114 Days: Plain ole exhaustion

I am plain tuckered out.  Was, maybe 8 hours ago, too.  I haven’t worked this hard in a long while.  Sucks that I’m barely making any money, and that in this holiday season, I’m spending more than I’m making, easily.  But it’s nice to have a full schedule.  There’s something refreshing about feeling my body totally exhausted.  From the soles of my feel to the scalp on my head.

Today, I got up at 7:30 am (after less than 5 hours of sleep) in order to get to my psychiatrist at 9:30 am.  For the first time in a long while, he was super attentive, focused, and really seemed to listen to me.  He agreed with me that we’d better switch up my meds, and we considered a few options.  For the second time, by a second psychiatrist, I was offered Lithium.  And for the second time, I refused.  There is such stigma attached to it.  And I don’t want to gain hundreds of pounds.  Lithium screams “bipolar and proud of it” to me, and I just don’t want to go there.  When it was first suggested, nearly a year ago, I did a lot of research…including all the art inspired by Lithium…the Sting song…the Nirvana song…plenty of other stuff.  I wonder if someone as talented and respectable as Sting is, is still on Lithium.  And whether it was the right choice.  Because Lithium seems like I’d have to admit to myself that I’ve somehow lost it.  So, I’m going to start on something called Cymbalta (sp?), and I won’t have time to research tonight, as I’m literally falling asleep as I type.  Good Lord…know what this means?  Time for major, and I mean major withdrawal this week.  Thank you Lexapro, thank you terror, thank you disillusionment…you see where I’m going?  I don’t.  I’m drunk with fatigue.  And starting to jones.

So, after the doc, went to my sisters to help her frantically pack for Italy (I’m meeting her there is just under two weeks), then had a strained lunch with my grandmother where I found myself having to apologize for everything and anything including my mere existence.  And then.  And then.  Wine!

It was so chaotic in the store I was placed in today that the manager asked that I not do any tastings (until perhaps the end), and just represent the winery in the aisles and help people with their choices.  My first thought was bloody hell…I got into this business for the tasting itself…wanting to teach…to converse about an actual product…not be a salesperson in the most direct and annoying fashion.  But you know what?  I did better business today than I did on any other day in the last two weeks.  Why?  When you’re leading a tasting, you’re kind of stuck to your station.  You can walk around, but then the wines aren’t being watched over.  And if you’re helping some people with a tasting, you miss customers walking in behind them and around the store.  Sure, people would have preferred a tasting, I think.  But you know what?  I learned that it’s me, the “expert,” the winery rep, the salesperson, who decides what to sell the customer.  If I sound assured, and I consciously choose what to present them, they will buy it.  More times than not.  Amazing.  Just the power of mere suggestion.  Nothing pushy.  Even helping with other products, other wines, beers, spirits…and they trust you.  It’s scary what an art sales really is.  And kind of disgusting.  Because when you think about it, we’re all prey.  If we’re not selling, we’re being sold to.  All the time.  But hey, today, I was really proud of myself.  I got people to change their minds after they went to the register with bottles they had been convinced to buy.  And I wasn’t the least bit pushy or rude.  How could I be?  I’m me.  Miss American Manners.  In Hellish Tel Aviv.

And then, and then, we’re talking 9 pm, I walked half a mile, got a bus home, went to the pharmacy to get my new meds, and the went to my uncle’s with a chicken and four premium bottles of wine, and I proceeded to cook…for the last three or more hours.  Chicken soup (with carrots, onions, garlic, celery, celeriac, parsley root, and leek…and of course the obligatory bay leaves and allspice) is done…as is the ridiculously complicated quinoa salad that I have become famous for this year.  It takes a ton of chopping and peeling and minute work.  It’s not difficult.  Just time consuming.  Tomorrow the matzah balls, tsimmes, and roast beef will have to find themselves being made somehow or other.  I hope.  Because at 9 am I need to be out the door to my last holiday tasting, all the freaking way on the other side of the city…until 3 pm, when I rush to my uncle’s to finish cooking.  Good Lord!

And now, I’m going to hop in the shower.  Oh how I’ve needed to shower.  For like three days.  Please don’t think me gross.  I’ve had other priorities, for the first time in months.  A “feels good to be dirty” kind of high?  Not really.  But it should be at least somewhat satisfying.  And Thursday!  Thursday!  I’m off to the Ashram in the Desert for 5 full days!

Happy Passover to All!  And Happy Easter (whenever it falls this year…sorry, it’s the first time I have no idea)!

130 Days: Shelter from the storm

The song that’s with me for the night.  Relish the master poet:

I’m in Haifa.  It’s a stormy night.  I’m with my lovely artist friend D, and we shared a dinner, tired as we both were, and then went to a nude modeling session to draw.  I feel safe here in her studio apartment, late as it is, with our makeshift mosquito netting hung quickly as an attempt to ward off these horrific offenders.

I am dying to blog about my first wine gig last Friday, but I can’t seem to concentrate.  Too tired.  Too wired.  Too much chemical craziness inside.  I’ve been having meds issues.  Yup.  The Lexapro (or Cipralex, as we call it here in Israel) hasn’t felt like it’s been doing much for the past couple months.  It was a pretty rotten February.  That or I really do suffer from seasonal depression, as last February was the pits as well.  But Israel’s not cold, really.  Or grey at all.  Anyway, my psychiatrist suggested we double my dose from 10 to 20 (I think it’s mg) per day.  Basically, I was taking one pill per day, and we were going up to two.  Sure, great, fine.  No, not fine.  Day one involved my sleeping for the whole day, and dragging myself off the couch only because I had an appointment I couldn’t not cancel, and I spent the entire meeting high off my ass like I had smoked a couple of joints on my own.  Ya, that’s progress.  I decided, no way, I’m going down by half a pill.  Better, but I’ve been sleepy all week.  Two to three hour naps at weird hours every day.  And I feel groggy all the time.  All the time.  Like in a kind of emotion-less, slow, silent, creepy kind of high-numbness.

And now, all I want is to get off the drugs completely.  Easier said than done.  If I do it, I’m going to endure some pretty bad withdrawal.  Worse than I’ve ever experienced before.  Worse than cigarettes, I imagine.  I had a sneak preview today because I was out of pills and had to run to the pharmacy to refill.  Not something anyone should do with Lexapro.  I’m supposed to take it around the same time every day.  Well, a four-hour delay gave me a physical preview of the jonez-ing I will endure soon, or when, I go off this stuff.  Even a few hours afterward, the balance must not have been struck, as I would have killed for a shot of whisky or a xanax or a cigarette or all three at once.  Yup.  Why?  So, great, I’ve got a slight bipolar problem.  I’ve got depression issues.  One little pill can help immediately.  But temporarily.  And at the end of the day, a drug is a drug is a drug.  Perhaps if I go all-natural, get acupuncture, take homeopathic remedies, eat all organic, spend lots of time doing talk therapy, draw pictures, be positive, positive, positive, and enjoy a glass of wine or scotch every once in a while to dilute life’s shit every once in a while, it would be a decent replacement for psychiatric drugs.  Because I hate to think what this is doing to my liver, to boot.  I might as well enjoy my liquor, as right now, it’s not safe for me to indulge very much at all.  Imagine that I went to a whiskey tasting, had eight lovely glasses before me, and took a miniscule sip of each one, leaving them virtually untouched.  Like, a hundred bucks work of booze down the drain instead of down my hatch.  Pisses me off.

Drugs are not the answer.  I’m not psychotic, and my bipolar diagnosis isn’t all that bad.  It’s a blip.  A minor thing.  I hope.  So, what’s the answer?  Who the hell knows.  Drugs are a temporary shelter.  The roof wears thin pretty damned fast these days.  And it’s astormin’.  Maybe I should just learn to enjoy the rain.

256 Days: Oy Vey Iz Mir!

I have a severe vitamin D deficiency.

I also just paid a fortune for anti-malaria medicine.

And I learned at a free seminar last night that I am basically fucked financially. Oy gevalt.

It’s nice that I am still relatively calm and having a nice day.  Hah!  I think I may have found the correct anti-depressant after all.  Or maybe it’s just liberating knowing that I quit my job and will not have to do the work that I dislike for much longer.

How to get enough Vitamin D

So – Vitamin D – is REALLY IMPORTANT.  And wearing sunscreen prevents my being able to create it.  Because its production in my skin is triggered by UV-B rays from the sun, and it’s absolutely free.  Oy vey.  You’re damned if you do, and you’re damned if you don’t.  I have very fair skin, and I live in Israel.  So I pile on SPF 30 on my face and chest every day.  Prevent skin cancer and aging, right?  Essentially, the only sun exposure I regularly get is maybe on my forearms.  And the thing is, we need vitamin D to absorb calcium.  Without it, we can have majorly softened bones.  It may also be linked to many forms of cancer, high blood pressure, tuberculosis, hypothyroidism, autism, multiple sclerosis, chronic pain, depression, schizophrenia, seasonal affective disorder and several autoimmune diseases.

This may actually, who knows, explain an awful lot.  I have been wearing a high SPF sunscreen daily since the age of 20.  I have prided myself on having the most wintry-white pale skin during the summer months for almost a decade.  And I’ve had problems with depression off and on since then.  They have suspected thyroid issues.  I have suspected nerve problems (balance, numbness).  It could be nothing.  Sure.  But now I’m on a very high dose of vitamin D supplements.  2 pills a day, for a few months, when the recommended dosage for old people with thin bones is only 1 pill per day.  Goodness.  Maybe this will help a lot.  Scary to learn, though.  And I wouldn’t have learned about it if my doctor hadn’t insisted on a blood test a couple months ago to check on the drug levels in my blood (the other 2-3 doctors I’ve been to didn’t think to test me at all).

Malarone

Travel meds – so…I didn’t realize (forgot…overlooked…ignored…????) the fact that India is largely a third world country that requires me to receive a huge amount of vaccinations and pills and prophylactics before I set foot on the plane.  I may have left this too long.  Stuff like Typhoid, all the Hepatitis-es, Yellow Fever, Japanese Encephalitis, Polio, Mumps, Malaria…and I’m guaranteed a healthy dose of diarrhea, for which I have to carry around a large dose of antibiotics and Imodium, for when…just in case….  Thailand wasn’t this much trouble.  Vietnam wasn’t this much trouble.  Russian wasn’t this much trouble.  My doctor recommended that I eat at safe places, like McDonald’s, when I’m there. HAH!  Hah!  Right.  Me, who will eat almost anything.  Me, who is going in order to learn how to cook from ordinary people.  I don’t even eat McDonald’s in Western countries.  I haven’t for years.  Years.  Why on earth would I start in India, of all places.  I go to McDonald’s for clean bathrooms with toilet paper.  Not the food.

Money.  Money.  Money.  Makes the world go ’round.  A mark, a yen, a buck, or a pound, that jingling, jangling sound!  Oh, it makes the world go round!

I save, then I stop working so I spend, I save, then a stop working and I spend.  I feel like I never have enough money to even think about investing.  Why?  Why?  Why?  I am in very decent shape.  I have no debt.  No debt.  No student loads, no credit card debt.  Just, no investments.  I don’t get it.  I’m not sure how I’m supposed to start.  When I am in a profession where I won’t earn a lot.  So, how do I invest the (MAYBE) couple hundred dollars per month I am able to save?  How will I ever be in a situation where I don’t have to worry.  Will I ever be able to retire?  I feel like we live in a world where nobody will ever be able to retire.  I’m not rich.  But I’m very far from poor.  And I’m highly skilled.  How do I get away from paycheck to paycheck?  And I just quit my job in order to start my own business.  How on earth do I proceed?  Any ideas?

God.

I need to get out of this.  I have like 10 friends to get in touch with, an article to write, work to do, a novel to edit, travel and health insurance to acquire, flight tickets to confirm, and a grandmother to break all of this news to tonight.  Joy to me.  Not to mention a house that still really needs cleaning.  Please send me good vibes.  It’s such a miracle I’m not having a panic attack right now.  Thank you to the gods of Lexapro.  Enabling a semblance of sanity among the frayed.

Finally, a bit of fun if you’ve read this far!  Check out this great VW prototype.  Amazing design video:

290 Days: Withdrawal pain, work woes, and a messy escape

I am tingling, nauseated, fatigued, jonesing…and trying hard not to freak out.  Three weeks of weaning myself off of Lamictal, and it took this long to feel this bad.  50 mg.  I guess going down gradually is smart.  But I’m quite a bit sick, and I never thought it would be this hard.  I want to curl up in a ball and pass out.  Not have to think about anything.  Not have to work.  Not have to eat.  Not have to shop.  Not have to be a friend to anyone.  I’d really like to get drunk actually or pop a xanax…but I think that’s the wrong idea.  Self-medicating is not going to make this any easier.  And I’m starting to wonder why on earth I decided to get off of this drug.

Ah yes…fuzziness, memory loss, slowly firing synapses, vocabulary shrinkage, and ah, yes, still having some depressive episodes.  So, I thought the drug wasn’t working as well as it did, and why continue with side effects that make writing difficult to impossible.  I think I like the Cipralex.  Lexapro.  It’s OK.  But coming off of the Lamictal is hard hard hard.  Who the hell knew?  I want to scream.  I feel faint.  And I feel angry.  And I can’t do a damned thing about it.  Makes me question the taking of any drug at all!  Maybe I should just, I don’t know, go to therapy three times a week, splurge on massages, retreats, meditation, chocolate and excellent Scotch, and then…who knows…that sounds like a damned happy existence to me!  Who needs psychiatric drugs when there is a world of pleasure out there?!  Fuck.  Wrong.  XXX.  You lose one turn.  Blah.

These crazy symptoms started at work today.  Thought it might be a depressive/slow-ish day, but it escalated and the symptoms stayed physical, not emotional.  Funny thing is that I really needed to be productive today, and for the most part, I was.  Anticipating an emotional swell, I worked as fast as I could to stay ahead of it.  It never came, but the arm tingling, dizziness, funny limb-feeling, breathing weirdness, and faintness sort of built, and I knew I needed to get out of there.

I’m going back to the Ashram tomorrow.  There is a huge festival called “Zorba” going on down there.  Lots of music and lots of meditative new age-y therapy for five days straight.  I’m a bit worries about going down there in my condition.  It only occurred to me this evening that it might not be a good idea.  Then again, these symptoms only happened today.  It could be better tomorrow.  And my dosage only goes down in about four days, after my planned return to Tel Aviv.  I’m also nervous about returning to the Desert Ashram in general.  Last time I was there, my first time, it was an idyllic getaway.  Calm, quiet, peaceful solitude, introspection.  This time I’ll be camping out (not in a comfy dorm bed but out in a tent in the desert), having to provide or buy my own food, along with hundreds of other people.  Sure, it’s a great chance to meet people.  But I’m such a social head case when it comes to stuff like this.  I always thought being at an event like Woodstock would be a life-changing fun experience.  But seriously, I would probably have been the one person who kept to herself.  Wallflower.  Depressive.  Socially afraid.  Why would I think I’d meet people here?  But why not?  I had a great time last time.  So, it’ll be really different.  I have to think of it as an adventure.

It’s probably the withdrawal.  Sure is.  I had planned to do the grocery rounds tonight.  I had planned to pack well.  Get all the bus schedules.  Find a good book.  Buy a new notebook to write in.  Nothing happened.  I sat at home.  Brooding.  Rocking.  Sleeping.  Playing with the cats (who are amazingly friendly nowadays), and feeling guilty about leaving them for 2.5 days.  I have time tomorrow.  But then the guilt piles up.  I should be working hard tomorrow morning, so that it doesn’t pile up while I’m away.  It is technically a work day.  And I’ll be leaving halfway through to catch a series of buses down into the middle of the desert.  Ah life.

Calm the hell down.  Eat more chocolate.  Watch more Star Trek.  It will sort itself out.  It will happen.  You will go camping and meet interesting people.  What is the worst that can happen?  Nothing you cannot survive.  It will be OK.

If only I could find and kill the one mosquito that got into the room and is eating me alive!

G’night dear reader or two or three.  Wish me luck.  Maybe I will dig out a shot of something strong.  Help me through the night…

299: Drugs, psychiatric drugs, that is

Escitalopram

I thought I’d share some pretty pictures of the drugs I’m on.  The Cipralex (Lexapro) is new.  Funky side effects the last couple weeks that I’m hoping will end soon.  Nausa, weird swirly head feeling, anxiety actually much higher than usual.  And I’m weaning myself off of Lamictal.  Not sure it’s the best thing, but the new psychiatrist thinks it’s probably OK.  Can’t remember things well, especially words I’ve always known (which for a writer is bad news).  So, increasing the Cipralex while decreasing Lamictal slowly.  And a roller coaster inside while all this is happening.  Jolly fun, this.

Lamotrigine