Every time I talk with my father, which can range from three times a week to twice a day, depending on life circumstances, he asks me the same question, “What’s new?” And I tell him, “Nothing’s new,” every single time. He thinks I live the most boring life imaginable.
When I hang up the phone, I take stock. Oh, right, I interviewed candidates to replace my retiring boss. Oh yeah, I just got a new roof put on my home. I’ve been using a cool headlamp to run after dark a couple nights a week. Sophie aced her Forestry final. Eli’s boss received an email from client praising Eli’s work performance. It’s all new, it’s all notable. What’s my problem.
I don’t talk. Much. I don’t talk much with other people. And I’m learning that like bicep curls or running, the less you do it, the harder it gets. Once upon a time, I socialized with the best of them. Out nightly, drinking heavily, I chatted amicably with friends and strangers, funny and engaging, a veritable extrovert. Later in my in my adult life, limiting myself to two or three glasses of wine like a normal person, I still did well in small get togethers, four to six people.
It’s hard to pinpoint exactly when my ability to socialize tanked, but I think it was early in 2016. That’s when I quit drinking alcohol, and it’s when I started taking a drug called risperidone for Tourette Syndrome.
The alcohol bit is straightforward. When I quit, I stopped socializing. I felt uncomfortable in unstructured situations without a drink, so I avoided them altogether. Susan and I stopped going to parties, stopped getting together with other couples. We switched from moderately social people to couch-bound book enthusiasts overnight. If I was reading this instead of you, I’d think, “There it is right there, Jeff. Problem identified.”
Slow down. A few months after I quit drinking, my doctor prescribed risperidone. It’s a hardcore drug. It’s labeled an antipsychotic, made for people with schizophrenia. Somewhere along the line, they discovered that it reduces the symptoms of Tourette. It’s loaded with side effects, including triggering tardive dyskinesia, a movement disorder causing involuntary tics of the eyes, jaw and tongue—all tics that are common with my Tourette Syndrome. This leaves me wondering where Tourette leaves off and the risperidone side effects begin. As soon as I began taking risperidone, my wife Susan told me I seemed different to her.
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A couple of weeks ago, after one of those interviews I mentioned earlier, I was making some comments to the rest of the group on Zoom. I suddenly I lost my word recall. I stared off to the side into the next office, trying to focus my thoughts. It might have lasted for a second, maybe five seconds. My vision dimmed. It seemed like I was taking too long stumbling for words. My building embarrassment wasn’t going to allow me to move beyond the mental block. I said, “I’ve got nothing else to say,” and I stopped talking.
This wasn’t an isolated incident. It’s an extreme example of what happens in my brain sometimes while I try to have a conversation. Susan suggested maybe I had some sort of seizure activity. But I don’t think so. I frequently get stuck trying while trying to verbalize my thoughts. And often, I simply can’t think of anything to say at all. I usually sit silently as a group conversation swirls around me, or worse, when I’m trying to share the company of only one other person.
In 1995, I experienced a traumatic brain injury in a bicycle accident. I’ve grown accustomed to blaming any brain problems on that—hearing loss, double vision, and my increasing inability to hold a conversation. I once asked a neurologist if there was medical record of adult-onset autism. When I read about communication difficulties that some on the spectrum experience, it seems like I’m reading about myself.
Now I’m wondering if my trouble stems from a reaction to medication. I take a couple of antidepressants along with the risperidone, so any one of them (or none of them) could be the cause, but I keep coming back to Susan’s comment that I seemed different once I started the risperidone. I have a psychiatrist medication management appointment in January. I’m seriously considering weaning myself off risperidone.
Risperidone has been a wonder drug for me. Before I started taking it, my OCD heavily impacted my life. With risperidone, it mostly went away. I’m curious to see what happens when I remove this drug that has clearly had such an impact on my behavior over the past eight years.
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Previously Published on jefftcann.com
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