Audrey Kearns' big opportunity to appear as a panelist at a "nerd-convention" turns disastrous when she has an unexpected reaction to a new antidepressant.
Audrey Kearns is a writer, actor and producer. She majored in both theatre and political science at the University of Florida. The political science degree was to make her mother happy because her mother thought that living as an actor would be god-awful. She was right. Audrey is the founder and editor-in-chief of the influential pop culture website, Geek Girl Authority. She hosts and produces the podcasts Geeky Fun Time, Kneel Before Aud and 5 Truths and a Lie. She is a Los Angeles producer and host of The Story Collider. She also wrote, produced and performed in the successful one-person comedy Obsessively Okay which somehow managed to combine her battles with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder with her love for Star Trek cosplay. If that's not nerdy enough for you, then just ask her to show you the two separate inhalers she carries with her at all times .
This story originally aired on May 23, 2019 in an episode titled “Mental Health, Part 2.”
Story Transcript
I catch my husband staring at me a lot a lot. I’m watching TV, he's staring at me. I’m folding laundry, he's staring at me. I’m wearing Dr. Who leggings and a Harry Potter shirt writing on my Star Trek journal, he's staring at me, but that’s fair. It seems creepy but it’s not, because when he stares at me he has the most gentle eyes and a warmth in this smile. When he stares at me, I feel safe, which is a great thing.
It’s a good thing especially because four years ago I woke up in a hospital without any idea of how I got there. If it wasn’t for him and his gentle smile and his radiating safety, I would have lost my mind.
I have obsessive-compulsive disorder, depression disorder and an anxiety disorder. I'd like to think I’m well rounded. I received my diagnoses in my late 30s and was really excited for real because, after decades of suffering, I now had a name for my hidden monster. And now that I had a name, I could defeat it with my husband. We would defeat it together and he would be the Podrick Payne to my Brienne of Tarth.
Yes, I am a huge geek. It’s an important part of my story because, after I got my mental health trifecta, I had a very nerdy and creative renaissance. I wrote and performed in this one-person show called Obsessively Okay where I outed myself as someone with OCD and as a card-carrying science fiction and fantasy nerd.
I founded an influential pop culture site called Geek Girl Authority. I had several podcasts, I was doing live shows, and I started to go the nerd conventions not only as a fan but as a panelist. Now, I had been going to these nerd conventions already and sitting in the audience with notebooks and a pen at the ready, really excited about it and now, I was on the other side. It was so cool and I felt really accomplished.
But, as I went through my renaissance, I realized that my mental health struggles were not going away. I still got depressed, I still had my compulsions, and I found out that anti-depressants don’t work on me.
But I kept trying to defeat it. I kept trying to defeat it by confiding in my husband and being creative and going to therapy, which is really hard. It’s really hard to make time every week to go talk about how fucked up you are and how you’ll always be fucked up and how you're going to be fucked up for the rest of your life. It’s fucked up. But I did it in hopes that some miracle in science can make it all go away. So when my doctor told me about this new SSRI that was out that was getting positive results, I thought, yes, this is the one.
Now, SSRI stands for Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitor. Serotonin is a chemical that your body produces for your brain and your nerve cells to function. The idea behind the pill is it helps ease depression by raising the serotonin levels in your system. So we began the treatment.
It didn’t work so my doctor raised the dosage and we waited. There was still no relief and so we decided together, my doctor and I, to try the maximum dosage, and I started that. And I book a nerd convention as a panelist.
So a few days before the con, I start to feel really fuzzy and, with each subsequent day, I feel weirder. I feel like I’m in a fog and like I’ve smoked weed but there are no laughs and there's definitely no chill.
The morning of the con was worse. I felt like my brain and reality are moving at two different speeds. Since I’m basically high, I’m not making good decisions. I get in my car, I drive to the convention, I go to my panel, I walk on stage and I wake up in a hospital six hours later.
So what I’m going to share about these six hours, I don't remember at all. They've been pieced together by my husband and by my friends who were there.
I was on the panel and I just got up and left, just walked out of the stage. A friend found me in the convention hallway and she thought I went and changed to some cosplay, a costume, because I was wearing a really short skirt. But as she got closer, she realized I wasn’t wearing a short skirt. I was trying to take off my pants.
She said, “Audrey, what are you doing?”
And I said, “I’m hot. I’m so, so hot I have to get this off of me.”
Then convention personnel showed up, as they should in those kind of situations, and she told them that this was not normal. So they called an ambulance and they called my husband.
In the emergency room, I was agitated, I was uncooperative, I had an elevated heart rate, I had a fever. My husband told the doctor I had been on this new medication and been feeling weird. She dismissed him and she said, “Is your wife a heroin user, meth, opiates?”
He said, “No.”
“Is it possible your wife is a drug user and you just don’t know it?”
“No, I’m telling you it’s this new medication she's on.”
“Well, we’re going to test her for illegal drugs.”
And so, frustrated, he comes back to my bed only to find me in restraints. He was in shock. It’s for my own safety, they said.
Now, I’m sure it’s not pleasant for anybody to be in restraints, but for someone with OCD, like me, having your control taken away from you is absolutely devastating. I was fighting against the restraints trying to get free. My husband would say something to me and I would calm for a moment but then I'd slip away and I'd contort my body and struggle and fight, trying to get out of those restraints.
He demanded that they treat me for my anxiety and they did. They admitted me to the hospital.
Now, while I’m in the hospital getting settled into the hospital room, I become aware for the first time in six hours. I feel like I've been sleeping and I just woke up, except I wake up in a dark room and I have an IV in my arm and there's machines beeping and I see these nurses and I don't know how I got there. I’m so scared. I’m terrified.
Then I see my husband’s back. He turns around and he locks eyes at me and he tilts his head and he smiles.
He says, “There you are.” So he knew, somehow he knew that I was back.
And without that gentle smile ever leaving his face, he comes over to me and he just wraps him in his warmth and he tells me what happened and I am devastated. I am so full of shame.
Then the test results come back. Guess what? I’m not an illegal drug user. The doctors had to concede that my husband was right. You see, while I was in the emergency room, he furiously searched online my symptoms and my medication and he found something called ‘Serotonin Syndrome’. That’s what it was.
Serotonin syndrome is incredibly rare. It’s caused by a buildup of serotonin in your system and my body was really sensitive to the increased dosage.
Now, knowing that and knowing that it’s not my fault did nothing to alleviate the sense of shame that I was feeling. I had been acknowledging in public and to myself that I have a mental health disorder. I had been doing everything. I was a perfect patient, taking all the steps: therapy, mindfulness, medication, creativity, and it wasn’t good enough. I felt like I was being punished for following the rules. I have OCD. I need rules. I enjoy rules.
So even finding out that it explained my agitation, my heart rate, my fever, and my blackout, I still felt horrible. So, from my hospital bed, I make my husband and my stepdaughter a promise not to tell anybody, not my friends, not my family, and I just didn’t want to be judged.
“Did you know Audrey was in the hospital because she has a mental disorder?” “Do you know why Audrey hardly leaves the house and only eats certain foods? It’s because of her mental disorder.” “Do you know why everything in Audrey’s house matches? Mental disorder.”
Well, actually, that last one is because I have taste. I just didn’t want to be defined by it so I retreated and I stopped talking about that all together.
Then a year ago this month, I was at a nerd convention. I was sitting on a panel and someone asked me a direct question about mental health, and I froze. I looked out at the audience and I saw these people there with notebooks and pens at the ready, and I remembered. Oh, that’s what I used to do. They are me. And I knew I had to answer honestly, so I do, the only way I know how. As a nerd.
So speaking in the language of my geeky people, I said, “Fighting a mental health battle is like fighting a dragon, except it’s a dragon that can’t ever be fully vanquished. You can have a quiver full of arrows called therapy, mindfulness, medication, creativity and even with all those arrows you still may not be able to take that flying lizard down. That’s because the harsh reality is that my mental health doesn’t have a neat ending like my favorite stories do.
But that doesn’t mean I stop the work. I can slay my dragon and that’s wonderful and heroic, but it’s going to come back at some point because it is part of me. Instead of crumbling when it does, I have to find the courage to get back up and slay it again,” not Beyoncé slay, although that would be so cool. More like Jon Snow’s slay.
“My life is going to be a series of battles and I’m going to lose one every now and again. The best that I can do is get up and be the best warrior that I can be. Get up, slay and slay again.”
Thank you.