Falling Down Again

The day has progressed, I have not. I am feeling more depressed. Of course, I have not left the house. I am hoping to still make my dinner plans. Maybe I can do one thing today.

Like any good drug addict, I am already thinking of my next pharmacological escape. Which means, calling my psychiatrist and asking for a new drug. Is it time? How long do I wait? How bad do I let things get?

I'm thinking that this is my fall/winter SAD depression kicking in. All the rainy, cloudy days that we have had recently hasn't helped matters any.

I really don't want more meds, I want less meds. I think meds made me bipolar, I started out with just depression. I think my meds are making me stupid, and taking my drive away. They have certainly made me fat. But when you are lying in bed, and life is just slipping away, and death seems like a comforting thing- well, you will try anything. What is there to lose?

What I am doing today is spending hours in front of my light box- I've set it up so I can lie in bed and still use it. It's cheaper than going to Florida! Which I can't afford, in large part to all my medical spending!

I really don't want more meds. But I know if things get bad enough, I'll change my mind.

Very Strange Dream

I dreamed last night that I was a part of this group of scientists that was doing experiments on rats. We were trying to teach them enlightenment by nearly drowning them over and over again, only to give them a breath or two at the last minute. I have no idea what the theory was, only that there was one.

In the dream, I was torn. My mind said that the theory works, and we will have a bunch of enlightened rats. But my heart said, what we are doing is really cruel. Look at these rats suffering!

When I was in college, I worked for two years in a lab where we routinely killed mice and rats. Not for their benefit, but ours. No enlightened rats. Only theories about the neurotransmitters in human brains.

I woke up feeling a little strange, but less depressed.

I turned on the TV while drinking my morning coffee. Of course it is all about 9/11. Until today, it has been all about the floods.

I remember where I was on 9/11, as I'm sure everyone does. I was living in Philadelphia in grad school. Someone called me up to ask me if we were going to have class that day, and I asked, why wouldn't we have class? And then they told me. I ran to the TV. It was like looking at scenes from a horror movie, I couldn't believe it was real. My dad was in NYC that day, very close by. After the first plane hit, they kept going with their meeting. After the second hit, they stopped. It took him all day long to get home to Brooklyn.

I had a NYC psychiatrist at the time. And he didn't think I was sufficiently traumatized from 9/11- but then he could never read me. He told me it was because of some medication I was taking that had been shown to protect from PTSD in some study. I can't remember which one now.

I was traumatized, but I think not like New Yorkers. And I think that was why he wasn't seeing what he expected- I was living in Philly. Also, I tend to keep my emotions inside a lot. He didn't see what was there.

OK, So I Didn't Make it to the Gym Today

I am depressed today, the first day in a few days. But I'm handling it. I went out for lunch, got a fast food cheeseburger and shake, and sat in my car in the sun and listened to music on the radio. It helped, and I didn't cry.

Now I am home and just want to curl up in bed. And eat chocolate ice cream, which I don't have.

I'm trying to stay in the moment, and not wonder if I will still be depressed tomorrow, and think about potentially how long this depression could go on. Maybe this is the onset of my fall depression, despite my light box. Don't go there. Maybe this is because of going off of the Abilify- don't go there. I'll find out soon enough if this is a trend.

So the mindfulness people, and my therapist in particular, say that when you are feeling bad, it is enough to be feeling bad in that moment. Don't project into the future. But at some point, don't you have to make plans, make decisions? Like am I going to be too depressed to do the things I have planned for tomorrow? And should I make adjustments? Should I cancel anything?

Nothing is simple, not even mindfulness.

But for today, I will try to accept what is, and hope tomorrow is better.

Abilify is Not Good for Me

I have been feeling like I have ADD on steroids recently- which is why I went off of Abilify the first time. I can't focus, I can't sit still, I have a lot of irrelevant and obsessive thoughts racing through my head. It is horrible. It took me a little while to realize that it was happening again.

So on Friday, I didn't take my morning 5mg dose. I have been so much better. So far, I am still taking my nighttime 5mg dose. I don't know what to do about that, only that I shouldn't go off it right away, if I do want to go off of it. Which I think I do.

I think that the Abilify does help with the depression, in some ways. But, at quite a price. If it makes me stupid- that is too high a price. Because I was starting to get depressed over how out of it I was feeling! Really depressed. Because I started feeling like I couldn't even function, and that is depressing.

Sometimes the problem is the medication.

I can't for the life of me understand why we are putting so many people on antipsychotics who are not psychotic. Now when I went on zyprexa, you could have probably made the case for it. But the Abilify was just added for depression. There were other things to do. There are other things to do. Abilify was just an easy thing to do, especially because I had a slightly agitated depression at the time, so there is always the fear of triggering mania. I had mentioned going back on wellbutrin to my doctor, but he suggested going back on abilify, and I agreed. Silly me. Next time my depression cries out for pharmacological intervention, I am going back on Wellbutrin. No more Abilify. One antipsychotic is enough.