Blink

All this rapid-cycling can take it out of a person; I’ve had to desert my working life for the foreseeable future and ‘take a break’ to recover from a crash, ah well, my own stupid fault, etc, etc. Here, just for shits and giggles, is a short run-down.

Stuff What I Did Wrong:

* Laughed off the hypomania of the previous month. Nutter? Me? Surely not – that was just me being happy for once – officer.

* Stopped taking my sleeping pills because I felt entitled to a proper drink and an actual social life for the first time in weeks.

* Chugged my way through two bottles of cheap Shiraz,; proceeded to wax lyrical to total strangers, imagining this as the new start of fabulous, glittering life with mentalist worries and woes well behind me.

* Didn’t sleep at all, went out of my head,  dipped into a huge, sudden hallucinatory depressive swing.

* Threatened suicide with glass to friend.

* Threatened suicide with glass to Crisis Team.

* Had emergency talk with GP who said wordy doctor equivalent of ‘Oh dear, this is bad.’

So, have blood tests for mood-stabiliser coming up, definitely off the booze. Super-short post due to extreme tiredness and total weariness with the whole madness scenario.

Pah.

I didn’t sleep for three days after trying to come off Lorazepam, so now I’m back on it. This is annoying as my body is already addicted, but also kinda important. As my GP said ‘They’re currently not offering any better alternatives.”

See, the psychiatrist wants me to come off lorazepam, but hasn’t given the green light for Lamotrigine yet, so in the meantime, I was left sleepless, increasingly unstable and swinging like a monkey in a gale. Back on the phone to the mental health outreach guy, he and the psych have a chinwag and agree that a higher dose of zopiclone might do, perhaps every other day. 

“What?” says my Gp, “You mean the medication that did shit all last time, on a higher dose, that is just as addictive? Better make another appointment about that mood stabiliser.”

Fair point. Should hear about new appointment soon and whether or not Lamictal is the way forward – I get confused with all these conflicting opinions, I’m just stuck in the middle trying to live.

The Rambles

*Firstly -Hurrah, a full 7 hours of slumber courtesy of benzodiazepine joy! But I am worried about going down to half a mg. The psychiatrist was very keen to get me off these as they are so habit-forming, but I’m under no illusions about what will happen when I do; I won’t sleep anymore.*

Yesterday was a rare day; for once it was full of communication (as I’m someone who usually makes a Trappist monk look like the life ‘n’ soul). All the rest of us in the house pitched together and bought flowers for one of our own, who is having an awful time, and there was coffee and laughter and other normal stuff. However, I washed my bed-linen for the first time in god-knows how long, and the rusty bloodstain from a nosebleed spread horribly, so now my pillowcase is covered with yellowish-brown patches like the huge fingerprints of a nicotine addict. Must remedy, possibly with red pillowcases.

Then, by God, I went out! On a saturday night! To meet people at a club! Being the ferocious party animal you’ve no doubt pegged me as I went home at ten o’ clock but the point is that I went at all, and conversed and debated and flirted and did some of the things you’re supposed to at 23, instead of adopting the foetal position under my duvet, obsessively checking the windows of the people next door, contemplating slitting my own throat or whatever else it is I usually do on a Saturday night.

Indeed, so overwhelmed was I by my social ejaculation into this harsh, vibrant world outside, that I wrote myself a letter as soon as I got home.

Dear ** ****

It has recently come to our attention that in recent months your painting, poetry and general productivity outgoings have far exceeded our usual requirements – giving you a good excuse to stay indoors.

We would like to extend our warmest congratulations on another people-avoidance job well done. Truly, your balance at the Misanthropy Bank must be very healthy indeed. 

Your annual night off on a reality jaunt was well-deserved, and you held your own admirably well amongst the earnest students, rambling drunks, bad dancing, loud music, casual violence, etc. No doubt though, that you are glad to be back indoors on your own.

Feel free to cash this cheque for 1000 back-dated previously-avoided people (inc. unspoken conversations, enforced celibacy, invisible arguments and a multitude of petty, gritted-teeth grievances) at your leisure.

Best of luck with all future endeavours.

The morning after the night before

To be fair, it’s my own bloody fault I was madly awake at 5 in the morning. Alcohol does that to me; and yes I know, I swore I wouldn’t drink on my medication again and yes I’m a weak-willed, wine-swilling social failure and yes I KNOW.

Still, I spent the best part of the night in a full-body pink panther costume talking intense philosophy with two men dressed as a bumblebee and Anthea Turner respectively. What was I supposed to drink, lemonade?

Bollocks

It is 4.54 in the morning…again.

Psyched.

So, I had my appointment with the Recovery and Independent LIving team psychiatrist. Prepare to be amazed: it was nowhere near as bad as I was worried it might be. Not only did he take me seriously despite my clean hair, neat appearance and ‘normal’ manner (it’s always the same isn’t it, a raving nutter until I actually see a member of the mental health outreach team when I transmogrify into someone who can look after themselves), but also didn’t make me feel like some NHS-draining sub-being for being bi-polar. I actually felt listened to; we talked about treatments seriously, he thrashed the diagnoses of that other total bitch who said that my hypomania ‘didn’t qualify clinically’ and put ‘rapid-cycling’ in big letters for the idiot to see.

So, psychotherapy is happening, I’m slowly coming off Lorazepam and, God willing, not having to take Lamictal or Lithium, but they are there officially as the next step in medication. After nine years of being ignored, mis-diagnosed and given the wrong drugs I’m finally feeling a glimmer of real support. 

Long may it live.

What?

According to my blog stats one of the top read posts is titled ‘61′ which is interesting because I haven’t written a post titled 61 and clicking the link gives The Man from WordPress, he say No. Well not exactly, I wish it did. It takes me back to home page.

Have also, on today’s trawls through the heaving spawning-ground of Google Search, found a particularly appalling ‘cutting-clone’ site (meaning yet another profile that has ‘WS – wrist-slitter’ in the About Me section, and is chock full of ‘the beautiful rich red morphine flows from my pale wrists like crimson tears weeping for my wretched soul’ bollocks) by some idiot describing her extra-curricular activites as… ‘Self-Ham’.

Drink-driving your life

Alcohol abuse – my psychiatric profile has this in giant, fuck-off letters and I have been warned, repeatedly, that leaping off the wagon will result in expulsion from CBT. However, exactly how, if your will-power is being kicked in the fork by The Mentals, are you supposed to resist?

Thankfully (?) this question has been, if not answered, then at least clarified for me after last night’s mortifying quaffing-session. Up until now I’ve been pretty good about not drinking on my medication; priding myself on my surprising will-of-steel in the face of my yoyo-ing brain, firmly resisting the lure of the Devil’s urine. Until yesterday, when four glasses of red wine caused me to babble repeatedly, aggressively and incoherently;  to wake up every hour with a frantically racing heartbeat, pouring acid sweat, crying hysterically. 

So, I’m freaked out. My body is covered in little itchy welts caused by this booze-induced sweatfest, I’m worried about my heart, my vision is still a bit off, I got no sleep and last yet not least is the overwhelming fist-in-the-gob humiliation of totally losing it. Especially as someone who prides themselves on their eloquence, who was, once upon a time, famed for my ability to compose legendary on-the-spot soliloqies in the throes of total drunkeness. Long, languid lexicons declaimed dramatically at four in the morning.

Not any more. At 23 years-old my recreational drinking and social letting-go has been reduced to the clandestine thrill of a cup of tea after 5.00 pm and talking sex, politics and religion until midnight! When my sleep-nanny, Lorazepam, tells me I have to go to bed, tucking me up with a cup of chamomile and wrapping me in my Jobs comforter; a burgeoning sense of failure, guilt and isolation at being this way.

Attack of the Zopiclones

The hypnotic Zopiclone, most often marketed in the UK as Zimovane, has achieved god-like hype around it as a perfect sleepy-time pill. Naturally, I got my little urchin hands on it after another bout of crippling insomnia. Worries about it being highly addictive were quickly shoved aside to make room for the hours of blissful unknowing I was sure would manifest.

Hmm, well. I was too far into hypomania for 7.5 mg to knock me out for more than four hours at a time, which was about 30 minutes more than I was getting anyway. This was extremely irritating; I mean, it zonked me out fair and square. 20 minutes after swallowing it the world would start Magic Roundabout-ing and negotiating my way across the bedroom floor was a quest worthy of the mighty Hercules. But it didn’t keep me under, my jack-in-the-box brain would spring awake again a few hours later.

So now I’m on Lorazepam, which works like…well, a dream. But, I often forget to take it as early as I should. Last night I did it again, I was busy writing until about 1.00 am, which I figured was a bit late to take it if I wanted to be even vaguely compos mentis in the morning. So I took my last 7.5 mg zopiclone instead, confidently expecting a bout of pleasant giddiness before crashing for a few Z’s.

It took over an hour to kick in; before the tell-tale taste of tin tickled my tongue. No Magic Roundabout-ing these days, just the vague feeling that it might be nice to lie down.

I suppose my new tolerance to more potent drugs could explain it; that Lorazepam has knocked the stuffing out of it in the Benzodiazepine mind-wrestling championships. I mean, it didn’t work particularly well for me in the first place.

But that my reaction time to it has changed so dramatically in under a month gives me pause; from 20 mins to an hour and a half. I suppose I can still use it a mild sleep aid, but…hmmm.

 

*Another post by Mumbling Vaguely Enterprises*

No, the recreational drugs don’t work, they just make you worse

The reason I stopped smoking cannabis was the intolerable, spiralling paranoia it caused. I’m pretty bad with anxiety and irrational thoughts anyway, but pot made me a million times worse; I wouldn’t go outside, everyone was looking at me, I wasn’t sure whether I was thinking or speaking aloud. I stopped smoking just before ‘Can they hear my thoughts?’ started in earnest, which is a good time to get out, I reckon. It was as though a gulf opened up in my mind, and all of my thoughts fell into it. But then, i’m a bit of a paranoid android in any case…

Paranoia, ’sieurs, dames, is probably the most bizarre symptom I have. When I was younger I would cut up mashed potato with military precision because I was convinced that there was broken glass in it. I have this with drinks as well, the glass is chipped, I am going to swallow it and die, obviously.

See that guy over there? He’s looking at me, oh God, he must be an evil psychopath planning all sorts of unspeakable acts on my person, I must quietly stalk him for the rest of the evening to find out what he’s up to. He’s talking to his friends and one of them looked over. Jesus Christ! They’re all in on the plan to murder me! I’ll be looking behind me all the way home with my keys pushed between my fingers, don’t you worry about that!

My friend isn’t answering her phone, she hates me. She probably never liked me anyway. I will never see her again, or any of my other friends, in fact, they’re probably discussing how much they dislike me at this very moment, and what friends I do have are watching me invisibly.

See these scissors under the pillow? They’re there in case someone climbs through the window! Of the attic!

I’ve got a headache and aching limbs, I must have meningitis!/Mystery illness post-sex-  clearly I am dying of AIDS!

I must wash all the pots and pans twice before cooking in them in case there is some deadly thing clinging to the stainless steel! Actually I do have a food allergy so that one isn’t so weird…

It’s only recently that I’ve realised that this level of anxiety isn’t really normal, the problem being that once I’m the middle of it, I think it’s totally natural to worry about that stuff. We all have our strange freak-outs about little things, but sustained paranoia about being followed, airborne germs, broken glass lurking in my food and people I know watching me invisibly isn’t really pointing the way forward in the Sanity Olympics. But hey, that’s what prescription medication is for.

But pot? Acid? Mushrooms? No way. I have trouble keeping my head out of Narnia, thanks.