Good riddance Effexor, welcome back Libido!

It’s been 2 weeks since I’ve stopped taking antidepressants (Effexor), and my body feels so much better for it. I’m waking up with raging boners once more and I’m also masturbating again (to porn, sorry JP!). The handful of times I’ve masturbated I’ve come prematurely and legit had 5–10 second orgasms each time.

I’m not unhappy. I’m not depressed, but I am fucking buzzing. My hands feel clammy when I’m awake, you know, that “wirey” tingly like vibe you feel when an ecstasy pill or shrooms start kicking in? It’s that feeling pretty much, that I feel all day through to night. I like this high but I’ve got a few concerns:

– My brain is going at a million miles an hour from the moment I wake up to midnight when I sleep.
– If no one is with me I’ll be bashing the keyboard on social media and writing about anything and everything that comes to mind; many drafts, sure, but also more ‘refined/laboured’ features too.
– If someone is with me I will absolutely talk over them and drown them out with words. I talk so much they literally can’t get a single word in.

I caught up with a friend who has bipolar, she told me that there’s Bipolar 1 and Bipolar 2. I’m like WTF?! At first she thought I was Bipolar 2, but by the end of the night she thought I was manic and more Bipolar 1 as I didn’t let her get a single word in all afternoon.

Symptoms specific to bipolar 1: The ‘experts’ classify mania to be a state of abnormality, featuring an elevated, persistent or irritable mood, severe enough to impair functioning, with three or more symptoms of:

– Inflated self-esteem or grandiosity (check!)
– Decreased need for sleep (check!)
– More talkative than usual (check!)
– Flight of ideas (check!)
– Distractibility (check!)
– Increased goal-directed activity (check!)
– Excessive involvement in activities that have high potential for painful consequences (check!)

For an episode to be defined as manic it has to last a week (I went for 6 months +); I didn’t talk to friends, nor sleep in my bed. I have a scab on the right side of my head that I pick off every day. I often fascinated over compiled piles of dandruff and even started to pee in empty Mountain Dew bottles as I was too lazy to walk to my own bathroom.

Ultimately, trying to define who I am with all this medical mumbo jumbo doesn’t really make me feel any better as I truly don’t consider my high highs and low lows to be out of the ordinary. As an artist I’ve always needed the low lows in order to create art, and the fact is that I remember, somewhat romantically, all of my low lows, but I can’t for the life of me remember many, if any, of my high highs. For example; listening to a song which represents a low from say, a past relationship breakup, and I’ll shed a tear today, but remembering a high, like that time I won a prize, brings back no feelings of elation at all.

I’m currently on 3 x 25mg tablets of Quetiapine a night. If I take them at 8PM (as recommended) I end up waking up at 1–3am which wasn’t working for me. I decided to try taking them at 11-midnight and that’s been working great for me as I sleep well and wake up at about 6am most mornings. My psych. Dr. Hyde suggests that Quetiapine is not addictive, and that I could take one instead of a bong hit if I felt the need to (not that I’ve had a bong hit, or felt like I needed to in what feels like forever now), but I’ve been avoiding dunking the pills by day as I’m scared of getting sleepy during daylight (in case I fall back into my comatose falling in and out of sleep all day gaming routine).

Long story cut short; I took a single Quetiapine pill when I was hanging with my bipolar 2 mate to see what would happen. 25 minutes later I was legit calm as, taking deep breaths, man, what a difference! Looks like the drugs do work, and self experimenting with these ‘corporate drugs’ is crucial to finding a way out.