I took my first dose of generic Zoloft yesterday at 11 a.m. I know that’s late in the day to in start an SSRI, but it was a fairly quiet day and I knew I wouldn’t get to bed before midnight. I figured that would give me plenty of time to test how well I tolerated it.

And this weekend is the Easton Book Festival, and I have tabling events and a panel. So I need to have my wits, my strength, and my charm.

I took 50 mg and forgot to eat, so I got immediately nauseated. Knowing I had a long day ahead, I made what we call an “ooey gooy egg sandwich.” I fried some peppers and tomatoes from my garden in Irish butter, added two eggs and a big heap of nutritional yeast. Meanwhile, I toasted two slices of Eva’s homemade garlic-infused bread and put a slice of smoked gouda on each side and ran it under the broiler.

The nausea did not end. I managed to keep it under control by minimizing what I ate and what I drank. Because even liquid gave me trouble. And the diarrhea started fairly immediately. And occured every couple hours,

Mentally, I had less creative spark but not the fatigue that often accompanies the drug. I did feel calmer, but that changed later… I thought everything was manageable.

I went to bed around midnight as I expected. Woke up wide awake. And it was dark outside so I looked at my watch. I hoped it was around 5 a.m. so I had enough time to get some good sleep before the alarm went off. But it was 1:15 a.m. And I was more awake than I usually feel in the morning. I got 90 minutes of sleep. None of my normal techniques for falling back to sleep worked. At 1:50 a.m., I went to the bathroom. I didn’t really need to. But I thought the walk down the hall would show me how tired I really was and I would go back to my bedroom and get some sleep.

Didn’t happen. It scared me how awake I was. And for some reason, I decided to groom my pubic hair. That killed some time. And then I thought I’d go down to the kitchen, make some Valerian tea, and then while that steeps, file my toenails. I’d drink it and go back to bed.

At 2 a.m., I start the tea. Do some chores and my belly starts gurgling. Loudly. Uncomfortably. File my toenails. Drink my tea. Watch TV. The tea makes my nausea come back full force. I almost buy an Apple Watch series 12. Mine is a series 8.

I feel the tea relaxing me so I head back to bed at 3:30 a.m. I toss and turn, realize I have hurt my shoulder sometime, and play with the cat, and repeat. At 4:15, I give up. I go downstairs and get ready for the book festival. At 5 a.m., I get dressed.

By 8 a.m. we head to the book festival, while in the car I realized I have been wired since 1:15 a.m. and that I’m still wired. This is how I expected Adderall to feel.

And I still have diarrhea. And coffee makes me sick. But I’m also calm. Eva and I describe it as my emotions being forced into a bottle, corked and put under pressure, with a layer of calm on top not letting them through, My weakness is my ankles and knees is worse. I fell after the book festival. I have eaten a Gobbler bowl from Wawa and had about 10 ounces of liquid before 4 p.m.

At 3 p.m., I fought the urge to vomit and managed to succeed in not puking. At 4:15 p.m., I was not so lucky. I barely made it to the bathroom in time to find myself puking in the toilet. I had last eaten at 9 a.m. and I was violently heaving and croaking like a frog. When I stood up, I realized I had pissed myself.

I told Eva and M– no more. I refuse to take even one more dose. M told me he didn’t often weigh in on people’s drugs but that this one is poison and I obviously can’t tolerate it.

“Stop taking that shit,” he told me.

I looked up how long the half-life is of this damn drug– single dose can last two to three days!!! So I looked up how long the side effects last if I stay on the medication. It says in most cases they abate in two to four weeks. Weeks!!! Aw, hell no! I do not tolerate lack of sleep. I struggle enough with emotional regulation so if I also did not sleep for a month, I would have a psychotic episode.

Now, I will accept that part of this is on me. I did not think to tell my new shrink-by-proxy that I am a lightweight when it comes to medication (which is part of why I am troubled by my increasing use of baclofen. I have gone from 5 to sometimes 20 mg in a dose, and 3-4 doses in a day without relief). When they put me on a beta blocker after my incident of Afib, I could not get off the couch on the dose they gave me. They told me to cut the pill in half and I was fine. Same thing happened with the sodium channel blocker. (Neither of those are still in my medication routine, so while my life insurance company has deemed me uninsurable, my cardiologist has deemed me healthy.)

I see two options: I text my doctor in the morning something like “I tried the Zoloft over the weekend. One dose. Bad side effects. Stopped.” Or I could call my shrink-by-proxy and explain what happened. Either way: I am NOT participating in any more medication roulette until they give me either a true ADHD test or a trial dose of ADHD medication. If the medical establishment is willing to play with my well-being with these ridiculous experiments, they can at least try the medication I tried and tolerated well.

It’s now 6:30 p.m. I still haven’t eaten since 9 a.m. but I have had a glass of water and about 24 ounces of electrolyte water.

Meanwhile my spreadsheet is looking wild. Because I am tracking it all.