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Jan. 18th, 2015 01:19 pmIt has been a really odd month so far.
I recently found out that one of my friends from MTSU died in a car accident last May. I can't believe that I didn't know that one of my friends had been dead for over seven months. We were pretty good friends during my last year at MTSU, but after I left we barely talked to one another so as such it wasn't as painful as it could have been. I guess that it just goes to show how far removed I am from that phase of my life; I really have changed a fair amount. He is roughly the ninth or tenth person who has died on me in my life, which is actually a fairly large number for someone who is only 31 years old; most of the departed were young people like him, too (he was only 26 when he died). I am no stranger to death; I was introduced to it on a significant level when my best friend died from auto-erotic asphyxiation when we were both 17. That was really shocking because I didn't know that people did that to themselves, and my friend was very straight-laced.
An odd thing about my dead friend was that when I was talking to him through Facebook four years ago, I told him that I wanted to move and yet I didn't want to abandon my mother, who had cancer and was going to die a year and a half later (I had no idea that my mother was soon to be dead, though; I just thought that I shouldn't leave her just in case she was going to die). He said something around the lines of "Dude, just leave and have your own life." He was right, but I really couldn't have left my mother like that. I just find it sort of ironic that he is also now dead, and I had no idea that anything like that would happen to him. To be fair, though, he had a vibrant personality that while it made him a very pleasant person to be around, it didn't really fit his age. He basically acted like he was 20 or so by the time he was 26 (not that he did stupid things; he was just very jovial and didn't take many things seriously), and there was always a part of me that wondered just how he would be when he was about my age; looking back on it, I honestly couldn't have seen him seriously being my age, not that I thought that he was going to die, though. He was my brother's age, which makes it pretty odd, to say the least.
I was on that one medication for two days in order to decrease my drinking, and it was strange. The first day, I felt all calm and almost euphoric, and I was kind of mildly dissociated, having the strange thought that we are just put on this earth with no purpose or plan, and no roles to act out, and no restrictions to our behaviors, and yet all of us seem to instinctively feel that all of these things exist in our lives, and that we are here for a specific reason, when we are not. On the second day, however, I felt like I was going to have a heart attack right after I took the dose, so I had to go into the ER. They did a check-up on me and also did an EKG, and I turned out to be fine. As it turned out, the medication gave me an anxiety attack that triggered some psychosomatic symptoms, and I freaked out over it. I don't feel ashamed because it was the first time anything like that happened to me, and I hadn't been to the ER in well over a year in any case. The physician acted surprised that I was on the medication in the first place due to me telling him how much I was drinking, and he said that I seemed to be very motivated to stop drinking and that I should try doing it without any medication. According to him, I don't seem to have a significant alcohol problem.
For days after I stopped taking the medication, my head hurt, I felt dehydrated and I was all-around miserable and prone to anxiety. My hair also seemed to fall out from it. I just felt like the medication had too many negative side effects, and that it was overkill. I didn't drink enough beer to seriously warrant a medication to curb the usage and the medication made me feel way worse than any hangover I ever had, with the exception of one during MTSU.
This is really the first time my psychiatrist has ever made a serious mistake. She must be really conservative with substance use, and probably believes that I have more problems with alcohol than I actually do. I ask people around me if I have problems with alcohol, and they say no and fully admit to drinking more alcohol than me. One of my friends privately felt that I should have never been on the medication, I later found out from him. It was just plain reckless that my psychiatrist would put me on such a serious medication for such a minor problem (if it is even a problem at all), although to be fair she didn't push it on me and it was my idea to try it out. She really can't be fully blamed.
There is one good thing that came from it, though: I quit smoking. It has been three days and I've only had the slightest cravings; it has been way easier than I thought it would be. I decided to quit because it was too expensive, it wasn't good for me, and it made my anxiety worse, so as such I did what I did. I don't regret it at all; if I control my drinking, I will now have a lot more money to save up for important shit or emergencies, for you never know what is going to happen in your life.
Not too much else is going on. Playing Final Fantasy XII for the first time in eight years, and that has proven to be pretty fun. Also trying to read a bit so that I will have enough knowledge and opinions to write one of my papers, although I wonder what the point of writing them exactly is nowadays.
I recently found out that one of my friends from MTSU died in a car accident last May. I can't believe that I didn't know that one of my friends had been dead for over seven months. We were pretty good friends during my last year at MTSU, but after I left we barely talked to one another so as such it wasn't as painful as it could have been. I guess that it just goes to show how far removed I am from that phase of my life; I really have changed a fair amount. He is roughly the ninth or tenth person who has died on me in my life, which is actually a fairly large number for someone who is only 31 years old; most of the departed were young people like him, too (he was only 26 when he died). I am no stranger to death; I was introduced to it on a significant level when my best friend died from auto-erotic asphyxiation when we were both 17. That was really shocking because I didn't know that people did that to themselves, and my friend was very straight-laced.
An odd thing about my dead friend was that when I was talking to him through Facebook four years ago, I told him that I wanted to move and yet I didn't want to abandon my mother, who had cancer and was going to die a year and a half later (I had no idea that my mother was soon to be dead, though; I just thought that I shouldn't leave her just in case she was going to die). He said something around the lines of "Dude, just leave and have your own life." He was right, but I really couldn't have left my mother like that. I just find it sort of ironic that he is also now dead, and I had no idea that anything like that would happen to him. To be fair, though, he had a vibrant personality that while it made him a very pleasant person to be around, it didn't really fit his age. He basically acted like he was 20 or so by the time he was 26 (not that he did stupid things; he was just very jovial and didn't take many things seriously), and there was always a part of me that wondered just how he would be when he was about my age; looking back on it, I honestly couldn't have seen him seriously being my age, not that I thought that he was going to die, though. He was my brother's age, which makes it pretty odd, to say the least.
I was on that one medication for two days in order to decrease my drinking, and it was strange. The first day, I felt all calm and almost euphoric, and I was kind of mildly dissociated, having the strange thought that we are just put on this earth with no purpose or plan, and no roles to act out, and no restrictions to our behaviors, and yet all of us seem to instinctively feel that all of these things exist in our lives, and that we are here for a specific reason, when we are not. On the second day, however, I felt like I was going to have a heart attack right after I took the dose, so I had to go into the ER. They did a check-up on me and also did an EKG, and I turned out to be fine. As it turned out, the medication gave me an anxiety attack that triggered some psychosomatic symptoms, and I freaked out over it. I don't feel ashamed because it was the first time anything like that happened to me, and I hadn't been to the ER in well over a year in any case. The physician acted surprised that I was on the medication in the first place due to me telling him how much I was drinking, and he said that I seemed to be very motivated to stop drinking and that I should try doing it without any medication. According to him, I don't seem to have a significant alcohol problem.
For days after I stopped taking the medication, my head hurt, I felt dehydrated and I was all-around miserable and prone to anxiety. My hair also seemed to fall out from it. I just felt like the medication had too many negative side effects, and that it was overkill. I didn't drink enough beer to seriously warrant a medication to curb the usage and the medication made me feel way worse than any hangover I ever had, with the exception of one during MTSU.
This is really the first time my psychiatrist has ever made a serious mistake. She must be really conservative with substance use, and probably believes that I have more problems with alcohol than I actually do. I ask people around me if I have problems with alcohol, and they say no and fully admit to drinking more alcohol than me. One of my friends privately felt that I should have never been on the medication, I later found out from him. It was just plain reckless that my psychiatrist would put me on such a serious medication for such a minor problem (if it is even a problem at all), although to be fair she didn't push it on me and it was my idea to try it out. She really can't be fully blamed.
There is one good thing that came from it, though: I quit smoking. It has been three days and I've only had the slightest cravings; it has been way easier than I thought it would be. I decided to quit because it was too expensive, it wasn't good for me, and it made my anxiety worse, so as such I did what I did. I don't regret it at all; if I control my drinking, I will now have a lot more money to save up for important shit or emergencies, for you never know what is going to happen in your life.
Not too much else is going on. Playing Final Fantasy XII for the first time in eight years, and that has proven to be pretty fun. Also trying to read a bit so that I will have enough knowledge and opinions to write one of my papers, although I wonder what the point of writing them exactly is nowadays.
