Not much new...

I meet with my psychiatrist yesterday and he told me to stop taking valerian root because it could cause problems with my liver. Over the next two months we're going to very gradually decrease the dosage of my Xanax in the hopes that my concentration, memory, and energy levels will improve without my anxiety and panic attacks getting worse.

In the meantime, I'm keeping myself in kind of a holding pattern, staying mostly withdrawn and keeping to myself most of the time. I'm not actively fighting the anxiety like I used to, and I'm not spending any time doing much more research or exercise or anything like that. It's a "lesser of two evils" approach. By staying withdrawn, almost in a state of denial, I'm able to keep the suicidal ideations away, not dwell on things, etc (although I'm sure this sounds ironic) but by doing so it's keeping me from having level 10 panic attacks and have to worry about being sent to the hospital again. I'm going to kind of stay in this state until we can find a medicine that at least cuts my anxiety and depression down by 40-50%. If I can get that much help from medicine, then I'll be able to jump back on the bandwagon and take my recovery the rest of the way using all the techniques I know.

For the past couple months, every time I try to go out and get exercise and work on my relaxation techniques and such, I find myself almost immediately sliding back down that downward spiral that leads me to suicidal ideations and fears that I'll need to go to the hospital. :( Yeah, it sounds backwards, but everything seems backwards for me as I try and get over my disorder(s).