Another mixed state. That’s what my medical team are diagnosing my last episode. Partly psychotic, partly hypomanic, partly irritable. But I’m emerging now and that’s the main thing.

Today is the first day I have taken only one Lorazapam to dull my constant restlessness. I simply couldn’t sit still, my thoughts were racing a million miles a minute, but unlike my previous hypomanic episodes I felt irritable and annoyed. It was an intensely unpleasant experience.

So my meds have been changed, my Lithium increased, and I feel SO much better. I have switched seroquel for olanzapine. Both antipsychotics, but the olanzapine doesn’t zombify me. I wake up and feel like I’ve actually slept. I dont think I realised how tired I was until I came off the seroquel.

But there is still a part of me that hates the drug regime. Lithium, desvenlafaxine, olanzapine, lorazapam, seroquel, tamazapam…all for me? The pharmacists know me by name, and dole me out my plethora of pills in weekly supplies. I feel like a drug addict. When people ask if I have ever done drugs I just tell them I don’t need to. I get natural high’s and I get my pills for free at the pharmacy 😉

I will start cutting it down again, once I am full recovered. I’m grateful I have found drugs that work. It’s just sometimes I wish I could walk around without pills rattling inside me 😉

A recent photo of myself 😉

They say the episode was brought on by stress. Your body reacts to stress through chemical changes which can skew the happy chemicals in people like me. I don’t really care. I’m enjoying being able to sit down and actually write. To read a little. To not feel like running a marathon 24 hours a day.

And I’m ok. I truly am. I feel somehow that I had a negative energy that needed to be purged through this mixed state. And now the tears have dried, and I have room for positivity again. That black feeling in my chest has gone…and oh how wonderful it is to breathe.

How wonderful it is to be me again.

p.s. Did I tell you I finished my thesis draft? 🙂