More is Apparently Better

I couldn’t hold out another month. I’ve been feeling the slide for weeks now. Last weekend I was nearly comatose, or at very most, walking ineffectiveness. My next follow-up wasn’t until April but I didn’t want to lose another month so I called yesterday and was able to sneak in by a cancellation today.

It’s no problem for me to sleep 12 hours these days. The only stimulation that gets me out of bed in the morning is that my job expects me to show up. At the end of the day my mind is a quivering skull of useless goo. My drive home, while slow and therapeutic gives way to dinner and a very sedated evening that is closed out around 9pm only to cycle again 10 hours later.

Dr. Jtrklzchk listened as I explained my recent downward spiral. Instead of trying some ‘plan B’ medication she pulled out her prescription pad and whittled me some new chemical. Same ingredients, new dosage. The Symbyax was up to 6/50… essentially the same Zyprexa dosage that is causing the somnia, but twice the happy (Prozac.) Mistakenly I challenged her wisdom by reiterating my descent to void.

“If a drug makes you sleepy and un-motivated, wouldn’t more of it make me more sleepy and un-motivated?” I pleaded.

She just stared over her desk with those shot-up Eastern block dentals letting me know that I was making stoopvid assumptions. I felt the love and slithered back into calm submission.

Then, like a pusher tossing in a dime baggy for good business, she scribbled out another three months of Adderall instant release. She suggested I pop one late in the afternoon to have a couple good hours in the evening, as an extension to the XR that has reportedly been keeping me productive.

I’ve got so many prescriptions for head medications on my fridge door that the magnet can’t hold them anymore. Fortunately the good doctor dated each one as to when I was supposed to fill it. Sort of like pinning a note to my Gar-animals to remind my guardian when to produce lunch money.

I think there’s a placebo affect after visiting the shrink. I haven’t taken new dosage #1 and I’m feeling more hopeful. Perhaps that’s all I’m getting. The drugs are doing nothing, but I’m feeling hopeful that they might work so that lasts awhile. I just don’t know, but I’ll take hint on the Adderall and start eating them like chiclets in the afternoon. As long as my supplier can keep me stocked and motivated with tweek, who am I to argue? She’s an MD… I’m just a DA (DumbAss)

Late Revelations

What happens when you find yourself at 47 and finally realize that you don’t like your occupation?

Every day is a challenge to get through the eight obligatory hours of the job. I have spent a lot of time over the years deluding myself that somehow I enjoyed working with computers. It is always the fault of something else: long hours, difficult co-workers, chemical imbalance in the brain. But now I’ve properly sifted all my excuses and am left with the conclusion that has been sitting in front of me the entire time. The last frontier was my mental state, and I’m confident now that my mood adjusting medicine is doing it’s thing. There are no more excuses, I simply don’t enjoy my line of work. In looking back I can’t recall any time when I relished the task of solving some problem with the computer. I never spend discretionary time programming. Never have.

What now?

Today I probably wrote a thousand lines of code, solved two problems that had been haunting me, and at the end of the day I couldn’t wait to log out. There was no satisfaction and absolutely no intrinsic reward in that work. I’ll never see the result that my work supplies the client, and I have no personal value in doing the work. At least if I were digging a hole I could enjoy the exercise. Instead I burn my retinas for 8+ hours a day while sitting on my fat ass. I may play a computer geek ‘on TV,’ but I despise the connection.

I haven’t memorized, nor find Monty Python very entertaining. I’ve only seen one or two partial episodes of the original Star Trek series. I’ve never read LoTR and haven’t seen the first three episodes of Star Wars. I don’t understand fantasy games like Magick and D&D. I don’t ‘hack’ code in my spare time. I don’t have any weird hobbies and am not a conspiracy nut. Kennedy was shot by Oswald and the towers fell because jetliners flew into them. I don’t watch cartoon network and I think Anime is gay. I couldn’t care less what the latest social network is and don’t ‘hang out’ with other geeks virtually or literally. I don’t attend any conferences, professional or otherwise. I owned an early Apple computer but I’m not proud of that. (Besides it really wasn’t mine anyway, dad bought it.)

With an important revelation about 20 years too late, what does an old geezer do?

I hear that people on average have about five careers. So far I’ve had one, but I’m not opposed to trying something else. The problem are the golden handcuffs. Sure, I could jump into a different occupation but nothing that pays what 25 years of Information Systems experience does.

Every Sunday I scan the employment section of the newspaper. For the same reason I scan the auto ads. I’m not interested in either, but I like to wonder what people are thinking… who can afford those new cars? And, who can live on those wages?

My dream job would be to drive a vehicle all day. Truck driving is the obvious, but I don’t think I could make much of a living at it. I wish there were meters or something to read out in the desert. I would climb into my Land Cruiser every day and leave civilization, crawling over mountains, reading meters and recording the results. I could do that for about 250K/year and be happy I think. Other than that, I have no other interests.

Thoughts from Trent

He sewed his eyes shut because he is afraid to see
He tries to tell me what I put inside of me
He’s got the answers to ease my curiosity
He dreamed a god up and called it Christianity
Your god is dead and no one cares
If there is a hell I’ll see you there
He flexed his muscles to keep his flock of sheep in line
He made a virus that would kill off all the swine
His perfect kingdom of killing, suffering and pain
Demands devotion atrocities done in his name
Your god is dead and no one cares
Drowning in his own hypocrisy
And if there is a hell I’ll see you there
Burning with your god in humility
Will you die for this?

Medication Dreams

I’ve always enjoyed dreams. Not the waking kind but rather the real dreams during sleep when the mind attempts to compensate for waking stimulus and tries and achieve equilibrium. A mental re-charge for another day.

Some days I linger in the twilight of semi-consciousness, not wanting to completely leave the parallel universe of sleep. Awakening from a strange place that may or may not exist, I am enraptured in a feeling that I want to return to explore further. Some places I can’t remember if I’ve been there before, or if they are being rendered entirely by my mind.

Since getting back on medication my dream places have returned. I don’t recall dreaming during my long sabbatical from head-meds, but I’ve recently returned to similar places almost forgotten.

Last night I rafted a river that I’ve floated many times in dreams past. It’s a warm river and I’m with unknown but kindred souls as we run rapids through town and toward the suburbs on this familiar stretch of river. It’s not the same river as dreams past, yet it is. Familiar bends and shutes, but different location. Like many dreams, only the feeling remains the same. When I awaken I want more.

I want to return to the river but I can’t.

–

The lute of Bassekou Kouyate provides background tonight as I attempt once again to determine my angle of repose. Still tumbling after 47 years and wondering if I’ll anchor before hitting bottom. Whatever bottom is.

It was a long day today. I set my sights low and still didn’t achieve my goal. After 5pm I still did not have my software behaving predictably. The upside is that my head wasn’t drowning in a sea of oscillating swells even after nine hours of staring at code. Without the meds, today would have been unbearable. I walked out the door and down the stairs to my truck to chase the disappearing sun off to the west. Yet another beautiful day sacrificed for what? … a little more rent money for the bankers?

A Day in Life

The mood swings have lost their camber. The days blend into weeks and the life of quiet desperation becomes tolerable. After 25 years in the same occupation, having medicated to expose unbiased causes, I’m left to aging and perhaps ennui with routine.

My day starts with the alarm clock. It’s 6:30am and my first conscious thought is, “Already?” My bones and muscles ache as if I spent the prior day chopping wood. I doze for a few more minutes hoping to awaken with more hope and restfulness. It never happens.

It takes all my will-power to exit the bed, knowing that I have a solid eight hours of undesirable work ahead of me, but somehow I make it from the bed to the shower. The brain is still in the ‘off’ position, preferably. It’s not unusually cold in the house but the hot water from the shower provides a tiny bit of comfort. Like a minor extension on the unconscious lease of slumber under insulating bedding I let the water massage the top of my head.

The tacit checklist of my morning routine:

• messenger bag, locked and loaded
• cell phone, charged
• two breakfast bars, top pocket
• morning joe, travel mug
• red lunch box, armed
• 1 Adderall XR, consumed
• car keys, in hand and out the door

The old Land Cruiser provides yet more familiarity. It smells like the year it was built. 1987. I muscle my way onto the freeway and find the middle lane where I’ll track with traffic for the next 30 to 90 minutes depending on how many accidents there are between far North Phoenix and East Tempe. As soon as I integrate with the momentum of fellow commuters I unwrap and eat breakfast. NPR provides slow stories, along with expected traffic (mostly incorrect reports of accidents long since cleared.)

As I drive, I am unconsious. I care little for speed knowing that I’ll be at my desk of despair soon enough. I feel every joint and flaw in the asphalt beneath my all-terrain tires aired to 50psi to get better gas mileage. It’s a hypnotic journey and light massage at the same time. I enjoy driving and my commute provides a venue for morning prayer or meditation. Pray without ceasing. An exercise in patience.

Pulling into the parking lot is disappointing. The drive is complete for 9 hours when I’ll retrace my journey. Nine hours of doing activities that are against my will. I trade those hours for food, shelter, gas for my 23 year-old Land Cruiser, and the many maintenance costs associated with the supporting of a family. Some people are energized by their jobs and I envy those people.

My desk isn’t very personalized. In fact, when I’m not there you might consider my work area abandoned. Inside my messenger bag I keep my Mac, a folder of current projects, working spectacles, a pen, along with a few creature comforts to assist throughout the day. I extract each component to my work area and run triage on the days’ pressing project(s). I check email and task manager for any items needing immediate attention.

By now the Adderall has kicked in and I’m enjoying some focus. It really wouldn’t matter what the task is, I would be able to do it. But I also know that I have a finite amount of fuel for the day. With proper cadence I will be productive most of the day, but under a deluge of multiple, high-prority tasks requiring my immediate attention, I can be spent by noon.

Most of the time morning goes quickly. By lunch at around 12 to 12:30 I’m feeling first fatigue of the day, but I know that lunch will provide the fuel I need to endure the afternoon. Hopefully. I unpack my lunchbox at my desk and check my news haunts on the web, reading while munching, headlines of interest.

Even on the best days, post lunch is in some ways like getting out of bed. It takes a lot of discipline, or perhaps defiance of will to re-engage the work.

Across the pond it’s called Tea Time. For me it’s apple-O’Clock. I take a break from the dark cave of the office to eat my apple or orange on the deck outside of the building. It faces a residential area where I watch the politics of a wild colony of Love Birds. I am jealous of all those creatures who are able to live according to their nature. I think about what it is I would do if I had the luxury of doing anything. Nothing comes to mind so I finish my fruit and return to the business.

5 O’clock comes slow. The last hour or two are painful. I struggle to find the energy to continue work and feel guilty for not being able to concentrate like I can in the morning. Quitting time for the day finally arrives. I’ve put in a full day, with varying degrees of productivity. Some days better than others, but rarely a feeling of contented accomplishment. I write software that provides productivity to clients, but I never see the results, and the client is rarely satisfied. Software is intangible and seems to decay and be abandoned over time. Unlike an old piece of machinery that still takes up space and can be appreciated even as it rusts and decays, software is simply deleted leaving no evidence that it ever existed.

Writing software is a very hollow task that requires no less thought than any other engineering feat. Some programmers find intrinsic reward, but I can’t say I ever had. I’ve always been in it for the money. Probably not the reason to do anything.

Sometimes the commute home is slow, and sometimes seems to take forever. Traffic varies, but I’m always satisfied to be on the road again and letting the brain close down for the day. NPR can be annoying during this time of day so sometimes I’ll slap a CD into the player. Sometimes it’s the wrong selection though and I get irritated.

After dinner I take my medication/vitamin pile and decide what to do with my discretionary hour of the day. Sometimes I have a few head-cycles left but am cautious not to over-extend myself. Knowing that I have another day that I’ll need to endure I force myself to rest. I torture myself with thoughts that I need to do my job better and consider studying technical books but ultimately conclude that down time is better.

By 9:30 I am feeling sleepy and by 10 I’m in bed and fading rapidly. The thoughts of another day exhaust me and make it easy to doze off into the escape of unconsciousness.

The DOWn Mood

It seems like my mood has been following the stock market lately. Not really correlative, but resembling the wild swings.

The week started normal enough. Of course, a weekend too short followed by a week that seemed to drag on forever. I take an Adderall XR first thing in the morning and have pretty good cognition all day long. However, I seemed to have a couple days in the trough this week. Partially due (I’m sure) to a couple of programming challenges I was faced with along with a couple high stress days dealing with the mental whiplash of a basket full of unrelated, yet high priority tasks.

By Friday afternoon my plate was cleared again. As usually happens, I beat my head against the monitor for a couple days questionning my ability to do anything right. Then a miracle happens and I have a day of mental flow where everything seems to work as expected. That was yesterday.

Here’s a weird observance though. I forgot to take my meds on Thursday night. I can’t say Friday morning was any easier to get started with than any other day, but by mid morning my mood was lifting a bit. I’m sure some of that elevation was due to finally breaking through on some of my programming challenges, but I also noticed the joy lobe filling with anticipation and hope later in the day. TGIF perhaps?

Symbyax/Deplin for mood and Adderall for clarity. I have to give high marks for the Adderall, but not so much on the expensive stuff (Sym/Dep.) Even though my mood tanked this week, I have to admit that I was still able to focus and concentrate on tasks. I just hated my job during that time. Then again, I can’t say I’ve ever loved programming. It’s something I learned how to do a long time ago, and there has always seemed to be a job market for it. I’ve heard it said that when you do something you love, you never work a day in your life. Well, I’ve worked most every day in my adult life.

I’m hopeful this weekend. I’ll recharge the batteries, take it easy, and then slam into the next work week to see what happens.

Gack: eXtended Release

It’s been a roller coaster week for mental clarity. Following my Monday appointment with the head doctor, I began a prescription of Adderall XR (extended release.) I explained how I felt a quick tolerance to the medication had built, but doctor Fzckt quickly shot down my theory. She claimed that it should have the same effect today as a year from today. I’m still not entirely sold.

On Tuesday morning I began the XR.

I didn’t notice any snow falling. There wasn’t any demarcation event felt as the drug took hold. However, I found myself deep in code mode throughout the afternoon. I was focused and able to whittle algorithms under the warm covers of the new medication. This will work. No warm snowfall, but the ultimate result was positive. One nice result was that I felt mental acuity well into the evening, something that was not possible under the traditional version of the drug.

By Thursday I was caught up with all my pending work and looking into new projects. My QA dept. was running behind so I was looking for other tasks to remain productive during work hours. In reflecting back, I’m not sure my mood decay toward the end of the week had anything to do with medication. It’s quite possible that I was just experiencing a couple bad days at the office. Stuff that everyone endures from time to time.

Friday felt like a very long day. I reviewed code and tried to study up on some new techniques while I awaited briefing on a new project. I could easily have taken the day off to vegetate and recharge, but the rules of 8 to 5 dictate an office presence regardless of output. Who was it that said 70% of job success is just showing up?

By the end of the work week I was exhausted and feeling the urgent need to leave the keyboard alone. When I get in that state of mind I fantasize about never having to use a computer again. Thoughts race through my mind about how my life had taken a wrong turn many years back when I chose a career in Information Technology. I get down on myself, and feel very mediocre about my skills. After all, the truly successful people in any occupation are those with internal passion. I can’t say that if I didn’t have to earn a living, that I would spend much time on a computer. Probably just for communication and looking up information. Passive tasks, but I can’t say I’ve ever had a driving desire to understand and perfect my craft.

Friday night through Saturday I was in a foul mood. Not so much into breaking things as just a disinterest in everything. I was feeling like a failure at life and longing for the dirt nap. I took my Adderall XR on Saturday morning, but it didn’t seem to provide any respite. I lounged around the house most of the day searching for motivation. I read a couple magazines but was unwilling to commit to a book. Television is always a passive pass-time. Between cable and satellite I’ve got a few hundred channels to choose from. I watched a prison show and a documentary about head shrinkers of the Amazon. I think all the prison shows that have surfaced recently serve to provide contrast for our desperate lives as corporate slaves. They show that life can be worse so you feel a bit more grateful for the daily desperation.

This morning (Sunday) I took a traditional Adderall. I was in need of contrast — I needed a familiar snow storm in my head and wasn’t sure the XR would produce. Sure enough, 45 minutes later I’m feeling hopeful. The snow fell, and for the first time in nearly a week I feel like writing again. I’m sitting here considering a number of things that I could engage in today, but foreboding the beginning of a new work week. What if the XR doesn’t work? Was my day of rest yesterday a new requirement for a productive work week? Maybe there’s something to the biblical weekly day of rest.

The doctor gave me six months of Symbyax/Deplin and three months of Adderall XR. I don’t return for a follow-up until April… or until I need additional help.

Perhaps it’s not the Adderall after all. Considering my mood seems to be the culprit at the moment, maybe the Symbyax/Deplin isn’t properly actuating. I think if my work had been more structured toward the end of the week, I may have just felt the exhaustion without the hopelessness. I plan to stay away from the keyboard today in an effort to trickle-charge my batteries for the coming week. I’ll be back to the XR in the morning.

Mental Management

I’ve always enjoyed reading Ralph Waldo Emersons’ essays when I simply want some non-commital yet thought provoking literature. I’ve read most of them and have a few of his profound concepts indexed away in the back of my wisdom stash. I’m not very good at verbatim recall, but I think it’s the idea behind the text that’s important, right?

Here’s an example:

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of a little mind.

Does this mean that repetitive, perhaps OCD behavior is the evidence of limited mental capacity? Or does it mean that familiar tasks are demons to an un-challenged brain? I don’t know exactly, and like many of RWE’s writing, the translation is left with the reader.

There is this other idea in one of Emerson’s essays about the distant view of a tacking sailing ship. From the deck of the boat the ultimate direction may not be obvious to the crew, but to the captain and landbound observer, direction may be concluded by drawing a line of averages toward the horizon.

I feel as if I’m chemically ‘tacking’ my way into the headwinds of Depression and possibly ADD control. Each new pill takes me in a new direction. The dosage acts as my rudder.

Last week I probably steered into the wind a little harder than needed. The sail spun around and I lost a little momentum. Following a sense of tolerance for my new Adderall came some new anxiety. I took an Adderall vacation last weekend hoping to recover some virginity to the drug on Monday morning. It was a miserable weekend.

On Monday morning I took a single pill. Within the hour I was enjoying the warm snowfall in my head once again. Most of the day was productive but toward evening the scales were forming on my mind once again. I refrained from taking a second dose.

Tuesday through Friday I repeated the single dose. I’m pleased to report that I enjoyed stable predictability each day. It would be nice to have a clear head all the way to bed time, but I’m content to have a highly productive 4-6 hours early in the day. I’m also not taking a weekend med vacation this time. There’s no sense in hibernating through the weekend. Shouldn’t I be allowed to enjoy some non-work activity once or twice a week?

I have an appointment with Dr. Bjqvrk early Monday morning. I turn in my ADD screening questionnaire and will report back on my Adderall adventures.

Too Good to be True

If you were to graph my mental clarity over the past work week it would look like the Dow Jones at the end of 2008.

The week started off optimistic with my newfound substance. I popped a pink (20mg) tab Monday morning and by the time I hit the office I was firing on all cylinders. Even the often nebulous workload was met with anticipation and a will to conquer. By lunch time I was starting to fatigue a bit, so to doctors’ orders, I popped my second dose of the day. One of my fondest work memories will be the reverie I felt while coding that warm Monday afternoon.

Feeling absolutely high with possibilities for what the future now held, I enjoyed a quiet evening at home followed by easy and deep sleep.

Tuesday morning I was out of bed at 7 to begin a repeat of Monday. Like any get-rich-quick scheme, often the only merit is the anticipation. I swallowed the morning dose in anticipation of a productive morning. Sure enough, by mid-morning I was hacking code like a pulp novel. The afternoon dose didn’t seem to grip though.

On Wednesday the distinct effects seemed to be waning. While I was still functioning, the snowfall of clarity seemed less obvious. Still two doses, 20mg upon awaking and another 20 at 1pm.

Thursday morning I started to feel anxious and iritable. I was feeling more chaos in my thoughts and slinging regretable emails at clients… a usual response traced back to a head full of mis-firing synapses. I also started feeling much more fatigued.

By Friday the effects of Adderall had been reduced to disappointment. With no change of dose I stared at the monitor most of the day wondering what happened.

From a search on the Google it appears that Adderall tolerance is fairly common, and quick to build. I’m taking an ‘Adderall vacation’ this weekend to see if I can recover some benefit next week. Perhaps if I use it only in a break-glass-in-emergency situation, it will still provide some relief. If that’s the case, I wonder why the doc prescribed three doses per day?

Sipping from the Grail

The last two days were my road test for the new Adderall prescription. It was my first full days back at the office after the long holiday. I’m afraid words will do little to describe the stunning ride I’m enjoying on this chemical. The mental clarity I’m experiencing is a first. I have been able to focus on my programming like never before. Hours in code mode and none of the frustration I’ve become accustomed to expect. The day is full of the usual challenges but I’m not foreboding every minute of it anymore. I finally feel normal and capable of doing my work.

I eat one tablet when I wake up at around 7am. By lunch I’m starting to cloud up again so I take another full tablet at around 1pm. It’s about 8pm now and I’m noticing a distinct fog to background the loud hissing which indicates my amphetamine is running low. My prescription allows for three tablets per day, but so far I’ve only ramped up to two.

My biggest concern is that I might build a tolerance for it. When I started the first dose two weeks ago I only took a half tablet, yet I was flying around for a good part of the day. A couple days later I took a full pill and enjoyed similar affect. About a week ago I started taking a full pill in the morning followed by a half-sustainer in the afternoon. I didn’t really have a lot going on during the holiday that required mental cycles so I opted to keep the dosage down.

You always hear the stories from junkies who become addicted to medication and must continue escalating their drug intake just to feel normal. I’m hoping this med only shares a name with meth.

• Recent Posts

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