Aropax (written in 2005)

Just came off Aropax – the famous antidepressant everyone’s talking and writing about, and a few commercial current affairs shows are warning us all against. Yep, the same one that’s supposedly causing so many suicides and murders. I say “supposedly” because there may have been a few variables other than the drug itself, misdiagnosis and misuse being just two of them.

I remember when my psychiatrist first recommended it, the name Aropax had a kind of symmetry and rhythm to it. AROPAX.  I’ve always liked the suffix ‘pax’ or peace. Serapax, the sleeping pill, means ‘night peace’. Hmmmm…cute. The ‘aro’ bit actually means ‘to plough’, so Aropax means to work in peace.

The active constituent of Aropax is Paroxetine, and when I checked it in the MIMS drug compendium – after my second day on the drug – I found a list of possible side affects so large I was gob-smacked! Then I noticed almost every drug has a similar list; it’s a basic scientific obligation to say how some people reacted during clinical trials. But I was gob-smacked all the same.

While Aropax is fast developing a reputation similar to Thalidomide, I have to say I’m ambivalent about it. It served its purpose. For three years on Aropax I managed my life better, suffered less from anxiety, slept okay, and no longer felt a need to kill myself. From my normally stoic perspective the side affects weren’t that bad: just a bit of edginess, weird dreams and difficulty reaching orgasm. And hey, I’m a heterosexual man, what better pick up line than, “I’m on these drugs, and…well… it takes me ages to come.”

So why go off it?

The weird dreams were more than just weird, they were cold, insidious and heartless. I used to call them my ‘Tarentino’ dreams because that’s what they were like: fast, vivid, violent, often very funny but generally lacking in compassion. i.e. A Quentin Tarentino movie. I once dreamt that in the middle of a shoot out scene, when the handsome antihero is about to be shot by the ugly psycho, the antihero casually stares into the psycho’s eyes and says, in that cool Clint Eastwood fashion, “I thought you guys were supposed to kill innocent people. I’m not innocent, I’m an evil prick. Why don’t you shoot someone who’s innocent?” The psycho guy then turns and shoots a woman walking past, giving the antihero just enough time to escape. But that wasn’t the end; these dreams went on and on from one clever but dispassionate scene to the next. They almost had end credits!

As for the orgasms…nahhhh…we’re talking hours, literally. At first it was great, I got to see it from the ‘turner-onner’ perspective, and it was kind of fun to say, “ Hey, I just love watching you enjoy yourself.” And I agree with the adage that getting there is most of the fun, but there’s no fun in ‘getting there’ if you don’t actually get there! Tantric Schmantric, I want the big pay off, and with Aropax that was rare. When it did come, or should I say when I did, the feeling was more relief than ecstasy.

My big reason for ditching Aropax was to do with feelings. Strong feelings. Not deep ones, strong ones. Deep feelings imply complexity, and with Aropax things are complex alright - sophistication abounds. One of the selling points of the drug is that it improves concentration. But strong feelings are about having something well up inside you and allowing it move around your body. I suppose that’s why we call it ‘being over-taken by emotion’. We lose ourselves in it for a while, and it doesn’t matter if it’s crying, laughing or orgasming, it’s glorious to be lost in that. Just for a while.

On Aropax it never happened. I could perceive feeling, understand it, analyse it, even feel it coming on; and sometimes I’d laugh along with friends who were bursting with laughter, or cry with others who were keening and wailing, but I knew I was never really there - a bit like trying to get drunk with your mates while knowing someone’s switched your liquor for water.

I realised this when I was playing guitar alone one night. I’d found the music to a song that was sung at my brother’s funeral - in the days before I took Aropax. It was beautiful Irish ballad about some guy who wishes he had it in him to visit his true love across the sea, but he just can’t bring himself to climb out of the shit hole of his life. And it was a wonderful feeling to pick up the guitar and belt out this wild, irreverent Irish love song – to remember that massive feeling of loss … and to re-live it … almost! After one rendition of the song I stopped and realised I wasn’t crying, and I was so damn close! I wanted to cry so much but I couldn’t, and for that I felt even sadder, but I still didn’t cry. It was like my body was just aching to go through all that shuddering and shaking and blubbering. But it got to a point where it stopped, as if my emotions were being governed. And in a way I suppose they were.

Sure, there were tears and a quiver in my voice but I never really let myself go.

It was then I realised the drug was holding me back. So I figured it was time to be rid of it.

But you can’t just go off these drugs, particularly Aropax (as my doctor told me later). Weird things happen. After the first few nights of cold turkey I started getting nightmares. But these weren’t your traditional “scary” dreams; they were a cross between frustration dreams (where you’ve lost something or can’t find your way through something), humiliation dreams (where you feel like an idiot) and dreams of sheer horror. A horror that’s hard to pin down though – insidious and creepy, not quite there yet. A horror that’s about to arrive but holds itself back so you can never really see it, just feel it. “Ephemeral and plastic” was the paradoxical term I once used to describe it; but it was other things too, sometimes visceral, emanating from within. 

With most nightmares, particularly recurring ones, the dreamer develops an ability to wake up and recover knowing it was just that rotten dream again. Consciousness becomes a kind of escape hatch. And sure, going back to sleep can be onerous but at least you have a choice. With the Aropax withdrawal dreams however, the escape hatch simply disappears. You can spend hours in a situation of stupendous horror and crippling embarrassment. You’re back at school again but in your forties, still failing exams. The teacher’s calling you dumb again. The exam has just started but you’ve dropped your pen and broken your pencil. You reach down to find the pen when suddenly there’s a feeling of dread beneath you. Some ‘thing’ is coming from the earth, rumbling it’s way up from the bowels of hell, but you’re not sure what it is, all you know is it’s coming to get you. And above your head the howls of derision continue.

When I did finally wake from these nightmares, it was more than just a sweat I found myself in; I was absolutely buggered. I’d been through an emotional marathon! 

This made life and work hard to endure. So I went back on the Aropax.

But recently, after some very big changes in life style – cognitive behavioural therapy, no alcohol and lots of exercise (and some very good professional advice) - I kicked the Aropax. I found a lovely place in the country where I also happened to be doing lots of work. I was surrounded by people I love and trust, and I had Valium for back up. But really it was sheer determination and fitness that got me through.

I’ll never forget the drive back to the city. After two nights of drug-free, dream-free sleep I cruised on up that highway, and when the radio got boring I turned it off and rummaged through an old box of tapes I’d brought along because my car doesn’t have a CD player. Anyone over forty has a collection of these tapes – a kind of aural version of a photo album – full of memories, old feelings and scratchy bits of life. And wow did I let loose! To the eighties ballads I howled like a baby. To the Blues songs I screamed with fury. And during one of the old comedy tapes I laughed so hard I had to stop the car and get out.

It was a wonderful thing – to be standing there laughing to a bunch of black and white cows in a green field surrounded by hills. A few of the cows casually looked up as if to say, “What are you laughing at and why should we give a shit?” And I just kept laughing, and then crying – really crying, where you go into spasms and fall to the ground. But then I was laughing again. This went on for a while, and fortunately I’d turned off a side road so I was away from the highway – I hate to think what could happen to someone found in this state by the wrong person – really! After a while I just stepped back, took a few deep breaths and leant against the car. And for a minute or two I just closed my eyes and thought of nothing. Nothing!

Then I got back in the car, and as I drove back to the city I thought about Aropax and Zoloft and Cypromil and all those drugs that work by increasing serotonin; and I figured it’s foolish to demonise them. What really matters is how the drug companies sell them, how the doctors hand them out, and how we consume them. In my case Aropax was helping me continue a lifestyle I’d become used to over twenty odd years: working hard when I had work; feeling rotten when I didn’t; hitting the grog and dope every night; eating badly and exercising occasionally (on a dance floor) then pushing myself to function the next day. So, when I suddenly shifted all that – dropped the dope, booze and hard work/hard play behaviour – life was unbearable! It was harsh, bright and had a buzz to it. Reality had very sharp edges. I then realised that all that time I’d been using Aropax to make up for the hard-at-it life style; but the booze and dope were taking an edge off the harsh reality caused by the Aropax. And I realised so many of my friends were caught in the same whirlpool of emotional dysfunction and chemical dependency.

But now reality is wonderful and multiform – soft, harsh, loud, peaceful, boring, glorious, stupid and occasionally drunk. It took a lot of work to realise that I don’t always have to control my feelings. Sometimes I can just sit back and let myself drift.