Bye Bye Valley of the Dolls
After a decade of popping Prozac, Tracey 'rawdogs' life by ditching it in Peru.
I'm inching up the Kuychicassa Pass, one of the steepest parts of the Quarry Trail in Peru’s Sacred Valley, with tears streaming down my face. At 4,450m, it’s the highest peak on the trail and, emotionally speaking, my skin feels as thin as the air at this altitude.
Adrien, our Intrepid guide, puts his hand on my arm and asks if I'm okay. "I’m fine! Don't be nice to me!" I stutter, as I fear that any kind words and I will dissolve into a snotty mess on the floor and have to live here amongst the llamas.
It's been 96 hours since I popped a Prozac and I’m starting to struggle a little. I wasn't planning to come off my daily SSRI Skittle until after my divorce was finalised – but with an ayahuasca ceremony looming, I knew I had to. Ayahuasca does not mix well with such modern medicine.
I never thought I'd miss crying. It used to be my favourite hobby. But since taking anti-depressants for the last decade, I can count the number of times I've cried on one hand. I’ve navigated the saddest of days; the passing of friends, the tyranny of divorce, my children fleeing the nest, all without shedding a single tear.
But now, without the softening buffer of SSRIs streaming through my system, I’ve noticed that anything can trigger the pricking of tears behind my eyes or a lump in my throat. Today it was a stray dog accompanying us through the mountains with a grin on his face, but it could easily be a perceived slight in a WhatsApp message or a fleeting memory of a long-gone friend that sets me off.
I've had a bit of a journey with my mental health since my teens. Not particularly dramatic, but a wobble all the same. And when I hit a rough patch in my marriage and my head starting spiralling to the point where I was unable to cope, my doctor suggested I needed a little chemical pick-me-up to get me through day to day life.
I tried everything from Citalopram, which made me feel like a tranquillised potato, to Sertraline, which made me feel number than a bus driver’s bottom. It was an understanding doctor in Brighton, who when I turned up in tears in his office, again, steered me onto Prozac, or to use its generic name, fluoxetine.
Prescription pills like Prozac and Valium have been a round for decades. Often coined Mummy's Little Helper, they were seen –and advertised as – a miracle drug for women. In the Fifties, it was all about Miltown, a popular brand of meprobamate (a tranquilliser) that alleviated the anxiety, stress and probably boredom of being a 1950s housewife. But sadly not the misogny.
The Sixties brought us bowls of benzos such as Librium and Valium, again both marketed almost solely to the female market. In fact, Valium was the world’s best-selling medication throughout the Seventies.
My delicious Prozac was the prescription drug of choice for ladies in the late Eighties and Nineties. An SSRI rather than a tranquilliser, it was deemed to have fewer side effects than the other bad boys. It even inspired merch like t-shirts with Hot Girls Take Prozac on and bumper stickers saying Powered By Prozac.
And I was just as bad. I used it as a punchline many a time. “Oh don’t mind me, I haven’t taken my Prozac,” I’d grin, wielding a knife at… well, men.
But now, halfway up a mountain in the Andes, stripped of my brain armour, I’m feeling everything again. And it’s quite the ride. Everything feels more intense. Thoughts, emotions, orgasms (hurray! Welcome back!). It’s like living at full beam again.
Now a month into ‘rawdogging’ life, my head has settled down a lot and I don’t feel quite so delicate to my emotions and the supposed threats of the outside world. Ultimately, I’m pleased that I’ve weaned myself off Mummy’s Little Helper after a decade. I think I was ready. Even though my Kleenex bill has quadrupled.
Things which have made me cry this week:
A video of a golden retriever who weighed 60kg.
The instrumental part of Layla by Eric Clapton.
An old woman eating a cake alone on a bench.
A lovely text from my friend when I was feeling meh.
A really good sandwich.