Here are some of the
newer highlights with me... I ran out of two of my meds, recently - the first
is Lamictal (Lamotrigine), which is supposed to help stabilise my mood, and the
second is Neurontin (Gabapentin) which is supposed to help manage my (still
being investigated, but suspect fibromyalgia) pain. Both have done quite a bit
of heavy lifting in their respective departments. Both I’ve been out of for a
long enough time that they are most certainly long gone and out of my system.
Want to hear the
strange thing? I’m feeling fine! Better than before! What the f-... Yeah. Did
the world suddenly turn upside down? Or have I just come to expect everything
that can go wrong to go wrong so readily that I’m shocked and stunned when
something doesn’t go wrong? I know
that I’ve said for quite a while now that I expect everything bad that could
possibly happen to happen (even though I also try to hope that it won’t), so it wouldn’t surprise me if I’m
taking this the wrong way. I mean... good is good, right? Take it however it
may come?
I’m quite sure that my
mind has become conditioned so that - no matter what - I take everything and
see it in a negative way. I see good things and think, “Wow, something must really be wrong, now!” Normally - or my ‘normally,’ at least - being happy
and in a constant good mood was a result or symptom of something else, and
never had much of a real or long-lasting basis in something good or considered ‘normal.’
Particularly mania, or more commonly for me, hypomania, was the suspect for
giddiness, or even just plain and simple happiness. My brain, I imagine, would flood
with dopamine, my heart would begin to flutter, and ideas and seemingly random
words would flood out of my mouth as if a dam exploded.
Sans the bouncing off
the walls and talking fast an in utter logorrhea, I’ve felt sort of hypomanic,
though my psychologist has described this strange phenomenon as ‘happiness.’
Not mania or hypomania, not a disorder or something wrong with me. She
suggested that I might just be this strange, alien thing called ‘happy.’
Now I think to myself,
“Wait, so this is what I’ve been trying to achieve all this time? Weird.” I’m
not saying it’s bad; it’s actually quite good! I know that. To me, though, it’s
just weird. I’m not completely sure
how to say it, especially in a way that would bring clarity to someone else.
Let’s just say that some people live in places that have never seen the sight
of snow, so something as simple as snow might be simply a marvel to them, or
they may think that 68 degrees is cold. If you go to southern California in the
middle of summer and it’s 68 at noontime, sure, that’d seem just crazy! It
would here, too. But at the end of summer, here, that’s perfectly normal, even
if others from other climates can’t quite wrap their heads around it or get
used to it. No, lady, I’m not putting on a coat in September just because it’s
68 out! That’s not cold (to me)! Well, in this odd and fairly inaccurate
metaphor, I’m the Californian who thinks that 68 degrees as the high in
September means the world is beginning to freeze over.
Normally, after having
run out of Lamictal, I would’ve quickly fallen into bitter moods and had
moderate to severe withdrawals. No matter how much I anticipated them, they
never came! I’ve had some minor bitterness from time to time, but it’s almost negligible;
and withdrawal symptoms? I’ve had no cold sweats, no nausea and/or vomiting, no
upset digestive tract, no withdrawal-specific pain, no shivers... I’ve hardly
felt any sort of bad sensations since I ran out (albeit, since I ran out of
Neurontin, my typical pain has increased slightly, but I’ve been constantly
distracting myself from the pain, making it occur less.) Overall, I’ve been
feeling better instead of worse. I
certainly wasn’t expecting that. I
mean... how does that happen?
One thing that I’ve
noticed, however, is that - since I ran out of Lamictal - my sleep has gone from
screwed up to consistently extreme. I went from an irregular near-24-hour
sleep-wake schedule to a 48-hour one. I’ve been essentially going every other
night without any sleep, staying awake for 34 or so hours and sleeping for 14.
In middle school, I used to go just about whole school weeks without sleep, but
that was because I could only sleep during the day, and school largely
prevented that. This is a whole other thing, though. My body doesn’t even seem
to grasp the concept of a ‘day.’ And what’s even stranger to me is that my body
is staying pretty consistent with about when I get up, when I go to sleep, how
long I’m up, and how long I’m asleep.
I’ve read from more
than one source, now, that sleep deprivation can help with depression, and is
even occasionally used as a treatment method! Since my sleep has become more
extreme, with longer hours being both awake and asleep, I’ve noticed my mood is
drastically improved. I’m not sure yet if those have anything to do with one
another, but I’ve gotten to a place where I don’t want to ‘mess with success,’
where the success is the constant improved mood.
I’m not sure I want to
mess with my sleeping schedule for fear that it might mess with other things,
as well, such as my good moods of late. I’m not sure I want to mess with my
meds, either, for the same reasons. Somehow, I’ve fallen into a system that
seems to be working, at least relatively well, and I know that it could be, and
could get, so much worse. This has been a drastic improvement, believe it or
not! So why would I want to mess with that, at least right now?
Like always, I suppose
I’ll just keep on trying to figure things out as I go. Make adjustments, gain
knowledge... I’ll see how things go, try to go with the flow, so to speak.
No comments:
Post a Comment