Stepford Wives v The Young Ones

It's been exactly a week into the lithium treatment now and I'm wondering how much I can sue the NHS for, for giving a psychiatric patient a placebo drug. I jest. I just over estimated how I would be feeling and behaving - I expected to be sleeping and vomiting a lot, and responding only to commands - not at all. There's been a slight reduction in the intrusive/obsessive dark thoughts, mixed episodes and brain racing (now there's a new pitch for the Olympics - a bunch of nutters running round the track bare feet and arms up screaming. First the paralympics and now the psycholympics).


The burning urge to crack open cava and create a cure for cancer at 11am has lessened, sorry Marie Curie, and I can be told my hair looks nice up without bursting into tears or sleeping with them in return. I've noticed that I'm noticing stuff too, like oncoming traffic and other spacial/visual stuff I've never really paid much attention to other than when someone shouts for me to get out of the f*cking way.


I have however let my flat become an utter tip in my slight vagueness and only yesterday did I take the plunge, after a very long conversation with myself, and I felt like a Stepford wife in The Young Ones house.


They increase today. Will post. In the meantime check out some art or something. I recommend Steve McCann, he's got some fab stuff up at Core Arts in East London at he mo.

http://www.londonsartistquarter.org/events/steve-mc-cann-paintings-drawings
www.corearts.co.uk

Cream Cakes and Lithium

The paracetamol plan didn't work. I'm been prescribed Lithium instead.


When I think of Lithium I think of the 1950's, a chemistry lab and a lobotomy kit, so I freaked out, obviously, just a few days ago when Mr Upstairs explained to me that my regular dose of Lamotrigine (lactimal) wasn't working, which I feel partly responsible for as it's taking me five years of being on this to point out to him what psychological side affects these have on me, which I've always thought were the psychological side affects of WHY I take them in the first place.. acute anxieties, deep depression, obsessive intrusive thoughts, distractive (and destructive) mania etc.. whether it's the pixels in my brain or the powder in my pills I don't care anymore, I just want a clean white, fresh start.


So in a couple of days, pending on blood results I start the new treatment. Several things concern me..


1) Blood tests - these are in my top five list of things I hate along with headless bass guitars and mackeral pate, and I need to have blood tests every four days for up to eight weeks.


2) Lithium is commonly linked with weight gain - I've never been overweight which I find hard to believe as my eating habits portray something like a bulimic who skips the throwing up afterwards bit. Yesterday my friend reminded me of a story I told her about my last day at school where cream cakes were laid out on trays in the classroom and I silently ate in the privacy of my own desk, six, without a care in the world, to be interrupted my the chanting "Eat!.. Eat!.. Eat!.." and I turned to see the class circling the two biggest boys in school having a cake eating competition and the winner painfully folded the last of, er, six cakes in his mouth whilst the other doubled over at four and a half. The class stomped and cheered, the winner couldn't move, and I silently shocked myself silly.


3) Lithium can stunt emotions and creativity - now this concerns me the most. If I can't write, think, make sense of, or make my dolls, play the drums, any other activity which involves impulse or improvise I'll feel a) numb and b) someone else has hijacked my body. 


4) Lithium can cause tremors - How the f*ck am I gonna put my make-up on?? Or explain myself to other people; I have a choice of saying that a) You make me nervous, b) I'm withdrawing or c) I'm on Lithium. My doll making requires detailed sewing and I also have a photography exhibition coming up.


I'm going to go on some forums now and find some fellow lithiumees to put my mind at rest. I'll keep you posted.


SSP x

Booze, Fags and Self Help

I've started counting booze units again. Partly because I'm bordering on listomania again - approached with caution, it used to be such a "listless" operation that during a hospital admission once I wrote consecutive lists for days without stopping, something I only became aware of when I asked for a copy of my file years later and some poor secretary had to photocopy the lot -  but also because I seem to constantly have a glass of plonk in my hand at the moment. I'm smoking too and smoking a lot, and as a non smoker I don't smoke at all. Obviously. 

I could blame my recent Angie Watts personification on this time of year - it's wedding season, the sun's out, there seem to be more bank holidays than actual days - but I'm spending most of my time indoors, on my own, and for obvious reasons I often get tippexed off the wedding list.

I'm also having to list some of my thoughts, they're neither fun nor glamourous, to take to Mr Upstairs. The poor note book that has to hold all this information (yes, I'm even feeling sorry for stationary now days)  looks like a polluted take on Bridgit Jones' diary. 

But on a positive note (and yes, that happens sometimes too) when you write things down, be it lists, letters, your will, etc.. things a) starts to make sense - I sometimes script format my conversation for therapists beforehand other wise I feel that what I'm trying to say doesn't make sense or is untrue, and b) it lets a little of whatever is bugging you out, and you do feel a bit better, slightly resolved. This is why I write, why I've always written, why I've spent years writing for journals, press, stage,TV, radio.. even toilet graffiti - no one needed to know that it was me who did it with Matthew Spears. 

Ironically I'm not much of a reader. Maybe the odd serial killer biography or self help book. The latter was recently eaten by one of my guinea pigs who has never been as chilled out, smug and vegan since!

The Science of Paracetamol and Pound Shops

I recently got an email from a friend I haven't seen since sixth form, he's been following my blog and took a particular interest in 'Side-Effects of Effectiveness'. He keeps pretty up to date with new science stuff and explained to me that pain-killers have been proved to help with intrusive/ compulsive negative thinking (the stuff that bugs me the most). The upshot of the research is that compulsive thinking actually creates emotional stress/pain in the same part of the brain that tells our bodies that they are experiencing physical pain. Early tests seem to show that paracetamol is the most effective drug in inhibiting receptors in that part of the brain. Thus - paracetamol (or similar drugs) are likely to be part of the formulation of future anti-depressant and anti-anxiety drugs.

Could this explain why some of us are addicted to painkillers? I myself have been through phases of popping codeine pills at every opportunity, convincing myself I had a stomach ache when I was just a bit hungry, walking into A&E with self diagnosed meningitis when it was just an ignored sell by date, and don't even get me started with my strokes and hangovers. 

So next time I see Mr Upstairs we're  going discuss this. I doubt they actually write prescriptions for paracetamol for such psychiatric illnesses but it's being grown up enough to discuss it as I am notorious for self medicating, self increasing/reducing and self withdrawing. No wonder I often feel as stable as a yoyo from the pound shop!

When I think of that brain receptor stuff (above) I try to think of it like this..

A double life, high heels and The Co-op

It's occurred to me that I lead a double life sometimes.. In the privacy of my own home I can do all the crying, chucking things across the room, drinking absinthe and talking to Roy Walker on the TV.. in the same clothes I slept in/wore yesterday/slept in the night before etc.. but in public I have to do my best to hold myself together - smiley, clean, heels and tales of how fantastic my life is.

It's at times difficult to work myself out and where I belong - I can be sitting in a grotty NHS waiting room with dog eared half torn poster advertising Anthrax or Clamidia in the morning, and that evening I can be seated and Chtardonay'd in the Worsley footy players. It gives me a sense of confusion, and I forget who knows the real me and the other real me.

Years ago I was obsessed with fame - I wanted to be famous - I thought I WAS famous, I remember working at the Co-op in Cambridge in my teens and, as a shelf stacker, I was allowed in the store room. I was convinced that this was of VIP status, like I was allowed backstage. Now I can't think of anything worse (than fame - not store cupboards). I enjoy the anonymity of London too much. Just to contradict myself, I was once on The F Word talking about the co-op, but they edited what I said. I said my least favorite supermarket was the Co-op and they edited it to reveal that my favorite supermarket was the Co-op. And the fact that I'm talking too much about the Co-op in my blog means that I should stop right here!

Side effects of effectiveness

A few of you have mentioned that I've been quite quiet these last few weeks on the ol' blog, it's a tricky one, I'm in a medical Catch 22 scenario. On my prescribed dose of medication I get hideous obsessive compulsive thoughts, and sometimes they seep into actual visions, but at the same time they stablilise my moods. However, on a lower dose, my moods are unstable - mixed episodes of excitability and excessive lows - and anxiety attacks. So, one day I can't cope with the OCT's and take 100mgs the next day I can't cope with the downsides and double or even triple the dose. My partner watched me tear my hair out (metaphorically, I'm on a mission to look like Julie Christie in her twenties) and tried to contact East London mental health services but he would have had better luck building a Tesco Metro on the moon. I'm also very, very tired. The upping and downing of my meds are doing a yo-yo effect on my energy levels. Caffeine and Cava are top of my shopping list and the lists in general are getting longer - I even found myself writing a list of lists the other day!

Bear with me - I do have a few things i want to write about, I just need to zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Agro/social-phobia, listomania and Roy Walker

Well we've just had a heat-wave in London (whoo - hoo!) From my window I could see people heading towards Victoria Park, and smell barbecues, and hear street music (and not just the tinny RnB that slowly kills the car stereo that someone has just nicked but is too young to drive off in - it's on the Hackney The Musical compilation, I'll come back to that). Everything in me was saying "Get out there, it's bloody beautiful!" but I could not for love or money do it. Sounds pathetic, I mean I have fully functioning legs, a tenner and a map - that's all you need for a free afternoon out in London - but my psyche was regressing to a thirteen year old when told to do something you really don't want to do - arms crossed, eye's down, "Not doing it. Don't care, still not doing it". I wish my bouts of argro/social-phobia would sync with the Met office and match weather conditions. Besides, when you don't have human contact for days or weeks on end, you start to rely too much on TV for company and I am starting to compare myself to Big Fat Gypsy Weddings - Why can't I live in a caravan outside a complete strangers house?  

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy has taught me to find a positive in every negative. Unable to leave the flat I am.. 

a) not going to develop skin cancer 

b) not going on a spendathon - yes there is internet shopping but my weakness is household pets, at my worst I had ten rabbits and twelve guinea pigs (eighty eight legs in total, in a flat, no garden)  

c) not going for a quick spritzer to come home three days later. 

And, more importantly, I have Roy Walker to entertain me for four hours a day, he is on my top five things that keep me sane. The top ten list goes like this (in no particular order)..

Medication - obviously

This blog - it's expressive

Take A Break - stories such as My ex through acid on my chips and the dog ate them but I still love him make me feel grateful for what I have (reasonable ex's and no dogs)

Lists - the only order I have in my life

Roy Walker - he's Roy Walker

My psychiatrist(s) Dr Price and Dr Medcaff - they know their stuff

My partner - he is very patient, and also a patient himself, it helps, normal partners can make you feel even crazier in comparison to them

My rodents - I use up all my maternal responsibilities on them

Core Arts - my day centre/arts centre whatever you want to call it, being around other people with mental health problems means I can turn my outdoor personna off

The odd bottle of plonk - it's plonk.