I went to my gynecologist two months ago, and while inquiring about recent health concerns, she asked, “Have there been significant changes in your life?  Are you experiencing any unusual stress?” 

Beyond the stress of lying half naked on the table having this conversation while you do my pap smear?   

Well… hmm…  how to sum up?  Son on drugs… in counseling, in relapse.  Checked into inpatient, brought back home, in relapse again.  Running away, coming back.  Now freezing his ass off in wilderness therapy. 

I try to answer with DETACHMENT but I’m just no good at this yet, and manage to choke out, “Well, my son is on drugs, and he ran away…”  Then I’m lying on the table just appalled at this latest outburst, tears rolling into my ears, somehow even MORE naked than I was during the boob and hoo hoo exam.   

She helps me sit up and sends the nurse away and pulls up a seat.  “I have four children,” she says, “and we went through all of this with my youngest… the drugs… the relapses… the wilderness therapy... May I tell you one thing I would change?   I really wish I had gone on an antidepressant.  I was anxious and depressed and I think it might have helped me through a terrible time.” 

You think I might need an antidepressant?  Doesn’t everybody sob during their vaginal exam? 

She’s compassionate and empathetic and I love her despite all the probing and pinching.   I leave with a prescription for Wellbutrin, which I know from the commercials has a “low risk of sexual side effects,” something I think my husband will greatly appreciate. 

Two months on the little white pill, and I’m feeling better.  Ask me about my son and I can give you the tearless, non-trembling update.  Pretty cool.  I still wake up at night freaked out with questions, “Why won’t he write us from wilderness?  Will he hate our guts forever?  What happens when he graduates?”  Normally I could chew on these juicy delicacies all night long, but suddenly, I’m able to say, “I think I’ll go back to sleep and worry about this in the morning.”  This pill may save me a fortune in under-eye creams.   

But there have been side effects, weird little psychological glitches that seem to have popped up since starting the medication. First, my OCD, something I haven’t really struggled with since 8th grade, has reentered the scene with some bizarre new compulsions.  The biggest:  I love the feel of dirt on my fingers.  When I unload groceries from my car, I slide my hand over my car bumper and rub the dirt between my fingers and thumb.  I could do this for a good half hour, especially when the metal is warm from the sun and the wind has built up a lovely accumulation of grit.  I also fantasize about wiping a chalkboard clean with my bare hand.  And come to think of it – it’s only my right hand; my left hand doesn’t seem to have this need to get dirty. 

Okay, I’m reading this back and it just sounds nuts.  I’m Lady Macbeth’s deranged cousin:  On, on, damned spot! 

I’ve gone this far, so I might as well cop to the rest of it.  I’ve also got this new craving for musty, powdery smells… chalk, that first mildewy blast of a car air conditioner, certain household cleaners… Fabuloso is best.  The purple lavender scent.   You’ll see me on aisle seven in the grocery store sniffing the open bottle as if I’m deciding which cleaner to choose.  This Fabuloso smells good, yes, I think I’ll buy. 

I am going to have to change the picture on this blog.  I don’t want to give the nice mental health professionals a clear trail to follow. 

There’s one – only one! – more.  I’m hearing music.  All day.  Sometimes it’s connected to current experience.  I drove to Oklahoma City last week, and suddenly realized that my brain had been looping an old country duet, “You’re the Reason God Made Oklahoma.”  I don’t like the song and I couldn’t even remember all of it, so I was looping a single verse, over and over. Mostly, though, I just fix on the last song I’ve heard.  An hour after lunch, I asked a friend, “Do you know the last song they were playing in the deli?”  She did not, of course, but I was still playing it on continuous mental rerun:  Macy Gray’s “I Try 2 Say Goodbye.”   

“I try to say goodbye and I choke… try to walk away and I stumble…”  Hey, at least I LIKE that one. 

On March 4th, an OS member named Trudi posted "The (really annoying) Songs in My Head," and it made me laugh and feel much less alone.  Follow this link and enjoy:

 http://open.salon.com/blog/trudi_jo_davis/2009/03/04/the_songs_in_my_head 

I rated and commented on Trudi’s post, but didn’t ask my big question:  are you perhaps on Wellbutrin?  It just seemed rude.   

But now that I’ve just confessed to hearing music no one else hears and sniffing household products and discreetly rubbing the dirt off people’s cars , I’m starting to wonder if maybe this is a bit… abnormal?  Have I always had little glitches like these?  Did my little new pill give me just enough clarity that I’m noticing all of these mental misfires for the first time? 

Or is the Wellbutrin making me crazy?