Needing People
Wednesday, March 14th, 2001.
One of the psychological side effects of feeling alone and being alone throughout most of my withdrawal is that every human contact, however slight, takes on the greatest importance. Actually, you don’t have to be alone throughout your withdrawal to feel this way. All you have to do is live through it.
One of the worst things for me about my Paxil experience is that I need people more than I normally would, but that when most people get a whiff of that need, they flee, they disappear, etc. I know this. I understand this. And I hate it that I am in such a needful condition, that I need people so badly now (eight months now since my initial withdrawal, and I still don’t have my life back, myself back). When I don’t hear from someone for awhile, it doesn’t take me long to miss my contact with them. I hate admitting to this. I hate being in the state I’m in.
There’s no dignity in what my withdrawal has put me through, in any of this, and I just want to go home to a place where I can rest. I have often wished that that place of rest was with someone, someone I could touch, someone who is really there for me. But it’s not. And it’s so hard sometimes — it’s been so hard — not to have that kind of home. I just don’t know how much longer I can last like this. Definitely a bad day for me.
First response:
I, too, find myself needing people more. I wish someone would just touch my shoulder and say, “Hey, how are you? I am glad that you are here.” But no one does that, so I feel really alone. My so-called friend of years asks me what’s new, and I mention lightly that I have been through a depression — and that was the end of the emails. At least there’s paxilprogress.org