I am bravely publishing this story knowing that Tom Cruise will get mad at me if he reads it. For nearly four months I’ve been taking a little white pill every morning that contains five milligrams of escitalopram, more familiarly known as Lexapro. Lexapro is a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor, which means that it selectively inhibits the reuptake of serotonin.
As is true of nearly everyone, I have a decent amount of depression, anxiety, alcoholism, and mental illness in my family. Lotta great hair, too. I’ve had some dust-ups over the years but my baseline belief is that I am extremely fortunate and capable of steering my own ship.
Long time readers my recall that six years ago I wrote a piece titled, “My Girlfriend Is Way More Successful Than I Am - And Sixteen Years Older.” A lot happened quickly after that story circulated far and wide (more a result of the content itself than my writing prowess, but I did my part). The thing that really stuck is that I wound up with an agent who believes that story can be stretched out into a memoir, which is what I’ve been trying to do for uhhhh while.
I spin out about feeling unequipped for the task at hand, and also find the thought of completing it terrifying. If all goes to plan, then this book will go out into the world and have a life of its own, introducing me into the public consciousness as the younger guy with Laura Brown. This is what I fret about instead of just writing the damn thing, but then after a day of zero progress I’ll accompany Laura to something like Bono’s solo show where we sit two rows in front of Bill Clinton. I’m artificially buoyed by the unearned trappings of life with my high achieving wife. I know, poor me. But this is not the way! You need your own thing!
I do have something of my own: a musculoskeletal imbalance that causes one of my ribs to ‘subluxate,’ or shift marginally out of its connection to my sternum. Usually it feels like someone is poking me in the chest and I have to squeeze my shoulder blades together to (audibly) pop it back where it belongs. The nature of it changed while we were in Australia at the end of 2022 and I was experiencing chest pain and shortness of breath. Rationally I knew I was okay but I could not shake the fear that this was a life threatening cardiac event.
Panic attacks suck and I’ll tell you why. See, what happens is you actually think you are very probably dying. So when it passes, you ought to be so happy to have rediscovered the gift of life. It should be followed by a wave of gratitude and joy. But instead you just feel humiliated, pathetic, and dreading the next one. Total bullshit.
It happened almost daily for a week (not a great thing to be thinking about as you board a fourteen hour international flight) and while experiencing an episode in LA I called a local doctor. He said, “I am extremely confident you’re fine but the only way for you to calm down is to go through chest pain protocol.”
So I did. I wasted everyone’s time and two thousand dollars to get an X-ray and an EKG to have the ER doctor patiently explain to me that my organs are healthy and stable, chest pain is scary, he believes me that something is happening that I should address, but not something I should lose any sleep over.
I relayed all this to my GP in New York City, asking if there was anything to be done. She suggested I try Lexapro, so I did. I’ve been pretty amazed by it.
The first week was weird. I had a weird headache that felt like someone was placing rubber bands around my brain. I also had diarrhea and couldn’t sleep. And for the first month, I did notice that it took, erm, more swings of the ax to fell the tree. Although relative to my norm, that could be convincingly painted as a benefit.
Psychologically, it was very bizarre. It’s weird to experience your own mind differently. I am very familiar with the worrylpools (whirlpools of worry) I tend to sail into while steering my ship. I’d see them and pull the wheel to go straight into them per usual but the steering wheel was stuck. I sailed right by, continued down the river, craning my head to see the worrylpool receding in my wake.
The other side effects have faded but that benefit remains. It doesn’t mean that I’m not the one steering my ship - I’ve added an extra stabilizing rudder that helps me stay on the course I want. I also like not having panic attacks.
I know that there are a great many ways to balance one’s mind and body, and they have worked for me. Eating well, reducing or eliminating alcohol use, getting good rest, and exercise - oh man, exercise. Exercise is the key that unlocks everything else for me. This pill isn’t a replacement for all that stuff. What it does do is help prevent me from wasting my time and energy fretting about things that are out of my control; or fretting so much about something that is within my control that I no longer have any energy to do something about it.
That’s about all I wanted to say: I was feeling bad, then worse, I started taking a little pill, and now I feel better. And I managed to sneak in a teaser for my book.
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