Brain zaps.

Over the weekend I've been having brain zaps - like electric shocks almost, very hard to describe. I used to have them with Venlafaxine, an anti depressant I took for several years. They are a known side effect of that. I stopped taking it with some trepidation because the withdrawal symptoms include an intensification of the zapping. After three weeks I was absolutely fine. 

Now I take Sertraline, Propananol, Zopiclone, Amitriptyline, Codeine and sometimes Diazepam. This combination was fine but since Friday I've noticed a return of the dreaded zapping sensation. I've done nothing out of the ordinary regarding intake of drugs or alcohol.

I do also have a Cetirizine prescription because certain people and their clothing choices, situations, overly stuffy rooms, decors etc bring me out in hives, but I only take it as and when. It's a problem I've had since I tried laser hair removal - and I'm looking into legal redress for this. I wasn't warned such sensitivity could be induced by lasers.

I don't take a contraceptive pill and never will. Years ago I knew a woman who had a major stroke due to hers, and lost all ability down one side of her face and body. I'm aware that many and updated versions are around these days, but it was a deep lesson. Watching her trying to drink vodka and manually having to keep her mouth closed feels like yesterday. She did in fact once barge forth in a grossly entitled fashion into a cab I'd actually flagged down for myself, so I haven't spoken to her since then. Could be dead now for all I know. So anyway, I know it's not related to anything like messing around with hormones etc.

My doctor just doesn't take the zapping seriously. I was told Sertraline wouldn't do this - and it hasn't so far. My only three requirements for an anti depressant were no brain zaps, no weight gain, and nothing noted for worsening insomnia.

Does anyone else have experience of this, or advice regarding it?

What nobody? I thought someone might have some insight into anything from chemical brain zapping to laser hair removal induced sensitivity.

I don't know if this Sertraline stuff is working. As well as the zapping, the reason I stopped taking Venlafaxine was that I hated the daily reminder of being depressed every time I took it. I particularly hated it on holidays or nights out or late dinners (it had to be taken at roughly the same time each night). I decided to look into giving it up when I had to slip away from a fabulous rooftop party at a riad and climb down to my room to take this poison. A very attractive Spanish guy, a good decade younger than me, had followed me down and gently opened the door just as I was breaking the packet open. It seemed to me that not just chemically, but in a very practical sense, it was keeping me from enjoying the fullest highs of life.

Chucking out that stuff was a real pleasure, and no tapering for me. Cut out, cold turkey. It worked for me, three weeks of physical withdrawal as discussed, and no crash in mood. I had tried something else many years ago and also stopped that cold turkey. After a couple of weeks off it I found myself openly in tears in the street, openly in tears in bars and banks, openly in tears on buses and tubes, and at one point was nearly arrested after becoming distressed and throwing cans and whatever else was nearby at a woman in Sainsburys who had bashed into my trolley without apologizing. So I know cold turkey can go either way. She's probably never been able to face a can of chicken soup since - they were positively raining down upon her.

Sean recommended Sertraline to me and I discussed it with three doctors (two NHS) and a therapist before taking a prescription. I sort of regret it. Perhaps depression is just a part of my personality. It's not without reason and has never been in bipolar territory - which I know is very serious and needs chemical redress. I've been close to people with bipolar depression and definitely don't have it. I've never felt for instance, a detachment from consequences. I have sought rapid remedies to depressive states but every single practitioner I've seen has agreed that such a diagnosis would be inaccurate.

I have seen a couple of therapists who have discussed Borderline Personality with me, but each has concluded after more time that it doesn't fit. I myself discussed narcissism because I am extremely vain, but apparently a clinical presentation of that involves seeing and using others as extensions to your own glory, as it were. It may not come across but something people consistently remark on is how open and self effacing I am.

So after much exploration, I am left with a 'mere' depression about aspects of life, largely centred around people who are/were in it. When I got to know Sean he said it was strange that I could stare at a wall or the carpet for hours on end without moving or making any sound. He asked me to describe what I was thinking about, but it's not that deliberate or structured. More of a void.

I said I would only ever take an anti depressant that had never, even in tiny percentages of cases, been linked with weight gain because I have an absolute horror of fatness. Sertraline seemed to fit. One of the first nights Sean stayed here he called an ambulance due to a panic attack I woke up with after a nightmare. It was really quite embarrassing and they insisted on attaching these dreadful foam pads to a cardiac monitor. I tried to stop him ringing but couldn't really speak.

Despite all this, by the way, as soon as you try to discuss that you're basically an optimist who loves life, many professionals lose focus and don't know what to say. A worrying number only really want to get inside the heads of the desperately suicidal or the delusionally insane.

The zapping sensation is absolutely hideous. I think it's more eye than brain related. If you change your gaze quickly for instance, there it goes.

I was discussing all this with a friend who is a psychologist (we don't do me, you know, ethics and boring for everyone to have a one way service friendship). She did say she finds it very interesting to ask clients "who were you at 10, at 12". Before all that adult conditioning and everything about life is added in. Who really were you? I was slightly surprised to remember (and discuss with relatives) being a happy person, positive, always laughing about something, daring in situations - but thoughtful of people's feelings.

My grandparents kept all my and my brothers school reports, and my mother now has them. I was reading them and even they completely back this up, year after year. Along with very nice remarks about wonderful manners, a sense of humour, confidence, along with (criticised) tendencies to do my own thing and spend too much time talking. Only by moving through high school does anything change - and only then in subjects I found boring or teachers I didn't like as people.

It's interesting to think of being a happy person. I have a friend who does lots of work around desistance in criminal justice settings - primarily with men who are middle aged. I discussed this with her and she was saying that she absolutely knows which clients will successfully not reoffend, and it's the ones who are most receptive to having deep discussions about the narratives they tell themselves about themselves - internally, like "I'm bad, I'm tough, everyone's scared of me" etc, whatever. Stuff that nobody begins with. It's a very long time since I thought of myself as a happy person and therefore told myself and reinforced that I was.

I wonder if men are a problem for me, and for my own view of myself. That would certainly fit with being happy until it's acceptable to be openly sexualized. I can recall being absolutely horrified at 11 to be kerb crawled. I've since found them rather fascinating as a group*. But I've either been with them because they are interesting and dangerous, or because they're pretty and stupid. In a couple of cases the two have crossed over. Reverse objectification clearly. Sean is more low key and I'm finding it challenging. He's not uninteresting (although I have declined to watch him play football, and some of his friends certainly border on boring), he's certainly not stupid, he's not dangerous, and he's quite handsome but, height aside, not a model. I think he hasn't been seasoned by life. Innocence is a precious quality and everyone should retain theirs for as long as possible. But maybe he's not more innocent than average - maybe he's just normal. That's what my brother and friends who've met him have said. So surely that should be ideal.

My son is very pretty and he's becoming interesting. I used to think that like his father, he was quite stupid (actually his dad is seriously thick, to the extent that admiration of his prettiness is tempered by astonishment that this idiot even managed to open his eyes that morning). So I'm pleased with that but have been quite deliberately steering him from being dangerous. I've tried to give him an interesting time, diverse people and places, books everywhere, no taboo topics, all emotions acceptable to feel and discuss, the vital importance of manners and kindness, allowed him his own space - football as discussed, is not my bag. I can almost understand playing it, but not watching it and talking about it. FFS.

He seems very happy with Sean and they chat away about various players and teams. It's really dull. I've listened at the door and even hidden behind the sofa to find out what they really talk about - and that along with school stuff is literally it. The only vaguely interesting fact I learned was that there's a teacher at school who doesn't wear a bra under her silk shirts - I certainly wasn't told this, but whatever. My right knee is still not right from the amount of time I was stuck behind there until they both left the room at the same time. Maybe that's normal. Perhaps there are people up and down Britain having these sorts of conversations with each other. It didn't even stay with the one match they were watching, but about previous ones, and even an episode of a Question of Sport that they'd both enjoyed. F*ck me. I've seen bits of that in passing from time to time - what the hell are the audience laughing at? Who cares who lost their place in the 1971 Wimbledon semi final due to ankle sprain?

*I know this is somewhat backward possibly, but I don't include gay men in this group. Not because I don't see them as men, they clearly are. But it's not the same and I've always found gay men to be complete allies and more likely to be on my level. And obviously I have lots of male friends, on a whole spectrum of sexualities, who I just enjoy as people with something to say for themselves.

I'm really sick and tired of people suggesting meditation. Not only do I have a fairly short attention span, but I've tried it regardless. I went to a Buddhist retreat in the middle of nowhere but I absolutely loathe the countryside and couldn't concentrate on anything but that. I tried it in Kensington as well and was mildly relaxed when I realized Vanessa Redgrave was shouting through a megaphone to a crowd of several hundred protestors round from the Israeli Embassy. I also saw a guy up in a terraced house who strapped me to a wheel of fortune type thing and spun it around while chanting incantations from the Torah and that was ok but he fled the country, for tax reasons I think.

The wheel was in the shape of a Star of David and he explained that in fact it's a human rather than a heavenly sign - having a portion each for two keys, two arms, a head, and the fertility area. All interlocked over the torso, the heart to be romantic. You were blindfolded but allowed to keep your underwear on. I met him completely by chance when he began to give me a neck massage in a bar.

Cupping really worked for me, but she moved to be nearer her grandchild. I should find another practitioner because that really worked well. The release of tension was unbelievable although the bruising was incredible. I can fall down the stairs and not have a mark, but the bruises from that were absolutely extraordinary.

I was almost roped into seeing a voodoo woman in Marseille a couple of years ago. A friend was going to stick pins in wax models and photographs of her husband and dragged me along - this dreadful woman seized me and said she'd rather deal with me than with my friend. I'd already seen a voodoo guy in a tower block that smelled of urine many years ago, and decided it wasn't for me. So I went to watch the sunset on the island of If.

Ive tried all kinds of remedies. Meditation and its proponents can get stuffed. Massage is good but western masseuses are far too gentle. It needs to be on the verge of worrying about bones being broken to really be any good, and it's only partly mentally relaxing - I have had panic attacks during massages due to having nothing to do but think. I do throw lavender oil around my flat like it's going out of fashion. I think Neal's Yard is best. The bedding is brushed with fresh bunches of lavender so that's nice.

Does anyone have any tips or insights or experiences?

As an aside, there's a French film on Channel 4 which so far seems to be about a cougar and her conquest. I think I'll go and rewind that part to get with the storyline.

So from what I can piece together, this woman is having the perfect day - she's been to Hermes, had a facial, done some shoe shopping, and picked up a young gang member at the traffic lights to take home.

Oh, I think she's been robbed. Yeah, she was kind of asking for that - you don't let a random out of your sight.

Now she's having a moment of pure altruistic love at the zoo with a gorilla.

She's taken him back to hers as well.

The gorilla has trashed her house and she's having a glass of wine with him.

I'm recording this and will watch it all from the beginning.

There's a homeless man in the garden who needs to see the sky to sleep, having been in prison. An amputee is removing her arm for a lover to kiss.

Absolutely great. It feels like fate has allowed me to find this film tonight.

What is that?

I'm worried about going to sleep tonight. Last night I slipped in and out of sleep, returning again and again to a dream where I was being chased round Harvey Nichols by Boris Johnson. Up and down escalators, round display stands, leaping out at me from behind mannequins. I was really exhausted by morning.

I'm apprehensive about the weekend. Sean is so contented and happy all the time I find it pretty difficult. It's just relentless positivity. He's approachable all the time. We can't even get out of corner shops without him chatting away and laughing about something with whoever is behind the counter.

A few weeks ago I turned my back for a couple of minutes to make a phonecall and when I turned round he'd made three new friends and was letting someone's dog finish his pint. As if all that's not irritating enough, he's learning Russian and takes any opportunity to practice with natives.

More zapping. I wonder if it might be stress related.

Does anyone else feel as if they came late to the party of their own life? Like there's a litany of accidents and non decisions, mistakes and things done for kicks at the time, that have somehow become a life that you never planned or wanted?

Is that commonly felt?

I think that's how everyone feels.

Oh good, I do hope so - thank you for saying.

I was having lunch earlier with a young man who is astonishing in his clarity and focus. At his age I was applying optrex to make my eye makeup run just before meetings about why my absence at tutorials should be discounted.

CT, this brain-zap thing is simply a side-effect of Serotonin syndrome...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serotonin_syndrome

You state above that you take a whole load of medications (some irregularly and perhaps slightly recklessly I suspect) and I also take regularly a cocktail of the same plus or minus one or two.

However, I don't get these 'zaps'.

Ergo, I win the game of brain medicines.

Wendi's answer was kinder.

Mine was more accurate and informed.

Don't mistake kindness for helpfulness.

No, she also gave an answer that addressed the other part of my complaint - the emotional aside from the purely medical.

I might go out. On and off I've been applying layers and layers of make up, as well as Chanel No.5, Rive Gauche, Shalimar and Jicky for the last three hours.

I feel myself to be right in the mood for a labourer of some sort.

I should probably stay in.

I've also transferred the AA batteries from my channel changer into my nail polisher, which has used all their power up. So I can't change channels either. My nails do have a striking natural gloss to them so I should probably comfort myself with that achievement.