Noon hour.
My Vraylar medication blocks brain dopamine so well that I can’t feel anything spiritual. Obviously this condition will influence what I say.
Do we want to conceive life as a big something or a big zero? This was the argument of Victor Hugo in Les Miserables. Unfortunately I have to take the medication, so I’m kind of stuck regarding the religion thing. I wish it were not so.
With dopamine levels, it’s feast or famine. Is there a happy middle ground between these extremes?
Six fifty five morning.
Outside is black as ink but I went out in it anyway. At four thirty I could no longer sleep so I got up; besides, my dreams were rather unpleasant. The music I hear is archaic for me, some Three Dog Night from my grade school years. My family was closer knit in those days, or so it seemed, maybe because all the adults drank, while today, the drinkers make a minority.
I remember a birthday breakfast I had with my sister nine years ago at Burrito Boy on River Road to the south of here. A strange rendezvous, because she called me to say the battery in her van was dead and she wanted to cancel. However, I suggested picking her up in my truck, and that’s what we ended up doing. Distinctly I recall telling her at our table that I thought I was a nicer person when I was drinking, which in hindsight was a load of crap. But in my defense, I drank for self medication of the illness, so it wasn’t entirely illicit. The drug I take for psychosis now wasn’t on the market until the following year. Up till then I squeaked by on a drug developed in the Fifties, a “first generation” antipsychotic that barely sufficed to keep me feeling okay… There had been a controversy over whether talk therapy could take the place of medication for schizophrenia. I don’t know what the current thinking is on that, but it seems very dubious to me, especially when psychologists can’t agree on what causes schizophrenia, if it’s even an experiential thing.
I think psychiatry is to thank for us being out of hospitals, not to mention out of medieval dungeons, chained up in darkness.
Today I read 13 pages of The Magic Mountain; I’m not even sure what drew me to it. It’s one of the books that I dabble in and then put aside for long periods. Jeez, I must have started it 22 years ago! I blow hot and cold on the book. I also played my bass again, but I noticed how my chops are slower than they used to be, and I’m kind of sloppy technically. Another observation is the impact on me of the antipsychotic medication. It makes me feel very realistic even to the exclusion of experiencing anything mystical or romantic. Thomas Mann writes of romantic love in a magical kind of way, though with tongue in cheek humor. But I think my medication puts the skids on a lot of things that make life worth living. Thus it’s a tricky balance to maintain between imagination and reality. It seems that even Eros contains a share of mystic sentiment. When you love a person, it’s like taking a potion, and you idealize the object of your desire. This is the magic I mentioned. But a realistic mood ruins the effect of the love potion. It knocks Cupid’s arrows off course. I know it sounds silly but I’m serious.
But I have no choice but to keep taking the medication. The imagination thing is feast or famine, or all or nothing. As it is today, I have to live with the famine side of the equation. So although I’m feeling sane and rational, I’m not having any fun with my life. I think that sooner or later, something somewhere is going to break. Something’s got to give, or it’s all for nothing.
Quarter of eleven at night.
It finally occurs to me that the Vraylar I take is very powerful and acts on me like a sedative, rendering me a lot less sensitive to some of the essential experiences of human life, such as spirituality, sexuality, and other things. Vraylar raises the threshold for the stuff that makes you feel alive in perhaps a primitive way, which I find to be regrettable to an extent. It was having a large Coca-Cola today that gave me this self awareness regarding the antipsychotic. Directly or indirectly the drug is costing me my membership in the church; but on the other hand it helps me avoid alcohol for the purpose of minimizing my delusions and hallucinations. It makes me wonder just what is the nature of schizophrenia: could it be just a matter of extreme sensitivity of the nervous system? In that case, maybe the psychosis is truer to reality than anyone had believed. Or perhaps the excitability of the nerves is like a tale by Edgar Allan Poe, an experience of darkness and terror and phantasmagoria not without its own peculiar kind of beauty… The best part about the Vraylar is how it saves me from alcohol abuse by abolishing psychosis; but the pitfall is mostly the way it deprives me of some of the quintessential feelings of human experience, the sheer primitive energy that makes us alive and gives us happiness as well as pain. It banishes the emotional roller coaster of life— which is why it is prescribed for bipolar disorder in addition to schizophrenia. In sum, it pushes down everything for better and for worse.
Quarter after nine.
I’m being picked up for church in a half hour. Feeling skeptical about it, as I usually do. I guess I’m skeptical about a lot of things. This is normal for me.
Three o’clock.
And so I went to church like I was supposed to, but the medication desensitized me to everything spiritual and religious. This is what I told Pastor when we talked for a minute after service, and I know it’s the truth. We sang a dark sounding kyrie hymn but I didn’t feel particularly moved by the music. I can’t experience either the light or dark side of religious faith anymore due to the Vraylar. My mindset is wholly realistic today, with nothing at all fantastic or metaphysical going on. But what am I supposed to do? I can’t stop taking my medication just to have a religious life. Frankly I feel quite comfortable on Vraylar at this dose and I’d rather not change it. There’s nothing really wrong with the way I think or process information. If anything, maybe the church pastor and parish have a screw loose… The rain restarted at about two thirty this afternoon and will keep on until six o’clock. I feel just fine. I may have to resign from the church, depending on how it goes after today. I understand that resignation is something that can be done. Probably it’s for the best if I do so, but I’ll give it another try next weekend.
Quarter after five.
The cocktail of meds I took last night really conked me out. I can’t even think about church today. Of course the sky is still black.
Eight o’clock.
Now it’s sunny out, but I still feel pretty crappy. I’m going to sit here for another half hour before my trip to the market. I’m tired and my brain hurts.
Nine ten. I peeked into my mailbox and found The American Scholar, the Kappa magazine. This might be rather interesting to look through. It’s definitely better than The Tribune News, though clearly it isn’t free. College was so long ago, and I went there on my mother’s money. I was too young to make decisions for myself; I had no clue what I was doing there, and even if so, my best laid schemes went wrong. When I read The Fountainhead, I believed I had a rosy future, and good fortune would fall into my lap. But then the very faculty of reason betrayed me: you don’t have a future without logic. My best friend of eleven years turned on me when I fell ill because he couldn’t accept the change in my thinking. He passed away eight years later, still feeling jaded and bitter. I should’ve been a great musician and composer; but no: there is no “should” in this life, or not according with my will. I don’t beat myself up for it now. You do what you can, and that is all… The sky is brilliant and dazzling white. I thought I noticed a little smoke in the air when I left the house this morning. Heather said some nice things to me. She had actually missed me at seven o’clock, thinking I might not make it today. She said her trip to DC was amazing, and she wasn’t used to the workaday grind now. I was a half hour late getting Aesop his breakfast. He bore it very patiently. And by now, church is getting kickstarted without me to see it.
Quarter after eleven.
My visit with Todd went fine; I’m going back on the Vraylar starting tonight because I’ve felt so terrible on the other medication. My rides back and forth to my appointment were with senior citizens. Then I walked to the market at a later time than usual. Michelle told me what a crazy morning she’d had. Their Internet connection had been down for an hour and a half, so customers couldn’t pay with a credit card or even use the ATM. She thought they were pissed off when they had to go someplace else. I also saw Suk and said hi to Brandi, who has worked there for eleven years or longer. I remember when she was a new employee and was mentored by John. He left the business long ago due to illness. He said once that you choose to either drink or not drink— as simple as that. At the time, I disagreed with him, thinking that alcoholism was genetic and not a matter of free will. Now I can’t really say one way or the other: is alcohol use an issue of fate or do we have control over the behavior? Perhaps saying it’s fate is just rationalization, and what it comes down to is the desire to drink or not drink. So that what you end up doing is what you wanted to do. And this would make good sense…
Noon hour. Today is cloudy and overcast, and I felt a few drops of rain out walking a while ago; just isolated, random drops that don’t mean anything. Cherie was out walking her big puppy up the street and Roger worked on the fence shared with Lori’s property, telling everyone it was a project he didn’t want to do. Lori’s house reminds me of something that happened in December of 2010. It used to be owned by some older guy. One day his mail got delivered to my box by mistake, so I went to his door to return the letter to him. That same month, I kept getting free copies of the Junction City Tribune, which I put in the trash without delay. The articles in it were conservative Christian and not interesting to me at all. They demonstrated a lack of intelligence. I can remember how I struggled with personalization and paranoia about the neighbors, especially when someone moved away. I automatically believed it was my fault. This paranoia was just like my mother’s. Thank goodness for cognitive therapy, which is the antidote to the other therapies and programs that don’t work.
One forty.
Last night I raised the dose of my medication to 3 mg, as I was supposed to do, but as a consequence I got up feeling terrible, with the blackest of thoughts. The only logical thing to do is reduce the dose down to 2 mg again at bedtime tonight. If I still feel this lousy by this weekend then I’ll stay home from volunteering and from worship on Sunday. At best, I’ll do only one and not the other. Schizophrenia is a frustrating mess. I hope tomorrow is a better day than this. I’ve got my eye on the sky out of my window: it’s still white instead of azure, the celestial blue that it ought to be. I guess sometimes you have to look upon the world with blue colored glasses when the reality falls short of perfect.
Quarter after eight.
It can be over a month before Risperdal takes full effect, so I should just be patient and a bit sympathetic with myself. I had my morning Snapple tea for my caffeine buzz and I’m feeling better. I didn’t see Michelle today; Suk held down the fort himself. There were quite a few customers, and also a small beer distributor for a product called Boneyard Beer. I saw a few Mexican guys and some blond woman who was obnoxious for saying excuse me— or was it thank you? Aesop is whining for his breakfast. I texted Rebecca about this week’s developments a few minutes ago… The funny thing about different brands of beer is that they all have the same active ingredient: ethanol. No matter how unique they say their product is, they all just get you drunk.
I guess I’m going to church this Sunday to participate in the service. My mind keeps playing the same Yes song, “Awaken.” I shared it with Pastor and he said he liked it when he emailed me yesterday evening. He even researched it a bit for some background information on its composition, particularly the lyric. I suppose I was way off when I compared it to Keats. It is different when you engage with the text alone from digging for historical and biographical contexts. Maybe there’s no wrong interpretation of a work of art. So, to my mind, this Yes song may always be like Endymion or “Ode to a Nightingale.” …The air quality outside is getting even smokier, clotting the blue sky and changing the color of the sun. For a moment I forgot about the trouble with my medication. Everything is the same when I don’t think about what drug I’m taking. Or maybe music and poetry comprise a drug in themselves, one that’s nontoxic and good for the soul.
This is the Saturday of Labor Day weekend. I avoided my laptop all day yesterday. I wrote some decent posts using my iPad. Today, I hiked over to Bi-Mart and bought Vitamin E and a kit for removing earwax. I have taken one of the vitamins at 400 IU. Afterwards, I felt dizzy and drowsy. I just need to get used to it. Years ago, I took 800 IU daily on the advice of my psychiatrist. I think his reason was to prevent dyskinesia from the old antipsychotic. Secretly, he was also thinking of my heart… It is very strange to look at the blue sky today and see something ineluctably here and now, and to know that here and now is much different from any past I ever knew. The sky appears whitish with smoke or a sort of smog, but it is unlike any ceiling I have seen in the past. A typical summer sky in the NW looks azure, a deep, rich blue. Partly, it is because I am sober that I perceive the heavens as they really are today. Drunkenness could blot out reality and replace it with whatever I desired… In addition to the afternoon white skies, I have observed that the predawn light in the east is virtually greenish mixed with peach. It looks like a kind of chemical stew, improper for the dawn, and quite disturbing. This change in color and climate is what we have done to our habitat… Damien is coming tomorrow at noon to mow and to collect what I owe him. Otherwise, I have no plans for Sunday or Monday. On Tuesday I have my lab appointment at nine fifteen. I must be ready to leave an hour before. I cannot think of what else is going on next week. Wednesday is forecast to be 99 degrees. Tomorrow: 91, I think. Hopefully, my portable a/c will arrive soon. I paid for it a long time ago… I asked Aesop if he would like me to brush him tonight. He seemed a little uneasy about it, but I think he will put up with it… I dislike the Editor feature of this app. It doesn’t allow me to use contractions without it flagging them. If I took its suggestions, my idiomatic English would come out quite plain and sterile. I’d look goofy. Therefore, I’m going to use apostrophes anyway. From my experience so far, I think I prefer writing with my iPad. Okay, I’ve told it not to check for this issue.
Quarter after five. I’m gazing again at the dirty sky. It seems so unnatural, and for that reason, ugly. A good rain might help it… It’s about time for dinner. Just a burrito. Sometime thereafter I can take my other dose of Vitamin E. I don’t remember the last time I took a gabapentin. The good news is that I’m not chemically dependent on any drugs.
robgradens 