I guess I wanted this to be easier

I have wanted to be off of Zyprexa since about almost as long as I have been on it- after about 3 or 4 weeks I got tired of being so numbed out and tried to go off of it, with a resulting hospitalization as I got agitated during withdrawal. Subsequent attempts haven't been any more successful.

This time I got impatient, I went too fast. I have to go up a little, be slower to go down. I have too much at stake. I have to function. I have a life. Zyprexa has made me obese. It is doing bad things to my brain, as does any antipsychotic. But it is damn hard to stop. Much harder than klonopin or adderall.

If I can't concentrate enough to do my notes at work- this is not sustainable. Forget how I feel... as if I could. But I can't get myself fired. I have to take my Zyprexa, for now. At 5mg, I was concentrating pretty well on Zyrexa. Any higher and it was definitely bad news, but at 5mg I seemed to do okay. I can only hope that at 5mg it is not doing too much damage.

I want to stop thinking about meds. I want to just live. All this thinking about meds makes me feel more like a mental patient, not less. Normally, I really don't think about it all that much anymore. I am just different- I do feel that. How can I not when I live in this family-centered town and I am about the only person my age with no husband, no children? Of course I feel different. Even without my past. But different is just different.

What I was hoping that my "mood disorder" would become like my hypertension. I take meds for it, it is controlled. I don't go around thinking of myself as someone with hypertension, although I know that I am. Twice a year I see my doctor, she adjusts my meds if necessary- tells me to exercise more, lose weight, and I am on my way.

I know that at times meds made me worse- but I blamed that on bad doctors. I was thinking that, perhaps, I am "doing well" now because of my meds, just like my blood pressure. But now the evidence seems to be that, for most people, the meds worsen long-term outcomes. And I don't know what to do about that. It seems like I need to do something.

There has always been a part of me that wondered, to what extent am I doing well in spite of my meds, not because of them.

And who really knows.