Oh mannnn,
I can relate.
I've always been a bit emotionaly unbalanced and ADD (poor concentration, constant mood swings, anxiety, etc....).
When I was young I was put on ritalin, but in all honesty, while it helped me schoolwise (graduated top of my class in highschool) it emotionally screwed me up, but the way my family is, success at all costs!
To deal with my moods, and their various negative effects in all areas of my life (socially, spiritualy, etc...) I began using and abusing Drugs and alcohol at 15 yrs old. Seriously, I did everything (tons of acid, cocaine, pot, opiates, Barbituartes, etc.... pretty much every thing but PCP). Needless to say, while initialy my self imposed chemical regiment initially helped me cope, in the end they fucked me over big time, ala a serious heroin and cocaine IV habit. In the midst of the begining of the nadir of my addiction, I was so emotionally and mentally fucked up that I was put in a psych ward. I had at least two flagrantly manic episodes ( feeling that every event was loaded with symbolic reference regarding the nature of the universe, etc...). Seriously some crazy shit to the max. I wasn't entirely honest about my drug habit, and I was put on a ridiculous psych med regiment by a well respected psycho-pharmacologist. Well respected by the literature and some of his peers, but the guy had a well deserved reputation of over-medicating his patients (or should I say test subjects, as he treated us more like we were guinea pigs). His office was stacked with ridiculous amounts of pens, pads, mugs, etc... from every major drug company around, ie his office was one giant psych med advertisement.
To be fair, he did (and sadly still does) feel that he was doing his best to help out his seriously fucked up patients, but he didn't have any respect for us at all. I'd always been a bit bi-polar, but he put me on massive doses of a drug called serzone (ssri-ish) that I believe in fact increased and exacerbated my mania. I was so beaten down by life at the time that even after I expierienced some nasty side effects (best summed up as being like the effects of mdma, ie chatering teeth increased heart rate visual-disturbance dilated-pupils) and told him that it was a result of the serzone in that they would begin after I'd taken the drug he discounted my insight and attributed said side-effects to anxiety. I told him I would stop taking the drug with or without his consent and he freraked out on my, in effect hinting that I'd be locked up, so in my brow-beaten low self-esteemed state I consented. When I became even more manic, he put me on a craxy regiment that ended up consisting of 8 (!!!!) psych meds, the primary one being Zyprexa (at one time a dosage of 20mgs a day, which is just about the max). In effect, I was taking multiple VERY STRONG drugs to treat each other's side effects, plus a benzo for sleep and Desoxyn (Methamphetamine) prescribed for ADD. This was in addition to the illegal drugs I was surreptitiously taking at the time: Heroin and cocaine IV, pot, and crack. In a ddition to this, I would reguraly take massive doses of temazepam (a potent Benzo) and wash it down with half-pints of Jack. I will re-iterate: I was fucked up to the max, a nervous slow thinking wreck of a human being, completely miserable.
I'm extremely fortunate that I didn't OD or kill myself intentionally.Some of this misery was a result of how I was 'made' by nature and genetics, some of it was a result of how I was brought up (ie the values I was instilled with) and some of it was a result of my crappy chemical coping methods. To add insult to injury, I gained 80+ pounds (due to the zyprexa, which caused me too eat constantly, ie waking up in the middle of the night and eating spoon fulls of sour cream, etc.... fucking disgusting). Becoming extremely obese only worsened my sense of self hatred and self-contempt.
After a few years of this BS, I came clean and got sober, but I was still on all the psyach meds. I eventually swithed Drs. and slowly tapered off of the toxic psych meds I was taking. Don't get me wrong, psych meds are a blessing and at times they are usefull, and for some people they are a neccesity ( eg people who believe they can talk with God, people who cut themselves, people who are habitualy suicidal, etc...) but I seriously believe that on the whole they really made my crappy situation worse, though my dishonesty and fear around my drug addiction ( my folks had instiled in me from a very early age that I was a completely flawed human being. Despite my stellar grades in high school I was convinced I was a complete idiot, and I was constantly afraid that everyone I met was judging me negatively, which seriously fucked up my relationships with friends and women {It's sad to admit, but I'm 30 and I only began dating four years ago, as I couldn't stand rejection, and not that many women were interested in dating and/or having sex with an overweight self-loathing paranoid basket case; go figure
} . My fear of judgement wasn't that far off base, as from an early age every interaction with my folks consisted of them judging me ruthlessly and telling me about how I didn't live up to their or societies standards, as far back as I can remember ( but only cause they loved me :( BS!). It's funny/sad: it was just like that old Adam Sandler routine: "they're all going to LAUGH at you!"
Since I sobered up and stopped taking the psych meds ( with the lone exception of a very small dose of lamictal for the purpose of mood stabilization) I've been dealing with a strange situation: extreme mood swings and my mind-power vacilates between extreme focus and brilliance and utter foggy-minded dip-shit-ism.
I've been experimenting with various noo-tropics and herbs over the past few months to try and find what might help me out, with limited success. But I'm keeping the faith. I've tried Oxiracetam (made me angry and confused), Picimilon (sedated me big time), vinpocetine (made my extermeites very cold and made me feel light-headed and hyped up), Arctic-root, ie Rhodiola Rosea (the nly one that's really helped thus far), high quality Fish oil capsules( uncertain as to efficacy, and VERY expensive) and high quality Maca (which seems to have been helping me with libido issues).
Next up, I'm going to give the following a go:
Bacopa to improve my memory
Piracetam to help with my focus and attention span problems (with cholineof course)
and maybe Huperizine for memory.
Other thyan the fact that I found that writing this was thouroughly cathartic, I wrote it to express my solidarity.
I truly believe that as fucked up as I became as a result of my illegal drug use/abuse/addiction, I feel that the psych meds I was on fucked me up even more.
I highly recomend you try out Maca, as a few months ago I was expierincing some troubles with my libido (desire and also troubles getting and maintaning a full on erection) , and since I began taking it things have smoothed out significantly. The type of Maca you purchase can either make or break it's benefits. I initially bought some from a company that was growing it in Hawaii. However, the plant is native to the andes, and as such really needs to be from that regioun (cause altitude and temperature really effect it's potency).
As such I recomend you check out a company called Navitas Naturals, as their stuff is grown and processed in Peru. I bough a rather large batch of it January 2nd, and I still have roughly a month's worth left. Plus, the batch only cost me $35.
I wish you the best of luck in your noo-tropic search.
-end rant-
Edited by leonine77, 18 March 2008 - 04:54 AM.
