Mental Health and Grown Up Stuff

[surreality]

@GangOfDolls Yeah, sometimes I have to say I'm grateful for the side effects of certain things on me that are addiction risks; not gonna lie, it helps avoid that worry.

While ZOMG ill, I took dilaudid for a couple of days and... no, just no, all the NOPE, NO NAY NEVER NO MORE. After the second surgery, I told them I did not give a damn what they gave me, but it could not be that no matter how much that was 'the most highly recommended painkiller post-surgery', and I would rather take absolutely nothing than ever have that medication in my body again.

Not only is it insanely addictive -- it's synthetic morphine that's apparently some absurd amount of times more potent -- I could feel my intelligence dropping by the moment from a half hour after I took one onward. My critical thinking skills I could track as they dropped in the amount of time it would take me to respond to anything verbally; by an hour after taking a pill that had increased to two minutes of having to process anything I'd been asked (and I mean things as simple as my husband asking 'do you want me to get you anything from the kitchen?'), I had a horrible headache, and felt like I was in a fog. Balance was gone, completely. All I wanted to do was sleep and yell at people (five minutes after they did absolutely nothing wrong) for absolutely no damned reason.

I needed it when I needed it, and it saved me a lot of physical pain and improved a problem that was complicating all the things, but 1-2 every 4 hours? Yeah, that lasted a day before it was 'I'm farming these fuckers out for as long as I can take it and still breathe without tears rolling down my face', because that was preferable to feeling like the above, seriously.

To be fair, it did mean I got to yell really a lot at my father for being a gigantic asshat about 'you might get addicted! That is so much more horrible than not being able to actually breathe! OH GOD SOUND THE ALARM!' after I took a single pill with less restraint than I might usually have employed, but in hindsight, damn, he did kinda earn that one. (Granted, for all I clearly recall of it, I may have called him a giant purple pollution-farting unicorn, but with whatever limited faculties I had at the time, I recall that it was probably mean. It may not have been remotely lucid, but it was probably mean.)

[Auspice]

Dilaudid was... yeah, it'd be dangerous if I had more access to it. It got me through my days in the hospital, mind you. However... I didn't have any negatives (well, OK, I did puke pretty much immediately after they gave it to me one time). I'd have like, thirty seconds of 'oh god I feel weird' and then a while of being dopey/drowsy or actually sleeping.

But then... morphine just makes me feel like I'm on fire (that's it. I just feel my veins burning and no pain relief, no happy-fun-time in my head) and it's not like they could feed me pills.

I've never had addiction issues. I smoked for a couple years due to job stress. The day I quit that job, I stopped. Every so often, if I'm out drinking or I'm super anxious, I might want a cigarette, but, for example, it's been... 8? months or so since I last had one.

...but dilaudid would come close. Just because oh dear god, if I had something like that I could take on the days where my legs hurt... my life would be so much better.

[Darinelle]

@Auspice - Dilaudid is the best hour of "is this what it feels like to not be in pain" ever. EVER.

[Catsmeow]

Y'all make me want to try Dilaudid now. Just for a day. One blissful day.

See? This is why I can't take drugs!

[Auspice]

@Darinelle said in Mental Health and Grown Up Stuff:

@Auspice - Dilaudid is the best hour of "is this what it feels like to not be in pain" ever. EVER.

It really is. It made the hospital stay bearable because, ugh, NGTs suck. Without the dilaudid, I was just experiencing high levels of both pain and discomfort.

[tek]

This is why I am so, so, so grateful for medical marijuana. I still have my opiates for when things are really bad, but I don't really need them more than once or twice a week now.

[surreality]

I have some very odd reactions to opioids, on the whole. There's the thing with the dilaudid, and then there's a long-standing weirdo reaction even to codeine. It doesn't knock me out at all -- I get hyper, seem to need zero sleep, and get hyper passionate about everything. Something is never good, it is THE MOST AMAZING THING EVER; something is never bad, it is THE END OF THE MOTHERFUCKING WORLD LIFE IS OVER.

...which is still much better than my reaction to it as a kid, which was 'don't sleep for three days, seemingly develop super strength for a four year old, and become hyper-aggressive'. My folks still talk about that one. (These days, it would be all over youtube by now, some hapless four year old with an ear infection literally flipping the huge solid wood dining room table and all that.)

Only (non-synthetic) morphine seemingly just makes me drowsy before anything weird can happen. It baffles the crap out of the docs, and has definitely made the post-hospital oxycodone something of a challenge, and also something I stepped down on long before I needed to, just in case. (To the tune of much ow ow ow, but... there is so much crap on the table in my dining room, people, you have no idea... )

[Auspice]

Does anyone else ever reach this point of... having something you should see a doctor about and avoiding it because you just feel so done?

My cubital is flaring up bad in my right arm. Prob because of how hardcore I've been knitting and crocheting over the past 4-5 months. But it's at a point where the tendon in my hand is so tight that... if I don't tape my pinky to my ring finger, it ends up 'stuck' extended out and hurts too much to use the hand. >.>

I've been making do by massaging the trigger points, icing, using a TENS, and I found exercises for it. I'm sure a doctor would probably just put me in a PT program, so I keep hoping I'll see progress from it on my own. But then I have days where my hand will start spazzing out (whole hand shaking, dropping things because my grip fails).

But I had so much medical-wise last year that I just don't want to go into more just yet.

[Catsmeow]

@Auspice

Yes.

There have been times in my life (and now might be one too) where I'm just tired. I'm over it. I don't want to go and deal with one more bad doctor visit. It gets emotionally draining. So then either I ignore it, self-help it, etc.

But yes, Dear, I understand and I'm sorry you are dealing with that.

[surreality]

@Auspice I have mystery shakes no one has yet been able to explain, since they come and go with no predictability whatsoever. The time I asked about it, the phrase 'around $25k in testing' was uttered, and two decades later, nope, still not looking into that. Sometimes it'll be months between instances, other times it hits for hours

I actually made a 'project leash' to deal with this earlier today, so I could clip stuff to it because I keep dropping things the past few days.

WTF is it with art and crafts that screws us up as much as it makes us feel better? Seriously. This needs to not be a thing.

[Auspice]

@surreality

That's how my legs are. They'll give out on me randomly and sometimes the pain gets so bad in them that I can't function. I know (and doctors have admitted) that it's something outside the fibro... but no one's had answers yet. I've given up on that one.

The hand... about 90% sure it's just the cubital flaring up, based on what works to help the pain. But I'm at month 4 (maybe closing in on 5) of taping those two fingers together. All the time. At least self-adherent bandage tape is cheap.

And yeah, srsly, boo crafts. Ever since I had my carpal tunnel surgery, I keep up hand exercises. Haven't had any flares there... but the crochet seems to hit around the elbow more. Bah!

[surreality]

...and that situation that has been plaguing me and screwing me up finally hit true critical mass.

It's time to run away to a dark hole for a while and reflect on this.

[Ganymede]

It's back again. The ennui. It feels sort of like this:

It's hard to put your finger on it. You're not quite sure what's wrong. After all, you have a good job, a good car, good kids, and, by all accounts, a good life. You worked to get there too: 5 degrees and about 14 years of schooling after high school, off and on. Medical coverage? Retirement account? Not issues you worry about on a daily basis. Maybe preschool expenses, but they are manageable.

You made it. That's what your Dad tells you. Your kids are great. That's what your Mom tells you.

Really. There's nothing wrong.

Not one thing.

So, you go out to celebrate your fortune, but you've no one to go with. You call as many people as you know, but they are busy; that's fine when you're a busy person because busy people know busy people who are often busy with their own lives, and you're too busy to be anything but happy for them.

So, you go out on your own, and you try to meet other people. Most look the other way: they don't know you, and they are there to have their own good time. That's fine, you tell yourself, because at least you're out and enjoying your good fortune on a Saturday night. You're out to have fun, not to mope.

So, you buy a drink, and it tastes good, but not great. It tastes like every other drink you've had for the past month or so. Same drinks; same taste; same effect. And, the same venues, the same people that blow you off, the same people that don't pay attention.

You sit on a stool, maybe. Or perhaps you stand outside for a smoke. Maybe you take a moment to look around. Maybe not. The cigarettes don't taste good, but they don't taste bad. They taste like the drinks: shallow, repetitive, and empty.

You can have everything to celebrate, yet still feel an unbearable lightness of being. You can have nothing to worry about, and feel completely unattached to your life at the same time.

This is not my melancholy; this is my boredom. I've felt it for almost five months. It goes away on the rare occasion that something or someone quickens me again. But then, nothing lasts forever, and the beer becomes a sodden lump in my threat.

Tomorrow's Monday. I look forward to it because it's not Sunday.*

[Auspice]

@Ganymede

That does, honestly, sound like depression to me. My depression, at its worst, is not a sadness. It's an emptiness. These states where I don't bother with anything because what's the point? Where I don't MU*, I don't play games, I don't read, I even barely watch TV. I can barely arse myself to do my job well because of the sense of 'why bother.'

Depression gets this... rap as being a state of sadness, but it's not. Not just sadness. For some people it is, sure. But that's why there's this whole idea that 'just look on the bright side!' will fix it. When I'm depressed, I can look at the bright side, sure. Before I got on my current meds, I did that whole thing all the self-help books and sites and shit recommend. Every night, I came up with three unique things to be thankful for. Every night. And y'know what? It made me feel worse. Because I could see, logically, that I was thankful and they were good, but I couldn't feel it.

It's that... inability to access the more upbeat/happy/good feelings. That's depression. And sometimes you do slip to the other end of the scale into the sad/morose, but most often it's into a realm of nothingness.

[faraday]

@Ganymede - @Auspice is correct. "Empty" feelings (not just sad) and loss of interest in once-pleasurable activities are two of the classic markers of depression. Brain chemistry is complicated, and I am not one to play armchair psychologist. But I do think there's value in highlighting possible warning signs and encouraging people to get a professional opinion.

[Thenomain]

Getting bored is also human. I think it's the hard part of Adulting, working out what to do when you feel stuck. Do you throw yourself into thing after thing until you no longer feel stuck? Do you dwell on how you've changed and how that scares you because you don't know what to do next? Is it depression?

No answer here, but I also want to posit other answers. I could never force myself out to a bar alone. I shouldn't eat Chipotle every day for lunch but I love the hell out of it and will continue to until something kicks me out of the routine. You can be depressed and enjoy things.

Five months is probably a bit overkill, tho.

[Catsmeow]

@Ganymede

It sounds like my dysthymia. It's a form of depression where you are depressed as your normal with moments of happy. So because it's your normal you don't realize you are depressed.

You describe my normal (not my current unemployed state). In my normal, I kind of feel out of touch with things. I'm not sad, it's just how it is. Normally people will say I'm happy because I'm 'on' most the time in my coping mechanism. It's a lot of me thinking that I should be happier (or sometimes even more disappointed) in how something is. I just have a static 'meh' feeling about most things. It took forever to come up with what it really was. The therapist that diagnosed it said it is functional, long-term depression. Your willpower is usually strong, so you've just found a way to cope and be successful. However, you are depressed 80% of the time or more.

[surreality]

@Auspice's description here is very good, and it is often overlooked. People think sad. Sad is alive, sad is responsive, sad is, in its own way, passionate and all the rest.

Empty is different, and when I think of the 'sad' that manifests in depression, it's more like grief, or mourning, that will not and cannot progress through the stages toward recovery or acceptance. Depression 'sad' is like being frozen in the depression stage -- or worse, reaching acceptance, but not as healing, but as the hollow feeling of 'nothing can get better, it is all futile'.

[Auspice]

One of the things I've had to learn to do is be more firm with people. More honest, not that I lied before. It was more that I obscured the truth, or worked around it. I've always done my best not to lie, but sometimes I'll withhold information.

Especially if it pertains to me.

"Will you be upset if..."
"Nah, I'll be fine."
(truth: 'I'll be fine eventually but right now yes I am totally hurt.')

A MU* example:
One of the people I'm closest to, IRL/OOC, joined a game with me. We made chars with pretty heavy ties to each other.

I've not been able to get him to RP for the last month and a half. It's starting to negatively impact how I can play my character. And whenever I'd ask about it, he'd want more time. To decide if he was going to be on the game or not.

I finally put my foot down yesterday. I told him basically: 'Hey, if you can't get into the game or the character, that's fine. I'm not going to be upset if you decide to leave. But I need to know because it's having a negative impact on me.'

Used to be I'd just steadily fade off my character rather than make my needs known. So I do consider this a win. Being able to acknowledge that my needs/wants are just as valid as someone else's.

[Cupcake]

This may seem weird, hear me out. An acquaintance of mine who used to be part of the MUSH community is now amongst other things, a professional photographer. He's doing a series he's calling "MortalClay" involving people in portrait with various substances like clay and charcoal and powders on their body.

This one is particularly profound for me, though they're all beautiful:
https://www.instagram.com/p/BQjFzYADCIE/

It's a tasteful, artistic nude so your NSFW may vary.

The reason it is so profound for me is because for years I struggled with the notion of imperfection and beauty being able to be housed in the same skin, namely my own. For some reason this picture in particular cacked a barrier, even if only in a small way. I could picture myself in this woman's place without bitterness or irony, and realizing that was tear inducing.