Day 4: what has been the most helpful in coping with your condition?
Singlehanded? Drugs, both illegal and prescribed. I am including nicotine in the drugs category. After I cleaned up at the end of my teen years I went on a streak of avoiding drugs, but the floodgates opened after my divorce. First there was the allergy meds... for sleep. I remember at times I was getting a bottle a week and sleeping months at a time. Unlike other former drug users I have no regrets. It was a dark time and I was glad for the help. Over time I lost my reaction to those drugs. At that point I had begun smoking cigars. Nicotine is without a doubt the most available and effective antidepressant. Smoking also improves digestion, which is very useful when anxiety messes up your stomach.
At that point I began with the weed. I don't remember ever having a casual relationship with weed. Of course at the time my relationship with all substances was pretty hardcore. I would get out of my head on benedryl, then start drinking. The benedryl suppressed the gag reflex so I could enjoy the alcohol.
Weed was like benedryl+alcohol without the side effects. Benedryl makes me edgy, and I'm not a big fan of the stomach pain or dizziness with alcohol.
So the problem with weed has always been regularity. Back in the day I smoked an ounce a month. I bought in bulk and got good deals. However because of my clean upbringing and past I didn't know many dealers. Every time I lost a dealer I had to go cold turkey. I also couldn't always get the strain that I needed.
Eventually I got health insurance. I also got a job at a children's hospital, which forced me to clean up. I started going to therapy. I got started on the long search for a drug that works. Oh, also the same month I started at the hospital I had my first panic attack. I never finished dropping weed or smoking but I got pretty clean. It wasn't an every day thing. I found buspar which treated the general anxiety and xanex which handled panic attacks. I also got on sleep aids and started sleeping normal hours.
After I left the hospital things went really bad. I lost my insurance for 6 months and went on straight weed... it was horrible, I hated it by the time I was done. Eventually I got back into treatment... Things stayed pretty dark for awhile. My depression deepened, and to be honest has never been as light as when I worked at the hospital since. But about 5 months ago my doctor tried me on a tricylic drug (effexor), which combined with my ADD meds treats the depression. I haven't had weed in over a year. I haven't had nicotine in 10 months. There's no telling how long these drugs will work, but there also isn't any telling how long I'll have to maintain this level of functioning.
I'll tell you a secret: I don't want to be high functioning. When I am high functioning (like now) I push myself past the limit. I don't stop until things start shutting down. As I am typing this I am recovering from a brush with heat stroke. I'm trying to get to the point I function moderately, and that is enough. I do know how to function moderately, but unfortunately that isn't enough at the moment.
A final side note there are a number of drugs that instead of improving my condition made it worse. First K2, which doesn't refer to just one drug because the recipe changes every time an ingredient is made illegal (or that's how it worked when I was on the stuff). It's not addictive, has no positive aspects apart from ONE really good high. It was the best high of my life actually, but it was one time. There wasn't any recapturing it.
There is a long list of anti depressants that didn't work. Side effects varied from making me more depressed/suicidal, sleepwalking/sleep panic attacks, seizures, various nerve problems, and sexual issues.
Drugs aren't toys, no matter how much doctors treat them that way. In choosing to self medicate I took an educated risk. I only jumped without looking once, and it ended badly. Every other time I knew as much about the drug as I considered necessary to consume it. Doctors are also as much my friend as my enemy. For every good doctor I have found there are at least 5 lazy ones. On some occasions I felt more like I was dealing with a drug dealer than a doctor. Actually, my drug dealers always took better care of me than my worst doctors.
The lady I'm seeing now is decent. She does her best, which is all I can ask. Her office staff however... more so so.
I still don't want to live on drugs the rest of my life, I'm hoping this is just a season I'm going through.
Singlehanded? Drugs, both illegal and prescribed. I am including nicotine in the drugs category. After I cleaned up at the end of my teen years I went on a streak of avoiding drugs, but the floodgates opened after my divorce. First there was the allergy meds... for sleep. I remember at times I was getting a bottle a week and sleeping months at a time. Unlike other former drug users I have no regrets. It was a dark time and I was glad for the help. Over time I lost my reaction to those drugs. At that point I had begun smoking cigars. Nicotine is without a doubt the most available and effective antidepressant. Smoking also improves digestion, which is very useful when anxiety messes up your stomach.
At that point I began with the weed. I don't remember ever having a casual relationship with weed. Of course at the time my relationship with all substances was pretty hardcore. I would get out of my head on benedryl, then start drinking. The benedryl suppressed the gag reflex so I could enjoy the alcohol.
Weed was like benedryl+alcohol without the side effects. Benedryl makes me edgy, and I'm not a big fan of the stomach pain or dizziness with alcohol.
So the problem with weed has always been regularity. Back in the day I smoked an ounce a month. I bought in bulk and got good deals. However because of my clean upbringing and past I didn't know many dealers. Every time I lost a dealer I had to go cold turkey. I also couldn't always get the strain that I needed.
Eventually I got health insurance. I also got a job at a children's hospital, which forced me to clean up. I started going to therapy. I got started on the long search for a drug that works. Oh, also the same month I started at the hospital I had my first panic attack. I never finished dropping weed or smoking but I got pretty clean. It wasn't an every day thing. I found buspar which treated the general anxiety and xanex which handled panic attacks. I also got on sleep aids and started sleeping normal hours.
After I left the hospital things went really bad. I lost my insurance for 6 months and went on straight weed... it was horrible, I hated it by the time I was done. Eventually I got back into treatment... Things stayed pretty dark for awhile. My depression deepened, and to be honest has never been as light as when I worked at the hospital since. But about 5 months ago my doctor tried me on a tricylic drug (effexor), which combined with my ADD meds treats the depression. I haven't had weed in over a year. I haven't had nicotine in 10 months. There's no telling how long these drugs will work, but there also isn't any telling how long I'll have to maintain this level of functioning.
I'll tell you a secret: I don't want to be high functioning. When I am high functioning (like now) I push myself past the limit. I don't stop until things start shutting down. As I am typing this I am recovering from a brush with heat stroke. I'm trying to get to the point I function moderately, and that is enough. I do know how to function moderately, but unfortunately that isn't enough at the moment.
A final side note there are a number of drugs that instead of improving my condition made it worse. First K2, which doesn't refer to just one drug because the recipe changes every time an ingredient is made illegal (or that's how it worked when I was on the stuff). It's not addictive, has no positive aspects apart from ONE really good high. It was the best high of my life actually, but it was one time. There wasn't any recapturing it.
There is a long list of anti depressants that didn't work. Side effects varied from making me more depressed/suicidal, sleepwalking/sleep panic attacks, seizures, various nerve problems, and sexual issues.
Drugs aren't toys, no matter how much doctors treat them that way. In choosing to self medicate I took an educated risk. I only jumped without looking once, and it ended badly. Every other time I knew as much about the drug as I considered necessary to consume it. Doctors are also as much my friend as my enemy. For every good doctor I have found there are at least 5 lazy ones. On some occasions I felt more like I was dealing with a drug dealer than a doctor. Actually, my drug dealers always took better care of me than my worst doctors.
The lady I'm seeing now is decent. She does her best, which is all I can ask. Her office staff however... more so so.
I still don't want to live on drugs the rest of my life, I'm hoping this is just a season I'm going through.
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