Archive for withdrawal
>Potholes and speed bumps…
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>Pretending…
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Ciao,
Nora
>It’s the coffee…
>
You see, it’s the coffee that’s keeping me going now. I had that decaf, but it didn’t do me any good. I just mentally collapse and find that I’m on the verge of the throwing in the towel. I just want to give up and more than anything throw all my medication down the toilet for all the good it does me. I know I can’t do that because of the withdrawal symptoms, but I wish I was a year along and off a lot of these things I’m taking now. I’ve never been as depressed and anxious and stressed and unstable as when I’ve been on the medication.
Anyway, I make myself a cup of coffee and drink it and I’m okay again. I’m not collapsing any more, but I can’t stop and think about my situation too much, because if I do, I become very disheartened and disgusted and I want to run away from it and wish myself into another life. I am most unhappy and I don’t care who knows it and everybody can have their opinion about it and their suggestions about how to make it better, but I tell you, I have to get off those drugs that are screwing up my mind.
I’m always having to artificially pep myself up to make it through the day because of all the sleep inducing medication I take, and I take a lot, even though I want to take a little. I had just reduced my anti-psychotics and my tranquilizers when my psychiatrist increased them again when I started on the Welbutrin and stopped taking my other antidepressants. I’m sure that this was well intended and done as a precaution against the problems I would have with withdrawals, but I think it wasn’t necessary, really, and now I have to reduce those medications again. I can’t do anything on my own without his express approval, so my hands are tied.
For as well as I was doing for the first 2 weeks on Welbutrin, I am doing badly now, but I will also blame it on withdrawal of one antidepressant that I completely went off immediately without any back up. It’s gone completely out of my body now and no doubt it is having its effect. If I don’t feel a marked improvement on the Welbutrin in a little over 2 weeks time, I’m going to stop taking it and not use another antidepressant, but just depend on my mood stabilizer. Then I can start reducing the anti-psychotics, which is a medication I really want to stop taking, having never been psychotic.
You realize, of course, that I’m using this blog to organize my thoughts. As I write these things down, they become more clear to me and my course of action becomes more obvious. I’m not really writing this down to get answers to questions from you, though input is always welcome. I guess I’m trying to make clear to you how I live in the artificial world of pharmaceutical products and how that influences my mind and my body and how really unhealthy that is. When my second psychiatrist had to hand me over to my third psychiatrist, he worried a great deal about how he was going to explain my list of medications to him. You know something was rotten in Denmark.
So, I’m having my second cup of coffee now. If that’s what it takes to keep me going, then so be it. It’s really an hour earlier than it says on the clock and I will pretend I live on the Mediterranean and have a nightlife. I started out this post with a feeling of despair, but it has settled down now to a feeling of control. I see what I need to do and the road that I need to take to get there. That does not mean that I will not sit here the next time without feelings of despair again. My moods are as unpredictable as the March weather here.
For those of you who think I like changes very much because I changed my blog template, I have to tell you that it s very double. I get very excited because it is something new and I look forward to how everything will look and which template I will end up with, but at the same time I also don’t like changes very much and am most at ease with the familiar, so doing this is a daring step for me. It’s a challenge and I have to get used to it myself and I feel very insecure about it. I would have liked to stay the toad forever, but now I’m a watercolor. I’m trying it on for size. Maybe it will be scary and I will flee back toward toadness.
I have a feeling that I’m not going to stay up that late, in spite of the coffee. It will be good to get a decent night’s sleep or as long as I manage it. I have to pick up pieces of cardboard in the morning and go to the tobacconist.
Thank you for letting me bounce my thoughts off you. It’s been very helpful.
I wish you all a good night.
Ciao,
Nora
>Don´t complain!
>I´m having withdrawal symptoms again. At least I assume that´s what they are. My life is quickly falling apart and my emotions are in an uproar. I´m trying to stay sane and rational and not intimidated by what is happening to me. The hardest part is going through this alone, because I so very much would like someone´s shoulder to cry on. I guess that´s what I want to do more than anything, is cry and cry and not be brave at all like I feel I have been this past week.
A lot of times I act as if everything is okay when really it isn´t, I don´t know if you can tell that. I keep being cheerful when I don´t really feel cheerful at all. I´ve been worried about my medication this past week, if I´m taking too much of some or too little of the other and I don´t really trust my psychiatrist to know that. I think he made a blunder this week and that has caused a dent in my confidence in him.
I´ve been feeling awfully tired these past days, although I have been out and about in the fresh air. I thought springtime would give me lots of energy, but I´m not having any. The time I feel best is late at night again, when it is dark out and the world is quiet and silent and at rest. That´s new, after sleeping so well for two weeks. I wish I could always be a night person and only marginally participate during the day. Unfortunately, I have to take my nighttime medicines and they do drive me to bed at a certain hour. It´s all medicine I hope to do without some day.
Maybe this is not withdrawal, maybe this is just a plain old case of unhappiness and disappointment for not having the road that I travel be as smooth as I had anticipated and for feeling very lonely in the whole process. I always think that everything should be a nonstop upward movement, but for some reason it doesn´t work that way and you climb the hill and roll down it before you get up and start climbing it again. I don´t know why this is so and why this is necessary. Somebody will have to explain that process to me in logical terms. This really mystifies me. It seems to work that way for everything, even when you think it ought not to, when it is pure science, although when applied to people it never is.
The problem is, that I´ve come to see my emotions as pathologically wrong and put labels on them, instead of just seeing them as emotions that all people have. I have decided not to do that anymore and, for instance, never to use the term hypo-mania again to describe an excited mood that I may find myself in. That way it´s not a psychiatric condition and it doesn´t need a medication to be cured, because a mood like that usually clears up by itself and for all I know I´m doing something that millions of people around the world do every day spontaneously. I mustn´t mistake happiness and excitement for an illness and allow it to be killed by drugs, so that I will be mentally straight jacketed and subdued.
I´m feeling better for having written this down and knowing that it will have a few readers who will hopefully understand. It takes a diversity of people to make the world go round and if we medicate everybody who falls outside the norm, we´ll have a lot of drugged up people. Cure the part that hurts and leave the rest alone.
Ciao,
Nora
>Wake up, woman!
>
I’m working on my second cup of coffee and it is very necessary, as I had to get up out of bed after not enough sleep to let out the dog and take my medicines. Bleary eyed and slightly in a stupor, I turned on the computer to see what was there in my in box and started the difficult process of answering my emails. I always hope I make sense when I do that after I’ve just gotten up. It may actually not be the right time, but that’s the order in which I do things. Rituals even maintain your bad habits.
I’m such a nutty woman, sitting here when I should be getting back to bed for some more sleep, but then I never claimed to have much sense. I act like and pretend that I do, but I never come right out and claimed it. I have about as much common sense as a hedgehog. It does roll itself into an impregnable ball when threatened, so that is a good characteristic, but you can also play football with it and that is less good. Of course, you do have to have sturdy shoe wear.
Well, I used what little common sense I do have and went back to bed and slept for a few more hours. That really was the smartest thing to do, that logic didn’t even escape me, thick skulled as I am. Hmmm… I see a theme developing here, I’m trying to get a message across. Could it be that I’m trying to tell you that I assert a lot, but in reality know very little? Something along those lines.
The first thing I did when I got up, was get dressed and not linger in my bathrobe like I did yesterday. That was a good thing too, because when I went outside to pick up Tyke’s turds, my neighbor was out there and I never know what mode of attack he is going to use on me. Today it was friendly, thank goodness, but I do feel better facing him with my clothes on. He’s an old man who likes to complain and makes me nervous about going outside. His wife eggs him on from the background. There’s always some tree or bush or cat to complain about and I get a sore stomach just thinking about it, so let’s drop that subject.
I’ve been sitting crooked in the desk chair again, leaning to the right at an odd angle, and as a result I have a sore ribcage. I lean into the armrest and it cuts right underneath my ribs, causing me to sort of get stuck there and having to remove myself with some effort. It happens without me being aware of it, suddenly I’m in that position. Yesterday I put a pillow on that side and it helped. It prevented me from leaning over. What I really need to do is spend less time in this chair and in a minute, I’m going to take Tyke for a walk.
The sun is shining, but it’s only 11C, so not very warm. I’m wearing my cold weather clothes plus my scarf. I’ll see you in a bit.
We ran into a bit of freshly rotated soil that had fertilizer added and raked into it. Tyke thought he had died and gone to heaven. He rolled around in it like it was the best smelling perfume ever. Every time I thought he was done, he started up again. Luckily, it was dry and flaky, so nothing really got stuck to his fur, except some of the smell. It was so funny, I had never seen a dog do that before. I hope he doesn’t do that when we run into cow dung or something. I wouldn’t put it past him. I can just see us out in the fields in the countryside and Tyke in a big heap of cow shit. I think I better stay in town with him.
We also ran into my sister and her friend. This car stopped and a very handsome man with sunglasses on said “ciao” to me. I couldn’t figure out at first who it was. I thought I was going to be pestered by a bunch of foreigners. Then I saw my sister and the pieces fell into place. I had to laugh at myself for being so silly that I automatically assumed handsome foreigners would pester me. That shows you what an attitude I have about myself.
I think I’m having withdrawal symptoms, as I’m totally not happy at the moment and I’m just pretending that I am. If not that, I’m having a shortage of sleep problem. I feel depressed and I’m going to lie down on the sofa.
Ciao,
Nora
>Music to write by.
>
The Exfactor came and looked at my speaker problem and realized immediately that I needed a power cable to make them work, which is something that I had suspected also, but I did not know what it looked like or where to plug it in. The problem was solved almost right away, though we had some problem finding the right place to plug the cable into, but we managed that in the end too, and voilá, music! Ella Fitzgeralds lovely voice came pouring out of the speakers. I knew the Exfactor would solve my problem and in the meantime, I’m learning a lot from him.
In my spare time I’ve been adding to my playlist of popular music with such people as Frank Sinatra and Johnny Cash and Sammy Davis Jr and Elvis Presley (all of his old stuff). See, I was born in the wrong era. This time I have no modern music. Oh, and I have Buddy Holly too. I’m just going to pretend it’s sometime in the fifties and early sixties and that I was a grown up then who hung out in cocktail bars and smoked cigarettes from a long elegant cigarette holder and who men bought interesting cocktails for. I probably never would have gotten into the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. Not that I ever did, really. I liked classical music.
I had an appointment with my psychiatrist this afternoon and he was genuinely pleased for me that things were going so well. I sat there quite perky and alert and I don’t think he has ever seen me like that. Usually I was this slow and morose woman who was very serious. I wasn’t being frivolous now, but much more light hearted and uncomplicated. I’m feeling so much better now and he said that I should feel the complete effect of the Welbutrin in another 2 weeks, so I’ve got something to look forward to.
I’m going to start reducing the rest of my old medication next week with little increments at the time, so that I will not have any problems with it. I shouldn’t have withdrawal problems, but really, after that enormous reduction I did at the beginning and the one day of enormous withdrawal symptoms I had from that, I’m not really scared of anything anymore. Nothing will ever be as bad as that, and it only lasted for one day. I’m assuming a lot, aren’t I? I’m either very optimistic or very naive. I’ll just assume the best case scenario.
I had a cup of coffee there, but it must have been a very weak one, because I’m yawning something awful and will be forced to make my own cup. That will bring the total up to 4 cups for today, which is not too bad. It is within reason. I like the fact that I’m tired, because I’ll go to bed early tonight and fall asleep quickly and hopefully sleep late in the morning. Sleep is a many splendored thing. You can guess who I’m listening to now, can’t you? Music used to be overly romantic. It was not at all good for people. It gave them the completely wrong idea about love. Especially those of us who were very impressionable. Ahum!
There, I just took Tyke for a walk and it wasn’t even cold out, 13C. That feels like warm weather to us. Tomorrow it’s going to be very warm, 19C. Can you believe it? It’s fine, as long as I get to keep wearing my cowboy boots. I’ll wear them even if the sparrows fall from the roof because of the heat, as the saying goes.
Today, in the waiting room, I saw a woman who used to be in my therapy classes with me and I was so glad to see her, because I really liked her a lot. Now I have to find her email address that I have around here somewhere, because we only had a short time to talk. It was so nice to see her friendly face and I realized how much I had missed seeing her. We used to have intense conversations during the coffee breaks. She reads this blog off and on, so I hope she leaves me a comment so I can contact her.
Well, okay people, that’s all my rambling for right now. You probably won’t hear from me again tonight, because I’ll go to sleep early, in my clean apartment, in my clean bed, with squeeky clean hair.
Have a good evening!
Ciao,
Nora
>Evaluation.
>
I think it is important to remember that what happened to me yesterday was due to withdrawal from my medication. I have very drastically gone from 450 mg to 150 mg a day, which is quite a change, and I was bound to run into trouble. It is going to take my body about 2 weeks to get adjusted to the new dose and then I will have to reduce the rest that I’m taking. In the meantime, the new medication needs about 2 weeks to build up into my body properly until it is at a constant level, so you see that these 2 weeks are going to be difficult for me. I didn’t know ahead of time how difficult they were going to be, but yesterday afternoon showed me a glimpse of it.
I went through a long crisis and somewhere towards the end it started to dawn on me that I was having withdrawal symptoms. Once I realized that, I started to deal with it differently and not take everything so very personal and serious. I did take the withdrawal process seriously and knew I had to get through it the best way I knew how. I decided to let myself cry as much as I wanted to. So that’s what I did and I cried about everything. After that I was so exhausted that I fell asleep on the sofa and slept for a couple of hours.
This morning I feel better. I had a long night’s sleep and didn’t get up until eleven o’clock. It took me a good hour to come to my senses. It felt like I was awakening from a coma. I drank my coffee on the sofa and cuddled Tyke, who likes it when I sit on the sofa, because it gives him the opportunity to show me all his tricks that he thinks of himself. Like, how to jump from the sofa to the coffee table without knocking over the coffee cup that is standing there. Life is a circus here thanks to Tyke and his ingenuity. We rarely have a dull moment.
Having Tyke sleep in the bedroom with me at night is working out well, because he behaves very well and patiently waits for me to wake up. That’s why I get to sleep so late in the morning. There’s not a sound out of him all night and when I go to the bathroom in the middle of the night, he follows me in and out of the bedroom with few problems. He does get sidetracked by Gandhi, but that is easily solved by calling him to order.
He also lets me know when he needs to go out back for a piddle. He’s figured out how to do that on his own. He puts his front paws on my arm and looks at me very intently. That does not mean, I want a cuddle. It means, I have to go now! How I tell the difference I don’t know. I think it’s mostly guess work.
I realize that with me being comatose until the late hours of the morning, I can’t make any appointments until the afternoon and I can’t go shopping with my sister in the morning. I just talked to my sister and told her that we can’t go shopping at 8 o’clock in the morning tomorrow, so we have to do it in the afternoon after my domestic help has been here.
It also turns out that my other digital alarm clock is broken, so now I’m without an alarm clock, but I’ll tell you honestly that I’d hate to be awakened by an alarm clock in the morning before I’m done sleeping. It would be a disaster to not get the sleep I needed and to have to function on not enough. I think it’s better if I just wake up on my own and get started at my own speed and save whatever appointments I have to make for the afternoons. I don’t want to upset the precariously balanced apple cart.
I hope the episodes like I had yesterday are few and far between. Right now I feel so good, that I can’t imagine having another one, but I know I mustn’t tempt fate. Things aren’t finely tuned right now and everything is unbalanced. I feel that I walk a tight rope and I could fall off at any moment. So, I must enjoy the times that go well and I do, believe me. Every moment that is pleasant is savoured. Nothing is taken for granted.
I have to get dressed now and take Tyke to go and have coffee with my sister. She is home from a week in Italy, so we have some catching up to do. Besides, she has very good coffee.
I hope you are all having a good day.
Ciao,
Nora.
>Finally!
>
I ran into computer problems a few days ago and have been off line since then. My mouse stopped working and just as I was investigating the reason why, I noticed that Tyke had chewed through the cable of my keyboard, which was very frustrating to say the least, because it was carnival and all the stores were closed and would be for a while, so I could not buy a new one. I called the Exfactor to see if he had an extra mouse and keyboard. He did not, but he promised to try and solve my problem as quickly as possible. He couldn’t do anything until today, when Media Mart opened up and he could buy a new mouse and a new keyboard and deliver them to me. It turned out that the portal into which the mouse was plugged was defective and now the mouse is plugged into one of the portals in the front of the PC. I taped the cable of the mouse into place so it won’t be a temptation for Tyke to play with. The keyboard works great and I like it better than my old keyboard, so I’m moving up in the world. We’ve tied the cable of the keyboard to the desk so it won’t be a temptation either. At least, I’m naive enough to think it. If I ever am off line for any period of time again, you’ll know it is because Tyke chewed through a cable.
The first day I was without my PC, I was rather frustrated and went through withdrawal. I thought it was one of the worst things that could happen, but at the same time I realized that that was exaggerating the importance of it and that I shouldn’t let it get to me that much. So, I tried to do other things to take up my time, which I was not very good at, at first.
After that it got easier and I realized that I got more relaxed from not sitting behind the computer and that my mood improved and that I was more even tempered when I was not sitting behind the computer at all hours of the day and night. That was an important observation and one I must not ignore. It seems that the computer causes me stress and I have to keep an eye on how much time I actually spend behind it and how much is actually necessary.
On those days that I couldn’t sit behind the computer, I contemplated my own navel a lot and did household chores. I also watched the Winter Olympics on TV. All of these things were quiet activities that didn’t cause me a lot of stress, not even the chores did, because I just took my time. I had nothing else to do, after all. I spent a lot of time in peace and quiet not doing anything very important, but hanging out with Tyke and lying on the sofa with a cat on top of me. It seems to have done me a lot of good, because my mood has vastly improved and I aim to keep it that way.
Since my mood has improved so much that even I notice the difference, I want to limit the time I spend behind the computer, tempting though it is to keep lingering here. For my own sake, I must turn it off on time and walk away from it and shut if off and keep it off until a long enough time has passed before I go back to it. I must spend time in quiet contemplation, because it’s good for me. I do need to be free of stimuli and distractions. I never realized that as much as I do now.
Tyke is naughty at least once a day. Once a day he gets into something that I have overlooked as a potential naughtiness for him to get into. Everything in the apartment is getting moved up or put away. I thought things were safe on the dining table, but he’s even managed to get on top of it when a chair was left pulled out. Other than that, he’s his most adorable self almost all the time and a most kissable and hugable little bundle of joy.
Have a lovely day!
Ciao,
Nora.
>Don’t spare the wounded.
>
I’ve just gotten up for the second time today. I was up earlier this morning and had coffee and answered my emails, but I was way too tired still and went back to bed and had a few more hours of sleep. Now I’m having my second attempt at being awake and hopefully I’ll make it this time.
My relationship, if you could even give it that name, with J. has come to an end. I wrote him an email in which I asked for some more things than I was getting now. A date on which I knew he would be by again, longer weekends than just the 24 hours that he came by for, some sort of steady schedule, expressions of love, shared vacations (he was planning his vacation while he was here last), and other tokens of dedication. I got an email back from him saying that he could not give me those things, that he did not want a more steady relationship with me and that he was already having his doubts about the fairness of this one.
I can only say that I feel a great deal of relief and liberation that I don’t have to do this “relationship” anymore, because it felt like a lot of emotional work, and when you are in a dysfunctional situation, you start to behave dysfunctionally, which is something I was certainly doing. You try to make your behavior make sense, but somehow it is impossible, which is not that strange, considering that it doesn’t make sense and that you should get yourself out of the situation. Thankfully, it didn’t take me all that long to figure it out this time. I have stayed in dysfunctional situations longer in the past. Much longer.
I can’t blame him for letting me get into the situation I found myself in. He thought he had made himself clear from the start, but I had read something more into it, being a female and having more needs. I thought I could handle what I assumed I was getting into, but my expectations were just a little bit higher than his and they became even higher over this past weekend when I actually fell in love momentarily, although I knew instinctively that I could not allow it. So, I can’t say that I have been used, although I do feel that way. But that is because of my own gullibility. I have allowed myself to be used.
And really, he had the time to stay longer this weekend, but he did not, which got my hackles up just a bit, because he was so eager to go home, although he had the rest of the week off. But I was ever so nice and understanding and thought he needed the time on his own. If he was seriously into the “relationship” he would have stayed longer, of course, and we could have done some things “normal” couples do. I was obviously not a priority. You see, underneath it all there is some bitterness.
In the meantime, I’ve walked the dog and it was dry, although we are supposed to have rain showers today. It is 9C outside, so it isn’t too cold at all. If it rains, I should go stand out in it and let it wash all over me and be cleansed by it. Although I doubt I’d have the nerve to stand out there naked as I should. Like a heathen being cleansed by the rain gods.
Well, I guess that’s all I have to tell you for now. I’ve pretty much wasted the afternoon on this subject. Well, not quite, I have some time left to do other things. Like clean up the kitchen. Tomorrow I have to do the groceries on my bike, because my sister is in Italy. I’m so looking forward to that. Not! I also have to go to the post office. It will again be the withdrawal of me from society for a bit. The usual crawling into my hole. Playing peekaboo with the world.
Have a good day!
Ciao,
Nora
>Ain’t we got fun?
>
The first thing I did this morning was pick up nearly 200 filter tubes that were scattered on the floor of the living room. Doubtlessly I owed that pleasure to one of the cats, because the box was laying under the computer desk. It’s impossible to get nearly 200 filter tubes neatly into the box again, so I tossed them in haphazardly in a pile that’s overflowing. It will be fun to use them, because some of them are crushed and may be beyond usefulness.
I grumbled about that a bit, especially when Toby and Nouri came over to ‘help’ me. They sauntered over and sat right down in the middle of things. The Überhund was merely confused by it all and didn’t know what to do. He walked around the living room in frustration. I will teach him to growl at cats and be mean to them when they have done something wrong, though I doubt it will do any good. Cats don’t associate well.
There is something clearly wrong with me, as I can’t stay away from the computer. I find it difficult to turn it off and when it’s on, I find it difficult not to write something. It may be something as simple as me going through withdrawal from my sleeping pills, I don’t know, but I am not behaving rationally.
I see myself being fixated, but I can’t seem to stop it. It’s like I’m on a merry go round that doesn’t stop turning.
I am trying to keep myself calm and relaxed and really pay attention to the amount of stress I feel and how uptight I get about things. I appear calm on the surface, but things are bubbling underneath. I have fixated thoughts and I can’t seem to put my focus on other things but this damn computer. I have just taken extra tranquilizers to calm down a bit, but I worry about tomorrow and how well I will do at creative therapy and if I will be able to relax enough. I worry about things I should not worry about and nitpick them to death.
The Überhund has had his double meal and has been walked and now he is laying on his blanket under the coffee table and he is sound asleep and snoring gently. It’s so sweet. He is practically comatose. Totally oblivious of everything around him. I would like to take a pillow and curl up beside him, but he would look at me very strangely if I did that. I must not cross the boundaries of his dog world. Besides that, I would be covered in dog hair in no time. It’s bad enough as it is.
Toby is siting on the kitchen counter pondering life’s bigger questions. Like, why is there never anything good to eat around here and why does that darn dog get all the best stuff? He is sitting there in the hope that some good morsels will come along and that he will get some of them. The kitchen counter is the best place to be. It’s also where the dish of milk is. Out of the dog’s reach.
It’s been 45 minutes since I took the tranquilizers and I feel them working now. What a nice feeling it is. My whole mind is relaxing. So is my body. You can’t do this on your own. It’s a loosing battle. I can’t fight my own mind and what it sets out to do. I see what it does, but I can’t shake myself free of it. It’s like being overpowered by an entity that is larger than me.
The Überhund is awake again and walking purposefully through the apartment. I think he has an idea in his head, but has not quite fromulated it. I will put the oitments in his eyes now and he will get a treat. That will distract him for a while. Maybe he needs to go out one more time after that big meal. It’s cold outside, so I will have to dress up warmly.
Ciao…
Another Splendid Day 