What a Dreary Planet

Here's the thing about stimulants: the line between function and frenzy is drawn in the sand far out on the beach and, apparently, it's only a matter of time before the tide comes in. These chemicals have the uncanny characteristic of making everything just a bit more interesting. All objects become shinier, all people younger and better looking. And without them, suddenly- nothing holds the attention. One finds oneself suddenly, inexplicably, back in an ordinary world where everyone has to make their own fun. Worse than that, everybody has to devote large portions of their lives to the Profoundly Unfun and Drab.

Why would you ever consciously choose to live in the ordinary world?

4:59 pm

Home Again

For some reason, my apartment seems to have been the only one flooded by the deluge yesterday. They did come and vacuum some of the water off the floor, and I got home to a nice soggy carpet. The problem with catching the water in bucket, etc, logical as it might seem, is that the water was leaking right through the threshold of entrance to my apartment. I would have had to have left the door open all night to catch it. Thank god (sort of) I have an appointment with my psychiatrist on Wednesday. Down to 50 mg of Zoloft and up to 150 of effexor. I would really like to knock the sertraline off my daily to-swallow list for good. Not looking forward to another series of Effexor adjustments, but c'est la vie. Hey, I took French this summer, I finally can use such a phrase without being utterly full of shit. Let me take a moment in praise of My Girlfriend. My Girlfriend, My Girlfriend. I don't think I've ever been so entranced by any one thing, person, or event in a state of sobriety in all my life. She is like fucking ecstacy, fabulous, amazing, bodacious, smart, hilarious, sensitive, wise and beautiful and indubitably incomparably righteous. I don't want to fuck this up. I want to roll around with her on the beach with Chris Isaak in the background, I want to take her everywhere and demonstrate her to everyone I know and love, I want her class to end so I can comfortably call her cellphone and find out when we are meeting up tonight. I shit you not, I have found the answer. Everybody should get themselves a codependant lesbian.

1:22 am

Today I Saw My Psychiatrist

It seems like the Effexor is starting to work, maybe. Well, it's working on my bulimia, anyway. When this last major depressive episode started, I was on 100mgs of Zoloft. When I started forgetting things and lost all ability to concentrate, and the entirety of my alimentary activity for days on end consisted of nothing but bingeing and purging (i.e. "sudden loss of appetite") my doc decided that, since I freak out at higher doses of SSRI's it would be best to change the type of pharmaceutical dick I'm sucking altogether. So he started me off on a wee lil bit of effexor and cut my Zoloft down to 50mg, which is a big fucking leap. Into a black hole. See, even though the Zoloft didn't prevent me from entering an episode, it did mask the one thing that most people associate with depression: the hapless crying all the time over everything and nothing at all.

He should have known better. I'm very sensitive to the SSRI's₁; once he tried to increase me from 100 and I agreed to try 112.5 but got all flaky and manicky and made him let me keep it at 100. He really should have known that, if I show a change in effect with an alteration of 12.5 mg, then 50 was going to put me over the edge. Then again, I should have known better, too. But I am not the fucking doctor. Being totally ineffective at even wanting to fend for myself is one of the symptoms of my illness. Luckily when I leave a sobbing message ending with the word "fuck" on his voicemail, he gets back to me the next day and tells me to bring the Zoloft back up.

Unfortunately the combination of 75 mg of Effexor and 75 of Zoloft have made sex virtually impossible. I have complained to him about this before. But this time I was not going to let him discount me with one of those "weighing the benefits and debits" bullshit. You put me on drugs that make me unable to have sex, you'd better give me a drug that will make me able to have sex He first suggested bupropion, at which point I reminded him that I have an eating disorder.₂ (Aside from which, I really think being on 3 different anti-depressants at once would really cramp my style) Then he suggested some anti-impotency drug which is of course not recommended to be prescribed to women because our sexual dysfunction, of course, is not an issue upon which the order of life on Earth revolves. Baseball players do commercials for Viagra, but who the hell cares if 20 million depressed women are feeling even worse because they can't have sex? Nothing helps alleviate those feelings of guilt and worthlessness better than being a cold fish, right?

At any rate, I took the prescription and had to have it filled at a non-uni pharmacy because they don't carry it and my shitty insurance doesn't cover it. I actually got rather pissed off there, and said to the pharmbot "So you guys have the drug that makes me UNable to have sex but don't have the one would make it possible?"₃ Ummm, yeah. Impulse-control issues.

I always find it interesting to compare the DSM code he writes on my billing slip each time. Today, I apparently managed to "upgrade" myself from 296.32 to 296.33, i.e. reccurent major depression moderate to recurrent majot depression sever without psychotic features. I wonder if this is some sort of an omen. I will have to pay close attention during the next week as I increase my effexor to see if I can win a "with psychotic features" DX next week.

I haven't been bingeing and purging very much. In fact, I think I may have actually gone a couple of days without doing so at all. Not really eating much otherwise, though, and my weight has dropped to just a few pounds from the "danger zone." So I deliberately binged and purged tonight. I can't even begin to justify the logic behind that action. Both my father and my piece of ass called while I was bingeing. I told my father I'd call him back, I told my POA the truth and how long he should wait before coming over.

The anti-impotency drug worked, by the way. I don't even want to consider the fact that it might be the placebo effect. I want to believe. I have gone on medical leave for the remainder of the term in order that my psychiatrist might play chemistry set with my brain as he pleases. I feel very guilty for this. I am in possession of a relatively large amount of triazolam, considering that I am a mental patient known to be a both a drug abuser and very self-destructive. It actually surprises even me that I have not abused my triazolam.

I guess I do have some shred of a self-preservation instinct remaining.

1. Haha. Welcome to the human race.
2. Fortunately for the disproportionately large percentage of nicotine-addicted cold fish with eating disorders, not many (widely read) doctors seem to care about this anymore.
3. Pharmaceutical yohimbine.

In Which Everything is So Very

Well, I did it. I commited an act of e-mail stalking. If I get no response I guess I'll have to presume that he had just had too much to drink that night and I will give him the tape the next time I see him.

A wave of "I don't matter"ness has just come over me. I slept well past 4 today and so have decided to pull another all-nighter. Unfortunately, the Minions of the World Insomniacs are at their greatest on weekend nights. I've had 420 calories today. I ran, after dark, and I will probably go again in the morning. I just have to stay up long enough to go to my gyn appointment tomorrow at 1:30.

Then I'll have another appointment with my therapist at 2ish on Tuesday. What do I want to show her? A client dissappering before her eyes, dying of loneliness, or a woman who is rolling with the punches? I feel the loneliness now. I feel it so deep and disgusting and dirty like that soup I just made myself eat. My appetite has come back to some degree. . . I think the way I am feeling is the result of half my dosage of zoloft being ripped from me in the past few days. The crying, I can see it happening. If only I could read. I will try again.

I need a real life outside of my apartment but whenever I am out too long I feel like an alien. I *have* to get back to my case where I belong. So I sit here lonely because (oh, lame) nobody is responding to my messages, because I developed an unlikely crush and am not getting unreasonably quick results. And my students are emailing me begging me to come back to them because I am more fun than their substitute. Maybe so, but at least your substitute can *read*.

God this feels awful. I don't want to be sick anymore. A character of Dostoevsky's said that only the sick see ghosts because they inhabit the realm between the dead and the living, they are on a precipice of sorts. I don't want to be on a precipice anymore. Why do I have to be sick? I'd rather be dead. Not, "I'd rather be dead than fat", that is utterly ridiculous. The only reason I am losing weight right now is my depression. It will only be once I get below 120 that it becomes attributable to and classifiable as anorexia nervosa. And maybe that will be good. Maybe that will numb the depression.

But I will still be sick, and that's the bugger. I want to be healthy or just fucking die already. I don't have the guts to do it myself, I know. I actually consciously saved myself from my last two ODs by purging after realizing the effects of having taken too many pills and making myself stay awake for hours afterward. I know I want to live. I just don't fucking want to live like this. I want it to go away.