Prazosin, I find out, is an alpha-blocker, primarily prescribed to lower high blood pressure, and also used for prostate problems (due to blood constriction). It has reported usefulness in helping reduce PTSD nightmares and anxiety.

More voodoo.

No medication that is supposed to directly lower blood pressure, heart rate, etc. has ever been helpful to me.

Vistaril, propranalol, clonidine and probably others that I forget, do nothing. And by nothing, I mean nothing, as in as if I had not taken anything at all.

Some drugs only "work" to reduce certain symptoms. For example, aspirin reduces aches and pains, like headaches; but aspirin does not "do anything" otherwise. If one has no aches or pains one would never "know" one has ingested aspirin.

So to for me with a myriad of other drugs, even some of the "so-called" narcotics such as benzodiazepines. Benzodiazepines do nothing for me but reduce my anxiety.

One time when I was in the Hospital I was given an injection of 10mg of Valium directly into my IV; I felt an odd sense of cold spread throughout my body immediately afterward, but that slowly passed and I had no other sensation related to that injection. That 10mgs of Valium did nothing. Later, when the nurse came back and asked me how the Valium was working, she was quite perplexed when I said that it had no effect.

You tell me what I am supposed to do when a Doctor's conventional wisdom regarding these drugs is just plain wrong. What?

Because I am "an alcoholic," proven anti-anxiety drugs such as Ativan will never be prescribed to me by almost every fucking doctor in existense. And if I do get a prescription it will inevitably be miserably too low to have much of an effect.

I am sick (duh!) of this shit.

Last Saturday I woke up in the hospital. I had no clue how I got to be there. I had no memory of the previous few days. Things are still vague. This is what I have been able to piece together, by my memory slowly coming back and from what I have been told.

(Oh, yeah, a quick update: Nardil was perhaps the culprit. I don't know... that's just what a doctor says.)

Last Thursday or Friday, all day, I was in a state deja-vu. The most intense feeling of repeating things I have ever had. The next day things starting getting black and hazy, like my mind was going. I couldn't think straight and it was like I was going in and out of conscience.

I have no memory of what happened next. This is what I have been told: With intense back pain (yeah, really weird), I went to the nearby Seven-Eleven and asked someone to call 911. The ambulance came and brought me to the hospital.

While in the ER I had a Grand Mal seizure^* and lost conscience.

Shit. (Turns out that deja-vu is a common beginning phase of Grand Mal seizures.)

As is typical, none of the Doctors were sure what caused the seizure. They think it was the Nardil. Right. Well, obviously, maybe it was. But while Serotonin Toxicity is a known complication of Nardil, seizures are not, as far as I have read, a documented side-effect.

I still do have back pain; and x-rays at the hospital showed several compacted vertebra. The doctors also told me that I may have passed a kidney stone. Apparently passing a kidney stone is painful. But how the fuck does a kidney stone cause compacted vertebra? Also, just where does a kidney stone come out?

Shit.

So, I am off the Nardil yet again, this time most likely for good. They replaced it with Prazosin (more on this later, as I have still to investigate it).

I don't know. Something is fucking wrong. I feel like crap. I still have fucked up visions in my head. I have had a rebound of despair and fear. And the doctors still have nothing conclusive to say.

This Shit Sucks_(tm).

^* Aka Gran Mal or Toxic-Clonic seizure.

You are here most likely via a search engine with a term such as PTSD. That's one on my Blog tags.

Your first thought triggered by this "place" was most likely, Huh?

Yeah. I get that too. And I write this stuff.

While you are here any way^*, perhaps you will allow me to explain my reasoning behind creating this blog. It is very simple, actually. I wanted to write a blog to document specifically what living with PTSD is like.

If you do not cringe at most of the writing here, I have failed my endeavor. Miserably failed, yet again. But that is PTSD.

When one is miserable, it is difficult to not let misery ooze out of ones words.

My "first draft" posts where in a diary format, most of the time direct copy of my not quite unlike stream-of-conscience note books, in which I wrote daily chronicles of the stuff and things I went through. Those daily doses of words, seen here in blog format, are pathetic—pathetic like pitiful, rather than pathetic like pitiable.

Something was lost in the transclusion.

It was I who cringed when my own posts here were later re-visited. My blog posts here seemed different than my word-for-word writings in my note books.

I decided then that the "memory muse-meme" of the paper written words can not be transcluded. The hand-written-in-pen style of the paper can not be transcluded; nor it's ill-formed-informal manner.

A blog, as the computer is, is a hard-edged medium. Hand-writing is a soft, no-edge medium. (My hand-writing anyway is.)

Then, on September 21st last year, I wrote a couple of posts from scratch... ah... no. God no. I would never continue to write such as that—ever.

Then, in December, I wrote my drunk-alogue, and posted it here.

An improvement I saw—why not write longer pieces? Still about me and my PTSD, but try to directly explain how PTSD is.

While I was musing this over, I had found the Anarchist News and hung about there. The posts there are all specific to anarchy and anarchists, and the comments were mainly funny or poignant. The funny I liked.

Right after I posted a comment there, in response to an article about self-immolation and other suicides, I thought I should also post that comment here.

P.S. Additionally, several of my old posts were regarding PTSD related medications. I would like to provide a history of all the drugs I have been on, of all the doctors I have seen, but that would be a very long post.

Suffice to say that I am back on Nardil. "You fucking crazy?" you ask. (And that is exactly what you should ask if you read my previous posts about my use of it, having spent a week in a hospital because of it, having to have nearly died because it. Well, crazy I am. And I mean, crazy I am.)

^* Did you notice that I spelled "any way" and not "anyway"? I shall explain why in a future post.

Monks did this too in protest of the Vietnam war.

I've read that Sati, one of the wives of the Hindu god Shiva was, as legend has it one of the first immolation-ers (-ists?). There is a long history of self burned-up protesters. Talk about making a point!

And that is what suicide can mean. A person's final message; from "I'm sorry," to "Fuck you!"

But many are just out of fear and despair. Last month someone I knew killed himself because he was facing a long jail sentence and could not bear such shit again. "Can you take care of my cat?" he asked just days before, saying that his landlord did not allow for pets... It was, of course, a warning sign.

My brother is dead from suicide of gin and medication -- he left a long note, his handwriting getting worse and worse until he slid the pen off the paper as his life slid away.

One of the worst ways to go is jumping of a bridge, as I have heard of many a survivor saying, in the first seconds of free-fall, "What the fuck am I doing!" Better to go fast. I can only imagine the horror of immolation. Joan of Arc screams at the end of her immolation by the state.

Life ain't like Burning Man's Dance Dance Immolation -- we ain't got fire-proof pants.

I was one of a few hundred thousand people this year who attempted suicide. Someone saw me passed on the side of the road (shit!) and called an ambulance -- I spent a week in the hospital with a catheter in my dick, a temperature probe up my ass, two IVs in my arms and a third in my shoulder, and three tubes down into my stomach. What fun!

I attend AA. It is a form of ANARCHY. We get together in non-political, direct action, with nobody else's help. We do this on our own. We do this to help one another. We do this to survive. We are greater than the sum of our parts.

I have seen more death among the AA and NA folk than I have anywhere else. "Dean" I met when I went to my first meeting -- he greeted me with a hello, a smile and a handshake. He died two weeks later. Two months ago a woman's husband hung himself, followed in a week by her brother who hung himself. There have been many, many deaths this year among "our group." Many don't make it.

Many people kill themselves slowly, a bit at a time, without hope, without identity, with nothing to look forward to, with no "community" that they feel part of, no group of people with which they feel connected to. There is no support system that they are aware of to help them. And they feel like shit, alienated and out-of-place.

ANARCHISTS perhaps, of all people, can understand this. You've made it. You've found your place. You have your communities. You sympathize with those other suicidists I failed to mention, those bullied by their "peers" to such an extent, typicality LBGT kids and other "outsiders", that they just can't take it anymore.

I don't know if this means anything or not. But I had to say it. (Or something like it.)

I was a lonely kid, shy to the extreme. I didn't learn much growing up. I was neglected and always alone.

My Name is Greg, and I am an Alcoholic

It was in the sixth grade that I was introduced to alcohol. Me and three of my friends one evening snuck out into the woods and went into a little shack. There were crates to sit on around a low table. Someone took out a small bottle.

I had never seen alcohol before. I didn't know what it was. The bottle was passed around. They had done this before. This was my first time. The bottle was passed around in silence. When it got to me I simply took a mouthful as they did. It was Tequila.

It did not taste all that bad. After my second or third swig I fell off my crate. It was as if someone pulled me. Someone laughed, "Look at Greg!"

We finished and left the shack. I suddenly was a different person. I was talkative, rambunctious. Someone asked, "What's the matter with you?" "I'm happy," I replied. And I was, until later on that night, then I got sad. My friend panicked and called someone. "Coffee," they suggested. Hot and black. I couldn't drink it. I'd never had coffee before either.

I was in a black-out for a while. I don't recall much of that night. In the morning I, amazingly I now think, was not hungover. I was not nauseous. But breakfast came back up. Bewildered, I had no clue of what occurred. The next day I went back to being that lonely and shy kid, not having learned anything. I had no one to talk to about it. It was soon forgotten.

Beer and Barrooms

My next drink was not until High School. By then I knew about beer, wine, all different kinds of liquor, usually stolen from a parent's cabinet. I went to parties. Keg parties. Bog parties we called the ones that were out in the cranberry bogs.

I managed it all pretty good. At first.

I started to chug. I'd drink out of the liquor bottle. I'd get drunk. "I've never seen you like this," some said when I was on a bender. I was kicked out of homes. I was known as "the lush."

By the end of High School I was still living at home. My father left years ago. My brothers had all left by this time. My sister went off to college. I was alone again. I had no friends. But I stopped drinking. I got a job. I got a car. I got an apartment in the center of town.

But there was something new in the picture, now. Bars. A pool-hall. A Tavern. The VFW and Amvets. A new world awaited for me in those places. They were places even the lonely could go. And I could drink.

It was a typical working class town. Nearly everyone worked, got paid on Friday's, and spent their pay at the bars on the weekend. What else is new?

Moving on Up

Well, there was something new. Cocaine. I was inevitably led to it, seeing other people using it. Then I saw someone cooking and smoking in "pipes" made of plastic bottles. I was drawn to it. Drinking became less and less of a want. Smoking crack was the next best thing. Until I saw a needle.

"How could I do it and not offer some to him?" a (then) friend of mine would later say. I fell in love with the needle. The ritual of preparation and the stab of the needle was exhilarating, the flow of the drug throughout my bloodstream was near nirvana.

But I stopped quicker than I had started. I was doing it more and more, and it's expensive. I met other addicts, from the City. Heard talk of heroin, and of shooting-galleries, and AIDs and hepatitis. And I stopped. Scared stopped.

I was broke. I had no friends again. So I went back to weekend drinking. I thought everything will be fine now. Until I began to wake up in jail. Protective custody they called it. Drunken bum I called it. I had an inkling then that something was wrong.

A Home and Black-Outs

At first I was just drinking more than I could handle every few months or so. I would get drunk and become stupid. I was barred from a few places. I went to new bars. I dressed nice and went upscale, to fancier bars. Every few months I would still drink too much.

I alienated everyone by my binges. But I found yet another solution. I'd drink at home. I'd buy cases at a time and stay home. I was now lonely, isolated, and drinking almost every day.

Somehow through it all I managed to keep a job. I got a better job. I made money. I bought a house. I was still drinking; my binges were at home now. Except occasionally, in black-outs that came more frequently now, I would go out. This began to scare me. I'd go in and out of black-outs for days at a time, finding myself unknowingly in bars and really drunk. These black-outs bordered on nightmares.

After the worst of these episodes, I curled up in my bedroom for five days--not eating, not moving--while I read Ayn Rand's 'Atas Shrugged.' The book didn't have much to do with it, but those five days let me think. I knew then that I was an alcoholic.

I found A.A. and I stopped drinking for six years. Then something else happened. I still wanted to drink. I was still lonely. I was still isolating...

It began after a few years of sobriety: the fear, a sense of doom, the panic attacks. I'd want to go out but I'd end up standing by the door unable to move; then I'd go back to watching TV. Work, go to meeting, go home, repeat.

I needed more than just A.A.

Doctors and More Doctors

I went to a psychologist once a week, and a psychiatrist once a month. This is how it works for those with mental illness. A therapist talks to you on a weekly basis, and a psychiatrist works with her to put you on medication. It started out okay. It just didn't work in the long run.

I went back out drinking.

The binges were not so bad, but I knew I risked everything. People I saw in A.A. meetings were dying from this disease. "Dean" met me at at meeting I was new to with a handshake, a smile and a "hello," making me feel welcome in a strange place. He died two weeks later. "Scotty" is dead. "Joe" died suddenly without warning. Many people go to A.A. meetings for a few times and never make it back.

I'd sober up and try the therapist/doctor thing again. It doesn't work and I'm back out. Then I'd sober up and try again. New doctors, new medication. Then finally...

I found a medication that worked. I stopped drinking again. I got out more. I hung out at the coffee shop. I'd drink coffee and read the newspaper and discuss the world with new found friends.

Only to find that I had a reaction to the medication and was hospitalized for a week, almost dead from it. Fuck!

A Cycle Occurs

With no meds, back to drinking I went. My binges got worse and worse. I lost my job. I sold my house at a profit, got an apartment, and drank the rest of my money away. Not working, I piled up my apartment with empty bottles. Many times just drinking myself to oblivion. I came out of a black-out with a broken bottle held to my face. "What am I doing?" I thought then. I called 911.

I landed in a psych-center, locked up for two weeks, a team of doctors questioned me everyday. When I was let out, I had prescriptions for new meds, and I had new diagnoses: PTSD, Major Depressive Disorder, General Anxiety Disorder and Social Anxiety.

But the medications stopped working, if they ever were, and I ended up drinking again. This happened to me nine times. Nine times I ended up in a psych-ward/detox. I'd get out on new medications that would not work after a month, I'd binge, I'd get taken in. Nine times.

Before the ninth and last time, my binge went like this: I'd got a six-pack one day. The next day I got two six-packs. The next day I got a bottle of whiskey. The day after that I got another bottle. The day after I got two bottles of vodka. When they were gone, wrecking havoc on my digestive system, I went and got two bottles of gin. They produced in me horrible, horrible nightmares. So I went back to whiskey; this time with two half-gallons.

On the seventh day of nothing but drinking and lying in bed, I took an entire bottle of my medication, washed down with whiskey, and went outside to die. I passed out. Someone just happened by, saw me in the road, and called 911.

Finally I Get Help

I woke up in the hospital. I had a catheter, a temperature probe, two IVs in my arms and a third IV in my shoulder, an oxygen mask over my nose, and three tubes down into my stomach. I was there for a week.

Back to the psych-ward I go. Been to this particular one two times before. The doctors are belligerent jerks. The last time I was there one of the doctors, after seeing me twice for an hour total, diagnosed me as bi-polar. I went along with it at first because I knew nothing about it. After I got out I looked it up. I am not bi-polar. The doctor was simply wrong, and I let him know how I felt. He got pissed off. Good.

I was let go after ten days. After I got out I went to live with my sister. It was tough for the both of us. I tried really hard to not drink. I was on the verge of another relapse when I got a phone call from someone at DMH (Dept. of Mental Health). I had been waiting for this. Through them, I have a new, low rent apartment. Somewhere in all of this I got disability from Social Security (for PTSD) which means a small stipend that covers rent and all my other needs.

I got new doctors. I am back on the medication that worked before, only this time it is the correct dosage (that first time it was prescribed it was double the dosage I needed). The therapist I see is kind of a schmuck, but that's okay, I just cut back his hours. The psychiatrist that I see is excellent. Smart, sense of humor, know what he talks about (admits that many of the newer class of drugs are voodoo).

I am back in A.A. and I enjoy the meetings. I am sober and well. For now.

I just wanted to say that I a still here and will get going on posting soon.

I am back on Nardil if you can believe it. The crucial thing about it is to not take too high of a dose. That first psychiatrist I had had me on about 3X too high of a dose, no wonder I went nuts.

Abilify sucks. Makes me manic and I can't sleep. Plus, there is a $60.00 co-pay that I did not find out about until a couple of days ago (complicated story).

Also I am back on Lorazepam, 2mg per day. I do not see what people like about benzos. At a few milligrams they do me nothing, nothing at all. At higher doses they make me fall asleep.

*sigh*

I am well, anyway. I go the A.A. meetings whenever I can.

More later....

Whew! What a ride it's been....

I have much to tell and am eager to start posting again. However, it will take a while as I work on other projects first.

I have several notebooks of material! Rehabs, detoxes, drunken escapades, new meds. New meds that work!

More here later I promise.

I made it. To burning man. If you've been following, you know how difficult it has been.

I got to the rideshare lot and someone asked, "Need a rideshare, $30?" "Yes," I said. Turns out that he and a buddy are just trying to make money by offering a shuttle -- blah. I kept asking around and finally found a ride with 3 Burners in an RV.

Noonish

I am riding in an RV with some very cool Canadians. They are so relaxed and polite! I could not have asked for a better ride. I really like their music. They offer water, soda, beer. I feel blessed.

Late Afternoon

Long ride in, of course. It's the same every year. I was feeling not "top notch" but we stopped for indian tacos and I had a beer and then I did feel top notch.

In Gerlach, where we wait for gas, I felt "ansy" and had two swigs of bourbon (something I had bought on the way to the rideshare lot and kept in my pack). I had no great anxiety so all it did was to make me feel "fuzzy" at first, but after awhile a bit relaxed.

The energy did not keep. Woke up with anxiety that got worse and worse as time went on. At about 6:00 or so I took meds; an SNRI and 3 Lorazepam. Seemed to help slightly after 1/2 hour but then nothing. I took 3 more Lorazepam; NOTHING. My anxiety got real bad.

At 8:00 I went to the bar. A cheap bourbon helped. So too a second. God, my fear is almost gone!

Fear is "way away" but a hook, a tentacle, remains. I have a beer too. I feel slightly more intoxicated than I normally would with just 2 shots and 1/2 a beer. Could be the Lorazepam. Fuck this Rx shit. Fucking voodoo. I have to change my entire life -- but when you are too scared to even talk to someone you know or met, it is not an easy thing to do.

I am going to try going to the rideshare place. Prediction: I'll be quite terrified when I get there -- hopefully some nice people will help me.

I sat at the bar for awhile -- 3 beers, slowly -- and two Burners sat next to me; they wanted a couple of drinks before they went out there. (It crossed my mind to mention that I'm looking for a ride, but I didn't.)

They were talking to the bartender about Burning Man and about how there were no money transactions out there. I had an opening: "There is only money charged for coffee and Ice," I said.

Things went good from there. I did mention that I was looking for a ride. Although they were full and had no room, they were very helpful.

It was good to talk to them and we exchanged names and handshakes. And it turns out that their camp is right next to ours. *sigh*

It has energized me, but a was a bit "libricated" by the beer. I hope the energy lasts til the morning.

I called _____. He couldn't talk but asked if I were alright and I could have kept him on the line. But I just mentioned, "I'm having trouble getting a ride-share." He was concerned but was with his ill grandmother so he said he would call back this afternoon. I paid for the room for another night.

Funny, if I knew I could get a ride back to Reno, that would have made approaching the ride-share a bit easier.

I went down to the bar and bought a beer and a shot of bourbon--I was surprised that it did not make me ill but calmed my stomach.

I am a bundle of nerves.

I can't do it. There is a burning lump of coal in my chest and it gets more painful the closer I get to strangers. I am so fucked.

I'll call _____ but I am afraid he'll say no and I'll be exposed.

I feel better. A bit calmer. Some of the pain is gone. Perhaps it is because I have decided to pay for another night at the hotel and to try another "walk around" the ride-share parking lot in the morning.

If I am still too scared to ask anyone I will look up the phone number of ______ who is coming up Thursday and--my hand shaking I am sure--will call to see about a ride. If that does not work out I will go home.

Still, I ramain aprehensive about ride-share--Burners yes, but strangers still.

It is so obvious now when it never was before--my fear of strangers. It extends to friends of siblings. It extends to friends of friends. But first and formost it is the stranger that I am afraid of to the point of avoidance.

I have not fully understood this so clearly until now.

Far away, outside, in contemplation of wants to be fulfilled, I forget, I let slip my fears--but ultimately, final confrontation with strangers I gulp and clench and tremble, shie away and hide. The pain is too great.

I'm going home. I could have done this better. I could have known that I needed a ride set up before I left. I needed a ride set up, or I should not have gone.

I can't go to strangers and start talking to them. I just can not do that. Period.

I took my pills, drank some beer, and eventually went out to the Save Mart. I circled the parking lot, seeing a Burner van and truck and possibly a car. *sigh* I couldn't talk to anyone and left.

I bought some more beer, ate lunch, and went back to my room and opened a beer.

This is all so pathetic.

But the fear gets so painful the closer I get to people.

What was I thinking? Why did I think I could do this? Hope. I tried to keep hope alive--but failed.

I will try again tomorrow after checkout (from the Hotel). I'll walk the lot and see what I see. Maybe something will present itself. If not I'll go back to the hotel and get 3 more days of room and wait for those friends going up Thursday (from LA) and I'll call them to see if I can fit in their car. If not I'll shuttle back to the airport and see if I can go home early.

I am too scared to move. I have only one tool left--my pen/voice. I want to cry. I feel beaten.

I am terrified.

My hand shakes as I call my brother. Fuck I hate the fear.

I want to write but I just can't get it out--racing thoughts, racing memories.

It's a bit later. I talked to my brother and, due to work, he is not going to Burning Man! A prospect that never could have occured to me. (He always goes.)

So I have to try ride-share at the Save Mart. What do I do? A sign? Just ask around? These are Burners, so therefore should be safe. It is Saturday; most people will be going Monday,

I have learned to check places out ahead of time, so I went by this morning and, ah, checked it out by walking around the parking lot--there were a few Burners there already--I just walked around and left.

PTSD is being afraid of people.

So, I am here all alone and to go on I will have to reach out to people I don't know.

I took 3 lorazepam and a beer to see what it does to me.

I think the lorazepam has slowed me down physically; I can concentrate better; I have calmed a bit.

Or maybe it is just the beer.

But there's more. The goosebumps, the fear, is still there, but it is further away--the tentacles are not quite reaching me-- Ha! Take that motherfucker!

Not quite. They are still there.

I have arrived in Reno. My fear is gone. But I am finally intoxicated.