I guess this whole mental health thing started with finding a body hanging in my favourite park. Or rather, that prompted me to look into it. I’d solved every external problem and life was… bad and getting worse. I was retired at 40, ironman world championships level fitness, two kids a wife and a house, and felt zero wellbeing. Everything I had thrown into the void only served to make it bigger.
I’d quit my job (again) the year before, but still had one foot in the door as it was my own company. I felt so incredibly trapped. Anyway. I had a string of spinach hanging out my bumhole is what I’m saying; needed pulling out. Ha. Disgusting.
So I continue with my art therapy. I know now why real therapy doesn’t work, and the art is very good for me. I basically, over the course of the 2024, deconstructed my persona and my life, all the way back to childhood. I needed to find where the rot lay so I could try to fix it.
Things got bad when my parents visited, and I imploded a little after that but not fully. In hindsight, mask exhaustion, so obvious. I’d already gone through 2 weeks of shock and then plenty of processing for the body I’d found and it didn’t really bother me to be honest; the problem lay elsewhere.
So… I spend the autumn… just doing a crazy amount of art projects. A crazy amount. It felt like I could never do enough to justify my existence. I had to do more. And non were for me. All gifts, so all need to be done by Xmas, and just… crazy pressure. This was my fix, you see. My drug. The thrill of having a complex plan come together on time.
It all does. Somehow. With 1 day to spare, 10 projects come together…. And then I implode. I have done everything. The program of my mask has completed. Work, athletics, family, even unintentional farewell gifts maybe… all done. What now? Die?
This was not conscious. The mask was never conscious so neither could the decision be.
I basically started vibrating apart at the seams. I felt like a Dremel in a peanut shell. Honestly about to just… fucking explode in all directions. Steel wool (at the time unregogniseable) going wild and just these horrendous waves of adrenaline washing up over me every few minutes. I’m talking sat there peacefully cutting wood then ‘wooomph’ like a jet plane and then nothing. Seriously fucked. No idea why. This is after years of night sweats and burnout and shite.
Middle of the night my kid wets the bed. I can’t take it, 5 days sleep deprived, flashes of suicide every minute for weeks (I forgot to mention those but I was having more and more images of killing myself). Just… I didn’t want to die and I didn’t want to hurt anybody. I love my family and I finally finished my work. I … don’t want to die. I want to enjoy this. Why am I trying to kill myself? Why the images? Punch the floor, near break my hand, distract, get my wife to find an online clinic (anycure.jp) and speak with a doc by end of day.
Called bipolar and given valproate, which was a godsend at the time. Like alcohol without the alcohol. Oh god the relief. I can barely recall now, but the pain… the drive to action and the internal struggle to restrain. The certainty that you’re going to impulsively kill yourself. Just slice that wrist like butter, vvvp with the drill… not fucking nice man. Why?
Turns out it was ADHD. Fucking intrusive thoughts. They’re gone now. As are a lot of the problems I’ve had over my life. Fucking drugs all along. They were the solution, not the problem.
Anyway that tides me over for a month and then I can see someone local. An hour later he’s like ‘you have ADHD’ and I’m like ‘oh fuck off mate I can hyperfocus’ and he’s like ‘that’s a symptom’ so I’m like ‘gimme drugs’.
And he gives me guanfacine. I do not want stimulants. If possible. I’ve done my work. I don’t need productivity. I just want less craving, less pain.
This… this is a miracle drug for me. It turns down my fight or flight over the course of a couple of weeks. I get the best sleep of my life; normal person sleep. The waves of adrenaline don’t stop immediately, but they do stop with time. The disturbing images fade 99%.
Over the next 3 months, things improve. But I know this is only half the story. Or 70%; who cares. The ADHD people only half resonate, and the autistic people resonate very little. Then I find a couple of audhd types and it’s like ‘oh my god these people are ME they’re so fucking annoying turn it off’.
Anyway so back to the doctor. My ‘squealing sensitivities’ as I’m gonna call them were playing up and I was getting ‘more autistic’ whatever the fuck that means. Struggling with crowds, lights, etc. I’d done a bit of research and one of the meds used for kids seemed like it could be a double-whammy for ADHD and ASD.
Anyway the doc didn’t believe I was ASD so I had to jump through a placebo hoop of Chinese medicine but then when I got aripiprazole… my world changed. I am waiting to see how much of this was transient and how much permanent, but everything feels better in every way, still.
So anyway there we are. I’m going to get rid of the valproate over the coming weeks but keep it on file in case I am BP2 (still a chance given my work style). After that, if stable, I will actually try lowering the guanfacine. I have a theory that it’s the downstream impacts of irregular dopamine signalling which is making people have irregular NE, so if you can fix one you fix the other. But let’s see.
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