F*#% You, Pharma

Here's to a newly lightly-medicated me. Here's to change, here's to differences. Here's to a mid-life crisis at age seventeen.

Since August of 2012, I have been on Vyvanse for focus issues and Mirtazapine for my depression. About two weeks ago, I told my psychiatrist I wished to ditch these two medications, leaving only Lamotrigine for mood stabilization. I've been medicated since age fourteen, but I have never been as heavily medicated as I have been this past year.

For the purpose of this post, I'm ignoring Lamotrigine.

I went on Mirtazapine first. No more issues sleeping, as taking this pill before bed knocked me right out. It made me hungry. Ravenous. My stomach was a bottomless pit and I always wanted to eat. I gained about ten pounds when I first started taking it. I was hungry and tired, but I wasn't as depressed.

Shortly after, I began Vyvanse. This pill, similar to Adderall and crystal meth, woke me up completely, eliminating all drowsiness and allowing me to sit at my desk and work for hours without losing focus or needing to eat. My grades skyrocketed. My sophomore year of depression and rebellion consisted of C's and D's, and the first quarter of my junior year, I came through with all A's and two B's.

So, in short, I was sleeping well, I was happier, I was making the grades, I was managing my time, I was keeping my world tidy, I was eating but consuming an acceptable amount of food, I was living the dream as a well-oiled human machine.

There were a few moments this past year when I broke down over the feeling of being imprisoned in a rigid structure. So I upped my dosage, and miraculously, I went back to being a well-oiled human machine.

Two weeks ago, however, I cut Vyvanse and Mirtzazapine out of my life, cold turkey. Painful withdrawal aside, it's safe to say my room appears to be post-natural disaster, I'm hardly achieving anything "productive", and I feel different. It started to occur to me the last month or so on these meds, but today, it's hitting me like a brick wall.

Productive vs. unproductive. Motivated vs. unmotivated. Enthusiastic vs. unenthusiastic. Organized vs. disorganized. Left-brained vs. right-brained. Being heavily medicated has shown me two different Emmas, and two weeks being the original Emma have left me thinking.

I was given medication because I was sad and I couldn't focus. I was given medication to be made into a productive member of society, conducive to the values of the masses, and perhaps ignorant to my own. The past year has been Employee Training Day for my minimum wage job of being a 21st-century human being, and medication has been my uniform.

I've built a future over the course of this past year. This year, I've been working for SAT scores and for grades. This year, I've been rigorously investigating colleges and I've been seeking out good drama programs because that's what I want to do, right? I want to be an actor. I've always wanted to be an actor, and this year, I was driven to put in the work to set up the opportunity to study drama at a prestigious institution.

Two weeks off of two medications and I'm completely disillusioned.

What do I want? Why do I want? Why do I care? What do I care? These are questions that were inhibited by a constant flow in my grey matter of lisdexamfetamine and mirtazapine.

September 2012

Q: Do I want to do this work?

A: Yes. I need to do this work. I need to do this work because of future ramifications. I will do this work through a certain process, and it will be done by a certain time. And then I might even have time to write in my journal! But probably not.

June 2013

Q: Do I want to do this work?

A: What work? Oh... nah.

Yeah... nah. 

So what do I do now? I'll go draw something. I'll go play video games. I'll listen to good music. I'll write something meaningful. I'll go on a walk. I'll go swim laps. I'll take a moment to consider the world around me.

What don't I do? I don't think about the future. I don't do much work outside of my job. I don't organize things. I don't think as logically as I once did. I pay more attention to my emotions and less to my obligations.

There are key questions to this issue, methinks:

1. Which is more important?

2. Which is more true to myself?

It's laughable that in society, everyone will automatically realize the answers to those questions, and to boot, the answers to those questions will undoubtedly be polar opposites. It's absolutely laughable.

Special, Self-Hating, Screwed-Over Snowflakes

As an opening that contradicts the title of this post, my junior year has gone much better than my sophomore year. 

I guess I hit my medication stew on the head for once, because when September rolled around, I was organized, hardworking, dedicated, and most of all, inspired. This year I took AP classes for the first time - two of them - and to begin with, they were going well. I remember thinking how proud I was of myself for handling my academics so well in comparison to my sophomore year, when I rebelled against everything academia and harbored a secret self-hatred because I wasn't meeting society's standards. This year I started meeting society's standards. I juggled theatre, AP work, my personal demons, a relationship, my job, and tried to maintain some form of a social life. As one could conclude from my lack of blog posts this year in comparison to last, I've been busy. Busy being "productive", I guess.

But I can welcome back that self-hatred now.

Maybe it's because that medication stew isn't working anymore. Maybe it's because I'm burnt out. Or maybe it's just because the demons I stuffed away in a drawer can't stay there anymore; maybe I can't continue ignoring the cracks in my foundation. It's probably all of those things, to an extent.

Here we go: I've never been able to stand answering to other people or justifying myself. I don't make excuses for who I am. I won't. I shouldn't have to tell them why I am the way that I am; all that matters is that I am, and that should be accepted. Once they accept that I am, they'll have a chance at understanding why I do the things I do. But the truth is that the only reason anyone would ever try to understand the things I do is if he or she had a problem with them, and that problem would inhibit him or her from accepting that I am. They can't accept me because they don't understand me, they can't understand me because they don't accept me.

Maybe I don't want to work the way society wants me to. Actually, maybe I can't. How many studies now have proven that humans don't all operate in a uniform manner? For that matter, many times have we, as members of this society, been told that we're a "special snowflake"; an individual? How many different ways has it been broadcasted that you should "be yourself"? 

Funny, how blatantly contradictory our society is; how it doesn't even notice it's own double-messages.

You're an individual. You're so special, there is no one like you! Be yourself, and love yourself for being different! But here's a template. Fit it. Your brain should be able to work this way. You should be able to operate in an academic environment; you should be able to handle this rigor to the point that we can stamp an "A" on your little individualistic forehead and hand you the same diploma every other special snowflake is getting.

This is what we're fed. The American Dream: find your way, make your dreams come true the same way as everyone else. All I've gathered from The American Dream is that every child should be numb and bitter by the age of fourteen. But maybe that's just me.

The real kicker of this entire subject, for me, is that as much as I criticize our society, as much as I realize how wrong it is, as much as I tell myself I'm okay for not fitting the template, I still can't shake the idea that maybe I'm the wrong one.

It's my fault I'm struggling. It's my fault that I can't meet the standards of my teacher, my guidance counselor, my advisor, my therapist, my parents, my peers. It's my fault that I'm not able to juggle theatre, AP work, my personal demons, a relationship, my job, and maintain some form of a social life. "Other people can do it," the voice in my head tells me. "Why the fuck can't you?"

I collapse under stress. My fault. I come to class unprepared because I can't get my shit together. My fault. I'm inherently right-brained. My fault. Even though I'll sweep the writing and reading portions of the SAT like I've done it two million times, I'll probably fall too short on my math score, prompting the colleges to say, "your fault."

Yeah, I hate answering to other people, but that seems to be all I do recently. 

This is why I think this. This is why I feel this. This is why I made this decision. This is why I'm acting this way. This is why I can't handle that. This is why I can't meet your standards; this is why I don't want to.

Because I think differently. Because I feel differently. Because I operate differently. Because I have my own priorities. Because I hurt. Because I'm breaking down. Because I'm not fucking like you. Because I fucking can't be.

And I guess I'm just not strong enough. I guess I'm not strong enough to handle the things society, and everyone else, thinks I should. I'm not strong enough not to write this post. And that's my fault.

I'm strong in a different way; my strengths lie in different places. My strengths lie in functional relationships, knowledge of reality, empathy, sympathy, priority. I'm strong when it comes to feeling things, understanding abstractions, and expressing myself. But who's measuring any of that in this society? No one. I don't have what's being measured. And that's my fault.

I just wish society would be honest. Either tell us we're special and our individualism should be cherished, cater to our individualism, and don't expect us all to operate the same way, or openly expect us to operate the same way. Don't pretend that what makes us special matters and then let us fall down hard and break our bones on the realization that it doesn't matter for shit. Tell us from the beginning. The former is idealistic. The latter is more likely, and is the option that breeds just as much self-hatred as the mix of the two that we have currently. I guess it all breeds self-hatred because according to this society, I just deserve to hate myself. Because it's my fault.

So I guess that's it, then. Society says we're special and should be true to ourselves, but then tells us exactly why we shouldn't be special. I've been told that I'm "blessed" with the "special gift" of insight, of personal voice, of abstract and philosophical evaluation. But that blessed gift doesn't have a place in the mold into which I am expected to fit. Tell me; if I'm so fucking "blessed", why do I have to change myself to look appealing to colleges? Why can't my blessed ass get the 4.0 that I want, or even cope, emotionally and mentally, with what this system hands me? Where will that fucking blessing be when I go in to take my SATs and completely bomb the math section? Where will that fucking blessing be when I'm 30, discontented, drinking alone and wishing I could have made myself what I wanted to be in this society?

It won't matter. I won't matter. I don't matter. And I guess that's my fault because society told me so.