Obsession – Story of an honest man losing

Here’s a story of an honest man losing religion,
Climbing the pulpit steps before an eager congregation,
The while praying came a wicked inspiration,
Brothers, sisters this is what he said:

Dearly beloved, dearly beloved, dearly beloved,
I can’t relate to you, I can’t relate to you!

“Dearly Beloved” – Bad Religion

First and foremost I am an obsessive person. I have been for a long time. Now, before I start going on about my self reflection over the past few days lets take a look at what the definition of the word “Obsession” is.

obsession /ob·ses·sion/ (ob-sesh´un) a persistent unwanted idea or impulse that cannot be eliminated by reasoning.

Dorland’s Medical Dictionary for Health Consumers. © 2007 by Saunders, an imprint of Elsevier, Inc. All rights reserved.

Unless, right now, you and I are on the exact same page, then you have no idea. That is exactly what I hope to help explain. What my obsessions have been and still are. Now some people have typical obsessions over many things in their life. I know for a fact however that people like me that ride this insane roller-coaster go through obsessive behavior that can not only be productive but also self destructive. To our delight, the self destructive part at times does not seem that bad.

Over the past few days, while diving deep into my mind to try to unwrap memories that I had suppressed long ago, I discovered a pattern in which I could not put a word to. After some research, and looking into behavior patterns I came across the word obsession. Before now I never really thought myself as obsessive. One who over thinks things yes, one who has some compulsions to do things over and over again, and one who has / had in short/long periods in which I hold on to any type of object, person or emotion that I can seize and essentially drive it into the ground until it is used up and worthless. All for what I asked, for the high.

The word obsession hit me like a brick. Similar to what it was like admitting I was depressed, and coming to terms with the fact that I was bipolar. In the same way though, a relief. Now, I have a chance to identify my patterns, my obsessions and work to correct them. Maybe, that is. I have a mental track record of driving myself over the edge, and even though I have been stable for quite some time now, I often feel that I am missing the high of obsession. Like I am not putting enough in, I am weak and need to prove that I can do more, be the absolute best, out work, out smart, and do anything to get what I want, at any cost.

Right now in this very moment, I am angry. This new med I am trying out “Latuda” has me pissed. Not because it is not working, but yet another side effect. It is only day 5 and over the past 2 days I realized at various times I would start feeling sick. Turns out it is due to “heat sensitivity”. What the hell is that? I live in the freaking south and suddenly if I get overheated I have to cool down immediately to feel better? I felt like crap today that I had to stay on the couch after us going around town for a bit while my wife and girls go to go down to the pool. They had new pool toys and wanted to show me, and I had to fucking miss it. Damn. Well enough of that. I will get through it, and at least make it through the next 4 weeks before evaluation again.

Back to obsession. In a moment, as you move down this page I am going to outline everything that I can remember that I am or have been obsessed with. I am going to give you a quick example of what I am obsessed with in this very moment, and have been for the past month. See, since starting meds over a year and a half ago I have gained around 40Lbs +/-3 at any time. To some that may not seem like much. I am 6’2 and was 145lbs, with a size 32 waist, and within months I was up to a 34. Now at that time I was a little excited, I had always struggled with being the “skinny” guy. The guy people always said “you can eat anything and not gain a pound” blah blah blah. So now that I was up to a big boy size was a good thing. So I did, kept checking my BP, weight, BMI to make sure it was on track. I was terrified that I would get to the mark for my height, weight and age (31 current), that I would be considered overweight. Then, within the past 4 months it happened. Changing to seroquel, I went from around 180 to 196. Checked my stats and low and behold I was “overweight”. At that point mentally I had a breakdown. How could I let this happen, how could I let my own willpower get so weak that I could not even control my appetite over a med. I wanted to punch a whole through the wall. My entire body tense every second I thought about it. Every day I would put on my jeans and they would feel tight I felt like a looser. This would NOT happen past this. Now you may say, you sound like a woman or something, oh well. This is about as real as it gets. Now the obsession started.

I was going into a manic phase, I had a goal. Drop the weight ASAP, do NOT be a loser, get back my willpower, take control and do whatever it takes. If that meant drinking 10 cups a coffee a day to suppress my appetite, then so be it. Well thanks to the tremors as well, and having to quit seroquel, my plan started to work. I took back portion control, changed by diet and intake and have dropped 10Lbs within 4 weeks, and trimmed down by BMI where I am back in the normal range. But this is not the end, this WILL NOT happen again, I cannot stress that enough. I will not be a label of american obesity, I will not be fat, a slob and someone who is out of control. Do you get that? Do you?!

Now that is the simple example, I am not going to even attempt to go into the details of the following list. I don’t even know if I am that prepared to address everything I have and will do at this time.

So here is to the past, present and future:

I am/have been obsessed with:

• Pain / Suffering
• Death
• Cigarettes
• Drugs
• Alcohol
• Skinhead Subculture
• Punk Subculture
• Music (all types)
• Bass guitar
• Tattoos
• Anarchism
• War that leads to the total destruction of mankind
• Insomnia
• Art
• Boxing
• Spending Money (a great deal of it)
• Clothing Brands
• Adrenaline
• Anything to get a rush or high (and I mean anything)
• Self Pain affliction
• Religion
• God/Jesus
• Sex
• Love
• Passion
• Cartoons
• Reading
• Astrophysics
• Poetry
• Game Theory
• Learning in general
• Computer Programming
• Computer Networks
• Quantum Mechanics
• Pornography
• Winning
• Losing
• Watching others loose
• Self interest
• Watching others suffer
• World History
• Evolutionary Science
• Archaeology
• Work
• Sleep
• Depression
• Being a caring person
• Self image
• Lying / Manipulation
• Manipulation of people
• Business Analytic
• Problem Solving
• My Wife, Kids, Family
• Fire / Explosives

And probably a few more that I cannot even remember yet. I’m sure the list will grow. To me this isn’t a list of sins or trying to come to terms with myself or behavior in the past. This is who I am and will be. I will get better at control, I will listen to other, I will…..because in absolute chaos their is a beauty in which one cannot imagine, and order that exists that keep us stable. That is what the universe has taught me.

Sleep Well,

Magnetic Nox

Adjustments – Make it Chemical

Give him something, make it chemical, chemical

You’ll get used to cranial niches
Smooths out neuro-transmitted glitches

Pretty Girls Make Graves – Chemical, Chemical

Today’s appointment went well. Now that I can identify swings in my behavior and when they occur, we are starting to figure out that most of my swings are towards the “manic” side, in about a 3-4 week cycle. This explains a lot, and my “constant energy” in the past. Now we are working to identifying more and more to the type/level of Bi-Polar. Right now as it stands BiPolar 1 (link if you don’t know what that is) is where it stands. Between age 19 and up I have about cleared a majority of that page.

My main concern that I brought up was my mood swings in between the intervals of the medication in which I was feeling like I could not control. Even in today’s appointment I wanted to just gnaw on my arm. Little known fact is that when I get really hyper but can’t show it, I will bite the inside of my forearm or my right index finger to focus on pain rather than on the stress. It’s the pain that I am addicted to.

I am on 3 medications at the moment, they are:

Lamictal – 200Mg Daily – Mood Stabilizer

Prozac – 20Mg Daily – Low Dosage to keep Anxiety Disorder in check. To much and it puts the manic over the edge.

Remeron – 15Mg Nightly – Anti-Depressant and Sleep Aid

Now all of the above work great for me, but there are still disorder issues that cannot be quelled by these. The ones that I am most worried about. At first there was an idea today to see if the Lamictal could be pushed to a higher dose safely since it works so well for me. Or altering the sleep aid. But I already knew that coming off the Remeron at night leads me right back to insomnia. I also have learned, by accident that taking 22.5Mg of Remeron will put me over the edge in the morning, sending me close to the edge on the mania side.

The adjustment today is to take me off of the Remeron and get me on an extended release mood stabilizer that will complement the other one, and help carry it through the entire day. This way by 3ish each day I don’t feel like a hamster in a trapped cage and wanting to punch a whole in the wall.

In it’s place will be: Seroquel XR. Starting at 50Mg tonight, and building up to 200Mg over the next couple of nights in 50Mg increments. Then to remain on that until my next appointment in 6 weeks to see what the results are. You know what sucks, is having to remember to take everything on time each day.

I am very confident in this adjustment as this med. is directed specifically for BiPolar 1. There is one other thing that I keep experiencing, ever since my late teens when it started. That is the following:

Forgetting basic things such as phone number and my address

Shuffling letters and numbers

Reading numbers out of order that are in a sequence

Time lapse, random now, but forgetting how I would get from one place to another. Possibly related to more when I am in insomnia mode. The rest however seem to persist no matter my sleep habits. Some days are worse than others. At first we had thought it was tied to my Anxiety, which makes sense. But it has kept on going. It’s not tied to anything else that can be found, and I don’t think it has anything to do with dyslexia as I have never shown any symptoms of that as a child or now. My personal theory is that my brain is moving faster than my eyes/body can put everything together. For example, when i look at a number, lets say one that I had trouble with today, 5 times in a row at that. The number is

07080

However I see and type it as

07800

I think somehow my brain looks at the whole sequence, and not left to right. Then it translates what it reads as I type it, read it, or write it. This is also an issue when I read aloud as well. So if anyone in the blogger world has any ideas and has similar problems I would be open to your advise.

Some reading may wonder why I post so much detail about my life, medication etc.. The reason is because I want to be transparent. Writing about it is my way of showing that life is not always kitten tickles. To many people do not talk about what is wrong with them, giving the impression to people that have issues like they are just doing everything wrong. It also helps me keep track of what I am feeling when. This way I can re-read and take notes later to bring up.

Sleep Well,

MagneticNox

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