tiredFor the first time in many, many years i unilaterally decided to not do what the doctor ordered. I cut my 10mg Abilify in half today and will continue on half tomorrow. I cannot deal with falling asleep in the middle of the day, it's just too frustrating. Friday i fell in a heap and cried for hours, not strictly over the sleep thing, though that just makes me feel all the more worthless and out of control so it enflames whatever existing misery i'm experiencing. I hate being held hostage by my medication. Tomorrow i will ask to keep the dose low or cut the drug altogether. I see little point in going from sleeping 12 hours a night to sleeping 8 hours a night if then i'm tired all day anyway.
Anti-psychotics are great, i really do appreciate how they can shut out the screaming voices and constant hum and odd thoughts, but perhaps these are things i should just learn how to deal with on my own. I can't handle the sedation. Seroquel was the worst and left me practically catatonic, Zyprexa is fine during the day but i can't wake up, Abilify just seems to makes me dozey. I don't think any of the others are cleared for bipolar maintenance, so this was probably my last option. And none of them appear to have much of an anti-depressant effect on me either, which is a shame because apparently for some people they do.
I had a bunch of conversations in hospital with people taking anti-psychotics. It spun me out that i heard from two separate people that they liked it because it made them feel like they were stoned all day. I used to get stoned all the time as a kid, but i couldn't imagine doing it as an adult. When i was 18ish i got to see the really dark side of chronic pot smokers and it kinda put me off the drug for life. Later on i lived with one who seemed to manage okay in spite of his addiction and it changed my mind a bit, but God knows it'd never work for me. Maybe that's why these drugs don't work for me either. I'm not fortunate enough to get the "activating" reaction that some people get, and i just don't enjoy operating when i'm spaced out or tired. I always want to be wired in to whatever i'm doing, like really feel like i'm fucking there. Otherwise i feel out of control, and ultimately that depresses me.
My therapist likes to talk about letting go of control, letting life be whatever it'll be. I mean, obviously you have control over some things, but the things you don't you just need to accept. I think i just regurgitated the serenity prayer. Point being, maybe i am too much of a control freak. Maybe i want to be "together" too much, so much so that i kinda miss out on just experiencing life as it is. In that case perhaps it's not such a bad thing to live a medicated life and just deal with the spaciness, maybe i shouldn't always be chasing that crystal-clear state of mind where everything seems to fall into place, maybe that's not realistic. Fuck i dunno. That's what i want my doctor to prescribe, you know, some drug that i can take where everything will be clear and focused and i'll get shit done and have time and energy and motivation to do more too. It's seems it's science fiction.
They say you shouldn't overanalyze yourself. Aside from sounding self-absorbed, it is kinda neurotic to obsess over your own mental state. I mean, LiveJournal is largely about just that, but still. I guess it's just something that fascinates me - how the mind works, how people react to things differently... Perhaps i should've taken more psychology classes in school. I'd probably still have ended up a fucking computer programmer, but maybe i'd have more sophisticated things to say.
