bleedingthoughts

So I am currently coming out of aripiprazole-induced psychosis and have been unable to sleep for 2 months. We are talking 2 broken hours of sleep per night, max.

What has been happening is that as soon as I fall asleep I blip awake, feeling like I have had 10 hours of sleep. This is a seizure in the frontal lobe, and it affects my behaviour for several hours after, making me write crazy shit on the internet. 

Anyway my sleep is fucked because I am processing thoughts too quickly, I think. I think the ari excited my brain, and combined with epilepsy it’s kind of made me have eureka moments on a near-hourly basis. It’s fading, but slowly.

So what I have started doing is keeping my phone by my bed. I need to vent these thoughts and get them out, or I will be unable to sleep. Now the drugs are dying down, the dopamine surges aren’t quite as strong, so I don’t literally jump out of bed any more. The drive is still real though, and I need to train myself to sleep again.

So what I think is happening is an over-aggressive processing of emotions or thoughts. Mr Method doesn’t have the same level of dopamine variability as me, so his approaches are useless.

I think because my dopamine was cranked up by ari I am struggling to sleep more than usual. The processing of thoughts is too aggressive, and the encoding sessions where you get a squirt of d to your lobes are just a little too much; instead of REM I’m waking up. Not good.

So a friend recommended this podcast which is amazing for falling asleep to. The volume of the voice comes in waves, and the fact there is a voice there at all gives me a soft touchpoint so I don’t get embroiled in my own brain.

For the bleeding of salience I need that phone. I still nearly got up and came downstairs today, as you can see, but I didn’t. Because I had that phone there (black and white filter, of course) I was able to just bleed off the word in my mind and go back to sleep. I am currently viewing these bleeding sessions as my equivalent of REM.

It’s all because my dopamine variability / dvar in ari withdrawal is too high, and my dopamine is rebounding. The drugs fucked me up worse than any illegals and now I’m rebuilding.

But having this framework of understanding and knowing that I can just bleed off a thought, then go to bed with it back in the churn, and gradually refine it through the night, helps. Things will improve, I know, because I am doing the work.

Nobody can do these things for you. But you can and do change your mind with how you behave every day. Real progress is always progressive.

[2025/07/23, 0:20:26] James: Waking 2 0019 podcast still playing but calm. Clear.

[2025/07/23, 0:24:37] James: Extrapolation mode I think

[2025/07/23, 0:24:53] James: The mind needs calming with a latch in order to process this.

[2025/07/23, 0:43:03] James: Pllld

[2025/07/23, 0:43:18] James: Forward and backward through time. All modalities?

[2025/07/23, 0:52:00] James: Ok I need more brain for this I have to get out of bed

[2025/07/23, 0:53:45] James: I’m now up and pacing because I know this is the way

[2025/07/23, 0:54:06] James: But I’m exhausted and can’t. Shouldn’t. I should go back to bed because I need rest, sleep or not.

[2025/07/23, 0:54:16] James: This thread is started

[2025/07/23, 1:50:45] James: Awake again but I’ve drifted into it more and can see a bit how other people might have a more relaxed version of this thought process

[2025/07/23, 1:51:08] James: I think I need to get up for a partial export now and then go back to bed afterward

[2025/07/23, 1:51:28] James: It do I?

[2025/07/23, 1:51:34] James: I just turned off the podcast.

[2025/07/23, 1:51:40] James: Maybe I’ll stay here.

[2025/07/23, 2:43:19] James: Awake again and the thought feels more refined but I still don’t know really; after so many months.

[2025/07/23, 3:03:01] James: Has that thought somehow straightened itself out over these 4-5 rapid cycles of sleep and wake

[2025/07/23, 3:03:11] James: What was it?

[2025/07/23, 3:03:29] James: It was to do with dopamine and processing emotions and trauma

[2025/07/23, 3:03:35] James: Then reintegrating it

[2025/07/23, 3:07:35] James: So that is 5 hours in bed

[2025/07/23, 3:07:44] James: Which is more than I’ve had for months

[2025/07/23, 3:07:57] James: And some degree of clarity

[2025/07/23, 3:08:07] James: Not on the answers, but the question

[2025/07/23, 3:08:12] James: My questions were wrong

[2025/07/23, 3:19:53] James: More aggressive processing of the emotion or thought

[2025/07/23, 3:20:12] James: Bigger waves, too big now, fragmented and unable to consolidate

[2025/07/23, 3:20:21] James: Consolidate with meditation?

[2025/07/23, 3:20:45] James: Must identify thought. Or must I? That’s not how the writing sessions go.

[2025/07/23, 3:24:06] James: History podcast

[2025/07/23, 3:32:20] James: Dawn walk, not looking directly at the thought yet. Very quiet

[2025/07/23, 3:35:25] James: Scientific method woefully lacking when it comes to anything to do with the mind