Thursday 15 October 2015
Wednesday 14 October 2015
Robin Williams
I have suffered from depression for about 4 years.
Depression is a disease, a disorder, the manifestation of something
fundamentally wrong in the functioning of my brain. I can no more will
myself out of depression than a diabetic can will his pancreas to
produce more insulin. As I recently told someone critical of Robin
Williams' suicide, judging someone killed by depression makes as much
sense as judging someone killed by cancer.
If depression is more insidious -- and more misunderstood -- than other disorders, it is because its core symptoms are mental and emotional. This can make it difficult to distinguish the person from the disease, as our thoughts and emotions define who we are. This confusing of the person with the disease is not confined to non-sufferers; when the depression is especially bad, I lose the ability to remind myself that this is not me. That is when depression is dangerous; when it swamps the person inside to the extent that they believe the irrational, self-negating thoughts are fully their own, rather than the diseased processes of a dysfunctional brain. And there is something more to depression, which is hard to put into words adequately: it wants to kill you. In the lowest lows, the darkest depths, it makes you "understand" that you need to be dead. The necessity and inevitability of suicide becomes as self-evident as one plus one equals two. You find yourself wondering why you haven't done it yet. What's holding you back? What is this week's lame excuse for continuing, when the future holds only more pain and failure?
The difference between "feeling low" and clinical depression is the difference between a paper cut and a knife in your back. I have a high tolerance for physical pain, but "pain" hardly begins to describe what depression does to your mind. It swallows you and the universe whole, replacing every vaguely good thought or feeling with a rasping oily blackness that wants to blot you out of existence.
You don't cope with depression so much as you build a repertoire of techniques for escaping from it, and they are all unhealthy: alcohol abuse, disconnecting from friends and loved ones, obsessing over the world's many evils in an attempt to comfort yourself with the thought that others share your hell. I sleep to escape it. It has cost me jobs and relationships and more opportunities than I can count. Depression leaves wreckage in its wake, hurting more than just the sufferer, wounding innocent bystanders as it carries you along. Depression is a bastard.
I have been through every form of therapy and medication. One pill helps a little. Very little. Antidepressants are not "happy pills"; they are "painkillers." Just as an aspirin may hold a headache or toothache at arm's length for a while, antidepressants (if you're lucky) may help dull the edges. At least a little. At least for a while. You take what you can get.
This is not an appeal for sympathy. It is a request to consider depression in a light you may have discounted in the past. I know other people suffer from other conditions with a grace and courage few of us can imagine. But please don't judge someone fighting for their life with this wicked disease. Whether we hide in a corner or try to cover it with a clown face, some small measure of understanding -- and patience -- couldn't hurt.
If depression is more insidious -- and more misunderstood -- than other disorders, it is because its core symptoms are mental and emotional. This can make it difficult to distinguish the person from the disease, as our thoughts and emotions define who we are. This confusing of the person with the disease is not confined to non-sufferers; when the depression is especially bad, I lose the ability to remind myself that this is not me. That is when depression is dangerous; when it swamps the person inside to the extent that they believe the irrational, self-negating thoughts are fully their own, rather than the diseased processes of a dysfunctional brain. And there is something more to depression, which is hard to put into words adequately: it wants to kill you. In the lowest lows, the darkest depths, it makes you "understand" that you need to be dead. The necessity and inevitability of suicide becomes as self-evident as one plus one equals two. You find yourself wondering why you haven't done it yet. What's holding you back? What is this week's lame excuse for continuing, when the future holds only more pain and failure?
The difference between "feeling low" and clinical depression is the difference between a paper cut and a knife in your back. I have a high tolerance for physical pain, but "pain" hardly begins to describe what depression does to your mind. It swallows you and the universe whole, replacing every vaguely good thought or feeling with a rasping oily blackness that wants to blot you out of existence.
You don't cope with depression so much as you build a repertoire of techniques for escaping from it, and they are all unhealthy: alcohol abuse, disconnecting from friends and loved ones, obsessing over the world's many evils in an attempt to comfort yourself with the thought that others share your hell. I sleep to escape it. It has cost me jobs and relationships and more opportunities than I can count. Depression leaves wreckage in its wake, hurting more than just the sufferer, wounding innocent bystanders as it carries you along. Depression is a bastard.
I have been through every form of therapy and medication. One pill helps a little. Very little. Antidepressants are not "happy pills"; they are "painkillers." Just as an aspirin may hold a headache or toothache at arm's length for a while, antidepressants (if you're lucky) may help dull the edges. At least a little. At least for a while. You take what you can get.
This is not an appeal for sympathy. It is a request to consider depression in a light you may have discounted in the past. I know other people suffer from other conditions with a grace and courage few of us can imagine. But please don't judge someone fighting for their life with this wicked disease. Whether we hide in a corner or try to cover it with a clown face, some small measure of understanding -- and patience -- couldn't hurt.
Tuesday 13 October 2015
Lets talk tablets
I've posted my medication reminders. You may look at it and get confused. I get confused. I mean just looking at all three of them confuse me.
So where am I right now. I'm in the midst of a battle. It's round 10 I'm on the ropes and the people that are in my corner are telling me that I still need to take some hits before I can fight back. That's what my medication is doing to me.
I didn't really take the whole side affects of tablets seriously until I got diagnosed with bi-polar now I dread reading them. In fact I didn't even read up on my new one until yesterday. I managed to petty much tick every tick box going (apart from blisters) I mean seriously. It's a common one as well. Big fuck off blisters. But that one can stay away.
But yeah at the moment. I am battling the affects of coming off my old meds and going onto new ones.
I was just going to do a blog post that just said the word crap. But I thought I'd try and explain myself. I'm looking at in long term. This is just a small blip. Once I get over this. I'll be ready to rock and roll again.
Monday 12 October 2015
Shame
I am writing this from my sofa, whilst I feel the uncontrollable urge not to throw up. I woke up this morning feeling pretty positive. Even for a Monday. Took my medication bang on time after breakfast. About half hour later, I started to feel a bit shit. But I thought I'd just bang through it. I got to work and it literally felt like I was drunk. I couldn't really say much, I was slurring my words and all I wanted to do was be sick.
So back to the locker room I go, with a flower bucket between my hands (thanks to everyone who looked after me at work the Mousers and Jackie) and all I could think about was "I must not throw up"
But I got sent home, I was in no fit state to work. So not only do I feel sick. I have this sense of shame that I have let people down. Myself, work and my wife.
It is a cycle of self loathing. I purposely did not read about the side affects of my medication due to the fact it could act like a placebo. If you read about something, your mind starts to play tricks on you. But after going home and falling asleep on the sofa. Linda woke me up to tell me the hospital had wrote to me with all the information about the side affects my medication could have. So I am posting page 1 of 5.
It is a horrible place to be when the tablets you are taking are meant to make you feel better, actually make you worse. You have a headache you take some paracetamol and your headache goes. You get depression, you take some tablets, the tablets make you worse before you get better. In fact they might even make you feel better.
The new medication I am on requires regular blood tests, to make sure it isn't fucking up my body too much. Pro's and Con's it's one of the best medications you can be prescribed to combat bi-polar but the side affects of getting used to it, as I am now finding out is pretty awful.
So to everyone reading this, I am sorry. I feel embarrassed. Having to leave work with a flower bucket in case you are sick isn't generally one of the looks I go for and I don't like Linda to see me like that either. I am a proud person and I thought I could just smash through this period, but I guess I am going to have to adjust my expectations and realise that this isn't going to be an easy journey that I am taking. But it will be a worthwhile one, no matter how shit I feel right now. I know at some point this will never happen again.
Yours shamefully
Glenn
So back to the locker room I go, with a flower bucket between my hands (thanks to everyone who looked after me at work the Mousers and Jackie) and all I could think about was "I must not throw up"
But I got sent home, I was in no fit state to work. So not only do I feel sick. I have this sense of shame that I have let people down. Myself, work and my wife.
It is a cycle of self loathing. I purposely did not read about the side affects of my medication due to the fact it could act like a placebo. If you read about something, your mind starts to play tricks on you. But after going home and falling asleep on the sofa. Linda woke me up to tell me the hospital had wrote to me with all the information about the side affects my medication could have. So I am posting page 1 of 5.
It is a horrible place to be when the tablets you are taking are meant to make you feel better, actually make you worse. You have a headache you take some paracetamol and your headache goes. You get depression, you take some tablets, the tablets make you worse before you get better. In fact they might even make you feel better.
The new medication I am on requires regular blood tests, to make sure it isn't fucking up my body too much. Pro's and Con's it's one of the best medications you can be prescribed to combat bi-polar but the side affects of getting used to it, as I am now finding out is pretty awful.
So to everyone reading this, I am sorry. I feel embarrassed. Having to leave work with a flower bucket in case you are sick isn't generally one of the looks I go for and I don't like Linda to see me like that either. I am a proud person and I thought I could just smash through this period, but I guess I am going to have to adjust my expectations and realise that this isn't going to be an easy journey that I am taking. But it will be a worthwhile one, no matter how shit I feel right now. I know at some point this will never happen again.
Yours shamefully
Glenn
Sunday 11 October 2015
Sunday....blurghhhhday
I slept pretty okay again last night, apart from having some vivid nightmares. Which is always nice! Woke up again pretty early.
My wife would probably say I am being over-sensitive at the moment or it could just be because she is annoying ;) I just don't like orange squash! It is just boring!
Anyway this whole cutting my medicine in half doesn't appear to be going well. I've prepared some (it is like I am on GBBO) but my halves don't really like look halves.
So back to work tomorrow, and as I am taking my new medication every other day tomorrow is my second day of having my new medication and I am doing overtime and it is Monday. It has all the potential to be a mess.
I mean nobody likes Mondays (unless you have no job or are on holiday or if your job involves naked ladies of a certain age) let alone Mondays when I know the withdrawal with my medication will start to properly kick in. But it is just a case of pushing through I guess. I was quite positive as the whole feeling tired thing seemed to have stopped for a few days but it came back with a vengeance this afternoon, so I have stayed awake even though I could probably fall asleep standing up.
I try and take each day as it comes, but seeing my brain likes to fuck me. All I can think about is that it is going to be six months before my new medication starts to have any sort of affect on me. Six long months. Fuck man. That is going to take some will power to smash through that.
But overall my weekend has been pretty good. I mean if you didn't know I was going through what I am going through at the moment, you would think I was okay. But I guess that sums up depression. You can't see it and you have to put a face on.
I mean when you are at work and people ask how you are, you have to answer "yeah I am fine" I think if I actually answered honestly nobody would come near me!
But my wife cooked loads of stuff last night and I must say she has conned me all the time we have been together as she said she couldn't cook. BUT SHE CAN AND IF I HAD A DEAD WALNUT FACE LIKE MARY BERRY I'd be telling her how awesome her cooking is.
Anyway hope everyone enjoys their Sunday evening.
I'll be back tomorrow to let you all know how myCrapMonday went
Glenn
My wife would probably say I am being over-sensitive at the moment or it could just be because she is annoying ;) I just don't like orange squash! It is just boring!
Anyway this whole cutting my medicine in half doesn't appear to be going well. I've prepared some (it is like I am on GBBO) but my halves don't really like look halves.
So back to work tomorrow, and as I am taking my new medication every other day tomorrow is my second day of having my new medication and I am doing overtime and it is Monday. It has all the potential to be a mess.
I mean nobody likes Mondays (unless you have no job or are on holiday or if your job involves naked ladies of a certain age) let alone Mondays when I know the withdrawal with my medication will start to properly kick in. But it is just a case of pushing through I guess. I was quite positive as the whole feeling tired thing seemed to have stopped for a few days but it came back with a vengeance this afternoon, so I have stayed awake even though I could probably fall asleep standing up.
I try and take each day as it comes, but seeing my brain likes to fuck me. All I can think about is that it is going to be six months before my new medication starts to have any sort of affect on me. Six long months. Fuck man. That is going to take some will power to smash through that.
But overall my weekend has been pretty good. I mean if you didn't know I was going through what I am going through at the moment, you would think I was okay. But I guess that sums up depression. You can't see it and you have to put a face on.
I mean when you are at work and people ask how you are, you have to answer "yeah I am fine" I think if I actually answered honestly nobody would come near me!
But my wife cooked loads of stuff last night and I must say she has conned me all the time we have been together as she said she couldn't cook. BUT SHE CAN AND IF I HAD A DEAD WALNUT FACE LIKE MARY BERRY I'd be telling her how awesome her cooking is.
Anyway hope everyone enjoys their Sunday evening.
I'll be back tomorrow to let you all know how my
Glenn
Saturday 10 October 2015
New medication/old medication
So here I am, adjusting to the change in my medication. After going to the Dr's yesterday and getting my new prescription then having to go to hospital to get a baseline blood test. To make sure the new medication doesn't fuck my body up to much.
Anyway I started my new combination of tablets last night with some trepidation. But I slept okay, apart from having some vivid fucking nightmares.
Although I woke up at 6am and couldn't get back to sleep, so I got up and decided to play Fifa. But then I had to take my new medication.
Although I had to ring the pharmacy first as I got told by the Dr that the tablet would come with a score in the middle to split in half. But it didn't, so I didn't want to risk taking it by slicing it in half with a knife as I know sometimes that breaks the chemical compound of the medication. But anyway they said it was all good.
The side affects haven't been too bad. Just a bit spaced out. The TV at one point did start to look like it was melting. But apart from that it's been manageable. I just have to remember to take everything as I have to take so much medication at certain times.
But yeah it's been a good day, I haven't felt particularly bad. But I know this is the first step of many. I know days won't always be as easy as this one. The new medication does have some pretty awful side affects. But if in the long run it stabilises my mood then I don't care if it destroys my liver or thyroid. I mean who needs them anyway!
So I'm sitting round my parents with Linda as they had us around for dinner. Which was nice. Although they keep looking at me weird as I'm writing this.
The unsociable bastard I am! Anyway Linda if you are reading this. Stop worrying about the side affects! I'll be okay.
Will update tomorrow. Hopefully Wales will have lost the rugby and Casulty will be a good episode tonight!
Glenn
Friday 9 October 2015
So here it goes
So today is the day. What day you may ask? The day my medication changes. It may not seem like a big deal. But it is, anyone who has been on medication for a long time knows that any tweaks to it fuck with your body.
I am sat here after I had to have a baseline bloodtest, the reason for that is the new medication I am going on can fuck with your liver and thyroid. So I have to have regular blood tests to make sure that doesn't happen.
I know the next few months are going to be a fuckfest of roller-coaster emotions. It is bad enough having just one of your medications tweaked, but when literally all of mine are being adjusted and I am starting on a new one. It is going to be fucking hard. So apologies to my friends and family if I just shut down and go into zombie mode. Or the opposite may happen and I'll be thinking I'm Jesus or something.
But it is Friday (Fuck me remembering what day of the week it is) and I have made it to the weekend. I had a lot of hugs from people today. Which I enjoyed. Random acts of kindness from people, it honestly does go a long way.
I know I am going to have some pretty dark days over the next few months whilst my body adjusts to the changes that is being forced upon it. But it will be for the greater good and all that I hope.
I am going to be doing a new rating system I'm calling it the "fucked" system so from 1 - 5. 1 being I am totally fucking fucked and I can't fucking be bothered to 5 being fuck yeah I am fucking jesus and I am your lord.
So I would say I am around about three at the moment...which is kinda like fuck yeah weekend is here...but fucking hell Glenn you fucking dick you are going to be taking medication which is probably going to give you side affects.
I am not going to look at what side affects as I kinda got put off when it said it can cause proper bad blisters. I really don't want to look like something that has escaped from a nuclear fucking fallout.
Anyway people, have a good weekend. I shall update this tomorrow to let you all know how I am getting on with day 1.5 of new drug day (it starts tonight)
Glenn
x
I am sat here after I had to have a baseline bloodtest, the reason for that is the new medication I am going on can fuck with your liver and thyroid. So I have to have regular blood tests to make sure that doesn't happen.
I know the next few months are going to be a fuckfest of roller-coaster emotions. It is bad enough having just one of your medications tweaked, but when literally all of mine are being adjusted and I am starting on a new one. It is going to be fucking hard. So apologies to my friends and family if I just shut down and go into zombie mode. Or the opposite may happen and I'll be thinking I'm Jesus or something.
But it is Friday (Fuck me remembering what day of the week it is) and I have made it to the weekend. I had a lot of hugs from people today. Which I enjoyed. Random acts of kindness from people, it honestly does go a long way.
I know I am going to have some pretty dark days over the next few months whilst my body adjusts to the changes that is being forced upon it. But it will be for the greater good and all that I hope.
I am going to be doing a new rating system I'm calling it the "fucked" system so from 1 - 5. 1 being I am totally fucking fucked and I can't fucking be bothered to 5 being fuck yeah I am fucking jesus and I am your lord.
So I would say I am around about three at the moment...which is kinda like fuck yeah weekend is here...but fucking hell Glenn you fucking dick you are going to be taking medication which is probably going to give you side affects.
I am not going to look at what side affects as I kinda got put off when it said it can cause proper bad blisters. I really don't want to look like something that has escaped from a nuclear fucking fallout.
Anyway people, have a good weekend. I shall update this tomorrow to let you all know how I am getting on with day 1.5 of new drug day (it starts tonight)
Glenn
x
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