Today is Wednesday; I had to consult the calendar to confirm it as I still live in the unstructured days blending into days that is mental ill health.
It’s the middle of the week and it’s been a middling kind of day.
I was high this morning, determined to buy a bike and learn to paint with oils so I could create the masterpiece that my brain has been formulating.
I was persuaded not to buy the bike (not safe to drive = not safe to cycle) and persuaded to try acrylics for the painting. My masterpiece is still locked mostly in my head as I discovered yet again that my actual talent does not match my ambition when it comes to art. I should’ve stuck with my usual medium of crayons.
Feeling restless agitated and fruitlessly creative I turned to Lorazepam.
The Lorazepam calmed me sufficiently that the rest of my day was spent in a kind boring suspension, aside from a trip to the pharmacists to collect my prescriptions.
The pharmacist felt it was his duty to warn me that the drugs I was collecting had some potentially dangerous interactions with each other- my reply “yes I know” it’s amazing how quickly one becomes accepting of such things.
Way back in November 09 when I initially approached my GP about my illness I was adamant that I wasn’t depressed and therefore didn’t need anti-depressant medication. Little did I know that I’d soon be downing anti-psychotics, mood-stabilisers, benzodiazepines and the rather charmingly classified hypnotics in order to get me up in the morning, help me through the day and help me get to sleep again at the end of it.
Each of these drugs brings it’s own information leaflet that at first you read hungrily, looking for hope, answers, reasons to or not to try the drugs. By the second week you know which end of the box to open to avoid coming into contact with the leaflet at all.
At the start of your treatment you are an active patient-
“So you recommend I try and SSRI then? Well I’d like some time to consider it”
A few months later you’re grabbing off-label prescriptions desperate that this one might just be the one that helps you get your life back.
Each new drug or dose increase brings a special little gift- shaky hands (eyeliner is a no-no), dizziness, weight gain, insomnia, drowsiness, hair loss- I believe anything is possible after witnessing my own face double in size after a reaction to one particular medication. Yet I continue popping pills ever-hopeful that one day I’ll just have a day.
So that was Wednesday, it was rubbish but way better than Tuesday which was awful. Tomorrow must be Thursday or as we call it round here ‘bin day’ because that’s the day the bin gets emptied and it doesn’t get more normal than that. I’ll keep taking my medication in the hope that ‘eyeliner day’ is just around the corner.