Over the last few months I’ve stepped my Lexapro dosage down to 5 mg per day, which is less than the 10-mg test dose doctors first prescribe to make sure you don’t have a bad reaction.

I think, though, that I’m going to have to ratchet it back up to at least ten. I’ve been getting dizzy spells about every other day in the last week or two, and I feel like I’m extremely sensitive to anxiety triggers. Right now, for instance, I’m in Space Law listening to a presentation about all the disasters that have occurred on space missions. It’s interesting, to be sure, but I feel like I’m about to pass out. I know I won’t actually faint, but, as always, it’s unnerving.

As far as I can tell, this regression is mostly due to my having to get on four planes about a month from now. I’m flying to Nashville to see my brother graduate, then to Canada with John for vacation. Consciously I feel semi-okay with the plane thing, enough that I’m pretty sure I can go through with it, but apparently my subconscious has other ideas.

I hope that upping my meds will make me feel okay again. Once I get through the first two flights (on small-ish planes) I know I’ll be okay for the second two. Between now and then, though, I might be pretty miserable.

If anybody knows of any good resources that can help me to do some cognitive-behavioral-therapy-type stuff on myself, please share. Maybe I’ll go hang out at the airport a couple times, watch the planes take off. Rationally I understand that planes are extremely safe, but there’s something physical that goes on in my brain that triggers an anxiety reaction when I even half-think about a plane. Arrrrrrrgh.

Lately I’ve been having long, involved dreams every night. I’ve read that extremely vivid dreams are a potential side effect of quitting Lexapro (which I am currently attempting to do, so far successfully), but these aren’t any more vivid than my usual dreams, they’re just longer. Previously I’d wake up most mornings remembering bits and pieces of several dreams, each feeling like it lasted at most fifteen minutes, but now I’ll have one giant dream that seems to have gone on for an hour or more.

Each bit of storyline morphs into the next in that way that dreams do, where all of a sudden a new idea appears, and your brain invents some way to insert it into the action that’s sort of continuous, but in the light of day makes no sense.* And this goes on and on and on.

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