Posted by MCush on September 29, 2006, at 12:54:28
I want to see if anybody can relate to what I'm going through because I'm lost and starting to freak out
I'm currently waiting on an appointment at a Mental Health Hospital in my city to get assessed for my conditioin. This is a condition that I've had pretty much my entire life and that nobody, including my MD, believed that I had untill I stopped taking some of the medication that I've been on for the past 6 years so that the symptoms would be a lot more visible.
I think the only reason that I'm the only person that really knew that anything was wrong is because it's mainly all mental. I feel like my brain is basically on speed almost all the time. My thoughts just keep coming faster and faster untill eventually I get too damned tired to even think anymore and then I'm just kind of stuck in a daze for a day or two untill the cycle starts back up again.
My current daily medical cocktail consists of 500mg of Epival, 20mg of Lexapro, 1mg of Clonazepam and 7.5mg of Zopiclone. The Clonazepam and Zopiclone is taken exclusively before bed because otherwise I can't sleep. I'll just lie there and daydream, tossing and turning, untill it's time to get badk up again.
My mother passed on when I was 16 and that was pretty traumatic for me. That kicked in a viscious bout of depression which lasted for about 6 years untill I seeked help for it. It was pretty much the fact that I couldn't go through a day without bawling my eyes out and the fact that I just about completely quit sleeping (maybe I'd get 10 hours a week) that made me seek out help.
Eventually a Therapist got me settled on the above cocktail, instead it was Celexa back then instead of Lexapro, and that made things a lot easier to handle but I was still never really stable.
For example, I'm 28 now and still live at home with my Dad. I've only held a few short-term contract jobs which is about all that I could really handle regardless of the fact that I've got 3 different business related College diplomas. I've never had a real serious girlfriend and I basically had to cut off all my "friends" when I made a personal decision to get sober and after that realized hwo bad the drug problems were with everybody that I associated myself with.
Which brings me to another point... For about 8 years the only thing thaht would keep me from going off the rails, from keeping my brain from speeding up too much and just kept it nice and mellow was from drinking and smoking marijuana pretty much every day.
For a job, this is pretty much the process that I would go through. I would get a call for an Interview. At that point I would immediately have to go and search out where the job was located. I'd either drive or take public transit there and back home again, timing it. Sometimes I wouldn't be happy with the average time of the return trip because I had taken it at a different time of day and would have to do it again just to see what the trip really averaged out to be so that I would know exactly how long it would take me to get there in the mornings. Then I would have to make sure that I set my alarm clock to give me enough time to factor that trip in. Then I would have to figure out what else I had to do in the mornings... should I shower and shave in the morning or at night... should I bring a lunch or should I make one... if I made a lunch to bring, what should I bring and when should I buy the groceries, if I bought one, then where would I buy one... Did I look over the fast food locations around the job site properly the last time I was out? What about supper, same process... What about my clothes for the week... you know, you really can't wear jeans to an office environment and you shouldn't wear the same outfit twice in one week... when can I factor in doing laundry?
God, it's almost exhausting to describe that to anybody. But that is pretty much what I would go through and once I had my schedule down pat I would start training my body into accepting that schedule. You know, I would have to make sure that I got at least 7-8 hours of sleep every night so that my brain could function properly the next day and everything outside of work and sleeping would have to somehow fit into that schedule.
The sleeping schedule would have to be the same exact pattern every night. Hell, I haven't even worked in about a year and I'm still stuck on falling asleep at 10:30 at night and up by the latest 7:30am. Regardless of what day it was. I haven't been out at night or even out at night past Midnight for at least a year now.
Anyways, that process would take place before I even had the Interview. If I passed the interview and got the job, well, you can just imagine how exhausted I would be by then. I will generally crash and burn the first week on the job unless it was something that required no pressure whatsoever.
For the last year, due to other health problems that I am dealing with at the same time, I have been out of work and have basically become a recluse. I read voraciously... I have a pile of paperbacks and hardcover books on all kinds of different subjects, autobiographies, biographies, etc. that number at least 60 right now thaht I haven't even touched yet. I have to tell myself not to buy anymore till I have read those though I still do.
I'm enrolled in a few online distance education courses at College right now. I'm about a month ahead of schedule in all of them because I just can't keep from studying. I'll study for about 7-8 hours every day of the week because I am afraid of falling behind in my studies.
My medication even, I've got to keep at least 3-4 months of each pill on-hand just so that I can avoid the feeling that I'm going to forget to get my prescriptions renewed and go off the medication. I'll even lie to my Doctor about how much I really have at home so that he'll give me prescriptions to go out and buy more.
A few months ago I decided to go off of Celexa completely because nobody would believe how much I was suffering. My Father and Brother (the only family I really have) refuse to believe in mental illness and think that I'm just being myself in my own way. They refer to me as being lazy, that I need a good kick in the butt to get on with my life, and that I should get off all my happy pills so that I can move out into the real world.
I have been sober now for over a year so to have your family make you feel like a drug addict for taking medication that is supposed to be helping you is really going too far. That is one thing that I just couldn't deal with.
I told my MD that I was going to stop taking the Celexa. He didn't think it was a good idea but I told him that I needed to find out if I really needed to take it and if I did and if I had to be on it for life then I wanted him to refer me to the proper people that could help me effectively manage it. So he agreed and set me up with a schedule that allowed me to effectively taper down and get off of the medication in a two month span.
I went through absolute Hell trying to get off Celexa and actually managed to go 3 months without it though I was basically bedridden for the majority of the time. After 3 months I started to have attacks where my thoughts would just slow right down to a crawl like I was depressed but at the same time I'd be absolutely wired and wouldn't be able to sleep for a few nights even with the Clonazepam and Zopiclone. I'd be basically going in two directions at once... not sure if I wanted to break down and cry or just start screaming and jump out of my skin.
So back I went to my MDs office one morning when I was in the middle of one of those attacks. He was effectively freaked out, I agreed to go back onto Lexapro, and he filled out an "urgent" recommendation for me to be assessed at a local mental health facility. Even with an "urgent" referral you still have about a 2-3 month waiting period before they see you. It's been about a month now for me.
My MD has told my Father and I that he has a feeling that I've been suffering from OCD for quite a while now. My Father then told him, which was news to me, that my schoolteachers recommended that I start seeing a Psychiatrist for the same thing when I was about 4 years old, again when I was about 8 and then now. Since he didn't believe in mental illnesses he never followed through with it.
If anybody has actually been able to follow this post through, does it sound like I might be suffering from a form of OCD? All I know is that I'm very very tired... I just want this to stop. I'm 28 now and pretty much don't have a life and at this point I'm not even that interested in having one. The only thing that is keeping me going is that I'm very spiritual. I believe that your soul is attached to your body and the material world in order to learn and strengthen your spirit. If I really believed that committing suicide would actually stop everything I'd already be dead. Even though I already feel that I am out of hope for ever having a normal life I'm too stubborn to fool myself into believing that suicide is ever the answer.
Kind of funny... my stubborness is effectively keeping me alive.
Mike
poster:MCush
thread:690211
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20060927/msgs/690211.html