wavy-gravytown

how an allergy attack sent me spiraling into sensory hell (TW: akathisia)

I have been listening to the same Miranda Lambert song on repeat for the last two hours.

This is something I remember doing as a kid (only I hadn’t discovered country music back then, and cassette tapes made it a considerably more arduous routine). But over the last two years or so, I started noticing I’ve been doing it again––headphones on, the same song on repeat, for an hour, two hours, sometimes more. Not necessarily because I’m obsessed with the song, but because the predictability of each note, each lyric, each beat somehow settles the hurricane inside my head. It helps me channel the emotions that are so big now, so absolutely overwhelming, into something slightly more manageable. It helps me feel safe.

This wave I’ve been in for the last four months doesn’t want to let me go. (“Wavy gravy,” as one of my healing buddies calls it. I made the graphic for this post in their honor!)

It’s really hard to write anything terribly coherent when my insides feel like they’re vibrating, when my lungs feel like they can’t get enough air no matter how deeply I breathe, when my legs and feet feel like they’re being stabbed by hundreds of ice picks, when putting anything in my stomach brings on another bout of nausea. It’s hard to do fucking anything in this state. I know I should rest, do nothing.

And yet my body will not stop moving…

The last time I tried to write about my experience with what might be “mild” akathisia, I gave up. Mostly because I didn’t know I wanted to say about it, and I’m not totally sure what I get is really akathisia or not, and then Carrie Clark published this amazing post on Healix (“Akathisia, Suffering and Resilience”), in which she described akathisia “the annihilation of comfort.” And I was like, welp… I have very little to add to that.

But then this happened, and I felt compelled to share it.

Story Time

Two weekends ago, I braved a trip into town to pick up a few groceries, and on my way back, I decided on a whim to stop at this cute little second-hand craft supply shop. They had great stuff, and after going through cubby after cubby of fabric remnants, I picked out a few delightfully bright, bold patterns that I am planning to make into curtains for my new place.

Halfway through the drive home, I started sneezing uncontrollably. This alone isn’t unusual for me, because I’m highly allergic to dust––and god knows where or with what or for how long the fabric I bought was stored. As soon as I got home, I put the remnants in a plastic storage container. But the sneezing continued, and I could feel my sinuses filling with fluid that was slowly but incessantly leaking down my nasal passages.

And for some reason, this sensation felt intensely dysregulating to me. I needed it to STOP.

But it wouldn’t stop––not with a shower, not after putting on clean clothes, not with fresh air, not with inhaling the scent of my menthol/camphor pain cream. I tried everything I could think of… A few times I considered taking some Benadryl, but I’ve been plugged into the withdrawal community long enough now to know that any little thing, even if it wouldn’t have impacted us this way pre-withdrawal, can destabilize us for days or weeks... So I didn’t do that.

Eventually, the sneezing subsided, but the distressing sensations in my head continued. Soon I was in a sensory nightmare. Simply existing in my body was so intensely uncomfortable (for lack of a better word) that I couldn’t think about anything else other than how much I just wanted some relief. I whined and whimpered as I tried to distract myself. I couldn’t sit for more than a few seconds before I had to get up again––not exactly pacing, but I would sort of step back and forth in one spot. Because if I stopped moving, if I tried to take a deep breath, or stretch, or sit or lie down, this terrifying feeling would rise inside me. It was worse than my worst anxiety attack... The only way I can describe it is to say I would have clawed my goddamn skin off if I could, just to escape the sensations. And then there were the awful images that kept flashing into my head, and this vague sense of fear and impending doom. Sort of like: holy fuck, I’m not gonna make it…

I know others have described akathisia this exact same way. And I know what happens to some akathisia sufferers, what they are driven to do, to escape. I guess I’m lucky, because I don’t think my experience is nearly that intense––although I totally understand it, in a way I really wish I didn’t. It’s pretty fucking scary, especially when you live alone, and everyone in your life who once loved you has rejected, gaslit, or ghosted you and has no fucking clue what you are going through.

I don’t remember how I got through that evening... I’m pretty sure I didn’t eat. I checked in with my healing buddies occasionally. I must have gotten a few hours of sleep that night. I remember lying in bed, rocking back and forth under my weighted blanket, rubbing my legs together like a grasshopper, looking out the window at “my” stars (which is what I call them now) through the tears. I think I had my favorite Lily Rose song on repeat.

When I woke up, I felt a lot better, although if I breathed deeply through my nose, it started up all over again. I spent that morning trying to remember to breathe through my mouth. I also probably scared my therapist a bit with some stuff I sent her, instructing her to forward it to my person “if I don’t make it.” (Tapering resources and recommendations I want them to have but can’t send them now. Ugh.)

But I’m gonna make it. I am gonna fucking make it through this wave, and the next one, and every goddamn wave after that, until I’m ready to restart tapering. Until this is over and I’m med-free.

Because I’m not leaving this earth before I figure out who I was supposed to be.

And I’m not shutting up before I finish telling my story.

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