It's interesting, isn't it. (Said with a properly unemotional blogging tone.) Each day I am less able to do. The mind breaks into a virtual sweat before it grasps the job, and after several tries takes a break -- email, journal, something, until too much time has been wasted -- then gets back to work, tries again, and the fuzz returns, and very little gets done. You know, grasping a big enough picture to do the next of the little blocks that the overall job has been broken down into. So it goes, and I bring the work home, but that doesn't change anything.
My ex wife, who's been reading books and now realizes a dozen ways in which she failed to grasp me and only made our life more difficult with demands neither of us knew I couldn't meet, says just take the test and get on the meds. And yeah, my doctor set up the psych department to administer the test, I just have to schedule it. Typical of my sort, I forgot all about that. What was it, a month ago.
Anyway, okay, there's something. But what are they going to do? Either nothing, or give me meds. This is the part that requires the properly unemotional blogging tone. Some of you may not understand this, but meds are death. I don't fear death, but I won't volunteer for it. More on point, I don't know why, but when I think of going on any kind of brain medication, I break down. I mean when I'm all by myself. Of course if there's anyone around I'm all brave and logical. But otherwise, I'd really rather live the rest of it out on my dwindling investments and do whatever of life is left that doesn't need any god damn fucking meds.
And that's interesting. I can be in the company of an amazing lady and more blissful than you can imagine one night, and the next inspired to despair by an (imagined? but) stark choice between life and death -- not physical death, but scarier: end of one Don, and start of a facsimile.
No.
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So what you're suggesting is, the meds will make you no longer you, in some fundamental way? Simply because they're affecting brain chemicals? I assume you wouldn't feel similarly about meds that affected your heart, or stomach?
I can't talk you out of this, of course, but I'm really sorry you feel that way.
FWIW though, when I was on the anxiety meds I did not feel any different as a person at all. I behaved differently (cut down on the compulsive-anxiety driven stuff), and there were certain impulses and reactions that I no longer had as intensely. But from the inside I didn't feel any different. It's sort of like, if you normally liked spaghetti, and you took some meds that made you hate spaghetti, the next day you wouldn't choose spaghetti, but that doesn't change who you are. You'd just have peanut butter and go on being you. It really did feel that trivial in terms of my identity, although in terms of day-to-day quality of life it made a big difference.
Also, bear in mind that meds are not forever. I got my brain back in balance and I'm off them now and functioning and fine.
Well. And aside from what Teacake says, which resonates and makes sense, let me say this about that:
You already medicate with brain-affecting drugs. You drink a beer, sometimes more than one. You have wine, sometimes a lot. And other such sorts of stuff.
When you have a cold and you take the wonderful medication I have given you for it and a co-worker gave you to help clear your sinuses, well, that has a serious affect as well that impacts the mind in that it sets things to racing. Pseudoephedrine is the basis of crystal meth, after all.
Yes, the ADD drugs and anti-psychotics and anti-depressants do all kinds of other things to our brain chemistry and as such I am not generally a fan of them, but.
For every story about someone whose doc got it wrong, I can give you stories of people who, after fighting and resisting and then finally giving in go, "Why the fuck didn't I take these before?"
Yeah, well, it was a silly late-night whine, and I knew better and could have just gone to bed instead, but frankly blog-land doesn't have near enough raw edges in it so I just went for it. Thank you.
I've been on anti-depressants. And yeah, if you get the wrong one, you can feel yourself slipping away.
But then you tell your doc, and you go off that one and try another - and suddenly you're YOU again, just not the mopey, no-energy, miserable, quietly-dying-inside-from-never-ending-despair version of yourself that you've begun to believe is the real you but really isn't.
*hugs*
Well, I'm afraid I'm with Don on this one. Maintenance medication is mainly away for pharmacy companies to make money. Yes, some people feel better -- well, some people feel better on cigarettes or vodka, only we don't pretend these drugs don't have downsides.
Antidepressants quote routinely do no better than placebo, and they cause weight gain, diabetes, sexual dysfunction and other lovelies in many people who take them. Who wouldn't object? And yes, given the way drugs interact wiht the subtlest chemicals in our bodies and brains, I question the idea that you could possibly be your authentic self while maintaining a steady level of some kind of pharmaceutical pollution. I'm watching this go on with a teenage friend of mine right now. Realistically, some numbing drugs are the only way she's going to make it to legal adulthood while living with her horrible mother, but anyone who cares about her is counting the days till she can get off a drug that screws with her appetite, her alertness and her sleep patterns.
Why is it better to stuff drugs into someone who's emotionally overwhelmed and force them to smile and function than to give someone the space to feel their sadness and work through it? Are we that poor in compassion for one another?
My alternative, which I regard sometimes with longing, is to quit trying to fit into the chock-a-block steady-work routine of meeting the requirements of my team-centered corporation and just go live my own life. But I can't afford to be poor yet (is one way to put it).
But to reset: This isn't about depression so much, but rather the more mysterious problem of keeping focus. Not an issue when writing or driving or doing other engaging and serial activities. But the requirements of my job and of similar things such as managing the proper disposition of my father's financial remains cannot be done in ten-second chunks of attention.
Yeah, my fault I think for ppl jumping into the antidepressant pool there.
I agree with sledpress with an "except". I've seen enough of it properly diagnosed and meds applied care-fully (deliberate respelling) and for short term while therapy also provided (proactive cognitive and behavioral therapy, not Bob Newhart couch therapy) that made a huge difference.
Guess I'm just saying do not dismiss out of hand when examining the options, and give reasoned consideration to all aspects of the problem and proposed solutions. Get data.
I'm with Sledpress here. I also have seen that therapy can do a lot, indeed, I trained to be a therapist once upon a time and saw that those clients who worked at it made positive changes.
I think doing drugs to improve focus is a very last resort. You'd be better off doing yoga, or tai chi or qi gong or something of that nature.
Or, it could well be that you are just dissatisfied with your circumstances and it has you jittery enough so that focus is tough. I've been there too, but I was lucky enough to have that happen when I was young and had nothing to look after except my own bad habits.
When you won't let yourself do things, sometimes it's because you know that DOING those things is the real death.
I experience this more and more as I grow older. I look at the jobs I might claim and think, now why would ANYONE want to do that?! I become more and more selective. Maybe I'm selecting myself straight out of the mainstream.
Which is, I'm pretty sure, what you want to do as well.
I took antidepressants for a couple years: Wellbutrin, because it doesn't kill libido, and having just become reacquainted with mine, I didn't want to lose it, outlet or no outlet for it.
The drug allowed me to form intention and follow through with action. I finally pulled the trigger on my marriage.
During the time of Wellbutrin, I learned how to titrate my mood through exercise, eating properly, rest, and play. Then I stopped the drug. I didn't need it because I had learned its lessons.
I still had highs and lows on it. But the lows were not quite so low, and they did not last long. And that's the difference between "normal" and "me": not feeling things less, but avoiding getting caught in the false cognition that the low place is inevitable--or an okay place to stay.
So each person is different, as everyone has said. But the drugs can be tools you use, not that you are used by.
As Gekko said, we are constantly tweaking who we are in all sorts of ways. The one true Don doesn't live outside the bubbling pot of chemicals. At least, I don't think so.
What scares you about being poor? I mean, we're all scared by it, I imagine. But what's the shape of YOUR fear?
I had one doctor refuse to start me on Topamax because he said it would cause me a bit of fuzzy thinking and mess up my word-memory, which it did, but SO DID THE MIGRAINES. As the headaches lessened, I somehow learned to deal with the other stuff... new paths, idk, and I feel that today I am not dumber than I was pre-March 2009 when a different doc R'x the Topamax. But yeah for a little while, maybe a year, I did feel in some ways like another person (which might explain the decision to be with TMWBMH for so long)... and my ex commented as such. Thought he was just being mean, but no, it was true. But I switched back. The brain is amazingly adept at fixing itself back to how it "wants" to be, like when people try to diet and end up sabotaging themselves. But of course if you really don't want to do what you're doing, then maybe you won't do it even with the meds. :)
The shape of my fear, Christine, is being known to explicitly make the decision not to be the breadwinner anymore -- never mind marital separation, I still support the four of us -- as well as live the loss of freedom that surely comes with having less cash and a smaller likely retirement if any. I know, cry me a river, I'm a lucky fucker to even have a thought of avoiding what is the norm for most people. But that is the shape of the fear: To throw something away of great value, regardless of the value it really has for me.
Anyway, went to med office today, big long process to get anywhere what with classes and appointments and whatnot, minor miracle if I follow through very far.
What Teacake, gekko, Jenna, and Christine said as far as any fears of losing yourself. If it were to happen, you'd either adjust the meds or get off them and go back to your old self.
I can relate to using drugs to get to a point of being able to handle things, find the right, more natural way to stay able to handle things, and then get off. Sometimes I felt a little flat, no really high highs, but also none of the horrible lows that could lay me out.
I agree with Harry when he says, "You'd be better off doing yoga, or tai chi or qi gong or something of that nature." Yes, you would be better off, but you have to make yourself do it, and that's not always easy, whereas popping some pills is easy, and fits into our workaday lives.
But I was doing the discipline thing pretty well in the last year before I got my present job when I was teaching part time, painting, and keeping house. I had the time/energy to reflect and plan what I ate, to meditate, to do yoga. And all of that had a very good effect on my mental state. I would love to be doing all of that now, BUT...THIS, this is it:
"My alternative, which I regard sometimes with longing, is to quit trying to fit into the chock-a-block steady-work routine of meeting the requirements of my team-centered corporation and just go live my own life. But I can't afford to be poor yet (is one way to put it)."
I was poor for the years 2009-2011, and it was NOT GOOD. I got my present job in the nick of time because it was really starting to look bad since they cut back my teaching hours. I really, really think, though, and you've heard me talk about my feelings about the way our society works, that if you could "live your own life", if all of us could "live our own lives", we wouldn't be such a drug happy society. (Of course I'm not talking about just skipping off into the land of irresponsibility, I mean living lives that are meaningful to US.)
From what you've shared, I don't think you really need drugs, not for what you perceive to be "wrong" with you. I mean, I ask you, when you get into one of your projects, are you really unfocused?
Of course we have to come up with ways to keep us in line so that we can take care of our responsibilities, but those ways ought to be as natural and doable for who are as possible, otherwise we just feel like failures.
"You have to go to considerable trouble to live differently from the way the world wants you to
live. That’s what I’ve discovered about writing. The world doesn’t want you to do a damn thing. If you wait till you got time to write a novel or time to write a story or time to read the hundred
thousands of books you should have already read--if you wait for the time, you’ll never do it. Cause there ain’t no time; world don’t want you to do that. World wants you to go to the zoo and eat cotton candy, preferably seven days a week." ~ Harry Crews, 1935-2012, from Dinty Moore's FB page today.
Responsibility for the family and the lifestyle set up keeps you tied to a job that has a specific expectation for performance within a corporate framework that does NOT align well with either your actual interests or your best work methods.
When you are engaged, you focus and create. When you are too challenged or bored, you cannot focus and you find the effort to do so creates a level of noise in your brain that shuts out normal thought processes. Or so I guess, as that is how _I_ experience it.
A mixture of self-loathing and depression looms.
To fix it would require you to step away from the obligations you undertook, find a position that stimulates you appropriately, and possibly take a cut in income.
You are, for now, sacrificing your essential happiness for the future of your sons, and for the woman you have left behind.
I find that simultaneously admirable and saddening.
Meds may quiet the chatter and fuzz in your brain long enough to give you a chance to find a method to quiet it naturally. Maybe.
Stay attuned to yourself, and be ready to change things so that you stay essentially you.
You met TUFKAS. You know his story. You know that he is adjusting his meds in order to re-find himself.
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