I’m now into my second day off of klonopin and I’ve noticed a little change in the haze and behavior. I had the energy to do a little bit of exercising in the morning and I’ve read roughly 1/4th of the latest book I’m reading. In general, my mood is stable.
I was very much afraid that my moods might destabilize a little when going off of the klonopin. And I haven’t cut it completely out of my life, I still take it for sleeping purposes. But my mood swings have actually improved since going off of it. I don’t have a downward spiral at the end of the day. And I don’t wake up in a hazy fog anymore. I think part of this might be because of the lithium or zyprexa finally taking hold. I’m into day 5 of the increase, and I was fairly close to the therapeutic range last time, so it could be stabilizing me while I go off of klonopin. But any which way, I’m remaining steady.
One thing of particular note is that I am tired all the time right now. I believe it to be the result of the mammoth doses of lithium that I’m taking. But it could also be my body readjusting to the lack of abilify. Or it could be withdrawal from klonopin. Anyways, my body is getting hit with withdrawal symptoms from something, or it’s getting hit with lithium, or both. Something is screwing with my head, I don’t like it. It’s not that I’m unaccustomed to something in my head screwing around with the wiring. That’s what happened a month ago when I went on all these new medications. Still, my patience wears thinner by the day.
As a result of the thinning of my patience, I’ve noticed that the bad voices have come back. Obviously I’m in the resultant depressive period following a mania, duh I should expect this. But the voices are really starting to make me peculiar. The odd thing about the bad voice is that it feels at first like my own internal monologue and then starts to split off on its own, so I have two voices. My inner monologue isn’t really strong enough to make it go away so I have to talk to myself out loud. It’s definitely an eccentricity that must baffle anyone watching me smoke a cigarette. Still, the voice goes away really quickly with me telling it to shut the f*** up and that I’ll tell on it to my psychiatrist. And I’ve noticed that even today, where I’m very lethargic, it only makes me anxious about things, not that it makes me depressed. Maybe it’s the lithium? Or it might be the zyprexa. I’ve only been on zyprexa for just about 3 weeks. It feels like a lifetime, but this is the mark where it should be really starting to take hold.
What gets me is that I’ve only been seeing my therapist for 4 weeks, and before that I was on klonopin for 10 days. Over all, this has been only 6 weeks. It feels like a year has gone by. I look back and I think to myself “just 6 weeks?” But it’s because I’ve been to the extremes in terms of moods and I’ve been medicated every way possible. And then there is the waiting involved, which always makes things seem longer than they really are. When I put it into a time frame perspective for other people, I’d say 6 weeks was fairly quick to get to a new therapist, get on a new set of drugs, ween away two other drugs, and come out of it swinging. And if it took about 8 weeks, I’d say that is completely respectable considering the emotional trauma and world upsetting that was caused. I mean seriously, I was holding a knife in one hand and planned on boarding up the windows, I was cutting again, I was so out of my mind that I was taking 3mg of klonopin every day just to keep me from hurting myself. Looking back, I should have been institutionalized until I got better. Instead, I still made it to classes (some of the time) and I still worked on my thesis. In retrospect, part of me wants to dare anyone to do better. But part of me also wants to finally crumble and collapse from this sprint. Because that’s what I’ve been doing, I wasn’t running a marathon as I should have, pacing my speed accordingly; I was sprinting a 5km having barely run before. Lesson learned in retrospect. And writing about it also bolstered my mood and outlook on this, so yet another plug for writing as therapy.
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I’m now into my second day off of klonopin and I’ve noticed a little change in the haze and behavior. I had the energy to do a little bit of exercising in the morning and I’ve read roughly 1/4th of the latest book I’m reading. In general, my mood is stable.
I was very much afraid that my moods might destabilize a little when going off of the klonopin. And I haven’t cut it completely out of my life, I still take it for sleeping purposes. But my mood swings have actually improved since going off of it. I don’t have a downward spiral at the end of the day. And I don’t wake up in a hazy fog anymore. I think part of this might be because of the lithium or zyprexa finally taking hold. I’m into day 5 of the increase, and I was fairly close to the therapeutic range last time, so it could be stabilizing me while I go off of klonopin. But any which way, I’m remaining steady.
One thing of particular note is that I am tired all the time right now. I believe it to be the result of the mammoth doses of lithium that I’m taking. But it could also be my body readjusting to the lack of abilify. Or it could be withdrawal from klonopin. Anyways, my body is getting hit with withdrawal symptoms from something, or it’s getting hit with lithium, or both. Something is screwing with my head, I don’t like it. It’s not that I’m unaccustomed to something in my head screwing around with the wiring. That’s what happened a month ago when I went on all these new medications. Still, my patience wears thinner by the day.
As a result of the thinning of my patience, I’ve noticed that the bad voices have come back. Obviously I’m in the resultant depressive period following a mania, duh I should expect this. But the voices are really starting to make me peculiar. The odd thing about the bad voice is that it feels at first like my own internal monologue and then starts to split off on its own, so I have two voices. My inner monologue isn’t really strong enough to make it go away so I have to talk to myself out loud. It’s definitely an eccentricity that must baffle anyone watching me smoke a cigarette. Still, the voice goes away really quickly with me telling it to shut the f*** up and that I’ll tell on it to my psychiatrist. And I’ve noticed that even today, where I’m very lethargic, it only makes me anxious about things, not that it makes me depressed. Maybe it’s the lithium? Or it might be the zyprexa. I’ve only been on zyprexa for just about 3 weeks. It feels like a lifetime, but this is the mark where it should be really starting to take hold.
What gets me is that I’ve only been seeing my therapist for 4 weeks, and before that I was on klonopin for 10 days. Over all, this has been only 6 weeks. It feels like a year has gone by. I look back and I think to myself “just 6 weeks?” But it’s because I’ve been to the extremes in terms of moods and I’ve been medicated every way possible. And then there is the waiting involved, which always makes things seem longer than they really are. When I put it into a time frame perspective for other people, I’d say 6 weeks was fairly quick to get to a new therapist, get on a new set of drugs, ween away two other drugs, and come out of it swinging. And if it took about 8 weeks, I’d say that is completely respectable considering the emotional trauma and world upsetting that was caused. I mean seriously, I was holding a knife in one hand and planned on boarding up the windows, I was cutting again, I was so out of my mind that I was taking 3mg of klonopin every day just to keep me from hurting myself. Looking back, I should have been institutionalized until I got better. Instead, I still made it to classes (some of the time) and I still worked on my thesis. In retrospect, part of me wants to dare anyone to do better. But part of me also wants to finally crumble and collapse from this sprint. Because that’s what I’ve been doing, I wasn’t running a marathon as I should have, pacing my speed accordingly; I was sprinting a 5km having barely run before. Lesson learned in retrospect. And writing about it also bolstered my mood and outlook on this, so yet another plug for writing as therapy.