so after a meditation retreat in September I saw the light and realized that the effects I thought social media had on my attention span were a health emergency I could not afford to ignore and went on a strict 4.6h/week regimen. This lasted for six weeks, I changed for the better in predictable ways (reading more books), and also turned into a binge drinker. It turns out that my brain expects a certain amount of entertainment and socialization, and if it can’t post bullshit constantly or talk to people on Discord 4h/day, I will go to parties I only kind of want to attend (just because they’re happening NOW and I want stimulation NOW) and drinking too much.
This has been a humbling experience.
(Also, in addition to alcohol expenses, I spent too much money on the books, so my budget definitely didn’t like my attempt to evolve as a human being)
3 weeks after making the above post, I have a new hypothesis: Lexapro is making me slightly manic. (Hypomania is a thing that happens to me sometimes anyway when I’m sleep deprived, or just out of the blue after I read too much fanfiction, so I didn’t think it was too unusual.)
I went on the social media break at the same time I went on Lexapro, and even after coming back to social media, the drinking urges continue. So does an unusual amount of internet shopping, which I thought was because I was buying new clothes for the… er… clubbing habit I’ve picked up in the past few months…
Blue line: “day x" => “during the 7 day interval centered at day x, how many days were days when I had 3 or more drinks”
Red line: Lexapro dosage, scaled to have the same range as the drinking – 2 means 20mg
Heh that’s the antidepressant I went on, noticed within the 4-6 week window it made my anxiety worse, waited till the 6 weeks or something to confirm I was still as depressed, and went off it. It was straight up “my anxiety, but more of it”, which I suppose you might argue for me would probably accompany mania but I just noticed anxiety.
I think it was mostly because I had been misdiagnosed as unipolar depressive, but when I spent a month on Lexapro it made me nuts and part of it was giving me a taste for straight brown liquor