Chain Brain

I sit here trying very hard to keep down the oatmeal infused medicinal breakfast shake. Each sip brings an urge to throw up and a tightening of my chest while i close my eyes and try to stay as calm as possible so i don’t throw up all over my computer. The fever i have is absolutely kicking my ass. As the heat radiates off my body it is not alone, joined by my rapidly depleting physical energy. Perfect timing too- I have a busy day. All i can do right now is hopefully type something worthwhile and then go lay down for an hour or two. Now i love the fact that people identify with and/or read my writing, that feels great. It’s very uplifting, motivating, and brings a big smile to my mug. Knowing I’m possibly a link in the chain of hope spread among us, and the hopeless. But really i am writing for myself. Im writing to purge myself of thoughts that without writing they would just whirl around my head, eventually being relegated to the dark corners of my mind, making everyday simple tasks much much harder than ought to be. Am i the only 32 year old man who turns into a sad, useless sack of groaning potatoes when I’m sick? Of course my low self-esteem is telling me yes without a doubt. But my brain (when it powers on for brief moments) tells me that its highly likely I’m not the only one who feels this way. It’s a good thing “Honor” or a word like it isn’t something i seek. If it was then i wouldn’t be comfortable writing anything that i have written and i certainly wouldn’t feel comfortable freely admitting to an unknown number of people i don’t even know that i have been a strung out junkie, or how i struggle deeply with serious mental illness and i have been hospitalized because of it numerous times. O wait a minute, if you would be so kind (or intrigued). I have been a patient of a methadone clinic for close to 7 years. That, along with a myriad of other potent psych meds i take on a daily basis, and not by want. I take them because i need them. Without them i suffer from crippling anxiety, and i literally mean crippling. It completely incapacitate me, rendering me unable to walk or distinguish reality from fiction. Of the large number of doctors, psychiatrists, psychologists, and counselors that i have seen they all overwhelmingly agree that i suffer from ptsd, depression, panic disorder. Most of them agree i suffer from OCD, surely it would be all of them if i didn’t leave that part out during our initial conversation. I have struggled with OCD for so long and learned to live with it that i figure i don’t want ANOTHER medication to take everyday. I do have the sneaking suspicion that i should start telling my doctor about this in full detail but for some reason never do. The OCD is so bad that if tried to explain it to you it wouldn’t make any sense at all, i promise. I’ve tried. So ill give you the simplest, outermost layer of it. I don’t have OCD like you see on tv when someone washes their hands 100 times a day or does some other normal or abnormal action so often that it inhibits their ability to take care of themselves. My OCD involves perpetually counting things. Theres an entire, insanely detailed system operating in my head that has to do with counting things. I have to count how long each one of my breath’s last and the number of seconds three breaths equals has to be a certain number. Its the duration of my breathing, timing of next breath…its really nutty. A tremendous burden that absolutely keeps me from reaching the level i know i can be at if it weren’t for this disorder. Ill get stuck in one spot, just standing there for so long counting breathes that by the time i kind of snap out of it and realize “o shit, ive been staring at the same spot on the wall for 45 minutes” that i have messing with my breathing patterns for so long and holding my breath without knowing it that not only is my breathing all out of whack for hours to come, the gases in my body are because i have been hyperventilating. Heres where it gets real fun- ( besides the hours of heart arrhythmia): Because off all of this hyperventilating and the gases in my body being thrown way out of whack and the heart arrhythmia i begin to suffer dystonia and eventually seizures. And if it’s not the ratio of gases in my system that causes the seizures its a fever. A fever brought on by me not sleeping or eating for days on end because I’m stuck in some highly detailed process (that makes no sense at all) of counting numbers. It’s not just the breathing, its the footsteps, the amount of times i touch something, the amount of times i think of something, it ALL has a numerical value to it that is plugged into some gigantic mathematical formula in my head thats i get stuck constantly, obsessively thinking about for hours, days, even weeks. Really it is so deep and involved that words cannot explain it. Iv had this problem for as long as i remember, and thats being 3 or 4 years old, maybe younger. I was born with this. And i propose that OCD, PTSD, Addiction, Depression, Panic Disorder are all the same thing. They all interlink with each other to form a chainlink fence that covers my brain and has a huge impact on my ability to even take care of myself. Scary stuff, even to me and i live it. And please do not think this is just me complaining and seeking sympathy- Because it is NOT. It is simply me trying to make sense of it all through writing.