Pill Plague

I don’t understand how people can live their lives pilled up all the time.  I’ve been on a combination of antibiotics and steroids for almost a solid month now and sometimes I think I’m never going to feel right again.  I know I keep talking about this but it is honestly worries/intrigues me.  I mean, I have been outside of myself for approximately four weeks now and it seems like it’s always been this way and always will be.  It’s so weird how medication can affect you.  I have been in a dizzying fog this whole time and it’s pretty miraculous to me how I manage to get out of bed, although I don’t do anything when I do get out of bed.  I certainly haven’t been living.  I feel like I’ve put my life on hold until I can finally be well but I’ve lost so much time in the process.  I can’t think straight and nothing makes sense to me and yet there are people that actually choose to live this way.  The pill poppers and the prescription drug addicts are probably wicked jealous of the stash I’ve managed to accumulate over the past several weeks.  Of course, they probably take pills that produce a better form of fogginess than what I have but even still, I just can’t see how people would want to go around so disconnected.  They must be in some serious pain to prefer to endure daily dizziness to dull their doldrums.  And I find that sad.  I’m in pain, too but that doesn’t mean I want to exchange my hurt for a haze.  Rather than trading one troublesome feeling for another, how ‘bout let’s just feel good for a change?

At this point, I don’t even want to take another Tylenol for the rest my life.

Yet...I do have those anti-anxiety pills in the bathroom that I sometimes contemplate.  The doctor gave them to me because he said there might come a point in my recovery where I'd wake up and not be able to breathe and it would make me panic.  I never ran into that problem so I never took any pills but sometimes I wonder if popping one or two wouldn't just make me feel a bit better.  Or at least more at ease.

I've never been a big fan of taking pills to make me feel better.  Almost all of my friends in high school took one anti-depressant or another and the pills either didn't work that well or made everyone feel numb.  Ideally, I don't want to feel numb.  Of course, sometimes I'd rather feel nothing at all than the intense feelings I can muster up.  And I have to wonder, what's better: emotional or empty?

I'd love to just be able to gain control over myself and the way I feel about things.  If only I could somehow grow into a more positive perceptions and learn to master my negative notions.  It's not that I want to get rid of negativity all together because I believe it's healthy to embrace sadness and anger sometimes.  Without those feelings, there is no balance.  Yet, I don't feel balanced now.  I feel next to nothing but hurt and frustration all the time and that is not healthy.  Where is the happiness?  Where is the excitement?  Where's the hope?  And are pills the way to dampen depression or will they simply put a warm blanket of blasé over my heart?

I guess this is my chance to find out.

I have a whole bottle of pills that I could sample at my discretion.  Then again, that's something that shouldn't be toyed with so easily.  I heard you can't just take those kind of pills and then stop.  You have to gradually ween yourself off of them so what would I do once the bottle was empty?  I couldn't refill just to come down from them.  I suppose I'd have to ration accordingly.  But what do I know about how to come down off of pills?  Nah, I'm not going to do that.  They might not even be strong enough to make that big of a difference.  It's just a thought is all.

I guess I just sometimes feel so desperate for relief that I contemplate whether I'm willing to try new and broader methods of dealing with my pain and sometimes that includes pills, something I told myself I wouldn't resort to doing.  I take my last bit of medication tonight so I hope that in about a week or so, once everything is out of my system, I'll start returning to normal, which isn't much of a relief because even my normal is still pretty flawed.  At least I hope I won't feel so drastically disenchanted.