The title of this post is a quote from Prozac Nation by Elizabeth Wurtzel, my current read.
A week ago today, despite everyone’s advice against it: I decided to stop taking my meds. In all fairness, I was already feeling horrible and slept through my medication alarm on my phone and when I woke up the next morning (Tuesday, my birthday) I was feeling fine and thought I could handle not taking them. I went to work all the while telling myself that I could make it without meds, and that I could pretend I was doing just fine even though I was falling apart on the inside.
Work started out fine, then about an hour in I started crying for reasons I can’t explain. Then, I started to think about the meeting I had the day before about a job I had messed up before I went on leave and thought about the fact that I had delayed pediatric luekemia patients their last chance drug because I didn’t ask questions about the barcode. I also thought about the fact that I am feeling hopeless because I can’t find meds that work for me either. I’m not a leukemia patient, but at times this thing that lives in my head seems just as bad, like it could kill me at any time.
I left work after my boss saw me crying and suggested I go home to try to deal with whatever was going on with me. (I still can’t tell you why I cried although I have a feeling it may be all the pent up emotions that I should have been feeling that my meds weren’t allowing me to feel.) I took Wednesday off as well and went to group therapy at night hoping it would have the same empowering effect as it did the week before, sadly it didn’t.
Thursday morning I had an appointment with my psychiatrist at 10:20, at 10:35 I still hadn’t been in to see him and a guy randomly showed up to talk to him about issues he was having with his medication and he pulled him in his office to talk to him. At that point, I was irrate. I was having issues with my meds too, and I had an appointment! Finally at 10:45 I went into his office and just went off telling him that I was still mad and that he wasn’t listening to me and that I needed new meds. Sadly, he took me off Effexor and kept me on the antipsychotic for schizophrenics that I feel isn’t doing anything but making me fat. Now I’m on the antipsychotic twice a day, Cymbalta at night, and Ativan when needed. I had an appointment with my therapist at 11 so I couldn’t stick around and have the session that I truly needed to have because he has no concept of time.
I made it to my therapy appointment with a little time to relax and try to cool down from yet another terrible psychiatrist session. When my therapist called me back to her office she asked how I was doing and I just let out a huge sigh. When I explained to her what was going on and that I had thought about admitting myself to the hospital on my birthday she immediately took me out of work and told me to go back to IOP. Actually, I’ll be starting PHP (Partial Hospitalization Program) tomorrow. It differs from IOP (Intensive Outpatient Program) in that it last longer through the day and you also see a psychiatrist once a week. She even said that hospitalization could be a good option for me to get my meds straight the quick way. I decided to save the hospital for when I really feel like I want to jump off a cliff again. (Which, the suicidal ideation came back last night)
My sleep is starting to be completely off and crazy, I was awake at six am today. And I’m also eating like crazy. Sadly, I have to go into school today and drop my creative writing class because I can’t kick this stupid guy that lives in my head. I wish I could let the people at work that are disappointed in me and think I should just come out of this see that I have no control over what my mind does or thinks right now. Hopefully with more work in CBT I can start to at least get some of it under control.
The guinea pigs are doing great, although Bella still has a hard time being held and they are both too afraid to take advantage of the multilevel aspect of their cage. I bought them treats yesterday to feed them while they are being held and I also bought them so grass that I’ll grow for them. They are a couple of spoiled little girls, despite the fact that I’m super broke.
Undoing Crazy 