The Sea of Klonopin

The Sea of Klonopin is 40,000 feet deep, and when you take the first couple of pills you’re held gently on the bottom.
It’s restful there, you’re neither asleep, nor awake, but half-dreaming.
Then I saw it was my mind, and a waiter comes to the table where I lay
And brings a menu called “Inner Self: Known and Unknown.”
Some are beautiful, and those you bless, and as it’s blessed it rises
through the Sea of Klonopin.

You remain with the waiter, and he warns me now the menu of self
will begin to bring fears and insecurities, old time guilts, “with things you’ve
never seen before, or thought about; all brought to you on heaping platters
of ugly, multicolored slime”

Then Klonopin says “notice it is all before you in chains! The ugliness you see here is powerless, it is here for you to judge.”

O, then I prayed, “Lord, Jesus, Blessed Mother, Saint Therese, and all the angels and saints that love me, come to and help me now.” (Guess I’m outed as a Catholic now.)

That niggling fear you never really understood, the one that waited
in the left corner of your mind, always ready to signal the neurons
to fire, fire, fire!

Your judgment is swift. “I reject you.”

Upon which words the servants of Klonopin remove the chains,
and it becomes waterlogged, part of the bottom of the Sea of Klonopin.
A mere stain where once a terror stood. And so with the next,
and the next. The number of things you have judged away
from you are now waterlogged and cannot rise…

Yet — miracle! You do rise

During Ascent, Depression tried to attack me from my left shoulder blade,
and Klonopin walked it out the door like pair of Vegas enforcers.
It was gone from me, and my shoulder
has been quiet since then, too.
Later a rush of adrenalin came out of the back of my chest,
I knew that it was the onset of a doozy of an attack. Again, the Klonopin enforcers came
and took that rushing adrenalin threat out a side door,
where I hope they beat it to death.

All the while I rise through this Sea of Klonopin, off and on moments of . . .
So much of what it touches and fixes are little receptors in our brains, covering them over with tens of thousands of feet of Klonopin protection. Everything runs, all of me is in working order, but my own neurology can misfire and put me into four days of torment.  Klonopin, son of Bromazepam, and all you Benzodiazapines, thank you.

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First thing you should do is read this story. It seems to me that three or four suicides does not an epidemic make. When you think of the sheer numbers of people who take Singulair, three or four suicides seems statistically low. I am no scientist, so what do I know, but a lot of people I know take Singulair and it keeps them breathing with much less trouble than before they were prescribed the pill.

The report says they are probing the links between Singulair and suicide, but I think it’s a little early in the game to be publishing their probe. What will result? Oh, some will panic and stop taking it. Doctors will have a tough time getting people who need it to take it. In a way it’s like saying, people who eat Ham are more prone to suicide. Well for heaven sake, how many millions of people eat ham? Out of that number someone is going to commit suicide because suicide is one of the things we as humans do. It’s not a pretty fact, but it remains a fact.

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For a long time people have been telling me that when someone needs medication for an anxiety disorder, and they will not go to the doctor to get one, they self medicate with marijuana and alcohol. Here is a nice little selection from Univ. of Oregon.

It’s quite common for people to seek unhealthy ways to cope with anxiety. Needing to get to “get a buzz” in order function at a party is only one example. Substance, shopping, eating, sexual and other addictions often mask deeper discomforts and distress. Activities that in moderation can be quite pleasurable become problematic when they are compulsive and preclude other ways of finding release and comfort. If you think that you may be “self-medicating” in this way, it would be important to raise this with your counselor.

I liked the start, “unhealthy ways” of dealing with anxiety. When you look at some of the medications out there, pot and booze almost seem tame by comparison. However, that’s the trick of both substances: they only seem to make things better. From the Power and Control Blog I found this

Natural molecules similar to an active ingredient in marijuana play a part in helping the brain clear fearful memories and keep them from being permanently debilitating.

“Helping the brain clear fearful memories.” So perhaps in judicious amounts it’s alright, right? Well, the first problem is that Cannabis in every form is illegal. And there are a multitude of problems that can go along with a pot smoking habit. And alcohol is not a bit better, even though it is legal.

Isn’t that interesting that alcohol is legal but marijuana is not. It certainly has nothing to do with the threat to the roadways by crazed potsmokers. No, it’s the drunks that kill on roads. Sure, it makes sense, make legal the substance that helps us kill each other on the roads, or in bar fights, etc.

I am not defending Pot against Liquor, what I am doing is saying that for those who self medicate they are in between the rock and hard place. If they can’t afford good mental health care, and who can? Then they are forced either into the public clinics where you have to let go of any pretense of pride, or you can just smoke a joint and have a beer or twenty.

So the question remains, do you self medicate? What? You want me to answer that? Not on your life buddy.

Tags: Self Medicating, Uncategorized by Stephen
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Each morning I review the news feeds that pile up in my Good Reader, and select a few for your breakfast. I try to make your Breakfast of Anxiety News, start with something sweet, and then onto the substantial material..

1. Disordered Personality is about a movie being made in India. “The film tries to show a psychiatric disorder called dissociative identity disorder (DID) or, as it was known earlier, multiple personality disorder (MPD).”
2. Neurotic Who Makes Scary World Her Banquet, is a Book Review. Patricia Pearson, author of A Brief History of Anxiety, is a woman who takes her fears, phobias, and makes something solid, a body of work — books, all related on some way with her experience with anxiety. An intersting quote “Ms. Pearson argues, in fact, that rationalism, intended to banish superstition and fear, has instead removed one of the most effective weapons against anxiety, namely religious faith and ritual.” Give it a try.
3. Harsh words may leave invisible scars on children. That should be obvious, right? Think about situations in your own life where you heard a child spoken to roughly, or perhaps that child was you. According to the article “Research conducted by Natalie Sachs-Ericsson at Florida State University suggest that people who were verbally abused as children grow up to be self-critical adults prone to depression and anxiety.” That should be so obvious to us.

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