pills – Sunny With a Chance Of Armageddon

Lamictal. The one drug that I can say that we’ve all been on at one point or another in our adventures with medication.

Pardon me, my aphasia is showing with a little dash of emotional flattening.

I’m having difficultly remembering how to spell things. You wouldn’t know it, because there is a such thing as spell check just for this purpose (but not solely). My emotions are at such a level that I don’t actually feel. It’s closer to a favorite pair of jeans where the dye has just completely washed out. The jeans still look good, but they are faded and muted. That’s me. Faded and muted.

I can’t write intelligently like I did before. Everything just comes pouring out like word vomit, because I can’t hang on to a thought for longer than a moment. It’s a miracle that I can put anything coherent together.

The landscape of my technicolor world washed away into an old movie reel. It’s so surreal. Once, I was the flowing turquoise waters of the seas, ever changing, always in motion. Now, I am the cracked earth, immobile and silent. And ever so slowly, I am drying up and eroding, existing without life rooted in me. Only the empty air whistles in my mind, catching a faint tune here and there, only to carry it away.

Moments come in flashes. I am engrossed and deeply engaged for just a few seconds before I am distracted by something nonsensical.

Stop. Sip of coffee. What was I doing again? I reread my last passage, and I am stumped, because it seems futile to even continue. What is the point I am trying to convey with such vague and poorly worded imagery?

That was my world for the last month, prior to the last couple of weeks. That is my life today, a translucent figure shrouded by shadows, discontent with such a shackled self.

That was not my life over the past couple of days. That is how I narrowed down what medicine was doing this to me. I was starting to run out of Lamictal, my Vitamin L as it’s commonly called in the mental health community (not to be confused with the Vitamin L of Lithium). I lowered my dose from 300 mg to 200 mg in order to make it through successfully.

Except, there was no success to be had. I went straight back into the same mixed episode I’ve been a slave to for more than nine months. It was almost as bad as before, sans the psychosis. I referred to it as Energetically Sad. The story of my life. I went into several crying fits a day, panicked and shouting the same phrase again and again,

“I can’t do this!!! I can’t do this!!!”

Not again. Not again. Not again.

I can’t do this again.

Ultimately, I grabbed my precious medicine and dosed. The distress was immeasurable. I needed relief from that hell, the one I had endured for far too long.

But, I realized I’m not experiencing relief. I’m experiencing escape. My mind goes into a state of partial shutdown, leaving me no real clarity in any aspect. My consciousness is jagged, disjointed, and blurry, at best.

I experience slow motion waves of hollow, but shallow depression. Futility is found at every turn. The shadows seem deeper and more defined, like menacing sillouttes in the distance. I can’t shake them, but they can’t seem to touch me. They nip at my heels, and send ripples of darkness through me, infecting every molecule. And in a few moments, it passes, the poison having been purged.

At first, I thought it was just me. It felt like a new state altogether, like anxiety masked by a tight cloth, rustling, deperately seeking an outlet. It had the face of depression, leaving me dispondent and uninspired. But no true symptoms existed. Not in the desperate, deep dark places I’ve been. I stood in a parellel existence unlike anything I’ve ever known.

And then I thought, “Is this what it’s like to be better?” Dullness and mild discontent.

It’s not.

It’s the medication.

So, that leaves me with two very undesirable states. Perpetual distress or muted depression and anxiety. One zaps my everything, making me too medicated to function. The other disrupts my life with meltdowns, only making me partially functional.

One little pill is what makes the world of difference. My vitamin L.

Day 20 : Your views on drugs and alcohol.

“Drugs are bad, m’kay?”

Or are they?

There is this long, Nancy Reagan-induced diatribe about the dangers and evil of illegal drugs. Say no to drugs. This is your brain on drugs. The war on drugs. Above the influence. Don’t drink and drive. Prom promise. Those of us that are Reagan babies and older, through the boomers, are well aware of the presence and negative consequences of drugs and alcohol. And despite the heavy dialogue, many people have personally experienced their own battle with substance abuse and dependence.

Alcohol had torn my life apart at the seams. As with any addiction, it starts off as a recreational activity. It’s a part of popular culture, especially in the younger age groups. In my youth, drinking was cool. Truthfully, it was a fun escape from the drudgery of daily life. That was at seventeen. Within a year, I started to find solace at the bottom of a bottle. Coincidentally, that was the same year Smile Empty Soul sang:

I do it for the drugs.

I do it just to feel alive.

I do it for the love that I get from the bottom of a bottle.

Bottom of a Bottle – Smile Empty Soul

By the time I was in college, I was seeking out opportunities and excuses to drink. A set of rules existed which meant to separate alcoholics, the loathsome bunch that we perceived people like our own parents to be, and recreational drinkers.

Never drink before 5PM.
Never drink alone.
Never drink without occasion.
Don’t drink before or during work or school.

As I gained my own freedom with my own apartment, the rules started to change. In private, I could do what I liked. I could deny everything and anything when I failed to be under the limelight of public scrutiny. I began to use alcohol as more than a crutch; I started to abuse it completely as a coping mechanism. That’s when alcohol and I started our sordid love affair.

The environment in my private life began to change. I have spoken about it many times in various posts like Decent into Hell where I described my addiction as:

The last days of that relationship are blurry; my memories are obscured by the drugs and alcohol intoxicating my mind. The days blended together in a ritualistic, self-medicated loop, work.drink.sleep.work.drink.sleep.sleep.drink.sleep… suspended in agonizing slow motion. The silence was deafening in the deep, dark hours of night, still, cold, indifferent.

I had become a functional alcoholic. I never drank before 5PM. There was always an occasion, even if it was a day ending in “Y”. And I certainly was not without company to share in my intoxicated merriment. But there is a solid difference. Every waking moment I did not spend at work was with a glass or a bottle in my fist. I had gone far beyond the point of mixers, and mostly beyond the need for glasses. It was me, a bottle of Bacardi 151 sans the filter, and a bottle of Gatorade to chase.

I wrote in Love the Way You Lie:

At that point, the seeds of alcoholism were taking root. I violated my own rules of drinking. It’s 5 o’clock somewhere! I’m not drinking alone if I’m drinking with my boyfriend. Hair of the dog, best way to cure a hangover. If I’m still managing to get to school and hold an honor’s average, I’m not drinking too much.

Liquid courage and comfortingly numb.

It has always been my vice, and holds the looming, unending threat to assume control and ruin my life. In another 30 Days of Truth piece entitled, Control, or Lack Thereof, I went into a full exploration of recent recreational alcohol use and the negative impact it created in my life.

Flip that coin.

Drugs have revolutionized my life.

People neglect to realize that they are consuming legal drugs daily. It becomes painfully obvious when you sigh over exorbitant copays at the pharmacy counter, like many people with mental health disorders often do. But, instead of calling them “drugs”, we call them “medications”. Did you know that Wellbutrin technically has the same chemical composition of a methamphetamine? And that benzodiazepines work on the same receptors in the brain as alcohol?

So here I am, with my uppers to wake me in the morning, and my downers to put me to bed at night. It would be illegal and detestable if I were using meth and boozing away. Instead, it’s under the supervision of a doctor, as a controlled substance, in a convenient little pill. Don’t get the wrong idea. I am only likening the effects. The supervision of the doctor is safer, and the medications are regulated by the FDA. And as a result, I have most of my functioning back.

And I wouldn’t have it any other way.