No Control- No Sanity…

from: http://insaneheart09.wordpress.com/2011/03/09/no-controlno-sanity/

Have you ever gotten to the point where you are fully aware of your mental disorder and realize how bad it really is?

I’ve always been aware that I have a lot of anxiety, in fact, I have generalized anxiety disorder, but I always thought I was handling it fine.  “I’m a normal human being and I don’t have to let this control my life,” is what I always thought.  This should be true, but I’ve come to the understanding now that I cannot control this on my own.  It’s taken over my life in a huge way.  I have a mental disorder.  I have others, but this one is in complete control of my mind.

I see the bad patterns and tendencies that I have when it comes to anxiety, and I feel powerless to stop it.  I’ve been trying to get it under control for about two years now, and all I’ve done is become hyper-aware of it.  I then, in turn, get more anxious because I feel like such a failure in attempting to control it.

I am anxious every second of the day, nonstop.  Constant worrying, constant fear, sometimes even terror.  Mortality has been my biggest issue lately.  I lie in bed at night after checking on my daughter for the third time, worrying that she will somehow die in her sleep.  I made a hair appointment (only because I had a gift certificate that was about to expire), and all I could think about until we had to make the trip was that I was  going to kill my daughter and I in a car accident.  I’ve been worrying about my husband at work, and I have no reason too.  I worry about my daughter every second she is away from me, even when she’s just in her bedroom and the door is closed.  If it’s quiet for too long, this fear rises in me and I have to check on her.  Every time she is fine.

Those are the big ones that make me really feel my disorder.  I know it’s not normal to behave this way.  There is an immeasurable amount of smaller worries, and things that should never even hit the worry radar that are making me go insane, little by little.  I fret over EVERYTHING I say to people, analyzing it all for stupidity.  I’m so worried that I will sound dumb to someone.  Right now, I’m worried about a work project that I just finished.  I triple-checked everything, but I’m worried that I might have missed something, even though it would be far from a catastrophe if I did.

It’s hard to really express how horrible this is for me, how horrible it has been for awhile now.  I really hate living like this.  I’m not comfortable in my own skin, and especially not my mind.  I expect that people judge me every time they look at me, and I hate that I am me.  Sometimes I wonder why God even gave me an existence, or this existence in particular.  It’s not fun to be me right now.  It’s not fun to be a slave to a mental disorder.  I feel so utterly out of control of my thoughts.

I think a call to my doctor is in order.

       

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Synthetic Marijuana Warning (Spice and K2)

Synthetic Marijuana Warning

http://blog.whitesidemanor.com/2011/07/synthetic-marijuana-warning.html

 

Teenagers and young adults who experiment with synthetic marijuana being sold as incense simply do not have all the facts regarding the dangers associated with these drugs. They have been called a legal high and can be found in “head shops” across the country all while the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) works to put a ban on such drugs. The drug goes by a whole list of names, the most popular being Spice and K2.

The drugs have the ability to ruin the lives of entire families, users of the drug experience hallucinations and even serious depression which has caused some individuals to take their own lives. The video below covers the story of a young man who lost his life behind the wheel while under the influence of this so-called “legal high”. His mother would like to start a foundation that would help educate people about these types of drugs.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32545640

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Florida’s Prescription Drug Epidemic

http://blog.whitesidemanor.com/2011/08/florida-prescription-drug-epidemic.html

The epidemic in Florida continues to rage, with an average of eight deaths a day from prescription drug overdoses. Unbelievably, in Florida alone, prescription (Rx) drug overdoses claimed 16,650 lives from 2003 to 2009, according to a new report released by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). In the past Florida was known for a surplus of cocaine and heroin, which led to a surge of overdoses related to illicit drugs. Today, prescription drug “pill mills”, doctor shoppers, and a general misunderstanding regarding the dangers associated with these legal narcotics has led to an epidemic that is spiraling out of control – not just in Florida, but across this great nation.

Prescription medications were implicated in 76 percent of all drug overdose deaths in Florida, while illicit drugs like heroin and cocaine were associated with 33 percent of the deaths. A number of organizations have been developed in the wake of all these unnecessary deaths to try and help educate teenagers and young adults about prescription drugs but it is not enough. The country needs to start looking at pain management in a completely different way if we are ever to get ahead of the problem. There are too many prescription narcotics being produced that are being prescribed for home consumption and the patients are hardly monitored. It might make sense to require all patients prescribed Schedule II drugs, like oxycodone or fentanyl, to go to special dispensaries every day to receive their daily dose; by doing so, we might limit the number of pills that hit the streets and get into the wrong hands.

There is not going to be one solution to this ever growing problem, but something needs to be done – fast! Too many people have died already for this problem to continue to be ignored.

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Super Stars and Depression

http://blog.whitesidemanor.com/2011/08/super-stars-and-depression.html

It can be hard for the general population to look at celebrities, movie stars and professional athletes with much sympathy or even empathy for that matter. We look at icons of the spotlight with envy, respect, and admiration; yet, we hardly ever feel bad for them or sorry for them and we certainly never take their feelings into consideration. We never think about what may be going on inside the head of a super star, anxiety or depression two forms of mental illness that can be quite common amongst celebrities, but hardly ever discussed openly.

When we hear of a celebrity overdosing accidentally or intentionally, the two most common responses are, “What a shame!” or “What a waste”. It’s almost as if the public will not allow celebrities to have problems, how could they with all that money. The truth is that no amount money, no amount of fame has the power to pull someone’s head out of the clouds of depression. Let’s face it, until tragedy strikes, no one ever has any clue that that person was suffering from mental illness, it is easy to hide what one is feeling inside their mind.

Rick Rypien, 27, a forward who had just signed a one-year contract to play for the Winnipeg Jets, was found dead in his apartment Monday. The coroner has not released the official cause of death, but Rypien had dealt with depression for a decade, which almost severally impacted his NHL career several times. New York Ranger Boogaard, a powerful enforcer in the NHL, was found dead in his apartment in May, which was deemed an accident caused by a lethal cocktail of alcohol and painkillers. Let’s face, both Rypien and Boogaard where suffering inside and whether are not the deaths were an accident is irrelevant. What is relevant is that neither of those two superstars got the help they clearly needed and it probably has something to do with the stigma of being famous and having problems.

“I think there remains a significant stigma (about depression) in the general population but more so in the professional athlete,” Dr. Don Malone, head of the Psychiatric Neuromodulation Center at the prominent Cleveland Clinic, said.

“There’s an aspect to it in the athletes that they want to keep it hidden.”

“Athletes are not immune. They can suffer silently.”

Source:
MSNBC

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Addiction: About Pleasure

http://blog.whitesidemanor.com/2011/08/addiction-about-pleasure.html

 

Addiction is a beguiling call to beauty, not beauty in the sense of something that is attractive but rather a quest for pleasure. Those who work in the field of addiction and recovery are mostly in concurrence with the disease model. The research all points in the same direction leading to the same conclusion: those who suffer from addiction are not weak minded, do not lack moral fiber, and are certainly not criminals or psychopaths to be caged like wild animals. Neuroscientist David Linden has been working on the subject of addiction for some time and in his new book, The Compass of Pleasure: How Our Brains Make Fatty Foods, Orgasm, Exercise, Marijuana, Generosity, Vodka, Learning, and Gambling Feel So Good, he explains his take on what lies behind addiction.

The scientific definition of addiction is actually rooted in the brain’s inability to experience pleasure, Linden explained to Fresh Airs Terry Gross. “There are variants in genes that turn down the function of dopamine signaling within the pleasure circuit”. There are people who carry these gene variants, which signify muted dopamine systems which lead to blunted pleasure circuits, affecting their pleasure-seeking activities, Linden says.

Blunted dopamine systems prohibit certain people from experiencing pleasure the same way “normal” people do, this characteristic cause people with these traits to overdo certain activities to achieve the desired feeling of pleasure. Linden gives an example: “In order to get to that same set point of pleasure that others would get to easily — maybe with two drinks at the bar and a laugh with friends — you need six drinks at the bar to get the same thing.”

“Any one of us could be an addict at any time,” Linden says. “Addiction is not fundamentally a moral failing — it’s not a disease of weak-willed losers. When you look at the biology, the only model of addiction that makes sense is a disease-based model, and the only attitude towards addicts that makes sense is one of compassion.”

Linden is a professor of neuroscience at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and the chief editor of the Journal of Neurophysiology.

Smoking Cigarettes More Dangerous For Women

http://blog.whitesidemanor.com/2011/08/smoking-cigarettes-dangerous-women.html

Smoking cigarettes effects everyone differently, some people smoke cigarettes for decades and experience little side-effects; however, as modern medicine has proved most people who smoke are highly suceptable to health problems. New research has shown that female smokers are 25 percent more likely than male smokers to develop heart disease, according to a study conducted at the University of Minnesota.

Women may be more likely than men to absorb more of the carcinogens and other toxic substances in cigarettes, but women tend to smoke fewer cigarettes than men, so they may be smoking more of each cigarette, according to lead researcher Rachel Huxely in USA Today.

Data from 75 studies, which included nearly 4 million people, on heart disease risk and smoking was reviewed by Huxely and her colleagues. They found women’s risk of heart disease increased by 2 percent for each year a woman smoked, compared with men who smoked for the same length of time. “Tobacco-control programs should consider women, particularly in those countries where smoking among young women is increasing in prevalence,” the researchers wrote in The Lancet.