This post brought to you by two folks from the same site who commented within 4 minutes of each other that “Everything will work just fine if we think positive”.

So… if I just think positive everything will be ok? Whoa! I didn’t know positive thinking was a cure for bipolar disorder!  How could I have missed that?  Oh snap.

Hmmms. I was thinking positive when I blew through over $150K in a year, most of which was creating nasty debt. I was thinking VERY positive, in spite of the traffic tickets and the minor fender-bender, and not having any way to support myself and the debt I was getting myself into as my money ran out.  I was so very positive it was a good idea to dump my life and move across the continent to be with a guy I’d met on the internet. You’ve never met such a positive thinking person in your life!  I just knew everything would be all right because nothing could stand in my way. Unfortunately, I was also very manic. Bipolar disorder strikes again.

Has it turned out all right?  I guess that depends on what you mean by all right. I’m still alive. That’s all right. I am, after over 10 years still paying off all that debt. That’s not so all right.  All that thinking positive didn’t keep me from having years of suicidal mixed mania or morbid depression or  wrecking my life to pieces.

Ya think maybe that thinking positive isn’t the whole story?  Just maybe?

Positive thinking is great, and might well be critical.  But don’t forget the positive action bit.  It’s also critical.

Start with the positive thinking. Directing your thoughts to the idea that things can and will turn out ok.  Then align your behavior with that idea.  Then things do get better overall.   Every little thing won’t be perfect. But more and more things will be good.

However, if you just sit on your can thinking good thoughts and doing nothing, or worse yet doing things that are bad for you, things aren’t likely to improve.

So THINK positive and DO positive.

Nuff said.

———-

As usual, the first thing Lady Dr. Shrink asked was, “How have you been?”

I told her depends on what you mean by that, but overall OK, I figured.

I’ve been amazingly OK from one perspective.  Da shit has been happening all over the place internally and externally since I last saw her. However, I’ve been handling everything really well.  I’ve kept myself safe. I haven’t wrecked my life with the swings or the chaos or left myself with nasty things to clean up. All that is really good. Definitely ok.

I have often felt like total crap at times throughout the month, which is not so ok.  I do know much of it has been caused by  rapid-cycling and mania and psychotic symptoms from the prednisone. And I’ve gained 5 stinking pounds from prednisone and having had to stop the bike exercise because of the asthma.  Pffffffft this stuff I don’t like.

I’ve learned, though, that I can choose to cope with the crap feelings and odd mental effects with much effort — with sleep and lifestyle and meditation and dbt skills and meditation and eating decent and mood charts and minimal medication — or I can medicate them to death.  They would give me enough anti-psychotics that I’d never have a negative feeling again.  Of course, I’d never have a positive feeling again either.  

You know, I did not crawl over broken glass to get away from my cocaine addiction just to medicate myself out of existence with legal drugs.  

So I bust my tail and overall find a balance.  The mood charts prove it out that however crap I feel I’ve felt and dealt with over the last month, it’s been a fairly even ride all things considered. I’ve been in much, much worse places for years at a time. So this is really working. It feels good to see that.

That’s what she and I talked about today.  We’re cool.

And I got back on the exercise bike tonight. 10 minutes and I was wiped. But it’s a start.

Yes, I need to quit smoking. I want to be a non-smoker.  But as I said in my last post, I’m not sure how to get there from here. In one piece.

Over the years I’ve tried quitting. Lord have I tried.  And nicotine gum. And patches. And affirmations for 6 months before trying to quit. And individual hypnosis. And group hypnosis, which only left me with an inability to eat chicken for about a year. And cold turkey. And biofeedback. And weaning myself. And psychotherapy. And even benzos to calm out the suicidal stuff a bit.. but then I was so relaxed I don’t care if I smoked, so nix that. And Welbutrin/Zyban, which helps with my depression but doesn’t do diddly for smoking urges. And several fairly weird quit smoking program and several more normal ones. And books and pamphlets and groups. And in various combinations.

Every time I got so suicidal within 2 or 3 even medical doctors tell me to light up. I’m not sure they would now. Asthma and COPD are hitting me so hard now they might tell me to just go lock myself up in some sort of hospital for a week or so to get past the first few days suicidal thoughts.  It may come to that, because nothing else has ever worked over many, many years of trying to quit for more than a couple of days.

I’m not even sure being in the hospital would work. The first time I was on a mental ward, a gal taught me how to hide cigs and then light them using common things found in virtually every room in the hospital. I haven’t forgotten. 

I do see a tiny light at the end of the smoke-shrouded tunnel though. Maybe I’ll make it before the ghostly tar train runs me over completely. I hope so.

I faced down cocaine. But it had to kill me first.  Is that what I’m waiting for here???

One thing I’ve considered is to just stop all my asthma and copd meds and not allow them back until I’ve made it past 3 days of not smoking.  Then let them back one at a time until I’m back up to normal.   I know from times I’ve forgotten the maintenance meds, though, that I will be positively miserable as far as breathing if I drop them all out.  I relate to the world primarly emotionally and by experience, so perhaps that lack of ability to breathe would make it compelling to finally just get the quitting over with.  I’m not sure that’s such a healthy thing to do, though. Maybe I should ask the doc. It would be sadly ironic and useless to die of what I did trying to quit smoking.

As I commented in response to Laura, I don’t think while I’m hallucinating is the best time to tackle it. Life is challenging as hell in the midst of that without adding stuff to it. If this course of the prednisone runs true to form, I’ll have max 3 days before my mind does a jump to the left, and then a step to the riiiiiiiiiiight.  I’ll put my hands on my hips and keep going in spite of things flying out of keyboards and children yodelling in the attic. But not the best time to tackle quitting smoking.

I’ll manage it. I’m just not sure how. I think I’ll start with gum and affirmations and exercise.  In a couple of weeks. Got to first get past the prednisone psychosis that’s on its way now that I’ve taken my first dose.

Depression decided to calm down.  Not entirely, but I no longer feel like planning my own funeral. So that’s good. I love when the bipolar shakes down enough to let me live somewhat peacefully.  The only good thing I can say for rapid cycling is that if I don’t like what’s going on, wait a day or two and it’ll pass.

Of course, this asthmatic breathing stuff has been hassling me long enough now and my peak flow is low enough that I figured I have asthmatic bronchitis. Yep, sure enough. 

Doc was a hoot, actually. I saw one of my reg doc’s colleagues, but I gave the nurse a ton of info.. peak flow, how long, etc.  So he walked in and said, “You know what you have. I know what you have. So let’s make this quick so you can get out of here.”  He even brought scripts already printed out. I laughed my butt half off. Then wheezed a lot.  He listened to chest… duhr, I can hear the wheezing without a stethoscope. It probably sounded like aboriginals with weird instruments to him. Yep, asthmatic bronchitis. As usual.  We discussed meds and quit smoking stuff esp in light of the bipolar stuff and my sensitivity to meds. But there’s not really anything to do except the usual.

So guess what. I get to take more prednisone!  No one’s going to die of that surprise. I’m going to start just having it as a snack at this rate. Who knows what this will do to my mood or the rest of my mind.  Everybody groan with me… Grrrrrrrrrrrrrroooooooooooooooan.  Thankyaverymuch.

I haven’t a clue how to get there from here without jumping off something tall, but I really want to quit wrecking my ability to breathe by smoking. Doc said gum might help me more than patch because it also helps replace habit type stuff.  Haven’t tried it in some 20 years, so might give that method a go again. Can’t hurt. Might help.

On the bright side, my knee is continuing to improve.  Praise the lawd!

Mog wanted to know how I handle the hallucinations. Today that was the answer: I got out of bed. Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday was busy. So busy that I’m worn out today.  Something about having been mostly unable to work the past couple of weeks causes that busy stuff to go haywire.  Of course, today I have to chill. But yesterday I got orders out and emailed a squillion customers and so on, as well as took my mother out to eat sushi for her birthday. So it was all good.  Today has to be more laid back or I’ll be laid out again with this bronchitis.

Yes, the bronchitis is going away. Far too slowly to suit me. But finally it does seem to be on its way out.  Praise everyone and everything!  I will keep my fingers crossed that it doesn’t make a u-turn. However…

Yes, the prednisone hit my brain finally. I almost thought it wasn’t going to. But nope. Last night coming home from taking Mom out to eat I noticed that every single white light had a blue rectangle under it.  Nice, bright, neon blue rectangle.  That seemed a bit unusual, so I asked her and nope, she didn’t see any blue boxes.  She’s not blind — which is a good thing since she was driving — so eh well, my brain went a bit odd from the prednisone finally.  Apparently.  I still see blue boxes all over the place. Underneath anything white.  I don’t know if it’s a hallucination per se or if it’s a “visual disturbance”. Whichever. There’s not a significant difference in terms of day to day living. It’s a bit annoying, but I couldn’t drive anyway with the mucked up knee, and it’s not freaking me out.  

So I’ll leave the blue boxes where they sit. I’m done with the prednisone doses anyway, and the weird effects go away within 2 or 3 days after.  If I’m still seeing blue boxes on Friday when I see the shrink, we’ll talk about it.

I’m not exactly sure what good that will do except for her recordkeeping. What will she note?  ”Prednisone, when taken, continues to play pretend with patient’s reality set.” Much else?  Nah. She has no magic wand to make things go away, however you define them. And blue boxes are neither dangerous nor distressing enough to bother trying to treat.  

Now it’s time for a nap so I don’t wear my silly blue-boxed butt out. Zzzzzzzzzzzzz

I was reading somewhere about medications covering feelings so that person never got past the feelings.  

Well.

Yeah, that can surely happen.  It probably does happen a lot. SSRI antidepressants send me hypomanic and however lucid that feels, the lucidness is just a feeling that evaporates when it does. Likely enough in a lot of cases antidepressants just push past any feelings and leave them behind in the dust. All the drugs I ever did recreationally covered feelings so well that I surely consciously knew I had any. Antipsychotics definitely cover feelings; they smoosh them flat. Hiding and smooshing feelings doesn’t work so well in the long run, though. More’s the pity.

I’ve been lucky though in getting my meds close enough to right that feelings are there. Right, meaning they just bring me to baseline rather than barrelling me past the stuff in my mind that actually lives there for some reason other than chemical weirdness. Emergency meds, like the Zyprexa for prednisone hallucinations and the like, moosh my feelings, but for brief periods, that’s ok. Once the emergency is past and I’m off those meds, there are those feelings again. Lucky me. Lucky in the sense that usually my feelings are just there and I can deal with them and process them through, at any rate. It doesn’t always feel so lucky to have to deal with them, though.  

So goody, now I’m learning to deal with old feelings. Oh yay *hackchokecoff* LOL  Oh it’s good, just not always fun.

And we know enough now about how my brain reacts to things to have a clue how to deal with meds in general. Yippee!

Thus my next adventure in meds will be Topamax, affectionately called Stupidmax. Why bother? I’m hoping to do a couple of things: get rid of this severe gastritis caused by the Trileptal, and get away from the enzyme-inducing Trileptal so that everything that affects my liver a bit doesn’t affect my psych meds so much. I mean sheesh, the number of cigarettes I smoke can screw with the Trileptal because they use the same liver enzymes. Topamax is also an anticonvulsant but isn’t one of the enzyme-inducing ones. Why do the pdoc and I think it might work? Like Trileptal which is good for me as an anti-mania med, it also works on the temporal lobes primarily; it has a somewhat higher but similar side effect profile as Trileptal as far as cognitive stuff, but we can probably work around that with dosage (Trileptal really screwed with my head the first few months, but it settled down and I’m merely somewhat more stupid than I was before it); it’s weight neutral or causes weight loss which would be helpful either way; it’s also used for neurological pain so it’ll probably keep my intercostal neuritis that Trileptal “cured” from flaring up again; and it’s also helpful for migraines (which I haven’t had since I started Trileptal) so hopefully that will continue; and it might even help me quit smoking, an oddball effect it sometimes has on people.  It’s less expensive too, which surely doesn’t hurt. So even if it works about the same as Trileptal with the same side effects, at least it isn’t enzyme-inducing which would be a plus.

But oh boy and hmmmms.  Am I nuts to want to go through the new meds routine again?  Even the Trileptal caused me a few months of various weird stuff. Mostly cognitive weird stuff after the initial stoned-out-of-my-mind feeling went away.  *looks at list*  No, I’m not nuts.  Brave maybe, but not nuts. Oh wait, is that the other way around?  Hard to tell.