I just watched "Snowpiercer" on-demand from my cable company. It was a good movie, but nothing that will stay with me. The ending just seemed to have come straight from the Matrix movies. But it was a good movie.
I am sleepy today, and maybe that is because I took a smidge more klonopin last night plus some benedryl. Yes, I am lowering my Zyprexa again. I think that the problems I have had at 5mg have really not been from the lower dose directly- but because I take more klonopin, especially to sleep, and then get rebound effects which set me off. So I am going to watch my klonopin use and taper if I have to take more than a quarter milligram, and hopefully I will be okay. If I am not okay- I will just decide I do need more Zyprexa and that will be it. But I have to test this theory.
I am already less hungry today. I only had lunch at 3pm. You wouldn't think that going from 7.5mg to 5mg would be that big of a deal, but it is. Yesterday, at the higher dose- I was so hungry that I pretty much had two dinners. 7.5mg is where my appetite peaks for me with Zyprexa. I don't think 10gm is any worse. Or maybe I am just so numb that I don't notice how hungry I am.
I told my step mother that I had gone down to 300mg on the Effexor. She asked me what the "next step" is. I don't know that there is a next step. My pro-med psychologist stepmother has become ant-med. At least for me. She said that meds are not doing what they used to for me. I really don't know what she means. When were they working better- when I was in and out of hospitals? I think that what she really means is that they didn't totally "fix me." They got me to work- but not to stability, not to a husband, etc. I think she expected more from all of these meds- from me on all of these meds. Sometimes I do too. But that doesn't mean I am getting off of Effexor.
Two psychiatrists tried to manage my depression without the use of antidepressants on the grounds that I am bipolar, and both times I went to such depths of hell for such lengths of time that I have no wish to try life off of antidepressants. That is actually how I wound up on Zyprexa- off of antidepressants I went into a psychotic depression- despite taking 3 mood stabilizers.
So Effexor, yes. Lithium, yes. Provigil, yes. Thyroid hormone, yes- especially since the lithium is making me hypothyroid. Zyprexa and Zonegran- I don't know. Probably yes at some dose, hopefully lower. And then something to sleep, maybe. I would love to be able to wean myself off of those. There was a time I slept without taking anything- but it has been a long time.
I hope I can sleep without taking so much tonight. I'll read or watch CSPAN book TV before bed. No movies- anything exciting will just wake me up. I make that mistake sometimes.
It is so hard for people to understand that taking these awful, toxic medications doesn't fix the problems in the brain. I've had family members express horror at the scary meds I take and yet those meds keep me alive, even if alive isn't where we wish it was. I think that as hard as it has been for me to adjust to the fact that meds aren't enough for me to live the life I wish I could it has been harder for my family to reach that point. My sister gets it the best of all because she has read enough and is smart enough that she has declined all antidepressants for herself, even when indicated, because she knows that she is at risk for them triggering bipolar in herself. She has the easiest time accepting how things are and I think it is because she learned for herself instead of relying on me to tell her but not believing me because I am, after all, "sick".
ReplyDeleteJMJ