Well…maybe not immediately, but I sure as hell felt like it when I woke up. It’s just a feeling of everything has to be rushed, but at the same time, I don’t want to get out of bed. But going back to a couple of posts ago, the breakfast thing took most of it away, at least temporarily. I’m writing right after I devoured last night’s leftover pizza, and I feel a hell of a lot better than I did when I first woke up. I’m also starting to think that because I have no blinds, the sun is giving me a rude wake up call so that could also affect my negative mood.
I think it’s a good time to try the tylenol experiment with this and see what happens because I have a bit of a headache, and heading to a hockey game soon. Let’s see if I can screw my head back on right.
So, I think I hit a little snag, and it all happened in 24 hours. I really did like that show, 24, and I know it’s back out, but I caught on late, so…yeah, can’t watch the rest of it.
Basically, it started with hockey on Friday, right after my last post. There’s a female there that I have my eye on, but being a goalie, and her being a skater, we don’t normally get too much of a chance to talk. I bumped into her and timekept one of her games a couple of weeks ago, where she grabbed the back of the head of some other chick with the puck, pushed her, then looked like she thought, “Might as well go for the whole 9-yards because it’s a roughing penalty,” and slammed her face into the ice. This happened right in front of me, and I was dying of laughter. Oddly enough, she didn’t get the penalty.
Anyways, on Friday, she came in with some guy, and pre-Cipralex me would be thinking all sorts of jealous thoughts, but they weren’t much this time around. It was only when the facilitator told me that she had a thing for hockey guys that got my anxiety going again. I really wasn’t feeling well during the game, but I kept telling myself that I’m a good goalie; I ended up letting in 4 goals in about 40 minutes, so that’s pretty good considering the company of Junior players I was with and how long I’ve been playing ice net (since October; and I let in a bunch when I was dying afterwards…leg day and then hockey day doesn’t mix). From what I seen though, I kept telling myself that I’m a better goalie than the guy was a skater, and I ended up shutting him down the entire time I was playing against him.
It didn’t stop there though. I carried the anxiety to work and wasn’t able to shake it off. There were blurbs during the day when I was fine, but for the most part, I couldn’t even form sentences. Same thing with work yesterday as well.
The Cipralex-less Experiment
I wrote a while back that Tylenol (or maybe ibuprofen in general, haven’t found that out yet) really helped alleviate the headaches and dizziness associated with the Cipralex withdrawals. It even took away the anxiety with it, which was a total surprise, and lead me to believe that the starving-for-SSRIs hippocampus (which is what SSRIs repairs) is what, at least majorly, causes anxiety and depression. So, because of the past couple of days, I wanted to try it out again; to see if Tylenol does relieve anxiety. I highly doubt that it would (my null hypothesis), but given my history with SSRIs, my current situation could just be my brain deeply “needing” it. I had a friend who told me once that it took her 2-3 months for her symptoms to fully go away when she went off her Cipralex; at least I think she said “months.” I’m also 99% sure that she just quit cold turkey after only a month or so on them, whereas, I was on it for a good two years and I ran a weening experiment on myself. So there’s that that’s influencing my attacks and headaches.
With all that said though, I did just take a Tylenol, but I’m not 100% sure if it’s from the anxiety or the fact that I really didn’t drink that much water and sweating buckets yesterday at work. Regardless, I took one an hour and a half-ish ago, and I still have a mild headache, no anxiety problems right now, but I wouldn’t hold my breath on that.
I don’t have much of an operational definition for this, just a simple “Does it have any personal effect or not?” type experiment. Very non-scientific and unempirical, and I probably won’t even give out numbers, but it’s a nice little mini-experiment.
That’s about it. Work also isn’t helping with the anxiety since I’m making next to nothing with 3 jobs and barely any hours (corporate greed), but at least I keep having better thoughts that I have a job, money’s sort of coming in, and I got the time to look for a better job in the meantime. I’m not sure what I would’ve thought pre-Cipralex though.
It’s March. I see that it is currently snowing where I live. I’m still experimenting with my Cipralex and if I didn’t know I was experimenting, I would be thrown in on a massive, psychadelic trip. The good part is, it’s cold and I don’t have an air-conditioner. I hate sleeping in the heat because it’s so uncomfortable and gives me anxiety whenever I can’t fall asleep. So there’s that, and I’m hoping that this summer is going to be a lot cooler than it has been in recent years.
The Experimenting
I’m sorry it’s been so long since my last post. February’s normally mid-term season so I’ve been bogged down with school stuff. So I’m on my 4-day cycle now, and it’s been very interesting. I felt that I should’ve kept going during my 3-day cycle, but moved into a 4-day anyways, but I think that five cycles isn’t enough when it’s this far apart. One of the most interesting things was that I was getting headaches and pretty heavy doses of anxiety and depression at the beginning of the cycle. Before, it used to be at the end of the cycle, and the Cipralex would take care of it, but at the start of the 4-day cycles, it was bad enough that I couldn’t even concentrate. I pushed through anyways, and at my sixth cycle so far, it’s starting to level out. I actually want to stay at this level for now, since I got a couple of things that requires my full, sane attention, like hockey and assignments.
The Experimenting Revelation
I mentioned back in November, when I started blogging again that it was hard for me to quit the Cipralex cold turkey. The symptoms I described above were reminiscent of that time, but I decided to do something about it: I took a tylenol. I wanted to get rid of the headache and the dizziness at least, but it worked way too well. Even the negative self-thoughts were gone. I felt that needed it’s own, one-sentence, italic’d paragraph on its own because it was that freaking effective. It was incredible. I’d say in less than half an hour, 95% of the physiological symptoms and thoughts were gone. I wouldn’t go as far as to say that it’s a complete replacement for getting off SSRIs, but it’s a hell of a bandaid for it…more like gauze. I’m actually tempted to go back on the Cipralex full-time, get off of it, and try the Tylenol thing to get off of it completely!
The Current Update But all-in-all, things are okay. The student loans here finally figured me out and screwed me on my funding, so now I’m scrambling to find a fast-food job for the time being. There’s a bit of anxiety to that, but for some reason, I’m not too worried. I’m also one more law course away from completing my degree, but another semester for my psychology portion to fully graduate. There’s a bit of anxiety there as I’m trying to figure out what I want to do. Part of me wants to just stay under the radar and live out my life playing a massive amount of hockey, while working at some bullshit job. Add upgrading my marks to get into a masters program, I’m set. But another part of me is wondering if it’s just fatigue from being in school for so long that i just want to take a break. I do want to take a vacation out east and golf along the Atlantic ocean though, or some massive body of water like the Bay of Fundy. I figured if I watched hockey in the west coast of Vancouver, I might as well do this.
Here’s a not so random song. I really got into this band not too long ago, and this song perfectly exemplifies depression and anxiety.
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Making it easier to understand depression and neurology. It's okay, you can laugh.
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