told him about my OCD at that time. I shakily told him what was happening, to the best of my ability,.... I was in tears of shame and anxiety. I had never experienced this kind of long lasting panic and dread ever before. It was like a perpetual panic attack…. I was being annihilated. I thought of the guy who had made the comments about my baldness in 1999, and I was thankful I didn’t live near him, I was lucky, I thought, because I was far away from anyone who really knew me from my past.
On the telephone, Shay was kind and compassionate…. What a blessing! He reassured me that I was not in any trouble and that I could go home without any consequences. He told me he was calling a driver for me, and to get ready, but to try to sleep, because the taxi was going to take a couple of hours. I hung up the phone and began to pack my bags. I was totally devastated, weeping, and shivering and ruminating.
The taxi arrived at camp about three hours later, and I exhaustedly got into the taxi and I rode the 2.5 hour drive, nodding off from time to time, to the airport. I went up to the counter and somehow managed to buy a ticket to Vancouver, then I sat in the airport and waited. I felt awful. About 3 hours later, suddenly, I saw a fellow, whom I immediately recognized,.... It was John! From dinner! John who had been instrumental in my being hired by the company after the airport demolition job. I instantly felt guilty for my circumstances and embarrassed that I was somehow letting him down, and I felt the compulsion to go up to him and tell him,… Almost like confessing…. I approached him, and I desperately tried to explain my situation to him. He was very kind and calm…, “I’m looking at you, he said, gently, as he clasped my hand, “and I’m telling you that it’s ok.” I was so grateful to him but at the same time I still felt very ill and ashamed….
I flew back to vancouver- it was a long trip- being in public, in that state. I bought “gravol,” for nausea, at the airport in Fort Mcmurray. I finally got to Vancouver and gathered my bags painstakingly, at the airport. Sonoko came and picked me up…, I entered our apartment and undressed and got into bed. I had to explain it all to my family, but I didn’t know what was even happening…, I just knew that my feelings had something to do with the anti depressants- so, take heed,..., anti depressants are a very serious type of medication, precisely because of what can happen if you stop taking them, even if you are careful!
Now, after a couple of days, even in that state, I had the thought that the scientific approach to getting better was ERP, so perhaps I should do some. I asked my wife for a notebook and I began to write down my worst fears, while I was sick,... it was so excessive. Of course, I didn’t feel better, and I was probably made more anxious by that…. For the next 6 weeks there was little improvement in my condition, and I barely slept, at night, and often when I did, I had nightmares.
A couple of days after being home I called my mother, again, and told her the truth, that I was thinking thoughts of suicide, even though I had no real desire to kill myself, but I thought of death, probably because of the distress and discomfort I felt. She told me to call a family friend in Prince Albert, who was a pharmacist. I called him and he told me, in turn, to go to the hospital. I decided to do that. I got dressed and took a bus to the Vancouver City Hospital. I waited for about 4 hours and then I finally got in to see a nurse, who asked me questions as to why I was there and I explained, then about an hour after that, another person, a doctor, this time, and I explained again, and then another doctor, so I explained yet again to another doctor. That was surreal. I told the doctor my long but shortened story, and I talked briefly, about the articles I had read, and how I had been doing ERP, consisting of writing scenarios about feared events, to prove to the doctor that I was not just some attention seeker, looking for drugs,…. The doctor said to me, about my ERP…:
“Well, you should maybe stop doing that, because that's kind of like a compulsion….”
I was incredulous! The doctor was saying that ERP itself was like a compulsion!? Now I had heard everything! Now, I had a doctor who was telling me that the treatment that I had been betting on for all these years, was actually the illness itself!? The doctor was simply showing that she didn’t advocate the ERP tactics, that she didn’t follow that protocol for the treatment and it was extremely frustrating. Oh my God! It was evident that doctors approached OCD in different ways…. Was it my job to tell them about the articles I was reading? No! and even if I did, they didn’t care, and no two doctors said the same things! Everyone had a different theory and yet they were all real “doctors.” That was just the proverbial cherry on top of my “shit-cake” life!
I was told that the best thing I could do was to just try to rest and stop doing ERP. She also recommended that I go on a very high dose of Paxil- (80mg a day)- when I was feeling better. 80 mg of Paxil is 20mg over the Canadian limit. This doctor said that in her experience, OCD tended only to respond to very high doses of Paxil. Well, at least that information was something…. They didn’t even really know what was wrong with me. That was a terrible time. I left the hospital feeling more lost than I had when I got there. There I was in Vancouver, with a young family, and I was supposed to be the Daikokubashira (main supporting pillar of the household)-....
It was then that I realized that the doctors were in the dark about psychotropic medicines, and about mental illnesses….They never took the drugs that they prescribed, they didn’t have the illness, they were educated by reading words, but they had no actual experience of how patients felt! Doctors were qualified legally, but they were, in many ways, essentially inept and useless….They were the blind leading the blind. I was, at that point, so done with doctors and experts,.... Oh, so done, I tell you. So very, very, done….
I walked dejectedly toward the bus stop. What a shit- life I had…! It was one problem after another, and I was so tired. I was weary. I felt my phone ring and I looked at the call display and saw that it was my sister. I answered apprehensively:
“Hey Jess,” she said softly but cheerfully,...”How's it going?” I took a deep breath-
“It's okay,” …I said and I sighed deeply and uncomfortably.
“This is hard for me to say, Jess,” she said “but I heard you were thinking of suicide?”
If it was hard for her to say that, how hard was it for me to attempt to respond….There was so much to tell…, but how to explain? How the head doctor had told me that my entire OCD therapy strategy was no good? That the head doctor of the psychiatric unit of the Vancouver City Hospital had told me that my ERP activities were themselves compulsions?? My sister didn’t even know what ERP was! There were so many points to make- I didn’t know how to even begin— I began to attempt an explaination…, I told her how badly I felt, and how scared I was, and how death just kept being thought of…even though, I didn’t actually want to kill myself. I felt so weak and I was embarrassed and ashamed of my story, embarrassed that I was even finding myself in this situation in the first place! The story itself had become almost unbelievable! I was so exhausted. Exhausted and lost. We talked for a few minutes, and then said our goodbyes and I hung up the phone. It was nice to hear from my family, but it was unfortunate that it was under such dark circumstances.
As I stood waiting for the bus, a group of students walked by me, oblivious to me and the world around them, and they laughed and joked amongst themselves…. That had been me, once upon a time,…, but that version of myself was now, sadly, barely a faint memory, and I was being annihilated by the uncertainty of what the future would hold. The war raged on, and I was growing tired,.... So very, very tired.
JH