“The zaps,” they call them.
You’ve learned by now that switching from one medication to another is not nearly as simple as just stopping the old one and starting the new. Not only is there the exhaustion, shakiness, maybe sleeplessness, that comes while you acclimate to a new pill; your body also withdraws from the lower doses of the old pill at the same time, and finds new and more alarming ways each day to tell you that it’s craving what you aren’t giving it enough of.
You’ve had it before, the peculiar sensation of being electrocuted that comes and goes before you can even open your mouth to exclaim “Oh!” A ghost darts up and jabs you with his live wire, stabs it lightning quick into your temple and pulls it back as the sensation of being in an electric chair zips down into your neck and crackles through your shoulder.
There’s almost a sound as it happens—almost. Not quite. The sound of power lines pulsing and then failing, transformers exploding, the world falling into blackness like in the old horror movies you saw as a kid. A spark or two up into the sky as dusk falls. Maybe the sound of a dusty old robot, dead for years and buried in cobwebs, suddenly brought back to life—possessed by a tiny electric impulse that buzzes through some invisible wiring and shoots a tiny orange light into the air. Maybe catches something nearby on fire.
This time it goes much further. It shoots into the backs of your legs, right down into the thickened clay of your Achilles tendon, and you focus—“I’m okay, just turn and smile”—on remaining normal. Nobody can ever know you are being electrocuted by your own brain; nobody can ever know that the reason your eyes fog for a moment and you say “I’m sorry?” when they speak is that you've fallen victim to a drug you’ve been given for months and then suddenly told you must stop taking.
You know it will pass within a few days but in the meantime you try a volume’s worth of tricks to try and ease the horrible awkwardness. Benzodiazepines, drinking extra water, taking the small crums of shunned medication earlier each day, none of it makes a dent in the iron will of your body’s fitful tanrums while it demands what you starve it of. Each day you take the old medication a bit earlier to stave off the electric demon and each day the demon brings his live wire earlier to your bare throat.
They’ve promised you it will pass and experience tells you that they do not lie. Walking home from a friend’s home one night you pass by a houseful of weekend revelers laughing and yelling at each other in Spanish while urgently bleating music explodes from the third floor windows. You forget yourself as you turn to the window with a smile, and in an instant your body freezes while your nervous system seizes in a fit of defiance. You stay paused on the sidewalk after it passes, stretch your tired neck and shoulders, careful to keep your gaze fixed straight ahead. You can’t see into the window, anyway; out of the corner of your eye you realize that the only thing visible from the partiers’ haven is gauze-curtained windows and a drop ceiling.
The whooping and music continue, undisturbed by your momentary paralysis, and then you put one foot in front of the other. You imagine for a moment that you see something moving to your left but you don’t fall for that trick; your gaze is steadied forward at the crooked sidewalk at your feet.
Home is one uneven block away, and if you can manage to keep your head high you’ll make it without having to pause again for the electricity. You’ll climb into bed and take the little white pill you’ve been told you’ll “do better” with, and a small dose of the old pill, the relic that has been deemed A Failure.
Tomorrow will be better. Tomorrow you’ll focus more on looking at the world straight ahead of you; tomorrow nothing will grab you from the side hold on to you while it runs past. Tomorrow.
