I'm far from fixed.

So far it's laughable to think I started this blog with the thought that the worst was behind me. HAH. Oh well, at least I have the (disorganized, impossible to follow, and in need of editing) content here for the next time I feel like maybe I am further along.

So much to say, So little time...

I say so little time not because I truly have a time limit (pretty sure all the work I should be doing has gone out the window with the updates I'm about to give), but because I have such a finite window of time each day where I'm inspired to write here and know exactly what I want to do. The key to writing this while still not yet far enough removed from my painful reality is just writing without a filter - no time for editing (hence the lame background and 0% formatting/page set-ups despite the fact I wanted to use this platform to learn coding... I'll get there eventually), and absolutely no re-reading past posts. That'll come once I'm further away from the insanity of the past year.

Speaking of the past year and insanity...

I cannot believe I'm saying this, but I think I'm going to find another outpatient program to do. Have I relapsed? No, at least not in a meaningful way (details later, this is more important), therefore I never really thought that going back to the program at Woburn Wellness was an option. More importantly, and I hate admitting this but it's the truth, I realized something incredibly important this past week:

For all my claims to end the stigma, I can't even get my own subconscious to stop judging me by the stigma.

Yeah, trust me, the irony wasn't lost on me one bit. Nor was the irony of the fact that in order to realize this, it took coming to terms with admitting what I was ashamed of (aka exact advice from the first ever Brene Brown book my therapist recommended). What I underestimated, per usual, was the extreme talent of the human brain to subconsciously sabotage your best conscious efforts. All this time I've been thinking I'm healed because I quit opiates, so imagine my surprise when a "short depressed episode" went on for months and months... and yet, I couldn't blame the drugs (at least not directly aside from maybe post acute withdrawal symptoms), because I wasn't taking them. It couldn't be any of my other illicit pills either, because even when I took an adderall it made no difference - the depression remained, I just was awake for it. Hell, I tried taking some painkillers out of desperation (the non-meaningful relapse) only to realize that they THANKFULLY did not provide the relief I craved. I say thankfully, because if they had then it would have been quite a meaningful relapse since I'd probably still be high. Luckily, I just considered it a $400 investment to prove that my answers don't come from opiates - there's more going on here. SHOCKING, I know. How did I manage to lose sight of the fact that my mental issues were far beyond just the painkiller use? A few guesses:

1. My only life goal for years was to stop taking them - so in that sense, once I stopped taking them and the 'pink cloud phase' of sobriety passed, I was left with a "okay so... why don't I feel better?" type feeling that I've heard many people get after achieving all sorts of goals (or maybe most people have more of a 'now what'), but either way, the concept is the same: goal reached, certain feelings expected yet not enough or not sustainable, and therefore left feeling almost no better for having reached the goal.
2. In my eyes, everything is my fault - because it is. However, since I did confirm with every person I could at WW that it is not possible to make yourself mentally ill by abusing drugs (although obviously recovery is somewhat of a lifelong battle that could be viewed as an ailment, but that's not an ILLNESS), I now realize that I expected the anxiety/depression to go away with the drug use. Fun fact: they have not. not even a little. in fact, I haven't felt as depressed as I did from Thanksgiving through January ever before. I am aware the anti-depressants I take (Venlafaxine) maybe could be adjusted, but more importantly they are doing their job, because normally I wouldn't be able to step back from the darkness and think about it ever. All those livestream posts with my streams of consciousness? Couldn't have happened if not for the few moments I was able to "catch my breath" before the depression sucked me back under. My point here: I perhaps overlooked the need for continued mental health treatment during recovery... and I have found it is important.
3. Now where does my gal Brene Brown come in? Well, thanks to some honest conversations with my friends and my boss, I realized a few instances where I hadn't even realized it, but shame was holding me back:
   - When it comes to my boss and co-workers, I was too scared to say more than just 'mental health program' about the therapy I was doing, because I was giving in to the damn stigma: I was ashamed of being an addict and worried that they would forever question my competency as a worker after. A friend of mine pointed out that she didn't think to solve my internal guilt I needed to have a big conversation all about how I was actually in rehab for drug use, because in reality, that's not the problem. The problem was that my guilt about not telling the whole truth (because I was ashamed of it) manifested in strange ways: lying about other, nonsensical things. For example, this all came to a head after I didn't sleep one Sunday night and before going to sleep I sent my team a message at 6AM saying I had to take Denver to the vet and would miss all our morning meetings (lack of sleep + sending work messages = bad idea). To make matters worse, I decided to throw in another absurd lie when I woke up and panicked about the fact my boss had asked me to call in (which I would have seen if I had actually been at the vet instead of sleeping) so I said that I told my parents over the weekend finally and have been "an emotional wreck." That's how I got to the point of asking my friend if I should tell him about the drugs, and she gave me the life changing advice I needed to hear: 1 - tell your parents (ironically I was on the phone with my dad before I read her response) and 2 - the part about my useless lying resulting in more issues than if I just had told the truth from the start. That seems SO simple, and yet when I say a light bulb went off I truly mean it. I wanted to drive to Spencer and give her the biggest hug in the world, because I realized how right she was - I was giving in to the stigma that I'm so hell bent on disproving.
   - Not only that, but I realized this while telling my boss: I'm ashamed of needing help because (right back to number 2) I blame myself for getting addicted to drugs and therefore making any reasonable doctor focus on that before the connected mental illnesses. Every time in the past he had told me not to be so hard on myself for needing help all I could think was "but no it IS my fault, I tried the drugs and let myself get addicted!" ... however, when I stop being ashamed of my drug use and look at it for what it is: the way I self-medicated for god knows what mental illnesses (it really was quite the cure-all), I realize that maybe I've been a bit too focused on beating myself up for being an addict. There's a reason I checked myself into a program after trying all sorts of alternatives to quit yet never getting into too terrible of financial straits to feed my addiction - so while I don't believe in self control for addicts, I guess I at least can say my addiction served a need that, to me, was just to live normally. Should anyone need 60mg of percs snorted throughout the day just to get by? No way, but my brain decided it did and I failed to prove it wrong until finally getting myself into the program through WW.
   - Now while all this sounds lovely and enlightening, that's not true one bit - it's terrifying. Admitting that I've been ashamed of my drug use to the point where it blinded me to the help I really needed means I'm basically back at square 1.5 (I absolutely learned a lot from my first go at rehab, so I won't say square 1) in which I can't even predict when I will or won't survive a workday. I honestly haven't gotten any work done in months thanks to well timed PTO/holidays, but as it's becoming an issue is when I had this conversation with my boss. When he first suggested maybe taking medical leave for another outpatient program, my instinctual response was "hellll fucking no, I already did that!!!!" ... so then I remembered the whole shame thing, and stopped to think more... and more and more and more, plus a panic attack and sleepless nights writing INSANE amounts of notes about "whether or not I can be a reliable worker" (not kidding, maybe I'll paste them as a post), and in the end I realized that the only reasons I was against joining a program were all based in shame. "I'm not weak, now that I kicked the pills I'll just have my neuro eval and deal" (SAMMI the stigma literally paints the mentally ill as weak - don't be a little bitch, in order to end the stigma you need to be strong enough to power through the shame and admit when some outside help would likely expedite the process of finally feeling better) or "what will people at work think if I take ANOTHER month or 2 off on medical leave!?" or, an incredibly/horrifically ironic one in terms of ending the stigma: "what if I have bipolar disorder or something else with meds that have equally horrifying side effects and I'm damaged goods for life?" To be clear: I'm not proud that I had these thoughts - and to be even clearer, I'm annoyed it took me so long to unearth them from how deeply rooted they were in my subconscious.

So what was I to take from all of this?

To me right now, it seems I have a 2 options: The first is to continue living in denial that anything is wrong and just keep attempting to work until I magically turn into a superhero that, with 0 additional help or work, overcomes all my mental illnesses and addict tendencies to take over the tech world while building a home for strays ... I hope my sarcasm there is apparent. The denial mentality is one I fall back on way too often, because for years I tricked myself into barely believing I was taking the drugs I was snorting all the time. Denial is a powerful tool, but it's not one I've found to be helpful... except in cases where admitting the truth really serves no good (i.e. "did you hook up with my husband?" - you deny that shit until the end of time, because no good comes from being involved in someone else's marriage/relationship and it's absolutely not going to sound good coming from the dirty mistress - one of many tags I need to add is 'dating gone wrong stories', and this will be one foooor sure).

Denial and shame is not the option I'm going with this time.

I guess between having 1 round of outpatient therapy under my belt, a team of angels from Woburn Wellness/Square Medical, the best boss ever, roommates that are not only my brothers but also my darling Joey who knows the hell of mental mayhem and dealing with outpatient programs the same as I do, and friends that give more helpful/insightful advice than they even realize, I'm finally (at age 30) going to go with an approach of taking accountability for my current situation and finding a real solution. Yeah, I know - terrifying. Just reading that makes me want to curl up in bed with my latest psychological thriller, and yet at the same time I realize that this is a moment I'll look back on and think "wow, that was a big turning point in my life." I need to talk to a whole bunch of people (my therapist, my doctors at Square Medical, Jill's dad, etc.) and figure out what options are out there that will truly help me. I'm really banking on this neuro evaluation providing me with some sort of useful information to work with, because I hate that I'm flying blind not knowing what's a symptom of mental illness vs. post acute withdrawal.

As nice as it would be continuing to throw myself into hobbies that I truly am baffled by (i.e. the circus installed in my living room for aerial yoga/silks, candle making, obsessing over instagram brands... the list goes on and on), I think a more structured approach at figuring out if life just sucks and I need to learn to accept that vs. if I have a mental illness that treated properly could change my outlook on life. Either way, I just want some damn answers - and that, my darling journal, is quite the improvement for me.