#because the brainfog and exhaustion has been too much

[nabaath-areng]

chest pains eye pain whole right side of face pain im so tired

[overandundertarot]

Message from your spirit guides.

Your spirit guides have a message for you; choose a pile to find out what it is!

Piles; 1-2(top row) 3-4(bottom row)

Pile 1; Page of wands reversed, 10 of wands, 7 of cups reversed.

You aren't being serious enough. You're too energetic right now and too playful, only chasing instant gratification. You are curretly procrastinating something because it feels too overwhelming and burdensome. Your spirit guides are telling you to get up off your butt and work towards making your dreams a reality. The things that will bring you actual results won't feel easy and simple. This has been going on for a while and it may feel exhausting but just keep pushing, you're almost there! They are really proud of you!

Pile 2; The moon reversed, 2 of swords reversed, 9 of swords.

Pile 2 you're experiencing a lot of mental confusion lately. You could be experiencing poor concentration, idleness, brainfog, anxiety and executive dysfunction. The fears, doubts and anxieties you have are stemming from something that is unclear to you. Your spirit guides are telling you that it's not all as it seems. You may be exacerbating your situation and allowing it to affect you to a degree that is more serious than the situation really is. A lot of this anxiety is because you're overthinking and overanalysing but you still haven't reached a point of clarity. You could be procrasting because you are a perfectionist and don't want to dissapoint yourself, but also not doing anyhting creates feelings of self loathing. Honestly, you need to take a break right now and then come back and look at the situation again; this time seeking the truth, and using that as a strating point for your thoughts and process.

Pile 3; The devil, Queen of wands, Queen of pentacles.

You are on top of everything right now pile 3. You are independent and thriving right now but there is something that's tempting you. It may feel a bit much sometimes but you love the chase. The temptation is a conflict of sorts, it may present like a challenge that you want to conquer because you have the confidence that you will come out on top; like a test of strength. Go for it and continue to believe in yourself! There may be some lesbians or bi women and femmmes in this pile. This is a very healing time for you; you are reaping the rewards of your labour. Your spirit guides hold you in very high regard and are very proud of who you are and your strength. You are very connected to your intuition and the spiritual realm,some of you have been feeling the call to look deeper into this side of yourself. You have a seductive aura, and your appearence may be very different from your personality; it may come as a shock to people. You could be looking to explore your sexual side, your guides are saying it's fine but remember to exercise your bodily autonomy. Don't do anything that doesn't feel 100% right. Also, this is a time of independence for you, a commited relationship is ill advised(specific message for someone regarding a masculine energy)

Pile 4; Ace of wands, 2 of wands, Queen of swords.

Pile 4 you are clinging to something that happened to you in the past. It may also be clinging on to you(It could be resurfacing right now). You've tried to move on but something always stopped you or you never found the strength. The trauma usually manifests for you as inaction/feling hollow/depression or lashing out at people as a defence mechanism. You're being advised to have a change of scenery, also to look into seeking support from the people around you. Your guides are saying that a chapter is ending for you, it was painful but it's time to shake off the sorrow and look towards a new future. Allow yourself to be hopeful. Specific message for someone is to get help from a doctor regarding their fertility issues.

That's it! Thanks for participating in this pick-a-card reading!!

*The images are not mine, I found them on pinterest!

[fanfic-inator795]

Idk what tf is wrong with me today

I’ve been so frustrated with myself the past week in that I’ve barely done any writing even though I have all these ideas - ideas I LIKE and really think are cute, mind you - but I’ve barely worked on any of them. Even when I have free time/alone time, I just end up ignoring my word docs, giving myself some whatever excuse and then feeling bad about it later

Pretty sure today was just the culmination of it, since I actually did feel somewhat up to writing at first... but then my stomach started giving me issues and the Monday brainfog began rolling in, and even though now my stomach has mostly settled, my minimal amount of focus and motivation to write are completely shot and I fucking hate it

This isn’t just writer’s block, as like I said I know what I want to write - even if I couldn’t finish any of my drabbles, I know that I could at the very least write out a few paragraphs/sentences. Like- these are ideas I’ve had bouncing around in my head for the better part of a week, surely I can string together something. But every time I TRY to start, my brain just keeps telling me “fuck it” and I delete the few words I do end up writing because even if it’s not outright writer’s block it’s still SOME sort of block.

I wanna rip out my hair. I wanna go home and drown out everything with youtube vids while I lay in bed. I wanna find something to cry over because I just feel so frustrated and so awful. I wanna just delete my entire AO3 account because idk if I even want to write out my drabble ideas anymore, it just feels pointless. But then I also feel WORSE cause then all those ideas I still have in my head are just wasted, and I just feel stuck. I can’t write, I can’t focus on ANYTHING, all I can do is fucking sit here and continue scrolling through tumblr and youtube while the boredom and guilt continues to just drill into me.

And for all I know, this is just a random mood shift cause of my period likely being only a week away or it just being a random bout of depression or idk. For as guilty as I felt yesterday, knowing fully well that I COULD have spent the five hours I had of free time actually doing some writing instead of watching youtube AGAIN, at least I was able to still enjoy watching BCGs with Tessa. But now I’m just sitting in my office waiting for the next five or so hours to pass before I can clock out and go home, and it already feels like today is gonna take an eternity.

I just fucking hate when I get like this. I hate when everything just becomes too much and too fucking exhausting and I can’t even focus on constructive things or the things that make me happy because my brain won’t let me or because I end up being reminded about how many things in life are just awful.

I don’t know. I really don’t know. I wanna just push through this already but I don’t know why I can’t just do it NOW. I don’t know what’ll make me feel better or make me feel like actually writing again instead of only thinking about writing. I just. Don’t. Know.

[fuumiku]

Wip. I do want to finish this, i really enjoy doing even digital art of Metal, digital which is usually painstaking for me to do, and I’ve got sooo many angst art pieces of him in the works lol

But this is vent art. And I’m thinking it can be a nice opportunity to give an update on myself? And have a talk about flowergore, machines, sketches and disability, because I’m in that kinda mood

I didn’t want to put a read more split on this post but it became too long to comfortably fit on my blog, so alas... Life doesn’t often go as planned, yeah?

Cw for the next paragraph, just skip if these make you uncomfortable, or if you want to go straight to the flowergore & metal convo: discussion of chronic illness & disability, with references to disordered eating. I’ve been diagnosed a bit less than a month ago with a chronic autoimmune disease that has been severely impacting my life for a long time without my knowledge: coeliac disease. Basically, my intestines see gluten as something to defend the body against, and that not only causes painful indigestions but also damages the intestines over time, so much so that the body starts having trouble digesting other things and getting nutrients from food. This has caused chronic pain, a miriad of ungodly symptoms like hair loss and skin rash, but honestly, more impacting? Chronic fatigue. I cannot express just how much psychological and emotional damage it has done to me, to have that decline of energy come in waves, but also steadily going down over years right up to now, where I spend most my days laying in bed, where sitting up in bed and booting up my computer is a “good day”, where I’m either sleepy, exhausted, bored out of my mind or frustrated that I can’t just be making the creative content I want to do. The self-esteem utter destruction, having to work through with myself that it’s okay to be idle and abandon all ambitions, to prioritize physical survival and keeping the will to live even as you stop eating to protect yourself from pain, struggle to keep up with your daily schedule and even thinking takes so much energy. My ipad, my accessibility tool that allows me to do something even as I can’t do anything irl, has become super old and dysfunctional. It gets overwhelmed easily and works slowly, closes randomly, corrupts art files and loads apps uncorrectly. Doing anything with it is either incredibly frustrating, time-consuming and difficult, or straight up impossible or a risk to lose work. I have a Metal Sonic artwork I’ve lost and redone twice, I’m currently taking a break from redoing it a third time. It’s been rough. But tbh, in another way, I relate to it? Massive brainfog energy, lmao. When I have to remind myself that machines are faillible too, I end up humanizing it and validate its struggles, even tho it isn’t alive and it just malfunctions because it is what it is. It has taught me patience and the ability to build back up work that I have lost. But hey, there ain’t no reason to add another layer of inaccessibility to my pile, and I ordered a replacement for it just today! I’ll be so much more productive and happy with material that works smoothly and allows for more. But anyways, back to flowergore.

Flowergore is vividly poetic, but I only realized why it has always appealed to me as a comfort/vent and cathartic aesthetic while drawing this: There’s an innate stillness and loss of control to flowergore. Pretty, but tragic. Illness stops being an evil, and becomes a simple product of life that does its thing regardless of the will of the soil it grows in. You have to tend to the plants, whether you trim them to get them under control or must care after them to coexist.  No matter if you find the flowers pretty or not, it doesn’t change anything. The flowers aren’t an innate good nor a moral wrong, they don’t even have an opinion about growing on you. They don’t care, they can’t, they’re just flowers. And yet there’s something so comforting about it, something that can be sad but that can just be peaceful, too. It’s about living through the effects, and dealing with the weeds as they come and go. Resigning yourself, or the process of getting there. It’s about acceptance, and compromise. I think flowergore has innate ties with disability and illness that can’t be denied, nor broken honestly, when you think about it. I also think it can represent/relate with dysmorphia a lot, bodily or otherwise. In my case, I have various skin and sensory issues that give me dysmorphia, and an otherwise “I hate my body and my body hates me” feeling.  The stillness of flowergore often resonates as fatigue, sadness or anguish. It personifies the illness in a way that you can better reflect on your relationship with it, and your relationship with your body & yourself, in a way that allows you to better vent about them. It’s very healing.

These sort of things are the kind of thing that sometimes, you kind of have to personify to distance it from your identity and properly cope with them, you know? Or it’ll just consume you. Even way before I developed my disease, or was regularly fatigued, I loved flowergore, and I think it’s just... A really nice way to frame things weighing you down, that you just kinda have to deal with and process through. Even vague or “normal”/”light” things, like fatigue or negative thoughts, feelings or insecurities.

And don’t get me STARTED on the metaphors and feelings of plants sprouting from an inorganic machine. It’s the classic “sprout growing from a crack in concrete” dystopia trope, except with a negative punchline hah. I’ve always loved to humanize the dehumanized: robots, antagonists and otherwise. I love having characters that feel like they’re on a high pedestral of innate difference and superiority away from others, but that makes them unreachable by default, deeply lonely and misunderstood for it, wether they’re truly an exceptional being or not. I love characters thinking that they’re above physical or emotional weakness getting a slap in the face and having to acknowledge their vulnerability and neglected/suppressed needs head on. I love the delusional, emotionally repressed with anger issues robot having a moment of clarity where he allows himself to be honest to himself for a bit, and resigns himself to the pain of his past and future, before returning to their regular schedule or self-destruction, or not. Ignoring is often the only option you can manage to choose when you don’t have the strenght to make a change or admit to something you didn’t want to about yourself, but ignoring is a lot harder when the proof grows ever bigger and more out of control everywhere on your body. It shouldn’t. It shouldn’t grow on you, impossible. But it does. So what are you going to do about it?

I think I finally get the appeal of hanahaki stuff too. I never understood before, but now I can see it in that same vein. Unreciprocated love causes flowers to sprout wildly, causing, at best, only body horror and/or wounds, when weeding them out or otherwise, and at worst proves to be fatal, most often by suffocating. Except that instead of illness or things like that, the thing you experience a lack of control over and feel some sort of detached destructive blame or resentment for is feelings. Feelings of love, like falling deeply in love, without your own consent, and the pain that being unloved brings. Your love, like a damaging parasitic disease.

Yeah, this isn’t gonna be my last flowergore content.

I didn’t end up talking about sketches, I don’t have the energy to and I don’t think it fits in with the rest anyway, but basically? It’s been an healing journey to allow simple, unclean sketches to be “enough”. To not be shameful, to represent progress and be pretty in their own right and a valid art format. And so, with all of this, I post my messiest sketch on social media to date. One of my very rare public wips. Freedom, baby. You get what you get, and that’s fine. Low standards art is part of my disability recovery arc ✨

[adamsvanrhijn]

If you’re still doing the directors cut, would you be willing to do “strange how I fit into you (there's a distance erased with the greatest of ease)” from “York , October 1933” to as far as you want since it’s a long passage? Thanks!

moroh boy oh boy oh boy

ok wel it IS a long passage, so we’ll see how much i get through!

strange how I fit into you (there's a distance erased with the greatest of ease) by smithens

under cut for discussion of suicide + length

York, October 1933

so i chose october to be the Rough Month mostly because octobers i think... can be pretty rough? it’s the middle of autumn and things are starting to really turn colder and grayer, so the seasonal element hits harder, and that’s a factor here for thomas... an extrapolation from canon but not one that i think requires mental gymnastics.

The door creaks on its hinges as it shuts.

Before Thomas can think about what this means for him — all those lies he'll have to keep up with, more stories to get straight, it's never ending and he's just so tired — the bed is shifting underneath him and there's something (Mrs Ellis's knitted Afghan, or Miss Baxter's quilt) (no, there's yarn on his cheek, it's the Afghan) more round his shoulders.

Not just the blanket.

"What'd you need?" Richard murmurs. He is very, very close. "What can I do?"

one sensory element of being up to your eyeballs in depression & brainfog.... everything is hypersensitive but also you’re not entirely aware at the same time, so everything that happens to your body prompts another little mental loop that you’re too exhausted to deal with... that’s what’s going on here

richard could be better at being comforting; he second guesses himself... wants to get it right but the stakes are high if he doesn’t, so he errs on the side of caution and ends up overwhelming him more by making another Decision, although he does figure it out eventually

Thomas shakes his head. Tears prick at his eyes again, but he keeps them shut tight — seeing is the only thing he can put a stopper in, no matter what he'll still have to hear and feel things. No matter how much he wishes otherwise. Not much to see even if he wanted, though, it's the sun's just about gone down and he didn't bother to turn on a lamp before. Dark and cold, even with the curtains open. The days just keep getting shorter; working nights doesn't help. Maybe if it were summer…

more of the seasonal element; more of the sensory element

thomas in this scene is pretty high up on the suicidality scale (i’m leaving what happened before this starts up to interpretation bc that’s an important part of the scene) but he has come down a little now that richard is present. the headspace he is in here is more “i want to go to sleep and never wake up” rather than planning/desiring to actually kill himself, and he’s thinking Around it but not actually getting sucked in again, which is good but still a difficult and exhausting mental position to be in

"What can I do, Thomas," says Richard into his ear. He lies down behind him all the way and slings his arm across Thomas's chest, and the weight of it is soothing as much as it is suffocating.

He wishes he had it easier. That he could only feel one of those things at a time.

He wishes all of this were easier.

"What's happened? Has something happened you've not told me about?"

more richard not entirely Getting it... i think a big part of his character in this is he’s an answers guy, he tends to follow patterns, and as this richard has never been depressed he associates Sadness and Despair with something happening, whereas for thomas it’s almost the opposite where it’s associated more with inertia and malaise, everything’s bad and it’s all blending together, so thomas can’t exactly answer the question properly because while he did have a switch over he can’t pinpoint it, but he’s aware of his mental state as well as that richard doesn’t entirely understand it and that awareness doesn’t help him very much here

also i think spooning can be a very good comfort position so in this verse it’s a coupley thing that they do... the big spoon gets to be the comforter and the little spoon is the comforted

He shakes his head.

Richard takes his mangled hand out from under the blanket and holds it, squeezing tight. It makes his third and fourth fingers cramp, but that's something to feel that isn't dull and numb and nothing, so he doesn't mind it.

He does mind when Richard's thumb traces up on the inside of his wrist.

"Don't," Thomas chokes out.

He lets go.

"If," Richard starts, "if I hadn't come home when I did…"

richard is thinking what if and his actions are betraying that before his words are; thomas doesn’t like that it’s being drawn attention to

he strongly dislikes being vulnerable and finds it very viscerally uncomfortable even with richard, who is the only person he allows to get this close to him anyway

"But you did."

"Yeah," he says after a moment. "Yeah, I did, I – God, Thomas," and he buries his face into his back and shoulder and tugs him tighter with his arm, breathing heavily. "Oh, Thomas."

"It's too hard," Thomas whispers.

A small kiss at the nape of his neck, beneath his ear, at the corner of his jaw.

He barely feels them.

"I wish it weren't."

"I can't."

"I know."

desensitized! this is also when it finally clicks for richard what thomas’s needs here actually are and what the situation is at this point

It's Tuesday. Eventually they get out of bed. When he thinks Thomas isn't paying attention Richard jams the door latches and takes the shaving kits out of the washroom, rearranges the cupboards in the kitchen. Apparently he can't even be trusted in his own home.

the day of the week is brought up in the first four scenes of this fic (monday > friday/saturday > sunday > tuesday) because the anchor of the fic is domestic chores & the process of doing laundry; in this time period there was still an established order to doing this that like, both their mothers and every other woman they know would have followed (which is why it works for richard’s sister to do theirs for them in the first scene) and that thomas implements, so that’s the structure here. tuesday or wednesday is pressing & steaming.

thomas is attributing a sneaky element to richard’s actions here that doesn’t actually exist. richard is fully aware that thomas is paying attention when he does these things because he’s not taking his eye off of him for a second; thomas is in a frame of mind where he thinks that richard will assume, based on him being catatonic, that he is not paying attention, and thus will not pay him any in turn, because that is his experience when he is depressed... but that’s not how richard is, nor how their relationship is

richard is following best practices here but it’s the sort of best practices that makes the suicidal person feel like shit, lmao. eliminate opportunities for privacy + remove methods, “rearranges” is code for hiding/getting rid of poison and sharp things. also the shaving element in this & the companion piece is like a thinly veiled masculinity thing in addition to the mental health thing it also has

it is because richard knows, loves and trusts thomas that he is doing it, not because he doesn’t, but thomas isn’t in the right place to figure that out here

"You won't let me be useful," Thomas mumbles. He's seated on the floor at Richard's feet, a pathetic heap, wrapped in a blanket and with a mug of tea within reach, though he's let it go cold. The sofa is right there, and that's where he'd started, but sitting properly feels wrong, and he's not going to laze about in bed all evening. A few hours ago that was all he wanted. Things can change so quick sometimes.

sitting on the floor... the mood. he’s been there a little while, that’s what the tea is meant to indicate. he’s now conscious of himself and his surroundings enough that he’s back in to being Cognitive, analysing what is around him and what he wants. what he wants is to be useful and feel like he’s contributing, because he’s put a lot of his self-worth into that in the first months of them living together (they both have! it’s a source of conflict!) and now feels like that’s been taken away

one of the big parts of thomas’s canonical depression & suicide attempt is to do with him lacking a sense of purpose and feeling like he cannot contribute; in this scenario he feels that he has manufactured his contributions and he has tied his self-worth to them entirely. he’s very much given himself the impression, due to past experiences, the brain making patterns, that if he’s not useful (if he’s not perfect, in how he sets standards for himself) richard’s not going to want him around anymore. he thinks he’s made up his own worth basically and he expects richard to leave him / feels like he’s deceiving him, and that’s what prompts the spiral, it’s sort of about getting-it-over-with, and that’s also the element of his depression that contributes to the lack of sexual desire & interest that is referred to in the next scene of this fic as well as seen in richard’s pov in the companion piece... big feelings of fraud/imposter syndrome here

Richard doesn't look at him. Too busy pressing a collar. "You do this every week, Mr Barrow," he says. He only ever calls him that when he's flirting or trying to cheer him up or such like.

"And?"

pressing and steaming day! 

"And you might let me for a change," nonchalant in a careful sort of way. "You've just been burning the midnight oil a bit too often…"

"I've been working at midnight," mutters Thomas. They're short of staff: more nights for everybody. He had today off, and he'll have tomorrow off, and then he'll go in Thursday night and make himself useful somehow.

"You're not going back to work for seven to ten days," Richard says sharply. He sets down the iron. It probably needs to be heated again but he won't leave Thomas alone to do it. That's all they need, is him doing a shoddy job of the ironing… "You're ill."’

"I'm not ill – "

"No use arguing about it," interrupts Richard. "Settled it when I telephoned, wasn't even my suggestion."

Flu Lie.... richard telephoned thomas’s job

the iron is made of metal (iron!) and has to be manually heated to work

thomas’s concern about their household is still present even in the circumstances...

ok i’m getting sleepy i’ll publish this now bc you can’t really save asks as drafts properly and then i’ll get to the rest like, tomorrow lol

"Because you lied…"

"Thomas, you and I lie every day of our lives – "

He stops talking at the first sniffle. Somehow he manages to sit even after Thomas has slumped over with his head against his calves; he wraps his arms around him and takes his head into his shoulder. Thomas doesn't know whether he should feel guilty for allowing him to sit on the floor like he is or thankful that he wants to or both. "I'll take the week off, too."

"We can't afford – "

"We've got family," Richard says softly. We, he says, not I. "They'll look after things. That's what they're for, isn't it?"

"You can't quit everything for just me," Thomas says, hoarse. He's not sobbing; he doesn't have the energy for it. But he's not dry-eyed either.

"I can," he returns. "And I'm going to, Thomas."

"Why," he mumbles, "why, why, why," over and over, because that's the only question he's got in his head left to ask. He's not even sure he wants the answer.

"Because that's what I'm for," still so soft, when Thomas doesn't deserve that at all, "that's what I'm here for, love."

"'m not worth it."

Richard doesn't bother arguing with him. "I love you," he says. They don't say it very often; Thomas doesn't deserve him saying it now. "God, I love you."

"You shouldn't."

"But I do," breathes Richard, clutching him close. Nobody's ever held him like this before and especially not when he's feeling the way he is now. Somehow that registers for him. "I do," reassuring. "Fuck, I should've noticed – "

"Didn't want you to."

"I know, Thomas." He kisses his temple. "I know."

[seeya-at-the-movies]

Been getting into using 3D models. w/ my brainfog recall is hard af sometimes and with that comes mental exhaustion - frustrating as fuck cuz i can't tell you how many actual years I spent figure drawing.

Using 3D models, it's.....honestly nice. it's so fucking nice. As much as I -want- to keep doing art the way I've been w/ minimal refs, mostly using recall alone it's just really mentally taxing and then I don't have spoons to draw for another day or two.

I gave using a 3D model as a ref a test (initially tracing, then redrawing for it to look "right"). It doesn't work with my toonier/flowier work, but does with my more blocky/rigid work.

Discovered how easy it is to import 3D models into blender (cool!) to convert them to .fbxs for csp. Right now trying to get models to import with their textures correctly (mega ass) and get used to the control scheme for 3d posing in CSP (lesser ass).

CSP outright rejects the model with the textures baked in (augh) but this accepted the fbx w/o just fine. Here's a rough attempt at me posing him.

Right now I'm focusing on making work that I can sell for money - which is mostly now trouble shooting art pipeline problems. A major pipeline problem I used to have (inking) got resolved recently, and recall has been the other major one. I get the sense I have a lot of sorting out to do before a sort of style emerges from this pipeline, but that's OK.

Pipeline that I think is going to work best so far is:

[rough sketch to establish flow] -> [overlay 3D model] -> [correct sketch] -> [line] -> [simple paint]

It's pretty exciting because there are a lot of background elements to explore too. Gives me a good reason to learn perspective too so it doesn't look too wonk.

[tinyaibou]

woke up in the middle of the night and i still cant sleep but like suddenly roght now im just remembering all these memories from childhood and also from like middle school and highschool and its... its oh god i cant even describe how odd of an experience this is to me like how contrary to like how i've been living before. and its like... i know this isnt going to be a constant situation but like lately ive been more present in my like body and mind and ive been able to remember things? a bit more clearly?

like its insane like being on testosterone like when i got on patches just how much more human i feel like legitimately one of the first things was like being able to legitimately experience joy for the first time and like feel at least partially connected to my body. and like being able to Properly Think?? Like i still get really REALLY BAD awful brainfog sometimes where i legitimately cant think or have thoughts or whatever but like thats a bit less of a thing now? haha aaaaaa. AAAAAAAAA. sorry like if youve seen me rant about this on like twitter but im legitimately OBSESSED with the feeling. LIKE THAT IM ABLE TO TELL AND NOTICE AT ALL ALSO LIKE IT IS SO HARD FOR ME TO DISTINGUISH BETWEEN HOW I FEEL WHEN IM NOT FEELING IT SO IT HAS ALWAYS BEEN DIFFICULT FOR ME TO DISCERN CHANGES IN LIKE HOW I FEEL PHYSICALLY AND EMOTIONALLY BUT NOW I CAN TDJSKKFKS ACTUALLY TELL????? LMFAO???? also like: actually being able to feel attraction and actually being able to properly daydream again and mfkskdkdlzkd like i am not kidding when i say the last time i felt likw this i was a child??? maybe even BEFORE THEN BECAUSE I HAD TROUBLE REMEMBERING THINGS AND FEELING THINGS THEN TOO LMAO. i have been very very very disconnected for a very very very long time so when im really REALLY present like this it feels novel. its also... really exhausting mentally!!! how do you people do this all the time AAAAAA.

[ravenfirethief]

My Experience with Opioids

So much talk about how horrible opioids are, and how dangerous they are and how they ruin your life and may kill you. My experience has been something entirely different.

I suffer from chronic pain, and have for over 30 years. I wasn't given any kind of pain management until about fifteen years ago, before the current panic about opioids. Luckily, my doctors were actually concerned with adequate pain control, and making it possible for me to regain some function. This is my experience.

I started with trmadol. I was taking 300mg a day, and it was... tolerable. I was able to drive to doctor appointments, therapy appointments, grocery shopping, and so on. I was even able to start writing again. Most of my work on AO3 started during that period. Then the pharmaceutical companies came out with an extended release version and insurance suddenly stopped covering it. So my doctors switched me to actual opioids.

The first thing my doctors tried me on was oxycontin. It managed my pain just fine, but something in it caused me to be violently ill. I ended up vomiting so violently that I and my doctors were afraid I was going to injure myself. So they switched me to a bunch of different morphine formulations, which became harder and harder to get as the influence of the DEA, CDC, and certain doctors at Stanford who were NOT pain management specialists or pharmacists became more prevalent.

Eventually, my pain management specialist switched me to Opana, which at the time was the only pain medicine that was not being treated as the opiate equivalent of crack. Somewhere around this time, I was finally put on an adequate does of Lyrica, which helped with my nerve pain. A LOT.

Opana is weird. Supposedly, it has an uptake that's equivalent to twice the same dose of morphine. So while I was taking 60mg of Opana a day, it was supposedly equivalent to 120mg of morphine. All I know is that on Opana, I was able to do things like go to the museum, attend Ren Faire, shop at the shopping mall, go to the library, and do other things that normal people do.

THEN THE OPIOID PANIC GOT WORSE.

Suddenly, Opana was as evil as Oxycontin, the CDC and all kinds of other people were claiming it was a killer drug that would cause addiction, death, and other terrible things. (NOTICE THAT THE FDA WAS NOT IN THAT LIST. IN FACT, THE FDA HAS NOT BEEN A PART OF THE OPIOID PANIC AT ANY POINT IN THIS. NEITHER ARE ANY PAIN MANAGEMENT SPECIALISTS THAT I KNOW OF. THIS IS IMPORTANT.)

Because of the opioid panic, Opana became completely inaccessible. I was told that it had been taken off the market, even though just a few years before, when I had been put on it, part of its appeal to the government was that it was formulated so that it could not be broken apart and used as a high-dose narcotic the way they claimed Oxycontin was. So, with Opana no longer available, I was put on plain morphine. Still 60mg a day, but suddenly the effectiveness was halved. I was no longer able to do any of the things I could do when I was on Opana. I could manage household tasks, drive to my doctor appointments, do grocery shopping, occasionally make trips for other shopping, but I could no longer do any of the non-survival things that I was able to do while on Opana.

After being on morphine for a few years, we added a very small dose of topamax to my regimen, which has combined with the Lyrica to help more with my nerve pain. It got to the point where I was starting to hope that maybe controlling the nerve pain would make it possible to reduce my morphine dose further, thus reducing the risk to my pain management clinic.

Unfortunately, reducing my morphine dose to 45mg (or less) a day has been a disaster. I am now at the point where even taking a shower is too exhausting to cope with. Where I used to shower every day, I'm now barely able to work up the energy to manage it once a week, and it SUCKS. I have about enough energy to make it from my bed to my chair, my sleep is back to being the equivalent of sleeping in the middle of an 8-lane highway, my body wants ALL THE CARBS (which is a disaster for my diabetes), and the only chores I'm able to manage are loading the dishwasher and washing machine when needed - which leave me in enough pain that I have to collapse into the nearest chair to rest long enough to gather the energy I need to make it back to my chair again.

The weirdest thing is, most of the time I only know I’m in more pain because I’m less functional. If you asked me to measure my perceived pain on the standard 1-10 scale, it would stay around a 6 or 7, regardless of what medication I’m on, unless I have something acute going on, or  I’ve recently done something that made it spike. But the lack of ability to function is directly proportional to the reduction in my pain medication.

As for things like roleplay and writing? I'll be doing what I can, but don't be surprised if I vanish for days on end, or if my responses seem a bit... odd... due to brainfog. I'm sorry, and if that happens, please, please ask me if I meant what I said, or if I was trying to say something else instead.

[rebecca-guthealthcoach]

Testimony Tuesday! This is for anyone looking for some natural relief with their #HASHIMOTOS or THYROID struggles? 😘 Take a min and check out what Natalie Maree​ shares... "I was tired, not the #tired that a nap can fix or a good nights sleep can cure. More like #exhausted emotionally, physically, spiritually to the extreme. I thought it was "normal" and par for the course since I had been diagnosed with hypothyroidism and Hashimoto's thyroid disease. Anything that required moving was difficult. There were times where I would lay on the couch for hours because even the thought of getting up was too much. There was a time that I didn’t want to do activities with my family or go on vacations with my family because I knew I couldn’t be all in because I would be exhausted. Along with this #fatigue came the guilt of feeling lazy, having too much to do and not having the energy to do it. I felt like a horrible mom and wife. I had gone to see doctors, many doctors, received good care and a prescription to help! I did my research, I am a nurse, I should have all the answers right?? Things I tried worked for a short time and then went back to normal. In addition to the fatigue my list of other issues was extensive: #weight gain, #GIsymptoms: #bloating, #constipation, #pain, frequent #migraines, #brainfog, balance issues, dizziness, lack of focus and motivation. And all of them were getting worse. Emotionally I was having new #anxiety symptoms that started while my husband was serving in Afghanistan and didn't stop after he came home. This was coupled with bouts of #depression. I hated how I felt! Everyday I would think to myself, this can't be normal, there has got to be a better way. I wanted to be better, healthy, happy, for my 3 girls, for my husband, for me! I wanted my life back. Being a Registered Nurse for 18 years at that point I started to do some more research. I focused more in finding solutions vs finding things to treat my symptoms. I also started praying. Pretty good combination huh!? One night when my sister in law was visiting she told me she had a friend who is a nurse and she wanted us to check out these supplements called Plexus......(see comment) https://www.instagram.com/p/BuFmodBH66f/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=1gvn4pyt302pn

[doorsclosingslowly]

i’m sick. which on the one hand is bad timing b/c i have so much to do but on the other hand the reason why i have so much to do and it keeps piling up is that my brain is insisting on rehashing the recurrent argument about whether i should kill myself that i’ve decisively settled six years ago don’t worry, and also brain static and total exhaustion and all that fun stuff, and that’s not so good for productivity. or doing things where i have to think. being physically ill is a reason for not getting anything done that’s much easier for me to accept & not hate myself for (even though it won’t be effective with anyone else, like i’ve had enough time now i should be done with this paper) i still felt so relieved when i realized that i feel really sick and wouldn’t get anything done?? so i could stop trying for today?

i’m kinda worried i’m approaching the productivity cliff. like, i’m definitely not getting worse in terms of brain stuff and i’m getting much better at coping. but. this is also not like school anymore where showing up and bullshitting your way through is sufficient? and that’s the kind of thing i’m lucky with, i can pretty much make myself get out of bed and show up & i definitely acknowledge that i’m lucky and that there are people with worse mental illnesses. but now that i’m also working and that uni is less about ‘show up, bullshit the exam’ but writing papers where i actually have to have thoughts -- i’m not sure i can do that as well as i have to? at least not during the bad times that i haven’t yet managed to get rid of even tho i try, with the meds and psychs and stuff (also i’m kinda possibly paranoidly convinced that every psych i’ve gone to was just like, “why did they come here?” because i’m good enough at looking functional to fool everyone else i hope. which otoh has meant that i’m not sure the kind of help i get when i ask for it is sth that actually helps me?)

tbh one of the major problems is that most of the coping methods i have take time?? they’re very centred around allowing me to exist without thinking because i know that’s either not going to happen or going to devolve into the ‘reasons why being dead is a good idea’ bullshit. coping is not forcing myself to think, and trying to reduce stress b/c that’a a major trigger. and waiting because i know it won’t be forever. all of which takes massive amounts of time in which i’m doing nothing except not making myself feel worse. Coupled with the bullshit fact that i need unreasonable amounts of sleep to be functional & start throwing up after two days of not even not sleeping, but sleeping not enough... i just need way too much time. i am so lucky that my parents support me and that i can afford to study slower than usual and that i don’t have a 40-hr week. i know i’m lucky and that my problems are laughable. i still feel like the walls are closing in on me about a quarter of the time.

i should evolve some coping techniques that take less time because i Know i won’t be allowed to live like this forever. i’m doing okay rn but this isn’t sustainable if i ever get a real job. okay. i could stop having hobbies, that would get me another hour or two per day, but then i’m back down at the only reason why i’m alive being that my parents would never get over it if i killed myself. also for some stupid reason writing fanfic makes me feel better occasionally. maybe i’ll finally figure out a way to keep working on sth mentally demanding when brainfog, a way that doesn’t just make me freeze up in terror and want to die. haven’t managed to yet, but i’ve been only trying for five years, and i am getting steadily better at coping so it’s not impossible. also i should look into getting a job that doesn’t expect me to be good at thinking in the way i always thought i was good at but it turns out i’m not. if that exists and doesn’t just also make me terrified b/c money. still i should think about that when i feel a bit better.

why does more than one thing happen in one week. i just want to sleep. or not exist, but, can’t do that.

whatever. my problems are bullshit, i’ll get better, at the latest when it’s summer again, and i’ll kick the problem down the road. i’ve survived for long enough without solving any of these problems, i’ll probably make it for some more decades