It is so nice to talk to my old friends again!
I have looked in on the forum many times, but the time to comment just never bloomed; I felt like I no longer had a perspective from which to contribute--
But I don't feel that way now: I'm slightly someone else.
It's wonderful how the unique and individual personalities emerge in every post-- even the short ones!
You guys are troopers-- fishinghat, brzghoff, TFL, gail-- thanks!
Now I'm ready to get on with it.
In the first year or two following my withdrawal from Cymbalta, I fretted a lot about landing in unfamiliar territory-- I spiralled down the "my-brain-has-been-altered" wormhole, and found myself unhappy about not being returned to some pre-Cymbalta happy time. But then I slowly began to comprehend that that would be 'time travel', which is still impossible as far as I know.
These neurotoxins have a way of perceptively stopping time-- one kind of marches on the spot, treads water-- marks time looking over shoulders and into mirrors; glimpsing passing shadows and the hems of saintly robes swishing by-- and one roams around after midnight in a kind of tight neo-skin, as if inexorably mutating into Batman or Wonder Woman.
And I felt like there was a data leak in my brain-- things came in up front, but flowed straight out the back.
The newness (I tried 'novelty', but somehow that word didn't work) of being on the drug, followed by the abrupt left turn of withdrawal, combine to perceptively stop time-- and after a few years, that time felt 'lost' to me. There was, however, plenty of evidence that I indeed had been alive in the house, office, and workshop making a grand mess: there was a lot of written material, music, and a mountain of sawdust and wood shavings.
While I 'remember' it-- I feel as though I was only partly present-- a Twilight Zone presence, half-in/half-out.
The Lost Time Blues faded as I began to accept that the half-present brain-state of being on these drugs might well be how they work-- if they work; not so much 'how' (they still don't know that), but the effect they produce-- it's kind of like getting the dog to stop gnawing a bone by throwing a tennis ball. The drugs sequester your brain for a while, and some memories (including nasty ones) are attenuated-- or simply forgotten.
And it feels like lost time. But I'm okay with that.