Meds are Not for Me

A few months ago I banged my thumb up pretty good.  It was sore for quite a while.  Then just, again, I banged up the other thumb.  Both my thumbs are not doing well, I probably am one person who can do without thumbs.  I'm going to have a doctor amputate both my thumbs.  Imagine that, no thumbs to hurt me anymore.  Makes sense right?  Am I making sense?  Even all my fingers and toes, they end up in places they shouldn't be in, they get hurt easily, I can't bear them anymore.

I remember some medication I was on for anxiety.  The psychiatrist told me they are the best on the market.  I was excited to try them out.  After all, I thought I would be cured, all my fear would be gone.  And that was all I wanted to live was a normal life.

I started the pills.  I started to have worse anxiety, I think the panic rose up in me and I actually felt sick.  I was super paranoid.  I imagined worse case scenarios that I never imagined before.  I took myself off, I spoke to the doctor, and he told me that some people can't handle that particular drug. He said its the best thing that's going right now, what went wrong?

I think it worked too good.  I mean, it did exactly what it was meant for.  Only that, oh boy, this is complicated, but I'll try to explain.  I have a theory.

There is an emotional balance in life.  I mean really, we live by our emotions, and logic is just a small part.  We can't make sense of things we just do them.  I have spoken to many therapists, and I felt like I was doing something wrong.  Why was nothing working?  Was there anyone who can help?  I was diagnosed with nothing but the PTSD.  So was I in a horrible war somewhere, that I knew nothing about?

Unfortunately, emotion does trigger anxiety does it not?  I mean, why not just get rid of it?  Those feelings, that's so deeply hard wired, thousands of years of hard wiring put into place.  I have a couple of theories too.  I did my reading.  It seems like the serotonin levels in the brain must be maintained, I get that, but it is not always supposed to keep running.  We are to go through periods of sadness, grief, intensity, and not try to solve it by taking pills.  Since serotonin is the happy hormone, we are not always supposed to have it.  It bounces around, sometimes we have it sometimes we do not, and if you are critically low on it, then you might need some, you might.  But I have confidence the body can make its own when the time is right.  Its just that some things can't be processed in the happy state.

But when I research anxiety, it is actually necessary.  Since I had to live with horror, of course I was in a panic state all the time, of course.  The pills eliminated that, but the fear was still there, and I felt terrified.  I might have even been suicidal, for I felt like the horror was still going on and I had no way to run from it, my fight or flight was gone.  I felt like I was going to die.  Yes, the pills did their job for sure.  But it was not what I needed.

I found some information that actually rid me of the sore.  It helped to know that it wasn't that pain is my problem, it is the process of resisting pain that was my problem.  And the answer to my anxiety was through my anxiety.  I had to embrace it.  Fear took over.  I mean how was I going to be able to do this?  Maybe there are some horrible monsters that I haven't even looked at and I didn't want to see, thus the anxiety.  Or even, that giving up the resistance to pain, the fear of that, is the reality.  Resistance to anything has a regular process,   We can change our direction at any time.  Just a little further journey to go back is all.

As with anything, and I extrapolated this information, but I am to accept the fact that it wasn't even anxiety that would be my problem, it was just trying to tell me something was wrong.  So what did I do instead?  I medicated the anxiety, to get rid of it, and things turned out worse.

It wasn't the new meds that were the problem.  I'm sure they were the super drugs that the doctor prescribed, he was trying to remove my anxiety, and I think he was trying to do his best.  But the anxiety was actually a gift that I didn't want.  It caused me too much trouble.  At least I thought so.

So in eliminating anxiety, what happened was that some part of my brain had to kick into overdrive to compensate for the loss.  I don't know exactly, something went on that made me horribly sick.  I thought I was in a dense fog screaming.  It was like a bear was coming after me, so someone just tied me up and blindfolded me so I won't see the bear.

I decided to kick drugs from then on.  I don't know what happened.  I started to pray, and a door opened up.  Suppose I am to embrace the anxiety?  You see anxiety wasn't the problem, it was the pain of trying to eliminate it was the problem.  For the first time I came alive.

I'm not saying that coming off the pills was a picnic, and there was anxiety and I just gave it a big hug.  No, well not really.  You see, I was trying to hide from it for so long, it screaming at me, that I just wanted it to go away.  Now it was a stranger to me.  But I can tell you from experience, the horrible feeling that always came over me was not the anxiety itself.  It was the process of resisting it. Once I got through that process, it wasn't so much of a pain anymore.  It was a part of me, and now it still is, but not as sore as it once was.

For inspiration, I look to my 3 year old granddaughter.  This child cries at the drop of a hat and smiles and laughs the same way too.  Is she in any pain over it?  I don't think so.  When she wants to cry, there is no process, she just does it.  Is she in pain when she is crying?  I don't think so, I think she is being relieved.  Is there anywhere she feels pain?  Probably, at some point, but I don't think she resists the process so much that she notices.

I think the psychology culture are making some horrible mistakes.  I thought amputation over the source of a little injury went out a long time ago.  But they are still doing it.  And even with depression.  I believe that the answer to depression is through the depression, not getting rid of it.  Its like its this tool or this gift, and we can't even recognize.  You can't live your entire life on serotonin, you need pain, even for survival, its a gift trying to tell you something is wrong.

You see, even in dating (yes I'm using that example again) and the woman just falls for this terrible guy.  He doesn't treat her well, and she feels it all over her body but she stays with him just to avoid the pain of breaking up.  It is a pain, no doubt, but it is through the pain that she will find her freedom.  If she avoids the pain, well, that means she never leaves him.

We can't ever forsake pain it has a lesson to teach us.

And even for addiction, I still believe its just another way of resisting pain.

Resist pain long enough then you'll still have the pain, but it dulls to this lingering feeling that you can't even pinpoint or remember why you have it.  So many people go through this for years, a lifetime, lingering pain, its still trying to talk to you, but its giving up.  Will it ever give up?  Maybe not, that is why some people are drugged for a lifetime.

These are only my opinions of course, and I don't do counselling.  But its a terrible shame that maybe this is a possibility that if we surrender to pain, instead of resisting it, we can overcome challenges, and be for real for real truly happy.