I’m feeling absolutely horribly awful today. But it is, I’m sorry to say, one hundred perfect totally self inflicted. We spontaneously got a late train on Friday to stay with some friends. As we arrived late, Friday was fairly restrained and Saturday was a late lie in. I knew there would be a lot of drinking this weekend so I hardly ate anything on Saturday daytime (a boiled egg and a piece of toast). On Saturday we went out walking and around their city, so I avoided eating by saying I’d grabbed a sandwich earlier. We stopped in a pub for the afternoon and I started drinking then. My alcohol tolerance is through the floor – a combination of medication and losing weight. Two pints later I felt hammered and it triggered me off on a bit of an alcohol binge. Though I did drunkenly eat half a piece of pizza because of that – so at least I ate something else on Saturday.
I carried on drinking all Saturday afternoon and then we started getting ready to go out clubbing for Saturday night. We had some speed which was left over from a party at Christmas and had decided to take that while we were out. I love clubbing, I just love getting lost in the music and dancing like a crazy person. But I’m fairly socially inept and it does make feel awkward trying to make small talk with people. So I figured the speed would help and also keep me going for the night. And once I start I couldn’t really stop myself and ended up taking some random legal highs (I’m guessing) at an after club party. Finally stopped drinking and sobered up about midday on the Sunday and then had to train it home to collapse in bed. Felt hideous after drinking so much, so again didn’t really eat. And I didn’t take my medication on Saturday (was too drunk) or Sunday (forgot), so I’m blaming the “wanting-to-climb-out-of-the-window” misery and “are-you-staring-at-me” paranoia on the rebound affect of messing with psychotropics. And I’ve got incredibly fun intermittent palpitations and hot/cold sweats thrown in. Oops. Drugs, are apparently bad, kids!
I’ve always been fairly honest with my doctor(s) about the issues I have with drugs (well, actually, I’ve been honest about what I take and when I’ve taken it, but I don’t have an issue with it, more that my doctor does and I’m unwilling to change). From what I’ve heard/read about substance abuse it’s not that uncommon with mood disorders. I’m not really sure which came first. I got into drugs around the same time I started suffering from depression (I was about 14). For me I’m definitely worse with drugs when I’m in the middle of a mood episode. Usually I will take the odd bit here and there like this weekend and although I’ll feel rough afterwards it’s not really an emotional crutch and no different from drinking. Regular drug use is usually an indicator to me that things aren’t all that great and often one of the first signs of a mood change. Highs tend to be worse as I tend to lose sight of the fact it’s probably a bad idea and this can spiral if the drugs trigger worsening of mood (speed is fairly bad for this one for me). When I first started seeing my psychiatrist last summer, when I was hypomanic, he asked if he could have some assurance that I would at least try to take the medication as prescribed and I told him that I would – but that I couldn’t start taking them until Sunday (it was then Friday) as I was going from my appointment to a party and was intending to take drugs and didn’t want the antipsychotics to limit the effect of the high. (At least I’m generally honest, if not particularly insightful about why this wasn’t a great idea). When I’m down I tend to take drugs to drown out the feelings, as an ill-advised form of self-medication – last time I was depressed in November/December I was taking ketamine on a daily basis as it gave me a brief period of not being me (and pretty floaty hallucinations).
I’m not really sure why I’m writing this - distracting myself from my total incoherence to function at work right now. This weekend was the first time in ages (since New Years Eve) that I’ve taken anything. So it’s not as if it’s a massive problem. I think just maybe next time I get offered stuff at least I might cast my mind back to this post and remind myself how awful the come-downs are and maybe, just maybe, not take anything. Given the abuses of the weekend, however, I haven’t really lost any weight, so I’m obviously made of sterner stuff than I thought – even if I currently feel like a lump of pain drenched in wibbly paranoia-jelly.
No comments:
Post a Comment