Not to be annoying but Lexapro is not recommended for the treatment of people with bipolar disorder. In fact SSRIs are known to cause manic episodes in individuals with the condition
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
I’ve become so much more confident. I work a room like wham. I flirt like Captain Kirk. I talk dirty like holy shit, like R. Lee Ermey’s audition tape, minutes solid without repeating myself. Which is great, because that’s practically the only way I can orgasm anymore. Even my reliable fetishes (girls wetting themselves or pissing outside, I think it’s the old flesh/spirit thing) don’t work anymore.
I drink straight liquor, which I never did before, like a lot of it, but I carry it well.
I black out sometimes or grey out and run on pure id and I’m quite charming to myself and others.
I fall asleep easily, have pettily realistic shallow dreams. Worthless sub sub sub us stuff and then I wake up and between the drunk and that it’s not clear what really went down.
My farts smell like pure evil, oh god.
I don’t have a cutoff level for sleep anymore. I’ll sleep 5 hours and pee, 8 hours and get a drink and slump back down, 10 hours and it’s a comfy bed, 12 hours and pee and holy shit I just slept 14 hours. I got into this for a long insomnia thing so maybe it’s just a large but finite deficit but let’s see.
