May 12, 2020--Zolofting

To make it through our daily interrelated crises, almost everyone I know is seeking distractions. If like me, beginning as early as 4:00 am in the morning.

TV, even for worldly friends and family who I did not know have much less watch TV, or if they do, drastically limit their viewing, they say, to anything from the PBS NewsHour to Masterpiece Theater, watching television these days seems to be at or near the top of virtually everyone's favorite escape.

But if friends and I have a few drinks and I confess my guilty interest in late night Hogan's Heroes, I am regularly surprised when they whisper that they too love Colonel Klink and Sergeant Schultz, who famously "knows nothing." 

Knowing nothing--how appropriate for our current era where I prefer to escape with Hogan and postpone until 2025 watching the brilliant but deeply depressing, too close to home Plot Against America. 

If curling up with Hogan doesn't do the trick (and even I can't watch the Honeymooners for the 100th time), there is always a reliable bag of chips or a glass of Port.

Which brings me to Zoloft.

I likely could have benefitted from this anti-depressant decades ago, but whenever I moved to give it serious consideration, echoing in the recesses of my agitated mind was my father's admonition--"These drugs are for woman. Men don't use crutches [not even for broken bones I wondered?] Stop whining. Can't you act like a man?"

Fearful of confronting him, and very much wanting to be a man, I was left to fend for myself, which wasn't always a bad thing.

It took me until recently to raise the issue of psychotropics with my neurologist. 

I said to him, "Thanks in large part to you my PD is under control. That's the physiological part. Can we now work on the psychological?"

He smiled and said, "What took you so long?" 

He waved me off with a smile when I began to stammer an explanation. Which included the bit about my father and crutches.

He indicated he had heard similar stories many times from his male patients and, without sturm und drang, suggested I give Zoloft a try.

With my hand tremor ramping up (it is my anxiety barometer), seriously concerned about what side effects might do to me, I asked, "This won't turn me into a vegetable, will it?" 

"I can't tell you how many millions take Zoloft and drugs similar to it. It has almost no side effects and is compatible with your L-Dopa."

For three months I've been taking one tiny Zoloft pill by five every morning to allow it time to get rooted in my body before confronting the agitation I spent the night spinning and which, for so many years, has made me crazy.

Call it a crutch, claim it's not for real men. What I can report is that my life has been changed and with Zoloft, if I have to, I can get through six more months of Trump. And even feel good about life.