Thoughts, thoughts, and more thoughts

Well, I've been obsessively thinking about my future, or what I perceive to be a lack of a future.... obsessively thinking about my financial debt, my burden to my family, the idea that I'll never get a woman to marry me if she finds out I have an emotional disorder, whether I'll really be able to get a job and be financially independent again, and whether I'll ever find a medicine that will allow me to be happy most days.

It seems like, for the past couple days, I will have about one and a half hours where I feel kind of good, usually as a result of my thinking that I'm helping other people out with similar emotional disorders by chatting with them in forums and such, that if nothing else, I am doing something productive.

I've been extremely withdrawn and quiet for a while, I've been doing less of my share of chores around the house because I've been in such mental chaos... depression creating panic attacks in turn creating depression, the vicious cycle. It's getting harder and harder for me to snap myself out of this cycle, which really upsets me, because having so much experience with this disorder, and having the will power and intelligence and compassion that I have, I should be able to stop this cycle before it even happens. I know how to identify the warning signs, I know how to do a "pre-emptive strike" against this vicious cycle by using positive affirmations and just getting out and doing something... but it keeps getting harder, and it seems that I'm running out of things to fight for. I mean, I'm fighting this disease so that I can get to a point where I can be free of the chains of severe anxiety and depression such that my many talents can be fully realized. That's good, right?

Before, I had other reasons too, for fighting, fighting so I can save my relationship with my ex-girlfriend (long story), fighting so I could just have a good time with the guys hanging out, and.... and.... I know there were a lot more but I've since forgotten them.

It's true, I have to fight this battle to save myself, and not fight it for other people. I know that, and for a long time I was fighting along those lines, but as I look back at how resistant I am to medication, and I look forward seeing that there aren't many treatment options left, it frightens me very much.

In other words, I'm at a point where deep down, I've already given up. I've surrendered. That's why my coping skills aren't working. I don't believe in them any more, and I don't really care, because I've given up, deep down I believe I'm not going to be cured, unless some miracle medical breakthrough happens whereby they can repair damaged neurons and such. Allow me to go on a tangent here... there are more than a few studies that have been done on rats and monkeys showing that when the sympathetic nervous system (for more information on what that is, see my fight-or-flight guide) is chronically activated for severely long periods of time, neurons in the hypocampus begin to shrivel up.

Hindsight tells me I've had this anxiety problem since I was an infant in the cradle. So my sympathetic nervous system has been chronically activated the majority of the time for the past 29 years. Hence, my theory on why anti-depressants and anti-psychotics and sleeping pills don't work on me, my neurons in critical parts of my brain are "shriveled up", so increasing the amount of neurotransmitter chemical in the brain doesn't have enough effect, because the synaptic space between the neurons has grown larger. I know the medications are "working", in a manner of speaking, because I do have side effects from them, which means that the rest of my body is more or less fine (these kinds of drugs, like pretty much any other kind of drug, spread through the whole body, there is no way currently for them to just go to where they need to go and stay there, in this case being the brain).

So, it's going to be a long, long journey. I think getting a combination of a PET, ECG, and MRI will really help to tell if there is damage to parts of my brain. And I'm thinking that maybe, for me, in order for the meds to work, I may have to go to such high dosages, like maybe four or five times the highest recommended dosage to see a positive effect. That's my theory anyway. Of course, taking such high dosages increases the side effects too, so the whole quality of life issue comes into play, plus I'm sure my psychiatrist isn't going to be quite so willing to test my theory by allowing me to severely overdose even in the name of an experiment, an experiment inspired by desperation.