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The Temptation Of The High


While being balanced mode wise is something that is good and something that I am glad to be, although I do wish that my medications made me feel less drained like I have been dragging a heavy weight around with me while I do things, in part because my mind seems to be sort of slow and just not totally with it at times leaving it to take a lot of energy to concentrate and get things done and that mental energy also has a physical manifestation as well, and is what tends to make me feel the most drained. while it is good to be balanced it is hard to not want to have a taste of the forbidden fruit that I have been brought down from having a minor taste of and that is to be on the more manic side of things.  It is times like this when I know that the meds are keeping me from an amazing natural high, that it is so tempting just to stop taking my medications.


I like to think that any one would be tempted throw caution to the wind to live a natural high that it would seem so many look to drugs to find.  It feels so good that it is nearly impossible to put into worlds to describe to someone that dose not know it already.  It is so tempting to tap into that to accomplish the goals that I want, like losing weight, which is so much easier when you have boundless amounts of energy and almost no apatite to the point that you often forget to eat, dose make it worlds easier to melt the pounds off, rather then getting threw with a day of work and feeling totally spent mentally and physically.  When trying to deal with real issues in ones life it is so much more tempting to want to be in a state where you feel on top of the world and unstoppable like the world is your oyster, where you have no problems at all.  It is tempting to slip out of your life and the issues that come with it into a place where others accuse you of and sometimes think that you are on drugs because of how good you feel and the amazing ways in which it makes your mind work.  Yet there is a dark side to it all a side that can be destructive as those very same frames of mind can cause one to make very questionable and down right poor decisions, decisions that wreck havoc long after the good times have come to an end.  The there is the risk, inevitability of the fall that will come after words, the fall that will take me to places that I never want to visit again yet I know all to well. yet the temptation is still there.

It is to live with that temptation is part of my life now, now that I am balanced yet know that right now if I where to stop taking my medication I could be in that wounder full land that are my highs. It is that temptation that I have to resist, yet it also leads me to not want to accept the down sides of my medications if I can help it because those downsides only make the temptation that much more appealing. It is something that not many seem to understand.  It makes it a choice every day that I do take my meds to try and live my life with in the lines and hope that the promise that by doing so I will be able to build a life that I want in a way that I can't when my mind runs away to the unrealistic in the highs and crashes down into the terrifying darkness of the lows.It is that promise that I am left hoping that it pans out, as that promise is the one that makes the amazingness of the high just less amazing enough to forgo it.  That is why I keep taking my meds, even though they get less and less appealing.

until next time dear readers.  

Comments

  1. Hi Matt,

    I wonder if our exchange of multiple e-mails might have triggered this topic, because what we talked about did occasionally touch on management of your symptoms. Not knowing a lot about bipolar disorder and how the meds do and do NOT work, I have a number of questions:

    1. Does the depression part ever occur on its own i.e., slipping out of “even” and falling to “low” or is it almost always linked to a manic high which immediately preceded it?

    2. Are there medications which knock out both the mania and the depression or do patients usually need two different medications to attack each extreme separately?

    3. Is it common for a drug which knocks out the mania to generate its own depression?

    4. Have you almost forgotten what if feels like to be in balance WITHOUT feeling drained?

    5. Does your doctor say that the lethargy and dopiness is an inherent side effect of most of these medications and just has to be tolerated, or is there any reasonable hope of finding alternatives which do the job without causing these unwanted side effects?

    6. Some of the money and spending problems you mentioned in another thread—could those have been caused by the mania part?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. 1. every so often but the ones that show up after/during a period of being level don't tend to be nearly as bad as the crashes that come after being so high, those ones are the deepest darkest ones that if I where to tell people about them they would not want to listen.

      2. I am on a combination of two medications which help and deal with some aspects of both and try to keep me balanced, I am on a mood stabilizer and an anti-psychotic, that help keep me balanced and deal with troublesome affects of both moods.

      3. They are common sideaffects that come along with the drugs, but that dose not mean that I am ready to just give up and say oh well unless there is not much that can be done about it.

      4. I have not forgotten what it is like to feel balanced and not drained, but I think one or another of my meds ether needs to be adjusted or I am still having to get used to the increase in dosage of one of them, as what is so draining is from feeling mentally slow and trying to concentrate and work at not being that way. (that and I think that work is just getting to be a tiresome drag at the moment too.)

      5. That is what I am going to talk to him about tomorrow and see if there is any way that it can be dealt with, hopefully with out screwing up the good that the medications are doing me, because other wise they are doing their job quite well.

      6. Yes some of the money problems and spending problems are related to it in reality because I was on my meds and it was not that much on the manic side they were much less then they could have been, especially considering in the past I have been know to drop over $100 on Itunes in less then an hour.(I did that a couple of times in the past) this time what undid me was the fact that I over donated to a couple of causes one of which being the campaign to approve R74 and protect gay marriage in Washington, a good cause by I wound up giving much more then I could afford to give.

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    2. Well, I hope you have good luck getting better and less troublesome meds. As demonstrated in one of your videos, those lethargic side effects are observable and it would help you in so many ways, some which we have discussed privately, to be able to get rid of those.

      Delete
  2. I can see how you would miss the highs, but since they are coupled with such lows, it does take some of the shine off the highs. Could it be that it will take you a while to get used to living a more mellow life?

    Also in reference to you comment on my blog about not having a kindle to read digital books on, here is a link from amazon to download a free app for your PC

    http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html/ref=amb_link_357152642_4?ie=UTF8&docId=1000426311&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=auto-sparkle&pf_rd_r=70CA1D558FFD4F1E9C32&pf_rd_t=301&pf_rd_p=1314144302&pf_rd_i=kindle%20cloud%20reader

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It probably is that I need to get used to living a more mellow life, and at the moment that more mellow just dose not feel quite as fulfilling as the more exciting high. But it is true that the lows and the that are coupled to them and the bad dissions made during the highs dose take some of the shine off, but damn there is so much shine those highs. I still miss the highs though, it sounds stupid but they are like a natural drug, and now I have to go without it.

      Thank you for the link I will have to download it.

      Delete

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