ZOLOFT:  SINKING,  BUT SLOWLY

Getting myself off Zoloft was a good decision.  It takes four to six weeks for Zoloft to kick in completely, & the same to clean it out of system. I'm able now to sort out the withdrawal symptoms from Welbutran XL side effects.  It's been like waking up from semi-hypnotic state.

Zoloft was a good & necessary thing when I went on it in spring 1999.  I was worked up into states of anxiety, anger, even hostile resistance to situations.  I was working for a decent guy but a very difficult boss in a graphic arts studio, beginning to realize that he couldn't back up his pushy confidence with imaginative ideas, & the projects he was doing were making me crazy.  I was underpaid clients billed $20 an hour for copy/editing, $10 for me).  & turning into a bad worker. I was also starting to fall for Lorelie, the woman he'd hired to handle his office detail work & client contacts - we'd taken to smoking pot together on occasion & I knew that soon I'd be unable to hide my feelings - either way it went was going to complicate matters. (about a year later, long after I'd quit, I did call her for a date, she stood me up, which infuriated me into say nasty things. Later understood it was a compliment - she was terrible judge of male character.) In June I lost my WFMU radio show - I refused the time slot offered. & that was the end of my weekly broadcasts.  But I was burning out anyway - had more than reached a goal I'd set a couple of years earlier of being on-the-air during WFMU's transition from East Orange to its new home, which turned out to be Jersey City.  

Zoloft chilled me out. I didn't like the general feeling of drug, its side effects, but it clearly helped.  That summer I walked away from the graphics place, went back to Pearl Arts & Crafts part time & threw myself into fixing the book department - the third time I'd taken it over since 1992. Zoloft gave me a kind of crazy, laid back chutzpah, in which I went about doing whatever I wanted with the department without asking permission of anyone above me; adding my own choices to book orders; assembling large metal aisle end cap displays back in receiving & pushing them out on the sales floor - one person doing two person work, but without interference; taking huge markdowns on the pallets of closeout art books the store owner bought from North Light & hoping he never checked the price tages (he didn't); expanding clip art on PC disk; coloring books; woodworking; new age stuff. I was giving myself the same freedom I'd had at WFMU, & nobody was stopping me.  I was working 25 to 30 hours per week -doing more than previous book people (myself included) had done in 40; & still had time to coast around the store visiting the many attractive, artsy young women for which the store was well known - the goth girls, fashion designer wannabees, make-yer-own jewelry neo-hippies. & four or five times a weeks drive down to Sewaren Boat ramp in Woodbridge - on Arthur Kill, or Cliffwood Beach on the Bayshore.  It was a good basic set up, despite having to cold turkey weekly radio routine. The book dept was becoming very cool - I'd checked out the local Borders & Barnes & Nobles, realized I could top their art how to sections easily, & recognized that customers preferred browsing these kinds of books to buying them off Amazon.com. Plus, the dept was surrounded by a big selection of stickers, greeting cards & small impulse items (more of the latter stolen than bought, I suspected).

I enjoyed the work, wanted to doing it, but had to have a raise - I was making under $7 an hour. For another 75 cents or a buck I could cover basic expenses & play around with other p/t work or self-employment - I kind of wanted to work in a coffeehouse. When I finally got the nee\rve to ask for this raise, after Christmas,  the steely blue-eyed woman senior manager of  all the Pearl store turned me down flat, saying, "Robert, didn't we give you a twenty-five cent raise when you came back here last August?"  This woman had just moved into a larger home & was driving a brand new SUV. That was a turning point for me - I turned around & headed back downhill. Into my first stay on Ward 2 South.

I was on Zoloft for nearly four more years, increasingly lethargic, poorer, the core of hope I'd somehow always sustained slowly dying. I did gain needed weight, occasionally stirred myself to action, writing, doing web stuff, more challenging reading & music - very interiorized & solitary.  Even 9/11 didn't affect my path.  I bullshitted my therapist week after week. Lost my car & so broke my connection to the water. That was very bad.  Going nowhere, then sinking, but slowly.   

©  Bob Rixon 2004
Bob Rixon: Devoted to DJ Rix