Shattered

Caution: I am aware that we are under a full moon tonight. If you are feeling bad at the moment then please DO NOT READ ON. I am not writing this post with the intention of making anyone else feel bad, but just for myself and to let you know how things really are in my life.

So tired today. Got a migraine trembling on the edge. Thing behind the eyes going on and headache. No doubt carb induced. Been going on for hours now and I don't know if it's going to go full blown or not. About 10 years ago I used to get them regularly and would be in bed for 3-4 days with a bad one. But since then I've had probably no more than a handful and probably only one full blown.

I am feeling wrecked. Total wreckage.

Needless to say I didn't make it to healing as I haven't been out today.

Part of this exhaustion is because I was out for quite a few hours yesterday. And part is a carb hangover. I have just eaten totally to excess the last 3 days. I am aching all over from it. I have eaten so much that the food is coming out the other end only partially digested (no laxatives involved). I will never feel the same way about muesli again ...

I had to go out because I had an appointment with my CPN. She was glad to hear that I haven't been suicidal since our last meeting 2 weeks ago. That meeting was with the head of the psychotherapy department to see what they might be able to offer me. I told them I had been seriously suicidal in the previous few weeks of bingeing hell. I actually contacted Dignitas, the Swiss euthanasia clinic, after reading their website to see if they could help me. They do offer their services for people who are not terminally ill, and have in the past helped people with mental illness to kill themselves. But under Swiss law they need to have it signed off by a psychiatrist and currently they don't have anyone working with them who can do this. The return email said I should keep in touch in case the situation changes.

I thought about Dignitas because it is a safe way to kill yourself ie you are guaranteed to die. The only thing that stops me doing it myself is the high chance of ending up damaged or disabled rather than dead, guns not being readily available in this country.

When I told The Bear about my emailing them he said it was a waste of money and I could save the estimated 7,000 pounds and kill myself for free! I hasten to add that most of the money does not go to Dignitas themselves but is legal, mortuary, post mortem, cremation, etc fees. There's a hell of a lot of paperwork when someone goes through this process.

I really admire the the spirit of Dignitas. To give people the freedom to make their own choice in a safe humane way. Their work is brave indeed and I am very grateful that they are there. They face continual battles to keep the service going and I hope they will keep on with it.

Meanwhile, re the therapy, I have already, over the years, had psychodynamic therapy, cognitive analytic therapy, and psychoanalysis. So now the nice lady is offering me a programme of group therapy plus individual therapy. I can honestly say that therapy has never helped me at all to date and I'm not desperately keen to do anymore. But what else is there? I can't do ADs due to side effects so this is all that's on offer. There is nothing else.

This is why I was suicidal recently. Because I can see no way forward from here.

I suppose since that meeting - which ended simply with a decision to meet again at the therapy department in three months time - I have felt there might be something in the future. But I don't know.

I know some will say this is evidence that I shouldn't take my own life as things may improve. But I have been in this hell for so long already. I can't see that my life will ever be worth living.

I hasten to add that I'm not suicidal right now - which may be due, in part, to the 5-HTP I am taking, as well as the (very) faint possibility that some treatment in the future may make a difference.

Re food: The really frustrating thing is that I know my body wants, indeed is crying out for veg, salad, fish and fruit. Yet I still can't eat it for some reason. I am listening to my body - well I could hardly miss it as it's screaming at me - but I'm unable to respond in the appropriate manner. Why am I so unable to take care of myself?


BTW Sorry my formatting collapsed in the previous post. I pressed a wrong button and couldn't undo it no matter how hard I tried.

Tough weekend

Today my mood is totally different to my jubilation on Friday. It has been a tough weekend. I feel like what happened on Friday was almost supernatural. Like not me at all. That I was very guided to doing what I did. I'm sure I felt so good because I was sent a lot of healing that day. The people who give the healing are so good to me. Someone always send me healing on Friday morning to help me get there. And on the rare occasions when I don't turn up they always send me plenty of healing.

It was a brilliant day, both for eating, being able to ignore my hunger and feel OK about it, and for the fact that I now have a totally useable, ultra clean fridge and freezer!

But obviously eating so eating much less for one day was bound to have a knock on effect. The carb monster has been on me ever since then. I tried to hold off but I couldn't. I was back to the 6 bowls of Readybrek on Saturday.

Friday made me realise how much this thing is in my head. That when I'm in the right place in my head I can control my eating - ignoring my hunger, making good decisions, and using tablets to help control cravings if necessary. Chris said something very insightful in her Thurs comment - that my agoraphobia is probably so bad because I am trying to tackle my eating problems. I think this is true. I'm seeing how much I have been "self medicating" with food; eating to cover my depression and anxiety.

When I'm in bingeing mode, every time I feel bad, I eat to feel better. Feeling bad emotionally is the prompt that tells me it's time to eat. I treat that feeling as though it's hunger. And this pattern is so difficult to get out of. Because when I feel bad I have no response to that if I'm not using food as my way of dealing with it. Hence I have been crying and feeling down and depressed the last couple of days. Grimness.

I have on previous occasions been through this pain when "coming off food", and it involves lots and lots of crying. I suppose, as with all addictions, this is a withdrawal effect. It seems to be especially bad in the first 2 weeks, and up to 4 weeks after "giving up" food. This tells me that it doesn't go on forever. It is only a few weeks. But I don't think I can deal with it at the moment. It's too much.

I've considered if I should try taking anti-depressants (ADs) so that I am dealing with the depression that way. But this would be a difficult path for many reasons. Firstly that ADs take 2-4 weeks to get working so I would have had to start them a while ago. If I had fully cottoned on to what was going on here, I could have looked at that way of dealing with it. But I wasn't so clearly aware as I am now. The awareness has come from writing all this down. I have never written or spoken about this stuff before hardly at all. Let alone just letting it all hang out here!

I could've spoken or written about it before but I've always been scared to do that because when I've attempted it, it's only made the problem worse. Just as adverts for food, recipes or articles in magazines, seeing people eat on TV etc can set me off bingeing, then talking about it always seemed to be an immediate trigger. It brought it to the front of my mind, like full on danger, red light flashing, total terror. So I shutdown that possibility. I couldn't cope with it. It was just too dangerous to talk about.

I'm not saying I could talk about it now - I don't know at the moment. But writing about it and even more importantly, reading other people's experiences, has really started to get all this in perspective for me. Provided a safe way for me to think about it. In fact I've thought about very little else recently.

So this is the power of blogging!!!

It's not just the reading, but also the suggestions make me think about why for example I can't buy my shopping over the internet and get it delivered as Chris suggested. I have, of course, sometimes thought about this. But now I really have to think about it because I want to give a response back when someone has taken time to think about my situation and make suggestions and write a comment. Whereas when it's just in my head, I can let it go. When I am not accountable to anyone else - (and lots of people have written about setting up a weight loss blog to be accountable) - then those thoughts can just be left, can drift away. But now I have to think, "Why can't I allow myself to have some shopping delivered?" Is it because that would be making things too easy for myself? Is it just because I haven't done it before? Is it because the cost of about 5 pounds to have it delivered seems ridiculous when there are shops just round the corner? Or is it because I'm not worth the 5 pounds? I'll let you know when I work it out.

Back to the issue of ADs. I have tried them before but the side effects were always really bad. I couldn't tolerate any SSRIs - like prozac or citalopram. I was on the tricyclic AD Lofepramine for 3 1/2 yrs but gave it up end 2005 as the side effects became too overwhelming. Tricyclic ADs are very toxic. The strain on my kidneys (which took 6 months to return to normal after stopping them), the low blood pressure coupled with low blood sugar totally ground me down the whole time. My hair went prematurely grey because of those tablets (kidney function problems). So in the end I didn't have much choice. Also tricylclics cause weight gain. I was my highest ever weight on Lofepramine. So not what I want in that respect either.

I am taking 5-HTP tablets at the moment - one a day last week and now I've started taking 2 a day. It's a nutritional supplement which is converted by the body into serotonin - the neurotransmitter that ADs seek to potentialise. Works much quicker than ADs - you feel the effects from the second day. When I stop taking it I will cry for a day or two. But the withdrawal is no longer than that, so much better than ADs. And there are no physical side effects. It's gently supportive and makes you care a lot less about things. But it doesn't of course make you feel happy. I'm going to keep on with it even though it doesn't offer anything near total protection from the overwhelming crushing pain of food withdrawal. But I have only stepped up the dose on Friday evening and maybe it would be worse than it has been without it. I've known days in this situation that were much much much worse than yesterday or today. This, in comparison, is low level pain, like an ache that's always there with regular but fairly brief periods of crying and piercing pain. Not full on curled up in an armchair with my head in my hands crying and crying and crying all day every day. So maybe it is working as much as it can. Maybe I should step up to 3 tablets a day? I am worried about the withdrawal from that of taking so much, but I would have to reduce one tablet at a time. Just as if I was coming off ADs. More important to stamp on this eating thing now than worry about that.

I am also taking rhodiola, a herbal supplement. Said to help make serotonin and dopamine (neurotransmitters) more available in the brain so making you feel better. I thought it would go well with the 5-HTP. It is also said to help with recovery from physical exertion - I've been taking it for the last couple of weeks now and maybe this is the reason why I have suffered no physical problems when I have had a sudden, unusual level of exercise ie comparatively long period of time walking. Problems like swelling of knees, aching of muscles in legs and bottom, aching knees or joints anywhere. I found this really surprising.

The above is what I knew when I started taking it. But I've just read how this herb also has an effect on opioid peptides. I mentioned in my first ever post how eating fatty/ sugary foods creates opioids in areas of the brain linked to this behaviour (see link to research in that post). So maybe this might offer some support there too. Rhodiola is an "adaptogen" which helps both mind and body deal with stress and return to normal functioning. It has also been implicated in helping prevent weight gain due to stress - but the experiments involve rats not humans! Still, I'm hoping it will help.

Jonathan Cainer says for Monday, "Better a little bearable pain today than a lot of regret tomorrow". Sadly the pain isn't little or bearable. But in taking these tablets I suppose I'm trying to make it less painful than it otherwise might be.

I still don't know if I can put myself through all this... But I don't think there's an alternative.