The Beloved
I know that headline post I did earlier was a little forlorn, but man, I didn’t take my Ativan last night, and it was like 8 hours of being burned at the stake. I wanted to be awake this morning, so I thought, Well, I’ll just take the other stuff but not the Ativan. How bad could it be? Wrong question.
I don’t think I was in any kind of proper withdrawal. I think it was rather that the OCD saw an opening — and took it. I was really focused on every movement of my body, every sound, every little catch in my throat. I couldn’t sleep. At one point, I was agonizing over whether my pillow was situated above my shoulder or below my shoulder. It’s not even a distinction I could understand this morning, but last night it was of great urgency. About a half-hour after a sneezing attack, I had an asthma attack. But I was nervous about taking my inhaler, so I waited until my breathing was so shallow, I was convinced I was going to die. It was like that, for hours and hours, with intermittent sleep. In my REM moments, I had a dream that I was trapped in a horror movie called The Beloved. In the film people you were attracted to would return your interest and then turn into demons. I tried to get out of the movie and away from the demons, but I kept getting pulled in. Bette Midler was in the film. She was the only name star.
I finally gave in a couple hours ago and took a quarter pill, which is doing absolutely nothing for me. I think I’ll go home and hide under the covers — this time, after I’ve taken a nice, pretty white pill.
liz | 5:22 PM | Uncategorized
I doubt this applies to everyone’s OCD but for me,”OCD abhors a vacuum.” If there is not a thing to worry about my OCD still finds it.
The shoulder thing sounds a bit like magical thinking. Sometimes I have to have my jaw, my shoulder or anything else just so or I believe there will be grave consequences. It is as you said probably OCD but consider magical thinking. If nothing else it sounds neat. A good book about it is A Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion, an account of some of the consequences of dealing with her husbands death.
I don’t have OCD but I do have sleep problems. I’ve been taking Lorazepam (I think it’s the generic for Ativan?) for quite some time now. If I don’t take it, I have the same problems you described (plus a few more) and I am almost guaranteed nightmares. I’m afraid to talk to my doctor about it because he might decide that it’s time for me to try something different. He would probably be right, I’m pretty sure I’m addicted to them. But I’m terrified that whatever else he may try won’t work and I’ll end up with nightmares every night and still have trouble either getting to sleep or staying asleep. The only other thing I recall having tried was Ambien. And I know if either it just didn’t work or there were intolerable side effects, but thanks to my memory problems post ECT I couldn’t tell you for sure why I didn’t stay on Ambien.
Sleep disorders suck!
Being sleep-deprived is like a disability in itself, and I think it’s usually best to do whatever is necessary to get enough sleep. Maybe Ativan is the wrong drug to cut back on, if you have to cut back on any of them.
My worst problems of day-to-day living almost always seem to come when I haven’t had enough sleep – at best it can seem like a surreal kind of experience, and it seems to create a greater chance of having interpersonal conflicts. I don’t know whether or not I have the symptoms for a diagnosis of OCD, but I know that I’m usually better off when I can convince myself that anything I may feel like obsessing over or analyzing to death doesn’t really need to be resolved right away – at least not during a time when I’m trying to sleep.
This post reminds me of how I just want to stay at home and hide in bed today, but I can’t. Well, maybe I can. But then what about tomorrow. I’m going to get in trouble at work if I keep missing. My sleep problems rule my life. Or is it my anxiety that rules my life? Or the schizophrenia? I don’t want to even see the sun today. I’m hoping it will be dark, rainy and miserable outside, because it makes me feel cozy inside when it is like that. There is also nothing like wearing a nice cozy sweater. I’m just dreading facing today…
Reply: