The Crazy Pills

 

The last two weeks have been a living hell for old Josh and not for the usual reasons. I am not ill, I am not overly depressed, and I am not suffering from some kind of writer's block. No, instead it’s my medication that’s driving me crazy. So, of course, the obvious answer would be to stop taking my meds, but in a twist worthy of Shammamillion it’s not being able to get my meds that’s killing me.

DUN DUN DUN!!!

Let’s cycle this back six weeks and give you the entire story. Back in October, my doctor made a big change to my bipolar/depression medications. At the time I’d been on Lithium and Prozac for the last four years and Seroquel for three months. The Seroquel was killing me. It took care of my depression but left me exhausted and thick twelve hours a day. So Dr. J, my awesome Valkyrie doctor, took me off of the Seroquel and put me on Abilify and a Lithium supplement called Deplin which she gave me a month's worth of samples for. 

For a month I was me again. I was the me I’d been before the bipolar destroyed much of my life. I was active, I was sleeping six solid hours a night, I was writing like a machine, and most importantly I was happy.

I WAS HAPPY!!!

Then the time came for me to fill the Deplin prescription and of course my bullshit insurance refused to cover it. If they’d covered it I would have had to pay sixty dollars a month and without insurance it was several hundred dollars, and that was not going to happen. My doctor filled an appeal for me, which was roundly rejected by my lovely insurance company. So two weeks ago I ran out of Deplin, and that’s when it all went to shit. First came insomnia, then came the restlessness coupled with anxiety, and finally it became impossible to concentrate on anything.

So what did I do? I dropped the Abilify on the advice of Dr. J and made an appointment to see her after the holidays. Now I’m no longer restless or anxious. I’m tired all the time, I can’t focus on work, and I’m just sad. I have no idea what to do. I feel like I had a taste of the paradise of “Normalcy” and then had it stolen from me under the guise of the insurance company knowing what's best for me. I’m not suicidal, and I haven't gone back to hiding in my room, but I can hear that little voice in the back of my head telling me to run away and sleep.

I hate that voice.

I am not writing this fishing for sympathy or pity—plenty of people have it worse than me. But I have to get it out. I have to say what's in my head, or things get darker and much scarier. Things look bad looking from the outside in, but I’m terrified that from the outside everything seems okay when it’s so far from the truth.

- Josh