Med Withdrawal Update

Since the Lamictal is still inching it’s way out of my system, and therefore my epival levels are still going down, I haven’t changed my medication much. I am hoping to start cutting down on the Epival more in April, but already it’s getting below “therapeutic” level. I’m doing well, essentially. I had some racing thoughts last night and a hard time sleeping, but that has happened irregardless of whether or not I am on my medication.

What I can note, however, is that two MAJOR symptoms have resolved themselves. I have ceased having auditory hallucinations, for the first time in years. I never had hallucinations before I took medication, but somehow it never got linked to the meds. I didn’t tell my doctors about hearing things either because I knew they’d FREAK OUT. So it’s gone away. Not only that, but the two types of seizures I most commonly have have also vanished. No more staring spells, no more intrusive memories/thoughts. It’s miraculous really, and just goes to prove that some psychiatric issues are completely iatrogenic.

I’m really quite happy, not bovine happy though, and not manic although some might try and classify it as such just because any emotion expressed by manic depressives gets pathologized. I’m having some really nice feelings again, a cornicopia of feelings really, not med induced flat affect for me. I’m also aware though that I might get sick before I get better, just because getting off the drugs makes people unwell. You try having your brain get used to chemicals and then get off them!

So far the doctor is letting me just stay where I am in terms of meds, I am getting another blood test. It’s so weird though, I really don’t know how to tell her I’m getting off of it. Clearly I do better without medication.

I’m also trying to accept the fact that there are things about me which aren’t really typical of what has been called “normal.” I think normal is really just a word for average, and I don’t see why we should all be average people. Yeah, I think really fast, and I can think about six things all at the same time. But is that a medical problem? I really only got into the hands of psych care because I had suicidal episodes, and that has never been adequately resolved. Besides that, I can see why I was suicidal for so long, I know why, I have some damn good reasons to have turned out this way. But those early issues are not so present now. I have pretty good self esteem now, Mom still tries to tear me down on a regular basis about whatever, she’ll just bring up some onetime thing I did that she disapproves of and makes me feel guilty about it, but now I’m just kind of like fuck it. If you want to disapprove of me that’s your business, I make mistakes, whatever, I learn from them, life goes on yes. It’s not her job to smother me for the rest of my life or make me feel like an emotional cripple, but clearly it’s a pasttime she likes to engage in. So I’m trying to just shrug it off as her being a silly bat, and move on with life. I don’t really want to feel admonished anymore and end up being the little girl holding a razorblade to my wrist crying in my bedroom because I wasn’t good enough. At this point she says stuff that I just filter out and agree to only to shut her up, I don’t even hear half of what she says. It’s a terrible relationship that is obvious deeply problematic, but I don’t envision it changing because I’m the nutter with the problem, and if I do confront her about it she just gets defensive and uses the stock “I’m the mother” defense, which means nothing.

So yes, we have a terrible relationship. I wish it wasn’t such a horrid relationship, but everytime I try to start a nice conversation with her she brings up some deficiency I have. You know, her sentences start out “You should” “You need to” and “You have to.” I guess fogging only goes so far with that, and then I do eventually snap, and then she starts talking about everything she learned about bipolar disorder from Dr. Phil.

What is it that parents of the mentally ill turn into wardens, particularly if they have had a hand in creating the problem in the first place? I had a really great self esteem when I was tiny, until I got chipped away and chipped away into a shadow of my original self. First I talked too much. Then I talked too little. Now I talk too fast. I dunno, I shall probably be someone who talks too much again. I was told I was terribly ugly, and then I was asked why I always stared at the ground and felt crappy. The classic though was when she would yell at me and I would point it out and then she would yell really loud that she wasn’t yelling.

Maybe it is terrible to blame my mother, but I also am tired of being the one who’s taken all the blame for how I ended up. I don’t want to be this family’s scapegoat, they can go find someone else to project all the fucked up ness onto.