Off Meds Update #3, And Thanks

A few of you have recently written to ask how things are going now that I've been off Lamictal, the last psych med I was taking, for two months. Thanks for even asking. I'm a bit tired, so my thoughts will be brief and badly-formed.

Once I got past 10 days or so of withdrawal hell from Lamictal in late July, things have gone quite well. Except my back went out, likely in response to coming off meds after 18 years of having a whole bunch of juju in my central nervous system. I was in agony from back pain and spent the better part of a week on the couch. When I wrote, I was in screaming pain. This happens when you don't have health insurance. But I was able to do some very improvised self-care and eventually worked the tightness and knots out of most of my back.

Now, I feel great. Better than well, as the classic "how does Prozac make you feel" line goes from Kramer's Listening to Prozac. The deep irony of me telling you all this during this week is that it is this week that marks my 18th Anniversary as someone with bipolar disorder. I like irony. A lot.

I'll have further reflections on this in the near future. For the moment, I want to stress that my circumstances are fairly unique and I've put myself in a position where I have few major stressors in my life right now. It's way, way too early to say if I am one of those bipolars who gets to make it to the other side, so I am trying to remain humble about the whole process and see what happens. And, yes, this was partly my doctor's idea. We are conducting an experiment with an N=1. And that's the only sample size that matters.

More later. I deserve a beer and I'm going to go have one.

In addition, I truly want to thank my readers for making yesterday the heaviest day of hits on this site since the glory days of the Zyprexa scandal. Perhaps even heavier, but I didn't have a proper stats counter on my site then. It was also the heaviest day of reader comments since February. Which is cool.