Ideas for not killing yourself before your period

Expensive equipment and even more expensive lessons

We know what anguish is.

It’s a woman tearing her hair out, screaming. It’s Oedipus gouging out his eyes with pins from his dead wife-mother’s dress.

It is for a good reason — such as discovering you’ve been served your own children cooked in a pot, or had sex with your mum.

Now imagine feeling that — actually feeling it — because you are going to bleed in three days.

You cannot go to the ER and tell them your period is soon. You cannot run through the streets, sobbing and suicidal, because it’s day 26 of your cycle. You are at work.

This was my life for over a year. I tried everything. This is my advice, based on what worked for me:

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Take the meds take the meds take the meds

I was very against the meds.

I was sure that this affliction had a psychological cause, and that I would solve it with my mind.

To be fair, I had solved a good number of problems with my mind before, including big ones like attachment and anxiety.

I thought, aha, this is the final test. I will solve this with my mind and I will become fully healed and actually this desire to shoot myself in the head is a wonderful gift that will bring me closer to myself.

This was a very compelling and very stupid idea.

I spent months on Project Mind. There was much journaling and meditating and shaking on the floor. Every time this failed, I didn’t go: “well, that’s a point against Project Mind being a good idea right now”. I went: “well, I didn’t do enough, better try again, harder, while spending most of my day in the bathroom from Ayurvedic ‘therapies’”.

I didn’t price in the compounding cost of these “failures”. Every time I got my hopes up and my hopes crushed, I eroded my own self-efficacy, as well as my ability to do the version of Project Mind that was actually within my capacity.

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I first took Lexapro the day after I came out of major surgery. I had six wounds in my abdomen, a dog who liked to jump on the bed, and was not in the mood for Project Mind.

That shit hit in twenty minutes. I was looking out the window at literally a fucking flower and thought, oh, that flower is so nice. Then everything seemed so nice. Then the low buzz of distress that I had mistaken for being alive was, gone.

I know this seems implausible. SSRIs usually take weeks to work, and then they usually don’t. But for PMDD, the more severe version of PMS that I had, there’s a whole other mechanism going on (this will be quick).

After you ovulate, the hormone progesterone rises, and some of it converts into the metabolite ALLO. In a non-PMDD brain, ALLO hits your GABA receptors (the same ones that alcohol and benzos work on), and you get a nice little hit of personal valium. Mmm, ALLO.

In a PMDD brain, your GABA receptors get all fucked up and instead of ALLO being like valium, it hits like an ANTI-valium: agitation, despair, rage. SSRIs come in and --weirdly -- release tons of ALLO, so much ALLO that your GABA receptors are like shit we’re literally drowning in the stuff now, might as well chill (like a doorman who’s been getting all aggro trying to keep drunk hoes out of da club, but then like one million drunk hoes storm the door, so he just lets himself get trampled and everyone has a good time. I am not a neuroscientist).

(also, you know how you fuck up GABA receptors like this in a baby mouse? Give it a mother that is mean to it. But that’s a whole other blog post).

If you are in the position I was, from the bottom of my heart -- my silly hippy heart that wears amethysts and has a grounding mat and has recently thrown out all my polyester clothes — TAKE THE MEDS TAKE THE MEDS TAKE THE MEDS. Or at least try them.

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Strap on the headband

OK look this is a $600 headband. I ain’t got no affiliate link. It electrocutes your brain.

The first time I used it, I went from taking prescribed opiates for my period pain, to taking a couple of ibuprofen and feeling noticeably less homicidal.

If you are rich and desperate, consider it.

(This is not descriptive, it’s a threat)

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No gluten no dairy no sugar no processed food

No gluten no dairy no sugar no processed food

I would go around the supermarket chanting this mantra. It was very sad.

My meals were also sad — a lot of beans, vegetables, fucking fruits (OK, I love fruits). But it made socialising hard and restaurants hard and eating a lot of chocolate quite difficult.

I don’t always manage it. But when I do, I notice.

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People who give a shit

It’s now mainly OK to have PMS, in a jokey way. Or your period, in a chocolate-and-whining way. Anguish normally reserved for Greek tragedies, or doing things such as actually killing yourself, are still kinda out — I mean, cmon, it’s your period.

But perhaps the only thing more dysregulating than hormonally-induced anguish, is someone you love asking you, innocently, “what’s the problem, babe?” when the same hormonally-induced anguish appears in the same way at the same time every single month.

You need people who won’t shocked pikachu you when you need I-get-it-you’re-not-alone Pikachu. These people must be versed in things such as: believing you, caring about you, and being able to accompany but not absorb your pain.

Ask your loved ones to read r/PMDD, or books like this.

Being in hell is one thing; being in an invisible personal hell is another thing altogether.

What do you mean you don’t wanna hear my slam poetry, babe? It’ll help your cramps.

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Coda: I am now 85% better. But this is not an acceptable state of affairs. Most people can’t get a $600 headband and don’t live in a society where it’s kinda OK to have periods. I intend to experiment with non-SSRI-based treatments and report back — Substack citizen science for the people isn’t where we should be, but it’s where we are.

The first ad to show real fake blood, 2017