October 11, 2002

• Yesterday, I got out the pill bottles.  That’s how far I got with the job.  This task keeps getting more complicated and time-consuming.  For over twenty years I have been doing a month’s worth of meds this way, portioning them out into film canisters and prescription vials so I get what I need after every meal. 

  
  

  Then I started taking neurotransmitter precursors (“smart drugs”, brain food, cognitive enhancers) which had to be taken on an empty stomach.  At first that only added one dose a day, as I cut the “after meals” doses back to two a day and added two “empty stomach” doses.  I began color-coding the packages so I’d get the right nutrients at the right times of day.  This started over ten years ago, and the best evidence I have for the efficacy of the meds is the way my condition deteriorates in a downward spiral if I neglect or “forget” to take my meds for a while.  Any little crisis or break in my routine has the potential to turn into an extended slump for me.  That I hate taking pills is just one of the complicating factors.

  
  

  Over the course of decades, I’ve learned a lot about my own peculiar allergies and sensitivities, and about those common to my blood type.  I’ve also learned a lot about the specific medical conditions I have and the relationship of dietary deficiencies and toxins to them.  I worked out a strict diet that, when I could manage to stay on it, made me feel better physically, but left me with strong cravings for the forbidden foods.  Part of the problem was that when I kicked some drug addictions, I replaced the drugs with food addictions.

  
  

  Now I’m trying something new, some neurotransmitter precursors that are supposed to alleviate the addictive cravings that turn all my attempts to eat healthily into brief, white-knuckle times when I obsess on food and get no creative work done.  The plan comes from a book:  End Your Addiction Now by Charles Gant, M.D., Ph.D.

  
  

  My food addictions are what I wrote about in my first Xanga blog.  These addictions, to sugar, casein, gluten, caffeine, etc., were what I was obsessing on when I had the dream in which an old wise woman came to me and told me I needed to keep a journal.  I had already determined that getting those substances out of my diet relieved some of my symptoms, and gave me more physical energy.  The problem was that I craved them all the time and the effort I needed to put into eating right left no attention or consciousness to spare for any creativity.  The two months I stayed on the strict diet was a miserable time of complete creative block, even though the physical improvements were undeniable.

  
  

  I caved.  When I went off the diet, I went farther than I had for many years.  I allowed myself indulgences I had “kicked” decades earlier.  I had a burst of creative energy, until the indulgences caught up with me, my breathing once again became difficult, the sleep disturbances came back and the chronic fatigue syndrome worsened to its greatest extent ever.  And this is where I sit now.

  
  

  At this moment, pizza has no appeal for me.  When I went off the healthy diet after two months, a bit over a year ago, my mind was endlessly repeating a jingle, “pizza, pizza, gotta have a pizza.”  I had been questioning whether life without pizza was worth living.  I had conveniently forgotten that this crap doesn’t kill me, it just renders me helpless, useless, and immobile. 

  
  

  I think the lunch buffet experience on the recent town trip was part of what I needed:  bad pizza.  Pizza is my most dangerous temptation.  It contains all of my worst addictive food substances (casein, gluten, sugar), plus tomatoes and peppers, both members of the nightshade family, toxic to anyone with my blood type (A).  Any aversion therapy I can devise is bound to be helpful.  I’m helping the buffet disappointment along by visualizing shit pizza, turds with diarrhea sauce.

  
  

  I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired.  No twelve-step dogma is going to help me.  Been there, done that.  There are traps waiting for me in just about any therapeutic modality I choose.  It is far too easy to slip from loving and nurturing myself into pleasing and indulging my perverted appetites.  Fighting the addictions leaves me at war with myself.  That won’t do. I must just let it go.

  
  

  My son tries to help.  When he sees me go for candy, he reminds me I’m not supposed to eat that.  But he doesn’t know all my dietary bugaboos, and it’s not his job to know.  It’s not his or Greyfox’s responsibility, either, to deny themselves the things most tempting to me, just so I can keep temptation out of my reach.  I have to learn to pick only those things I can tolerate off the pantry shelves, and to refuse the tempting little gifts of candy and pastry Greyfox brings me to encourage my indulgences so that he can justify his own.

  
  

  I know how complex and challenging a task this is.  It makes kicking amphetamines or barbiturates seem effortless by comparison.  I also know that I’m in this alone.  Those nearest to me lack both the skill and the motivation to help me.   Those at a distance who care about me and/or realize the magnitude of my task, can offer only words of support.  The Great Spirit has already given me all the wisdom, love, hope, insight and such that I can absorb.  The rest is up to me.

  
  

  My bed is my workspace.  There is no other horizontal surface in this house big enough to set out the little bottles, sort them by type and color coding, select the appropriate things to fill them and do all the uncapping, collating of pills and recapping of bottles.  Last night I moved my collection of flat boxes full of bottles off the bed near midnight so I could sleep.  Today, I’ll put them all back out there again and see how much progress I can make.

  
  

  It has gotten to be a bigger job than ever before.  These new neurotransmitter precursors have to be divided into three daily doses, all to be taken on an empty stomach.  The usual vitamins that go with food have to be divided into at least two doses.  I really ought to divide the precursors into four doses, but I decided to combine the before-dinner and bedtime doses.  The with-food things really should be taken three times a day, but as it is I’ll be making up 150 little bottles of pills.  I simply don’t have enough little bottles to do 210.

  
  

  I try not to dwell on the knowledge that once it’s done, I’ll have only one month to acquire another month’s supply and get it set up, in order to avoid the kind of crash I’ve experienced this summer.  I try to focus on desirable possibilities.  If these things work, I might get some jewelry work done.  I might get the furnace fixed, or at least diagnose the problem.  I might get that backlog of readings that I’ve promised done.  My sense of smell WILL come back… it always does, and it is always the first gratifying reward I receive for my abstinence.

  
  

  Affirmations and little self-pep-talks seem to work against me, so I’m not trying that any more.  I can’t take that little voice inside that replies, “Yeah, right,” when I affirm some unlikely thing.  If I could devise a way to force myself to take all my meds on time and not sabotage my efforts with a momentary indulgence, I would.  If there was a bridge I could burn that would assure my compliance, I’d torch that mother.  This latest effort toward better health is like a thin wire high above the abyss.  And down there in the pit, I can hear Lorelei’s song. Maybe shedding these tears that have just come to my eyes will help.  At least that will get rid of the damned lump in my throat.

  
  

  I just stood in the doorway to take this picture.  The day is as bleak as my mood.  Koji is the only member of the household who is happy about the snow.  His mother was a sled dog, and he loves the white stuff. 

  
  

  The flakes falling now have just changed from big and wet to even wetter and mixed with rain.  I’ll like it better when it makes up its mind to just stay frozen and pile up for half a year, instead of toying with us this way.

  
  

  Tomorrow is Greyfox‘s birthday.  He will be 55, officially a senior citizen (I made that milestone three years ago.) and the only thing he said he wanted for his birthday was a good sunny weekend so he could open his stand and make some more money before winter closes in.  That will take a miracle… one about on a par with the one I’ll  need to get through the task of baking his birthday cake without licking the spoon, cleaning the mixing bowl or sampling the finished product.

  
  

  I made this a private post, at first.  Then I decided to go ahead and turn off my readers with a dose of my current reality.  I know you guys enjoy the dramatic memoirs and the local color.  Nobody (least of all me) enjoys this tedious addiction shit.  But I needed to express this, and it’s just not the same when I’m only talking to myself.  So what if I lose a few readers, eh?

  
  

   

  • 2:23 pm
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