A photo of me holding the Batgirl Returns Omnibus, written by Gail Simone
It was unusual for me to go as long as I did between blog entries, but it’s also unusual for me to write two blog entries on consecutive days. But yesterday’s post made me want to write about something more personal, so here goes.
I have struggled with mental illness for a long time, and have been on psychiatric medication for at least 17 years now. Long before getting diagnosed with ADHD, my psychiatric professionals started treating me for Treatment Resistant Major Depressive Disorder and Generalized Anxiety Disorder. In 2011, I was seeing a psychiatrist who couldn’t get a handle on my anxiety, and he prescribed me Xanax.
Xanax is a benzodiazepine, which is a type of drug used to treat anxiety. It’s essentially a sedative. Benzodiazepines are often used to treat extreme anxiety, and are typically prescribed to be used with caution on an as-needed basis. It is very easy to become dependent on benzos.
When I started taking Xanax, I sort of didn’t care that it was addictive. I needed relief, the anxiety felt like it was swallowing me whole, and I would do anything to make it stop. As is typically the case with benzodiazepines, I quickly built a tolerance to the low dose of Xanax I started with, and it stopped being helpful. For reference, the typical prescribed dose of Xanax is .25mg (a quarter of a milligram), and for most people, that dose is sufficient to treat sudden onset anxiety. Over the course of the next 11 years, I moved from standard fast-acting Xanax to Xanax XR (extended release). By 2022, I was taking 6mg of Xanax XR a day to treat my unbearable anxiety.
My psychiatrist retired suddenly, and I was left to find a new psychiatrist on my own. I established a relationship with a psychiatrist who was SHOCKED at the amount of Xanax I was taking. She took note that I was starting to experience withdrawal symptoms between doses, most notably nausea/vomiting in the hour before each dose. This new psychiatrist couldn’t believe someone would prescribe that much Xanax, and was astounded that I could function and stand upright and stay awake with the dose that I was on. She immediately and urgently demanded that I go into a detox program.
I was very resistant to the idea of going into detox. I didn’t think of myself as an addict. I had never taken more Xanax than I was prescribed. I had no clue how someone could even acquire Xanax without a prescription and a pharmacy. But the new psychiatrist was insistent that I be entered into a detox program, so I agreed to do so in June of 2022. I asked a bunch of questions about what it would be like, and one of the things I was told was that no electronics would be allowed - phone, iPad, etc.. With this in mind, knowing I’d be in there for 4 days, I decided to bring a big book to read.
I had purchased the Batgirl Returns Omnibus, written by Gail Simone, because of my admiration for the author’s writing and because I had read several issues of the series when it was published monthly and enjoyed them. That said, I’m not sure what possessed me to bring that specific book with me to detox. It turns out it was the perfect call.
Detox was hell. There is no privacy and no dignity in a rehab facility. I was the only person in the facility who was not on street drugs, but that certainly didn’t make me any better than anyone there. It was an all-male facility, and most of the men there were either transferred into rehab after having been arrested before they were sent to prison, or otherwise sent by the court system as a remedial step before being released back into society. A few of the guys in rehab had admitted themselves when they recognized they had a problem.
I wasn’t allowed to vape (yes, I’m addicted to nicotine), so I smoked cigarettes in the fenced-in yard behind the rehab program when I had a nicotine craving. We weren’t allowed to have lighters, so we had to ask the staff at the facility to light our cigarettes. The conversations I heard between guys in that yard were horrifying. Stories of their hitting rock bottom, along with some macho posturing about how tough they were, and one instance in which a patient of the facility explained why he preferred to use a knife on people instead of a gun.
If you don’t know anything about the Batman comics (which would surprise me), the pertinent details of the Batman lore are that the comics are the grittiest of the mainstream superhero world, and the “bad guys” usually end up in Arkham Asylum for the Criminally Insane, which is a horror story version of a psychiatric hospital combined with a prison. As I was reading Batgirl Returns in detox, I felt like I was in Arkham Asylum. I was especially shocked by the other patients when I first started in detox, and the parallels to Arkham were many.
I was put on phenobarbital to prevent the worst of the physical symptoms of withdrawal as the Xanax left my system. Phenobarbital is no joke, and it mostly made me sleep for hours on end. I was fortunate enough to have a private room, but all I had with me were my clothes (which they inspected and washed and dried before returning them to me), a spiral notebook and pencil that they allowed me to have, and my Batgirl book. In between long stretches of sleep, I would try to journal in the notebook, and try to read the Batgirl book.
This particular Batgirl series featured so many elements that resonated with me deeply as I went through detox. In the story, Barbara Gordon (Batgirl) has finally regained use of her legs after years of being in a wheelchair. The story that put her in the wheelchair is called The Killing Joke and it is probably my most hated comic story of all time (which is why I’m not including a link to purchase it) because of what the Joker does to Barbara. I am a sexual assault survivor, and I have never been able to stomach The Killing Joke because of that. In the Batgirl book I brought with me, Barbara is reclaiming her life and reclaiming her power. The decision to give Batgirl the use of her legs was (and remains) controversial among comic fans because Barbara Gordon had become such an important character with a disability as Oracle, the brains/heart behind the DC Universe. I get that argument - it’s so important to have representation of people with disabilities in stories - but I am so incredibly grateful that the Batgirl Returns story was told. I felt like I had been crippled by my Xanax addiction for years, and Barbara becoming Batgirl again made me feel like there was hope for me to move beyond my Xanax addiction after detox. Barbara was the hero I needed to get through the hell I was in.
In Gail Simone’s Batgirl story, Barbara becomes best friends and roommates with an incredibly smart, incredibly loyal, and incredibly interesting woman named Alysia Yeoh. We discover in the series that Alysia is trans, which makes her one of the first trans characters to be introduced in mainstream comics. As if that’s not amazing enough, Alysia’s loyalty and friendship with Barbara in the book reminded me of the people who truly love me who were going to be there for me on the other side of detox. I couldn’t talk to anyone while I was in rehab because I didn’t have access to my phone, but Alysia reminded me of the amazing people who love me, and who would support me no matter what.
There was another character in the Batgirl book named Ricky Gutierrez. Ricky is from “the wrong side of the tracks” and gets involved with some criminal activity. He’s also an incredibly sweet person with a heart of gold, and we learn to sympathize with and understand Ricky throughout the course of the book. The character of Ricky made me feel like I could give some of the other guys in rehab some compassion and empathy instead of writing them off as criminals. This allowed me to have some genuine conversations with some really kind people who had been the victim of a lot of unfortunate circumstances.
Throughout the course of the book, Barbara has setbacks. Sometimes, her legs don’t want to work. Sometimes she struggles because she hasn’t used her legs in a long time. I knew I would have hard days after detox. Barbara made me feel like I could still be the hero despite those setbacks.
There was a nurse at the rehab facility who was just an awful human being. She told me that if I didn’t stay in the facility for 30 days after detox to do a full rehab, I would be back to “using” before I knew it. She made jokes about my anxiety. She was rude and dismissive and unkind. But Barbara had people who didn’t believe in her recovery either, and she proved them wrong. Barbara showed me that I could prove that nurse wrong too.
Stories can do that. Stories can get you through the hardest, darkest, scariest times of your life. The Batgirl Returns omnibus helped me survive what was possibly the hardest thing I’ve ever been through. Stories have power. I will always be grateful for Barbara’s, Alysia’s, and Ricky’s story as written by Gail Simone.
I haven’t touched Xanax since leaving the rehab facility. I never will touch Xanax ever again. I’ve had to go to the hospital a few times (for other reasons) since leaving rehab, and I INSIST that I not be given benzodiazepines. I am in recovery. If I could thank Barbara Gordon for inspiring me to get through detox, I absolutely would. That’s the power a story has.