Psychiatric Medication AKA Drugs That Keep Other People Sane

Clonazepam tablets Klonopin 1mg. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I have no idea what is going to come out in this post as I am at once both pro and con on the medication front of bipolar illness. I do know I do not like some of the side effects of the medications, but by the same token, having tried to go off the medications, I can see where they are necessary to keep everybody else around me “sane.” If I go off them, I become overly moody, paranoid, delusional, yah da yah da yah. I think they (the doctors) like to neatly categorize these effects as “episodes.” They like things in neat little diagnostic boxes. This is not to say that all the psych doctors and people in the mental health profession are bad. There are some who are quite good at what they do. What I question is why do I have to be on these medications for the rest of my life? 

I recently ran out of one of my medications and could not get it for about four days. Apparently, my HMO decided to play doctor as they have in so many other cases, most being much more serious than mine. At any rate, my HMO deemed it “too early” for a refill. I was fairly okay the first day off the medication thanks to it’s long half-life, day 2 was a little worse as I was developing extremely high anxiety, a feeling like nothing around was real, and just generally feeling strange, but I managed to hide this mini-trip into psychosis. I was out with my Mom looking for apartments, and that meant I had to deal with people real or not. Mostly, it meant I had to act “normal” which if are in a semi-psychotic state is very hard to do. So, due to physical addiction to this drug and my HMO paying God with my meds, I got to experience a mild psychosis for about 3 days.

I have also experimented with stopping Seroquel (quetiapine), and that caused a lot of agitation. and I could not sleep properly which is essential in managing manic- depression illness. No one told me any of this or about any side effects from the drug itself. Stopping Abilify did not seem to produce any side effects, but having to stop Klonopin “cold turkey” was quite another experience altogether. Thank you to my HMO for playing doctor, you nearly killed me (insert sarcasm here). There is nothing to be said about that other than I slowly slipped into severe paranoia and psychosis. It was like going down the Rabbit Hole but slippery as if coated with butter or something. Usually, I can feel it happening and try to stop it. It is not the case when you have suddenly quit a long term, high dosage “habit.”

These drugs, I am convinced, are more for other people’s sanity than for mine. Basically, they keep me in check so other people won’t be bothered by me. That’s my opinion anyway. Maybe I am becoming cynical and jaded, but my brain is addicted to these chemicals that I take dutifully every morning. I was a great lab rat. Knowing that I am very “med compliant”, the dutiful doctors tried regular anti-psychotic like Haldol, they tried anti-epileptic drugs like Tegretol (huge headache, loss of balance, etc.) and Lamictal. Patients should really be aware of Lamictal’s side effects which the “rash” is the most common side effect. What they do not tell you is that you can develop Steven-Johnson‘s Disease (a rare but fatal skin disease). That you can find on your own on the Internet.

In fact, if you are curious, you can find that pamphlet that used to come with the medication that list all side effects from least severe to rare. I have often wondered why they stopping including those with one’s medication(s). Conspiracy: pharmacies are the “girl friday” of the major drug companies and the drug companies do not want the consumer to know the big picture of a particular medication. I take 2 medications that if I were not getting low income help from Medicare, I wouldn’t be taking. The combined cost for one month of these two is about $2,000. That’s twice what I receive in Disability per month. But they have been deemed necessary so medicare covers them. I only wonder how these atypical anti-psychotics are affecting my brain chemistry. That I find of more concern than the physical side effects. I already know of one effect of long time use: physical and mental addiction. But, then, I have been addicted to some substance or another for most of my life. What’s another going to do? So, I’ll go to my grave addicted. Pleasant thought. I hope everyone who is in close contact with me is appreciative of the fact that I am so compliant in taking my medications so you can be sane, and I can be a semblance of sanity.

I Have No Idea What I Am Right Now ~ Manic, Depressed, Stressed Or Are They All The Same

bipolar-quotes-02-300×240 (Photo credit: Life Mental Health)

 

I have one certainty right now. I have BPAD type I with psychotic features, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, Generalized Anxiety Disorder with and without Agoraphobia, and Panic Disorder. It it not amusing that 3 of 4 are anxiety disorders that are triggered by stress which I am undergoing to an extreme that I never have in the past. Not this kind of stress. I can handle work-related stress, the everyday stress that comes from sharing this planet with so many different people, but I don’t know if I can handle this level of emotional stress. I feel that I may go insane (I have a list to choose from), and this time I may not come back in the same form I left in. I cannot sleep, I cannot eat, I am paralyzed in my mind where I go to hide. I feel like a coin being tossed and whatever comes up heads is where I go that day. If it’s tails, do not bother getting out of bed, it won’t be worth the time, energy or pain that will go into trying to stay positive in the face of extremely negative circumstances. 

 

Everyone thinks I am strong and I am not. I am a quivering mass that is hiding behind a facade of normalcy and strength. Unless you have experienced this type of emotional stress, you will not understand what I am going on about. My husband is going to be served with divorce papers tomorrow, and neither one of us have a place to go live other than where we are. So, we are living together for the next three months. I do not think this is going to finally be the proverbial straw, and I go off the deep end (I am already in the deep end), and never come back. This is going to color my world for a long time, I think. My whole paradigm about relationships has shifted, and it remains to be seen in which direction. My last long term relationship lasted 9 years, but at the time no one knew that I had manic-depression. PTSD, yes. But nothing that could explain the Bipolar symptoms that were beginning to manifest. Now, I know, and I feel an obligation to whoever can love me to tell them so they will know from the get go what they are in for. Ideally, this person will not be swayed and will learn how to be with someone who has periods of mania and severe depression. And, they will care and not care at the same time. They will love me for me, and the disorder won’t always be the elephant in the room like it is now.

 

He doesn’t understand what he did wrong in the marriage, I totally get what I did wrong. I am divorcing him for those reasons, not because I do not love him, but because I do love him and care about his welfare, and I am not an easy person to be around sometimes. I do things and say things that are harmful and damaging. And, I am trying to protect him from me, and to a certain extent, myself from him. I cannot tolerate his pet diversion any longer and still respect myself as a woman. I can no longer live with someone who refuses to try to learn something about Bipolar disorder since that has been the most disruptive of all my diagnoses. How can one handle something that one has no real knowledge of? I have to live with it everyday. You can be damn sure I read whatever I can get that is legitimate and not “pop” psychology. I cannot do battle against something that I do not understand. No one can. At least not effectively. I hope I can get through this without becoming cynical and jaded. I hope that I can get through this without any drama, or me going way off the radar of “normal” feeling. 

 

I just hope that……hell, I do not know what I hope. I do not even know how I feel. I do not even know if I am feeling or if I am pretending which I am so good at. I just know something is off about me these days. I do not think I have allowed myself to feel because then I would be useless. Maybe I will let myself feel when I have time. Maybe.

 

I Just Don't Understand……Maybe I Really Am As Dumb As I Feel Sometimes

You Don’t Understand Me (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 

I do not get some people. It isn’t for lack of trying. Every person I have spoken to today has either been very snide or has outright yelled at me. Which tends to make me really irritable. I am already having a “manic episode” which means that I am not sleeping, eating, or anything else I supposed to do to keep myself healthy. What I do not get is why other people cannot seem to see when I am “sick” (I hate that term), and that is when they choose to get strange on me. 

 

I have no one to talk to about what is happening to me because nobody wants to hear it; they’ve got their own, much more important problems to deal with. I am being sued by my student loan provider, I am on the verge of being sued by my other student loan provider, if they win the payment amount per month that they want, I will be homeless because I simply can’t make nearly $300.00 in loan payments and pay rent. I figured it out. If I pay as the plans stand, I will have $662 (roughly) to pay rent, utilities, and try to feed myself. That’s impossible. I will be homeless. I will lose everything I have worked so hard to accomplish both socially and privately. Material possessions can be replaced eventually, but once you have been knocked down, it is really hard to stand back up.

 

I am going through a divorce and trying to live out the lease with my soon to be ex-husband. I can’t talk to him about how I feel about that. Most of the times, I feel okay about it. Neither of us were happy. But, then there are days like today where I really need someone to just listen to me. I feel very sad and lonely (as per the usual) today. I didn’t want to file for divorce, but it was the only thing that would resolve the entire situation between us. We fought all the time, made snide remarks about each other, he always defined me by my mental “interestingness”, but never by who I really am which is a normal person who feels life more intensely than most. I wrote him a note today trying to explain to him that I was not doing this out of malice, or that I can no longer tolerate him, but rather it was out of love for him and concern for his welfare that I was stepping out of the picture before I do any more damage, Apparently, it is very difficult to have a relationship with a bipolar person. I say it is very hard for a bipolar person to have a relationship with a chronically depressed person.

 

I basically have no friends anymore because he isolated me from them through very subtle emotional and verbal abuse. But, I am just as much to blame on that front. Sometimes, I think we fought about nothing just so we could hurt each other. It was really good for about the first year and a half, and then very slowly, it started to go downhill. Then it picked up momentum, and became it’s own living entity. But, how do you fight something you cannot see? How do you fix something when the other person is blaming you for nearly everything that has gone wrong, but they cannot see their own contribution to the demise of something that was once beautiful? 

 

I am feeling very uncomfortable today. I cannot seem to say anything right to anyone I have encountered today. I have been flat out yelled at by another mentally “interesting” friend who is really struggling right now. Nothing I said was right, she shot down everything I suggested as “impossible,” she put down any idea I had that might have helped. I even offered to help her clean and organize her apartment, But, that was met with more yelling. I tried to tell her that people are willing to help her, but that she pushes them away by repeatedly turning down their offers to help her. Eventually, people will get tired of getting shot down every time they try to help her, and they will stop offering. Why beat a dead horse?

 

I feel very alone in this. I know that I will be okay in the long run, but the short run is a bitch. I feel like the wicked witch of the west. I feel like he was right all along; that the destruction of this relationship was mostly me. I changed him, I damaged him, I hurt him, I didn’t show enough affection, I didn’t do this and I didn’t do that. He never stops to think that he did two very important things: he spent hours on the Internet watching and collecting amateur porn which I felt very disrespected by, and he didn’t open a single book written by the people who are the experts on mood disorders to find out how to support me, or even to just understand me. To me, that shows a lack of real caring. It tells me that his love was conditional on my not getting upset about his porn addiction, and just let him carry on his merry little way thinking that he understands the multitude of bipolar manifestations.

 

I cannot talk to anyone about this. Everyone I know is happily married. When you are getting divorced, the last thing you want to do is talk to someone with a functional marriage. It just makes everything that iota worse than it already is. I find myself questioning whether I have made the right decision, or if I really am as dumb as I feel.