Being Onboard with my Treatment Plan

Medicated Life Must be Something I Want to Work

Photo by Greg Rosenke on Unsplash

By way of a solution, I have been given a special prescription for an as needed medication for my schizoaffective disorder.

The idea is that when I take this medication, I will nearly immediately become sleepy and any symptoms of mania will wash away like words written in the sand of a seashore.

With this medication, my erratic unplanned road trips will end. I won’t wander the city all night long never wanting the night to end. This medication will knock me out pretty thoroughly.

This medication plan is great in theory.

The plan however presupposes that I want the night to end. When I am getting amped up and am in a manic phase, I feel great. I have more energy, my thoughts are faster, the world excites me. Why would I want this to end?

Maybe the rush of mania is similar for anyone with the bipolar aspects of schizoaffective disorder. Schizoaffective disorder is the combination of bipolar disorder and schizophrenia.

Under my medication regime, I lived a very ordered and structured life. I’ll admit, I can’t say that it fully fulfills all my desires, but it does keep me safe and ordered.

When I am getting amped up, as I like to call going into a manic phase, everything is a little more stimulating. I am getting excited about living.

Why can’t I just figure out how to insert a little “life and living” into my medicated existence?

Why can’t I just live a little and have a life while under the support of my structured life?

The answer is I can and I am learning to do it.

I took a trip to Chicago a couple months back. It supported my need for living. I didn’t do anything crazy on the trip, but it helped me feel a bit alive.

Learning to live “medicated” is what I struggle with in my fully medicated state and I’ll admit, I don’t always know what’s best for me.

I am the type that loves a routine. However, the structure of it makes me feel as though I'm in a bit of a self imposed prison.

There are other aspects of my personality that don’t support healthy living.

I have a strong sense of being an introvert and not needing a lot of people around me. I must force myself to have some people around me. I need to force myself to have social time.

To recapitulate, I need to insert some randomness into my routine at a healthy titration.

Also, in summary, I need to regularly impose on myself some social time.

I need people too. My counselor says, humans are social animals that need one another, I must always recognize that fact and have some people in my life.

I have to be willing to want the medication that brings me down. If the life I am living is a life that I enjoy, I’m willing to take it . I need to enjoy my life.

I don’t want to jeopardize a life that is good and that’s what mania does. It puts me in a position where my life will be disrupted. A life that is good shouldn’t want to be disrupted.

As I type today, I am enjoying my life and am happy with it. I don’t want to jeopardize it.