Friday, September 28, 2012

Med changes and a thought about weed and psychosis

It's 3:17 in the friggen morning and I am not asleep yet! I got home from Prince Albert just before 1, so I am kind of wired. Mum basically just went straight to bed. She was exhausted. We went for my screening in this two spirited festival up there. My video was the VERY LAST thing of the whole night! People who stayed really liked it, so it seemed. Someone even told me if he had millions of dollars he would give it to me so I could make my tv show.

On the ride home my mom and I threw around some ideas for my television series. I have a really good idea for the character of the narrator. I think it could be funny! Yay! We also went down the road of wondering why I have had such bad luck with Canada Council juries these last three years. I really don't know. It's pretty frustrating. I didn't even get a highly recommended this year, they must have HATED IT! I just want to win the lottery already and not have to depend on the whims of a funding agency. I've thought about crowdfunding, but I don't know if enough people care about my work to make any money. Plus I would need some pretty substantial dollars.

I got a call from my psychiatrist today, we've been playing phone tag for the last week. Since my prolactin is elevated, she thinks it is the risperidone and she wants to lower it another milligram. So now the morning dose is out, just a little epival and wellbutrin in the morning and epival, risperidone, and iron at night. Along with my ranitidine twice a day. So we shall see what happens. She asked if I was still not smoking pot and I said yes. She said it was very important that I not smoke any pot otherwise we'll have to raise my risperidone levels again. My mum laughed about that, she said "You can either smoke pot and be sexless and diabetic, or you can be clean and healthy!" Ha ha ha! It's true though. My moods have evened out a lot without weed, I was never a good judge about it making me psychotic or not. Although I remember just before I quit I noticed my thoughts would get really out of control while I was high! I was starting to hate it, and I was addicted so I kept needing it, but it was really fucking me up in the head. Whoever thinks pot is harmless is an idiot. It really messes with your brain. ESPECIALLY if you already have a mood disorder. It wasn't always like that. But it got worse and worse as years went on. Sometimes I wonder if I would have been Bipolar 1 without having smoked marijuana. It's a big difference from Bipolar 2. Bipolar 1 is when you go into psychosis, and THAT is a very dangerous space to be in. Not to mention it seems to take forever to recover from.

Mum asked me in the car home what I was going to do my next video about. She said "What are you thinking about these days?" I thought about it, and I guess my sobriety has taken up a lot of my brain space lately. It's not just about something I USED to do, it's also about what my life has become since and what I am doing differently now. My psych nurse told me she wanted me to work through my emotions more now. She brought up a good point which was that before I would avoid them by smoking a joint. My risperidone is apparently one of the reasons I can't really cry, so lowering it might bring back that ability. Which would be nice, actually. My psychic told me the first time I saw her that I have to cry more. It's really hard!

I used to be able to cry so easy. I feel like I have hardened up since then. Like I don't WANT to cry because it signals weakness or some nonsense. I know it's really healthy to cry, it just feels like I can't get there! When I first quit weed I started feeling all these old emotions, even stuff about my late cousin who died in 2006! BUT I didn't cry.

I'm tired. I should go to bed. Anyway, yeah, I need to make all these med changes before I go to Toronto. I need to be stable for a good six months before I leave. I am stable now, but we don't totally know what reducing my antipsychotic will do. I'll know we have to up it or go on a different one if I start hearing music in white noise even when I have taken my meds. That's a pretty clear indicator. It's one of my early warning signs and I've been able to note it and still have insight into my condition. Sometimes when you go crazy you stop believing you are crazy or that you have ever been crazy. Everything seems real, even when it's intensely impossible weird shit. So, watching out!

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