Off My Meds – The Devil is not the King of Hell

Tonight I’m gunna do some things that I’ve never done before,
I’m gunna find out what the screamin’s about
On the other side of that door
So don’t you bother callin’
There ain’t nobody home
Sometimes we’ve got to stand together
Sometimes alone

The devil is not the king of hell

Tom Morello – King Of Hell Lyrics

A year later and I have lost. I have lost the ability to control things. I hate it. So many times you hear the ol “uh oh…their off their meds again”. I am here to tell you, its true.

I spent years getting control of both the mania and depressive conditions of my mind. I have spent the past 12 months reflecting on my past and can now clearly identify what was going on. It’s a relief and a curse at the same time. I can now actually tell when I am in each swing, and its faster than I thought or remember.

I am now one of those people, I have lost the ability to control the phases if I do not take my medicine. So may laugh and say “oh you always have self control”. The fact is I don’t. Here is what I have learned.

1 Wake Up

2 Go to Work / Weekend Play

3 Options:

• Take meds early, stay in good mood most of the day. Snap less at co-workers, curse alot less and focus better. Productivity high, anger low.
• Take meds late, morning sucks, anger level high, faster to snap at people, coffee intake high to balance out. Don’t eat, creativeness high, mood swings.
• Forget to take meds till 5 PM. The day sucks, I quit remembering things all day. Letters go backwards at times. Recalling basic information is random. Creativity depends on mood swing. Coffee intake extremely high, I don’t eat.

4 End of Day – depending on how option 3 went either my meds are wearing off, or just kicking in. This is not a good time for me. There is a failing sensation in my body that I may just let go, I might snap at my girls more, have a short fuse with my wife, or just want to slam my head against a wall. All depends on which cycle I am in.

5 Sleepy Time – 2 options:

• Take sleeping anti-depressant – happy mood, focus ok, likely to sleep on couch. Vivid dreams and nightmares. Wake up foggy but focused, very quiet, brain still. But well rested. Focus better in morning which helps hold off if I mess up on option 3. 7.5 Mg or 15 Mg is a deciding factor.
• Do not take it – bad idea. I learned this months ago. For years I have always been a night owl, living on low sleep. So when I started taking my sleeping med after months of good sleep I thought that my body would now be in a sleep cycle. In short – hell no. Insomnia kicked in from June to August, I didn’t sleep more than 3 hours a night at best. My therapy session did not go well, she was not happy to learn I stopped taking it. I at least started back on 7.5 and worked up to 15 again and so far, so good.

(for a reference, it is between 4 and 5 that I should not be allowed on any social media)

When I say nightmares, these are ones I do not have the option of waking up from. They are curious and terrifying at the same time. In this year I have seen things in my dreams that make me question the existence of God. The sheer gore and destruction that plagues them. Yet I sleep so well.

On or off each day is a challenge. Keeping my anxiety at bay is now harder than ever. I worked so damn hard for so many years. Fighting the swings, trying to keep myself under control. I became the master of my domain. It’s all gone now. I am… in short …. dependent. Which I must say is not a bad thing but I am scared. What if I forget completely. What if one day I wake up and the random hallucination start again. What if I snap to hard at my kids or wife.

There are some days when I wake up, I just want to close my eyes and make it go away. No one knows, but I start the day seeing numbers backwards, I put on my clothes backwards, time becomes an illusion. Often when I drive places I have no re-collection of the route I took there. I forget names, my own address, phone numbers I have repeated a thousand times are gone. My therapist has told me that’s because of the anxiety. I don’t care what it is, it f’n sucks.

I often wish I didn’t know I was Bi-Polar, that I didn’t learn so much on the family history after finding out. It’s good to know I am not alone in this. My wife is a champ to say the least :).

I now live on 235mg a day, to ensure that I am not the King of Hell.

Sleep well,

MagneticNox