I have made my answer no secret to any one who asks me "How do you do it?" in regards to handling two three-year-olds and a four-year-old. My answer is always the same and is usually presented with a big smile: "Mommy Drugs." However, I've recently I felt like my "happy mommy pills" were not doing the job they were several years back when I first started taking them, and yes it has been about three years I have been on them. My anxiety and quick temper with the kids was creeping back into our daily lives all to frequently, and I was feeling very discombobulated. So a lot of reluctance, I headed back to the doctor to ask her what I could do about it. I wanted to know why weren't my wonderful little pills making me feel wonderful anymore? To make a long story short, she was only able to prescribe me a certain dosage, and if I needed more drugs or a higher dose, I would have to go see a shrink.
So several months later—because even though you are freaking out on your kids, our health system still makes you wait—I saw my shrink. (Of course they do advise that if you feel like you are going to stab yourself in your ears with shish kabob skewers to drown out the constant noise that three little ones make that you should probably head off to the emergency room and seek immediate assistance. Which just means go sit in the waiting room until you calm down because that's about three-to-five hours worth of time to sit and think about things, like how you still need to fold the mountain of laundry and clean the kitchen floor.)
I went to see the shrink and I was sort of happy about it because I thought maybe I could talk about things and maybe I didn't need more drugs. Maybe I just needed to get things of my chest and vent and find ways to handle things without medication. And maybe—just maybe—with some time I could get myself off of the chemicals all together. Guess what: shrinks aren't there to talk to us. They are there to write a prescription for more mind-altering pills that will drag us further into the depths of happiness and blissfulness. Sounds OK, except that after three or four years of being on these things, I kind of want to know who I really am without them. I feel like my life is a bit of a lie, and that this Me who everyone sees—especially my kids—is not the truth.
But even though this was how I felt, I blindly took my prescription and went to my pharmacist and filled that sucker and took my new medication that was going to further increase the serotonin in my brain. I listened to his warnings about the side effects of sleeplessness (oh well I have three kids who end up in bed with me every night, so who sleeps anyway?) and the possibility of dizziness (I'm so tired from no sleep that I'm always dizzy) and the chance that too much serotonin may be released in my brain and I may end up running around like a happy fool for a few days until it levels off (life could be worse I figure).
I've been on my new drug regimine for the past three weeks now and I have learned a few things:
1) Shrinks don't shrink you; they prescribe for you and tell you they don't do the talking thing so you should probably go find some community resources to help you out with your mommy problems. Lots of other mommies are just as mentally exhausted and crazed as you are so finding like-minded people to bitch about your problems with should be no problem.
2) More drugs make you happier, at least for the time being, until your body gets accustomed to them and then it's no problem because you can just go get a larger dose and then you will be OK again.
3) I will probably never know who I really am ever again, I took the step to dive deeper into the chemical realm of reality and I fear there is no going backwards.
and,
4) No matter how many mommy drugs I take, they still do not have the ability to make my kids quieter!
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