So I am following the plan my pdoc told me, the original plan, and it involves cutting my Geodon in half and then doubling the Rexulti day after tomorrow. I cut the Geodon last night.
I had a sleepless night, took a nap, and sorted myself out, showered and shaved and cooked and stuff, then sat down to read a nice big article by David Buss on evolutionary psychology of personality. Now I am known for reading like a machine, for example, I got frustrated with “taking it easy” last night and read half a textbook in five hours. Now today I cannot read one article.
I know that cutting Geodon like that is risky, but it had to be done, it must go before going on a solid dose of the new medication. I just haven’t had an injury to my cognitive ability like this in a long time, it feels ominous, like “this is permanent…” but I know that it isn’t permanent.
I can read short things like posts on here and I can digest data pretty well, but big bodies of sophisticated prose are just not happening with my brain right now.
I am familiar with things like panax ginseng for this sort of problem, and my negative symptoms are flaring. I spoke over the phone with my mom and sister, I was coherent, but I was noticeably flat.
I get frustrated when my mental health plummets. I woke up from a nap and drank a coffee and then realized that I stank and hadn’t been taking care of myself. Like it just hit me all of a sudden. I was unshaven, I keep my head buzzed close so that never is a problem, body odor areas smelled like ■■■■, I hadnt put on deodorant, hadnt eaten since…■■■■, I still haven’t eaten since 530AM, and it’s 4:30PM. I am not even hungry.
The night was hell, it was insomnia and withdrawals out the ass, I am a mess. Day after tomorrow I can double the rexulti which should help.
I just hate when I have to walk the depths of psychosis when my whole deal is that I was top of my class and will be starting my doctorate in two months, and my greatest strength is that I have walked two lives in the past few years- walking at graduation with every honor they could hand me, and walking the walk of the depths of the worst mental illness. Well, really I have three, the third is being a former fighter who still stays hard.
It is like suffering right now is just my job. This sucks. I go from “over-achiever…” to “psychotic” in a matter of hours. I just want to go back to my usual self.
I like to share when my stuff goes wrong because I seem to give off this vibe of never being down. Like no, false, I am down right now. My livelihood, my whole thing I do so well is gone right now, it just up and left. I am not a machine, I am human.
It is a disservice to only show when things are well and good. Right now, things are ■■■■■■. I make it look like if you are gifted and disciplined, motivated as well, that schizophrenia won’t stop you.
I am at a halt.
I spoke briefly with the president of my alma mater at a conference, I asked about how to fight stigma. He said what I knew he would say, because he apparently read the literature too, he said we need people being open and public, and that is the best weapon against stigma. My thesis was on a stigma intervention, that is my stuff. I also live it, it is my whole life. I plan on moving onto evolutionary psychology for the eventual dissertation, but I have some unfinished business with the intervention I generated and defended earlier this year- I want to do further investigation with it. I don’t just want to, I should, as a scientist, because that is what the science says to do. I make a point that there is a wrong way to be public. There is fair-weather public, and then there is reality, the gritty and grimy experience of mental illness, along with the joy and triumph over it.
It is like…a Yakuza wearing long sleeves and pants. You are still a Yakuza, underneath the facade, which is not so hard to assemble, there is a stigmata covering your skin. We are marked, even if we do not show it. We lie to ourselves and to the public when we present a facade.
So I find this post more important that the milestones in recovery I have shared, which have been so well-received.
This is why I am here. I am here because I have mental illness. I am not here to pretend I am well every day of every year, achieving this and that for whatever reasons. I am standing with my struggle with mental health, as it truly is.
Scared, suffering, incapable of my work, and holding onto hope. Like Pandora’s box. This illness opens up a world of pain, sickness, and even death, but hope for something better comes with all of that.
Take care.
