Gone Dull

[Cainad (dec.)]

I've lost my edge. I used to have a knack for writing, and now it's gone. Words would just flow from my fingertips onto the screen; neat little ideas spun into verbal abstractions that other people could pick up and experience if they liked. And not to brag, but they did like, even if I never thought they were worth much. I've had friends and teachers who mistakenly thought I would pursue a career as a writer. Even though I never cared for what I wrote, I'd give a lot to be able to do it again.

It all disappeared when I stopped taking brain pills. Adderall, the awful stuff. On it, I was an efficient, angry, and productive machine. Ideas crystallized rapidly and beautifully inside my head, and I had to let them out lest they crack my skull from the inside. I almost never had to draft, and barely even had to proofread. The thoughts would form with such clarity and precision that no real process came between my brain and the blank page except for that of my fingers moving to touch the keys or move the pen. Some of my best crap took less than an hour to write.

I was angry, intense, and someone very close to me didn't care for it. After a while, neither did I. Everything could be going perfectly well, and I'd still be angry. I'd force a smile to put others at ease and try to remind myself that everything was just peachy (because it usually was), but within a few moments I'd return to a scowl and terse language. Adderall put a sharp, clear focus on everything–too sharp. I started taking it less and less for the sake of, ironically, my mental health.

Now it's all gone, no more. Everything's all soft and muddy, and sometimes I'm even able to reach a state one might call "calm" on a semi-regular basis. Ideas and thoughts in my head are softer and squishier than they were, and have a habit of oozing out on their own without needing me to write them out of my head. But I can't write anymore, and soon I will be in a situation where I'll be surrounded by very few friends and I will have need of a sharp mind that is efficient to the point of viciousness. Looks like the Old Me might be making a comeback to PD.

[Placid Dingo]

My feeling is that there's a lot you can do with your writing without the focus on the anger.

Savage writing can be great, but once you find the best way to redirect the energy, you're back and rolling.

[memy]

I write soft and muddy a lot.

I mean, dreamlike. Kafka-ish. Not sharp at all, or if I do it's ironically, like the time I wrote the words "quietly, like a chainsaw, you cut me with your words" or something silly like that, in a poem about being a sharp ice sculpture to a girl who I did not care for, but nonetheless she "loved" me for god knows why.

But the problem is that without my medicine I'm like you, the words are up there, all soft and dreamy, but they don't get out on the paper I want them to. I have trouble repeating things, so if I say it right the first time, I'll write it wrong the second. Anyway, I'm not taking my medicine anymore either. Celexa and Concerta are the two I need. If they gave me any bad effects I don't remember what they were.



I think quitting the Celexa gave me sexual dysfunction. True story. Damn. Looks like the words aren't the only things around here that are "soft"! Haha! Haaa...

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I rarely take my Ritalin. I forget, and I kind of like the dreamy, flighty bird I am without it. "Wild Bird", my friend Liam calls me, flitting from one flower of a thought to the next.

And I write well without it, but it's a different kind of writing; a writing from the gut, not from the head.

I like Ritalin because it lasts about four hours and then it's gone. I can take it just when I need it; if I take it for school I'll get straight A's, or for a conference I'll recall everything, for a presentation I will be sharp and funny. I should take it for work; so that I do my shipping first thing without getting distracted, and get into my studio in time. When I'm productive, I am a monster; I have the potential of producing $600/day in glass, and when I'm on my game I can sell it. I earned my reputation.

But I don't want to be that productive. All that focus, all that drive... it's exhausting. I like drifting along through life.

[P3nT4gR4m]

Fuck yeah! To this whole thread. Last time I fried my brain they stuck me on Lithium. Fuck Lithium! That's all I have to say for that chemical. It killed my thoughts. Turned me into a fucking zombie. I ditched the script and took the long hard road out of depression. More than a year it took me but rather that than hand myself over to fucking lithium.

[Adios]

I am just emerging from this but must stay on my Lexapro.  My sex life is crying.

[P3nT4gR4m]

Meds seem to really work for some people. I'm one of those lucky bastards that gets worse on them 

[Adios]

I can't take ANY kind of inflamatory because they really inflame my personality. To murderous proportions.

[Cainad (dec.)]

I'm liking the responses here. Thanks guys!

Right now I'm experiencing it again. All these responses made me think of something, and on Adderall I would have immediately hit 'Reply' and gone to town. Now whatever it was sort of floated away, and even now my motivation to put these very thoughts into text form is fading in and out. I forget the points I wanted to make; my mind no longer cares enough about what it comes up with to put it into focus and have it written down. With my brain full of pills, it becomes a mad narcissist and every little idea that's even a little bit interesting is akin to a priceless gem excised from a quarry of gray matter.

[memy]

It's interesting just how mental this board is.

Celexa, I think, is related to Lexapro. I think my sex life was better on it, I remember reading somewhere that sexual dysfunction is an unofficial side effect in some people, and it can last for years. But besides that, even though I wasn't addicted to it per se, the withdrawal symptoms are a bitch. "Brain zaps" for nearly a week.

Plus I'm one of the lucky few who actually get positive effects immediately. It's supposed to take weeks, but in just a couple days I feel the demon lift off my shoulder and I feel like flying.

[BadBeast]

I gave up going to the Doctors for medication about 15years ago. All they wanted to do was to sedate me with Benzodiazapines. Fuck that, If I'd wanted to walk around in a semi coma,  I'd take heroin.

Then they started to push SSRIs. I did about 3 weeks on Lustral (They made me priapic) Then my best mate hung himself 2 weeks into a Seroxat script. I saw him the night before it happened, he wasn't depressed at all, just puzzled. Then I found out Seroxat was known for producing suicidal urges, in patients that had never exhibited them before. And, knowing this, the Doctors still prescribe them.   
So now I prefer to self medicate with reliable sources of street Drugs. I know what works for me, and what doesn't. What's problematic, and what isn't. And I don't have to jump through all the bullshit hoops that Doctors make you do. No-one is trying to "cure" me, which is good, because there is fuck all wrong with me, other than a contrary disposition, and a healthy disregard for authority. And I trust me to have my best interests at heart. Not my Doctor.
Plus, I like using drugs to get high, and that isn't something that the Medical profession like to associate themselves with. That would imply that they are Drug Dealers, and that's just a little to close to home for comfort. (They are worse than Drug Dealers, at least a Dealer is honest about what he does)

[Triple Zero]

Fuck yeah! To this whole thread. Last time I fried my brain they stuck me on Lithium. Fuck Lithium! That's all I have to say for that chemical. It killed my thoughts. Turned me into a fucking zombie. I ditched the script and took the long hard road out of depression. More than a year it took me but rather that than hand myself over to fucking lithium.

Can't blame ya, from what I heard, Lithium is pretty fucking hardcore stuff. In fact, [I should ask him IIRC], but my friend who is a psychiatrist [in training] where he works, I don't think they prescribe that stuff unless someone is actually being a danger to themselves.

Afaik it's one of those pretty oldskool psych medications too, yeah? Wouldn't they have better, more subtle stuff now? [not for you, but I just like to think they're not still drugging up poor unstable saps full of Lithium anymore]


Also, about ADD/ADHD meds. Apparently I don't have the proper kind of ADD, because it doesn't do the magical concentration thing for me like it does for most ADHD people. Gives me a littlebit of a kick, like coffee but a bit different, great for when I go dancing, but that's about it.

[P3nT4gR4m]

Dunno about nowadays but where and when I was on the receiving end of it psychiatry was very "black-box":

Patient exhibits symptom-X
Give him compound-Y.
Is he still doing it?
No.
Eureka - we haz cured.
Patient is in coma?
Forget it - our work is done here.

Lithium was swatting a fly with a fifty megaton icbm from where I was sitting. Felt like a fucking lobotomy.