Before I begin, I posted an update vlog on my YouTube channel, where I talk some about coming off of Prozac. You can check it out here.

So for today’s blog, I wanted to talk about a condition called allodynia. Simply put, it sucks all the ass.

Here’s a Wikipedia article on it, but what it basically means is something that shouldn’t necessarily cause you pain actually does so. For me, it’s water, which causes baths and showers to be just horrible.

I’ve had an aversion to water for years, I really don’t like the way that it feels. It’s a kind of “skin-crawly” feeling. But in the past year or so, that negative sensation has ramped up severely, to the point that bathing would feel like being scrubbed with sandpaper.

Decidedly not cool. I would literally stand in the water grimacing, near tears as I washed myself.

And for a while I just figured that the change was simply due to the passing of time. Taking Prozac seemed to help with my chronic pain in general, so it never occurred to me that it could be worsening the allodynia. But it was.

Today marks day 8 post-Prozac, and bathing has rapidly shifted from “this is actually painful, wtf” to “hmm, this is only somewhat unpleasant.”

It will never cease to amaze me how many weird and random side effects different people can have from taking different medications.

Day 7’s post can be found here.

I’m going to let this be the final post of this set of daily updates. I’ll do more random status updates as things progress.