I wonder, at times, of people who may put their faith in a “Higher Power,” or in, as so frequently is heard in the halls of AA, a “Higher Power I choose to call God.”

The choice is their’s to make, or is it? We all, in one way or another, are fed stories of “God” while growing up. “In God we Trust” has been emblazoned on all our money since the 50’s “Red Scare” era. We added also “under God” to the “Pledge of Allegiance,” that school children are so often forced to recite each morning at school, during that “Red Scare” period as well.

I however, chose to call my ‘Higher Power,’ Loraxepam.

I have in my posession 7 little — 1mg — pills of a medication called Loraxepam (also known as the brand name Ativan).

I got these 7 little pills from the Emergency Room of a nearby hospital, after I had visited it two nights ago in the throes of a severe Panic Attack — my heart was beating so hard that I thought that it would, no doubt, burst or somehow or other fail. The thought was illogical, perhaps, but human organs do fail, do become “ill,” and I was so scared something was wrong or that something was going to go wrong that I felt that the safest thing for me to do was to go to the ER (as it was about 11:00pm, I had no where else to go).

Seven little pills. Why would I put my faith in them?

Because, at the ER, I was given one of them, one 1mg pill, and it reduced my pain — for that was what a Panic Attack is, and is why I purposely capitalize it: pain — and I was able to relax and to feel safe again.

I was provided, upon discharge, a prescription for 7 of these little pills. I have them, two, no three now, days later on my kitchen counter. I have not taken them yet. For, you see, these little pills are denied from an entire class of people: those who are known as, or thought to be, Alcoholics.

Doctors the country over deny these medications — known as benzodiazepines — from anyone even thought of as an “abuser” of alcohol or in any way any sort of “addict.”

For me, as a Panic Attack sufferer, I can find relief in benzodiazepine medication. However, since I “abuse alcohol” by drinking at times to suppress my Panic Attacks — as alcohol also has a sedating effect on the body that lessens the symptoms of Panic Attacks — doctors, upon hearing the phrase “alcohol use as self-medication,” generally refuse to offer benzodiazepine medication.

Too many doctors refuse to treat Panic Attack (and PTSD) sufferers with live saving medication.

So there my seven little pills remain in their prescription bottle as I silently defy those so many doctors: “I will not take these pills to ‘make me feel good.’ I will not abuse them. I will take them to reduce my Panic Attacks which happen from time to time. I will not ‘get high’ with them.”

Yes, I have, and still do, self-medicate with alcohol. But I am not so fucking stupid to abuse live saving medication — I shall reserve them for when I need to stop my heart from palpitating in my chest so fucking hard that it feels like it is going to burst.

I know the difference between a heart beating hard from exertion, or from a hangover, and, these doctors do not seem to understand, from a Panic Attack.

My mind is torturing me with projections of past terror…

I am afraid of being, becoming, afraid.

I am afraid that at some point ahead I will encounter terror — to be, to find myself suddenly confronted by a terrible and fearful situation. That something will go wrong — will break — and I will need help and only two kinds of people will be there:

Those that ignore and those that ridicule.

I get up and look around to see if all my stuff is here: keys, wallet, etc. Yes. “Fuck,” I say to myself and go back to sleep.

I finally get up. I take my morning meds. Now I am on amitriptyline, gabapentin (brand name Neurontin), quetiapine fumarate (brand name Seroquel), and prazosin. None of them help.

There is a half-pint (200ml actually) of Jose Cuervo Especial before me as I write this. It is un-opened.

As I commented two days ago, Where do I start?

What happened to me in May of last year that caused me to stop writing here? What about the positive posts of April? A lot has happened.

It turns out that fear is always just below the surface and ready to come out and start “driving” at the first sign of stress. Stress is the biggest trigger I have. Too much stress and fucking wham! I go to pieces. That is, I tremble, I sweat, I get paranoid, I am fearful, I expect doom; I also cannot think straight, I have poor judgement and I make poor descisions. PTSD is a psychological and physiological disorder.

The fear is the worst. It is a painful fear — it is actual, physical pain in my heart and upper chest. It feels as if something corrosive spreads from my heart up and into my arms. This is far beyond the “butterflies in my stomach” feeling.

And all these feelings result in wanting to be left alone, to isolate. This part of the disorder is debilitating; I fear doing things (like updating this blog), I fear going out outside, I want to remain still and to be hidden. And, therefore, nothing gets done.

But deep down inside is a want, a need, for comfort and compainionship. I want the pain to go away! So I tend to turn to medication… and the bottle of tequila that was un-opened?

It is now not.

“Fuck.” That is the word that most describes my current mood. I am in a bar — whose name I care not to know nor remember — somewhere in Boston.

I cannot drink.

But I do anyway…

I have been away… scared and confused I have been these many months… things have not gotten better.

I have been through it all (“from Jesus to Paul”); I have been to Burning Man; I have driven across the US; I have fallen out and in of love; I have seen the insides of jail; I have been inpatient three times; I have been to the ER too many times…

I have much to write about, but where to start?

I have not updated this “blog” in awhile as I have been concentrating so hard on other things. I do, though, have much more to add.

Despite some positive results with the Trauma Center — PTSD is NOT uderstood by many doctors and having a specialist is crucial — I still feel anxious.

More later….

My posts on serotonin syndrome have been combined and is here Serotonin Syndrome.

(If you happen to have been following this blog, I hope you will understand the sporadicness of my posts. When it is difficult to just live day to day… Well, I hope you can imagine.)

The Medications

After a breakthough of sorts in therapy — The Trauma Center at JRI — involving the sources of my PTSD (see my post “I Dreamt that I Woke up” for some information in that regard), the incredible terror of dark forms coming at me in my mind whenever I neared other people^* has all but gone!

The ramifications of this release from bondage has been no panic attacks, and I no longer need these medications:

Propranalol (brand name Inderal)
Hydroxyzine (brand name Vistaril)

I had stopped taking the Geodon but am undecided about its efficacy (and how it works) — more on that later.

I had stopped the Nardil, but I have re-started it at half the dosage — 30mg three times a day nearly killed me (see the next post, “Serotonin Syndrome”) — I am willing to try 15mg 3x day and so far so good.

More later because this is all so very important (but I am tired).

* Basically that is how it worked, it was actually a bit more complex, and, need I say, difficult to deal with.

I got out of the hospital today (Tuesday) and am to exhausted and slow of wit to disscuss the ordeal in as well as I should. I was in since last Wenesday. I should have been admitted Tuesday night went I went in totally strung-out and uncontrollaby cramping up due to the MAOI, but Dr. Rotten in the ER pre-judged me as some sort of addict just looking for a fix and sent me home as my vitals were not life-threatening (or something).

Anyway, things got much worse.

My legs were tensing up hard, I couldn’t move my bowels and hadn’t for four days. When I finally wasn’t able to urinate, and things started to hurt, I had to go back to the ER, practically yelling at the guy in triage (who I later apologized to, twice) that I was not an addict looking for fix, Dr. Simple, after looking at the previous night’s report, immediatly administered to me some Ativam (lorazepam) and started another round of testing. Lukily for me, they admitted me.

And a week later I ain’t got those MOAI blues no more.

I had this most incredible dream. It should have freaked me out — and pissed me off — but I have come to grips with it.

In my dream I woke up and I thought that I was awake. It was so vivid! I leaned out of bed and saw that the room was different. I was hallucinating I thought! What else could explain it. I was not scared though. It was interesting. The dresser over in the corner — in the wrong place. There was a sign on it, which I unfortunately did not read. There was a crib in the middle of the room. And toys. Lots or colorful toys. There were three children inthe room playing with the toys. They were happy. I wanted to talk to the dark-haired boy with glasses — I did not know him — but I’m not sure why I did not. I do not remember the faces of the other two children, a boy and a girl. I felt that there was a fourth person in the room and tried to look at him.

I was picked up than, lifted and moved side. Someone leaned against me, warm soft skin against my back. He whispered in my ear. It was my father, whispering some insincere reassurance, although I do not remember what he said. I felt then that warm soft feeling on my buttocks.

And my father proceded to rape me.

When I woke up then I did not feel too overwhelmed, or scared or angry. I am not sure that this was an actual memory. But it was relevatory — was that what I am terrified of? That that did happen to me? May happen again? Was that all?

If it happened there is nothing I can do about it. It was not my fault. I must move on with my life.

My terror of people has lessened. The dark, looming imagery I used to get about people is all but gone.

UPDATED — SEE END OF POST

Finally, a positive post!

I have been on these medications for awhile:

Ziprasidone (brand name Geodon)
Propranalol (brand name Inderal)
Hydroxyzine (brand name Vistaril)

No effect can be attributed to the Geodon, but the Inderal keeps my heart from pounding in my chest, with the side effect of the feeling like the circulation in my arms has been cut off and my arms are near to being hard to move, and the Vistaril spreads an additional sense of calm to my lungs and chest with the side effects that of the feeling that there is a ton of bricks on them and a kind of soreness in my lungs when I breath. These are decidedly effecting the symptoms, though and not the root causes of my fear. The Geodon was supposed to do that, I guess, messing with the dopamine and serotonin neurotransmitters of the brain, at least on paper. But so far no typical dopamine and serotonin neurotransmitter effecting drugs have had any effect on me — none.

But I still got panic attacks, twice of such magnitude that I went to the emergency room; the pain was horrific. I was given a benzodiazepine (Adivan) that made me fall asleep, which made the attacks subside — but I can’t spend the rest of my life sleeping or in a fatigued state.

So I went back to my doctor and said “I’m going crazy!” and he tried to reassure me that there are other medications to try. And the one he recommended this time was an MAOI (monoamine oxidase inhibitor) called Nardil (phenelzine sulphate).

Although it’s side effect are pretty strong (some fatigue and a sense of being “spaced out,” I have to remind myself to think) I am now quite relaxed and the background terror of my life is all but gone!

More later…

The Nardil took a few days longer to do its thing. It is a fucking nightmare! More when I am able.

I once quit a job because I did not make my sandwich right.

I had a job landscaping. It was pleasant, easy work. I got out in the weather, saw much of my town, got exercise. The guys I worked with, and the boss I worked for, were “good eggs” and I got along with them. I admired the foreman’s pride in his work, and it rubbed off on me.

But one day, I got so scared that I just called in and made up a story of “how I got in trouble and can’t make it in.” I called later in the day to quit. I was just scared. And I did not really know, nor dwelled upon, why.

But a memory, it was right before I quit, had always been nagging at me about that job. It is, as in the pride in the foreman’s work, so clear. It was lunch time — we always stopped at noon for about a half hour, no matter what — and I found myself looking down at my ill-prepared lunch of some dry and hard french bread with just a couple of slices of roast beef in the middle and some snack to go with it that was so insignificant that I do not remember what it was.

I remember, sitting comfortably on a porch, they guys all eating their lunches of carefully made sandwiches and fruit and drinks; someone had milk. They had all done this before, in fact for a very long time, and they seemed so comfortable with what they were doing… they seemed content.

And I remember looking down at my dry, hastily thrown together sandwich and felt — knew — that I was not one of them. I was different. I did not belong. I was not part of them. I could not even make a sandwich right.

Only now do I realize that…

The sandwich was why I could not go back.

It is you are in a world that is a cross between H. P. Lovecraft and Phillip K. Dick, it is everything you have ever believed in is not true, it is do not touch that or we will all be blown the smithereens, it is your family is out to get you, it is that guy over there is working with the guy other there to cheat you, it is that people can not be trusted and if you interact with them something bad, something horrible, something terrible, something so violent and of such terror is going to happen that there is no way that you are going to move, no way are you going to draw attention to yourself, no way are you going to make a sound, you are not even going to breathe it is so fucking scary.

And logic does not make it go away.

And the one thing you need, the only thing that will save you, you can’t have — a friend.

There is a sort of pain associated with loss. Loss of a valuable possession, a sum of money, etc., can cause a painful feeling. Similarly, the making of a major mistake can cause a painful feeling. The two feelings are quite the same.

Related too is the painful feeling of fear of such events, the fear of such pain. I fear leaving my camera on the front seat of my car. I fear certain type of crowds, such as cocktail parties.

Memories can trigger these painful feelings; memories of such painful events. Thinking can trigger these painful feelings; thinking that you might make a mistake.

Those two things, remembering and thinking, can turn into a vicious cycle that interferes with life. One wants to do something and upon the thinking of the doing one is hit by the painful feeling that one may make a mistake which gets reinforced by the memory of an event which resulted in a painful feeling.

The problem — the problem of PTSD — is when a painful feeling comes with seemingly no reason, with no associated event or memory; the pain just comes. Sometimes there are triggers. A person walks into a room and you are in pain; a dog barks and you are in pain; there is a vague smell and you are in pain; there is a look on someone’s face — even a friend’s — and you are in pain.

Even worse is when there are no discernible triggers. You are in pain and there is no reason. You are in pain and there is no one to talk to.

You are in pain and there is no way out.

[I wrote this some time ago, but I think it should be posted here today as it explains so much about how I still feel to this day.]

There is something that frightens me and I know not what it is. It is not fear of the unknown but an unknown fear.

The closest I have come to meeting this fear was in a dream. In a typical childhood fear-dream, I was laying in bed in my room at the top of the stairs and someone, some dark form, was coming, sneaking, up the stairs toward me. Paralyzed with fear I could do nothing but wait as this unknown form slowly came closer, closer… up the stairs it came. All I knew was that something with bad intent had me as it’s goal.

However, that fear was nothing. It disappeared. Or rather, got trumped, overridden, forgotten. For something else was coming. Something else, beyond form, beyond human, was coming. Coming from above, from outside. More terrifying than anything ever I had experienced before or since, this unknown thing was coming from outside my dream.

Suddenly I was aware I was dreaming. The fear on the stairs evaporated as if it were nothing. The ceiling of the room I was dreaming in began to morph. From the ceiling emerged a tunnel out of the netherworld, and out of it something was entering my dream. Something was entering my dream! And the fear of this was overwhelming. This fear was… exquisitely painful.

This fear was of an unknown source. I woke up screaming. Luckily, I woke up screaming.

I have had a similar dreams — nightmares — before, but then, all I remember was waking up in a scream. My childhood dreams was fraught with dark, scary visions, of shadows of people watching and whispering…

But this unknown fear overshadows all — and I never know when it may return.

I feel that people must see it on me, or in me, my fear of this fear. Do they notice that I am always looking over my shoulder? Looking up at the ceiling? Do they notice that I am always jumpy? Jumping at shadows and quick movements? Is that why people look at me so strangely?

It’s a feeling that I just can’t shake. I just can’t shake it.

I have two direct experiences with suicide: me and my brother.

My brother is dead.

Dead by his own hand — technically not by hand but by mouth via the ingestion of a lethal combination of drugs and alcohol. He left a note, his handwriting deteriorating as he penned his last words at the end of the paper…

I am still alive.

There is a stigma attached to suicide: it is unlawful; it is a sin; it is a sign of cowardice. This stigma causes families members to hide, suppress and deny it — I know all too painfully of this.

Lost, among the glowing “anti-depressant” ads (even with their warning labels), the journalistic triviality of suicide reports, the movie portrayals of suicide victims, and the quite neurotic treatment of suicide victims by many, the overwhelming, driving force behind suicide is searing pain.

Those of us who have died did not do so out of cowardice or of lack of empathy, but of a madness that is caused by constant pain.

Those of us who have died simply wanted their pain to cease.

It is like what makes me who I am — my core being — is, has been, broken into a thousand pieces; and having been so alone for so long, I am groping, grasping, in the dark trying to gather the pieces; and without help I am trying to figure out how the pieces should go together.

Anger is supposed to be okay according to my therapist. We have not yet gone into the subject too deeply, but I think she meant that anger is a normal human emotion and that that feeling is okay to have.

I was telling her of how I abhor anger.

I avoid anger. I run away from anger — literally and figuratively. Especially the anger in others.

First, an aside: When I was a young kid I had a bit of a mean streak in me (if three makes a streak). I don’t want to re-live those times again right now, but there were three instances when I bullied and hurt some other kids. I don’t want to recount exactly what happened as I am deeply pained and ashamed of what I did. Let me leave this thought with that I saw (and felt) the hurt I caused another boy in a disgusting act by the boy’s father against his own son.

But there are some times today when I get angry and let my anger overcome my reasoning powers (limited as that power is).

Part of "anger is okay" though, I believe, is that although the feeling of anger maybe okay, the lashing out at others in anger is not. I am not talking about anger at, say, someone who robs you. No. I mean anger at, say, a blog post or comment; anger at someone else’s attitude; anger at someone’s ethnicity, class, race, gender or sexual identity (luckily I am not plagued by this latter class).

When I look back at the (not too many but enough) times I have posted an angry comment, yelled at a slow driver, insulted someone, I think that I was really acting out some deep rooted anger that I have never dealt with — some internal turmoil never resolved.

There are too many, for me, now, as I look back, instances in my life about which I need to say…

I was wrong and I am sorry.

Abandonment. Disappointment. Fear of those prevents me from proper relationships. Fear of negative response to those — inevitable — instances of not hearing from, misunderstanding of, etc. It is painful. To the extreme.

It was a cut, a long time ago, on my cheek… I had this image in my head of it. Spirals. Spirals of images and memories and one of my cut cheek — one of the spirals — went forth from the past until now.

Or something.

I don’t know.

But now, I have a thought, turning into, the more I think of it, a compulsion, to cut my cheek. And underneath the thought is a reason: to remember a specific terror that could have been avoided if I where stronger or smarter or more experienced or had more wisdom.

So the cut, this cut, is a reminder of that. This cut is wisdom. Learned but not remembered other than by the cut. By that I mean that I did forget the pain I went though, suppressed, like many other times before, leading me to make the mistake yet again.

I cannot this time forget.

For if I do I shall repeat the pain.

Trauma teaches one to forget. Not remembering though, these little but painful social “mishaps,” means repeating behavior — painful behavior that ultimately leads to other self-destructing behaviors.

The first cut this time was lame. Funny I think now to use that word: “lame.” For I hate machismo crap. One does not cut to be macho in any sense of the word. Fuck no.

I cut to scar. Which is to remind. Which is to remember.

A small cut will heal quickly and not leave a scar. My first cut would not scar. My second would not either. But the third…

Blood drips and trickles and then flows down my neck and immediately I feel relief.

It is like a drug.

I am, now, as I write, somewhat content. Yet…

Logically, I know that I am wrong in my thinking. But physically I am, at least for now, willing to be wrong.

I have before me an ample supply of some good anti-pasto, a good stick of pepperoni and some good pita bread. I have also a case of Tsingtao. And, equally important to all the above, I am watching the Battlestar Galactica marathon on the SciFi channel and I eagerly await the next new episode tonight.

I am wrong to isolate and especially to drink, but even though I just might drink too much and do something wrong late in tonight’s wee hours if I become too drunk, it is a chance I am willing to take.

For now and today and into tonight I am somewhat at peace and my pain has receded.

I know my pain will return.

But for now my pain has gone.