// μ = m // dayvan cowboy // music is math

These mayonnaise posts might be annoying from the point of view of the reader and sure hurt my googleability and reader attention, but there’s so much context involved in most post and it’s kinda tiresome introducing it as-needed, not to mention forcing anyone who really wants to understand this story to decipher through the breadcrumb trails scattered over short-ish, this-is-now posts.

My psychiatrist. My psychiatrist is a psychopharmacology geek who has studied under who he consider his Master, a psychopharmacology geek from Spain. I mean, he went all the way through med school, but he still holds a special place to this Master.

What being a psychopharmacology geek means is that we’ve gone through a lot of meds trying to optimize my experience. Most psychiatrists will give you lithium or Depakote and expect you to cope — actually bullying you into coping and keep taking your meds — and while that does work wonders, statistically — as in preventing relapse for N weeks, where N is a function of the size of your research grant, I for one know that I would have lost a lot in life if I had been in Depakote monotherapy, even if that meant avoiding a few hypomanic flip-outs.

He’s actually cool with me doing some psychopharmacological experimentation — not taking other people’s drugs, I guess, though I never had the chance, but fiddling with my doses in general and being discretionary about my clonazepam and ritalin in particular. I did earn his trust by being responsible, extremely well-informed and being fantastically aware of my moods so psychopharmacological experimentation can lead to optimal experience. I think he’s glad I don’t have major psychological issues that interfere with him being a psychopharmacology geek working with psychopharmacological optimization.

20 packets transmitted, 20 packets received, 0% packet loss
Oh, cool, that means I have internet access. You wouldn’t believe how much downtime I get, specially on, wow, weekend nights, when I really need it.

My meds. Many people think medications are like drugs you take to help you cope instead of addressing the actual problem. The actual problem, of course, is the actual problem they have, because everyone seems to think every existential search is the same. Heck, dr. Freud thought every existential search was the same, and that’s why I was always distrustful of psychologists, even though my parents tried to force me into one (and managed to, for one consult) — they’d tell me what my existential search was. I was in my tweens, I had no friends, and that was the obvious guesstimate about what my existential search was, and they’d try to help me cope with something that was never really the problem. I’m just beginning to see what the problem is, and that’s because all the fucked up nonlinearity in my head is being sorted through — not the old nonlinearity that forms my memories, my personality and the fears I’m trying to address, but the new nonlinearities so I myself can keep up with my thinking and both search through my past and the problem, but also try and build a life from now on.

I’m currently taking an antipsychotic, an anticonvulsant, a benzodiazepine (which is actually a mild anticonvulsant whose side-effects everyone seeks) and a stimulant. First there’s Seroquel, which is quetiapine fumarate, but mentioning the generic name is pointless because it’s still patented. Then there’s lamotrigine, best known abroad for its original brand name before it went generic, Lamictal but I’ve really taking made-in-india Lamitor and made-in-Brazil Neural. Neural is such a stupid name for a med.

Stream of consciousness today — I apologize for the bad style. I fucked up big time when I  tried 10mg ritalin knowing I had skipped one dose of anticonvulsant. I had just run out and thought Seroquel was strong enough everything else was just an add-on. I think it’s a full hypomanic flip-out. I do know Ritalin competes with Seroquel for receptors. I’ve already taken six miligrams of clonazepam — which sure did chill me out — and two susie-Qs, and I’m still insomniac. Usually one 100mg seroquel will knock me out for 10-12 hours. 

I do hope the extra antipsychotic stops this on its tracks. If it doesn’t  I’m upping the anticonvulsant. But I don’t have the time for that, I’m supposed to function as a normal human being or get fired. 

On a second thought, I should up the anticonvulsant right now.  Maybe a Depakote, but if I’m depressed tomorrow I won’t be able to function. Lamictal has that antidepressant effect which could get in the way of stopping mania in its tracks. Maybe Risperdal?

Jesus, self-medicating is hard. I should have gotten an algorithm in case of a manic flip-out, but I wanted the Ritalin enough that I downplayed the pro-manic effects of it at my last season. 

What’s worse, as soon as I feel stabilized — no chaos attracting my brain even if ultrafocused on ritalin — I’ll still take ritalin, though in much more moderated amounts.

If the pre-psychotic “chaos attracting my brain” is the problem, I think I might do half a 2mg Risperdal. Seroquel is way too expensive to keep one-upping it in hopes of getting okay. OTOH a full 2mg Risperdal steals my entire soul. But hey, 1mg Risperdal plus 200mg Seroquel might be way too much antipsychotic and might numb my soul far worse than 2mg Risperdal did — even though Seroquel is much smarter.

I’m at the diametrically opposed state of mind as of the last post. After two hours of sleep, a moderate (5mg) dose of Ritalin about seven hours ago and a small (1mg) dose of clonazepam right now, I’m focused, sitting straight, eyes focused at the screen — I feel like a robot.

I’ve just been given strict deadlines to complete a strictly defined workload. There’s next to none creativity involved, so I should be able to complete it no matter how sharp my cognitive skills are at the moment.

Instead, even when at the ritalin zen ideal of being calm, emotionless, focused, I keep looking for complexity — I keep expanding the scope of the report I’m supposed to be writing.

Even at zen state, my brain seeks chaos.

I am not actually emotionless. I’m dazed and confused, somewhat depressed over my apparent incapacity to perform normal tasks, afraid of utter general failure in life. I also need to talk to someone over coffee. Coffee, not alcoholic drinks. But emotions don’t seem to surface. I’m calm and focused, as in that Radiohead song spoken by a voice synthetizer. Insulating outside noise with Einstürzende Neubauten’s “Silence is sexy” — the album. I’m fucked up big time as far a seric levels of medications go, and I need a plan to go back to pax seroquel and yet be able to use moderate amounts of ritalin to get this project done — or I’ll get fired.

The plan right now is to clonazepam myself out of hypomania — the fire within that seems to seek complexity and return tonight to the normal schedule. I’m hoping the anticonvulsant dose I missed caused the big disruption and I’ll be able to reach pax seroquel by tomorrow, and microregulate my mood/productivity on ritazepam.

All the drugs I’ve taken for most of my psychiatric life — except for that brief contact with bupropion — have been anticonvulsants. And I’ve actually been okay, oscillating between mild hypomania and no hypomania at all. Remember, I started psychiatric drugs because of depression, which hasn’t happened for more than a night or two since I started treatment.

Then somehow I got into the (hypo)mania that wouldn’t stop. I’d take 6 or 8mg of clonazepam and still be awake all night. Spending massive amounts of money in luxury stuff like $250 headphones or a 160gb iPod. So we finally entered the strange world of atypical antipsychotics. I had learned a lot about anticonvulsants, but this is brave new world to me.

For a while I though they were horrible drugs that silence the chatter inside your head. 1.5mg o risperidone made me smart — as in shutting out all other stimuli that made it difficult to concentrate on the smarter stuff. 2mg made me a bot.

We’re phasing risperidone now and introducing Seroquel. Like with risperidone I’m quite liking the effect — which is very different — but I’m not at the final dose yet. OTOH, I’m still on risperidone, so I might be on the right track regarding antipsychotics.

I’m getting pleasure waves around 6PM everyday, and my first theory was that that could just be the Seroquel (which has a half-life of 7 hours only) wearing off and leaving the 4mg clonazepam that’s still on my daily cocktail. But, hey, I’m on minimal doses of Seroque, and that’s supposed to hit your H1 receptors first, which could mean I’m only getting a sedative — or maybe it’s enough for the antipsychotic effect to kick in — and no one in the world can tell. And I’m on risperidone as well.