After 4 years of messing around with meds and drugs, one thing has become annoyingly apparent: what goes up must come down. This is common sense when dealing with "drugs", but meds are sometimes treated like they are permanent ways of altering your neurological function. It wasn't made clear to me when I was rx'd my first SSRI that it very likely might stop working in a few months/years, and leave me with the choice of escalating dose on a road to nowhere, or biting the bullet and going for a stay in hell for 2 weeks as withdrawal passes.
If I drink coffee regularly as a way of increasing motivation, eventually it does nothing more than bring me out of caffeine withdrawal in the morning and back to my normal personality. Benzos - at first a miracle cure for social phobia, later a requirement for not having a panic attack the whole day. SSRIs - at first made me feel rather "magical" and positive about life, now barely perceptible. It seems like the rule of tolerance applies to pretty much all drugs acting on the central nervous system, although its rate varies with drugs and people. Some people have meds work for years on end, but how much of that is the placebo effect, long-term neurological adaptations, or whatever remaining after the CNS has sensitised to the drug's direct effect?
That's without even mentioning side-effects, which are pretty severe with most stuff that works (and most stuff that doesn't).
The only thing that might change my mind on regular med use is if a LOT more information and success stories emerge regarding NMDA antagonists (or any effective drug really) for slowing tolerance. They didn't work very well for me, and made my moderate schizoid ways turn into a disorganised schizophrenia-like state of mind. And even if they worked for slowing tolerance, that still leaves you having to take drug breaks to restore efficacy, and with them disruption to your life / addiction due to the intense highs and lows.
I'm ready to sumbit to my natural hedonic treadmill, seems there's no escaping it. No more meds, no more tobacco, no more coffee, and no more weed smokery, except for occasional psychoactive use just to tease myself with what the brain is capable of when blessed with happier / less anxious genes (or completely insane genes, in the case of psychedelic drug use, lol).
If I drink coffee regularly as a way of increasing motivation, eventually it does nothing more than bring me out of caffeine withdrawal in the morning and back to my normal personality. Benzos - at first a miracle cure for social phobia, later a requirement for not having a panic attack the whole day. SSRIs - at first made me feel rather "magical" and positive about life, now barely perceptible. It seems like the rule of tolerance applies to pretty much all drugs acting on the central nervous system, although its rate varies with drugs and people. Some people have meds work for years on end, but how much of that is the placebo effect, long-term neurological adaptations, or whatever remaining after the CNS has sensitised to the drug's direct effect?
That's without even mentioning side-effects, which are pretty severe with most stuff that works (and most stuff that doesn't).
The only thing that might change my mind on regular med use is if a LOT more information and success stories emerge regarding NMDA antagonists (or any effective drug really) for slowing tolerance. They didn't work very well for me, and made my moderate schizoid ways turn into a disorganised schizophrenia-like state of mind. And even if they worked for slowing tolerance, that still leaves you having to take drug breaks to restore efficacy, and with them disruption to your life / addiction due to the intense highs and lows.
I'm ready to sumbit to my natural hedonic treadmill, seems there's no escaping it. No more meds, no more tobacco, no more coffee, and no more weed smokery, except for occasional psychoactive use just to tease myself with what the brain is capable of when blessed with happier / less anxious genes (or completely insane genes, in the case of psychedelic drug use, lol).