Tag Archives: Amitriptyline

I hate being depressed

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I am angry. I am irritable. I don’t want to move. I feel only anger and fury and dislike for my children. I’m not feeling motivated to eat. I’m sleeping absurd amounts but not feeling even vaguely rested. The NHS page on depression is so belittling that I’d like to learn how to launch a DDOS attack and bring down the NHS website because I’m so fucking angry that I’m being told I should maybe talk to someone, eat healthy food, and exercise.

Here the treatment for depression is: nothing! Surely it will go away. Wait, it didn’t go away? Fine, then let’s give you a fucking self help book and you can go home and fix it without bothering us. You do a workbook on your own and a therapist checks up to make sure you did your homework. They might send me to a group exercise class since I can’t figure out how to exercise on my own. Bonus points for it being a kind of exercise that will cause me injury and then they can tell me that I don’t care about my mental health again. Then eventually if all that fails (which it will in 99% of fucking cases, but let’s abusively shove everyone through the process because EVIDENCE BASED MEDICINE) we will let you talk to a therapist many months of suffering later. When you talk to that therapist you will be told to go on an SSRI. You will get some cognitive behaviour therapy bullshit. CBT is widely considered to be gaslighting and wildly abusive. It is *the* form of therapy offered on the NHS. If I’m severe enough they might consider letting me have abusive CBT *while* I’m being forced on a drug that is going to make my life a living hell.

I want fucking EMDR.

Here they max out at 16 sessions for any kind of treatment. This is why I am considered treatment resistant because in 16 weeks a therapist has barely learned the shape of my problems.

Amusingly, the nerve pain medication I’m on–Amitriptyline–is their second line “I can’t take SSRIs” option. So I’m already on that antidepressant and I have been for years.

EMDR is not even on their list of possible treatments for depression. They won’t let me have it at all. I feel so angry that I am going to have to fight this hard for a non-invasive, non-drug form of help. That seems really broken to me. I want the least expensive option. I don’t want talk therapy for the rest of my life and 16 sessions is fucking stupidly a waste of time and resources. I am not a 16 session patient.

I feel sick and bad and useless and stupid and like I should die. I don’t want to snuggle and I feel like I am going to throw this fucking cat across the house if she doesn’t stop scratching me to ask me to pet her. (I haven’t thrown her.)

I feel like I don’t know how to stop roiling in rage and pain. Everything in my brain is saying that I am a piece of shit who should die. I don’t do anything that is good in the world. I am only bad. I feel guilty for backing out of the date with TB and also like I might cause serious damage to a long term friendship if I go and I flip out at him because I’m completely dysregulated. That’s not fair.

He dodged a bullet. Lucky him. He was smart to opt out of being a bigger part of my life. I’m really not worth it. And I think he was the one shot I’m going to take. He was barely passive and accepting and supportive enough of my marriage for Noah and no one else is ever going to care even 10% as much as he does about preserving my marriage. He’s a really good friend and I am lucky to know him. I wish I felt like there was any good luck for him in knowing me. I feel like a punishment and a curse.

I should be getting ready to bike over to go rock climbing. It’s hard to move at all. I want to lie on the floor in the fetal position for the whole day.

I want to fade away entirely.

We’re All Mad Here

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I was reading an article that included the phrase “Mad Pride” about how mental illness has been perceived by society (mostly the US/Canada/UK) over time. It made me stop and think hard about how much my life has changed. I am in the closet now in a way I was not in California. There were times in my younger years where I would keep some things under wraps (I was militant about limiting sex life conversations with some groups of people) but mostly I didn’t hide any aspect of myself to such a degree that anyone and everyone couldn’t find out if they tried even a tiny bit. 

There is a big difference between “I don’t share personal stories about my sex/romantic life with students or homeschooling parents but I write about it explicitly on my public blog” and “I took my writing private so that someone would need at least a basic understanding of the internet archive in order to find out anything about me, I stopped writing about myself publicly on any topic that might be controversial and I no longer bring up or mention most things about my past and I am actively evasive with every person who does not have connections to my former life.”

It’s different. I am feeling more comfortable in the community. I feel like I probably do not have to remain quite this guarded permanently but I feel intense gratitude towards myself that I allowed myself this runway of time to have a place in the community where I am already seen as stable and competent and fairly well educated, especially in topics that are not well understood already here. I am starting to have that boost to the ego experience of having people say, “Oh Krissy I wanted to ask you about something. I don’t understand why ____?” When that something is often related to an aspect of interpersonal communication. I’m also getting more requests than I can take when it comes to organising level responsibility for different community groups or associations. And folks are asking me how I have taught my kids (thing). That’s definitely one of my sweet spots for feeling like I am not an imposter who should shut the fuck up.

It’s not that I think everyone should do what I do… that would go poorly. What I really appreciate is when people are interested in the process of how I figured out what was right for me because understanding that process is the bit that can help other people. They will have a different right answer in the end, but maybe seeing how I made decisions that align with my values will help them crystallise what their own values are so they can feel confident in their own choice. I like talking about parenting philosophy, not parenting choices. Because we are going to make different choices and that’s absolutely great. It’s mandatory. It’s as it should be for there to be the delightful variety of folks that this world needs. But the philosophy behind parenting is a place where you can discuss motivation and intentions and you can learn from each other without getting into a pissing match about technique. 

Technique is hard because it’s a minefield of traps for not understanding your own privilege when you frame what you do. Noah says that society has as much justice as it can afford. It’s complicated because often a family has as much justice as they can afford. And from family to family that is such a complicated and loaded concept that oh goodness just no. Can’t.

Anyway. The article. It goes through who is allowed to be mentally ill in public now. Who benefits from hashtag campaigns and public awareness movements around mental illness? It’s a short article but provocative in a way I agree with. I am so deeply aware of the privilege I enjoy at this point in my life. 

But this privilege comes with costs too. Costs I could not have imagined when I was on the far side of that particular privilege slider. 

I’ve been watching a lot more sci-fi/fantasy shows and movies recently. I am particularly drawn to things that are depicting ways that people live with an understanding of there being completely opposing truths/narrative/existanses existing all at the same time. 

So, I like to talk about money. If you have been here for a while you have seen the arc of that from poverty to (I think) fairly substantial wealth. When you are new to a community you only really exist from the moment they meet you. Your past is invisible and unknowable. Ok fine with google they could look me up but they don’t. I write all over the fucking internet. I have one handle I use on every site and I am so trackable it is definitely what a security expert would frown upon and give me a lecture for. I am consistent in part because that is my absolute only talisman against being called a fraud. My story is too whack-job. But I gots receipts, bitch.

I have suppressed so much of that over the past few years. I have been so very silent. It is taking a toll. 

The pendulum is going back and forth on so many different dynamics in my life. In one way I feel like my kids just got out of a big disequilibrium period (or at least some combination of them) and I am slamming my way into one with full force and fury. There are a whole bunch of things that are not working and I need them to change. 

I say over and over that disequilibrium is a necessary feeling for everyone because without it you probably won’t grow. You will get complacent and comfortable and you won’t want to face the terror and uncertainty and pain that comes with change. I have to get angry to have the force to demand change. I have to feel like I will wreck big things if the change doesn’t happen.

I am doing a med change. Amitriptyline and Lisdexamfetamine are not working for me anymore. There are enough negative symptoms with using them that I just cannot. Sex just hasn’t been happening. I’m not happy. I’ve been intermittently explosively raging for quite a while and it’s just not ok. I don’t like me. I need Patience, and I don’t mean the drink made with a whole lot of bourbon.

It feels silly to say this but I want to drink less. (It’s silly to say because Noah and I both have recently put in MASSIVE orders of alcohol.) I got variety. I got stuff that I want to invite other people over and say “I have x and y for you to taste test.” I want a social gambit, I don’t plan to consume much of it myself. I is making friends. 

I have a teeny tiny bit of regret about buying this house because it is huge and has been really rough to repair but I can’t tell you all about it because a Shorty has just informed me that there are gingerbread pieces waiting to be made into a house and I am all out of time.

PMDD is so awful

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I am on day 42 of my cycle. I start running low on hormones around day 26/27/28. I usually start sometime between day 28 and day 35. It’s been pretty consistent since the last kid. I am… not ok this time. I can feel the complete and total lack of energy or happiness or give. My bones feel worn out and terrible. The numbness in my hands is super bad at this point. I know that a lot of that is how much I’m painting but progressively over the last week it has gotten worse and overwhelming and awful.

My whole body is hurting. I haven’t had many spells like this since I moved here. This is a California-level of pain. I feel sad and irritable and angry and disappointed in so many people and situations and results that I feel unable to cope. I am not suicidal; which is a blessing–that doesn’t darken my door much anymore. I just feel like I’d like to crawl in my bed and cry for a few days until my period starts because I am completely out of cope. In the overall scheme of things that is a relatively healthy and sane impulse and I feel proud that I am in this place now instead of where my lows took me ten years ago.

It is weird being able to list things that I miss about California and reasons that there were advantages there that I don’t have here… while completely knowing that I am overall doing better here than I ever have. Do I still have pain? Yes; particularly when I am drifting back towards California-style work habits that I know are dramatically not good for my body. Do I still have some anxiety? Yes; my anxiety here is so different. I can’t put a number on this to do like a “rate your pain” scale. Knowing that I will never run into Dan or Paul or my mother or my sister or Auntie or Anna or Brittney or or or or or means that I no longer live with hypervigilance. It’s not that I believe that nothing bad can happen to me I just fully accept that scanning the room for exits is not going to be helpful in any of the bad things that happen to me going forward. I can’t tell with a casual glance who is going to be a problem so I just… don’t.

I mean, when the dude got out of his car to yell at me and smack my hand I didn’t freeze up or start crying or react poorly until after he drove away. I stood my ground (in a suitably gun free manner) and I defended myself verbally and I took his picture. I did what I think I should do. And now I don’t scan looking for him or his car because I am pretty confident that if he ran into me in town and harrassed me again I would simply call the police and tell them we had another problematic interaction and he would get in trouble. They put a mark on his record.

I am living in a small town where the police get upset about that kind of thing between strangers. It is still hard to solve between neighbors… but that’s a whole different dynamic. Stranger assault is prosecuted.

I’m anxious about saying the wrong thing to people I am trying to make friends with. That isn’t gone but it is different from California. I find it intensely healthy for me to be consciously aware that people here don’t owe me anything. I haven’t been doing things for people for years with the hope that someday things would shift and they would support me when I needed it because they love me. That’s very freeing.

Even though typing this is terrifying for me I’m going to do it because this space has to be for me if it is going to work. Even things with Jenny have leveled off and found a comfortable stasis. We are not trying to live in one another’s back pockets because we are both cat-like and we like a lot of space. There are topics we kind of avoid because it feels like those aren’t the best ones for us. It’s feeling really comfortable and happy for me. I can only project and not speak like I really know how she feels but she isn’t expressing any dissatisfaction with our relationship. I feel like I pushed too hard when I moved here and we had to work out how to deal with each of us having our prickly points and it has worked out. She remains one of the people I love most in the world. I would bury bodies for her. If something catastrophic happened I would absolutely rescue her or her kids or her husband. I believe with my whole soul that she would show up for me in an emergency. I am feeling safe and comfortable that we have managed to find a nice place between us. I suspect in 5-10 years when our kids are older we will see each other a tiny bit more than we do right now but we are both people who are very comfortable in our own company and that’s not a bad thing.

I’m slowly working on other relationships in town and that’s slow going and complicated because people are like that. I like living here and I think it is going to be a good space for me in the long run. I worry a little about Noah’s place here because he is a lot more constrained than I am in terms of going out and meeting people. He’s going to need friends in the long run too and having them all be on his computer is mixed.

Kids are a pain in the butt. I’m just saying. This has been a bad week for me in terms of my emotional state and that’s no one’s fault. Also: my kids have been buttheads a few times and we’ve had words. I feel so intensely proud of myself because we had words. I didn’t shout. I didn’t scream. No one was punished or denigrated. “Hey this thing is happening and it’s not ok and we need to talk about why.”

Ok, take a deep breath and really feel that. Even when I am upset and I want to freak out because of hormones… we talk. I say, “Hey let’s explore some of the angles you aren’t seeing on your own right now.” When we are done they understand why I am asking for a change (it may or may not happen–let’s be real) but they aren’t angry with me for bringing it up. I understand more about why it’s going on from their perspective. It’s not ok to just silence people when they are inconvenient. Children aren’t problems they are *having* problems and talking about why is important.

It is so hard that my older kids are very much in a place where many of their problems are now things I cannot fix because it isn’t about me. The main upside of that is they are starting to feel in their bellies that it is true when I say the same thing about my problems. “I’m not upset about you. I’m having a problem.” I can see Little Girl struggling through what the older kids went through and she is directly acting out her stuff with her dolls and it’s interesting. I feel so much more emotionally/mentally distant from the process now than I did when the older kids were that size. I will roleplay with her with her dolls.

So yesterday morning I woke up and I felt awful and I cried some. It’s not because anyone did anything. Then Little Girl came in and joined me for a snuggle and she does this thing where she likes to dig her feet into my legs. Sometimes it is ok and sometimes my body hurts and it is super painful. I was already crying so of course she felt bad and took it on herself. Later she had a whole scene with her dolls where she was talking about them hurting her by poking her legs so she was putting them in time out because it’s not ok to be mean to her. I roleplayed one of the babies and talked about how I wasn’t trying to be mean; I was trying to be close because I love her. Is there a way I can be super close without hurting her? I am scared to go in time out right now because that means I broke a rule and I don’t want to feel like snuggling is breaking a rule. She was so kind and loving and caretaking with her baby. It was really wonderful to watch. “Oh my gosh! You are right! Snuggling is not breaking a rule. Maybe we should change where we are snuggling so that you don’t hit my legs and hurt me.”

My grinch heart grew three sizes.

(At this point pretty much the only rule she breaks is screaming in the house and you have to take big voices to your bedroom. This is not California and I can’t insist that all screaming has to be in the yard because of weather.)

I don’t talk about the big kids much anymore because they deserve privacy and walking the line is complex. But I do want to say that it is fascinating to me just how much they still ache for my approval. (They get a lot of it–I’m not saying this is a hollow thing.)

My Oldest Girl is pushing so hard to individuate and good golly hormones have hit her like a freight train and she has so much hostility about injustice and difficulty in the world. Saying good morning at the wrong time is fairly likely to get a stiff middle finger. I go with it. I try hard not to take almost any of it personally. We are dancing around the balancing act of “I’m still your mother so sometimes I am going to be obnoxious and I will want to give you a hug and a kiss. If you truly object in the moment you are allowed to refuse but mostly it’s a good idea to let me do it.” She is doing a lot better in terms of mental health since she stopped going to school. Things were getting really bad for a while there. We come from families that have a lot of depression and anxiety and PTSD and suicide. It would be highly unethical and neglectful for me to not act quickly when I can see my child melting down because of abuse they are receiving. She is starting to blossom again. She is returning to herself and I love seeing it. It’s going to be a process for her to find friends here and school is not going to be the solution. Her art blows my mind. She has so much talent and skill and she practices all the dang time. Her writing is fun and engaging and she is absolutely brilliant at creating pictures in your mind of what is happening to her characters. She still needs a bit more work on exposition but that’s not a terrible lacking–just something to think about and work towards a bit more. She is strong and fit and confident and willing to speak up for herself. And she’s taller than me and built like 30-something Taylor Swift and I cannot even.

My wonderful and delightful Enby is still plugging along. Puberty is happening and it’s a roller coaster. It’s interesting how the acting out is different now from when they were younger. They have so much more self control than they used to have. They still have giant feelings that are hard to manage at times but they know which direction they are growing towards/working on when it comes to expressing those feelings and they are consciously and deliberately learning skills around that. I am so impressed by the effort they put in to being self aware. They are baking and cooking and tweaking recipes and being brave and adventurous. I am sad we didn’t get a better evaluation done at Stanford before we left because they clearly have some specific learning challenge going on and I’m struggling with figuring out what it is. They really have a hard time with some aspects of education and we are trying a few different things because I don’t know what direction is the right one. They are making progress but I think they are always going to be a person who is much better with kinesthetic and active and oral learning rather than on paper learning. It’s really cool watching them learn coping skills around that. They want competence and if they have to route around an area of challenge for that… well just get on with it. They alternate between being this absolutely startlingly compassionate person and being a normal kid. I see them being on this see saw towards adulthood and it is so clearly part of the process they need to follow. They progress intensely then they regress a bit then they leap again. The more patience I show and the more scaffolding I supply the bigger each leap is and the smaller the regression. If I am impatient or difficult about the regression then it intensifies and they can’t leap again for quite a while.

It is fascinating living with these children. The Oldest doesn’t need my approval all the time–once in a while she succeeds in order to spite me. The Middle craves approval like it is heroin. They will beg, borrow, steal, to get it. They do not function well at all if I am anything other than a full throated cheerleader. Rebukes and course corrections have to be delivered with the softest of touches or they wilt and don’t recover for days… sometimes weeks. The Littlest is so small that she still needs tons of redirections towards “Oh hey it would be great if you….” “Oh golly if you do x then y will happen and that’s not good.” I suspect she is going to be more on the spitfire end as she grows. Her threenager year has been so very long.

This post brought to you by the good news that one of my buddies now works in the paint store and he is encouraged to give a friends and family discount to people and basically no one he knows buys paint. I was talking about the sorry shape of my arms right now and how I am pushing myself raising the clock before the paint dies and he told me to take a break. It won’t be nearly as expensive of an issue to fix as I fear. Ok. I will listen.

So I stopped painting a week before my purported end date. I have a ton of other work to do that has been sliding through the cracks. This will be in no way a bad thing. I am exhausted in a way that means I am not sleeping enough because I can’t shut my brain off to sleep. I’m craving alcohol like mad. I think at my next cycle of talking to the GP and psych nurse I will say that I think I am ready to both increase the Amitriptyline and the Lisdexamfetamine.

I am still on very low doses of both and getting closer to a normal dose would be useful at this point. My blood pressure readings are so so so much better on 30mg of Amitriptyline. I’m back in the high 120’s-low 130’s/high 70’s-low 80’s. There is still room for improvement but that’s not dangerous or scary. More Amitriptyline would possibly help with that. Losing weight would probably help with that.

These medications are breaking the stalemate of my weight plateau. I’m still eating whatever I want whenever I want. I am drinking some alcohol (in the range of 4-6 units/week because I know drinking is not recommended on these meds) but not nearly as much as I was. I am not doing tons of exercise because I have been in the house painting all the time but I am still doing the twice weekly yoga and I’m riding in the neighborhood of 20-ish miles a week and even occasionally getting in a decent length walk. I’m not sedentary but I’m not over-exercising in a way that would cause weight loss. So I really believe the drop is as a result of the medications at this point. I didn’t think to weigh myself right when I started the medications. The first data point I have in this year was in February and I was 211. In late August I was at 203. As of this week I saw 199 for the first time in a long time. I repeat: I am not dieting. What I am doing is taking medications that change my brain chemistry and increase my serotonin changes how my brain processes dopamine. That’s making my body not feel like it needs to hold on to fat in the same way. I’m not doing this because I want to lose weight; I am noting physical changes in a way that can be measured. Things like mood are harder.

The PMDD window is something that can overcome the positive effect of any medication in my experience. I am seriously dreading the peri-menopause experience of my cycles gradually lengthening. I expect the next ten years to be hard. But it’s not like any decade has been easy so get on with it. I am deeply grateful that I have gotten to the point where when I feel really low that does not increase suicidal ideation or fixation. I am grateful that I don’t struggle with the desire to mutilate my body anymore. It is complicated as fuck dealing with my children as they have times of feeling like they want to hurt themselves. I am grateful to the marrow of my bones that they know they can trust me and talk to me when they feel like that. Yes, you can always come in my bed and snuggle if you feel you are scared and you aren’t safe to be alone. Puberty is a horrible time and we’ll talk and we’ll get you through this.

If therapists were available they would be in therapy. I didn’t understand the depth of privilege we had in California around mental health. My entire life trajectory happened because therapy was plentiful and that would not have been possible in other places. All my kids have is me. That’s fucking daunting. (I mean, they have friends and we are making community connections…) We talk a lot about having thoughts and feeling impulses doesn’t mean anything bad about you. Let’s talk about the possible consequences if you follow through. I’m not saying I will punish you; I’m saying that once you cross the line into these behaviors there are people in the community who are bound by law to intervene so if they find out this is what will happen. It’s out of my hands. Let’s talk about strategies and ways of coping and figuring out what other things could be done instead. Let’s build habits around feeling distressed so that when something even worse happens you have some pre-built ruts in your brain for how to handle bad things. Let’s talk about distorted feelings and projecting and learning how to scan your central nervous system and what tools exist to help you feel grounded and like you can wait to act–this feeling does not require a response RIGHT NOW. For the record no one is actively suicidal, no one has any kind of plan, and people are not engaging in the sort of behavior that would involve mandatory removal from the house.

What is happening is that they both have had to deal with bullying and additionally people have been telling my daughter that she should kill herself. They are both just children and this has been hard for them. They have every predisposition genetically towards mental health struggles. Life was never going to be a walk in the park. There were always going to be dark times. But you can bet your fucking buttons that I am going to teach them how to light a candle in the dark. (I got some LED candles so nobody else tries to burn down my fucking house. Oh good grief.)

They are kids. They are all so different. I like all of them. I am annoyed by all of them. I admire all of them. I enjoy spending time with all of them. I don’t know what their future will bring but I sure hope that I get to be an enthusiastic cheerleader as they go do all the things they will do. I tell them that when they don’t believe in themselves they can borrow some of my faith in them. I will never ever run out.

More medication changes/observations.

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The last time I posted was 2 days after I lowered the Amitriptyline as an experiment. I am talking to my doctor/psych nurse about all of these changes before I do them. It’s kind of weird having a medical team that I call up and say “Hey I want to try x. I will report back on how it goes.” They respond with, “Cool. Let me know how it goes.” I am not used to American doctors being so chill about someone playing with their medication dosages. In emoji terms: 🤯

I had almost three weeks of being on the first step of Amitriptyline dosage. Very quickly I noticed: my mood getting lower (a lot more intrusive obnoxious thoughts during yoga–amusingly), sleep became really hard (the last three weeks I averaged 7.5 hours of sleep when I’ve been otherwise averaging over 8 hours a night for the past few years), I started craving alcohol a lot (back up to probably 8-10 units a week after only 2-4 units/week for the previous month or so), I was more interested in late night snacking, I had several very late night painting sessions because going to sleep just didn’t feel important, I needed more Lorazepam to sleep, my general pain levels were sky high, and I was using more Co-codamol. Oh hey and my blood pressure went from being usually in the 120’s-130’s/80’s to being mostly in the 140’s-150’s/mid-high 90’s.

That’s some forking data. (I mean… sorta anecdata but I have spreadsheets where I’ve been documenting this day by day…) It’s not like I’m trying to apply this population wide or anything.

I talked to my psych nurse two days ago and told her I do not think this is a good time to increase the Lisdexamfetamine because I need my blood pressure under control first; then I talked to my GP yesterday and told her that I think the next step is increasing the Amitriptyline for a month and seeing what happens. They both think my suggestions are dandy and that’s plan A. We will all check in next month and see how things are going.

After another month on the Lisdexamfetamine I am 3.2 pounds lower. That is a very gentle and sustainable amount of weight loss compared to the roughly 10 pounds I lost in the first month. I mean… I’m still 40-ish pounds away from where I feel like my body feels the best in terms of strength and not being limited by chub in the way. I don’t love having to shove a roll of fat out of the way to get into a certain position. I don’t love that it is hard to bend over and tie my damn shoes. But this is way better than the 60-ish pounds I was above that weight for a while.

I have been putting painting progress pictures up on Facebook because that interface is easier for dumping photos. I kind of hope I will get around to putting together pictures on a webpage here sometime soon. It’ll just take a lot more focus and time than I have right now. Erf.

Good thing to notice

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I’ve been going to yoga classes for a little bit now–a couple of months? Something that I notice when I’m there is that I talk to/about my body differently than I used to. I’m not sure when it changed because I don’t write this kind of thing much anymore. It’s noticeable to me because of what the instructors say. They tell you to check in with your body then pause and then tell you to get past the negative vocies.

These days when I check in with my body it’s gratitude. Thank you for being so strong. Thank you for carrying me so far. I am so proud of what you can do. Yeah, you hurt but isn’t it nice that you hurt so much less than you used to? I’m proud of us for learning how to take care of you better. I can feel the expression of love over time in my bones. I’ve worked so hard to get to where I am. I’m happy that I’ve had this kind of support and time.

I suspect that the combination of meds that I’m on at this point is helping. Amitriptyline is both for pain and it increases serotonin so it’s an antidepressant at the same time. The lisdexamfetamine feels like what I wish i could have had since I was a teenager. I genuinely believe I would have made fewer risky/bad choices if I had been on it.

I really wish I could have been properly assessed for ADHD and ASD as a teenager. It would have changed my life. I wonder if I would have accomplished as much? I wonder if I would have accomplished less? Ah well. It is what it is and all I can do is move forward.

It’s a lot better painting on this med combo. I don’t feel the urge to paint all night long “just to get through it”. I know it will make me feel like trash later and that’s not very tempting/alluring. I’ve been painting for a few weeks in a row now. My one short night of sleep (I got over 6 hours… so not a California short night) was when I was trying to clean up after painting. It took 15 hours to put things back in place and clean up the house enough for the cleaners to be able to come in and do actual cleaning instead of just walking around piles. My average for the last four weeks of sleep is about 8 and a half hours. That’s… kind of shocking for me being in a heavy work cycle. That’s just about healthy. Whoa. Balance.

I am finding a bit of appetite suppression from the amfetamine. I am eating smaller portions at meals (2 tacos instead of 3, 2 pancakes instead of 4, 1 bowl of soup instead of 2) and I feel less desire to have a late night dessert. Sometimes I skip lunch because I’m not that hungry but I eat a lot more dinner to make up for it and I think I eat about the same amount of food. I am drinking waaaay less alcohol (I’m probably taking 3-6 units a week down from 10-15) mostly because the amfetamine means you feel the alcohol less so I don’t feel as much desire to consume it. It still tastes good so I have some. And some of the wine I like is multiple units/serving in the glass I use so there you go. I’m flirting around 200. I haven’t seen lower than 203 since I arrived in Scotland and I’ve usually been in the 210’s and 220’s over the past 2 years so I am losing some weight. With the amount I exercise it has felt kind of weird that I keep as much extra padding as I have been. When I was in my 20’s and 30’s this much exercise would have kept me down in the 160’s.

Something that I think I am feeling in my body is I have dramatically fewer spikes of cortisol with this med combo. I really don’t feel anxious. Over the past two years I have noticed that in Scotland I feel dramatically less anxiety than I did in California as a baseline… even with the help that cannabis provided. I don’t have as much hypervigilance here. Prior to trying this med combo I was still feeling anxiety though in that way that I think is about my body being programmed to worry about everything as the natural state of being. That feels like it is stopping now. In California I had to be careful with my cannabis usage because I couldn’t/wouldn’t take it when I had to drive so I had a lot of up and down effect in terms of my experience in my body. I think there was enough break in cortisol production that my body could process food normally and not turn it all into emergency fat rations for later tragedy.

Since moving and being off cannabis entirely (the weight gain started right when I left California–I could tell in how my clothes fit) there has been a slow but gradual ballooning effect. Exercise and eating a balanced diet wasn’t having any impact at all. Despite the comments of ignorant people… I eat a fairly ridiculously healthy diet compared to the average person in the western world. We eat very little that is processed. We cook from scratch for something like 12-15 meals a week. (A lot of the other meals are leftovers.) We eat 4-9 servings of fruit and veg a day. I have cut a lot of the dairy and meat from my diet. (My family eats more than I do but I’m trying to limit inflammation.) My weight creeping up is not about eating too much and moving too little. Yeah yeah it’s anecdata but I have lived in this body for 40 years now and I’ve seen it through a lot of cycles. Cortisol/stress/anxiety.

It’s really dramatic having medications that lower the level of cortisol in my body on a 24/7 basis. I am consistent with the meds. I haven’t skipped many doses since I started so this is a really level sort of experience.

But my blood pressure has creeped up. I’m hoping that losing some weight will have an effect on that so that I can keep the meds. I really like how my brain feels. I have also halved the amitriptyline dosage on the advice of my GP to see if I can keep the positive effects with a lower dosage. She is mildly skeptical because my former dosage was already the “grandma dose” (her words) and she wonders if my body will be able to feel anything with half that. I’m trying it for a few weeks to see. I think it is worth trying. I really don’t want to lose the lisdexamfetamine. I feel like this is doing so much.

It feels like such a blessing that when I quiet down and look inward what I see is liking myself.

Clickbait trash

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I was foolish last night. I was procrastinating on sleep and I gave in to clickbait. Habits of highly productive people. Ugh. I have this constant internal tug of war over productivity. You might have noticed that I don’t write much anymore. There are so many reasons. One of them is that I use my hands a lot and if I want to reduce pain something has to go. Another reason is that I have largely been able to write over the last 12 years by giving up sleep.

One of the neat things about tracking lots of data about my body is I can tell you fairly conclusively that Scotland has been fucking fantastic for my sleep habits. In California I went years getting 4-7 hours of sleep. 7 hours was somewhat rare and I would pat myself on the back for doing it. When I was deep in project mode 4 hours for weeks or months was not unusual.

I’ve had 4 weeks of project mode since I arrived here: painting the dining room. Otherwise I have been getting 8-10 hours of sleep. I’m certain the Amitriptyline helps. It doesn’t make me pass out in a drugged stupor instantly anymore but it keeps me asleep longer. I like that.

I don’t need to read bullshit about how if I went back to waking up at 4 am I could be a much more productive person as if productivity is the same thing as measuring how moral I am.

Every so often I will talk to another immigrant here and they will almost inevitably complain about how hard it is to deal with the less intense work ethic of Scottish people. I always say that I am trying as hard as I can to move in that direction. I don’t want to maintain my California work ethic. I don’t think it is healthy to believe that 60 hours a week is a minimum amount of acceptable work or you deserve to be fired. I don’t think it is healthy that everyone believes you must monetize every hobby and interest you have or you are wasting your time.

I find it really interesting just how happy I am to be out of California and the US as a whole. It’s not that Scotland is perfect–there is no such thing as perfect. But I don’t worry about having to find a tactful way to play 20 questions with new parents-of-friends to find out how they handle gun safety in their house because the expectation is that people might/probably have guns. I think the US has lost the plot when it comes to gun ownership. Gun ownership in the US is not about keeping the gun owner safe. It is about letting people who own guns feel powerful and mostly they put themselves and their families at greater risk for the charade of being powerful. It’s gross. I know that I know a lot of people who own guns. As much as I love you I am glad I no longer have to navigate the emotional/anxiety minefield of ever walking through your front door again. Your desire to feel powerful makes me feel sick.

When I talk to my older kids about what they want from the future: where would they like to school, where do they think they want to live? They say that even if they don’t stay in the Highlands for the rest of their lives there is no chance they want to go back to the US. I can’t say I blame them. I mean, feelings might change. That happens.

I have been reading books on gardening in this climate about as fast as I can get them. Sure, a lot of them are more England centric and don’t perfectly answer my needs for Northern Scotland but it is teaching me more relevant information than my background education in California gardening. The UK is so hilariously on the nose about naming: Flowerdew (the jokes write themselves), Cox (a kind of apple), Titmarsh (I think of little birds in the marshes telling me the ancient lore).

An immigrant buddy told me that it takes a good 7 years to settle into a place. With the pandemic I feel like that process is frozen in time in a bizarre way. I think of 80’s tv “magic” moments where someone froze time so that someone could get something done without it impacting anyone else. I am setting up my garden. I am working on the house. I’m about to start painting again: maybe that’s why I feel the need to write something down again. I feel like I am being given this weird slice of time where I am here but I am not here. I learned how to paint by doing set design. I learned about creating a setting so that things could be perceived a way, so the characters could be perceived a way, so the plot could be advanced with as little acting effort as possible.

By the time anyone is allowed into my house and I’m actually working hard on making a social place, the backdrop will be pretty much finished. Some folks are making noise about it being fine to come visit this autumn. I have serious doubts.

I want to paint soon in large part because apparently UK paint doesn’t store the way that US paint does. I need to use it up before it isn’t good anymore. I bought too much volume. Next time I will only buy 1 liter cans. Life lesson.

I have been out in the yard a lot over the past week. The kids had an academic break and the effort I normally put into schoolwork we put into yard work. It was nice. Things are coming along. I am most of the way through making the raised mount beds. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H%C3%BCgelkultur) I have been taking it very slowly because it is a lot of shoveling and lifting and carrying. Mostly what I am doing is cleaning up all the debris all over my yard and putting it in long-term compost-in-place mounds on top of felled trees. How long they will be functional is difficult to fully determine. Opinions vary between 5 and 20 years. I will find out! It’s an experiment.

I am doing quite well with my current pass at increasing fitness. In the past I have set strenuous goals and reached them (by sacrificing sleep, other healthy activities, giving up almost all other hobbies) and I’m just not in a place to do that emotionally. So I have been very gradually increasing my personal step count goals and I’m ignoring the watch’s direction for how much I “should” be doing. I am consistently reaching my personal/lower goals and I’ve managed to bump them up very slowly over many months and that’s going well. I haven’t injured myself in months and at this stage of decrepitude I am treating that as a major victory.

I don’t enjoy how much “don’t injure myself extra” is a huge sticking point at this stage of my life. But it is.

I am making forward progress on fitness. I am moving the garden along. I am homes educating my kids. I am keeping a household running (thanks Noah for doing most of the cooking). I am keeping us on a budget. I am maintaining a low and slow drip of getting to know home education folk here through online meetings and randomly meeting people out on the trail (that’s pretty darn thrilling, I’ll tell you). I’m going to be painting again in a week or so.

I don’t need to be told that if I just gave up all my rest time I could be more productive as if higher productivity level is the measure of a life. I have worked really hard on increasing how much rest I get. I take weekend time to sit in my room and do nothing as a conscious choice. Yeah I am watching shit on Netflix. I am also reading books. I am also planning for the future. I’m sketching out ideas for how to solve future problems we don’t have yet but will appear like magic over the next 10 years or so.

I don’t need to give up sleep. I don’t need to give up all recreation on the altar of “Work is all that is moral”. Fuck your clickbait in the ear with a pointy stick.

Heart racing

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Here’s an Amitriptyline symptom I should note: I’m having noticeable elevated heart rate. My watch buzzes when my heart rate is too high compared to my level of movement. It’s going off almost all day right now. I’m elevated above 120 bpm for hours a day even if I’m barely moving around. That seems kind of problematic. Hm.

Because of the watch I can give specific data about my heart rate compared to exercise over a very long time period. I normally rarely hit 120 unless I’m doing prolonged fairly intense exercise. Now I hit that sitting in a chair over and over all day.

My watch is buzzing enough that the people I live with are noticing and commenting on hearing it. That seems… possibly not good.

Well I stopped tracking…

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The onramp to this medication is magnificently easy. I am stunned. I have never had such an easy time with a psych med (ok it’s considered a 4th line antidepressant so it’s not mostly a psych med but… it’s a psych med).

I saw the doctor for an in person exam. She basically said that the placement of the wound means I am almost certainly not experiencing nerve pain as a result of the surgical site. She thinks it is muscular, which tracks with my previous general experience. (My old long-term medical massage therapist and good friend thinks that it is fascia related and he sarcastically says “It’s not like I’ve watched the progress of your body up close and personal for over a decade or anything”.) For the record he was one of the early people to suggest Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome.

So the doctor wants me to stay on this medication in large part because it is giving me one of the benefits I got from cannabis that is anxiety/depression/ADHD related-ish. Specifically: I really struggle with impulsive reactions to things. On pot I have this pause in my brain that allows me to stop and consider how I want to react to things that happen to me. I’m getting the same pause with this drug. It’s not that I am generally speaking super slowed down or dumber… I’m not losing words and I can still be funny and respond fairly quickly. I just have… the ability to decide how I want to react to things again and I really like that effect. Given that this drug is free from the NHS it may be almost worth the price of admission.

Other side effects that are ongoing: I’m slower to wake up than normal and it isn’t putting me to sleep much earlier or more reliably after being on it for a few weeks. I can take elephant level quantities of tranquilizers and just shake them off. Sure I can stay up all night cleaning, why not?

She doubled the amount to 20mg. I’ve now been on this a week and I’d say I’m very acclimated and it’s a mild overall impact.

She also wants me slathering gel Ibuprofen on a few times a day and I would say that is helping somewhat… if I do almost nothing with my arms. If I do much with my arms in a day it hurts about as much as normal. If I do almost nothing the Ibuprofen brings the pain level down.

I’m feeling incredible distress over the level of pain I’m experiencing because I had months of almost no pain. I’m not entirely sure what kicked it up to full speed again. It started getting bad in September/October and it’s been bad since.

I’ve been super low energy for the last week but I think it is more related to my sore throat and mild cough. Everyone in the house feels lousy so I don’t think it is medication related.

I’m having enough trouble sleeping that I used one of my last Lorazepam tonight and I had some brandy.

I just… metabolize drugs like whoa. And it’s 9:10 and I’m a little tired but not really sleepy at all. I took the Amitriptyline at around 6. The Lorazepam at 8. I’ve been nursing a glass of brandy for about 4 hours. I’m not even anxious I’m just… not sleepy. I crave interaction.

On the fourth day of med trial my body gave to me…

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I slept from 8pm to about 6am. I woke up earlier with the vague belief that I should probably get up and pee… but I didn’t bother and went back to sleep instead. That’s nearly unheard of for me.

So… last night I had some cocodamol and two glasses of wine. I have very mixed feelings about how hard my body resists sedatives but I’m fucking tired and if it takes a lot sometimes I’m going to knock myself over the head with a hammer.

I’ve had a few bursts of severe pain in my hand/arm/elbow/shoulder. I attribute that to working. Which… is a mixed bag. I don’t need pain meds tonight. My back is sore and icki but I don’t feel like I want to cry.

Today I have been alert and energetic and I’ve gotten a lot of chores done. I haven’t felt slow or impeded. I don’t feel the same sense of time distortion. I feel a little tired in the “Jesus I’m years in the hole on sleep deprivation” sense but not bad or worn out for me.

I have 15 books and 32 days to go on my reading challenge. I’m almost done with one. I may even be able to finish tonight. We’ll see….

On the third day of med trial my body gave to meeeeee

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Very little notice that I am using anything new. I would say that today I felt incredibly close to normal. I feel like I was a little slowed down but in the “I need more sleep and I’m working too hard” sense rather than in the “Holy shit I’m swimming through molasses” sense. I probably feel less of a malaise of depression. Today I was more patient with the kids than I have been on a lot of days lately.

I didn’t do as much exercising as yesterday (only walked 2 miles but I rode my bike almost 5 miles and that didn’t feel hard at all–more than a mile of it was up an extremely steep hill). We went out and picked litter with a group who has been moving around the city trying to help out in different areas every weekend. It was very productive and nice. Gotta meet our local hippie comrades.

I took the pill at 5:30 tonight because 6pm last night didn’t have me feeling sleepy till 9. I also took some pain medication tonight because my back and neck are in full on fuck-you mode and I can’t keep this up.

I don’t know that it is making a big difference in the nerve pain. My hand is still going numb quite easily. My elbow is on fire. My upper arm is numb until you touch it then it tingles and hurts. I can’t reach the wound site to see how tender that is by myself.

Overall I would say that right this minute I think this dosage is not a serious/permanent solution to the problem but the side effect profile is not so bad that I am terrified of upping the dosage to play with it. I am currently taking 10mg and up to 75mg/day is within normal expected range. Apparently it is expected that it might take 6 weeks to be effective as a pain killer. As of this evening I feel very comfortable with being willing to test that long. That’s actually a pretty resounding endorsement from me. Normally 3 days into a drug means I’m already trying to figure out how to get the fuck off it.

So I’d say a C+ or B- right now? I’d like more impact on nerve pain. It could definitely do more for actual depression and anxiety. But it is a start and it’s not a bad start.

And this is all fucking free.

Another day, another chance to record what’s happening

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Med responses are very important to me. I am upset that I have so few written records of my previous drug attempts. Oh, by the way my oldest heard me make a crack about having a hangover from the drug and she flipped out. She thought I was using hard street drugs because I had just run out of cope.

Serves me right for not telling my kids in advance absolutely everything I do with my body I guess?

Today was different. Less exhaustion. I woke up at 4 for a trip to the loo. I didn’t get back to sleep for close to an hour then I was up by 6:30. I took the pill at 7 last night and was asleep by 8:30.

Tonight I took the pill at 6.

Today we had already made plans to go for a walk in the woods with a family who lives about 1.5 miles away from us who are new to home education. They have a 9 year old boy and an 11 year old girl. The two of them both turned up saying that they were hoping for a kid of their gender. I said, “How would a non-binary kid who is not a boy and not a girl who likes to do things regardless of gender fit?” They had about two questions then they both went with it. For the record: that’s where middle kid is at again.

Anyway, I was… more calm than usual? I felt like my brain was slower and on the sluggish side. It was a less pleasant experience than pot but not completely dissimilar? I didn’t have any of the uplift I get from pot but I got a little bit of the “pause” between having a thought and reacting.

My feet are going to sleep ridiculously quickly. If I kneel down to put stuff in a drawer it doesn’t take 2 minutes. Usually I can kneel for 10-15 minutes before my feet fall asleep.

My back has been hurting quite badly all day. Of course I have walked 6.5 miles after it hurt when I woke up. Cause yeah. I carried the littlest home for the final mile because she was utterly wasted.

I’m still having some nerve pain in my arms if I tweak them up to use them in an unusual position. (Putting the baby in the back carrier was a bit festive.) I feel a lot of tightness and general arm unhappiness. I have fairly deliberately not typed much today trying to rest. (Really the last couple of days.)

I have very much wanted to not add more medication to this in the first few days. So I’m not taking anything for the back pain or headache. I want to have a really solid idea of what is coming from the Amitriptyline. Normally I would definitely be medicating for those at this point because it hurts.

I’m having massive time dilation. I can check and see this is the end of the second day. It feels like a lot more than that. I labeled the pill packet with the exact date I am supposed to take each pill because I am worried about taking too much or skipping a day and not noticing.

I am utterly out of patience with the kids but I think that was happening before the meds. Right now it is hard to remember.

In unrelated news: I have 17 books to read in 34 days. Time for some graphic novels (Neil Gaiman’s American Gods 1 & 1). In another day I can finish The Cooking Gene, and I need to sit the kids down and finish Odd Girl Out. That will leave me with 14 books to go. Eep. Maybe my goal was a tad ambitious for this year…

New med tracking

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Started Amitriptyline last night, primarily for nerve pain. I got a solid 8 hours of sleep, which I don’t always do and that seems nice. As I was going to sleep I felt like I got to watch a firework show on my eyelids. Lots of bright white lights dancing. As is typical for me it took more like an hour and a half to really hit me instead of an hour.

ETA: Yeah, I barely stayed awake long enough to eat a little breakfast then I almost passed out on the table so I crawled back to bed. I was in and out for a while making sure that oldest got to school. Then I slept hard until 10:30 when I could tell that I needed to go to the bathroom to deal with blood (it’s the heaviest day of my period. What glorious timing).

My dreams were super intense and overwhelming and constant and highly sexual which I did not expect on a medication known for lowering libido.

I am so groggy that middle kid has been talking at me for a while and I have literally not retained a word of what has been said. I feel slow and stupid and exhausted.

It’s a very good thing I homeschool my 10 year old and Noah works from home because I don’t know how I could have provided care for the 2 year old today while alone. Scary thought. Woof.

I have a really intense headache at the back of my head near the top of the spine and it shoots straight through the skull to make it throb hard on my left temple. My mouth has been throbbing, which is a weird ass feeling. I keep feeling like I am falling only I’m lying prone at the time.

Strangely it was easier to sleep than usual because even though my neck/head hurt quite badly my shoulders already feel a little easier. It didn’t instantly hurt lying on my side. If I reach back gently the surgical wound site still hurts.

The headache is absolutely massive but I am worried about taking another medication on top of what is in my system.

I am sad because my lack of help today is going to mean that Noah has to work more days into December. (He was going to take the month off.) But at least I think it’ll only be a couple of days next week and not the whole month.

Also of note: my typing has been super shitty. It’s taking me 3-8 tries to figure out how to spell a lot of basic words. Yay spell check preventing me from looking in writing as stupid as I feel.