#might be time to raise my antidepressant dosage again but i was accidentally taking the next dosage for a bit

[vamptastic]

i am really starting to understand the term mental illness. like, ive been on antidepressants since i was 13, obviously there is a problem with my brain. but in the past it was explosive, crushing, an active external force making me feel like shit. episodes. right now, i just feel sick. im tired all the time, i can't sleep and when i do sleep for days, my appetite is gone, and every time i try to dig myself out of this hole and fix things i have panic attacks. i know, logically, that i am away from home for the first time, that i am taking a difficult courseload and burned myself out, that i missed several days of my antidepressants and stimulants and that likely triggered this saga, that i have not seen a therapist in six months, that i haven't talked to my friends in weeks and haven't seen them in person in months, and all of these on their own could cause this. but i cannot help but feel as if i just suddenly went from being a normal, if rather heavily medicated person, to suffering from some sort of malady. it's all horribly physical in a way it's never been.

[trevoriirw639]

The Worst Videos of All Time About sandale piele

The first time I saw Heath Ledger, it absolutely was accidentally. My day and later on to-be partner, Nick, took me to determine ‘The Sixth Perception’, at last succumbing to look pressure to guess the large surprise ending. By now, ‘The Sixth Perception’ was off the major theater chain circuit and only screening in smaller suburban independent theaters, which led us to practical experience a type of now rare occasions: a double-attribute matinee. The main movie was ’10 Things I Loathe About You’.

Very well handed teen videos, even All those with Shakespearian-centered scripts, we shyly admitted to liking ten Matters. Wow, I really like the male guide, what was his identify? Hes Australian, you realize, replied Nick. And in standard Aussie-vogue, I was doubly amazed and now stupidly crammed with countrywide satisfaction. A further outstanding Australian up-and-comer to affix the speedily expanding queue to grace Hollywood screens.

Many years afterwards, I might often grab the DVD to fill a cheerless afternoon and locate myself viewing and rewinding exactly the same scene. Time and again and over again. My solution responsible pleasure. Heath sliding down the pole, microphone in hand, singing Youre just far too superior being genuine, cant just take my eyes off of you The brass band kicks in. Which charmingly defiant half-run, 50 %-prancing throughout The varsity methods. The scene is excellent. Its inexplicable. He just has that previous-fashioned it element.

Im not a star-struck supporter and was never ever a type of teens with Motion picture-star idol posters plastered around my Bed room walls, but this Youngsters bought talent.

After which came All those scene-stealing roles that thoroughly blew us absent. The Patriot. Monsters Ball. And at last top-person standing and an Academy Award nomination. By now, we were just utilized to owning One more popular Australian up there with the rest of the world’s good expertise churning out an unlimited array of numerous, still illustrious movie roles.

We experienced no idea. It was not limitless. It wasn't what we expected.

When individuals who Ive in no way fulfilled but significantly admire die, Im unhappy. But Ive by no means cried before. I have not right before felt that coronary heart wrenching overwhelming shock that lasted for days following I read the information. This time it absolutely was in some way additional private. The moment I read through the specific listing of the first report of his deathbed scene, I intuitively knew how he died.

10 days afterwards the ultimate professional medical examiners report confirmed my suspicions.

Hollywood is Xanax-city. Sensation down, pop a Xanax. Experience stressed, pop a Xanax. Should accomplish at your best possible, pop a Xanax. A-record stars really feel the strain to offer A-quality performances when engaged on multi-million greenback movies. There’s excessive revenue at stake. The extreme strain, the two inside and exterior, is immeasurable. The studios are jeopardizing billions, spending The celebs thousands and thousands, along with the actors are unnaturally subjected to more pressure than we mere mortals can imagine.

Heath Ledger, himself, admitted that after the around the world release of the Knights Tale with its instant paparazzi-bulb-flashing stardom, his strain stages improved 10-fold.

Xanax is definitely the trade name with the generic anti-anxiety/tranquillizer prescription drug, alprazolam, mentioned in Ledgers toxicity report. One other anti-stress and anxiety drug was diazepam, or more frequently referred to as Valium. These prescription drugs are from a class of frequently prescribed tranquilizers known as benzodiazepines or just often called benzos.

According to the most current National Wellbeing Study, around 10 million scripts of benzos are penned yearly in Australia alone with its meagre inhabitants of twenty million compared to three hundred million in the US.

Many Medical doctors will compose a script for benzos a lot quicker than a rushing bullet. But the actual Risk is always that a lot of of these don't know the very long-term outcomes these medications have with your technique, how to present their people the correct suggestions when administering or checking the dosages, and additional frighteningly – how to handle their clients benzo withdrawal method.

For starters, That is how benzos have an affect on The body or maybe more importantly your brain. Benzodiazepines improve, or somewhat, boost your brains primary neurotransmitter, generally referred to as GABA. Finally, and this can be as promptly as three to 4 months if using a each day dose, your Mind will end manufacturing its very own GABA and rely completely to the synthetic benzo.

GABA is An important neurotransmitter mainly because it influences nearly almost everything else. Primarily it boosts the brains other neurotransmitters like Serotonin and Dopamine. Every one of the brains neurotransmitters have essential features which include, voluntary motion in the muscles, wakefulness, slumber, memory perform, sensory transmission – Specifically discomfort, and much, a lot more.

The trouble is usually that from this level on your brain requires more benzo as tolerance begins the downward spiral, as well as Mind needs better and higher dosages to obtain exactly the same effect. In case the affected individual will not be supplied the right dosage or administration information, that insidious and infrequently-undiagnosed disorder called Benzo Withdrawal Syndrome (BWS) will start its unpleasant and most likely hazardous descent.

BWS is understood by industry experts in the field for its severity and prolonged character. It could get several years to fully withdraw from benzos, In spite of proper treatment and supervision. With out this knowledge, the unwitting affected person can put up with about 30 symptoms, the commonest remaining unrelenting sleeplessness, extreme ache and mood improvements. People who have been using benzos for a relatively small time can working experience withdrawal indicators even although getting the drug. Moreover, if you have been getting them for a prolonged time, then out of the blue halt, dire instances may possibly occur. Or, for the pretty minimum, extra suffering, more despair and unrelenting sleeplessness.

Once we now examine Heath Ledgers issues, does this audio acquainted? Anything points to Extraordinary Benzo Withdrawal, but no-one particular is exclaiming its potential risks. In reality, most GPs and in some cases medical center Medical doctors acknowledge they know hardly any about Benzo Withdrawal. Some even refer their sufferers to drug rehabilitation centers an absolute no-no In line with sandale rieker benzo counselors. Benzo withdrawal is the precise reverse to alcohol or Avenue drug dependency. You dont choose to abruptly eliminate the benzo from the physique, because they frequently do in drug rehabilitation. The Mind requires the benzo. A person must steadily withdraw the synthetic benzo until the brain can sooner or later raise its individual GABA. Unexpected cessation of benzos could potentially cause critical difficulties which include seizures and blackouts.

When in BWS, the counselors suggest towards taking any medication or medications in any respect. Paracetamol might be The one thing the body can cope with for agony aid. Almost nothing else. Even codeine is forbidden. Also, one particular must entirely refrain from alcohol, caffeine, and all stimulants. There exists a robust protocol to be followed and devoid of this expertise, the affected person is easily place at fantastic chance.

The Ashton Guide, the acknowledged benzodiazepine bible, warns:

Drug interactions: Benzodiazepines have additive consequences with other drugs with sedative steps such as other hypnotic’s, some antidepressant’s (e.g. amitriptyline [Elavil], doxepin [Adapin, Sinequan]), main tranquilizers or neuroleptics (e.g. prochlorperazine [Compazine], trifluoperazine [Stelazine]), anticonvulsant’s (e.g. phenobarbital, phenytoin [Dilantin], carbamazepine [Atretol, Tegretol]), sedative antihistamines (e.g. diphenhydramine [Benadryl], promethazine [Phenergan]), opiates (heroin, morphine, meperidine), and, importantly, alcohol. Sufferers using benzodiazepines ought to be warned of such interactions. If sedative medicine are taken in overdose, benzodiazepines might include to the potential risk of fatality.

The real difficulty is that there are incredibly several experts in managing BWS; they won't include your neighborhood health practitioner, healthcare facility, or drug clinic. Nevertheless, there are good BWS experts that can be extremely practical, but they are often located in specially funded tranquillizer Restoration clinics.

One need to ask, why dont Health professionals know relating to this? The situation is that they simply just dont. Is it their fault or maybe the pharmaceutical organizations that cash in on these addictions? There is little or no dissemination of knowledge in the Group, the medical fraternity or within the pharmaceutical companies about benzodiazepines. And, In line with BWS counselors Functioning in the sphere, There is certainly insufficient study or empirical scientific tests on the results of benzos and BWS management to assist them with their intense workload’s.

Why? Who's at fault? Who's answerable for remedying the specific situation? Why would be the people who generate the scripts uninformed with regard to the following-consequences and probable risks connected with benzodiazepines?

Can our beloved Heath Ledgers Demise be a minimum of a person catalyst that should attract this devastating travesty to the public’s interest to demand more info?

I hope so.

[rhenal]

Hello again

Wow, it’s been a year now since i last posted anything here. I’m still alive, if anyone is still here at all to care. Um. Last post I did was about the status of my mental health, so I guess a follow-up would be prudent, no?

So now it’s official. I have both Aspergers and ADHD. I thought it was just ADD, but no. The hyperactivity aspect is something I very much have. It’s just that it doesn’t manifest physically - it simply manifests mentally in that my mind is always everywhere at once - that my train of thought manifests more like a puppy on its first snow day than like an actual train.

I’ve been on antidepressants for 13 months now, but I’ve only really felt any real effect from them for the last month and a half as I finally got to change med type. The first type barely helped and gave me nightmares two nights out of three, but those things were small and irrelevant enough for me to it really bring it up until now. Because for all that time, I have been searching for and adjusting to ADHD meds as well, and you only want to sort through one set of side-effects at a time. Turns out I’m really sensitive to side effects, so finding the right type and dosage took a long time, and I’m not certain that the one I’m on now is the best choice still. 

I’m still on full-time sick leave for burnout, since February 14th last year. Currently it will last until the end of August, then we’ll reevaluate from there. Hopefully I can start studying again by that point, if only at 50%.

Turns out, it takes a really long time to recover from a bout of burnout that has had five entire years of buildup. 

So what am I doing now? Mostly just being useless. Restless but without the energy to do anything about it. I barely eat these days, and my sleep cycle is just completely nonexistent. See, in large part due to aforementioned double-whammy of Aspergers and ADHD, my capacity for self discipline is basically nil. With me being on sick leave, I have nothing that forces me to get up and do stuff. There is no reason other than my own health to get up in the morning.

Add to that the fact that both my current antidepressants and my ADHD meds lower my appetite. I do not get hungry anymore. I just get tremors in the late afternoon when I’ve forgotten to eat all day. I can go entire days where I am never ever hungry, and when I finally manage to make something to eat and force myself to just eat it dammit, I can barely get half the meal down.

My doctor has actually advised me to eat small snacks through the entire day to make up for it. You know, the thing that you’re usually heavily discouraged from doing? :’)

In conclusion, my daily life is kinda shit. I’m doing what I can to get better at it all, even going to group therapy every week, but it feels like a Sisyphean effort. 

I’m too burnt out to study or work, but without study or work, I can’t really recover properly. It’s one real bastard of a catch 22.

I’d move back home, but that’s not really an option. Not now that the family’s got a much smaller apartment. I’d have to live on the couch, in a living room with no possible way of real privacy. And I’m an introvert. I am really fortunate to have a family as loving and supportive as I do, and I love them dearly - but I NEED my space. When I went there over the winter holidays, just those two and a half weeks I was there was enough to suck me completely dry of energy. 

If anyone has any advice, I’d love to hear them. Because I need them desperately.

So well. That’s where I am now. 

[garbling thought-vomit about social issues and the failings of tumblr as a community below. Probably best ignored.]

So, why’d I disappear from Tumblr? Should be obvious. The state of my mental health is bad enough without having to deal with the constant anxiety of dealing with this social network. The nonexistence of nuance and the total intolerance of anything even remotely problematic. And the idea that if you like anything that has any problematic aspects in it at all, that means YOU are problematic and are to be ashamed.

It’s actually a really hostile environment for creatives. 

The pressure to be perfect and totally 100% inclusive at all times with not a nanometer’s space for human error or honest mistakes, the attitude that ‘if you’re not perfect 100% of the time always you are EVIL AND BAD AND SHALL BE SHUNNED FOREVERMORE’. 

The attitude a lot of Tumblr seem to have that the only things you are ever allowed to write or otherwise portray are essentially self-portraits because if you haven’t personally experienced it you should never ever write it ever. Kinda makes it impossible to even try to do properly inclusive work for fear of getting even a single minute detail wrong. It’s actually really really fucking hostile and I hate hate hate it. Like, I keep seeing creators of all kinds - writers, artists, cartoonists, animators and game devs alike try their very hardest to make something as inclusive and culturally diverse as they can, only to be rewarded with heaps upon heaps of abuse from Tumblr users just because they weren’t 100% perfect in every single aspect, or that their efforts were seen as ‘virtue signaling’ and are only doing it to make themselves look good and that is false and sin and to be PUNISHED.

It’s like the reward for trying your best to make something that everyone can enjoy without feeling left out is only hate and vitriol. 

(All the while creators who do not care about inclusivity at all get perhaps but a mere fraction of this abuse, I might add. It’s pretty fucking insane when you think about it.)

It’s suffocating.

And it’s total fucking bullshit.

People make mistakes. 

People change. 

And people can absolutely grow from those mistakes and be better. 

But Tumblr as a community keeps fostering this attitude that if you have ever said or done anything even remotely wrong on any level, regardless of the context or how long ago it was or how much better you have grown to be since then, once an uninformed or unthinking statement - accidental or not - always a racist. Or homophobe. Or transphobe. Or ableist. Or any kind of -ist or -phobe imaginable.

I’ve been very fortunate to not really have had to endure any witch-hunt personally, but I saw them happen all the time. And it just. Well. I got really fucking tired of it, and it further worsened my mental health by quite a lot. I just cared too much that I couldn’t stop ranting about it in my head. Sometimes for days.

So I left.

Why am I back? Honestly, I have no idea. I guess I still have a lot of thoughts about things and I’ve been really isolated this last year, so I just need a place where I can put them.

I intend to go on a bit of a purge of the blogs I follow and start with a zero-tolerance policy for witch-hunting bullcrap and other drama. 

See, I have a pretty simple, straightforward moral code. It’s often difficult to follow, due to the human brain working as it does with it’s shitty, garbage, garbage ‘us vs them’ mentality, but it is something I intend do always strive for.

No one should ever be judged for that which they can not control

Ever. That includes the entire spectrum of skintones, every single possible gender identity, sexuality, romantical affiliation, neuropsychiatric status - normal or otherwise, physical condition, place of birth, state of family or culture they grew up in. Or anything else I can think of.

No one picks the toolbox they’re born with. All that should ever matter to anyone is what they build with it.

Fuck jokes about skin colour - ANY skin colour - it’s tacky and only serves to further strengthen the idea that they somehow make people fundamentally different, and that idea can get set on fire and shot into the sea. 

Yes, there are absolutely issues with the culture surrounding differences in levels of melatonin. White people like myself carry a lot of privilege in the west, and darker skinned people of all kinds absolutely do face a lot of unjust treatment in the world. No matter what country in the world you are in, that place’s “default” - how I detest that unfortunate consequence of the human brain functioning as it does - will always carry a strong privilege compared to those who do not fit that default.  But it’s all cultural. There’s nothing inherent in looking any certain way that dictates a person’t being. It’s all the norms and values of the culture they were raised in - and cultures change. It’s slow. It’s difficult. But it is absolutely a worthwhile struggle, is it not?

And, maybe a reasonable path to changing a culture to be more inclusive is to maybe not constantly call attention to such differences? Because that only strengthens the idea that the trait pointed out is ‘other’ - not part of the ‘normal’. 

And we want to widen the definition of normal to include all of us. Right? That’s pretty much this entire community’s mission statement, isn’t it?

I’m thinking that simply acting like a trait is normal, that it’s not something that’s even worth calling attention to, does a lot to normalise that trait. To help it be included within the definition of normal. 

Maybe I’m wrong. But I don’t think I am.

And then there’s the whole thing with white guilt/cultural shame or pride or any somesuch. I have thoughts. Probably pretty controversial thoughts. So I’m preparing myself for pitchforks.

Feeling shame or guilt over whatever hand you drew in the grand lottery of genetical happenstance is just really fucking stupid. That much should be thoroughly established by now. But the thing is, so is feeling pride, for the same reason. You did fuck all to affect what you got. The deeds of your ancestors have nothing whatsoever to do with you. 

You don’t get to choose your toolbox. You can only choose what to do with it.

It feels kind of weird to condemn cultural pride as a concept like this, but I do. I really honestly do. Because it’s dumb. Incredibly hard to drop, absolutely - most of us are fed with it since birth, after all - but it’s still dumb. I mean, what on earth did anyone do to earn the culture they grew up in? Nothing. Because it’s entirely out of your hands.

Treasure your culture, absolutely! Revel in it. Learn all you want and can and strive to carry it forth to the next generation, and to teach anyone who wishes to listen. Absolutely do! Take pride in your accomplishments. Take pride in what you do to carry your culture forth into the future. Take pride in what you help others accomplish. Take pride in what you do to raise public awareness of the reality of your culture. Or your sexuality. Or gender identity. Or any other aspect of your being that is being woefully misrepresented somewhere.  But don’t take pride in simply being what you are. 

Because that’s just part of the completely random toolbox you got at birth - a toolbox you could not have possibly chosen any part of.

Taking pride OR feeling shame over things that you had no hand in is something you have no right or reason to do.

Never judge anyone - not even yourself - by what they have. Judge only by what they DO with what they have.

These thoughts have all been spawned by my time on tumblr. It’s a community that wants to be progressive and inclusive, but is much too often anything but. It’s all complaining, all vitriol, all salt, all echo chambers fostering this kind of thinking. Very little, if any, actual attempts at working towards real improvement.

I remember seeing a comic that circulated some time ago. About equality vs equity. There were these three kids standing by a fence, trying to watch a game of some sport or another taking place at the other side. They were all different height. 

In the equality picture, all three kids got a box to stand on, of equal size.

In the equity picture, they got a different amount of boxes, making it so all of them could see over the fence.

But there was a third picture. One rarely included. 

This picture adressed the fence itself. It swapped the wooden fence to a wire fence. One that all three kinds could see the game through, without any need of boxes.

That’s the kind of world I’d much rather live in. One where the barrier itself is adressed. Where there is no need for boxes to stand on. 

Yet all anyone can really, truly do, is do as Michael Jackson said, and start with the man in the mirror.

We can complain. We can decry. We can wallow. But it’s all for naught if we don’t then step up and act on it.

I'm sick and tired of the ceaseless complaining without action and the oppressive feeling of helplessness fostered here. I want to actually DO something to help the world be better. And if I’m not in a position where I can help personally, I can at least reach out to those in a position to do so.

This is why I donate to charity whenever I can afford it, despite my miniscule budget of a university student on sick leave with a lot of medical fees.

This is why I endeavor to always smile to strangers, be they the retail worker at the checkout, a simple passerby or the cold beggar on the street.

This is why I am always eager to share what I know with people who may need it, be it pointers about mental health or simply how to patch up a torn pair of pants.

All minuscule, inconsequential acts in the grand scheme of things. But it’s something. It’s my small straw, pulled to the anthill. Makes me feel just a little tiny bit less helpless about all the terrible things in the world.

Because even if it’s something small, it’s better than doing nothing. Far better than simply complaining and wallowing about a problem without ever following it up with action.

I don’t even know what I’m on about anymore. I should probably stop writing. Get something to eat. Go to sleep. Bye for now, then.