Saturday, November 4, 2006

Chemical Castration

11/4/06---

I have a very short time frame in which to write---before I have to take 2 mg of Respirodal (spelling?--I sure as fuck don't care.  I don't intend to take the poison long enough to matter) and 250 mg of Depakote.  Why am I taking them?  The answer to that is longer than I have time for today.  I just want to document the destructive side effects that these drugs have on me.  They turn me into a zombie during the day.  I see people around me who are happy and joyous and able to interact with the reality around them, and I am incredibly sad because when I am on these meds, I cannot do so. 

It also is having the same damaging effect on me physically that it had in the hospital---increasing my resting heart rate and creating a real malaise-like drag that leaves me without energy, ambition, or drive.  I just want to sleep.  Yesterday, during my workout, my normal cardio routine on the machines---3 miles in 30 minutes was completely disrupted.  I did not check my resting heart rate, but I could tell it was greatly elevated because working out in the fatburning zone really slowed me down.  I couldn't even break a sweat.  I kept checking my jugular pulse, and was scared how fast my heart was pounding when I wasn't even sweating.  But it took every bit of energy I had just to go 35 minutes.  Like last year, when I felt much the same way, while being force-fed lithium, I couldn't help but envy the people around me, who were able to really jump into their workout with healthy push and vitality.  I'm so sick of  feeling like an invalid.  I continue to suffer from the heaviness in my limbs.  I don't know when I am going to be healthy again.

Then, there are the mental problems caused by the drugs---especially the loss of my dreams (I'm not dreaming, or if I am, I cannot remember them when I wake up).  This is unacceptable, as my dreams are important for guiding me.  I can't pray.  I don't have the concentration.  I can only read for brief periods of time.  Again, my concentration is practically nil.  And my memory is starting to suffer in the same way it did when I was on lithium.   Currently, I am reading Sangharishita's Survey of Buddhism.  He was writing of vipassana meditation.  So yesterday, I did an internet search for vipassana, and remember that I  found what Iwas looking for.  This morning I started reading again, and ran into the vipassana referrence again, and for the life of me, I cannot remember what I learned in yesterday's search.  At all. 

This is a huge handicap.  A big part of my intelligence has to do with my prodigious memory.  I have an incredible capacity for short term memory, and normally am constantly thinking about topics that I am currently reading about.  This is also the source of my concentration. I cannot ooncentrate or think when I am on these meds, and I am turned into a very average intelligence kind of person.  Now, I am afraid to apply for a challenging job with my mind like this (I want a tech support position).  I don't believe I have the mental capacity right now to successfully understand and complete a rigorous training.

Before I leave I want to say why I am re-reading Survey of Buddhism.  My inner voice told me to, before I got all doped up on these drugs.  "SB", along with The Science of Yoga,  were read at a really fruitul time in my college career.  I had just finished reading St. John of the Cross' classical works as well as The Cloud of Unknowing, and I was so struck by the similarities  that I started immediately re-reading the Christian classics along with the Buddhist/Yoga texts.  The big difference is that the Christian authors are more poetical in tone and prose, while the Eastern authors are more analytically conceptual in their description of essentially the same reality, which could be called meditation or contemplation.  I was also sitting in half lotus (I could do that back then and even occasionally hit a full lotus), every day for 20 minutes.  These books enabled me to rein in my "monkey mind" for the first time in my life.

My mind is not in good shape right now.  I can clearly recognize that.  I know too, that much of my current "monkey mind" is a result of the damage done by the lithium.  I have to get my clarity of mind back and the books/meditation practice can help me, but they are severely undermined by the psychotropic drugs I currently am forced to take.  Interestingly enough, "the thoughts" that the drugs are supposed to curb, rule with even greater intensity when I am drugged.  What the drugs impact is my impact to creatively write/transform/understand my thoughts.  I am so messed up.  God help me.

Didn't get to my eyes, but clearly these drugs have a terrible impact on my eyes as well....

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