Cognitive Impairment (Day 156)
Monday, January 22nd, 2001 (83rd day off Paxil).
During my withdrawal, I had peaks and valleys of cognitive ability. Except for one brief period, writing anything was a challenge. Around the middle of November, a few weeks before I got down to zero milligrams (my last “official” dose was on November 1st, but I had to take an occasional sliver of Paxil for a couple weeks afterwards), I lost my ability to read and retain more than one paragraph at a time. Nothing seemed to hold my interest, and nothing I read seemed to stay with me. My memory was going right down the toilet. I couldn’t retain or recall anything. It sucked. Conversationally, I’m normally more animated than most people I know, but between November and December, I became the shy guy in the corner who kept to himself (I’m still somewhat affected by this).
Only recently, within the past few weeks, have I been able to read on a fairly consistent basis again and to remember what I was reading. It’s like I’m being re-introduced to the world of thought again. Conversationally, I’m not nearly as lively as I used to be, mainly because the withdrawal threw me so far out of the loop that it had a negative effect on my self-confidence. I’ve had plenty of experiences related to my Paxil withdrawal that have beaten down hard on my faith in humanity, but I expect that that, too, will gradually recover. And my self-confidence will probably recover along with it.
It takes time to return to normal after an experience like this. I try not to let it bother me, but often it does bother me that I’m not as lively as I’m used to being and as people are used to seeing me. But I’ve survived a severe neurological trauma (i.e., the Paxil withdrawal, which stole away almost seven months of my life). After surviving something like this, it’s only natural that our legs are going to feel a little wobbly at first. It takes time to get one’s strength back.