Depression Talk

I haven’t been posting much in the last few weeks, partly because I’m working close to seventy hours per week, and partly because I just don’t really know what to say. Its not that I’m at a loss for words, because I’m not… But at the end of the day, I’m just tired, sleepy, and cranky, causing all coherent phrases or sentences to leave my mind entirely.

Despite my insane working hours, I’ve been feeling great lately. I went through a period in mid-October hating my medication and the fact that I take it. As a result, my medication regime was sporadic at best. However, after a few days of brain shakes and queasiness, I straightened up and started back on my regular routine.

I don’t know why I struggle with medication like I do, but I do and I’m not sure what plan of action to make here. I’ve been toying, as usual, with the idea of living med-free again, but we all know where that leads: Sitting staring blankly at nothing, listening to bad country music and generally being a totally non-productive member of society.

I think that at this point, it is fair to say that I have done more than enough experimentation with a medication free lifestyle, and I know deep down that I need them to function like a sane and rational human being.

When I take my medication properly, everything is good but I spend my time despising the fact that I need pills to make the world go ’round. When I don’t take pills, I feel like ass, I look like ass, I act like ass, and everything is just generally a big old pile of ass.

So, I’m happy and doing well. Work is great, school is great, I’m being challenged in my professional and personal life just enough to keep me wanting more. But I’m doing it with the help of pharmaceuticals, and that is upsetting to me.

It is clearly time to put this issue to bed, to quit beating the dead horse, and to accept that I’m a better person when I deal with my medical issues the way they are supposed to be dealt with.

But how do I go about doing that?

Fall has hit us here in CowTown, and I’m feeling it pretty hard.

What’s that? The suckiest blogger in the world? Who? Me?

Yeah. I’m finding it hard to focus on this whole blogging thing what with the fifty million hours of doing stuff each week, and all.

Well, the thing is that this time of the year tends to hit everyone here at The Ranch pretty hard. I’m certainly no exception.

Every day, I come home from work and I hit the couch with the dogs. This is the end of me until supper time at around seven.

The amazing thing is that on days when I work two shifts, I manage to remain upright and conscious for that period of time. I feel like I deserve a big old pat on the back every time I do it.

Part of the problems I have include obsessive-compulsive tendencies. I chew on my hands or my lips or whatever I can bring to the vicinity of my mouth, and I go nuts.

I also tend to shake my legs, twitch, and generally be a big ol’ ball of energy compacted into one handy location (That location being the couch.)

The other night, I was sitting around twitching and being insane, admiring the handywork my teeth had done on my hands, and my mother asked me if everything is alright.

Well, of course everything is alright. I have a job (Two jobs, even) and I have a car and a horse and a relatively peaceful place to live.

The thing is, that I’m pretty sure I’m alright. Mostly sure, even.

The problem that remains is, what if I’m not alright? What do I do? I already take the maximum amount of the drugs I can take. So I’m not sure what else there is for me at this point.

Some sleep might be good.

Or maybe even some hope and faith, some knowledge that this is just the time of year that crazy people tend to go a little crazier. I know that everything is fine.

I just need to work on accepting it.

I write here often about my sleeping habits; how once I deem that I’m tired I can lapse into unconsciousness on command. Hell, if I wanted to, I could nap while riding my horse and eating sushi at the same time. Only if I did that, I worry about who would put my saddle away.

Sometimes, however, sleep becomes an issue for me. I crawl into my luxurious warm bed, with its flannel-y soft sheets that smell of fabric softener. I cuccoon myself into my blankets, and shut my eyes. And then I don’t sleep.

Over the years, I’ve developed a number of unhealthy ways to deal with this. A drink or two has always made me drowsy. Simply not sleeping until the following night sometimes works. (But the last time I tried that, it kind of backfired when I ended up going four days consecutively without a wink of sleep. I’m sure the hospital kept good documentation of it.)

I battle with the issue I have when I can’t sleep; that issue being, Dammit, Girl. Why don’t you just take the medecines that were prescribed to you to make you sleep?

I have a lot of fears surrounding my meds. I’m scared that they’re unproven and will make me die of brain cancer. (Because, Hell, I’m a smoker. I only want to die of lung cancer, dammit!) I’m afraid that I will sleep too deeply and miss out on some sort of emergency. (Because my normal a-heard-of-elephants-can’t-wake-me sleep doesn’t make me have that fear. Right.)

I’m forever choosing a part of myself to work on. I know where my problem areas lie and I know what my strengths and weaknesses are. This past week, I’ve been battling with my inability to sleep and my need to accept that I’ve been prescribed medecine to help me with that problem.

And I know it makes sense to take medecine for a sickness (And I strongly believe that an inability to sleep when needed falls into the realm of sickness.)

I think it just drives me batty that I need to convince myself to take the necessary steps to help me stay healthy.

My newest medication is a wonder drug. Really. It has made me so absolutely sane and rational that words can’t begin to describe the amount of sane-ness and rationality that exists in my life right now.

But there is a down side to every up, and as with everything, this new wonder drug has a down side.

My new wonder drug has created within my mind a monster that will not go away. I have become a dreamer. I have vivid dreams on an almost daily basis. They are so vivid that the afternoon after I have the dream, it is still on my mind, replaying like a video that won’t turn off.

The dreams that I have now are incredibly vivid, as though they are real life. I occasionally wake up feeling disoriented, and not knowing what is real and what I have drempt. Sometimes my dreams are exhausting, and I wake up drenched in sweat and completely ready to head back to bed because dreaming the things that I dreamed took so much out of me that I need a nap.

I love sleep, and I love everything that is associated with sleep. I even love dreaming now and then. I just wish I didn’t have to dream until sleep itself is exhausting.

I’ve taken a numbe rof medications for my Insanity over the years, a large number. At one point in my life I was taking pills out of seven different bottles, bottles that my mother had to code with letters and numbers so I wouldn’t confuse them and end up seizing on the kitchen floor in front of Grandma. Because there is nothing worse than seizing on the kitchen floor in front of Grandma.

Medication for Insanity is very tricky, because there is no set in stone rules about which medications will work for which person. The first meds I took made me shake like shaking was my job, as though my entire body had been taken over by one of those little electric toothbrushes, only it didn’t have an OFF button and I couldn’t remove the batteries. I’m sure that if I had worked at one of those illicit sex shops during that time in my life, I would have made wonderful presentations without draining the batteries on the objects they sell there. But I was not working at one of those illicit sex shops, and so my unstoppable shake-y shaking was of no use to anyone.

After that experience, I was more than a little wary of trying any more drugs. If I had to forfeit any type of life I had because I couldn’t leave the house for fear of vibrating my car right into the ditch, what would the point of being sane be? Off meds, I couldn’t leave because it is hard to go places without your mind. On meds, I was shaking like a leaf and its hard to go places when moving is IMPOSSIBLE because YOU CAN’T STOP SHAKING.

I was really lucky in that the third drug I took managed to make me sane again. I was amazed that I had once more become capable of sleeping, eating, and leaving the house at appropriate intervals and in appropriate amounts. All three of those things are affected when I’m not sane, and when you can’t eat, sleep, or leave the house, the rest of your life tends to be affected negatively as well, because really, what else is there in life than eating, sleeping, and leaving the house?

I guess my point here is that the first batch of pills sucked. The second batch of pills just didn’t do anything. And the third batch of pills made me all better again, made me a happily functioning human being capable of living. Capable of BEING ALIVE.

You can’t lose faith entirely if your first treatment options don’t pan out. I had to be cajoled after the side effects of the first pills, I really had to be convinced to give it a try after the second. Eventually I found one that worked, though, and then my life became a life worth living once more.

medication, depression, anxiety, seizures, Grandma

I had a rather ridiculously busy weekend, one which involved a wedding, a night of drunken foolishness, and not sleeping at all Sunday night in order to arrive back home in time to sleep from six until noon.

Weekends like this often interfere with my drug regime, a regime that according to my doctor should never, ever be interfered with unless there is some kind of apocolypse that shuts down every pharmaceutical company on the planet Earth.

So I neglected to take my drugs two days in a row.

I typically keep my drugs in the pocket of my lumberjack jacket because I wear it every day and when I pick it up and hear that familiar rattle, I can just reach in and grab them. However, because I waxn’t sleeping at home and I have a friend who refuses to be seen in public with me while I wear it, the drugs were in my toothpaste and drug holder. Its the one that should be large enough to house every personal item I have use for, but instead holds only a few key items, my drugs, and my toothpaste. They were not conveniently located, and by conveniently located I mean in a place that I can get to without having to expend any energy whatsoever. If my drugs are upstairs, I don’t take them. If they are in the car, I don’t take them. If they are in a bathroom cabinet, I don’t take them.

So today I am suffering the consequences. My brain is gyrating about inside my skull; my hands feel shaky and I can’t do anything but sleep because of the way everything feels like it is moving as though it is a bad techno song on acid.

You’d think that after a while I would learn that putting the damn pills in my mouth and swallowing would be a happier alternative to these nasty side effects, but six drug-filled years later, I’m still sitting here shaking like its my job.

I wish there was a point to this entry, like I’m going to really, really learn to start taking my meds because messing around with my brain chemicals like this IS JUST NOT GOOD. Unfortunately, its been six years now and I tend to think that if I haven’t learned yet, I’m probably not going to learn any time soon.

So, I’m sure you gathered from yesterday’s entry that I talked to my doctor about changing my medications. The CrazyMeds.

When I mentioned the fact that I wanted to take less meds, the man actually gripped the wireless keyboard sitting in his lap, face blank and eyes wide, and flatly refused to consider me with fewer drugs running through my system.

I think there will always be a part of me that wants to try life unmedicated. Or at least less medicated.

Things are going well right now, though. I suppose that risking having another downward spiral at this point might not be worth it.

Surprisingly, I’m comfortable with it. I only ever sort of wanted to lower my doses, without any real reason for wanting to do so.

Living through chemistry is better than living with uncontrolled Insanity, anyhow.

Plus, I’m happy.

Why mess with a good thing?

As I’ve mentioned a few times lately, I am in a really good place right now. I feel normal, I feel capable. Its been weeks, or even months, since I’ve lain in a heap on my bed weeping for reasons beyond my understanding. Its been weeks, or even months, since I’ve sat and stared off into nothing, only to realize on my next glance at the clock that four hours have gone by. I’ve been sleeping and eating like a normal person: food has taste and I can even consume it in normal quantities.

Every time I spend a few months feeling this way, I start to wonder if perhaps I’m cured. I’d love a cure for this thing that I deal with, I’d love to wake up one day and feel about it the way you feel about getting over the common cold: Thank the Lord that’s over!

And every time I start to wonder if I’m cured … I start to wonder if perhaps I should take another go at this life un-medicated. I start to wonder if perhaps my brain has re-wired itself and that I don’t need to take medications at all any more.

The reason I tend to think this way is because when I was initially diagnosed, it was with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, and I was told that I may outgrow it. I was hopeful as a teenager because I never wanted to be crazy for the rest of my life.

But now I’m nearing 23, and I have to say that I think less and less that I may outgrow my issues.

My mother and I have taken up riding bicycles in an effort to pretend that we are fitness enthusiasts. We’ve been biking for a day or two now and I have to say that being out in the fresh air, with the sun beating down on my back has lifted my spirits substantially.

I’ve heard people say that it is possible to regulate some mild forms of depression with exercise and diet. I’m skeptical. However, considering I am on the highest dose alloweable of my medication, I have to say that I’m willing to try a continuation of exercise in hopes of lowering the amount of drugs coursing through my veins.

I’m only at the thinking about it stage right now. As I’ve said, I’m in a good place and I really don’t want anything to mess that up, but at the same time, I’m desperate to see if I can maybe change my lifestyle and see if it has an effect on my mental health.

Anyone here have any experiences with this?

Every now and then, I go through a time period where I feel fine. I feel like a person able to get out of her bed, a person able to function as a normal and fine human being. I am in one of those times right now.

Every day I wake up and I have to take large doses of drugs. I’m sure that diabetics don’t feel guilty for needing insulin, and I’m sure that people with a host of other illnesses don’t feel guilty for needing their medications either.

But my need for medications bothers me. Every now and then, I think about what my life could be like medication free. I think about the money I could save and never feeling that ‘Oh, God, the pills are stuck in my throat and I’m going to choke to death’ feeling ever again. I think that I could pack an overnight bag and if someone else were to lift it into the car, they wouldn’t wonder what that strange rattling sound is.

At the same time, especially with the new medications I’m taking these days, I have to say that I am in the best place emotionally that I have ever been in. I feel sane and rational a lot of the time, I sleep at night… that in and of itself is miraculous. I’m less prone to hysterics, although they jump out at me from time to time, and I spend much less time staring at nothing in space than I used to.

At the same time, I occasionally have this wild desire to never look at a prescription pill bottle with my name and fifty gazillion repeats on it ever again.

Every morning, when I take my drugs, I have to stop and look at them for a moment. I have to tell myself that these are the medications that allow me to be the way I am today.

I like me. I like being me. I like the life I live and the people I know and the things that I do.

But sometimes, it’s really, really hard to like the fact that I have to take drugs every day in order to actually like all these things.

Amanda

There are a few people in this world who I allow to openly tease me about my insanity. My best friend often greets me in the morning shaking about any number of pill bottles, depending on my current regimen, singing “Take your meds, Crazy Girl!”

I love to laugh at the things that I do that are insane. I can’t stack dishes that haven’t been rinsed, and I can’t possibly have my socks arranged in a manner that is anything less than … military? Insane? Over the tops? Who knows.

I try not to take my issues with anxiety and depression too seriously. I think, though, that if the wrong person were to make some of the comments that my mother or best friend ever made, I’d be tempted to remove his or her teeth from his or her head. With my right fist.

The Internet provides me with a level of safety in discussing the things that are wrong with me. My Network allows me to discuss freely the things that are on my mind. I once admitted to my best friend that I lied to her: I refused to go to a social gathering of hers because I was too scared of interacting with other people to leave the house.

And like any best friend would, like every best friend should, she laughed at me in the end, asking why on Earth I thought she would want me to go to an event that would leave me dry heaving and erupting in hives in the restroom. And she looked at me, and she laughed. It was real laughter, the kind that erupts from deep within you and escapes like an oil spill, taking over everything it can, and leaving nothing untouched in its wake. She laughed for so long and so hard that I was concerned for her well-being and when she stopped, she put a hand on my knee and looked directly in my eyes.

She said:

“Amanda. My God. You are so fucking crazy! If you didn’t want to go, for God’s sake, just TELL me. Oh, my nutbar.” She stopped and chuckled here once more. “Oh, my lunatic, my crazy girl. You’re crazy but I love you.”

I’ve heard before that laughter is the best medicine. I think, though, that really, the most potent laughter is one shared with a close friend, and better than that is sharing it with a close friend who has seen me through every step of my insanity thus far in my life.

The Dixie Chicks once sang that Some days/ Ya gotta Dance. I love to take it one step further and state that some days, you gotta laugh. Laugh long and hard because really? What matters the most?

Is that you may be screwed up a little in the head, but if nothing else, you have a good friend to laugh with about your insanity.

Amanda

“The type you put stuff in for travel…”

“Not following…”

“Like, it folds up and you keep stuff in it.”

“Stuff?”

“Yeah, like your toothpaste and your drugs.”

“I didn’t know they made a receptacle strictly for toothpaste and drugs!”

“Oh. Well, right. Really, they don’t. This thing is meant for holding all your bathroom stuff in travel size jars. But if you’re like me, all you can really fit is toothpaste. And the drugs.”

“Right. So a toothpaste and drug holder.”

“Exactly. So, anyhow… What were we talking about?”

“I’ve no idea. I’m still dumbfounded that you need a special piece of luggage for your drugs.”

I managed to make it out of grade school without an official diagnosis of anything, and sometimes I wonder if my life would have turned out differently had I not been so stuck on denying completely that I had anything wrong with me.

Before the end of the eighth grade, I had been interviewed by a counsellor at school who I smiled brightly to and told her that I never had any thoughts that might be out of the ordinary. No, Ma’am! Not me! I’m not crazy! I was scared for a variety of reasons from a young age. Mostly I was scared of being teased by my peers further than I was already. Mostly I was scared of facing something I couldn’t understand.

I made it out of public school and on into high school relatively unscathed. I started dating, I started skipping class, talking on the phone, occasionally flipping through a text book, and going to school dances when I could. It was ok, I suppose, although looking bac I have to say that high school was terrible, and who doesn’t hate high school?

Sane people, I think.

The first time I actually really and truly feared for my mind was when I was seventeen. The exact circumstances, in retrospect are entirely unimportant. What is important is that I HAD LOST MY MIND.

It was at this point that I gave up sleeping and all my life I had been a fantastic sleeper. I also gave up on most of my social activities in order to stay at home and laze about in my pajamas. I love pajamas to this day. I rarely actually wear real pajamas and instead I choose to steal oversized T-shirts from people I love and pair them up with jogging pants. I always wear something that belongs to someone else when I feel down because it’s like having a piece of them right there with you. Or it’s not at all like having someone right there with you, and there is just something comforting in swimming about on the couch in a shirt that is large enough to hold you and three of your closest friends.

I think the thing that scared me the most was that people would think I was crazy. I didn’t want to be like someone out of a movie. I thought for sure that the minute I was diagnosed with something, anything, that I would turn into a raving, screaming lunatic being carried about by large men in white jackets and into an institution.

I don’t know why I had this fear. I had never witnessed an even like that in my life, but it was a paralyzing fear that led me to stay away from discussing the thoughts that went through my head all the time with anyone.

As a result of my inability to sleep, I also encountered an inability to eat and I lost copious amounts of weight during the first months.

I suppose that it is time, once again, to give praise to good medical attention because a person really can’t do without it. I was so sure that my doctor would initially hear my complaints, leave the room, and come back followed by the people who were to carry me out. Instead, my doctor nodded. He listened to me. He wrote down what I was saying in my chart. He asked me questions. I was sitting curled up in a ball on the seat in his office, my fists wound up into the sleeves of my oversized sweatshirt, staring down at the ground with tears streaming down my cheeks. And rather than getting up and injecting me with some kind of sedative before tying me to a stretcher?

He listened. He listened and later that night as I sat in my giant clothing on the couch beside my mother, this overwhelming feeling of Dear God, I’m in my own house and not locked up somewhere and not being sedated by strangers who think I’m not fit to be in with the rest of society.

I have to say that my initial appointment with the doctor was one of the most relieving things I’ve ever done in my life.

Amanda

The problem with mental health issues is that a lot of the time, you can’t just turn it off. You can’t choose when to be crazy.

I would be entirely comfortable in my Insanity if I could choose when to be so. Like signing up for shifts at work. I’d have no trouble signing up for split shifts of Insanity every Tuesday, Friday, and Wednesday from seven a.m. to ten a.m., and then again from eleven p.m. until one a.m. I’d be perfectly willing to give in to the Insanity during those hours, because I’d still be free to watch ER on Thursdays and Degrassi on Mondays.

One of the things that acompanies my Insanity is an almost complete inability to sleep.

The longest I went without sleep, without even an hour of shut-eye, was four days. Previous to that, I had been unable to sleep but could still find some comfort in the odd afternoon nap or treat myself to a little pre-sunrise dozing.

It was the hours between one and five in the morning that really did me in because all I wanted to do was to take something and shut off the things that were running through my mind. I would spend hours lying in my bed, staring at complete darkness, with anxiety coming over me in such a fashion that it felt like a serpent. It would begin at my legs, completely coiled around them. And then it would work its way up to my abdomen, where it would begin in a pulsating motion that made me feel nauseous. Eventually it would work its way around my ribcage and my shoulders, making it difficult to breath and impossible to relax. I could not take a deep cleansing breath, I could not recite relaxation poems, I could not take a walk.

I would simply lay in the darkness night after night with This Thing That Makes My Brain Hurt and wish that there was some sort of off switch.

I was running the tap tonight to wash my hands — yes, I really am that hygenic. I wash my hands and sometimes I perform this action so frequently that I could bathe the entire army of homeless men who live on my street if I gave it up for a week — and I turned off the tap. And that’s when it hit me that there really is a way to turn off this thing called Insanity.

I can’t really say what the best thing for everyone who suffers from mental health issues should do. Some people firmly believe that a total lifestyle makeover will do it, and other believe that the perfect combination of herbal teas can make it better. Some people believe in holistic medicine, or faith, or traditional remedies, or modern medicine.

But I eventually was able to turn off the Insanity. It took some time and it took some doing, but I did it.

And now I’m a free person, and I’m not even working split shifts with Insanity three days per week. I’m just me, and it feels really good right now to be me.

I look at each episode of mental health issues as a stepping stone: After each one, I realize something really good, like the fact that I’ve now proven to myself several times that I can control it (with the right help). Hopefully the next time my mind decides to take leave of its position in the deep recesses of my brain, I can manage to remember this wonderful little tidbit.

Amanda

I took this picture last fall, after an incompetent doctor tried to kill me with ultra high doses of anti-depressants. It’s unfortunate that it has to happen, but some medical professionals are just not that adept when it comes to dealing with medical issues that aren’t black and white. As I’ve learned, very little in this world is black and white. Very little actually makes sense, and when you’re little and your parents tell you that life isn’t fair?

They weren’t lying.

I’m not sure why I did take this photo. I think it says a lot about my mood at the time: All I wanted to do was to make the anxiety that was coursing up and down the length of my body go away. Sometimes when I’ve had a bad day, deep inhalation on a cigarette can make it stop. Other times a beer or two can make it stop.

But when your anxiety gets out of control, beyond the point where deep breathing is going to do any good, relying on your favorite vices isn’t going to help, either. It’s a cold hard fact, and one that’s hard to accept a lot of the time.

Most of all, though, this picture makes me think that there is so much more that you don’t see. You don’t see that these objects, these things that I rely on to link me back to sanity, are sitting on my mother’s kitchen table. You don’t see that the room is sunny and bright, and that my mother and I are laughing about how ridiculous it is to photograph one’s drugs before washing them down with beer. (Which is not something you should do. Just, you know, as an FYI).

Does it make you think anything in particular?