// 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.

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.

Há algum tempo que a visitação ao meu blog journal tem sido movida em boa medida por buscas muito dirigidas por informação no Google, o que não chega a ser curioso (dado que eu uso muitas frases estatisticamente improváveis) mas é desafortunado, porque eu não dou realmente nenhuma informação útil. Mas como alguns temas têm se repetido consistentemente nos termos de busca (segundo as estatísticas do Wordpress) ao longo dos últimos meses, decidi tirar uma meia hora para um pingue-pongue com toda essa gente anônima que não pode nem deixar comentários.

“torval efeitos colaterais” Torval é um equivalente genérico da versão de liberação prolongada do Depakote. Eu já tomei Torval 1500, e como estava partindo as minhas pílulas recebi uma receita para o Depakote brand-name, que sairia mais barato porque a pílula partida perde o efeito de liberação prolongada. E, enfim, muito mais gente tomou o Depakote e sabe como isso pode dar efeitos colaterais horríveis. Mas olha, eu tomei doses bem baixas — primeiro 1500, e depois 750, para o meu peso que na época era de uns 70 quilos — complementando o regime básico de lamotrigina (Lamitor, Neural, Lamictal, etc.). Eu não tive o famoso Efeito Velhice de perder cabelo, ficar cansado com os ossos doendo, etc. etc. Pra mim o Torval foi um ansiolítico extremamente intenso, ao ponto que eu passei um mês inteiro fora do planeta, feito um monge budista, em despersonalização completa (o que provavelmene se deve às minhas questões neurológicas esquisitinhas também).

Mas, respondendo à questão dos efeitos colaterais negativos, uma coisa muito marcante da época do Torval é a perda de memória.Eu não lembro de quase nada daquele mês, e com freqüência eu não lembrava de conversas tidas horas antes, ou de tarefas cumpridas na semana anterior. Recentemente eu tive que conferir alguns cálculos feitos aquela época para o trabalho, e fui ver os logs do Stata: eu refiz os mesmos cálculos várias vezes — cheguei ao número errado várias vezes, lembrava de que havia algo de errado com aquele número embora não conseguisse recordar o que, refazia o cálculo com outra metodologia de ponderação e encontrava o número que eu queria, o número que existia como uma imagem fuzzy na minha cabeça — sem nem mesmo pensar que tudo existia no log.