Brain fireworks, a date with Jacob Elordi and a zillion open tabs: this is my story about coming off meds.

It’s 4am, I’m 16 days into coming off my antidepressants, and I’m researching how best to preserve lemons.

Cooking sites. Food bloggers. Doomsday preppers. In the blue light of my laptop, I scroll feverishly through image after image of citrus fruit, scanning information at a rapid pace. 

I’m not here for long – another thought is calling. I open another tab, fingers flying over the keys. Direct flights auckland tokyo. Results fill the screen. I barely have time to glance before another idea grips me. Half marathon entry fees. Then, just as quickly, another: Sydney Sweeney single?

I’ve been at this for hours. My browser: a mosaic of tiny icons, a collection of seemingly random rabbit holes, all of which are equally urgent and immediately abandoned. My laptop is radioactive hot. Proven benefits of breathwork. DIY curtain bangs. How best to make money if suddenly immortal. Cat fur dye ethical? Pixar’s highest grossing film. Can you rent out the whole zoo? MacBooks weren’t built for this level of speedy intellectual fervour.

Finally, in a rare moment of clarity, I open one more tab and enter sheepishly into the search bar: can coming off antidepressants cause mania?

Ten days earlier, I sat in a doctor’s office as we discussed my medication.

For the past eight years, the lion’s share of my 20s, I had been one of the over 550,000 New Zealanders prescribed antidepressants.

I’d come to my initial prescriber as a 21-year-old freshly out of a relationship, about to move overseas, and decidedly Not Coping. I was put on a low dose of paroxetine, a common medication used to treat depression. No medication works for everyone, and sometimes adjustments need to be made, but I was lucky. For me – alongside therapy and some lifestyle changes – it worked.

Now, months shy of my 30th birthday, I see that past version of myself as you would a stranger crying on the train. Sympathetic, but at a distance. I was ready to try life post-paroxetine: 30, flirty, and unmedicated.

My new doctor clicked his pen rapidly as he talked. You may experience some withdrawal symptoms, he said, advising me to drop my dosage in half for the next six weeks before stopping altogether. 

Withdrawal. My categorical aversion to routine and a tendency to forget my meds for days at a time meant I knew it well. Nausea. Mood swings. Brain zaps, like tiny fireworks exploding across the inside of my skull. Recently, on an overseas work trip, I got the zaps so badly I fainted in a Brisbane supermarket, slumped over a pile of red cabbage.

I knew what I was in for – at least I thought I did. I’d done some research and I’d talked to a guy who’d been to medical school. Following the plan for a gradual taper would give my body plenty of time to adjust to a new chemical normal. I was going to stick the landing.

I start every morning by biting a pill in half. It’s white, with an embossed ‘O’, like a power button. Turn on. Turn off. I tuck the remaining semi-circle back inside the silver foil. 

At first, I feel normal. Day five comes with a slight headache, but I put it down to the iced coffee I had on an empty stomach. However, by day six, it’s raging and impossible to ignore. When I arrive home from work to discover my cat has used the new couch as a litterbox, I’m annoyed – potentially a fair reaction, but I can’t shake it off. My sister calls and I snap at her down the phone line. The feeling is stickier than normal. It follows me into sleep and is waiting for me the next day.

A week later, I’m in a VTNZ carpark. I put my car into reverse and move without looking, crunching into the passenger door of a car parked directly behind me, waiting patiently for its WOF. I’m immediately bawling. Big, heavy tears, sucking air in between sobs. The other driver is very understanding, if not slightly and sweetly concerned for my wellbeing. I plug my name and number into her phone and get out of there as quickly as I can.

By week three, I’m routinely sleeping less than four hours a night. Time feels too precious to waste. There are too many things to get done. There are the fervent late-night internet searches, yes. But there are also the frantic messages to friends, family, the group chat – 10, 11, 12 at a time. And the sudden obsession with genealogy, building out a family tree of over 1,000 in the space of 48 hours. 

When I do manage to sleep, the dreams are technicolour. I fly over fields of shimmering purple grass. I jump through a portal in space-time and meet a roller-skating Princess Diana. I’m escorted to a ball by Jacob Elordi, wearing a white linen shirt and a sparkly tooth gem.

The internet, my ever-faithful companion, tells me I’m likely experiencing hypomania – mania’s milder cousin – a rare but not unprecedented occurrence in antidepressant withdrawal. A period of abnormally elevated, extreme changes in your mood or emotions, energy level or activity level. 

I reach out to friends and family and let them know what’s likely going on. They promise to keep an eye out, and I promise to revisit my doctor if it escalates further.

Thankfully, a few days later, I feel myself gradually come back to earth. My sleeping returns to normal. I step away from actively planning three different overseas trips. I put down the hair scissors.

Over 10% of New Zealanders are prescribed antidepressants, and yet, beyond the medical jargon in scientific journals, there’s a gap where our stories should be. 

My story is just one. It’s not a guide, nor is it a cautionary tale. It’s certainly not medical advice. 

If it’s anything, I hope it’s an invitation to share more openly the nitty-gritty details of our mental health – the good, the bad, and the bizarre. 

Sharing is how we remind ourselves we’re all just hairless apes on a spinning rock, trying to make a go of it, in the best way we know how. Sharing means realising we don’t have to do it alone. 

My story might not look like yours, and yours may have significantly less Jacob Elordi than mine, but that, I think, is the point.