DOSE:		oral	Pharms - Methylphenidate	(daily)
		oral	Pharms - Atomoxetine	(daily)
		oral	Pharms - Venlafaxine	(daily)

BODY WEIGHT:

120 lb

When I was 8, I was diagnosed, CLINICALLY, with ADD. Its been a really hard life coping with this, and I face prejudice and hatred everywhere I go. I kid, but seriously its frustrating at times. 4 years ago when I was a junior in highschool I was battling depression and anxiety, and my life sucked pretty bad. I would be on edge in social situations. I drank hard alcohol pretty compulsivey and self destructively and did other less addictive drugs (less addictive for me..), which didn’t help my condition. I could never concentrate due to racing thoughts. I hated myself. I would sleep all day if I had the opportunity and I would stay up most of the night. I was also a juvenile delinquent, HA, I sound like an old man. I was into graffiti and even though I sucked (I was alright at stencils, but anyone can do this), and I would shoplift every day after school. I really got off on the adrenaline rush, and the feeling of reward afterwards, and I realized after a year or so that I was addicted to this feeling. I digress, and that is another story.

However, it is my opinion that all of these things contributed to my ADD and made it (and my general mental state) worse temporarily. My mom made me go to family counseling and they basically blamed all of the family’s problems on me somehow, and in a few cases the dude was right but he was a real dick about it, and was mostly just telling my mom what she wanted to hear so he could get paid. Anyways he “highly recommended” I see a psychiatrist. I was put on concerta, and remained tweaked on it for about 4 months. At first I was on 18mgs, then 27 when I reported it wasn't doing anything. I hate stimulants and the way it makes me feel. It didn’t do much except make me more anxious, and at times wired, but I still couldn’t concentrate. It also decreased my appetite which is bad because I already had a small appetite being a 120 pound weakling. My mom was secretly keeping count of the pills, and apparently every other pill in the house with abuse potential. She actually had a CHART. I took 4 concerta one day, and was just a little more wired than usual and my mom called me on it the next day, and was afraid I was addicted something. I said whatever because it wasn’t even working and I discontinued use of the concerta.

OH yea, I was not only a 120 lb weakling, but a pimple faced geek. Like hard core angry acne, totally puss spewing. I was doing all kinds of things to treat it, and I got put on Accutane at about the same time I was put on concerta. Accutane dries the FUCK out of my body. It turns my lips into sandpaper, and they constantly chap and bleed. I have to drink a lot of water on it, so I also have to use the bathroom a lot. I noticed later that I had become accustomed to using the bathroom frequently in stress inducing situations as it somewhat relieves tensions. I would drink tons and tons of water throughout the day, just so I could have chances to get out of class and away from people later in the day. It was a guarantee. Staring at a small dot on the tile wall in front of me, holding my stuff, and emptying my fluids out in my own personal stall (I usually went for the larger isolated handicapped stall). Ahhh, how satisfying. Anyways I developed this strange coping behavior while on this drug and partly because of the drug. Another side effect of Accutane is change in mood, more specifically depression. At least the accutane worked on the acne.

After concerta I was put on Strattera. Both the shrink and the psychiatrist both gave raving reviews of this drug and thought I would respond well, which is what they said about everything. This was for my anxiety and ADD. A two-fer. This really had no effect on my concentration or mood. But it severely decreased my diet, more so than concerta. Also I used to masturbate compulsively, at least once a day (that’s being generous), I was addicted. For about a week, I couldn’t get it up easily. I had to force my penis to get excited. Once I had a painful ejaculation and I was very concerned. That didn’t stop me from masturbating though, and it could’ve just been me masturbating entirely too much and like hurting my junk from excessive at times perhaps violent use/abuse of. But later I learned that both diminished sex drive and painful ejaculation are side effects. I was on strattera only a month or so because it wasn’t doing shit.

Then Effexor. They thought that ADD existed, but that since I wasn’t responding to concerta, maybe if they “cured” whatever else I had (anxiety and depression) it would indirectly cure the ADD. AKA. They had an excuse to give me more drugs and get paid more. This one really fucked me up. I only took it for 4 days. I immediately felt nauseous. I felt dizzy, and had lingering headaches throughout the day. I would have little to no energy and felt physically weak. I did not attribute this to the drug. Out of all the above drugs this really suppressed my appetite the most, but I do not think that my headache, weakness, and nausea are the result of this, because I concentrated on forcing myself to eat, and I still felt that way. I immediately noticed that it was harder to concentrate, but I attributed this to my terrible sleep. It was hard to get to sleep but once I attained it was impossible to truly wake up. I remember tossing and turning those nights with frustration because I was tired and could not sleep. I honestly don’t think I masturbated, for once, so that means hardcore diminished sex drive. These symptoms are all because of fucking effexor.

The symptoms progressed through the 4 day time period. By day four I woke up and took 3 extra strength Tylenols because I felt like shit and was drinking water nonstop, and I was convinced I just had a cold or the flu, because I’m a dumbass and didn’t even think of effexor as a possibility. I thought that I had made a fool of myself and everyone was talking about it and I had just missed out on the punchline, and of course this was all my imagination. I was extremely anxious all day and was on edge, I just wanted to go home and sleep because I felt shitty. I was singled out two or three times for not paying attention in class, and my English teacher held me back after class to ask me if I was doing OK.

Then I had guitar practice right after school let out, and I had actually studied my theory and practiced this song we had been working on for 3-4 hours total through the week, which is unheard of for me. I could tell the theory fine, but whenever he tried to elaborate on it I would get confused, and he would get frustrated and overexplain it for me and then I would lie and say I understood even though I didn’t. Then he would come back and relate something to that point and quiz me and see that I really didn’t understand it and start all over. Terrible session. I sucked, and I think my guitar teacher thought I was high. During the guitar lesson I actually did feel kind of high, like I had just smoked a bowl. My body felt a little heavy and I felt lightheaded and it was difficult to think.

This is kind of how I thought thorazine would be. I just could not think or feel much. There were things that were bothering me at the time, but I pushed them out of my head and only focused on my anxiety (which always makes it worse, it’s a vicious cycle and a self-fulfilling prophecy, when I let it get it the best of me) and how much I didn’t want to be there. Someone would make a joke and I would see why it was funny, even if it was especially clever and well delivered, and I couldn’t find any satisfaction in it. I would force myself to laugh and I felt like a tired dysfunctional robot, depressed, but more empty than anything else.

Coming out of the lesson, I felt uncoordinated. I felt hardcore anxiety coming on. As I walked down the stairs I realized from my previous experiences with dxm and benadryls that I was definitely hallucinating. Everything kind of looked like it was being viewed through subtle fish eyed lens. The stairs seemed to extend a little longer than they should be, and the railing seemed at more of an inward angle than usual. The parking lot looked more symmetrical and smaller than usual. For a moment I think cool! Then when I got into the parking lot everything seemed massive, and the anxiety is getting worse, and I looked back up at the stairs and the bushes near them and they looked smaller than usual. This has got to be the Effexor. My eyes couldn’t focus on anything, I felt a pain behind my eyes when I focused on it for too long. This was kind of happening all day and I just blamed my headache, but this effect really peaked at this time. When I moved my head one way the parking lot would seem to shift the opposite direction. This made me dizzier. I would stare at the lines near one car and they would be very short, and the lines near another car would be longer.

I’m more on edge now than I have been all week, and I feel I’m about to have a panic attack, but somehow keep it together. The parking lot kind of dips in the center. There is a sewer there because otherwise water would collect. It had rained earlier in the day and was now sunny. There were leaves on the ground, I began to feel floaty, and hot and stuffy. I observed that it felt like I was in a soupbowl.

By the time I got to my car in the back of the parking lot, I did have the ability to look over many cars, being somewhat above them. So at other times (as I sat in my car), it felt like I was also above the soup bowl at the same time depending on how I wanted to think about it. It also kind of looked like I was in a bowl of some sort because of way the parking lot curves inward and there was still water on the ground shining. I thought that the (faded) pavement looked like the bottom of a black bowl. And I was in the broth. Some of the cars were chicken and others looked more like vegetables of some sort. I didn’t see all this directly, but I thought it in my mind. After sitting in my car for about 10 to 15 minutes and watching these things get worse, finding myself coming with very strange thoughts, and ridiculous comparisons between a parking lot and a soupbowl I decided I shouldn’t drive. Besides the minor visual disturbances, my coordination sucked, my thinking was skewed, illogical, and delayed, and I was on edge and did not want to think about driving at all because I was afraid I would accidentally kill someone or myself.

I had to call my mom to come get me and she didn’t believe me that I wasn’t high on illegal drugs because my pupils were massive. My family was pissed. I went home and immediately went to sleep. My Dad tried to make me eat something to “get that shit out of your system” and I didn’t feel like eating and he called me pathetic. The thought of food made me nauseous and I had already forced myself to eat at school. This made them think I was crashing on meth or cocaine, because they have seen both addictions with my uncle, but I have only tried cocaine once and hated it. I slept from 5:30 to 5:00 the next morning, and couldn’t get back to sleep but didn’t feel like getting out of bed because I still had a headache, and found it difficult to think. When I used the bathroom my pupils still looked funny, and my coordination was still a little off.

I refused to take any prescription drugs ever again (and then broke this promise to myself later when I fell in love with xanax), and thankfully they believed me that I didn’t abuse the effexor because my mom was keeping count. They never apologized for the way they treated me during this time period even after the doctor said that minor visual disturbances is a rare side effect. After 2 days I gradually started feeling better, and I got back to my normal self loathing depressed anxious self, except I believe it intensified. My mental condition soon after this mess went really downhill, and its hard to say if it was caused by these drugs, or the recreational drugs and alcohol, but I think it was probably a combo, and the prescription drugs made me more depressed and desperate to get fucked up which made the problem worse when I did get fucked up, a VICIOUS CYCLE!!! Ha, but seriousy, I was not drinking or smoking weed while on the effexor, but I had been doing it around this time period and right before hand.

2 months later I was drinking myself stupid every night, and did triple C’s (which I shoplifted of course) every other day, and took a liking to hydrocodones and marijuana (which I bought with the money I wasn’t buying lunch with). My delinquency and shenanigans SPIRALLED OUT OF CONTROL, to be totally cliché again. I pretty much had a mental break down, and I was not myself at all during this time period. I got busted for shoplifting by my parents because I went way overboard with it. I found myself doing really stupid shit like driving drunk all the time and doing shitty graffiti in risky places while intoxicated. I thought I was a fucking artistic genius or a martyr or something.

They searched my room and found lots of porn, and also my journals and they read them. Which still pisses me off, because I have all my innermost thoughts in their. They were extremely disturbed after reading through and wanted to put me in a psych ward, and I must admit the content of these journals were at times shocking, but I never thought anyone else would be reading it. I pissed off lots of people at my school by writing weird anonymous letters on people’s lockers these were supposed to be “clever” and satirical, making others question their values, but as this ridiculous and pitiful attention seeking trend progressed my letters became more blatantly critical of other people and their beliefs, and one or two were somewhat threatening the more I think about. I should have known that everyone at my school knew it was me, or at least the teachers because this rich private school had cameras out the ass. I swear I’m not usually an asshole. And never a pretentious creepy asshole like this, I’m still shocked over all the things I did.

I ignored the hell out of my (ex) girlfriend. I got my ass destroyed in a fight and after this beating, as a grand finale, I OD’d on 13 hydrocodones and 10+ shots of whiskey (lost count). I wouldn’t call it suicide, but I definitely didn’t care about life, and I didn’t enjoy life, and I probably did not want to be alive, but didn’t have the balls to kill myself. All of the armchair psychologists are now thinking to themselves ‘rationalized suicide and/or denial’, but it was not a conscious decision. Finally my parents had a good excuse to put me away for a little while (1 week). Girlfriend broke up with me. There were tons of rumors going around school about me, the most popular being that I got busted for shoplifting and caught with drugs by the cops and was in jail. I switched schools after this because I realized it was one of the main stress factors in my life, and I hate these people, and it was definitely a TOXIC environment.

I took a break from drugs from all drugs for about 3-4 months after this and was then much more mentally and emotionally stable. I can’t help but think that lot’s of this could have been prevented by not taking these prescription drugs which I believe made me a different person even though I was not on anything at the time except for accutane. I’m not saying I don’t blame accutane because there have been several studies linking that to suicide. And I’m certainly not saying that I have no responsibility in this either. Now I’m drug free (30 days exactly), and for once i'm trying to keep it that way and focus on not intoxicating because it makes me miserable over time and I can't just have one toke or drink. SO NOW, I smoke cigs constantly instead, eat about 5-6 candy bars a day, and keep myself busy 24/7 so I don’t have to think about troubling thoughts and I can momentarily repress all of my emotions. Much, much healthier.

Exp Year: 2007	ExpID: 62702
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: Jul 27, 2007	Views: 41,584
[ View PDF (to print) ] [ View LaTeX (for geeks) ] [ Swap Dark/Light ]
Pharms - Venlafaxine (191), Pharms - Methylphenidate (114), Pharms - Atomoxetine (316) : Families (41), Depression (15), Hangover / Days After (46), Post Trip Problems (8), Retrospective / Summary (11), Not Applicable (38)