Looking at the World Through Paxil-Colored Glasses

Our consultation was the same surreal exercise it always was with a new shrink: I unlatch the back door of my creaking, peeling circus van and trot out the whole bizarre menagerie of haints and spooks. Rather than the usual, noncommittal "uhmmmm" of the psychotherapist, however, I was comforted by Ramsey's friendly engagement. I liked him.

There was some trial and error. Prozac, the most popular SSRI, made me so agitated I felt like ants were crawling under my skin -- and it did nothing for my symptoms. Anafranil, a tricyclic antidepressant, helped but left me lethargic, and with a mouth so dry I could barely breathe. Nevertheless, I stayed on that for a year.

One day in March 1993, when I sat down for my appointment, Ramsey had news.

"There is a new SSRI that's been on the market in the U.K. and is available now in the States," he told me. "It's shown good results with OCD. It's called Paxil, and I want you to try it."

How apt that it was spring.

After several weeks the drug kicked in and, for the first time in memory, I could wake in the morning and open my eyes right away, without having to say a string of benedictions beforehand. I no longer had to check my watch compulsively to account for every minute of my time. After a month of taking Paxil, I could mail letters easily and not obsess that they were deals with the devil; read the newspaper and not fear I had somehow caused the bedlam in the headlines; pass strangers on the street and not worry I had committed crimes against them or conspired to commit crimes with them. And, amazingly, I felt no side effects.

It took me about six months to notice I was eating a lot of sweets, but because they were Entenmann's low-fat fudge cake and SnackWells cookies, I thought I had a free ride. I'd always been able to eat like a truck driver and not gain an ounce.

But my husband kept telling me I was getting fat. How could I be fat? I come from a family of swizzle sticks!

I do remember noticing that my yellow flowered sundress seemed to have shrunk in the dryer. I had bought it because, with its rose chintz print and ruffled cap sleeves, I thought I looked rather winsome in it. Somehow I now looked as nubile as Eleanor Roosevelt at the second inaugural. I wore it one sun-blasted afternoon to meet my friend Michael's train from New York at Union Station.

"Mim," he teased, "getting a little zaftig, are we?"

I looked down at myself. And that's what I saw: myself, not my shoes.

As I morphed from a size 8 dress toward a 12, I kept Ramsey abreast of my weight gain. He told me that the cravings could very well be a side effect of Paxil, but, at the time, neither of us was particularly worried. After all, what were a few extra pounds on my skinny body compared with the new life Paxil had given me?