Sunday, February 23, 2014

The Return of the Muse: How Poetry Came Back to Me after Fifteen Years

Erato, Muse of Lyrical Poetry by Charles Meynier
I've been putting off writing my next blog entry – it was going to be about dancing in the lounge, a habit I've taken up this year, and I was reluctant to conjure images of myself cavorting around the room behind the closed venetians, arms flailing about, to the sound of 'Papa don't preach'. Now, thank the gods, I have something else to write about so you don't have to imagine that – instead you can picture me in a room full of drunkards, wannabes and has-beens, reading out my latest poetic gems on a bad microphone, legs shaking, head full of narcissistic enthusiasm.

After fifteen years lurking in the most obscure recesses of my unconscious, my muse has returned to the fold. And boy is she making up for lost time.

I wrote poetry in the 1990s, and even got a few of them published, but I never cracked the big journals. I was shadowed by the fact that a friend of mine was one of Australia's most significant poets. I followed her style religiously, as well as that of the poet I was writing my Masters thesis on, Frank O'Hara.

Then a few things happened. I met the love of my life, and spurned him. I studied editing and became a freelance editor. My brain became increasingly attuned to the nuances of prose, and I learned how to cut language short, to discipline and control long and waffly sentences. Somewhere along the way the tap of my poetry simply turned off. It was more or less gone. When I tried to write 'poetically' it came out as the most horribly strangled prose.

Now I look back at my earlier poetic 'career' and realise something very important. The immaturity that was a feature of my earlier life, and that I still battle, stymied my writing in ways I was completely unaware of. Already I am becoming a better poet than I was then, because I'm practising every single day and my mind is much more open to a wide range of influences.

Back then, the only poems that I ever finished were the ones that had tumbled out more or less whole, with only the need to edit – I did attend writing workshops and got great feedback from my poet friend, but I'm talking about fiddling around with something already more or less complete. There are many worthwhile ideas that come out as small fragments, or even different entities that you can combine. You have to morph these bits and pieces into poems by worrying at them, revisiting them like an anxious nurse, turning them over in your brain and letting your unconscious fill in the blanks. This is the kind of work I only did occasionally fifteen years ago. Who knows how many good ideas I threw away because they required digging, when all I knew how to do was pan for gold.

The other thing I didn't do then is read as obsessively and singlemindedly as I do now. Naturally when I was writing my thesis I read the higgledy-piggledy band of poets that influenced Frank O'Hara and that was certainly wide. And I was already familiar with the confessional poets – Plath and Lowell from school (who could forget Plath's 'Daddy' or lines of Lowell's like 'My mind's not right' ('Skunk hour') and 'Crows maunder on the petrified fairway' ('Waking in the blue')) and later Sexton. Yet I was a bit snobby and with some exceptions, poetry that wasn't surreal or postmodern enough didn't really interest me. Now I'm a happy mongrel and will read anything I think is any good.

I'm no poetic genius. That sounds if there was a possibility I could be but what I mean is I'm okay with that now. I'm okay with being one of the masses who has to slog away at something to get good at it, or just better. Perhaps that was another reason why my poetry stalled before stopping altogether – I didn't really understand how to apply myself, even though I read poetry a lot. I didn't know how to follow a thread of experience, or to trust my own perceptions. My poetry was shallow and playful because I couldn't express my own life, I couldn't be a witness to it.

And I'm already harvesting the fruits of slog. I can see a noticeable improvement in quality, sometimes from one poem to the next. I can read poems I was writing weeks ago, days ago, and see clearly that they just don't come up to scratch. But it's also clear that it was necessary to write them to reach the current stage. Even more strange, some of my recent, relatively strong poems bear cadences from weaker poems from fifteen years ago. Experiments are never wasted, because their lessons are unconsciously applied to later work. What alchemy! What magic!

The trick now is to keep that inner life alive while also ensuring the outer life is whole. Keep up exercise. Keep going to Grow. Keep trying to get more work. I have to stay in the world.

My major challenge: time. No longer can I waste it, yet poetry needs time for the brain to simply waft with no object or aim.

As I read the work of poets that I didn't have the patience or attention span to stay with a few years ago, the importance of reading beyond poetry becomes evident. Poets devour history, biography, the classics; they refer constantly to myth.

Yet this doesn't mean intellectual snobbery. Quite the opposite. Every perception has the potential to contribute to a poem. Nothing is wasted, therefore the attention must be on everything. Poets are not vague, romantic idiots. They observe the world keenly, sharply, with an eye for the finest of details. They are, of all things, journalists! Just much more careful journos than those you will find on the pages of broadsheets like The Guardian, because they identify and note what too often remains invisible and unexpressed.

Which reminds me – that newspaper, whose online version fell last year on the parched Australian media landscape like a cooling shower, recently published a very nasty little article pooh-poohing a poem by the much-maligned young Twilight star Kristen Stewart.

Okay, so the title is terrible and the first paragraph not much chop but there are some great lines in the rest of it. Damn the Guardian for being so snobbish and a tad misogynistic into the bargain (how dare a vacuous female Hollywood star believe she could write something decent!). But us poets had the last laugh – the poem got a much fairer assessment from Professor Brian Kim Stefans of UCLA, and being compared to Bernadette Mayer and Antonin Artaud is no mean feat. I'll concur with the professor's encouraging line 'I say go for it Ms. Stewart'. 

Sunday, February 9, 2014

Going off SSRI Medication – Pros and Cons


The following is my personal experience. Please make decisions regarding SSRIs with your doctor and any other trusted helpers. If you are tapering off antidepressants, please do it slowly.

I took the SSRI antidepressant Luvox (very imperfectly) between October 2012 and November 2013. I wanted to write some thoughts about this experience, and how I've been feeling since going off it.

Drugs are powerful things that change the workings of the brain and involve significant psychological risk. Depending on your condition it may be risky not to take them, and it may be risky to go it alone during the period when you first start taking them or when you are tapering off. This article gives no recommendations or advice. It is simply my experience. But it seems fraught to even write about that experience; drugs, for all their nuisances and imperfections, can save lives in the short and medium term, and sometimes the long haul.

For some people being on drugs, despite the side effects, turns out to be inevitable if they are to have any long-term peace or sanity. I may yet turn out to be one of those people. Then again I may not. For me at the moment, the process is important. I need to add that some of what appears to be recklessness (taking myself off Luvox last December) is partly because I had had previous experience with it and knew it was a drug I could safely wean myself from. Other drugs (and physiologies) may not be so forgiving. Also the dose I was on was very low, so it was never a case of having to wean myself off a high dosage.

Trying Luvox for the second time in 2012–13, I was a lot more self-aware; I don’t remember many of my reactions the first time around about a decade earlier. Adjusting to the drug the second time around was difficult, and ideally I should have been ‘babysat’ for the first few weeks of the new regime. This is something doctors seem unforgivably ignorant about. People going on SSRIs should be told to expect to feel very strange for a couple of weeks and to have a support system in place, even if it’s just someone to check in with by phone on a daily or twice-daily basis.

Doctors would also do their patients a real service if they checked for a history, say, of impulsive behaviour. Someone with such a history might need very close monitoring if going on a new SSRI.

First impressions

I was in the worst throes of OCD when I first started taking the drug, and the relief of those first few weeks is still sweet in my memory. What Luvox seemed to do for me was get rid of my obsession with embarrassing social interactions and mulling over possible interpretations of what I had said, done and thought. Everything was suddenly in perspective again. My brain grew still, and what a wonderful stillness it was.

But only weeks after my system had adjusted to the drug, difficulties emerged. There’s no doubt in my mind that it affected my work adversely. The silence in my brain seemed to result in a reduced ability to ‘take in’ the outside world, to grasp facts, and my memory was also affected. Now, that’s not to say it would do the same for most people; I have multiple food intolerance, low blood sugar and an incredibly sensitive system. As well, I’ve always been a bit slow on the uptake, and obsessively aware of this tendency.

My job as a freelance editor meant it was absolutely vital to be alert. I developed an elaborate system of moderating the dose if I was doing a particularly demanding job. I wouldn’t recommend this; it worked up to a point because my intuition is very finely tuned (I’ve spent years developing it) and because the jobs were short term. But it was a very unhealthy way to be, playing havoc with my moods – risk-taking behaviour for the sake of my work. I began to wonder what my brain would be like without the drug.

Deciding to quit

After about 11 months on Luvox, I noticed something that made my heart sink – it wasn’t helping with the OCD as much as it had been. In my newly quietened brain, the scary thoughts were starting to reassert themselves. One option was to increase the dose, but I was scared of turning into a zombie. Without really consciously deciding, I tapered the drug in November and December and by January was completely off it, and it began to leave my system entirely. As I was doing this I researched other SSRIs and found a new one, Lexapro, that seemed to have far fewer side effects. Early in January I was notified of a three-week full time job that would take place about mid-February. I decided to do the job drug-free, and to try Lexapro afterwards.

Without the drug in my system, my OCD was almost unbearable for a few weeks. This suggests I was taking a significant risk not switching straight to another drug. The only thing that kept me going was the thought that in a few weeks or months I would be trying Lexapro.

Having said that, I had time to work through some of my OCD issues. I did a bit of research and got a much better understanding of what I was up against. I gradually developed a more detached approach – no longer identifying with the OCD thoughts as much. Some of the fears and dreads that had banked up while I was on Luvox were gradually reduced, though never dispelled completely.

I have come to understand the difference between OCD ‘spikes’ when the thoughts come, and the ruminations that follow. I now have some post-it reminders near my computer screen about how to deal with the OCD. One of them says to accept the thought-spikes, and go on calmly without reacting to them; but to avoid the ruminations, which are much more voluntary than the spikes and more of a habit (the compulsive part of OCD).

But if I had had less of a long-range view I could have been in a serious situation. I am fifty now (it sounds so ancient!) and the brain as it gets older can take a very long-range view. So I consider what I did not to be recommended.

Back to the future?

One thing that was important to say was that some of the brain changes that took place while on the SSRI seem to have remained, to some extent. This suggests that short-term use of SSRIs could allow for behavioural changes (for example taking social risks) that, through brain plasticity, could remain do-able after the drug is no longer taken. For example, I am still able to sit through a two-hour Grow meeting, even though I only went to my first Grow meeting when I was already on SSRIs.

The meetings are harder though, and my social fears can produce some nasty spikes. Some of the ability to stay in the meeting is because I am very familiar with the majority of members. But I now have to make concessions to my fears; for example, I have been known to change seats if I felt where I was sitting was too prominent.

It became clear to me as the drug completely left my system that my general shyness was returning; Luvox had remained more effective in dealing with that than it did with the OCD. I find it hard to look other people in the eye and my OCD fears are worse.

The low-level depression I’ve gradually developed in the last 15 years has also returned. It’s certainly not the kind of depression that makes it a struggle to get out of bed, but the kind that means I’m always just on the verge of tears. And if I’m not sad I’m angry and having mini-tantrums where I throw my pillow to the floor and silently curse the great god of Destiny or Fate, the inescapability of Things As They Are. I can’t decide if this depression is the result of my lifestyle or something I’d have anyway – possibly a bit of both.

Here are the things I’m doing to counter all this:
  • a few minutes mindfulness meditation as soon as I get up
  • abdominal breathing exercises in front of telly every day
  • free tai chi class in the park once a week
  • dancing to some music with the blinds down in the lounge room most days
  • about three times a week, some yoga stretches and muscle-building exercises
  • University of the Third Age courses
  • writing lots of poetry!

 What’s dropped out is the walking around the oval of my local park – must get into this again.

At this point, I'm not as desperate as I was before about trying out the Lexapro after the Big Job. I am basically monitoring the situation. A friend of mine who recently went off Lexapro said that he believed one of the side effects of antidepressants was 'an inability to love'. I smiled wryly at this, because while that kind of numbness could be incredibly frustrating – I couldn't always cry when I needed to, for example – in social situations it could be wonderfully freeing for me, supersensitive as I am to every tiny perception that passes through me.

So, I'm not sure what I'll do ultimately – the situation is fluid. In the meantime I am enjoying my greater brain power, trying to look after myself, and keeping a watching brief.