Lately, I've been curious as to if I should be on a stimulant of some sort or not. Whether or not I have ADHD has also been put onto the table for questioning. What I do know for certain is that immense amounts of coffee (three or so cups of coffee or a handful of chocolate covered coffee beans straight) can aid in getting me to sleep. I also know that low to moderate amounts of caffeine and 'energy' drinks can calm me down. This is quite common in people with ADHD, except that sugar seems to be able to have the opposite effect, and actually magnify the energy drastically. That, I haven't found in myself.
My NP (nurse practitioner) is iffy about putting me on any more meds, or adjusting my meds much. From what I've read, people with bipolar can be flung into manic and hypomanic episodes more easily when on stimulants, which isn't ideal should that be the case 24/7. Well, sometimes I wish I could always be a little hypomanic, but when I'm not, it's exhausting just to think about. However, I'd much rather always be hypomanic than just blah or depressed. I don't deal with those two states very well.
However, a bipolar blogger I like to read talked about this sort of thing, as she's on Ritalin. She apparently takes it once every other day, and this gets her into a little bit of a hypomanic flight which lasts into the next days without going overboard, or needing too much of it. She described how I feel perfectly; she said, "Most of my moods like to hang out on the depressive side of the pole, and quite honestly, I hate it. Usually it takes something to
push me into a state of hypo-mania. Not always, but generally speaking
that is how it is. A medication, a major event, a seasonal shift. It
doesn’t take much, but it usually takes something. I don’t just wake up
one day all manic and happy." I didn't used to be like this, but it seems like, now-a-days, I linger around the 'blah' side of things way too much and need a push of some sort to get me some energy, up, and racing.
Hypomania is a wonderful feeling: you don't need to sleep as much, you have a rush of energy and ideas, you feel like you have the answer to everything, and like nothing bad could happen. Depression, however, would be if you took the opposites of all of those things except for sleep (it's a cliché that depressed people sleep too much, and it's often the opposite.) Now, I've been getting this grinding gear feeling for the past year or so. It's like the two have merged into some get-nothing-done, anxious, tugging-from-opposite-sides state. It's as though the gears want to be turning, or want to be stopped, but something's trying to have both at the same time. Imagine an engine that doesn't want to start, and you get that brutal, ear-shattering grinding sound - that's how I feel. You feel like trying to push it to go will just cause some sort of irreversible damage, and no one wants that.
So, what is this 'grinding gears' sensation? Well, let's look at how I'm feeling right at this very moment - as well as many nights. I took my meds a little while ago and they're starting to sink in. When this happens, I typically feel a kind of wall of sedation hit me. It's not always very strong - or even effective - but I do still feel it. Now, I have a tendency to resist this to a degree, often until I finally lose the fight and go to sleep (sometimes unintentionally in the middle of things.) However, during the resistance, I feel somewhat like I'm trying to run in shin-deep water. My mind wants to keep on going, but the meds in my system are trying to tell me otherwise. Often, the two contradict each other so that I can neither sleep, nor get anything done. I don't know how many times I wanted to write something but didn't because my meds kicked in and fogged up my brain.
Now, take this and apply it more loosely to my day-to-day life, not just at night. It got me thinking that maybe I'm on too many meds, or maybe just not the right combo. Maybe the more slowing/sedating properties are leaking less noticeably, but still problematically, into the rest of my life. Perhaps this is what's causing that grinding gears sensation. However, these hypotheses could be off, or incomplete - I really don't know. I just know that bipolar, or whatever it is I have, exactly, is a lifelong journey, and it'll probably take a good deal of time before I have things figured out.
Friday, October 26, 2012
Monday, October 15, 2012
Desires
I suppose I have horrendously unrealistic desires when it comes to my mood disorder and anxiety. I want to be able to freely and readily swing between highs and lows, but I don’t want to be obligated or responsible for anything during those times. I want to meet people, but I don’t want to do the work of going out into the world to do so – I’d rather be set up with someone and… just hope we mesh well. I want to be able to feel free to cry if I get emotional and laugh insanely when I’m emotionally high without feeling like I’m being judged. I want to be stable and unstable at my very whim. I want to be able to manually open the flood gates (tears), because – otherwise – they’re habitually blocked. I want to be able to just… go to sleep when I feel sleepy, and feel sleepy, like a normal person, instead of needing a chemically induced sleep every night. I forgot a long time ago what natural sleep feels like.
Some of these might not seem so crazy to certain individuals, while some of these might seem ridiculous. I can’t really predict who would think what. I can understand these desires being unrealistic, but they’re desires – not necessarily what I will or can get. I guess, to sum it up, I want control… even if that means a little bit of lack of control. I always imagine in my head how things should play out, with specific cues, like a movie version in my head. I can say that I cannot recall a single instance that has happened except for the ends of certain movies (I’ll admit, when no one’s looking, I can be a bit of a crier with films that hit home with me.)
I see these bipolar people on TV and movies, or hear stories about people with bipolar, and they sound so much closer to how I used to be. I mean, not many people get a number of coexisting psychoses in the form of different kinds of consistent and persistent delusions and hallucinations. That’s one reason an old therapist of mine and I had come to the same conclusion that I might have schizoaffective disorder with bipolar tendencies (in between bipolar and schizophrenia, though they are sometimes believed to be part of the same continuum.) Still, having been on a steady supply of antipsychotics for years and years, now – perhaps over a half dozen different kinds – I’ve been lacking that particular symptom. I had a love-hate relationship with my psychoses… I often miss them, but am often glad they aren’t around anymore. I guess if I could pick and choose my psychoses, I’d be just golden. There I go being unrealistic in my desires, as I obviously can’t be picky about what psychoses I do and don’t have.
And then there are my romantic desires… Love… wife… kids… Each and every day that goes by, I decrease my chances of ever finding those things because of my solitary, hermitic, anxiety-engulfed, anti-social, hypocritical day-to-day life lodged firmly in this house. And what if I happen to miraculously find any such person, and succeed with any such things? Would I just live a miserable, unfulfilling life? Would I feel inept and impotent? Would I be a horrible father? Would I still be too scared to even walk a few blocks away from the comfort of my house alone? I’m constantly pestered by these questions swirling in my head. The things I want could become so disastrous in my current state, or if my state got any worse. I then often think that, perhaps, dooming myself might be the only way to avert such disaster, assuming that I don’t improve. It’s not until I improve in the various other areas that my self-destructive tendencies really become relevant as more than a defence mechanism.
To be able to control what I feel and how I feel it… To be able to control how I deal with things in life… To be the master of my mind… Those are the things I truly want so badly. That’s what all of these desires really boil down to. I almost achieved a trance-like state during a shower at dawn. It was peaceful, relaxed, and utterly free of my problems. All the pain and anxiety and tiredness seemed to disappear. It felt almost like sleeping, but it wasn’t. All of my senses began to blur, but were ever-present. I was mindful of every one sensation, and yet they felt… not blocked, not dulled, but a particular kind of feeling that I’ve only really found in narcotics. You know that it’s there, but it’s drastically less taxing on you. This transcendent state was like a natural, mindful painkiller. If I could always achieve a state like that, I don’t know if it would be good or bad. Would I become like the guy on Office Space, or like a Buddhist monk? Or would I become like something else entirely?
My life has been like one giant experiment with no real conclusions. There’s been trial and error, with no ‘right way’ of doing things (but certainly plenty of wrong ways.) And, in this life, each trial and, usually inevitable, error takes months at a time, if not years, making the process painstakingly slow.
Some of these might not seem so crazy to certain individuals, while some of these might seem ridiculous. I can’t really predict who would think what. I can understand these desires being unrealistic, but they’re desires – not necessarily what I will or can get. I guess, to sum it up, I want control… even if that means a little bit of lack of control. I always imagine in my head how things should play out, with specific cues, like a movie version in my head. I can say that I cannot recall a single instance that has happened except for the ends of certain movies (I’ll admit, when no one’s looking, I can be a bit of a crier with films that hit home with me.)
I see these bipolar people on TV and movies, or hear stories about people with bipolar, and they sound so much closer to how I used to be. I mean, not many people get a number of coexisting psychoses in the form of different kinds of consistent and persistent delusions and hallucinations. That’s one reason an old therapist of mine and I had come to the same conclusion that I might have schizoaffective disorder with bipolar tendencies (in between bipolar and schizophrenia, though they are sometimes believed to be part of the same continuum.) Still, having been on a steady supply of antipsychotics for years and years, now – perhaps over a half dozen different kinds – I’ve been lacking that particular symptom. I had a love-hate relationship with my psychoses… I often miss them, but am often glad they aren’t around anymore. I guess if I could pick and choose my psychoses, I’d be just golden. There I go being unrealistic in my desires, as I obviously can’t be picky about what psychoses I do and don’t have.
And then there are my romantic desires… Love… wife… kids… Each and every day that goes by, I decrease my chances of ever finding those things because of my solitary, hermitic, anxiety-engulfed, anti-social, hypocritical day-to-day life lodged firmly in this house. And what if I happen to miraculously find any such person, and succeed with any such things? Would I just live a miserable, unfulfilling life? Would I feel inept and impotent? Would I be a horrible father? Would I still be too scared to even walk a few blocks away from the comfort of my house alone? I’m constantly pestered by these questions swirling in my head. The things I want could become so disastrous in my current state, or if my state got any worse. I then often think that, perhaps, dooming myself might be the only way to avert such disaster, assuming that I don’t improve. It’s not until I improve in the various other areas that my self-destructive tendencies really become relevant as more than a defence mechanism.
To be able to control what I feel and how I feel it… To be able to control how I deal with things in life… To be the master of my mind… Those are the things I truly want so badly. That’s what all of these desires really boil down to. I almost achieved a trance-like state during a shower at dawn. It was peaceful, relaxed, and utterly free of my problems. All the pain and anxiety and tiredness seemed to disappear. It felt almost like sleeping, but it wasn’t. All of my senses began to blur, but were ever-present. I was mindful of every one sensation, and yet they felt… not blocked, not dulled, but a particular kind of feeling that I’ve only really found in narcotics. You know that it’s there, but it’s drastically less taxing on you. This transcendent state was like a natural, mindful painkiller. If I could always achieve a state like that, I don’t know if it would be good or bad. Would I become like the guy on Office Space, or like a Buddhist monk? Or would I become like something else entirely?
My life has been like one giant experiment with no real conclusions. There’s been trial and error, with no ‘right way’ of doing things (but certainly plenty of wrong ways.) And, in this life, each trial and, usually inevitable, error takes months at a time, if not years, making the process painstakingly slow.
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