"Couple decades" use is a fucking BIG issue, in terms of intensity. Your brain is currently lacking all the brainy things (neurotransmitters etc.) the meds were boosting/preserving. Everything regulated got unregulated.
This is a nasty way for sure, but if you know you want to do it, you simply got to do it to get through it.
If you fail, it won't break you, and you will try again to get out, but differently. So you will finally make it, and that's the most important.
And then you have a chance to live your real life.
A couple decades is indeed a long time of directed therapeutic use, and recent world events, and timing of things have caused me to do a lot of meditation and introspection over the last few months, making me recognize, that in a SHTF situation, I will be utterly compromised for an undetermined amount of time as my system experiences potentially life-threatening withdrawal symptoms. (holy run-on sentence...)
I've recognized I've gained a lot of experience since being prescribed these drugs, learned enough about the diseases and myself, that I believe I am capable of tackling removal of psychotropics from my daily regimen entirely (better coping techniques due to experience, education, meditation, introspection, study...)
I quit cigarettes cold turkey successfully.
I quit drinking alcohol cold turkey successfully.
It's not safe or healthy to quit psychotropics cold turkey successfully. I'm going to need to suffer at each step down. No sense tip-toeing around it. Working with my doctor regularly during this period in time/process.
The truly frightening thing is, that we raised the dose I was on, in hopes of improving a problem, but instead of fixing the problem, it ended up giving me incredible anger issues that we were not able to properly identify until near Christmas.
I sort of became an emotional angry monster for close to a year. A different person entirely almost. It feels very surreal "coming back" to myself - able to maintain control of my emotional self, and able to lean on logic a lot more using meditation and introspection, and generally being way more calmer now.
Had a really brutal argument with Rick where he's desperately like "Why are you being such an asshole to me?" and I sort of broke down into tears and started crying, only able to answer him "I don't know..." and we realized something had gone horribly wrong blah blah blah...
Anyway, I'm a lot better now finishing the second (of many more) step down off of the primary drug, and need to switch over to another drug entirely to replace the primary, to safely begin the transition to 0mg per day.
Secondary titration-down schedule involves spacing out the doses increasing per hour, for a few months, and that's a lot more challenging. Not starting the second step down off that drug until I'm "safely" switched over to the "new" primary two months from now.
It's all fucking retarded, anyway. I get out on the ranch, and it's just impossible to be depressed out there. It's so beautiful, calming, and such a change of pace from city life. I love it out there, and recognize the change of pace will mean I don't need to be on this brain crap any more... I hope... we will see. One month at a time kind of deal until I'm at zero. Not in a hurry to get there, but feel it's important to at least give it an honest try.
For the sake of, well, everyone near and dear to me, I guess. And myself.
I would like to think there is still a lot of fun shit I have left to do with what time God chooses to leave me with, and would be nice to be "clean" again. I've been "polluted" for too long, in a manner of speaking.
Feeling very hopeful and optimistic despite all the horrible shit happening around us.
I still hold grudges like a Yakuza Boss with a multi-generational blood-feud. That part of my logical self remains, I'm just not so emotional about it any more. Remove/block-out/ameliorate the negative energy, and move on with my life.
I would like to think you are never too old to stop improving in some ways.
The last sentence sums it up, yep. Growing is our destiny, imo.
That pro-nature move was superb. I grew up in a 10k village, i didn't live in cities bigger than 1 million. Still, the more far from nature, the more troublesome my life.
After moving back into nuture's arms, watchting the deers every day, taking a walk through the woods a couple of yards away from the house, being surprised by the look, eye-in-eye, of the hawk silently sailing through the cold air, passing by, an arm's length above my head. Or, in those clear, warm Summer nights, when the high pitched barking of some young fox, hysterically running away through the forest, because he just got into the electric fence around the chicken coop, is cutting through the silence of the night, while i'm lying under the starry, black sky, listening to the damped, whining noise of the step motors constantly moving that telescope, in sync with the planet's rotation...
Sure, i had to sacrifice some things to get there, but retrospectively, i didn't really need them anyway, and i never missed them here.
Heaven and Hell are both part of a human life, not something one encounters after death.
(Nietzsche, iirc)
