So last night, I took an Ambien...

And I'm having my husband get that shit out of the house. F'reals.

Took one around 8. Twenty minutes later, I took another one because I forgot I'd taken one.

By the end of the night, I'd taken four because I'd forgotten every single pill I'd swallowed.

If he leaves that bottle with me, I will accidentally kill myself because my stupid ass will forget I'd taken one. So, bye-bye Ambien. Nice knowing you.

Day Five

The meds are working, I think. I feel a bit more upbeat in the morning and am actually able to accomplish shit.

I won't be blogging much over the next few days, I joined National Novel Writing Month and I have exactly twelve days to pull a novel out of my ass.

Just letting the zero people that read this blog know. I'm basically talking to myself, but what the hell. I'm a good conversationalist.

Day Two- New Meds

Took my Zoloft and Lamictal this morning, and aside from feeling a tad loopy, no itching. Feeling good this morning.

Mr. Poppins surprised me with Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 last night, knowing how I'm such a Potterhead. Fell asleep midway, so I plan to watch it this morning after I bring the baby to daycare.

I'm looking forward to having a quiet morning at home by myself.

Day One- New Meds

I picked up the latest cocktail prescribed by the good Dr. M today, and took my first dosage of the Zoloft and Lamictal. I've taken Zoloft off and on for years, it's a good antidepressant for me...but the Lamictal is already making me itchy. No rash yet, just itchy. I don't know if that's some weird psychosomatic effect from me scaring the hell out of myself about Stevens-Johnson syndrome, or a genuine side effect. I'll give it a few days to see if it persists or not. If it does, I'll be putting in a call to the clinic.

Carlos and I are actually being civil to one another now, which is good I suppose. After giving careful consideration to whether or not I wanted to destroy his life, I've since realized that I have no place to ruin someone else's life just because my panties are in a twist. If his wife is meant to find out, she will, and it'll be his own doing. I already have a 24 hour half-life with my own karma, I'd hate to see how the universe bit me in the ass over that one.

I'm spending the evening with my Fat Louie, drinking coffee and listening to the rain. I feel pretty peaceful at the present moment-- but we all know that's subject to change at any moment. :)

New Meds, and A Farewell To Chardonnay

Went to visit Dr. M today. He's this delightful Nigerian man that seems genuinely dumbfounded that I've survived the past eight years of bullshit and fuckery without medication.

I tell him the truth: The Saphris isn't working and I've gained fifteen pounds in the past month. What I don't tell him is I was drinking copious amounts of wine, eating shitloads of unhealthy fried foods, and forgetting to take my meds at least three times a week.

It's okay-- the doctor has a plan! (because he's not an idiot and my H&P says I have a history of non-compliance with treatment)

And the plan is: Throw more meds at the problem!

Now this would be all well and good if it weren't for two things: A) New meds fuck me up for at least a week, if not two, and that would be okay if it were not for B) Fat Louie.

How am I supposed to do a half-assed decent job of taking care of this tiny little human if I don't have my shit together? Mr. Poppins works 16+ hours a day, and my parents are out of town until further notice. Mr. Poppins' parents are out of the question because there is no way in hell I'm sending my infant son out of state without me tagging along.

So the fabulous new cocktail I'm going to be taking is as follows:

Morning:

50 mg Zoloft (titrating up to 150 mg)
25 mg Lamictal (titrating up to 200 mg)

Evening:
25 mg Lamictal
10 mg Saphris

Bedtime:
10 mg Ambien


....

Ambien?! Really?! I have a baby! I can't be sleepwalking or burning the house down trying to sleep-toast some fucking bread!

The divine Mr. M told me that side effects are rare (bullshit- see ambienoverdose.com or .org, something like that) but I could take a half a pill to see how that worked for me. No, I will be hacking each one of those little fuckers into fourths, and will have Mr. Poppins ration a quarter out to me every afternoon before leaving for work-- AND, he'll be hiding the bottle from me so I don't end up like Heath Ledger, being so fucked up out of my head that I unknowingly take half the bottle. Oh, and I've asked him to rig the bedroom doors with bells and hide the keys from me. As paranoid as I am, I'm taking every precaution to make sure I don't sleepwalk, sleepcook, sleepdrive or (God forbid) attempt to sleepparent. The last thing I want or need is for Fat Louie to get accidentally injured because Crazy Mommy is on new meds.

I pick up my meds from the pharmacy tomorrow. Seriously considering lying to my doctor and telling him I had adverse effects with the Ambien, just so he'll put me on something a little less hardcore and a damn sight less controversial.

And the Lamictal can cause a deadly flesh eating rash. Isn't that fucking delicious? I think my doctor is actively trying to find a way to kill me since apparently my crazy ass has nine goddamned lives.

The cherry on this whole situation? Alcohol will kill me, if I imbibe on this regimen. I'm in AA, so it shouldn't make much of a difference, but I am mourning the fact that I can never have a teeny-tiny nip ever again. Dammit. And with the holidays coming up. How the hell am I going to get through the holidays sober?

Okay. Baby's down and House is on. Until tomorrow, lovelies.

I am an asshole.

Specifically, I am the asshole that went and bought more wine and got stupid drunk because I was depressed.

I hate myself. Maybe I would be better off drinking myself into oblivion.

Happy Drunk Sunday

Mr. Poppins and I struggle to make ends meet, as most people living in this economy do. However, I have boobs. Thus, I am able to get whatever I want out of most men.

A few months back, in the throes of full blown mania, I made the mistake of entertaining an office romance. To be honest, I don't remember much of it- when manic, my memory becomes incredibly spotty and I have trouble recalling information for days, weeks, and sometimes months, depending on the severity of the episode. What I do know is this: if I were in my right mind (stop laughing) I never would've done it. I'll spare you the gory details for a later time, since several of Mr. Poppins' friends and Mr. Poppins himself read my blog (and in the interest of keeping him from looking like a cuckold and myself looking like a turbo-slut, it's better some things remain left unsaid.)

I digress. So, I had a brief fling with my friend, Carlos, which wound up ending badly because he began declaring his undying love for me. Oh, and the whole new drug regimen I was given made me come down from the ceiling. I simply wasn't interested anymore when I started feeling guilty about what I was doing behind my husband's back. (When manic/psychotic/mixed, I rarely have a conscience. I tend to become apathetic, and very reckless as a result.)

Carlos and I have remained friends somewhat, however this business of him acting like a hypersexual poodle with a human leg gets quite old after awhile. Although, I'm not above using him when I need to. Last week, Mr. Poppins and I were fighting over money for the billionth time, when I got it in my head to call Carlos. Ten minutes later, after some very fancy verbal footwork, I had a guaranteed fist full of cash to pick up on Sunday morning. Five handsome Benjamins, my friends. All for me.

So, today I went and picked up the money from Carlos. I spent $58 on groceries (and wine), $30 on perfume, and the rest will go towards my rent this month.

Thank you Carlos. Thanks to you, Mr. Poppins and I are drinking a nice Chardonnay, eating Jarlsburg cheese, and I smell like a very fancy stripper. :)

Oh--- and I dyed the underside of my hair pink yesterday. It's been a very eventful weekend.

Dear WIC Office

You win. I'll come and sit through your thirty minute class so you'll reload the card that helps pay for the ridiculously expensive hypoallergenic formula my baby needs to survive. But I will not be nice, I will not participate, and I will play Angry Birds on my phone the entire time. Thank you for penalizing my child because your staff is so fucking inept that they *refuse* to send out a general mailer to all WIC recipients notifying them of upcoming classes. Did I say inept? I mean fucking lazy.

Four hours.

I got four hours of sleep last night.... which means I got a good night's sleep. Between the baby fussing and Mr. Poppins snoring, I was unable to pass out until 3:00. I didn't mind much, though. I happily watched reruns of It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia and crunched away on peanut M&M's.

Insomnia has always been a problem for me. I vividly remember staying awake all night when I was sixteen years old, and still managed to function at school the next day. I had actually written a few poems about it, in typically horrible teenaged rhyming fashion. They are now lost to history, so when some snot nosed kid writes my biography fifty years from now, I don't have to worry about knocking some dentures out of an old broad's mouth for laughing at my shitty childhood scribblings. I already know I'll be that crazy old lady mumbling to herself in the hallway, I just don't want to wind up locked down in a geriatric psych unit.

In other news, the wounds on my left arm from my psychotic episode a few weeks back are healing nicely. My arm itches like it's got crabs, though.

For Fuck's Sake

Stop snoring, Mr. Poppins. I will totally smother your ass and cop to an insanity plea. (Oh please, like I wouldn't get one. Pshhhh.)

Go The Fuck To Sleep

My four month old will not go to sleep. I know Fat Louie is tired, he's been rubbing his eyes and yawning for the past hour, but the little bastard won't go the fuck to sleep. I have held him, rocked him, sang to him, checked his diaper, burped him...and still nothing. It's moments like this that make me envy the deaf. At least shit like this is permanently on mute.

In the Beginning....

Like every other thing I do when I'm manic, I've opted to start blogging again for the sheer satisfaction of knowing I did *something* remotely productive for the day.

To summarize: I am twenty-eight years old. I have a beautiful four-month old little boy whom is affectionately nicknamed "Fat Louie". I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder twelve years ago, and only in the past year did I stop resisting treatment and give in to it. Maintaining a life less medicated got to be fucking exhausting, and when I began getting myself in trouble with the law over my behavior did I finally accept that I couldn't keep swimming against the current.

I have Bipolar I, rapid cycling, which is one of the most difficult to treat. I've taken Zoloft, Seroquel, Depakote, Effexor, Celexa, Paxil, Prozac, Klonopin, Tegretol and Saphris. I will probably be put on lithium soon, as the Saphris isn't working quite that well. But, it does keep me from eating the grapes off the wallpaper and keeps me from chasing Mr. Poppins around the house with sharp, pointy objects... So I guess it's sorta working.

Life with me is never dull. One moment, I'm depressed and curled up in fetal position in the bathtub with the shower on...because the pain hurts that fucking much, the next I'm careening through the house at top speed looking for a book that hasn't seen the light of day in four years...insisting to my husband, "I have to read it again. I have to read it NOW." Two hours later, I find the book, read three or four pages, toss it aside and forget about it for another four years. I can be happy and euphoric, gregarious and chatty...and in the next moment I become wildly angry and vicious. I can hide under my bed for hours, only emerging to take care of the baby, or I can be on the fucking ceiling, unable to come down because once again, I'm on the wrong goddamn medication and I'm psychotic.

I love Chardonnay with a passion, but I'm a mean drunk. I don't like AA, but I go for the free coffee and the satisfaction of smoking indoors for once. When I drink on my meds, my husband knows to go stay at my parents house for a night because he knows that no matter how good of a mood I seem to be in, I can snap at any moment.

Sometimes, it makes me feel interesting, touched by fire, but a lot of times, I just feel like something monstrous.

My husband tells me that at least life with me is never boring. I have to concur. Plus it does have some added bonuses: since the neighbors have seen me hauled off in handcuffs to the hospital several times, I no longer have people knocking on my door trying to sell me shit for their kid's school, I don't have kids knocking on my door to retrieve a ball from my backyard (seriously. My dog has two baseballs and a kickball to play with out back and I didn't buy a single one.) and since I'm officially the crazy cat lady on the street, I haven't had to worry about trick or treaters in quite a while.

A life less ordinary, indeed. But at least it's fucking quiet around here now.