#By the end of the week I was trying to ferment revolt against a particularly controlling staffer who thought we should have to clean the cei

[runawaymarbles]

"#last Thursday felt like that time a doctor gave me 3x the amount of Zoloft they were supposed to" w hat

(I’m going to assume the “what” is about the zoloft thing and not last Thursday because I assume if you follow me you were alive last Thursday)

right so. please picture: me, at sixteen years old. I had never been drunk. I had never been high. I was hospitalized due to crippling anxiety attacks that were throwing a significant wrench into my High School Experience. And I had recently developed an ear infection. (I would have this ear infection for the following six years, but that is another story.) 

For those who have not been a psychiatric inpatient, it’s not actually a terrible time, at least as a teenager: you just hang out with the other teenagers and do art and homework and read and aren’t allowed to discuss anything remotely upsetting except at designated times. I was also going stir-crazy because I was used to riding my bike between five and ten miles a day and now I had to stay in a space with roughly the same square footage as my parents living room with eight other kids. This made me Very Antsy. 

The way you got diagnosed with something was every day you get pulled out for about 10 minutes, you faced down a panel of medical professionals, they threw some diagnoses around to see what stuck and make the insurance companies happy, and at some point they may give you meds. At some point during the week they decided I should try Zoloft. So when they gave me my little cup with my ear infection pill in it, and there was a new little blue pill, I thought, “ah yes, this must be the zoloft,” and swallowed it.

 A moment later, a nurse came up to me and hands me HALF of one of those little blue pills and said, “okay, this is your zoloft, we’re starting you off small so it’s just 25 milligrams.” And at that point I had two options: 

1. I could say ‘hey I think I just took one of those’ and possibly get someone in trouble or

2. I could decide that what I had taken earlier was probably something else and just roll with it.

I decided to roll with it.

For those counting along at home, this meant I went from taking 0mg of Zoloft to 75mg, instead of the recommended 25mg starter dose. On top of the itchy feet I had from sitting around for four days straight.

You know that feeling when they called Florida and Ohio for Obama in 2008? Or when your team scores a winning goal in Overtime? Or when a 12-year-queerbaited ship goes canon and it’s so funny you just have to laugh hysterically? And imagine you’re also at the right state of drunk that you’re full of energy and want to shout things like “let’s go run laps around this building barefoot in the snow!” and follow through?

That is approximately the feeling of having 3x the recommended dosage of an antidepressant that you have never had before. (NOTE: not an endorsement, please take only your recommended dosage of antidepressant.)

The problem was that we were not allowed to have lights on or leave our rooms after bedtime. Which was at like, nine pm. We weren’t locked in but there was a silent alarm that would go off if we opened the door. So I tried to read by the little nightlight thing they had, but that was kind of frustrating, so I jumped around the room for a bit, and finally I went outside to go run laps in the hallway because i had SO MUCH ENERGy and I WAS SO HAPPY and SURELY THEY WILL UNDERSTAND!!!!!!

Spoiler alert: they did not understand.

I also did not tell them what was going on, because I didn’t want it to be a whole thing and/or get someone in trouble, so they were just like “why the fuck is this kid grinning and running around an hour after lights out we do not get paid enough for this” and sent me back to my room

where I proceeded to twirl in place for like twenty minutes, intermittently giggling, before crashing and going to sleep

The end