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.