On not going tharn

Decisions have been made and plans are being enacted. The great year long experiment of trying psych meds is over. I quit.

Well, to be scrupulously honest, I am quitting the systemic Buproprion and keeping the as needed Ativan. I have designed my step down program (and was told I was being too meticulous and to hasten) to get it out of my system. I will be done in fourteen days or less. (As opposed to the twenty-one days or more I had proposed).

So in future, while I still may be snotty, I will have the opportunity to experience other emotions as well. Which is all “hurrah for me”, as having a totally flat affect except for anger and anxiety was really, really, harshing my mellow, cramping my style, and all those other, turd in the punchbowl, type euphemisms, analogies and metaphors.

Now to be again, perfectly honest, I am being encouraged to try a different approach once my system has cleared out and normalized. Cymbalta was suggested. I have to admit that those commercials give me the green envies. All that “depression hurts” (yes, yes it does,) “Cymbalta can help” (Oh really? Ya promise?) does tweak my “I wish this was just fixed already, deep down, Stepford is bliss, can’t this be simplified so I can just do my bills like a normal person” jones.

I am however, taking a wait and see approach. Because as much as I am terrified of withdrawal from this fairly innocuous script, I am really terrified of SSRI’s. There are few things worse than coming down and/or withdrawal. It just takes all the fun out of drugs.

Oh I am a beast

Well I did me some papering and if I don’t get my coveted A it will mean that I have gone insane w/out realizing and made no sense a’tall for 14 pages. Last night I was so very happily relieved and today I am bitch ugly and want to drink and fight.
So, if you run into me somewhere tonight, (because I now want no part of socializing and that just seems like a really good reason to force myself) and I seem a little buzzed, it’s probably best to just swallow any pride and be conciliatory to me. I have a bad habit of being a REALLY happy drunk until without warning I become extraordinarily vicious. Lon Chaney eat your heart out.

PS No moralizing required, as when these things happen I always hurt myself somehow, and usually pretty badly. It’s like perfect karma in a bottle.

Salutations decaffeination

OK the results are in and here’s the conclusion about becoming one of the few, the miserable, the decaffeine.

If one must do decaffeinated black tea in order to have some semblance of civility and rituality, much like in the real world of caffeine, Red Rose appears to be superior to the more expensive, individually wrapped, over packaged, more expensive, tripe such as Twinings.
It took me awhile to realize that I could boost my intake to two bags, in a sort of reverse process from how I got off the stuff. That did give a bit more taste to what is really now just a ritualized giant mug of milky hot water in the mornings.
But my decision is, that once this box of “RR de” is gone, that’s it for de-caf. There are plenty of herbals that offer much more actual taste. Yogi Kaffe is one. There is also a nice, hearty, Celestial Seasonings, something like Sugar Plum Spice, that appears to be seasonal but perhaps I could order or something.

I’ve also been making my own lemon and lime and sometimes lemon-lime ades and mixing them with various Zingers, as well as hibiscus straight up to play with. Honey and/or agave nectar is the usual sweetener for these as well as that a hearty splash of rose water really rules Belgium pretty firmly.

Cold turkey, will sure give you the runs

If there is one thing I’ve learned in my checkered, chessed, and parcheesi’d past, it’s to step down, over cold turkey, whenever possible.
Now for some people (court ordered, boneheads, recalcitrant) or in some circumstances (Jail, rehab, de-tox) or with some substances (me & tobacco so far) it’s not likely to work.
But cold turkey is for that brand of people who say things like “Go ahead, punch me as hard as you can, right in my stomach”. And I guess if you’re just a flat out pain freak it might even be fun.
But my step down program has always worked (other than tobacco) every time I’ve needed it to and it’s relatively painless. It’s based on halves and doubles. Either cut the dose in half each time or double the time between or if you really need to be macho, both.

I used to think withdrawal was meritorious in that it would make one think thrice about picking up. But then I used to enjoy a bit of pain as well. And the reality of pain is one of our most fleeting memories. (Thank you brain chemistry for that at least.) I am so over that bit. And I have also learned that if one is determined to pick up, nothing is likely to stand in the way, other than a bullet ot something of that ilk.
People who are in that headspace don’t call their sponsors. That is one of the big ass problems of 12 stepping.

I mention all this because I will be off the caffeine by Monday. I started at the level of one cup tea, one cup coffee on Weds. Thurs. I had one cup tea. Fri. 1/2 a teabag. Today 1/4. Tomorrow a few grains. So far, no debilitating headache. Sweet.

So if I can painlessly get off it, compared to the pretty severe pain it causes me, I’m ahead in the game. Of course when the memory of the pain it gives me has fleeted, I could easily forget to not pick up..... Cuz coffee, tea and chocolates are such sweet poizens.