As I flip through the scattered entries in my journal from the past several months, looking to find my lost resolve... I stumbled upon a lively discussion (that I had with myself...) detailing the evolution of my perceptions regarding medication, diagnoses, etc. In mid December, I decided to try to face the world without meds for the first time in nearly 10 years. I will be the first to say that I do not encourage anyone to do the same, nor do I feel that medications are without benefit or merit. I simply allowed my curious nature to experiment with the novel concept that crazy begets more crazy... and in examining my own diagnostic history and my most recent descents into madness, I saw firsthand how one psychological disorder can confound diagnosis and, in turn, the entire resultant treatment process...
December 28-31, 2012
"Recently, I've found myself becoming increasingly frustrated at my own decision several weeks ago to discontinue all of my psych meds. Looking at all of my perceived failures over the past few weeks, I realized that I have, in fact, become extremely bitter that what I had once found to be a source of relief from my brain's incessant badgering, is no longer a viable option for securing peace of mind permanently...
Medication made things (if only slightly) simpler, made the din quieter, and every so often, I would go so far as to say that they calmed me down... A Herculean feat for a tiny pill prescribed to a walking bundle of nerves... After a scary few months (September, October, November of 2012), where I suddenly found myself seizing, cracking open my head, biting my tongue, and collapsing for no apparent reason... Well, no NO reason, but it couldn't be pinned down whether it was 18 years of self-inflicted violence from my eating disorder, or the sharp involuntary decrease in Benzo usage. You see, I moved from a large city in July of 2012, back to my small home town after 2+ years of being consistently prescribed Clonazapam for anxiety. Though I never abused the medication, doctors in my hometown either refused to prescribe it, or refused to even see me in the first place. After calling 30+ doctors and psychiatrists who either didn't accept anxiety patients, or didn't accept uninsured patients, after 3 massive seizures... I was done... The fear of having a seizure because I could not obtain my medication was worse than all of the previous fears that caused all of the panic attacks I ever had...COMBINED! When I finally met my current therapist, he changed my medication, but after a couple of weeks on that regimen, encouraged by a wild suggestion from the same therapist...(that misdiagnosis was a distinct possibility all of these years) I decided to test his theory for myself...
In my long and complicated relationship with psychiatry, I have been diagnosed with and treated for Bipolar Disorder, GAD, ADD, PTSD, OCD...you name it, some one has likely put the diagnosis on a bill... As an aspiring behavioral scientist and former mental health professional, I myself thought it odd to possess so many "disorders" co-morbidly... knowing damn well it was a statistical improbability, if not impossibility, to have one, much less MULTIPLE conditions simultaneously. Even given the broad, sweeping generalities and loosely defined terms of the DSM (Diagnostic Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders), no one could come out with all of them... As skeptical as I am of the liberal manner in which psychiatric diagnoses are tossed around by both professionals and our culture, I couldn't really argue with my assorted labels. If the shoe fits... take your medication...
My moods shot up and down without warning or catalyst, sending me to the highest heights of elation and impulsiveness, crashing in the darkest depths of despair... When I wasn't oscillating between the two, I was hovering somewhere in the middle, feeling both extremes simultaneously. Where most would find some sort of baseline, my "in between" usually meant "both". My anxiety was incapacitating, and I suffered from incessant panic attacks. With mere hours elapsing between each horrifying sensation that the world was ending, my heart was exploding, my lungs were collapsing, and that I would somehow be caught in a limbo between life and death forever...
The last part was not so far off... Towards the end of November (2012), the whispers behind my back grew to a deafening roar... My family, my friends, my boyfriend, were getting scared (again...) that my 18 year old love affair with my eating disorder was going to bring about my demise (again...?) I had "voluntarily" been through (and failed) more treatment programs, etc. than I could enumerate, but this time Involuntary Psychiatric Commitment was looming in the horizon. Having worked on an acute psychiatric unit for over two years (before losing my job in February 2012 for taking too many consecutive medical leaves), I knew the criteria for Invol. all too well: Danger to self or others. As vehemently as I outwardly denied that I was in any real danger at all, I think I had known that the "end was (fucking) nigh" for quite sometime. I pretended to care so others wouldn't give up on me... But I had given up when my last treatment wrapped...
Unemployed, uninsured, osteoarthritic, batshit insane, seizing without warning, and purging to the tune of 60 times a day... As an employee on the unit, treating anyone else, yeah, legitimate death wish, hazard to herself... But me? I was so mixed up, I don't think I could distinguish any longer between wanting to die and not wanting to live in slavery anymore...
Then, I grabbed the gun... One night, after a multitude of other confounding craziness, I lost my shit over some minor indiscretion between my 2 house guests. Feeling utterly hopeless and alone, I walked calmly to my mothers room, and retrieved her pistol from its home beneath her mattress... I checked the magazine, only to find it empty... I began desperately hunting for the bullets to load it, which she clearly stored elsewhere. I think somewhere in the determination to find the bullets and the time that elapsed as I did so, I began to frighten myself. 20 minutes later, exasperated by my failure, fear finally gave way to action. I still regret this action to this day, as I feel it was exceedingly selfish to hoist my suicide attempt upon anyone in this way, especially someone I love, but I did...
Totally exhausted and afraid of my own intentions, I slipped the empty magazine into my boyfriend's back pocket, and instructed him not to examine it... as if any human being with a healthy curiosity or brain (he happens to have both...) could simply keep an object in their pocket without investigation...
"Here, save me from myself!" This was what I intended my act to convey, but in the wake of his reaction, I quickly noticed the "Fuck you!" lurking in the subtext... The events of the evening had salted some rather painful wounds... As my desire to die had grown, so too had my desire to be stopped... No doubt, I should have gone about it differently, not cruelly placing the burden of my death in some one's pocket... In hindsight, the meager thoughts forming in that moment were completely at the mercy of my emotions... I hesitate to call them thoughts at all! Plagued by the panic that I was beyond hope or change, and disturbed by the fact that I could possess the collective insights of numerous treatment programs and enough professionals to populate a conference, and still remain sick? Death seemed an inevitability... And, since losing my job and insurance in February, I had been begging for death to just fucking come already for quite some time.
Like a wounded animal, I had begun looking for a porch to crawl under. I had begun to prepare for the end, all the while, slapping expression after deceitful expression across my face. This is my "recovery face"! My liar's mask was, I'm sure, transparent as hell... But it did quiet the shouts of protest all around me... or at least insulated me from them. I let myself believe that because I was blind, deaf, and deluded, from their concern, from their love, from their suffering, that no such sentiments existed for me any longer.
As my, now boyfriend, said once at that point, "I think that, until you get better, you've worn out your welcome just about everywhere." Over the next few weeks following the "gun incident", it became painfully obvious that I had, in fact, become an (ironically tiny) elephant in the room... No matter how hard I tried to use the knowledge of the shadow I was casting over ever each place I went to ease the discomfort, no matter how cooperative, pleasant, or level-headed, the facade I generated was, the grim truth of how I was REALLY doing was inescapable.... unless of course you were me... I secretly maintained that I could escape anything and had everything I needed to do just that. How fucking naive...
As November wore on, the Ron Burgundy internet meme, "Wow! That escalated quickly!" comes to mind... It seems like forever ago, but in reality, only a few short weeks have elapsed. At the end of my rope, and tired of being treated like a criminal because I needed my benzodiapines for anxiety, I scheduled an appointment with the local low-cost clinic in hopes that I could get my medication refilled and would no longer have to live in perpetual fear of running out. In late September of 2012, I ran out while on a trip to Boston (poetically, to attend an eating disorder conference). I soon found myself seizing in Harvard Square and returned home with 5 stitches and a 4 day supply of clonazapam for my troubles. A week later, when that ran out, I seized again on the floor of a friend's house, and since I was, again discharged from the ER with a measly 3 day supply of medication. I called my former psychiatrist from the "big city". After a brief phone consultation, I obtained what would be my last full prescription to clonapin, and despite its anxiolitic nature, I anxiously awaited my appointment.
As my prescription dwindled and my appointment neared, so escalated my paralyzing fear of having another seizure...I ran out of clonapin on the morning of my appointment at the low-cost clinic. Although I was already shaking violently from withdrawals and intermittently bursting into tears at the slightest provocation. The nurse practitioner at the low-cost clinic sent me into a first-rate panic attack almost immediately, when he not only refused to fill my prescription on the spot AND, as I saw on my referral slip to the behavioral health branch of their family of clinics read : "Anxiety disorder vs. Medication seeking," I literally flipped my shit! Had a panic attack on the spot, trembling, crying, and rattling off profanity, as the nursing staff made the arrangements for my behavioral health appointment. I left with a sense of impending doom (and seizures), and perhaps a slight hope... (or expectation) that this LPC, who was solely responsible for behavioral health medication recommendations to the clueless Dr.'s and NP's writing the psych scripts for all of the low-cost clinics in the area...
So, for his confidentiality, we'll be calling my therapist Dr. Badass... Yeah, that seems most appropriate. So having been labeled a drug seeker despite 4 previous psychiatrists determining that my anxiety was substantial enough to warrant my benzo/antipsychotic/medication fun time regimen for over 2 years...I walked into Dr. Badass's office in a pretty pissy mood to say the least... Oddly, from the moment I walked into the door of his office, I had to say surprisingly little before he "had my number"... Barely volunteering any details in our initial meeting, he explained my problem to me better than I think I could have myself... And after my numerous hospitalizations and therapists, I considered myself to be quite the seasoned veteran of the breakdown...well, breakdown...
He told the asshole nurse practitioner that labeled me a drug seeker what to prescribe... I eventually took this cocktail...for a couple of weeks... OF COURSE, that night, the pharmacy had to take 36 hours to fill my prescription... OF COURSE, I had to have one more grand mal seizure in my boyfriend's garage the night of that first appointment while i waiting for myscripts ...(11/27/12) That night, I regained consciousness, wiped the blood and foam from my mouth, and, amnetic and delirious, mumbled "I'm never purging again..."
This would turn out to be a lie, but in all sincerity, it was probably the most USEFUL delusion that I have ever had..."
