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Journaling (on Back) Reads:
Little White Pills
Taken On My Schedule:
• 2-30 mg Adderall XR
• 1-15 mg Adderall XR
• 4-5 mg Desoxyn
Supposed to be 7 Pills Daily
In My Daily Pill Case:
• 1-300 mg Wellbutrin XL
• 1-150 mg Wellbutrin XL
• 3-25 mg Lamictal
• 1 to 2-30 mg Prevacid
• 1 to 4-10 mg Reglan
• 3-25 mg Toprol XL
• 1-5 mg Zyrtec
• 1-Zyrtec D
• 1-Ovcon 50
13 pills every single day
Taken As Needed (Max Per Day):
• 1 to 6-10 mg Compazine
• 1 to 3-8 mg Zofran
• 1 to 6-Vicoprofen
• 1 or 2-10 mg Valium
• 1 or 2-40 mg Relpax
• 1 to 4-Fiorinal
• 1 to 2 puffs every 4 hours-Albuterol
Diagnoses:
• Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD)
• Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
• Bipolar Disorder
• Gastroesophogial Reflux Disease (GERD)
• Gastroparesis
• Tachycardia
• Allergies
• Chronic Nausea and Vomiting
• Migraines/Chronic Headaches
• Exercise Induced Asthma
When I look around my room, I feel like I could open up my own pharmacy. I have pill bottles all over the place, which is not surprising considering the number of pills that I take every day. I am supposed to take more, but I take 13 pills daily, for all kinds of things. I am only 21 years old and I already have a General Practitioner, a Cardiologist, a Neurologist, a Gastroenterologist, and a Psychiatrist. I feel like I should be 70, living in Florida, and telling everyone I meet about all the things that are wrong with my health...I have become MUCH, MUCH, MUCH more compliant with my doctors’ directions for taking medicines, especially my psych meds. I used to just stop taking all of my meds randomly. It usually would happen when I was feeling like the pills controlled my life or when I would feel that I could live without them. (The only thing I always take is my Adderall, Desoxyn, or whatever stimulant I was taking at the time because I literally cannot function in daily life without my stimulant medications for ADD.) I have this argument with myself all of the time: is it worth it to take all of these medications? Do I really need so many pills? Why can’t I just get better by my own will? I have so many doubts that cloud my mind and make me question why I do what I have been told to do by my doctors. I mean, who gave them control over my life? But when I really stop to think about it rationally (when I am thinking clearly and am not sick) I realize that I have had this discussion with every one of my doctors. We have decided together that taking the medication provides a greater benefit than risk.
But then other questions come up that I am afraid to talk to my doctors about, like am I dependent on some of these medications? (The answer is YES.) Does that mean I am a drug addict? (I believe the answer is NO.) I really get concerned about the medicine I take for Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) because it is a stimulant and a CII drug that is abused by a lot of people. And I know that I cannot function without it—not just cannot function well, but I cannot function period. I did not schedule an appointment with my psychiatrist for a month and a half, so I ran out of the medications I take for my Attention Deficit Disorder, Adderall XR and Desoxyn, because I can only get prescriptions for a one month supply at a time. I actually went through withdrawal because I was not taking the medications. I got these terrible headaches and slept all of the time. I do not even want to remember how horrible I felt emotionally. I was a wreck, so depressed. I could not focus on anything and I could not accomplish anything. I did not even have the patience or energy to scrapbook—something I usually love to do. I would spend all of my free time sitting like a blob in bed with the television on while I was surfing the internet, even though I could not even concentrate long enough to watch a half hour T.V. program or check in on the forums on scrapbook.com. I made a HUGE mistake at the Trump Marina (one of the places I work) that cost the company $90. (Not a big amount of money for a casino, but I was really upset that I messed up. I usually am very careful not to be careless and I had never made a mistake like that before.) I had an especially hard time driving because of all the distractions that are present on the road. I almost rear ended someone because my mind was wandering God only knows where and I had not seen the car in front of me stop at the red light. I kept getting lost because I would miss the street that I was supposed to turn on—and this was just driving routes that are to familiar places that I drive to at least every week. Thank God for the GPS in my phone so I could find out where I was and how to get to where I was originally headed or how to get home.
What scares me (I mean besides all of the things that I just listed) is how good it felt when I finally took those medications again. As soon as I left my psychiatrist’s office I went directly to the pharmacy to have the prescriptions filled. As soon as the prescriptions were filled, I took the drugs. And as soon as the drugs kicked in I felt like a completely different person. There was a little sense of euphoria, which felt good physically and emotionally, but was unnerving to me. I have been taking some form of stimulants for years, but never realized how much I needed them until I had to go without the medications for a couple of weeks. It is kind of scary to me that I need these drugs so badly that I cannot function in everyday life without them. But when I look at all of the things I listed above that I could not do when I had run out of my medications, I realize that it is safer for me to take them. I am less of a danger to myself and to other people and I can be a productive member of society.
The other thing that makes me dislike taking the medications for my Attention Deficit Disorder is the other health problems that have been caused by taking these medications for long periods of time. Because I have taken these types of stimulant medications for so long, I have to take them at higher and higher doses which have not been studied in a clinical setting and the long term effects of taking these medications at the high doses I need to take them at for the meds to be effective are not known. My dosing needs to be adjusted every couple of months in the upwards direction, and I maxed out the recommended dose years ago. For the one medication that I take, the Adderall XR, the maximum dose that has been studied and that is recommended for adults taking this medication is 30 milligrams once daily in the morning, and the Adderall XR is supposed to last 12 hours. When taken that way, adults with Attention Deficit Disorder should not have to take additional drugs to treat their ADD. Currently I usually take at least 75 milligrams of Adderall XR daily: I take 30 mg in the morning, usually around 8:00 AM, then I take 30 mg at 12:00 PM, and finally I take 15 mg of Adderall XR around 2:00 PM or 3:00 PM. And besides the Adderall XR, I also have to take Desoxyn. I am supposed to take four Desoxyn tablets daily. I take two Desoxyn tablets at the same time as the 8:00 AM 30 mg Adderall XR and the afternoon 15 mg Adderall XR. (N.B. Depending on my schedule for the day, sometimes I adjust the dose—changing how much I take for that day total, more or less, or changing the amount I take at certain times of the day. Usually I work in the evenings so I will take the higher doses on the evenings that I have to work, but then I cannot really function earlier in the day, but I need to be able to work, so I have no choice.)
I have always had a high heart rate, but one of the things that stimulants like Adderall, and especially Desoxyn (which is methamphetamine or Speed), can do is raise your heart rate. My resting heart rate when I was taking the medications was around 120 beats per minute. That was high, even for me, but it was particularly high in comparison to the average person’s heart rate which is around 65 to 75 beats per minute (I think). At least I know that any heart rate in an adult over 100 beats per minute is clinically considered tachycardia (meaning an abnormally fast heart rate). That is what I have been diagnosed with and why I needed to see a cardiologist when I was 19 years old, because I was having this really fast heart rate that was causing a pressure in my chest that would become extremely uncomfortable and even painful. So now I have to take another medication (a beta blocker, Toprol XL) to keep my heart rate down. The stimulant medications I take also are believed to have caused another one of my health problems, gastroparesis which has the symptoms of chronic nausea and vomiting because food sits in the stomach and is not digested fast enough, so the body is forced to get it out of the stomach, but since it cannot be digested faster, the food comes back up or I become extremely nauseous. I have to take another medication for the gastroparesis, Reglan, four times a day, one half hour before meals and at bedtime. And Reglan has potential life altering side effects, like permanent uncontrollable muscle movements, especially in the face. And if I forget to take the Reglan or it is not effective I have to take a medication for nausea. (One of the meds I take for nausea is called Zofran and it costs about $1,500 for 30 tablets of the generic! Thank God for prescription insurance.) But other than that, stimulants along with my other medications have made it possible for me to live my life in ways that I now realize I could have never done without the medication. So I suppose the benefits do outweigh the side effects of the drugs.
Thanks for spreading positivity!
April 22, 2013
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