WOW!!! almost two months since I posted here.
Anyway, lost another alcoholic over the holidays. She died on December 30th 2016. Her name was Tara, she was 44yo and was sober for two years. She did not OD nor drink herself to death but I am sure previous drinking/drugging contributed to her death. The circumstances of her death are a little cloudy but she had a persistent cough, was not in very good health and had been bouncing around living with whomever would take her in for the last year or so. From what I could find out, she was living with someone who was not the cleanest person in town. Multiple cats (and their messes) in the house and she had been getting sicker the last month or so. Tara went into the hospital Dec 29th where they found her organs were shutting down and was placed on dialysis. She was dead the next day.
Tara lived for the day she could get her son back from foster care but it was a mystery to me how she was going about doing that other than to go to court proceedings asking for the kid to be placed back in her custody. With no permanent home (sober houses, womens shelters and friends were where she lived as long as I have known her) and no income (DSS checks increasingly got lost or stolen or sent back due to her address changes) I didn't think she would get him back without drastic changes in her life. I helped her when I could with rides to/from meetings, moving her from place to place and some money here and there.
Having a hard time finding out any funeral arrangements. Saying she was not close to her family is an understatement and I don't think they understand or trust hte fellowship.
Good bye Tara, I am a better person for having known you.
“If you trust in yourself, and believe in your dreams, and follow your star. . . you'll still get beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren't so lazy.”
Jarlaxle wrote:Wake up clear-headed?! What is this of which you speak?
Frigging morning people......
Take it from someone who's about as far from a "morning person" as possible: it helps to arrange your life such that you don't have to wake up until 2 or 3 in the afternoon...
Istillneed coffee to complete the waking-up process, though!
People who are wrong are just as sure they're right as people who are right. The only difference is, they're wrong.
— God@The Tweet of God
“If you trust in yourself, and believe in your dreams, and follow your star. . . you'll still get beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren't so lazy.”
I'm not much for mornings either. I love them when I manage to see them, early mornings in the garden last summer was a lovely time - but my internal clock only sets for early wake up if I'm physically exhausted and asleep by 9pm, which isn't my usually. Currently my sleep cycles are all screwed up because I'm working overnights; I don't love what I'm sure are the ill effects on my body, but it's not so terrible working such shifts if one is a night owl by nature. And I get to see the early mornings, just from a different perspective - sunrise on the way home to go to bed.
For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.
~ Carl Sagan
I got up at 8:30AM yesterday. Had somewhere to be. Was a bit difficult. Being unemployed sucks, and it's completely altered my sleep schedule to the point where I've been getting to sleep around 6:30AM and getting up at 2 in the afternoon. It's the lack of a reason to get up any earlier, just keeps shifting it, later and later.
I've never been a morning person. Even when my last job required be to come in at 6AM one day a week, I still came in at 10AM the other 4 days. Drove my boss nuts. But I've worked every shift that existed. Plus I was in the Military, so used to altering schedules. When I was in the Navy the standard underway rotation was 2 4-hour watches (unless you got one of the dog watches, which were 2 hours) every 28 hours, running 4 watch sections. That meant you only got a good nights sleep one out of 4 days, the other 3 days you stood watch at night. Though it was possible, if your shipmates let you, to rack out early of you had the mid or 04-08 watch. Still, you were screwed if you had the 20-24 or mid (00-04) watch.
Death is Nature's way of telling you to slow down.
Reverse sleeping patterns, such as yours are not a good thing mate, they can exacerbate illnesses esp depression.
“If you trust in yourself, and believe in your dreams, and follow your star. . . you'll still get beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren't so lazy.”
No, Gob is right too - it's a cycle. Depression causes sleep disturbances, but sleep disturbances can cause depression and ultimately even full blown psychosis. Sleep is critical to good mental & physical health, above all other things. If you go to a decent doctor looking for help with clinical depression, beyond prescribing an SSRI and cognitive behavioral therapy, s/he will surely ask about your sleep pattern and prescribe sleep hygiene and a short term course of Ambien, Trazadone or some other sleep aid to help restore you to a positive sleep cycle in keeping with your body's innate circadian cycle (sleep at night, wake during day).
I don't have any choice but to work nights right now, and I'm scrambling to find ways to counteract the devastating effects on my health. Numerous longitudinal studies have established a shorter lifespan and many links to serious illness in persons required to do shift work for any length of time.
Try melatonin and valerian for help sleeping if you aren't comfortable with short term scrip to get you re-synced - but do try if you can.
For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.
~ Carl Sagan
You have no idea. Or maybe you do. If you want to see inside the mind of a disturbed individual, continue on. But be warned. This is coming from the pit of despair.
Not really what I wanted to get into, but hell no one wants to talk about it either. I've suffered from clinical depression my whole life, so it's not like its a new thing. In fact Gob's post actually sent me into a nervous breakdown (it's not his fault, it's been brewing for a long time. Been a few years since I had one).
I was diagnosed with Schizoid Personality Disorder back when I was 18 years old. They were looking for a root cause of my depression- depression that I was trying to get noticed by someone, but was unable to confront on my own. I came up with a rather ingenious method of doing so, one that held no physical risk but scared someone into action, which got me pulled out of class and into a Psychiatrists' office. I couldn't do it myself, so I got someone to do it for me, passively. But since it was diagnosed by the military they did nothing to treat it- I'd missed the follow-up psychiatric appointments because the symptoms associated with the deep depression I was under (I was completely unprepared to fail academically in the US Navy Nuclear propulsion program I was in) resulted in my being removed from the academic program, then given duty that had me working 12 hours a day 8PM to 8AM, with the choice between sleep and setting up another midday appointment not a difficult one. Then I was transferred to a ship, and no one bothered to note the side note from the mental evaluation. The underlying depression was reaffirmed in my last physical checkup, which was 2 years ago. Again, no treatment, since I refused prescriptions and a psychiatric referral wasn't offered. Since I was (and still am) unemployed, I couldn't afford it anyway.
My only saving grace was, I never took up drinking to deal with the problems associated with my mental disorders. Whether I really have the Schizoid Personality Disorder, or an Anxious Personality Disorder, I don't know. Most people who don't seek treatment use alcohol to "self medicate", to get over the social barriers that these disorders cause. I have an easily addicted personality- somehow I've managed to avoid chemical dependency, but only by never trying those chemicals. In fact, I am so afraid of addiction that I refuse any painkillers stronger than Ibuprofen. That includes any prescribed painkillers that doctors wanted to prescribe after I'd been stitched up from head injuries. So that's why I'm so afraid of medicinal treatments for my personality disorders or for my sleep disorders. I do not want to become dependent on them. I know too many people who take painkillers like Vicodin just to get through the day.
But there's another reason. The side effects of many prescription antidepressants or anti-psychotics used to treat this condition is increased depression or suicidal actions. I have NO ONE to monitor my condition. If that medication was to have the wrong effect, no one would know. I routinely go 4-5 days at a time with no face to face communication with other people. Internet is all I have. My nearest family is an hour away, I have no close friends - no friends at all aside from the people I work with in a volunteer organization twice a week, or those I know on the internet. So I have pretty much no support structure. You might ask- why not just call my family every day? I don't know. I can't. I get anxiety picking up the phone. One I get to talking I'll talk anyone's head off, which is probably why no one calls me in the first place. I don't initiate conversations, and since people rarely initiate them with me, I become more and more reclusive.
That's one of the underlying problems. I get extremely nervous- to the point of it being paranoid- in going into unfamiliar situations. One of those is meeting people. I won't, and never have been able to, introduce myself. When I meet new people, THEY have to do the initial introduction, or someone else has to. I do volunteer work at a museum twice a week, love it, but I never would have stepped in the door by myself. My Dad basically told me to meet him down there one day after work in 2004, and I've been going ever since. Every job I've gotten was referred to me by someone else- either the Navy recruiter in my High School physics class, my job at the car rental agency that I had when I was in college (my neighbor offered me the job and I wasn't even looking), and my last job, I was recruited right out of school via the school's job placement program. I've never actually gotten a job I'd applied for, I've just taken what was offered by someone else that was a sure thing. But that inability to form interpersonal relations goes into my personal life- I cannot establish relationships, and cannot expand them beyond what the other people are willing to push. It's an underlying lack of motivation- my life needs outside motivation, otherwise I stagnate. Hell, I couldn't even motivate myself to quit a job I grew to despise. Until I got laid off as the company downsized and eventually closed the office here.
I've been unemployed for almost 3 years, with no prospects. Just boilerplate rejection letters, and now I can't even find job openings I haven't already applied for. None that I remotely qualify for, since they all want SDETs now instead of QA Engineers.
So yes, I need to get help, but I have an anxiety attack just trying to pick up the phone. Because I'm unemployed, the State issues my health care. But they assigned me to a "clinic" that's 45 miles away in a different county and is understaffed. No doctors, just nurse practicioners. So here I am, at 3AM, unable to sleep.
Death is Nature's way of telling you to slow down.
Most people who don't seek treatment use alcohol to "self medicate", to get over the social barriers that these disorders cause. I have an easily addicted personality- somehow I've managed to avoid chemical dependency, but only by never trying those chemicals.
Yup. Been there, done that, got the t-shirt and the addiction.
I suffered from anxiety for many years. Alcohol helped early on but made it worse in the end. Started taking zoloft (forget the generic for it). It's not opiod based and is non-addicive. Been slowly weening off of it. Started at 150mg and am now down to 25mg. Prayer and meditation have helped tremendously. I should be totally off the zoloft by June. Zoloft side effect is lack of sex drive, but there is a pill for that too.
dats, that's an awful lot to take in. Sorry to hear it. To your credit you come off as being quite lucid and you don't ramble on like so many other people struggling with mental illness. On the down side, you don't seem to be able to ask for help and, subsequently, no one is offering you any. You've painted yourself into a corner. Sadly, "stagnate" seems to fit your situation. Change is totally up to you but change is often the hardest thing most people can face -- healthy, or not so much. I understand.
Thankfully, I'm not fighting the demons you appear to face daily. I do, however, understand the "aloneness" of what you're going through. My physical limitations, coupled with my median SSI, prevents me from being more noticed in the outside world. A little bit of food shopping, a daily stop at Starbucks, a few hours at the "Y" every week, and time with my daughter about every ten days -- is about all the face-to-face contact with people that I have. If something serious were to happen to me hardly anyone would notice for quite some time. I feel your concern.
Regardless, here's a small fix that may help keep you somewhat noticed in the hear and now. On a daily basis, mostly in the early evening, I send a simple text to my daughter which usually reads "ILY...D." Within a short while she will text back something equally short like "ILY...C." With that, she knows I'm still functional. Granted, it's not constant monitoring -- anything can happen at any time -- but we are comfortable with the quick exchange. At least I'm not forgotten.
dats, I'm not going to pontificate about what you should or should not do... YOU KNOW. Simply put, as the Nike commercial say, "Just Do It." That's all I got. I wish you well, my friend. Ray
“In a world whose absurdity appears to be so impenetrable, we simply must reach a greater degree of understanding among us, a greater sincerity.”
