Posted by hyperfocus on April 6, 2011, at 22:47:31
Last week I decided to add Risperdal to my combo to try to deal with the recurring, distracting thoughts that I have. Even though my mood is markedly improved since I've been on my current combo for the past couple of months (200mg amitriptyline + 25mg tianeptine) it's like there are these deep grooves in my mind that have been laid down that I find my internal focus traveling on when I'm trying to concentrate. Like I'd read for 5 minutes or be watching a Youtube video and then realize that I had stopped paying attention and was thinking about something (bad) which I had thought about at least a couple of thousands of times over the years that I had already resolved. Clearly this is not an ideal state to be in when you work with computers for a living. So basically I wanted the Risperdal to help me hyperfocus on important stuff I chose - not no-longer-important stuff I don't want to think about. And I knew from previous experience that Risperdal did not negatively affect my response to the other 2 meds - I'd be able to start and stop it and return to my current baseline easily.
So I started Risperdal and it did help. My focus and overall mood have increased significantly. I'm able to type this, for instance, in one go. If this improvement continues I'll be able to label this Risperdal experiment as a success and add .5mg Risperdal permanently to my meds.
The thing is not what's happening now but what happened last week. I should have started at a dose like .5mg but I'm impatient and tolerate most meds well and needed to know if it would work or not quickly. So I started at 1mg.
So it started helping - both with focus and overall mood and anxiety. But then I had some work stuff that didn't go as expected and we screwed up a presentation for a new client. And from that day my thoughts began spiraling downwards. And they didn't stop till I crashed into the trees and burst into flames. The best way I can describe what I felt like: it was as if somebody had turned the contrast knob all the way up on a black-and-white projection I had of my entire life. Everything was just laid out in stark detail and the conclusion was clear: It just wasn't good enough. I would never be good enough. With work or fun or friends or family or wife or kids or anything. God Himself had put his mark on me. This was the stark fact. I really had had enough. When my mood goes down I always eat a lot more but not this time. I didn't eat at all for 2 days and the days following that very little. It was very, very painful, beyond description really.
So I had the good sense to cut the Risperdal back to .5mg. And like I said I'm feeling much better. But something is just...different inside. I feel like I'm not going to forget the I pain felt and what I experienced.
In a novel called Flight of the Intruder about the Vietnam war, there's a horrific passage where a pilot dies trying to save another pilot. The doomed pilot's plane goes down but after the crash he manages to switch on his emergency radio and everyone participating in the rescue of the other pilot, including the other pilot himself, can hear the dying pilot...hear him die. And the narrator mentions that hearing the other guy's screams - a guy who lost his life trying to save him - hearing the guy's screams in the last few minutes of his life branded the other pilot inside for the rest of his life like never before. Like even though he was rescued and came through the war without a scratch, he would be different from that day.
It isn't as dramatic, but honestly it's sort of how I feel now. Like I came though the the other side of the Risperdal-induced suicidal state, and objectively everything with my illness is better, and I should be happy about that; but something inside me is just different. Like what I felt and thought about and saw for those days last week is burned inside of me and I can't be the same. I don't think in all the years I've been sick that I've ever been so far, far down in that pit. And I can't seem to forget it.
I'm not really sure what I'm trying to ask here, but has anybody ever had a similar experience? Like things got very very bad and something changed inside of you and you were sort of scared because it seems like your view of life shifted and everything is sort of different now? And you're not really sure about some things anymore?
Maybe it will pass - dissolve into my subconscious just like all the other acute depression episodes over the years. Maybe next week I'll be me again. Maybe I'm better inside. I really don't know.
poster:hyperfocus
thread:982139
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20110406/msgs/982139.html