still kind of not allowed to stop working, which I still think is a weird position for an adult man to be in, but hey, who said any of this had to make sense? Carl Sagan probably, but he was an academic, different rules for such people.
Anyway, yesterday I went to the doctor, not because I wanted to, but because I had run out of other options apart from hospitalization or death. Frankly, it was only slightly more appealing than death, and that was because it is nearly impossible to screw up going to the doctor. It’s like having a drug dealer who gives you the drugs for free, or maybe a more effective supplement shopping experience. Oh, and the drugs are so legal that if your employer terminates you for taking them you might have a chance to win a lawsuit against them, which is quite a thing in this company owned world of ours.
We adjusted the dose on a few of my existing meds, and introduced one new one; lithium.
Something interesting I learned is that most of my drugs are serotonin precursors. For those less literate in brain chemistry, it goes like this;
some chemicals can’t pass the blood to brain barrier. Most neurotransmitters in fact, which is a logical design decision when you realize our brains are chemical engines, not electrical automatons as they are often portrayed. If serotonin could pass the blood brain barrier, there is every chance you’d eat the wrong thing and be dead.
I know that I am in general pro death, but by choice, not by chemical accident preferably.
So because you can’t push more neurotransmitters into the brain, you have to alter how it handles them. SSRIs are the most common anti depressant and they work by making your brain leave more serotonin after reading the signal. The thing I didn’t know until yesterday is that many drugs have a net positive effect on serotonin in the brain. Apparently I’m on a lot of them, and it can lead to serotonin syndrome; a situation where you develop tremors and bowel troubles, both of which I’ve had and not known the drugs could have been at fault.
Anyway, long way around to say that we added another drug that leaves more in the brain. The catch, or perhaps the feature; it tends to decrease suicidal ideation. To my observation it’s because you’ll be too numb and high to care to end your life. Maybe the mechanism is more complex. The point is I feel numb and high, and compared to where I was earlier that’s just wonderful.
Sometimes you can’t escape the horrible world you live in. It presses in from all sides and threatens to consume you, then a medical professional comes along with drugs more effective than anything on the street, and damn it if it doesn’t make the whole thing easier to deal with.
On a logical level, I still think it’s stupid to keep throwing chemicals at a problem that has real world solutions. My meat suit, however, is sending me lots of satisfied feelings for filling it with comfort and lack of interest in anything but keeping up this high.
Another day, another awful thing I don’t have to face. Oh, and my coworkers are so worried about me that they don’t mind that I’m slower and less effective, which is pretty cool also.