mathr / blog / #

I'm on medication (30mg/day aripiprazole, fact fans), and get my supply every two weeks. Except on Monday, when I went to collect it, and they couldn't give it to me. Apparently a shelf had collapsed and several hundred lots of meds were now in a big pile on the floor, and they couldn't find mine. This was concerning, because I had run out of pills after Sunday's dose. I phoned up the next day, and they said that it turned out the pharmacy hadn't delivered it so it wasn't in the pile, and that I'd have to wait some more.

By this point I was quite anxious, having only missed one day in the 8 months that I've been on this medication, and fearful of the withdrawal effects, whatever those might be. I was feeling a bit down and tearful too, which is very unusual for me since being on this med (it has really done wonders for me). I took a nap, because I didn't want to be awake and feeling like that. When I woke up I saw a bloody hand wrapped around my pillow, which really really freaked me out - the image faded after about 30 seconds, which is altogether too long for comfort, at which point I could see that it was a 'trick of the light' and/or 'my mind playing tricks' - but not really having experience visual hallucinations before it was frightening, I've got used to hearing things that aren't there or mishearing things that are there, but this was an entirely new phenomenon.

I'm still a little unsettled by it, even though my CPN brought me my meds this lunchtime. Add to that on Saturday night (I think it was) I had a dream where I was physically very weak and collapsed while walking down the road about 25m from my parents' house and couldn't get up, and that on Monday when I saw my CPN he insisted on checking I was eating enough and had food in the fridge etc on the grounds that 'I might collapse while taking a walk' if I hadn't been... It makes me wonder about causality and synchronicity and all those spooky things that if I start to think too much about will set me surely on the road to psychosis once more.

I'll be fine I'm sure, now that I have my chemical crutch back.