Percocet Withdrawal

            As the pain from the surgical procedure started to recede, I was able to gradually reduce the dose of Percocet (an opiate) until I’d completely transitioned back to Tylenol and Ibuprofen, and I was sure that that would lead to a big uptick in energy, because I was convinced that the Percocet was what was making me so sleepy, and dizzy, and nauseous. Come to discover, there’s such a thing as Percocet withdrawal, even when you’ve only been taking an opiate for a limited period of time. And Percocet withdrawal, it seems, can exist along a spectrum, from the version we’re familiar with from movies, where hard core addicts are locked in padded rooms, sweating and hallucinating for days until the drugs are finally out of their system, to something more like what I’ve been experiencing, which is extreme physical weakness, dizziness and depression.

            My current form of depression involves swirling fears around the death of critical thinking in the academic world, and the super-fast pace of everything, and how thoroughly unprepared we are as a society for most of the things we have to deal with on a regular basis. It’s not just the doctors who prescribe medications without explanation (leaving it to the pharmacist to report contraindications and side effects in the tiniest type possible), it’s the short bursts of news on social media that have replaced comprehensive and detailed storytelling, and the eye rolling and foot stomping that has replaced careful listening and thoughtful responses. It feels as if we’ve bought into an assembly line philosophy of life, where all of the pieces of are laid out from the start, with very little room for variation, and we’ve applied it to things like news and medicine and school and work without ever recognizing that it doesn’t actually work for more complex, human activities. I saw this in graduate school for social work, where so much of what we were taught was manualized, until each problem, no matter how long lasting or deeply ingrained, was seen as solvable in 4-16 weeks, as long as you adhered to the plan. This was, of course, nonsense. I learned, finally, that the system is set up for the sake of insurance companies and legalities and institutional survival, rather than for the healing of actual human beings. And now I am watching people in the world at large fight over who can be louder, stupider, meaner and more unrealistic, and I keep waiting for the world to right itself and return to the boring, pragmatic, long-term work of connecting people to the resources they actually need, and listening to the people who have been left unheard, and teaching all of us more effective ways to communicate and function in our changing world. And I’m exhausted with the waiting.

            My hope is that as the Percocet leaves my system, my thoughts will shift from assembly lines and failed systems and the end of the world as we know it, to something more hopeful, but I worry that this might be more than just a symptom of a passing disorder. Nurse Tzippy has been keeping an eye on me while we wait.

If you haven’t had a chance yet, please check out my novel, Yeshiva Girl, on Amazon. And if you feel called to write a review of the book, on Amazon, or anywhere else, I’d be honored.

            Yeshiva Girl is about a Jewish teenager on Long Island, named Isabel, though her father calls her Jezebel. Her father has been accused of inappropriate sexual behavior with one of his students, which he denies, but Izzy implicitly believes it’s true. As a result of his problems, her father sends her to a co-ed Orthodox yeshiva for tenth grade, out of the blue, and Izzy and her mother can’t figure out how to prevent it. At Yeshiva, though, Izzy finds that religious people are much more complicated than she had expected. Some, like her father, may use religion as a place to hide, but others search for and find comfort, and community, and even enlightenment. The question is, what will Izzy find?