Anxiety is an emotion that tells us when something in our life seems out of place or improper.
What does it tell us?
Anxiety tells us to exercise caution, to think before acting.
How to deal with it?
Visualizations are fantastic for anxiety. Deep breathing. Ice. talking to someone. Counting down from 100 by 7s. A good joke. Singing. Moving your body (dance). Yoga. running.
Body sensations
Tightness, faintness, blurred vision, sweating, butterflies, heart racing, restlessness, energy
Examples?
Making a speech, driving in a busy area, telling someone bad news.
I'm drawing on the knowledge and the faith I have collected from so many people. You were there from 97-20. They can make it about your hair color or your physical attributes, but you were my RN. You watched over me, you taught me, you never failed me. You know me.
I need to be a better me. While I cannot simply sit and blame my families, I cannot stay the same nor can I simply forget. You may be asking why. Why he can't just go live life and work and get married and forget. To me, that kind of walking away is a betrayal of the struggle and an abandonment of the people like me who also got lost as well as a burying of the truth. I cannot be the only zombie that's been walking around drugged up. I cannot believe that living that way is healthy or right. Maybe I haven't seen enough evil, but life has not actually been a walk in the park. I don't like being that disabled guy with the name.
You WOULD NOT LET ME BREAK. So now I have to be more. To fail to do so would be to let the lies about myself and the people around me fester and to dishonor the work you did. God gives us purposes. In McClean I kept asking why. I could leave. I could go somewhere else. But it's been too long here. It's become unfinished business. What would I be if I let the people around me break? Maybe you didn't know how much I relied on you. Maybe there's people that rely on me too.
I have to trust. I have to try to lift others up. I won't always be able to. At times I will fail. My heart was never in the rat race. I wanted to touch people. I feel dull and worn. But so long as I am breathing, I will continue to try to understand how to make this right. I don't have it in me to shut my eyes and ears to focus on money and raising kids without first untangling the trail of pills and hospitals. There has to be something more. I hope, wherever you are, you understand. It seems so many other people want to bury this. Just give the psychotic guy more happy pills until he shuts up and does something useful. I hope they are wrong about me. There has to be something more than silence in my future.
I created a series called creative medicine to warn people about the dangers of different prescription drugs. This is not at all an encouragement to use them. Quite the opposite. I learned wrong. I still have to take some. I try to take as few as possible. Lots of vitamins helps to make up the difference. My hope is that by educating Greenville County, I can avoid lots of pills out there. I can avoid doctors getting script happy.
I'll never forget Mini press. This is some highly dangerous stuff. The red pills. It decreases adrenaline. Makes you think things are ok. deactivates fight or flight. decreases nightmares for some people. BUT WHEN YOU COME DOWN... shit gets real. suddenly you're freaking out and can't stop. Nothing makes it stop. That's probably why they dye it red. it's an alpha-blocker. primarily for blood pressure. Beta blockers are safer, less powerful. The blue pills. Propranolol.
Gabapentin is a drug that I have strong feelings about. That stuff can get pretty crazy. Disinhibits behavior like alcohol. I start doing all sorts of crazy stuff. This one is scary. Mostly used for seizures, but also for shingles and off label for anxiety. Long term use, especially at high doses, can (in my experience) lead to muscle spasms, phantom sensations, and a loss of awareness.
Benzos are classified as anti-anxiety medications, but they can be used for some other things like sleep, or I think as add ons for seizures or akathisia, for example. Some benzos are valium, tranxene, ativan, xanax, and klonopin.
These meds have become slightly less popular for a few different reasons. Firstly, they are addictive. Secondly, they decrease alertness. Thirdly, they have certain long-term effects, primarily in memory, attention, and overall cognitive functioning. These effects can be permanent, regardless of whether the drugs are stopped. Can you guess how many of those Benzos I have tried? of the ones listed above only, I have tried all but xanax. These things are dangerous. They change your perception.
The hippocampus encodes memories based on emotional intensity. When you're on a benzo, it calms you and everything is just groovy. Decreases the intensity. What will you remember? How well will you function on the drug, and once discontinued? It also slows down your learning. You adapt more slowly because it slows down the neural transmissions via the GABA system. Benzos truly are dangerous.
When they talk about substance abuse and addiction... I was on a lot of meds by prescription. My use of prescription meds was not safe. That's why I talk about the meds. It's important that I talk about the meds. How dangerous they are. It reminds me not to take them. I still keep ativan. But only for when I need to go near hospitals. I can't go near memorial without freaking out. I was never into opioids, thank God. But drugs like benzos, alpha blockers, gabapentin, mirapex, and perhaps amantadine... some of these drugs are quite dangerous. clozapine numbed me out, making me unaware of how I was affecting others and how my mind was adapting to the world. Without natural emotional response, I wasn't learning about the world.
