As if to prove the psychiatric skeptics, including the one in me, I’ve been feeling increasingly drowsy over the past few days.  What was manageable on Monday and ignorable on Tuesday became difficult to deal with yesterday and intolerable today.  I spent the day at work just trying to stay steady on my feet.  I was lively, but I had Eminem blasting in my ears to keep me going.  The dizziness was alarming, nauseating.  What felt exactly like waves in time and space shook the world around me.

I get home, smoke a cigarette out of desperation for a bit of peace.  An hour later, the blood ran from my face and hands as I poured myself a glass of water.  I stumbled toward the couch, and I buried myself beneath the blanket there.  I was shaking, freezing, and ready to collapse.  What’s happening?  What’s happening?  Oh, God, what’s happening?  Please stop.  Please.

The shaking—the shaking didn’t let me think.  I couldn’t—couldn’t hold it together.  I tried.  I wanted to so badly.  Sam was calling me.  I can hear you. But I couldn’t answer him.  I was too in it.  It was happening all too quickly.  Make it stop.  It’s okay.  Just stop.  It’s okay.  You’ll be okay, if you just breathe.  Just breathe.

But it wasn’t just breathing right then.  I couldn’t get out of my head.  Three hours later, I wake from a sleep I don’t recall falling into.  Sang is smoking and laughing with Sam.  They were two feet from me, but it was another half hour of unsteady semi-consciousness before I sat up.

I’ve been awake two hours, and I’m ready to fall back to sleep.

Now, do I dismiss these feelings as the symptoms of an oncoming cold?  Or do I apply what I know to be true: among Clonazepam’s common side effects are dizziness and drowsiness?  Shall I say nothing of suicidal tendencies [link leads to article in The Washington Post]?

These feelings are no longer “manageable.”  Can you agree, given some of my recent posts?  What I’ve been living the last two days isn’t what any doctor would call functional.  But I want this one to work.  I don’t want to try more drugs.  I’m tired in too many different ways to sustain another withdrawal.  Maybe it is just a cold.  Maybe I’m just under way too much stress these past few weeks.  Maybe it is the drug, but this won’t remain.  Maybe I just need to exercise more and resume my healthy eating habits.  I’ll do it all.  I’ll try it all.  I just don’t want to change drugs again.

…I feel the creeping insecurity that nothing I do is right.  Perhaps it is my depression.  If it is, the uncertainty and insecurity that inevitably accompanies putting my life—literally—into a doctor’s hands is exacerbating my condition.  In short, as usual, I’m afraid.