I’ve been having allergic reactions to lithium and abilify recently, the abilify added after I had to quit lithium, cold turkey. The abilify was even worse, and made me feel really crazy for the first time ever– manic, mixed, unable to concentrate, on the verge of rage. Even my worst depressions never left me doubting myself so much. Fortunately, yet again, my great doctors spotted what was going on at an early stage, and now I am off both drugs and going through withdrawal. The withdrawal’s been more of the same, just only slightly less severe each day, and slightly better after each nap, each liter of water, each massage, as the poisons slowly leach there way out.

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Mornings are better/a mostly full night’s sleep/or at least two or three chunks of several hours at a time.
When the antsiness is replaced by weird dreams if you’re lucky/bad ones if the ativan and tylenol and benadryl name brand saviors fall behind the poisons.

With your nocturnal naps under the belt of your bathrobe and some light reading from three to five a.m./and a good liter of water to wash down more name brand saviors/I can mostly function well/well/except I have to pee constantly/pace like a tiger in the zoo/clench dystonic jaw and neck and shoulders and hands into claws of rage and rictus of anxiety/I feel like an animal/in a bad way./To talk wildly/drum fingers constantly/shift and squirm in my seat like a kindergartener/to want to run around the table until it’s time to take an early lunch and walk around the building eight times/more pills/more water.

All day stretching your poor sore stiff self as poisons leach through your pores your pee your sweat/I swear I smell like salt all day/all muscles poisoned, protesting, screaming for relief, especially when you are so distracted you miss the next dose signaled by that cell phone alarm you forgot to answer.

Sitting still is bad enough/talking to someone is worse/keeping in the hypomanic bursts of speech/words burbling like water over stony brooks at icemelt’s bursting./It’s worse after lunch because six hours is really all you’ve got before the name brand saviors cease to be so effective and you need a three hour nap interrupted by a ten minute pee and more nap to feel human again and keep your thoughts from running together like hot caramel overflowing the pot, sticking to everything burning hard to peel away taking forever to cool.

Touch your tightened jaw/your knotted neck/use the sensory trick of touch to tame the tensioned parts momentarily/petting/stroking/pressing/smoothing/soreness frantic when will this stop when will I feel better/maybe I should take just half of the dog that mauled me? to ease it?/but you know that will slow it down, stop it, reverse it, increase it, make it longer harder even worse/unimaginable, unendurable.

You know it can be worse/you know you’re not that bad/you’re home, not at hospital/and while you’re hyped stressed bummed exhausted hurting talking and oh it’s all too much at once/but still you see the light at the end of the tunnel/can say, with reason, that mornings are better/tomorrow will be better than today/and you hope pray wish cry weep for tomorrow to come sooner/soonest for those who don’t know can’t know/deny/relapse/refuse to see/to feel/to believe each morning can be a little better.

Mornings are better, at least for me.

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There was a thought-provoking article in the NYT about the “Mad Pride” movement— about proclaiming our craziness publicly, about being examples of adaptation and function despite it all. Like any movement, any blanket platform, there are lots of threads, some of which are more provocative of thought and agreement and disagreement than others. I’ll try to assemble some thoughts on it next week.