>>From: Belacqua
>>To: Perdita
>>Subject: funny medication issues
>>Date: Fri, 29 Dec 2000

So, my shrink calls me back and tells me what the group consensus was on my medication issues (they still think I'm taking everything) and they think I need to STAY ON Effexor, Wellbutrin, and Buspar, and IN ADDITION take Paxil and Risperdal. So, I'm loaded now with a 3-week free sample of Paxil, 20 days worth of Risperdal, and I was supposed to go to the pharmacy to pick up a sleeping pill, but I said to hell with it and left town. I thought that was totally fucking outrageous. They want me on five goddamn medications. I'm not THAT fucking messed up. But she just found out about my cutting troubles, and she thinks these medicines will curb that or some fruity shit like that. I'm thinking about taking the Paxil, but wasn't the Risperdal the one that sent you to the emergency room? I'm not real anxious to give that one a try, even though the dosage is only 0.5mg a night. If I can't drink on it, I'm not gonna fucking take it.

I've been barely staying conscious all day long. Every few seconds I feel like I'm about to pass out. It's getting kind of irritating. The beer isn't helping that a whole lot, but I seriously have no idea how I drove home today with my head fucking blacking out like it was. It was funny because I thought I was just going in to pick up the samples, but the fucking whore didn't leave them out like she said she would, so she baited me into waiting there and going to her office because she wanted to see the cuts and shit...evil bitch. She was also trying to give me all this advice for getting over my "cold" that was so bad I had to cancel my appointment. She was asking me about my symptoms and all, so I was just pulling shit out of my ass to tell to her, and she was all sympathetic and shit, saying that's rough and then launching into how I REALLY need to find a new doctor because we haven't found the right "balance" of medications for me yet and she doesn't think I'm stable on them so I should immediately find another shrink. Fuck that. I'm tired of shrinks and therapists getting in my fucking way, trying to tell me how unnatural my thoughts are and how abnormal I am and all that shit. They can fuck off with all that crap. There’s an entire medical industry set up to try and prevent people from hurting themselves. If I want to hurt myself or kill myself, it's my own fucking business because my life belongs to me and only me and no one else can tell me when it's time or when it’s not time to end it. When it's time for me to die, I'm going to fucking kill myself, and that's that. It doesn't sound that horrifying to me. I don't understand why everyone else is so worried about it. They all think I can have such a happy life if I just let them help me. I tried that shit. I played their game for awhile and it just wasn't working out, so sorry, I'm playing by my own rules again.

In case you can't tell, I'm really fucking pissed off at the amount of drugs they're trying to pump into me. I was thinking about it, and this is the longest I've been without any antidepressants in over a year. I've completely forgotten what it feels like to work with my own brain and its own chemicals, and I'm still waiting for these other chemicals to flush out of my system so I can see if I like my old world better than this new, numbed up clouded world the doctors want me to live in. Alcohol clouds my world, sure, but it doesn't dull my feelings. And alcohol is a short-term escape mechanism rather than a full, mentally altering state that persists constantly. I'd certainly rather live in an alcohol cloud continuously than an antidepressant cloud. But that's all irrelevant...not that I know what is relevant right now. My head is really fucking spinning like crazy. A beer and a half isn't enough to make me this fucked up, but coupled with the withdrawal, it's kind of neat. If I even blink, I feel like I'm going to pass out. I can hear the blood squeezing through the capillaries in my head. I can feel the medication losing its thorny grasp on my mind as the beastly form of the depression looms in the background, advancing to reclaim its prey that it never totally lost possession of. I have risen from my kneeling position at the altar of psychology to turn and kneel at depression's horrifying altar, with my neck exposed on the sacrifice table, waiting for the beast to come and drag his offering back towards his sweating cave. I'm not even going to try and fight the depression as it reclaims my entire life in full. I'm going to be swallowed in its poisonous fire with my head bowed and teeth gritted against the pain. I'm through fighting. I'm sliding closer and closer to my end, and I'm not going to struggle against it. I'll fight it only so far as I won't let it take me away from our agreement, because that is a sacred promise that only blind chance can force me to abandon.

My apartment is an interesting pharmacy right now. I still have a healthy amount of every antidepressant I've ever been on except the Prozac, and that's because my mother takes Prozac and I gave the last of mine to her. I could at any time get more by stealing some from her, not that I'd ever really have a reason to, except to erect some strange monument to the futility of pharmacology in fighting what's happening to me. It’s not that I believe antidepressants are worthless. I believe they help a lot of people, but for me, they're slightly less effective than children's aspirin when I have a migraine. It's like trying to stop an avalanche with a hair dryer.

My parents aren't aware that I've secured a ticket to see you, yet, because they haven't asked. Before I left, my dad tried one last time to put me off by saying it was a bad time of the year to go north, and I should wait until spring, and what's the rush anyway? So, I let him say his piece, then I sat there and just looked at him, and said, "Okay. " And he just left. Screw them. It’s too late to reverse anything now because all sales on Priceline.com are FINAL, and nothing they could say would make me change my mind. They can have all the reservations about it that they want to have. That'll just make it all the more miserable for them.

God, the fucking days are crawling by. Christmas break is usually over before I even know it has started, and I can't believe it's not already New Year's yet. I want to wake up and have it be January 3rd and I'm already sitting on the airplane as we're about to touch down. But it is getting closer. No matter how much it wants to slow down, time will never stop, and no matter how many cosmic forces there are working against me, they cannot prevent January 3rd from occurring, and even if they cause icestorms and plane troubles and everything else they can fucking do, I'll crawl there. Christ. I can't even see the words on the screen anymore. I hope these effects start to go away very soon, because they're very distracting and downright annoying.

I love you, Perdita.
Belacqua

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>From: Perdita
>To: Belacqua
>Subject: Re: funny medication issues
>Date: Fri, 29 Dec 2000

Belacqua,

I admire your approach to cutting out the medication. I don't know if I could do it. After drinking with Ami the other night, I skipped my dose (as I always do after drinking to avoid the vapor trails I wake up with), so I figured what the hell and skipped my morning dose yesterday, too. Then the family went bowling. I'm a relatively decent bowler, I guess, but hell if I could see any of those damn pins yesterday. My vision gets so fucking screwy that I don't know how I ever saw ANYTHING without the meds. I HATE it. I rather like being able to see straight. And I think being on the verge of withdrawal lent my head to some remembrances of what it felt like before the meds and I specifically remember how bad my headaches were and how much the tenseness hurt my back and how I couldn't finish an entire thought to save my life, and it occurs to me that perhaps the meds are still helping more than I realize. I don't know. I keep telling myself that I really owe it to myself to go off the meds and reclaim my creative writing skills that have been somewhat obliterated for the last year. But my resolve in these sorts of issues is rather weak. I have very little willpower when it comes to resisting urges for chemicals.

Risperdal IS the drug they put me on that landed me in the hospital. That is one strong-ass drug. I have to say I'd be curious to see if the Paxil would do much of anything for you just because it did so much for me, but that's not to say it would be much of a help in the long run because I'm going progressively downhill anyway.

After I went to breakfast the other day, I went to Borders to look for books. I gave my parents a list of three books I wanted for Christmas, and they kept bugging me to extend the list because they had no gift ideas for me, but they didn't even get me any of the books I wanted. I mentioned it the other day, and my dad said they couldn't find any of them, so I thought I'd check out Borders to see if they were lying, and indeed they were. One of them was Night Falls Fast by Kay Redfield Jamison, and it's subtitled Understanding Suicide, so I think they didn't really want to buy it for me. So I bought it, along with two other books; one is an abnormal psych textbook and the other is I Hate You - Don't Leave Me. So I started the borderline one, and you're right that it seems to outline me quite well. I'm just where it's detailing the characteristics of borderline, and the way I read it, it just keeps outlining things that are perfectly normal in my world. Hm.

I'm having serious troubles understanding exactly what it is your parents find disturbing about you coming to visit me. My parents are at least happy to know that someone else is making me happy, so yay for me and go do whatever makes me slightly happier. I seriously don't understand what could be BAD about it. What are they afraid of? I just don't get it. Well, in any case, I'm glad they're not influencing your decision to come. I can't wait for January 3rd. Isn't time moving at ALL? Christ, it's taking forever. But I guess it's coming slowly, even though it's hard to tell.

Good luck getting through the next few days without meds, and good luck putting up with your parents at the same time. I can barely trudge through the muck of time as I await your arrival.

I love you more than anything.
Perdita