The Night I Tried to Kill Myself

I don’t quite know how to put this experience into words. I haven’t written for some time again, due to feelings of inadequacy, depression, and general brain fog. I can’t seem to form coherent sentences as quickly as I used to, nor can I focus for long periods of time on something that I have a deep love for.

Thursday, 10.25.18 I remember walking into the outpatient center I attend for a therapy session. I remember the feelings of utter hopelessness attending with me, like a sack lunch I was carrying to school. I had made the decision to give up. I was tired of fighting, I was tired of trying to fight, and I was tired of the only option being fighting. I was tired of fighting myself, I was tired of, for the millionth time in my mental health career, coming off of medication, and I was tired of hearing I needed medication to thrive.

I was taking 10 milligrams of Abilify and 10 milligrams of Trintellix and I couldn’t find the energy to finish homework, or get out of bed, and I didn’t have the luxury of feeling any emotion at all: happiness, sadness, inquisitiveness, passion–nothing. And so I did what I always do: stopped the medication.

This usually happens without consequence. For the most part, I’ll stop cold turkey after a couple of months, struggle through a few physical withdrawal symptoms, and get on with my lifestyle. The last time I stopped these two meds, I regained my energy quickly, breezed through four classes, and managed happiness until the opinions of those I care about convinced me to try the medication again.

So I tried again, For maybe two and a half weeks. Then I stopped. I stopped and I noticed my energy did not come back. My mood was stable until it wasn’t. It plummeted. I focused a lot on what was wrong with me, the disappointment of my relationship ending (yes, I’m still stuck on that), and the worries of the future regarding my education, where I’m going to live after December, and the simple fact that I struggle taking care of myself. Those are the surface issues. There are deeper issues I don’t think I’m in touch with yet.

I’ve struggled with depression since I was ten years old. A low mood was nothing new to me, in fact I welcomed it because the darkness was comforting. It was an old friend, a sinister reminder that life is suffering and suffering reminds us that we’re alive. I was thankful for this friend to return because on the medication I didn’t feel alive.

I started planning fun things to do to keep me from falling further: A concert, an overnight trip to San Francisco, Halloween plans and costumes. I got excited: the week of the 21st would be marvelous.

But I started separating from myself.  I don’t remember when, and I don’t remember how, but part of me blacked out. I know I was around and talking to people because I went to work, had laughs, made plans. I don’t remember much of it, but I know I was there.

By Thursday, the 25th, I was moving slowly, not comprehending where I was, no hope or vision for the future, and I’d even lost interest in Halloween, my favorite holiday. I confessed to the therapist that I didn’t have energy to care much about my life, nor could I answer her questions. I didn’t tell her I’d made a plan to (somehow) kill myself after Halloween. It wasn’t fully developed yet, an undercooked chicken in the oven.

I don’t remember much about the session other than the ending: a mindful meditation seeking to locate my inner child. I remember a lot of pain resurfacing, so deep and profound I had never felt it before, and I snapped. I was gone. She asked me how I felt, and I told her dissociated, separated from myself. I remember that. She made me do some grounding activities to bring me back into my body. I don’t think they worked.
That night I went to a concert. It put me in a seemingly better mood.

Friday and Saturday I spent the days in San Francisco at the Academy of Sciences, Golden Gate Park, Six Flags, and around town. Saturday evening, on the drive back, a sinister part of me reminded me of my plan.

I’m not a stranger to hearing voices. I don’t hear them every day, and I haven’t had a bad episode in a while, not since my last hospitalization last year, but this time was different. This time I heard nothing external, and everything internal.

We all have an inner voice that reads to us, thinks for us, and we are in control of that voice, we dictate it. I’m dictating it now as I read back what I wrote, and as I write. But what I listened to that Saturday evening was not of my own doing. A different voice, a male voice, one inside of my head that I had no control of, which directly told me I needed to kill myself. He instructed me to open the door of the car and jump out in traffic–on the highway–and end it. He addressed me as “you” and I addressed me as “I”. That’s the only difference I can pinpoint right now. When I had a thought of my own, I said to myself “I need to calm down”. When I didn’t, he said “you need to do this. There’s no reason for you to live, you don’t deserve life.”

Was this a demonic entity interfering with my thoughts? I didn’t know. I sat paralyzed in the rental car my Ex drove, crying consistently for an hour and a half. The torment wouldn’t stop. “You don’t deserve to live. There’s nothing good about you. Jump out of the car. End it. When you get home, kill yourself. Hang yourself in the closet, no one will even find you.”

I had plans that evening with another friend, so I did not act on those commands. I did, however, drink quite a bit of whiskey and wander around the downtown city. When I got home, I drank more whiskey and fell asleep.

In the morning I awoke instantly crying. The day was Sunday, 10.28.18. I turned on Breaking Bad: I’ve never seen it before. I don’t remember much of the episodes because my head was so loud: “hang yourself in the closet. Take a knife, slit your wrists. You will never amount to anything. You don’t deserve to be on this earth, you don’t contribute to anything.” I joined in: “I can’t write anymore. I can’t enjoy things anymore. I don’t see this getting any better”.

It was 6pm that night when I finally stood up and searched my apartment for something, anything to hang myself with. I didn’t feel in control of my body, I was just going along with the motions.

“Fill up the tub, get in the water, slit your wrists.”

I grabbed a kitchen knife from the drawer and filled up the tub. I remember this part more clearly than other parts because my heart was beating out of my chest, my hands were clammy, and I couldn’t get a grip on myself, I felt like I was losing myself to someone else.

I got in the water with my clothes on and fought the noise in my head. I tried to give myself reasons to live–family, my cat, work–but it was always overpowered by that other voice. I spent a half an hour sawing at my wrists with a dull blade that could barely cut a tomato. I pressed as hard as I could and my skin barely broke. Eventually, I threw the knife. I remember a lot of crying and banging my head on the wall and hitting myself. The noise wouldn’t stop. I ripped out the string from my leggings I had on and wrapped it around my neck and pulled and pulled and pulled. Thinking back on it, I would probably pass out before I die, given my hands are the one pulling the strings, but in the moment I just needed to cause some sort of harm to myself. I kept trying the knife in between strangling myself and I sent one text message that I don’t remember.

It was a couple hours before I stopped. My neck was sore and I had stopped crying, but I wasn’t back in my body yet. The water was cold and I heard the front door open and footsteps running in.

We spent a couple hours talking, and I was gone completely. I don’t remember an ounce of the conversation. I remember seeing through my eyes my body stand up and go for the knife, go for the string, and my ex preventing me from doing so. I remember telling him I didn’t want to traumatize him.

There’s a block on my memory of the conversation, what I said, what he said. I remember being on the couch wrapped in blankets, soaking wet, distraught, eating pizza. I didn’t remember the last time I had food. It couldn’t have been too long. I took a Seroquel. I only had three or four left. It’s a shame I didn’t have a full bottle, or I would have just swallowed them all and called it a night.

The next day I didn’t awake until 1pm. I could barely move, my mind was paralyzingly loud, and I turned on more Breaking Bad. The urge to die was so strong. People took turns watching after me, texting me, calling me. I refused to let anyone call 911. The hospital is not a place to be when you’re in a crisis.

Today is Halloween. My head isn’t loud. I came back into my body and have trouble remembering what the depression felt like because I feel I wasn’t the one to feel it–this entity within me, whether it’s paranormal or just a fractured part of my self, is hell bent on destroying me.  I haven’t experienced a dissociative experience so destructive since high school.

Am I still depressed? I think. Mildly. Or it’s so severe that I’m incapable of comprehending the severity of it.

I didn’t learn to love life from this attempt. I didn’t learn to appreciate the little things or find new meaning or purpose. I still feel lost and confused. A hospital visit isn’t going to change that. What I did learn is that I’m more committed than ever to never taking psychiatric medication again in my life. After 7 years of being a guinea pig, I’m done.

My outpatient group counselor asked me why I despised medication so much. I told her it’s poison. She asked in what way. I told everyone in that room that long term treatment results in heart issues, liver issues, physical ailments that permanently scar your internal body and shorten your life span.

She said okay,  well, then would you rather kill yourself now and not have a life to live, or have some little problems a little later?

I said that was a dumb question, and that heart arrhythmia’s aren’t little problems. I said I’d rather kill myself than subject my body to synthetic chemicals.

And through this experience, if it’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that the only two ways I will die is by my own hand or nature’s hand. I will not slowly die at the hands of greedy monsters making a profit off my death. If anyone is going to shorten my life span, it’s going to be me.

Should 911 have been called on me? Probably. I’m worried what I will do after Halloween–my original plan–and where my mindset will go. I’m worried I won’t be able to receive the support people are offering because I don’t know how. I’m convinced there is nothing left for me and that the only thing keeping me alive right now is fear of the unknown and a low threshold for pain. I’m worried this depression will slide past, unnoticed, and sky rocket into something more. I’m worried I’m not going to find a purpose again, that I’m not going to find a reason to live. I’m worried I’ll never feel passionate about anything again, or optimistic. I’m worried I’m shutting down, like the last stages of liver cancer. I’m worried I’ll pass as functional and be in misery for the rest of my life, however short or long that is. I’m worried someone will convince me to go back on medication. I’m worried that the only thought in my head right now is that I give up.

I’m worried that, recently, every time someone offers their help, my response now is “I don’t want it.”

Quantum Biology and Hallucinations

I was on a TED talk binge this morning, and I watched Jim Al-Khalili talk about Quantum Biology. Although this is regarded as a relatively new field, it’s not. It’s been around since the 30’s/40’s and was really contemplated within Schrodinger’s book “What is life”.

Essentially Quantum Biology is the study of quantum properties acting within biological systems, like cells. Al-Khalili gave a pretty good summary of the way we have already provided some evidence of this, like the Robin which uses particles that are Quantum entangled in their retina to sense the magnetic poles around the earth–this is how they know which direction to fly during migration. I think this study is the most well known one. The other has to do with Quantum tunneling.

Quantum tunneling is this:

Basically, a particle has the ability to pass through a physical barrier. This has been shown to be a process within the sun and is a prime occurrence in nuclear fusion, but it has also been shown to occur within enzyme processes. Enzymes are those little guys that help with digestion and metabolism. They keep processes speedy and accurate. It only makes sense that they would evolve a quantum process to help them keep up speed.

If you would like to watch the video and get a better summary/explanation than this, here is the link to Khalili’s Ted Talk. 

What I find so fascinating about this besides the quantum element is what it could mean were we to ever really understand what we’re seeing. Especially what it could mean for medicine. Could you imagine understanding the real quantum process within an enzyme that has been infected with a Cancer?

We’d obviously be dealing with a lot probability and uncertainty, but I think we’d have a greater chance at really understanding what’s going on with diseases like that were we to have somewhat of a better understanding of the process it goes through, and the processes it disrupts. I’m no doctor, and I’m certainly no physicist yet, but I do pride myself on being pretty logical and philosophical and there are a lot of ideas that come to mind when I watch videos like this.

There are a few more lectures on YouTube about Quantum Tunneling if you’re interested. When I was in high school I got interested in physics and picked up a bunch of books on the subject. This was before I understood an ounce of math, so I didn’t really get that part of things, but I understood the theories. You don’t have to go to college to learn this kind of stuff if you’re dedicated.

Now that I have taken some physics classes, things are even more clearer. So, honestly, had I not read those books I did in high school, I probably would have had a much rougher time in the classes, and I still had a pretty rough time. Too much group work. I can’t group-think. I have to individual-think.

I think the point in all of this is don’t believe everything you see.

There are so many things out in this universe that we don’t understand.

I was listening to another Ted talk from a man talking about how consciousness is basically all of us hallucinating but agreeing on the hallucinations: that’s what we call reality. He said that the brain uses more information that it’s already gathered about the world to show you what you see, rather than actually seeing what’s in front of you, and therefore what we see and experience are kind of like “controlled” hallucinations. This got me thinking, as he mentioned psychosis and other altered states could then be considered “uncontrolled perceptions”. But because he is assuming that all perception comes from something we’ve already perceived, then what is it that the brain has perceived that makes some people see/hear demons, as yours truly does? What is it in this world, outside of our physical realm, that our brains can sense that we can’t?

You can watch that video here.

Consciousness and the world of quantum mechanics is so convoluted and complicated that anyone who claims to really understand any of it is certainly a liar. Anyone who claims they understand the process of hallucinations is also a liar.

Just food for thought: today’s mental truth.

The Nature Of Progression

It’s weird coming out of this writer’s block. I feel that I have so much to say and yet somehow have forgotten how to say it.

Before the brain fog hit terribly, and I was still blogging on here, I talked about a class I was taking, a Native American literature class and how the material really spoke to me. I also talked about how there was a girl in my class who I was sure was so jealous of me that she was turning the professor and my classmates against me, and conspiring to get this blog taken down–like I said, it was right before the brain fog settled in.

I’m sitting here tonight thinking about where my journey had brought me so far. I think it’s brought me to a much better understanding of myself, of how I fit in this world, of where I can go. I manage to plow through a speech yesterday, something I promised myself I’d never do again, and felt okay about it–better than I usually feel about something like that. It was the first time I could speak in front of a decent group of people and NOT forget everything I was supposed to say because of anxiety.

And tonight I opened up a book I got from that Native American professor and the first passage entitled “The Nature of Progression” touched me suddenly and deeply.

“There’s a gyroscope inside the body, whose electro-magnetic fingers reach out to touch the facets we call spirit, mind, and emotion. It builds a progression that’s always seeking to occur, always moving, always bringing us to balance, despite our confusion, our camouflage, our sabotage.”

That’s described my experience over the last 3 years perfectly. I felt I was always losing control, always bouncing off the rails, and yet there was another force within me fighting for balance. I knew where I needed to return, I just didn’t know how.

And I think that’s a struggle for a lot of us dealing with our mental health. We have a vision of where we want to be, how we want to be, but we’re not quite sure how to get there. I’ve learned a little secret about this.

I’ve learned to let life take me where it will take me. I’ve learned that I don’t need to be perfect in everything as I was pushing myself to be. I’ve learned that where life takes me is where I will end up, and I’m okay with that. Sometimes if you let go of a little control, you gain more than you’d ever imagine you’d have.

The thing about life is that you can’t control it. The universe is so chaotic that it’s ordered, so no matter how much you try and control something, the universe already knows what needs to be in order for balance to come to fruition. And it will guide you in that direction, it’s guided me.

This is my second post of the day because I just have so much to get out of me, so much to catch everyone up on, and a blog to run, of course. I’ve been absent for too long. It’s been calling me back ever since.

As this song I’m listening to says: there’s no point in living if you can’t feel the life.  And as much pain as I’ve been through, I wouldn’t trade it in for a life of perfection. I think that says a lot.

Kanye, Toss Me 50 Mill, Let’s Change The World Together

*Ahem*

I’ve been writing on this blog since July 2015, periodically at best, fragmented at best, turned it into a domain I could own, lost the domain because I couldn’t afford it, and now here I am, back to square one, reintroducing myself to the world of rants, vents, and sarcastic musings.

I realized how good of an outlet this place is, and I miss the interactions between new people, old people, and people in general. Fuck building an empire, fuck pleasing people, and fuck everything, in general. I think that’s a good way to start off this post.

In reading back a lot of my old posts, I laughed at my own jokes, humored myself with my own sarcasm, and cherished my vulnerable moments: essentially it was a huge ego trip. Isn’t that wonderful? How conceited can I sound? I could probably be worse if I tried. But what’s life without having a bit of an inflated self-esteem? What’s life without trying to convince the world you’re a god among men? Kanye knows what I’m talking about, right? No? No one? Okay.

Love Kanye. What he say in his new song, Yikes?

“Shit could get/menacing/frightening/find help/ sometimes / I scare/ myself.”

And

“I can feel the spirits all around me/ I think Prince and Mike is trynna to warn me/ they know they got demons all on me/ devil been trynna make an army/ they been strategizing to harm me/ they don’t know they dealin with a zombie. ”

I resonate with that on a spiritual level. That’s not sarcasm.

And, of course, the most influential line of his musical career:

“Scoopity Whoop.”

That song took me to higher levels of consciousness. I sat at the computer listening to Lift Yourself, nodding to an average beat, but that next verse? That NEXT VERSE THOUGH? Damn, I just didn’t really realize, I guess. I don’t think I’ll ever find another set of bars that chills my veins like “Poopity Scoop, scoopty whoopty poop”. Or, whatever.

In 2015 I was twenty years old, barely out of the terrible teens, and in 7 days I will be twenty three, still barely out of the terrible teens I guess, and in my own apartment free of the reign of terror that has been my parents’ apartment. I have good memories and bad memories. The good memories are pretty good, the bad memories are pretty bad. Read previous posts for more info. I’ve basically put the last three to four years of my life in a chronological order on this blog.

I remember writing a post about my predictions for the 2016 election, and how if that base head neurosurgeon Ben Carson dropped out of the race, Trump would win. Well, what happened? Without Ben there to cancel out Trump’s stupidity with his own, nothing could stop Trump. Don’t agree with me? No one’s asking you to, but I basically predicted the future, so . . .

Now what I’m trying to predict is when I will find a competent psychiatrist. I’ve sort of come to the conclusion that it’s impossible. I had a good two months with a county-funded psychiatrist who listened to what I said and, for the first time in my life, found a set of medications that worked well with me, but when they kicked me out of the Mental Health building K because I didn’t want to actively kill myself anymore, because I still had a job, I got stuck with a regular county psychiatrist who, when I told her I’d stopped hearing voices, told me I was lying and sent out a prescription for a higher dose of my medication.

If you’re wondering, I stopped seeing her.

If you’re reading this and are really confused, I’d suggest reading through a couple previous posts. I would also like to remind my audience that not everyone who hears voices hears them all the time, and not everyone who hears voices has/or identifies with schizophrenia–two common misconceptions. And not everyone with schizophrenia hears voices.

The fucking point is, if I tell you I’m not hearing voices, I’m not hearing voices. If I tell you I’m not seeing shit, I’m not seeing shit. If you don’t believe me, go to the back room, take your head out of your ass, and breathe the fresh air of reality, because you’ve been missing from it for too long.

If I don’t want my medication dosage raised, don’t fucking raise it. 

Now, here’s the tricky thing. In leaving that shitty psychiatrist and stopping all my medication, I not only put myself through some serious mental hell, I also lost the ability to find a psychiatrist or therapist at all.

*For global readers, insurance is what the United States scams it’s citizens with to get more money.*

With my propensity to freeze up talking to doctors, psychiatrists, and therapists, I often get help calling for new appointments because the anxiety paralyzes me. So I’ve pushed my family to help me call. We’ve been calling for two months now.

One psychiatrist has gotten back to us, after a week of him leaving voicemails, us leaving voicemails, and both of us missing each other. He asks how old I am, and what’s going on with me. My mother takes the call, and explains what I’ve described, and he suddenly has too many patients.

Every other mental health professional we’ve called and who has called us back and left a voicemail always, always said “I’m sorry, I’ve got too many patients right now” without needing to know any information about me.

This motherfucker said that after he learned what I was going through. What does that make me think? That he can’t take on a challenge. And, if that’s the case, at least have the balls to tell it to my face. Tell me you don’t want to deal with me. Tell me you can’t handle it. If you can’t admit that, fuck you, you’re a coward.

And most importantly, don’t ever waste my fucking time again.

If you’re wondering, most recently I’ve breezed through 5 new diagnoses (not counting the ones I had as a teenager) after seeing 4 psychiatrists and a few therapists since December 2017 (six months total) , and I only found out the most recent one because I sat in my psychiatrist’s seat and read her notes on her computer while she went to go talk to a colleague. If they won’t tell you what they write, read it yourself–a tip for anyone new to the mental health system. Just don’t get caught.

The diagnoses have been: GAD, PTSD, Depression, Bipolar 1, Psychosis NOS from oldest to newest.

Some psychiatrists haven’t agreed with the PTSD–how is that something to refute, anyway? They ruled out schizophrenia and depression with psychotic features. The psychiatrists in the hospital were bent on Bipolar 1 even though I’ve never been manic in my life, the one I saw immediately after my hospitalization wasn’t sure at all what I was dealing with (finally, an honest fucking response). The last one is hell bent on psychosis NOS. They all agree on the depression and the anxiety.

So, what have I learned over these last six months besides the fact that if I’m not actively suicidal and/or psychotic I won’t be taken seriously as a candidate for steam-lined mental health care? Other than, if I’m still working I don’t actually need any real help?

Absolutely nothing.

If I didn’t love my job, I would have quit just to add the dramatics they obviously want.

I welcome myself back into the blogsphere.

I can’t

I hadn’t been blog posting rants or personal posts for quite some time now, because I was actually partially adulting.

No, I wasn’t adulting, I was simply coasting through the adult world for a brief period of time. As someone who dislikes most medication, and can’t ever seem to agree with one or the other, Effexor XR did wonders for my mood or whatever hole I was stuck in previously. I could my emotions again, and work through them rather then get entirely overwhelmed by them. It was a stabilizing moment in my life, now gone.

I got eight hours of sleep. Now I’m back to getting whatever the fuck THIS is. This 5:34 a.m clusterfuck of thoughts and no sleep.

The withdrawal, I will say, is fucking terrifying. At least, for me it was. I had to lay in bed for a couple days because every time I stood up to walk, the world tipped on its side and a shockwave ran from the top of my head to the tips of my toes. I’m still getting the shockwave senstation a bit, and that’s convinced me 2016 is going to do what it does best, and kill the fuck out of me.

My head is killing me. The headaches were another bad withdrawal symptom. I got so dizzy and my head hurt so bad I was immobilized and crying for a good hour or two. At least I’ve got my kitten sleeping on my shoulder.

Because tonight the thoughts are going, going, going, gone into fucking outerspace. I can’t tell what I’m thinking half the time. I described it to someone as having a head full of thoughts crashing into each other–not racing thoughts, just a bunch of them–and because they crashed into each other so quickly, I can only capture snippets of what they want to say. So the conversation I had with this person consisted of me blurting as many snippets as I could to try and convey how I felt. I don’t think it worked. Shit got weird.

I’ve been away from this side of my brain, or at least this intensity of this side of my brain, for a good couple months. And now, because health insurance costs want to shove a lead pipe up my ass, I’m back to where I started. Too bad. I was making progress.

But, considering the withdrawals, to be honest, I wouldn’t want to stay any longer than a couple months on that shit. With the way my body reacted, me being on it for a year would get me stuck on it for life. And I’m not about that bullshit.

The emotions are all haywire again. I felt it the instant I woke up this afternoon and rushed through twenty emotions at once and confused myself so badly I forgot to eat. This was my problem before. My head gets so muddied up with random thoughts, anxieties, paranoias, pains, that I forget to do basic things like eating or I just don’t have the energy to take a shower or go out and buy necessary items. If I lived on my own, I wouldn’t survive more than a week.

That’s what impressed me about Effexor. It’s labeled as an Anti-depressant, and it sure did give me some energy back, but wholly hell were the thoughts calmed to a dull roar. I wasn’t so quick to convince myself of whatever it was I was going to type here because I type to slow for the thoughts in my brain. And I type pretty damn fast, ya’ll.

My plan going forward is to go talk to the dreaded county office. They can help set me up with Medi-cal. At least I can get healthcare that way. My hope was to get into system.

To get into “The System” you need to be labeled “severely mentally ill”, three words I never put together in one sentence. Ugg. It makes me cringe.

The truth is, I don’t have the capability, or the skills, to live independently. It doesn’t mean I can’t learn, it just means at this moment I don’t possess them. I get lost in my head and shit gets weird and I don’t leave this room, I don’t eat, I don’t sleep, I don’t do anything really but think and think and think. At this point it’s not even thinking really, more so as such my brain blurting random shit and then attempting to foil a theory from it, failing, then trying all over again.

Is that “severe” if I have an on-call position and a record of going to college? Probably fucking not. Severe means you’re in the streets babbling about the bastards you know and the hero you hate and scrubbing your feet with a dead squirrel because it contains the blood of Egor, the giant in the clouds who tells you to punch the kid on the red bicycle and shove a pine cone in the ass of the next skunk you see.

Sorry.

See, I babble about that kind of shit in my head or I babble about it out loud in the shower. I’ve only slipped up a couple times in public, and I yanked my dumbass self back down and shut my mouth. You can’t be seen loosing it in public man–reputation forever tarnished.

People don’t hear me talk to myself, or the images that get put in my head, or any voice I may hear, because, well, fuck me, I’m aware of stigma. Well, fuck me County, let me just disregard everything I’ve taught myself and let the crazy out JUST FOR YOU, let me do it JUST FOR YOU.

And they’ll still shove a steel pipe up my ass and kick me out their office.

I’ll repeat, I have not slept. I am tired. My teeth hurt from clenching them. The only reason I care so much about being part of “The System” is because you’re assigned a team dedicated to help you get along. They’re there whenever you need them. Sure, I could also use where I work as a support force, but the difference is I have to initiate it, and that’s something I’ve never been able to do. This “team” would be “assigned”. And as you all know, I prefer structured things over willy-nilly things.

So whatever. First things first–get Medi-cal insurance. Second: tell medi-cal I’m crazy. Third: take over the world. Fourth: finally, for once in my fucking life, actually get the services I need because I rule the fucking world, and if they don’t do as I say, I’ll just blast them away with the laser hidden in my third eye.

Now, I’m going to go ruminate on the third eye, all the powers it contains, and try to unleash Pandora’s box on the world. Cool.

THAT DOESN’T SOUND LIKE SLEEP TO ME.

 

Counting Sheep

Warning! Warning! On coming rant! Buckle your seatbelts, kiddos, I haven’t done one of these in a long time and my blood is just boiling for one.

Firstly.

FIRSTLY.

Everyone has their own opinion on the subject I’m about to speak on. I will say this forthright: I don’t care which side you are on. I don’t care if you agree with anything I say, or anything this other person has said. You know what you prefer, I know what I prefer. If you would like to argue with me about it, send an email to dontsendmeafuckingemail@gmail.com.

SECONDLY.

Yes, I am on an SNRI. No, this does not make me a hypocrite about what I’m about to say, and I’ll explain why in a moment.

So tonight, I had a conversation with someone that really, really shoved a metal pipe up my ass.

I was speaking to someone who is studying psychology. When I said I was studying psychiatry, they said psychiatry was too hard for them. I don’t know what that means. They probably can’t do math. They also can’t think, judging by the conversation we had. A lot of their life must be “too hard”.

I started speaking about some recent things I’ve been going through, not including how I’ve sprained a tendon in my wrist and was literally dying for four days, and I happened to mention the list of medication that psychiatrist tried putting me on (Effexor, Seroquel, Propanol, Ativan, Praoxin). I mentioned how I chose only effexor and told the psychiatrist to fuck off with the rest.

This chick has the audacity to ignore everything I said about how much I struggle socially, and say “well, why don’t you just get on what she suggested though?”

*Bitch Face Ignited*

I explained that for me, medication isn’t something I can consciously eat like food. I just prefer to find alternatives. I explained that they are not built for long term use, that they go through 8 week trials of a couple hundred people, sometimes less. I said I had nothing against medication, as she mentioned she also takes medication, but that I feel they are often overused.

Her response? “Don’t over use them, then.”

My response?

Realizing perhaps I wasn’t clear enough, or perhaps she had some medication stuck in her ears, I said “I mean they’re over-prescribed.” I told her about where I work and about how we accept all world views. I told her I’m someone who often experiences odd things, and that I’ve gotten along just fine without medication, as have many people do. I made the mistake of mentioning that chemical imbalance is just a theory that’s hardly got enough evidence to consider proof.

She replied with “aw, but it is proven though.”

Motherfucker, are you this fucking dumb? Are you? Have you never read a fucking research paper in your life? Is your brain a potato? There are countless numbers of studies supporting the complete publication bias scandals between the pharmaceutical companies and the research companies out of places like Harvard, Stanford, and several other universities. I’ve read studies of research companies being caught hiding the fact that they found absolutely no correlation between their medication and the “imbalance” they claimed existed when, in fact it didn’t. Many articles written by professors also expose things on the inside. Have you not heard of homeostasis?

Do you know how many days I spent as a fifteen year old forcing the people I knew in college to give me access to the online research and archive databases so I could get a hold of these scientific journals? Do you know how many hours I spent reading them? More hours than I spent doing my high school homework, that’s for damn sure.

Here, here, I’ll break it down for you honey, my honey bunches of shut the fuck up.

Say you have a brain with more serotonin in the synapse than the brain next to that person. Say that person with more serotonin often experiences more anxiety than the brain next to them.

Companies call this an “imbalance” so they can say this medication “balances” you. Unfortunately, what’s perceived as an “imbalance” is entirely relative to what you’re comparing it to and every human brain is like a fingerprint. What does that mean? It means you’re comparing it to levels and behavior that vary per person. Anyone who has ever been any level of scientific or logical in their life should understand you can’t compare something to something else if that something else isn’t a consistent control.

Unfortunately, correlation is not causation–what does that mean? It means just because you have anxiety doesn’t mean your levels of serotonin are high. It means just because your serotonin levels are high, doesn’t mean you experience anxiety. And if anyone ever tries to tell you there is definitive proof for either, punch them in the throat.

The real imbalance comes when you try getting off the bullshit and you get brain zaps and hallucinations and fatigue and nausea and tremors as your brain tries to adjust back to its NORMAL levels. That’s often almost unbearable if you’re on several medications and what happens? You get STUCK on them. 

It’s ironic a simple thought can dramatically change the level of chemicals in your brain just as easily.

I lied. It’s not ironic. It’s fucking obvious.

I wasn’t this rude to this person, although I wanted to be. I said in my opinion medication isn’t what’s best for me, not when they’re meant to fix something that doesn’t need fixing. Her response was: “Some are placebos, not all. Why don’t you just try the medication and see how it goes?” That was her response over and over again. “Just try the medication, just try the medication, I’m just trying to help you.”

 

 

At this point I’m laughing like Satan because this bitch is clueless to anything I’m saying. I have a right to my choice to NOT go on fifty different medication for something I believe isn’t necessary. I’m not a lab rat. If she wants to be one, that’s fine. I could give two flying fucks if she eats Prozac for breakfast, Haldol for lunch, and Seroquel for dinner with some Lexapro and Lithium for snacks. It’s probably a deadly combination, but her doctor recommended it, so that’s what she should do, RIGHT?

Fucking sheep. Some people are such fucking sheep.

If you feel the medication helps you, by all means, I support you 100%. If you feel differently, hey, guess what? I support you 100%. You know why? Because YOU know YOU better than I know YOU.

The real reason I got angry isn’t because she doesn’t believe as I do. I got angry because she kept ignoring what I was saying and pressuring me to take something I stated multiple times I didn’t feel was best for me. She judged me on the condition she felt I was in (I should have never mentioned antipsychotics), rather than listening to the words I was saying. And THIS, my friends, is what you FUCKING learn when you get into this industry.

You learn that if someone is non-compliant with advice, they have a problem.

You learn that medication is a first resort. 

You learn that alternatives are for the “delusional” and the “stubborn”.

And when I said, “hey, you know honestly, I’m getting offended by the way you keep ignoring what I’m saying and just telling me to take medication when I’ve stated I don’t feel it’s best for me”.

Her response?

“I understand.”

No bitch, You don’t “understand”. You fucking apologize is what you do. Holly Christ, if someone like me, someone as bad at social interaction as I am, is telling you how to respond to someone, you are incompetent. A deadly level of incompetent.

And thus I ended the conversation. I don’t care if she never reads the research and cases like I have. I don’t care if she endorses medication for the rest of her life. I care that she’s going into counseling and psychology and all she did the entire time was judge my beliefs because I didn’t agree with a licensed professional, because I’m the “sick” one that needs help, right?

I have a fucking headache.

Ten Quadrillion Ways To Be Fucked Up

Sometimes you just want to wake up, go online, and not get bombarded with stupidity. All the time you should realize this as an improbable feat.

You try to read a serious article about someone in a car accident and all you see is the ad for “Precious lost weight, now she’s a hottie!” or some fatsist, sexist bull.

Then you make the mistake of clicking on the “I hear voices mumbling, am I going crazy?” question on Yahoo Answers and find an extended, wanna-be-intellectual answer of “that sounds like schizophrenia and here are my dumb reasons to why I think I have the right to make that comment”.

Now some fifteen year old female is running around thinking she has schizophrenia because some loon on the internet told her so.

A reminder for us all: We’ve got to be careful what words we release into the ether of the internet. I shall repeat something I feel I repeat much too often to people: hearing voices is not indicative of schizophrenia. There are many different types of auditory and visual hallucinations, and only a very small fraction of them can be categorized and attributed to a diagnosis of schizophrenia.

Did you know you can hallucinate merely from being stressed out?

Shocker!

There is this overwhelming belief in our society that something “abnormal” must be disordered or a sign of a “broken brain”. I don’t know where it’s coming from. Seriously, someone find the answer for me and link it to my blog in the comments below.

But for God’s sake, don’t get the answer off Yahoo. If you link me to yahoo, I will personally hack your Facebook and post graphic Hentai gifs to all your family members.

It really all comes down to this idea that we’ve got it all figured out, that how the majority of the population perceives things in the world is the only way to perceive the world, and if your perceptions are different, if your brain integrates information with a twist to it, than you and your wacko brain are in the wrong and we will make sure you’re aware of how wrong you are. And we’ll drill it into your head until you know you’re wrong and we’ll make sure you know how not acceptable you are. So along with your weird perceptions of what we label as reality, you also have to deal with being disrespected.

And we’ll make sure none of us get on your level to try and relate because, well, fuck you, you’re below us.

That attitude isn’t everywhere, but it is in many places, and I’m sure those of us who struggle with our mental health could pinpoint it somewhere at least once in in our lives, whether it be from family, doctors, psychologists, neurologists, whoever.

I gave up on the internet today. I closed all the tabs, put my computer to sleep, and sat wondering how people with such strong beliefs of “mental disorders make you insane” aren’t also labeled as delusional. 1) it’s an irrational thought 2) you can’t talk them out of it and 3) when asked, they have no real evidence to support their claim other than the media and their unintelligible link of mental illness to violent crime and since when is the media a credible source?

Then I got bored of trying to catch all the thoughts whizzing past my eyes, so I turned the computer back on. The internet Gods have been merciful on me and presented me with two wonderful articles from Scientific American and a website called “Medium.com” that kind of rips off flipboard but I’ll ignore that.

Links to both articles can be found here and here.

Both are in relation to the idea of consciousness and theoretical physics and I promise I will quickly link all of these ideas back to the reason why I say there is no one true reality or one true/right way of perceiving said reality. One article believes the concept and action of our consciousness may never be solved, but perhaps it could be merged with computers and bionics–as soon as neuroscientists can crack the “neural code”.

Now, I’m no neuroscientist, nor am I a particle/theoretical physicist, but the idea that a neural code (meaning a comprehensive pattern the brain/mind follows that results in an algorithm describing the function of consciousness and every single neural network in the brain) would be reduced to something as simple as a couple action potential spikes with specific milivolts as they’re suggesting sounds kind of . . . well, dumb.

That’s like saying  “specific sounds have specific frequencies, and those frequencies are are the reason for the pitch of the sound” . . . without taking into account the particles that allow all of that to happen.

If you’re studying sound and how it syncs to the entirety of the universe, wouldn’t you need to dig a little deeper than that? Kind of how, you know, consciousness is everything to us?

But a good point they made is the amount of neural synaptic connections in the brain: A quadrillion. If it averages ten action potentials per second, that’s ten quadrillion operations a second. Can you fathom that without making your brain hurt?

Oh, the irony.

At ten quadrillion action potentials per second, don’t you think there’s going to be some several million of us who perceive things different than the other several million? If each brain is like a finger print, don’t you think we’re all going to see things through our own eyes and we have no right to think that our vision is the only kind of vision?

Does it seem a little silly yet to think that ONE “imbalance” of serotonin is what has ruined your life without other factors playing into it all? Does it make sense why they find some people with the same differences in serotonin as you that are not depressed or not anxious? Does it make sense that everything you’ve read about imbalances are basically just loosely educated guesses?

Does it make sense that hearing voices isn’t indicative of schizophrenia yet?

There’s no such thing as a perfect brain. There’s no such thing as a broken brain. There are just brains. Love your brain. It does so much for you.

Next time you and your brain quarrel, just remember there’s a little mass of squishy tissue with billions of neurons scrunched together just above your brain stem that gives you the freedom to never have to remind yourself to breathe. It lets you enjoy the portions of your life that you’ve enjoyed. Don’t piss it off. 

Project Homeostasis: Find And Maintain

 

One thing I’ve always struggled with accepting was labeling Substance abuse as a disease. I live with a user and although I’ve never seen it as a choice, I’ve never fully understood its classification.

My professor tonight related the neurological process of addiction to the evolutionary and neurological process of eating.

Yes, eating. 

In the simplest terms, the act of eating is pleasurable for means of survival. When you eat, your brain rewards you with dopamine, that feel-good neurotransmitter, in the Mesocorticalimbic pathway (MCLP), particularly the Nucleus Accumbens. Because you’re rewarded, you keep going back. That’s what keeps you alive. Your brain and body knows it needs nourishment and it’s not going to count on you to do it right, that’s for sure. So it trains you. Like a dog. 

You think you make your body do what you want? Ha. It makes you do what it wants. It’s been conditioning you since birth. That’s why it’s better to work with it than against it.

When you’re dehydrated, you feel better after re-hydrating because of the same process. Your body isn’t going to count on you to drink water, it needs to remind you: “hey dipshit, I’m thirsty over here, come on man, give me some water already!”

Assuming you look at the world through a biological lens, this is what goes on. This is not my opinion, I’m just telling you what researchers have found out thus far.  Nothing is ever written in stone.

When a drug has the potential to effect the MCLP, it’s considered to have abuse potential. You know, Benzos, Opiods, Amphetamines, Alcohol.

These facts shifted my mind a bit. If you needed to stop eating because it was harming your body, but you got the feeling of being rewarded each time you did it, would you be able to just stop eating?

We’ve seen that in many examples on shows like My 600 Lb life. The ones who keep off the weight often don’t struggle with as severe of a food addiction as their counterparts. Some have Gastric Bypass and keep eating and eating and eating.

Here’s a scale for you.

Say there’s a baseline dopamine release: than,

Eating increases dopamine by 150%

Sex increases dopamine by 200%

Cocaine increases dopamine by 300% 

Meth increases dopamine by 1500%

Stew on that.

Addiction is essentially like a compulsion. That’s how my professor explained it. The user continues regardless of risks of consequences. If you live with OCD, you know what I’m talking about. You know about standing in front of that light switch and having to flip it twenty three and a half times before you can step outside of your room. And as much as you want to stop, you can’t.

If you struggle with substance use and I say something horribly out of line, feel free to tell your story in the comments. I’m just jotting what they’re teaching nurses and community counselors these days, for all of your benefits. Maybe it’ll help someone understand the mindset in the people they work with.

He made it clear that the user may at first choose to try the drug, but because the drug then stimulates a high, the reward pathway is also stimulated and suddenly they can’t stop.

But it’s not as if your body doesn’t try and compensate.

GABA As A Chemical Structure

Tolerance is one way. If you’re an alcoholic for example, the main reason why you are sedated and squirming around in a daze on the floor is because alcohol triggers a serious release of GABA (Gamma Aminobutyric Acid), a neurotransmitter that is rather inhibitory. If you lack this neurotransmitter, you’re probably anxious and wired and an insomniac like me. I don’t know if I lack GABA, but whatever, you get my point.

Well your brain really, really values two things: consciousness and Homeostasis. We’ll focus on the homeostasis part.

Homeostasis means balance. Stability. So if you’re overwhelming it with an inhibitory transmitter, it’s going to start spewing an excitory one at you, like Glutamate. It essentially tries to even itself out. That’s why you have to drink more and more the further you dive into alcoholism, just to get a buzz in your brain; there’s so much Glutamate combating the GABA that you need more and more GABA.

What happens when you stop?

I’m sure every alcoholic has had the shakes and mood swings. But when you’re a severe alcoholic (there’s a spectrum), you’re at risk of experiencing Delrium Tremons (DT) which consists of confusion, hallucinations, or the fatal “sympathetic overdrive” which can advance to cardiovascular collapse. You’ve probably had a seizure or two as well.

Withdrawal for severe alcoholics can result in fatality because of DT’s. Other withdrawals cannot.

But Withdrawal from any substance is also your brain’s attempt at homeostasis. When you stop drinking, all that GABA you were once supplying your body with basically crumbles into non-existence. But by now your brain was used to pouring buckets upon buckets of Glutamate on those sedated neurons. Remember, Glutamate is excitory. This imbalance of chemicals is a cause of withdrawal seizures.

You ever hear a doctor explain withdrawal seizures as overactive neurons? Well, that’s what they’re talking about.

I’m not a fan of statistics, they’re about as reliable as my left foot having the ability to spread wings.

Depending on the research, of course, and the researchers.

However, I tend to agree that those of us with a parent who is an alcoholic and those of us that choose to get shit-face drunk raises our risks of developing the disease.

I call it a disease only because I see the biological and genetic development of it much clearer. No one asks for an addiction just as no one asks for heart disease.

Eating Burger king fifty times a month (A CONSCIOUS DECISION) may raise someone’s cholesterol and they may develop heart disease (NOT A CONSCIOUS DECISION).

Having a history of alcoholics in your family and going out to the bars five times a week with your friends (A CONSCIOUS DECISION) and passing out behind the dumpster might switch on that little genetic component and get that reward center flowing and they may develop an addiction (NOT A CONSCIOUS DECISION).

Not everyone gets heart disease from Burger King. Not everyone gets addicted to drugs.

He put on the board HEART DISEASE and asked us what the first words were that came to mind. We said a lot of things like smoking and cholesterol and genetics. He asked us what the people around those with heart disease were usually like. We said supportive, understanding.

He put addiction on the board and asked us what the first words were that came to mind. Someone blurted ANGER. We also copied the physical health we listed under heart disease. Someone else said struggle. Someone said environment. He asked us what the people around those with addictions were usually like. We said angry. Disturbed. Misunderstanding. Unsupportive. And a slew of other negative connotations.

Because we’ve got this crazy notion that people choose to be addicts. No one chooses to be an addict. I didn’t have to take this class to know that. I did have to take this class to see why it’s classified as a disease. But even I’m not stupid enough to think someone chooses to stick a fucking needle in their arm on a street corner. 

It’s true, some people refuse help. And if I feel any anger towards that, it’s towards the disease and not the person. A few bad choices damn near doomed their future.

Many suffer comorbid with mental health disorders.

There are reasons for turning to food for comfort and turning to drugs for comfort.

Substance Use might not technically be a “disorder” as much as it is a “disease”, but we’re all in the same boat here.

Little Jimmy didn’t wake up one day and decide to develop schizophrenia and then the next day rolled out of bed and said “eh, I don’t feel like dealing with schizophrenia today, I’ll just stop”.

Little Suzie didn’t wake up one day and say “I want to spend the rest of my time having manic highs and suicidal depressive lows! Yay!”

Middle-sized Kyle didn’t wake up one day and say “I think I want to be a heroin addict on fifth avenue now, mom”.

One bad decision doesn’t mean they chose to be an addict. Everyone makes bad decisions and most of them we don’t have the consequences of developing a disease because of it. For example, I backed into a wall today because I made a lazy decision to not wipe off my back window so I could see. Now there’s a hairline scratch on my car.

But that’s not going to kill me.

Bro, Stop Moving My Arm! Stop It! Weirdo

Today I thought I’d take a different twist on things and talk about an amazing TED talk video I watched on electrophysiology and the ways our technology these days can manipulate neurosignals. This entertained me greatly.

All I could think about was buying myself one of these gadgets. Think if we enhanced it with all the crazy quantum teleportation technology we’ve developed just this last year. I’d go running around slapping random people with electrodes and then come home and sit in the closet with the lights off hooking them up to my legs and my arms and laugh knowing when I extended my arm someone was slapping their boyfriend or when I kicked my leg someone was kicking the knee of a guy standing in front of them in line. Just how diabolical could we get with this freaky science?

The day we transport thoughts via quantum entanglement is the day I’m building my underground barricade made of aluminum foil. Reynolds Wrap will see a huge increase in sales from me personally.

My Future Children’s School Attire

You can’t call someone deluded when the threat is real.

Which begs an interesting question. A lot of paranoid delusions today revolve around satellites and the government tracking your every move, your every thought. When that becomes a well-known and accessible truth, do we still call these people deluded? Or will the delusions themselves manifest differently? It would interesting to see how much of the environment really plays a part in the development of paranoid/delusional disorders and thinking. Just a thought.

Anyway, the guy in that TED talk started this website and I’ve checked it out, it’s awesome!  The human-to-human interface,  the machine he used in this TED talk (although probably not equipped with quantum physics as of YET; let me finish taking my physics classes and I’ll get started right away) is $260. I’m thinking of buying one. They have tons of little other gadgets and work with students, teachers, whoever, to get kids and schools interested in such an understudied field like neuroscience. How else are we going to improve on the disgraces we call psychotropic medication? If no one’s studying it, well you’re going to be stuck taking a cocktail of pills that will eventually ruin your heart, your liver, kidneys, and other such vital organs. We need researchers. And I think handing a kid a machine where they can control their friends arm with their brain can go one of two ways:

1. Turn them into a raging mad scientist who deconstructs the machines and rebuilds a new one and incorporates quantum properties and ends up controlling the presidents, kings, and prime ministers of the world and makes them hit that big red nuclear war button on accident when he really meant to make them pick up that hot cup of coffee and spill it on the vice president as a joke and then destroys all of humanity except the cockroaches.
2. Or motivates them into a future career in neuroscience and understanding the brain.

I mean, life is really all a big 50/50 isn’t it? You might wake up, you might not; you might have kids, you might not; you might laugh at that corny joke your professor tells, you might not; You might like the new Imagine Dragons album, you might not.

Completo: The Table Top Electrophysiology device. Fit for High School students or Graduate students!

I’m going to check out their Completo and find myself some Earthworms and probe the fuck out of them and measure the fuck out of their sensory neurons. I’m drooling just thinking about it. I will never sleep again if I start purchasing their equipment. Don’t feel sad for the Earthworms, they gave their life to science. Which do you think they prefer: to be used for amateur neurological research or to be eaten by some asshole fish? I mean, really, pick and choose here people, I’m making his demise worth something.

Anyway, I’d recommend checking out these guys if you’re at all interested in the brain or current research going on. More power to them; I think they’re doing a great job making this type of equipment available to anyone.

Kids learn way better when they see science in action rather than sitting in a chair and learning “This is a muscle. This is a bone. This is a brain. This is a cell. Now go home”. We need more little aspiring neuroscientists in this world.