Thursday, October 4, 2012

Med Withdrawal/Medication Compliance

Just a quick post here to explain med compliance.

If you've read the previous several posts on mania, you'll know that in there I decided that I wanted to be the "real me" and not take my meds. This is known is "medication non-compliance". Its a hazard of bipolar.

When I had been off them 3 or 4, days, I began to feel like I had a headache and this internal... well BLAH. I felt terrible. Its hard to explain.

So because of this, I went back on my meds carefully with my doctor's supervision. I felt much better after a few days, and after a week, I am back to my normal dose on both Lithium and Zyprexa.

Interestingly, I still had the THOUGHTS of mania that I'd been having, but they were damped down- like Dolby Noise Reduction did to tapes in the 80s. Almost 2 weeks later, they are still there- the paranoia and anxiety- but not as often and not as much.

It feels as if I'm addicted to these meds because, as I've written, even WITH them things in my brain can go very wrong. I didn't really notice a change in my symptoms of the drugs, actually, though by that point I may have been too far gone to really be able to tell the difference.

The first day I went back on the Zyprexa, I was out at Starbucks with a friend. It was raining. I was so sedated -that's how they work you see- that I sat in a comfy chair and stared out the window across from me at a canvas umbrella outside; the rain rolled down drop by drop, and every few seconds two or three little drops would join into one. I was mesmerized by this! All day, I was ready to sleep and in fact fell asleep in my friend's car and again at the bookstore. Funny thing was that employee joked with my friend about what boring company he was!

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