Little White Pills

It's no secret that I struggle with chronic depression -- anyone who knows me well knows this about me. My traumatic past and my damaged brain have conspired to make me a chemically deficient basket case. I have a lovely psychotropic regimen to right the wrongs, a little rainbow of capsules: 2 pink ones, a blue one, a white one, and a green-and-brown one, every day. These are respectively: mood stabilizer(s), long-term anti-anxiety, emergency short-term anti-anxiety, and nightmare control. Oh, and then there's the legal Speed to counteract the effects of the long-term anti-anxiety med, also known as Klonopin, which is quite effective at sending me to a state of consciousness about half a notch above comatose. It's a mess.

Two of these medicines are PRN, which means I only have to take them when I need them, as determined by me. I don't always have to take the nightmare med. I don't always have to take the Klonopin. This makes me feel slightly less of a basket case -- I'm just left with Paxil, Ativan, and Dexadrine. A 3-a-day set is damn good for someone with an Axis I diagnosis of chronic, recurrent Major Depressive Disorder. Most of my MDD peer group is drugged up past their eyeballs. It is my personal policy, however, not to take anything I don't absolutely have to take. At this point in my life, I am aware that I MUST take a mood stabilizer/antidepressant. Me without that ain't pretty. Me without that for too awful long probably ain't even alive. I only broke down and asked for something for nightmares after 3 months of vivid, hallucinatory dreams about things like the ground turning into snakes and rabid hounds chasing me through the woods like a damn deer or something. I was haggard. I was exhausted. I was terrified to close my eyes. Something had to be done.

And this leaves us with the anxiety meds. Along with my depression comes a huge amount of anxiety. It's like a 2-for-1 psychological package deal: you get your depression, and we throw the panic in for free. This is where the little blue pill comes in. If I take the little blue pill like I should, I'm a lot more chill. There is no "Tif is frozen in place because the world will crack open if she moves" anxiety. Occasionally the rogue anxiety attack of moderate severity will break through, which is where the little white pill comes in. White pill + blue pill = my nervous system is stoned, and I wouldn't care if flaming meteors started crashing through the roof and landing in my living room.

Prior to just recently, I took a little white pill AND a little blue pill together maybe once every six months. I seriously rarely ever needed the Ativan. I actually considered telling my shrink to stop prescribing it -- but oh man, I am so glad I didn't. All this stuff going on with my mother has thrown me into a state of almost constant panic. I wake up in the morning already shaking. I try to hold off on the Ativan as long as I can, I really do, because the last thing I need is to become a pill-head, but for the past 2 weeks I have needed that little white pill once, sometimes twice a day, every day. Yes. I have gone from one every six months to up to 2 per day. My anxiety is out of control. And as anyone who struggles with persistent anxiety will tell you, when you're in it, you feel like you'll be there forever. I am calmly discussing this now because white pill + blue pill are working their magic in my bloodstream, but the second the dose wears off I'll be back to waiting for the ceiling to cave in.

See, people in the midst of full-blown anxiety attacks are capable of believing impossible things, things like, "If I move, my body will literally fly apart into a million pieces," or "If I move, there will be a massive earthquake and the entire world will crumble and suck everyone down to Hell." I know this because I've experienced it firsthand. About 3 years ago, I once had an anxiety attack so severe that I spent 14 straight hours stretched out flat on the floor, digging my nails into the carpet, because I just KNEW something unspeakably horrible would happen if I dared rise. In my right mind, this is laughable. Like now. Now I'm smirking and shaking my head. But my friends, a person in panic is NOT a person in her right mind. No way. Panic is so much survival instinct gone awry, and it can literally shut you down. Stop the presses. Drop you where you stand. Honest to God. It really can. When you have a panic attack, your brain convinces you you're dying. Unless you've been there, there's really no adequate way to explain it. You will do anything, literally anything, to just make it stop -- including lying prostrate on the floor for 14 hours. Or taking a whole lot more of the little white pills on top of the little blue pills and calmly waiting for flaming meteors to appear in your living room. That's where I'm at right now. I hate being there; I really, truly hate it. But if I don't do this, somebody's gonna have to come peel me off the floor and pack me off the the psych ward, which is not a locale I care to revisit.

Hopefully, this ends soon.