The Unmedicated Americans

Thursday, July 16, 2015

So today is the sixth day since I stopped taking sertraline last Friday. Given that sertraline has a half-life of approximately one day there is now not even 2% of the quantity in my system as compared to this time last Thursday morning shortly after I took my daily dosage. I have been attempting to bring a mindful approach to the process of adjusting to life as one of that pool of people called "the unmedicated Americans". I think, unfortunately, there are far too many Americans who are medicated and even overly medicated. And perhaps maybe, just maybe, the ones who most need to actually be medicated are the many clowns from the GOP who are announcing their intentions to run for President.

This is not the first time I am going off sertraline but I do intend it to be the last time. Unlike previous periods of my life that were very difficult I do believe the health care I sought out these last two years was profoundly effective in fully healing the impacts of the trauma I experienced in the earliest years of my life.

I don't recall experiencing withdrawal symptoms when I went off setraline previously. This time seems a bit different. Or perhaps I am (also) simply much more mindful about my body and aware of how I am feeling each and every day. I have been having minor and brief episodes in which I feel dizzy. This is apparently a not uncommon withdrawal symptom. The only other major undesirable is the weight gain I seem to have experienced due in part to taking sertraline. I seem to have a small tire around my midsection now. I'll be working to eliminate that.

I feel myself to be a in very contemplative place now. I suppose you could like it to what some people experience when they emerge from a shelter to discover a devastated landscape after a storm has roared through...and nonetheless feel grateful to have survived. The last two years sometimes felt a bit like that for me.

Journeys like what I have just completed have a way of giving a person something called *perspective*. I look around at the world and still see plenty of issues such as pettiness, greed, misplaced priorities and the like. As for myself I feel my own priorities are now probably the best they have ever been. At some point in the last two years I entered what Richard Rohr calls the Second Half of life. I wonder what I will do with my second half. I certainly have some exciting ideas and plans.

I have learned a lot these last two years.