just got off the phone with my parents. spent 80% of the conversation on the verge of tears and the final 10% in said tears because i was so wracked with this building anxiety from the past few hours that i could barely speak. i rambled on about being scared a few times, telling them that i thought i was “going mad” because i could barely remember tasks that i had performed just hours prior, including doing my taxes/filing for unemployment the previous night, and getting violently nauseated in the middle of sleep, just before my girlfriend went to work.
i’m assuming that’s the ativan, but i’ve only taken a sum total of 10 mg of the stuff (3 consecutive daily 2 mg doses, then four spaced out 1mg doses over a seven day period) so i’m not totally convinced. i know that i’m now deathly afraid of taking any more of the stuff, so that’s probably out as an option in the future. 4/6 times (all four 2 mg doses, one 1 mg dose) it effectively put me into a mini-stupor of glee, and the girlfriend even noted that i “seemed like myself again” when it kicked in for the evening. the other two times, it only lessened my anxiety down to a point where i felt like it was manageable at best. coupled with the horror stories of using benzo’s long-term, and i’m just going to suffer through the anxiety/panic as best i can until i find a more suitable solution.
my face feels hot right now. it feels like there’s sparks flicking across my chin, arms and shoulders right now, which is pretty typical of when my anxiety spikes. it spiked two days ago when i used the phrase, “so here i am” from a tony hawk song that i used to use to annoy/tease my girlfriend. i said it aloud when gaming that night, and i instantly had this extremely strong psychosis episode, taking back to the initial episode where i thought the world was resetting and the reset point was in my room. (yes, i realize this sounds insane now. no, i don’t hear voices talking to me, other than my racing thoughts bombarding me non-stop.)
that’s what’s annoying about this vicious, vicious cycle i’m in. i’ll have some semblance of what i’d call an “acceptable” day (not fair to call it good when for years before the incident, my anxiety level usually didn’t trickle past a 1-2 unless i was at work). i’d go for a walk, get a few menial tasks done in the house, hang out with the girlfriend, play some video games or watch youtube videos, and get fairly sound sleep without worry.
then some flashpoint happens. anxiety creeps its way back in, usually in the form of this feeling of dread about being stuck in this house with nowhere to go and no one to talk to. the downstairs neighbor’s air conditioner and the steady, ominous hum it omits caused it last night. in between video game sessions (which i have tried to convince myself works as a perfectly acceptable distraction but in reality just “kills time” which in itself is an anxiety trigger), i was opening the door to the porch, darting my eyes around and trying to pinpoint where the hell the damned hum was coming from. fun fact, anxiety makes tinnitus (which i’ve suffered from for a few years, thank you full blast walkman use through my teens) worse and can cause “phantom tinnitus” where you hear hums or roars that no one else can. luckily, i’m 100% sure that i’m hearing an air conditioner down there and i’m not loopy, but unluckily, even knowing that what i’m hearing has a physical place in the world isn’t enough to keep me from being uneasy about hearing it.
once the anxiety returns, the worry starts.
“do i actually exist?”
“is this just a time loop?”
“am i destined to be like this for the rest of my life?”
then the panic starts. i’m 35. my life expectancy is probably mid-70’s, though the damage i’m doing to my brain and heart right now might start kicking that down towards the 60’s. i think about the passage of time and how fleeting it seems. the last three and a half weeks (i think?) have both flown by and been agonizingly slow. then i think about death and the void. then the panic fully sets in, and i’m stuck in bed/the couch/in place. thoughts at mach 5, to a point where i can’t make sense of any of them. i feel like my heart is going to just rupture, and i have a recurring thought where i feel like there’s this gunk in one of the valves, and i envision myself pushing out the gunk to keep myself from having a heart attack.
this is the point where i usually end up breaking down and crying uncontrollably for a short time. like today. or six of the past ten days since the hospital visit.
and yet.
there’s a bottle of lexapro sitting at my house somewhere. prescribed by a psychiatrist that
a) warned me in advance that she would only be my psychiatrist for one or two sessions before she left the therapy network my insurance takes
b) warned me at the beginning of my (ten-minutes late to start) tele-therapy session that “i’m her like, fifth case in a row”
c) asked me the same boiler-plate questions my last psychiatrist did before giving me a sales pitch on lexapro then ending our one-hour therapy session after a sum total of 25 minutes.
one of the side effects listed for lexapro that i found from…googling lexapro and going to their website.
depersonalization.
hey, guess what? that’s why i’m in this mess to begin with! yay!
but.
as i just told the girlfriend, this last month has been, without question, the absolute worst month of my entire life. waking every day knowing that you can’t escape these terrible, everpresent and everlasting thoughts of despair, hopelessness, and grief. feeling no emotion other than sadness, even though you still can muster out a few faux laughs and grunts at gaming banter or tv shows. then trying to sleep, being scared to death that this is the night your heart gives out from the stress of all the anxiety and panic built up over the last few weeks.
shockingly, i’m not suicidal. on the contrary, i’m absolutely terrified to die. i’m more worried my body is going to just decide, yeah, i’ve had enough of this for both of us, let’s go in peace.
so. therapy with my normal therapist (who has been above and beyond in helping me at least find moments of respite through all of this) is Friday. i have three days between now and then, and as i sit, i’m at around a 7.5/10 on the anxiety scale. i’ve been jotting down activities and my anxiety levels during them for the last few days as sort of a “tracker” to try and anticipate when my anxiety spikes and when i have some relief. the past few times i’ve hit past a 7, i’ve taken that 1 mg of ativan and felt defeated for thirty or forty-five minutes, until it took effect and pushed the anxiety (that i could tell was still right there, lurking) a few feet away for the night.
now, at least until friday and a second opinion from my therapist, i’m going to be trying to ride out the anxiety->panic->sadness->fear cycle on my own. then, if he suggests it, i’ll be taking a lexapro and praying to every deity imaginable that it doesn’t retrigger me and instead somehow curbs this down to something i can at least manage until my life goes back to normal.
so yeah. this is thirty minutes of verbal vomit from me. i really was hoping that it would at least somewhat alleviate some of these symptoms, make me feel like a whole person again instead of a shell with someone pulling strings over his body.
but the chills are still there. the sparks are still there.
and the cycle begins anew.
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