Grinding Gears

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.