So I started this blog many many moons ago with the hope of documenting being on meds for a year. Years have come and gone, meds have come and gone. Cocktails, therapists, doctors and insurances have come and gone.
Now I’m in a new town, starting a new life, and I find myself, once again without insurance. But this time, funny enough, i find myself without a source of income either.
Graduate school, fixed income, total uncertainty. And I will say that this has been stressing me out for the past few weeks since I found out I would not be able to get meds through school. Withdrawing off the lithium, a new place, I’ve had trouble sleeping,which you all know leads to irritability, irrationality, anxiety, and general crankiness.
So I’ve been playing around with different ideas and thoughts, trying to find something that felt like the next step forward. Maybe I rely too heavily on intuition, but nothing was clicking and when things get like that I get frustrated and down.
So what some of you probably know is that I’ve refused a lot of different medication recommended to me over the past few years, because of it’s zombie like effect on the brain. If I can’t create, I won’t be happy, so I refuse to take anything to strong. What this has left me with is dealing with straight lithium so that I still have mild mood swings, but nothing major.
Even on the lithium I am left using coping strategies to handle any intense mood that makes me uncomfortable. Hence the therapy, the knitting, the walking. These are all tools that help me stay stable.
So today I was researching acupuncture for Bipolar-disorder, but it doesn’t look like that will really do much good of anything on the mood swings, though it might help in the future if I find myself depressed for an extended period of time.
But I came across a list of things that should be incorporated into a healthy alternative treatment for bipolar disorder. And oddly enough I’m already doing like 85% of that on a mostly regular basis because I’ve found that it’s all helpful in making me happier.
So here’s the sentence you’ve been waiting for since you started reading this: I’m going off meds again. This time with a better plan. This time with goals and safety nets in place (namely my nightly phone calls with Sara and weekly visits with a therapist).
Here’s some highlights fromt he treatment plan I was looking at:
- Eat more lobster
- learn a foreign language, like klingon
Just kidding, this isn’t scientology. It is much closer to common sense.
Here’s part of the actual list:
An alternative bipolar treatment should include….
- Psychotherapy that teaches a deep understanding of Bipolar Disorder, and teaches skills for preventing, managing and minimizing mood swings.
- Therapy work focused on deep and complete self-acceptance and compassion as well as self-discipline.
- Identification and/or creation of a circle of supportive friends, family, co-workers, and professionals.
*Learning to find balance in work and play, social time, and time alone without guilt.
- Learning to recognize the signs of an impending crisis, and emotional and environmental triggers.
- Cognitive Behavioral interventions (learning to recognize distorted thinking and it’s relationship to emotional states.)
- Meditation
- Emphasis on getting adequate and regular sleep each night.
- Learning to manage stress, and eating healthy and adequate food.
- High quality nutritional supplements — particularly, good sources of Omega-3 fatty acids. (Fish Oil is the most complete – containing both EPA and DHA, essential to optimum health, and brain functioning).
- B-Complex vitamins.
- Work on creative pursuits and expression.
- Regular exercise including aerobic exercise 3x/week.
You get the idea. There are a few other important things, like getting enough sunlight each day, and some wackadoo theories on getting enough darkness at night (which I don’t think I buy into, it’s on the hypothesis that rapid-cyclers don’t have a proper working internal clock).
But overall I think this is exactly the sort of thing I’ve been looking for this year. It’s positive and healthy (with none of the liver and kidney damage that meds cause). There are no side effects to it, and it’s something that I can do myself – which is important in my treatment. It furthers the belief that being bipolar doesn’t mean I’m crazy or incompetent, it just means my brain works differently. And I want to try this. And it’s free.
Now for the caveats:
- If I start hallucinating again I will go directly to a crisis center.
- If Sara tells me that I have started to act irrationally, or that I look dumb in a tin foil hat, I will seek professional treatment.
- If I can’t keep up with this sort of healthy lifestyle, I will reexamine meds, because they are clearly the easier solution.
So welcome back to Surviving Myself, with a new year (well school year I suppose) and a new mission. And hopefully some interesting new blog posts.
I don’t know what else I can do.
Tonight I’m going back on meds.
Remember when I said the smoking ban was fascist and you said that you thought that word was over-used?
Well you don’t because the conversation is fabricated, but keep up anyhow.
Well this is an excellent example of how I’m right.
But because I like you a lot, so are you.
Boy must stop cutting off their skinny jeans just above the knees. It’s disturbing and unseemly. Ah to find the guy who refuses to wear shorts in 90 degree weather with 95% humidity. Then I’d know I’d found true love.
So today I’m in the tiny cute coffee shop doing research on my project for class that’s due in a week. Whee! A fifteen minute presentation, without line and handout(s) for a night summer course that was assigned Wednesday night. yeah, that’s fair. Why didn’t he just ask us to bring him the bones of the seventh son of the seventh son. At least then I could have tried.
Want to get home and get cooking, but I wanted you to know that I woke up this morning feeling good at a half dose. Thought you’d care.
Actually feel really good. Don’t feel paranoid, feel somewhat competent, and I’m not getting nearly as pissed off at ridiculous things.
I’ve completed 75% of my homework for tomorrow, and so I’m going to leave you with this:
(isn’t it very moment of zen?)
This is Thursday’s Post
I need a creative orgasm.
I am aching, sweaty and unfulfilled . . . creatively.
I need that amazing epiphany moment. Where a problem works itself out. Where a character shows me who they are.
I need that like a junky needs a saw buck for a few hours of respite.
They are best had when you’re alone with a really clear picture of what you want. Collaboration is messy business. You need to set aside a fair amount of time if your determined to finish, because an interruption in your narrative flow can derail all your chances at any creative satisfaction for the day.
(Show of hands: how many people aren’t sure what we’re talking about anymore? Okay, good).
Had 90% of this journal entry written in my head, along with two back up entries but I just got back from the psychiatrist and I feel naked and vulnerable. Did you know my psychiatrist is Ben Kingsley with a full head of hair and beard? It disturbs me as opposed to comforting me. Especially because I began likening my own father to Kingsley about 5 years back.
anyhow I have this tendency to go in there and just say everything as if it’s nothing:
(In the same I use to order a latte) Yeah, so I guess I’ve been hallucinating, and have experienced paranoia so intense I don’t want to leave my house because everyone hates me, especially me. No, I said sugar-free with soy milk.
And he pointed out that i say these huge things like they are nothing, but he did so in a way of observing something without asking a question, merely implying a question. So I was able to say Yup. . .Yup, I do do that
Anyhow we decided to incorporate a very very very small dose of an antipsychotic at night. This is not the first time this strategy has been employed, but it is a new anti-psychotic for me so we’ll see. The reason I’m agreeing is because he said it might bring down the paranoia, and I recall that anti-psychotics worked well to temper my anger. And quiet frankly, the hallucinations are freaky as shit. No lie, 99% it’s something that wants to crawl on me. Lying on my couch after a long day slapping at random body parts while watching shadows creep flash by peripheral bits.
This Is Today’s Post
That was written a couple days ago but thanks to my shitty internet problems it is only seeing the light of day now. But it’s good because this is the first morning after trying the new med.
So first impressions:
This is what crazy looks like to the general public. My eyes don’t want to focus. My limbs don’t want to move. My brain is functioning in a linear fashion. This is what it must be to feel like a normy. It feels slow and illogical. Multitasking is near impossible.
I say over and over again that there is a period of adjustment. There always is.
My apartment is in total squalor and I can’t clean. I can hardly bring the cup of coffee to my lips.
there are adjustments to be made. Tonight I’ll cut the dose in half (Doc said that’s cool. Better to try a little than to give up).
there are adjustments that I must make. But if it kills the paranoia I can make concessions. I can meet the drugs half-way.
I like the lithium because it keeps the swings to minimums, usually, but it allows some swings. The anti-psychotics in the past because they promote routine. They promote sleep and the desire to be in a comfortable bed alone.
But the initial reaction takes me back to zoning out in a hospital common room, complete with glassy eyes and gaping mouth.
This is what crazy looks like tot he concerned public.
So I’ve been eating a lot of raw foods lately. Eating raw mean eating largely vegan and vegetarian dishes. I said that I would keep these dishes to three – four times a week. but when you take the time to prep and cook this food you end up eating it a lot more often than planned. so basically I’ve had meat twice in the past two weeks. And only a fraction of what I would have consumed before that three weeks ago.
So last night Kate and I went for Mexican while running errands. I had friend food and chicken and chorizo (which I love). Well yeah, that was dumb. Chorizo is probably a bit difficult to digest given a normal base, but with little more then veggies and nuts in my system, I bloated three times my normal size and broke out into a cold-sweat.
Will have to explore meat vs. non-meat eating in more depth later. Still going to keep on with the raw foods during the summer. Freaking waste to cook peppers the color of fall harvest.
Will try for more posts this weekend. I’m coming out of my stupor and want to try to stand up.
Paralysis ~ Jun 21, 10:16 PM
So I’ve been meaning to post for the past couple hours about how the sheer immensity of the things that need to be done had left me in a total paralysis.
The interesting thing about fiction that doesn’t happen in real life is that our main characters are given the exact obstacle that they need. Claustrophobic are faced to deal with climbing beneath cars to save children or gerbils or whatever they care about, Type A personalities are forced to loose control for the greater good. This doesn’t happen in real life, we are not given the appropriate obstacles to overcome ourselves.
Some of you might remember the heart-shaped freckle incident, where I became fairly convinced that I must be fictional because the idea of a person having a freckle in the rough shape of a heart (on my right arm or sleeve if you will) is so ridiculous that it can only be a convention of fiction.
So I’m sitting here too paralyzed emotionally to even post about this emotional stasis, and I think I accidentally took twice my dose of Lithium.
Yeah. I’ve been waiting for that to happen, with my shitty memory and my aversion to missing doses lately.
So now I really can’t stand up. Well when I do, lights pop in front of my eyes and I want to topple over.
So I type. and it’s taking way to much concentration to focus on typing this.
Small Changes to the site coming up. keep eyeballs peeled like potatoes.
I’ve gone through a half liter of fiji while writing this. You know when you leave a camel cigarette burning in an ashtray? Probably not, only lepers like myself smoke, bite me. Anyhow, as the camel cigarette reaches the end it burns over the part of the part with the picture of the camel on it, and the ash is darker so the whole thing looks like a massively dehydrated cigarette. That’s me right now. I look human but i’m made of ash right now.
Okay must lay done and flop around like a fish out of water.
edited to say: I feel like Johnny Depp as Hunter in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas where he comes to with the lizard tail on in the flooded hotel room. I just spent three minutes trying to stand up.
Please kill me, this feels awful.
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