Binge drinking — long-term aftereffects worse with start at younger ages

A new study shows that binge drinking affects ability to relearn tasks that have to be adjusted; what’s more, it shows that this difficulty, as well as long-term loss of impulse control and related issues, is worse for people who start binging at a younger age.

I AM HUMAN, HEAR ME FEEL

A feeling human,
No emotional cripple;
How could I be that?

If I really were
I couldn’t feel so anxious
Of lacking feeling.

Expressions crippled?
Perhaps; I’ll not deny it.
But feelings still whole.

Yes, my mind emotes;
I am human hear me feel.
I need to believe.

Believe I deserve
To feel the love and anger
And everything else.

Anxiety calls

For the first time in a while, and the first time since moving back to Dallas, I felt like throwing up from anxiety this morning. And, although I did not feel that tired, I definitely did not feel like getting out of bed this morning. I do wonder if I tapered back too much on antidepressants.

I have a couple of emotional issues on my plate, no, ONE emotional issue on my plate, that I'm not dealing with well right now, either.

PLATONISM AS PSYCHOLOGICAL BALM

When I was younger,
I believed in the Platonic ideal.
I especially believed in the ideal of myself;
Perfect, and so, incorporeal.
The Platonic equivalent
Of the Pauline spiritual body.
Why?
Was it a love of Platonic philosophy,
Or rather a Pauline loathing of the physical?
I believe the latter.
Not only had I internalized
Augustinian angst about concupiscence,
I also had been buffeted by childhood slings and arrows.
Bullying by neighborhood acquaintances,
Abuse of various types at home,
Asthma, allergies and other breathing problems,
A bit of a lisp,
Late growth and skinniness.
What shy, quiet, lonely, hurting boy
Wouldn’t harbor Platonic thoughts
As a secret dream of salvation
From the curse and burden of the physical,
Deliverance from a body
That brought nothing but pain?

SSRI Depravity

SSRI deprivation,
Or depravity,
Stabs at my head,
An ice pick to my temple,
Mocking my claims to wholeness.
Modern medicine
Isn’t always so modern.
At times, it seems mental health care
Has advanced but little,
From Paleolithic
To Neolithic,
Maybe Chalcolithic.
The equivalent of Bronze or Iran Age uses
Of tailored treatment
Remain far away,
A PR strategy
From Big Pharma,
A sop to regulators,
To justify
Ever-lessened oversight.

Feeling better

My sister and my best friend both tell me I sound better, on the phone at least, since moving back to Dallas. Another person said the same about me just by sobriety chat room observations online.

I guess I’m more transparent than I might want to admit; sometimes, that’s pretty good. I have cut one of my two antidepressants in half, as I felt lethargic in the mornings, not antsy and sleep-deprived. That was shortly after accepting the job offer to move back here, which I figured had something to do with it.

When my tricyclic runs out, I’ll cut the Celexa in half again a month or so later.

SSRI “brain zaps” — they are for real

Technically, your brain itself doesn’t feel anything; it has no sensory nerves. But, trust me, an electrochemical overstimulation of nerves, whether in the head or elsewhere, DOES happen when you’re trying to get off an selective serotonin reuptake antidepressant, even if you’re tapering and not quitting cold turkey.

I had “zaps” on my left temple as I cut back from 20mg/day to 10 mg/day of generic Celexa. I had one, just one, about a week after starting to cut down. Two days later, I had two, within about half an hour later. That was last Tuesday and Thursday. Saturday, I had one Saturday afternoon. Then another. Then another.

Soon, it was a new “zap” every 10 minutes. Needless to say, what passed for sleep Saturday night wasn’t very long, nor was it very refreshing.

So, if you are on an SSRI, or even an older tricyclic antidepressant — follow doctor’s orders, especially when it comes to tapering off and how to do it.

Anxiety — anger turned sideways

If the old cliché about depression being anger turned inward has any degree of truth, then anxiety can certainly be seen as anger turned sideways, at least to a degree.

Anxiety is, at bottom, far of the future. To the degree this fear is based on anger at my present state, status or condition, or the environment in which I am making my future look iffy to me, then anxiety is anger turned sideways.

R(E)BT?

To me, rational(-emotive) behavioral therapy is often, as avidly espoused by people who also, unsurprisingly, seem to be libertarian in their politics. And, from their lips, the “E,” the emotive content of this therapy, seems often missing. Not surprising, again, as these are the same people who would have us all believe that economics is a totally rational game.

Well, neither it nor psychology are.

A wild, wacky week

What a weird, wild and wacky week since my last entry.

The sobriety chat room acquaintance I mentioned there apparently faked her own suicide, for whatever reasons. I made an error in judgment over running a story, or not, and had the news manager of the local radio station question my journalistic integrity the week after someone from the other side of this hot button story did, as if it's the radio station's business what the newspaper writes in the first place. The radio station guy's angry yelling at me provided a stiff test of the anti-anxiety property of my antidepressants. They worked, but it’s like I was drained enough to slide a step or two backwards on the brain/hormonal growth they had provided. Then, I had to call the family of Grimes County’s first Iraq death today.

In between, saw my college and graduate school best friend when he was at a convention in Houston.