Sans Lithium pt. 2

The biggest reason i got off of lithium was that i was never sure what was the drugs and what was me. Which is wholey irritating at the very least, now having been off it a few days, over what minor withdrawls there were, i can say that most of the thoughts and feelings and reactions now are the same as when i was on lithium. Now i want to give it more time, but now im left with the question of ... so am i better off on it or off it?

On a seperate but slightly related note i switched to decaf green tea just as a kicker to say i dont use caffine entirely.

The more i think ive changed, the more i realize im exactly how ive always been

lack of lithium reduces quality of dream

So i dont think im bipolar. Im pretty sure i just bought into the game like everyone else since it was short simple andswer to a much more complex problem

as a result i have stopped taking my medication and feel a whole lot better without it. Im open to the possiblility that i could be wrong, but when one suddenly stops lithium therapy they usually go into a manic state, being as that i suddenly stopped and only had a little trouble getting to sleep i believe my theory is correct.

You cannot survive without consuming other living beings, what gives one the right to decide which living beings are superior to others?

Its been busy at work

I never used to like sleeping, but now i do because i love dreaming. And i swear to christ my dreams have started taking on themes. Its almost like a thesis my unconcious wants to convey to me every night. Maybe im just slipping off the deep end or looking WAY too into this.

Understanding the concept of no-self is very difficult and its what ive been working on recently. But to be fair most people do years and years of mediatation before they understand the concept. So its a bit frustrating, but you have to live in each moment and be blind to the goal. If you focus on the goal, you lose sight of the path.

Its all fun to say and sounds like i have it figured out, but it seems so infinitly more complicated than that. But thats part of buddhism, is taking away all those layers of bullshit and complications you've built up over the years.

Its been a rough week. One of those weeks where i wanted to quit, or relax and just take it easy, but something in me just wont let myself do it.

Im really starting to dislike the drugs, i can feel them. They say that if they are working right you wont even be able to tell your on them. Well i can tell, i can tell you exactly when i hit a therapudic level, i can tell you exactly when its high and when its lower. I get nervous when its low, afraid ill go into a manic episode. They screw with my head that way. Im not able to fully trust my own thoughts, actions, emotions. I feel like a zombie sometimes.

Breakthrough

A while ago i was having a conversation with a friend about people changing, granted people do change but she was arguing that people needed time to change, while i was insisting that people had the capacity to change in an instant. Case in point

There is a man, lets say of the age of 32 and he has drank his whole life, never really been an alcoholic, but never been one to turn down a party either. And one night he gets beligerant and beats his wife. Now this is a man who has always thought it wrong to hit women, much less the one he cares for dearly, so he decides that he is never drinking again. And till the day he dies never touches a drop of alcohol.

Now, at what point in his life did he change? Granted he might have had concious desires to drink that subsided over time, and hell he may even have come right to putting the beer to his lips a couple times, but never acually drank. The point is, we cant judge someone on their thoughts, we simply, no matter how much psychology we took in high school or how well you think you know someone, you simply cant put their thoughts into context, you can never paint your world the same way they have painted theirs, for this reason we judge each other (mostly) on actions.

Now say this guy had a friend, who knew him since they were in diapers, had been drinking with this guy since they had their first beer behind his house on a saturday afternoon. And this whole time hes thinking, There is no WAY hes gonna never drink again, this guy LOVES to party, i give it a month tops, but on the day of his friends funeral (suprisingly lets assume he outlived him) He will probably say to himself, damn, he really never drank again, he really changed that moment he decided that he never wanted to drink again. Now granted the friend might have given up on his hopes that his friend return to the partying lifestyle after a few months or years, but the wife beater changed much later in his friends eyes than in his own. This is the nature of differing perceptions. And of course the realization didnt come till death.

Such is the way of buddha nature, within each of us we have the ability to follow the perfect way and we, like the second friend, presume we need time to breakdown those perceptions and ideas we have built up around our concept of the "self". But when the self truely dies, it seems so simple, the idea was there the whole time.

It is difficult to know when to have faith and when to not. Doubt is by far the most usefull and nessesary of all ideas. By all means use doubt to your advantage, question everything around you. Question what you think is wrong, and question what you think is right. Really sit down and think and question what this corpse is you carry with you. Find your own path. And no doubt, doubt, will slow you on the path of losing this attachment to your corpse but it is nessesary.

Thus is the balance we call hypocracy.

somehow, i leveled out

ive been fucking bouncing around last couple days

who knows the cause

*sigh*

Its just one of those nights when your constitution is worn down

Whole time im thinking and remeber those old days and cant help think. What if im wrong, or rather what if im right, and im not bipolar, and what if my new found values are wrong.

ahh, its only these nights, most of the time im infinitly happier... i think

Its impossible to know if im better or worse. Or at least for myself to judge. I can see it in other peoples eyes, they want the old me back, they want the good-on-his-luck always got a story to tell fucked up out of his mind person back. Of course its always covered with a quick your better this way. I guess its better to be this way, but it makes it so much harder when everyone else says its better this way while they do the complete opposite, hypocracy is human nature, but that just leads me back to Why am i not capable of doing what they do? or Am i? Fucking christ its so damn complicated yet it seems so simple. Simply enough I'm not pretentious enough to say "Oh i dont do drugs, or drink, or smoke, or drink coffee, or have frivilous sex" and be proud of it. The whole damn time im thinking dear god i want to be back in that.

Its just tonight, its nights like these that make it hard, make me question what i know to be true. Its nights like these that only prove to myself, 1, how much more i have to prove and 2, how strong ive really become.

The old me, always ended nights like these with an entry, with signifigantly more spelling errors, and a hell of alot more selfishness, usually whining about something he doesn't have

But i have everything, sometimes i just forget that, and think only of the things i want
Its human
But it doesnt have to be that way


I got a long way to go

Therapy

Havent had a whole lot of time to update this thing, added a new class so im at school till 9 every night now and work has been fucking crazy, this is the first morning i havent been swamped with work for like two weeks.

Started therapy, which i was highly skeptical about at first, but i think i really do need it. Its not so much therapy as it is drug and alcohol conseling. The goal of course, not being to stop, which is already done, but stay off, and not do my sterotypical go 6-8 months clean only to have a little "vacation" that ends in on again off again use.

Im being so damn productive now its almost sickening to myself, or what would be the part of myself that still wants to be destructive and counter-productive, at some moments i feel almost downright two-faced, like i can almost hear the seperate voices and ideals arguing in my head. Because at the same time, i love being this productive, and clean, and steadily growing more pretentious.