Honesty Is The Best Policy?

Sometimes there comes a point in your life when you just have to stop trying to swallow down all the internal destructive demons you have and admit, both to yourself and others, that you have a problem. Many problems perhaps even. It's all too easy to try and focus on just one aspect of your mental health and try to ignore all the other issues, simmering away under the surface, because to admit to everything is scary; embarrassing even. But lately I've been reading the blog of another girl my age, (and yes, we can still legitimately call ourselves girls when we're in our 30's!) getting to know her a little, outside of her online presence and I'm in awe of her candid honesty when it comes to discussing all of her current mental health problems. I've kind of skirted around the issue of my own weirdly complicated eating disorder on here, Over the years I've flitted from periods of not eating, to times when I'd only eat certain weird things and most recently I went through years of a very despairing Binge Eating Disorder, that I would joke about to people saying I had Amnesiac Bulimia – i.e. I would binge like it was going out of style, only to 'forget' to throw it all up again afterwards.

It was no laughing matter though. It escalated during a period in my life when I was living with a man who had absolutely no respect for me and who would criticise my every move. To this day I still can't see why he decided to get together with and move in with a woman he seemed to despise so much, but I can only guess that he saw me as someone he could control, in an attempt to assuage his own feelings of low self worth. I'm a smart cookie for the most part and not someone who anyone would ever believe likely to allow a man to get under her skin, controlling her with a daily dose of mental torture. But the thing with emotional abuse is that is creeps up on you. The people who abuse their partners, don't make their true nature present right away. They're smarter than that. Charming, funny, charismatic...these people are sociopaths with no real concern for the hurt and pain they cause others. But they begin their relationships with those of us they choose, in a way that allows us to believe that they truly like/love/appreciate/respect us. We become drawn into their world with an act consisting sorely of lies, deception and a concerted attempt to gain our trust....merely so that they can break it.

My personal experience with my ex is probably both personal to me and yet textbook in the way in which these relationships develop. I was attracted to the guy because of his gregarious nature. His ability to work a room, make people laugh and engender a sense of fun and frivolity. Sure he wasn't the sharpest tool in the box, but I mistakenly thought that my being smarter than him would never be an issue. He befriended me before we got together as a couple, so I spent nearly a year getting to know the guy. I thought I knew everything about him, the things he liked, the things he disliked, the way he conducted himself around other people, the people in his life who were important to him....I genuinely felt as though I'd truly gotten to see the real him over the time we spent socialising and hanging out 'as friends'. 

I was also very touched at the way in which he had supported me, during the time I had to get a termination. When I first met my ex, I had just started work at a new job in a hotel. I'd only been there a couple of weeks when I discovered that I was pregnant. Now I've always been Pro-Choice and have always known that I didn't want children, so the decision to get an abortion wasn't a difficult one. I wasn't upset or distressed by the process – in fact of all the surgical procedures I've had to undergo in my life, I can honestly say that the abortion was probably the least stressful of all of them. However, being as the topic of abortion is such a controversial one, it can be difficult to open up and talk about it with people. I'm not ashamed of having had one and have never once regretted it, but at the time I felt as though I had to keep it a secret because of the potential for fall-out amongst friends, family members or work colleagues who didn't agree with it. But when I met my ex, he persuaded me to open up to him about whatever was on my mind, assuring me that he would never judge, regardless of the issue at hand. 

Now he's Irish Catholic, no naturally I was somewhat reluctant to discuss the subject with him. But I told him and he assured me that he was not at all shocked, disgusted or any of the negative persuasions I'd mistakenly assumed he would be feeling. It felt good to be able to discuss the matter with someone who did nothing but show me support. I wasn't able to discuss it with the guy who had gotten me pregnant as we were not on personable terms at the time and he himself was completely anti-abortion (he too was Irish Catholic and only went along with the idea because he couldn't face his family finding out that he was having sex before marriage and creating a child out of wedlock!). My ex became a firm friend over that period of time in my life and showed what I thought to be a caring, rational, genuine, decent side to his personality. 

After I'd had the procedure, he invited me to come and stay with him for a night so that there was someone there to keep an eye on me and make sure I didn't develop any complications. I didn't feel too bad after it, but the after-effects are kind of like a really bad bout of PMT, combined with really bad cramps and bleeding; so I did feel a little out of sorts. But he acted like a real gentleman, taking care of me, fetching me whatever I wanted and making sure I got lots of rest before I was due to return to work. It was around that time I guess I first developed an attraction to him. I mean, what woman wouldn't? Despite many of our protestations, we females are a sucker for a 'knight in shining armour'. Even those of us who pride ourselves on independence, self-reliance, equality and an end to sexist ideas, deep down like the feeling of being rescued during our 'damsel in distress' moments; hell, it's still one of the tried and tested methods of actually securing a man's attention when trying to attract a potential mate and I don't think there's anything really wrong with that. Unfortunately for me however, the guy I thought was a real 'knight in shining armour' actually turned out to be a cruel, sadistic manipulator who for almost six years, systematically worked his way through my confidence, my self esteem, my intelligence and belief in myself, creating a shell of the person I'd once taken pride in being.

Like I said, these things don't just happen all at once or right at the beginning of a relationship. When we finally did get together as a couple, I really did believe that I'd snagged one of the 'good ones'. But after that initial 'honeymoon period' of having moved in together, he began his grand master plan of grinding me down, playing mind games and ultimately causing me to end up on a downward slide of binge eating that made me gain a lot of weight and develop another little issue that I haven't been honest with y'all up until now.

I probably wouldn't be admitting to all this if it wasn't for the candid honesty of another blogger making me realise that I wasn't being completely honest about all my little faults. Y'see, whilst I was with my toxic ex I injured my back and ended up being put on painkillers for a long period of time. The injury was pretty bad and I wasn't even able to sit down for three months. I still suffer with a lot of pain from it now, but the downside of having had to take those painkillers over such a long period of time, is that I slowly became addicted to them. I won't lie, as much as I needed (and still do) those painkillers to deal with the excruciating pain in my back, I also began to like the warm feelings of contentment that they gave me as soon as the narcotic induced haze of codeine whirled through my veins. 

Now I was no stranger to drugs. Hell, in my past I was a bit of a wild-child, experimenting with anything and everything going. I read the term 'dustbin junkie' in another blog – a term used to describe someone who will use and abuse pretty much any substance going. Well that was me, back in the day. I wasn't trying to escape reality or deal with any problems through drug use, I just had a curiosity for anything I didn't already know, that could only be satisfied by trying it. And, if after trying it, I found that I liked it, I'd do it again. Because it felt good, or it felt different. Like going to another country to soak up the temperature, scenery and culture, for me taking different drugs was like visiting a different state of mind for a while. A holiday from reality. Not because reality was anything bad, but because we all like to change things up a little now and again.

If I'm honest, a lot of the years from 17-22 are a bit of a blur. I initially started out as a bit of a weekend party animal, but liked the insanity so much, I ended up letting it encroach into weekdays too. My apartment became known as a drug-takers party paradise and was pretty much filled with strangers from one day to the next. It's probably easier to list the drugs I haven't taken, than the ones I have. I've never tried crack or meth (purely because there wasn't any of it going around in the area where I lived during my drug-taking days!) or that weird khat thing that you chew on. Everything else though was pretty much fair game. I also managed to fall in love/lust/fascination with a paranoid schizophrenic ex-heroin user who had an incredibly interesting prescription list. So I developed a bit of a taste for all kinds of downers too.

It was that same feeling I experienced, when I was first prescribed the co-codamol for my back. That familiar sense of being cushioned in cotton wool; of the edges of your nerves becoming dulled to the sensations of pain or stress or anger or frustration. It's hard to describe a narcotic high. It's sort of a high in that you get a wonderful warm glow begin to emanate from your gut or your solar plexus, radiating out through your body and blanketing your brain in duck down. It's not so much euphoria, but a sense of release; that nothing else matters, nothing is wrong and you are safely cocooned in your own little oblivion, nicely detached from the rest of the world. Depending on how much you take, you might 'take the nod' (fall asleep) sit gauching (basically slumped barely conscious, only having the tiniest grip on reality and what's going on around you, probably drooling and looking like a zombie to anyone who sees you, but feeling happily lost in your own little hedonistic heaven) or if you're alert enough to remain functioning, you might want to curl up with a hot drink, put on some music, try to watch a film - or if you're like me, you go to work and pretend like everything is okay and your eyes are not so pinned that your pupils are barely visible.

A narcotic buzz is different for everyone. Some people get nauseated and cannot abide the idea of eating, some crave the warm sensation of a hot drink or something like chocolate in their stomach's to mirror the external feelings of cushioned cosiness (although it's mostly those on a weaker buzz who can stomach the idea of food or drink because for many people it completely suppresses their appetite). It can disorient you or make you feel quite at home in whatever surroundings. It can make you fall asleep, or it can interfere with your sleep patterns causing you insomnia. It's different for everyone depending on their own physiology, the type of narcotic taken, the amount, the potency, the user's tolerance, other substances taken, the environment it's taken in.... everyone's mileage will vary. For me though, because I wasn't using anything as strong as diamorphine or morphine, I was always able to get just enough of a buzz to float about on my cloud of detachment, able to escape some of the pain and anger I was suffering on a daily basis, just living with and putting up with my brutal ex.

That's how it started becoming more than just a painkiller for me. It became a crutch, a barrier between me and the reality of living with an abusive partner. Sure it numbed the permanent pain in the base of my spine, allowing me to sit down and walk around unaided, but it also gave me something to look forward to every day. That little hit of happiness. That moment when I knew I would feel every little thing drift away and I would be smiling on the inside. I looked forward to that time when I'd mix up some soluble co-codamol, swallow it back and wait for the 'Reddy-Brek glow' to take effect. It's what got me through the day and made everyday life bearable. But of course, narcotics have a nasty way of losing their efficacy over a period of time. Two soluble's of 30/500mg might have given me that lovely warm feeling of escapism to begin with, but after a while that feeling just wasn't there any more. The dose wasn't cutting it. So I upped the dose to three of those little soluble tablets and once again found myself basking in the warm glow of narcotic ambivalence.

But y'all know what's coming next dontcha? Yup, that dose was also soon failing to hit the spot. Not just in dealing with the genuine pain-relief they were being prescribed for, but by failing to give me the sense of bliss I needed to deal with my inner turmoil. So I upped the dose again to 4 solubles. Now the maximum amount of paracetamol (acetaminophen) that you're supposed to ingest in any one day is 4000mg/4g, based on you taking 2 lots of 500mg, four times a day, six hours apart. And I was already doubling up the amount I was taking in a single dose. So I decided to supplement my intake with another source of codeine, that didn't also contain any paracetamol. 'Nurofen' brought out 'Nurofen Plus' at around the time I was beginning to abuse codeine (how fortuitous) so I was able to take a couple of those too at the same time to increase the amount of codeine I was taking. Each 'Nurofen Plus' tablet contains 12.8mg of codeine and 200mg of ibuprofen. The maximum amount of ibuprofen you can take in a day (unless under a medical setting where dosage can be increased slightly under doctor's supervision) is 3200mg, based on 4 doses of 800mg, six hours apart. So when the extra two 'Nurofen Plus' weren't doing it for me, I figured I was okay to take another two on top of what I was already taking. 

You can see where this is going right? Yeah, over the course of the next few years I had to keep upping my dose of these meds, another tablet at a time, until right now today, I'm currently taking a ridiculous amount. Like any addict I go through a load of internal dialogue, bartering with myself, trying to rationalise my increased doses, having myself on that I'm not doing myself any damage because whilst I'm taking a shitload of drugs all at the same time, I'm not exceeding my daily allowance. I know it's all bullshit, I'm not stupid (well, not in the knowledgeable sense, even if I'm dumb as fuck when it comes to allowing myself to cause all the internal damage I've undoubtedly done to my stomach and liver over the years.) I'm on anxiety meds for a breakdown I suffered around this time last year, which I fuck about with as well, but it's the codeine addiction that's gotten a little bit out of hand. I'm currently taking 8 soluble co-codamol at 30/500mg each, with 8 Nurofen Plus at 12.8/200mg of codeine/ibuprofen, 3 or 4 Diazepam at 5mg each, a beta-blocker, Venlafaxine (anti-depressant) and up to 10 Tramadol (from my boyfriend's prescription). I'm also prescribed Risperidone and Zopiclone to help with the periods of mania I can suffer which will keep me awake for up to 3 or 4 days in a row without sleep, but sometimes I slip one of them in to the mix too sometimes if I just want to fuck the whole of the world off for a bit and let myself drift into a bit of a trance. 

If I were to give any of you who weren't used to taking this amount of drugs altogether, it would undoubtedly kill you. Your central nervous system would become so massively compromised that you would suffocate, unable to breath and die – probably in a deep sleep or coma. But these have become my daily dose, taken every morning or whenever it is that I drag my lazy carcass from my pit. I rarely get any of the little hit of warmth or glow from taking it anymore – these days, it's all about managing the pain I still suffer from in my lower back, chronic pain I suffer from in my teeth and gums (I've got a jaw that's too small for all my teeth and need to have five removed surgically, but am a bit reluctant to have it carried out after the last bout of oral surgery left me with abscesses and infections for a year afterwards) and also to stop my body from going into withdrawal from the codeine I'm now addicted to.

If I go longer than 24 hours without a dose, I start to get flu-like symptoms, followed by aches in my stomach that make me double up in agony. There is nausea, dizziness, pain in every part of my body, changes in temperature ranging from shivering with cold and sweltering with overheating. You are exhausted from being in so much pain and completely disoriented, time slows right down and you feel every agonising second crawl by like an infinite torture. You can't sleep, but when it gets really bad you begin to hallucinate whilst awake, having confusing conversations with people who aren't there. And then there are the trips to the toilet. Narcotics cause your body to dehydrate making stools harder to pass, whilst also relaxing muscles so much that sphincters are unable to contract properly. As a result of this, you can become incredibly constipated. But when you are in withdrawal and there is no more of the narcotic in your system, the exact opposite happens. Those excruciating abdominal cramps give way to violent, repeated bouts of diarrhoea, causing you to spend huge amounts of time on the toilet passing watery mess and at the same time you will find yourself vomiting up whatever you happen to have in your stomach. You know that the one thing you can do to make every single one of these symptoms go away, is just take another dose of whatever your cocktail of choice happens to be. 

If you are trying to come off of the drug the detox is not only agonising, but incredibly dangerous. It should really never be attempted unless under medical supervision as the shock to the body of suddenly no longer being slowed down and depressed by the substances you have been abusing, can cause brain haemorrhages, strokes and even heart failure. It is not something you should ever try to undertake on your own. If you want to detox off of narcotic drug abuse, there are other drugs that can be prescribed to help assuage the symptoms of withdrawal and replacement medications that can be prescribed to help with the ongoing attempts to keep clean. 

If though, your withdrawal is unintentional and down to a miscalculation of how many tablets you think you have to get you through a weekend, or you're late in requesting a repeat prescription, you know that you can probably get to a chemist and buy some over the counter tablets to get you back to feeling human again. If you're addicted to prescription drugs and/or over the counter medications containing codeine, you will undoubtedly know where each and every single pharmacy in your area is located. You will have their opening hours memorised and if you're anything like me, will also have every single one of their phone numbers in your phone so you can always ring ahead to check that they have what you want in stock. Like me, you will also find yourself becoming well known to certain people who work in all these pharmacies and these people will start to become wary of you as you repeatedly come in to purchase medicines which are designed to only ever be used for up to three days at a time. The recent clamp down on the sale of codeine based medications to the public, because of the emerging knowledge about widespread misuse means that staff are now trained to keep an eye out for people just like you who come in to buy these products on a regular basis. They are told to refuse you if they think that you are abusing these medications. You find yourself in embarrassing situations where you have to tell a barrage of lies to the woman behind the counter in order to try and persuade her to give you the product you so desperately need. But she stands firm.

So you begin to learn the days and times of the staff rotations in each and every pharmacy too, so that you know when to time your visits to them and not be refused. You learn to rotate your visits to each pharmacy on certain days at certain times and then find yourself seeking out pharmacies in the next town where your face is yet to become a familiar sight. In order to get to these other pharmacies, you have to learn bus timetables so that you can get to the next town, do a sweep of every pharmacy in that town and get another bus back home in time for tea. You worry that you will also become recognisable in these pharmacies too, so you consider the other three towns on main bus routes from the town you live in, slowly building a mental database of up to 20 stores, 60 employees and their work rotas, a dozen or so bus timetables and the incredibly important duty chemist rotas which ascertain the pharmacies who will open for a few hours on Sundays and bank holidays, because you know that you can never allow yourself to get into the position of not being able to get hold of your drug of choice.

If you're receiving part of your fix through a prescription, you need to know which pharmacy to hit up to get that filled in and which other pharmacy to visit to buy the other subsequent medications that you're supplementing your addiction with. You need to work out a route that will allow you to visit both these pharmacies in good time, whilst still making sure that you remember to run all the other errands you need to do whilst out and about in town. Things start to get on top though because even though you think you're able to plan your week out and make sure you have enough tablets to see you through a certain period of time, you actually find that on certain days when you're really just looking to get that old familiar buzz, so you greedily taking more than you had allotted for that particular time period and you run out before you're due to get a prescription refilled or go buy more from a pharmacy. And more often than not, that will likely happen on a Sunday when most chemists are only open for a few hours and you need to seriously plan how to get out there in time before they close.

But what if that particular pharmacy, on that Sunday 4 hour rotation is one where you're already kind of well known by not only the staff behind the counter, but the pharmacists themselves who lurk in the background approving every codeine purchase the sales people are allowed to process? Then, you're fucked. So you wind up dragging other people into your sad little world of desperation and addiction. You get your partner, your friends or your family members to run little errands for you to pick up a packet of whatever it is you need, making out that you're suffering from terrible back/tooth/period pain and desperately need them to run to the chemist for you. You force them to become enablers. Whether willingly or unwillingly, they become participants in your addictive behaviours and when you first discover just how easy it is to get them to pick up some meds for you, once again you find yourself getting carried away with the amount you are taking because if you run out, well, you know that you can always rely on them to help you out. 

Then one day your other half comes home and tells you that he was refused service in one of the chemists he usually visits when running a drug errand for you. You feel guilty at first for having made him a part of this situation and for him having been embarrassed, but what you're also thinking – quite shamefully – is that you've perhaps lost one of your avenues to getting your regular fix. You worry that you won't be able to sustain the amount of meds you need in order to keep the withdrawal symptoms at bay and part of you gets mad at your other half for having always used the same pharmacy each time he picked some up for you. You expect him to have been thinking like you; like and addict. You expected him to rotate the different pharmacies he visited the way you do, because you expected him to anticipate being exposed as some kind of addict enabler. You're basically being an ignorant, selfish ungrateful bitch, but then that's what being an addict does to you: it causes you to lose sight of a lot of what's real and important in this world because first and foremost, your main concern is always being able to get your fix.

You're obsessed with making sure you have the one thing that is not only destroying you, but at the same time keeping you going. You can't even think about planning anything else in your life without first making sure that you have your drugs sorted. Going to stay overnight at a friend's house? You need to make sure you have a few doses worth with you, not only for the next day, but just in case plans end up changing at the last minute and you're away from home longer than you anticipate. Going away on holiday? Wow, well first of all you need to make sure that you not only have enough meds to see you through your trip in your suitcase, but you want to make sure that you have about three days worth of meds in your handbag and carry on luggage too, just in case your suitcase gets waylaid along the way and you need to have enough on you until you can get to a doctor or pharmacist. Going in to hospital for surgery? Yeah that can be a hard one, but what I remember doing was taking a large dose last thing at night, the day before the surgery, just before I had to stop eating or drinking so that I was going to be okay and not in withdrawal the next day when I was scheduled for surgery. I then had to make sure that I had three days worth of meds in my bag with me too, because I knew that I would not only be feeling absolutely no effect whatsoever from the morphine, paracetamol, Tramadol and Diclofenac mixture they'd be administering me post-surgery, but that there is always the possibility of being kept in longer than you expect, should there be complications. And I wasn't going to risk going into withdrawal in a fucking hospital ward.

This shit plays into every aspect of your life. At work, people start to get a bit suspicious if you're seen to be taking a large amount of medication all the time. I used to take my daily dose at my desk, first thing in the morning, along with the first coffee I would have at my desk, prior to starting through my daily to-do list. But then people started noticing and making comments, so I decided to make sure that I always took my cocktail just before I left the house to get the bus to work. So I always had to make sure that I was up in time to get that taken care of before leaving.....but you know how it is sometimes. You hit the 'snooze' button a few too many times and you linger in the bed a little too long because you're just so wonderfully ensconced in the arms of your other half who's hugs seem to be the most amazing, right at the time when you're due to haul your ass out of bed and into the cold harsh light of day. You know you can do your make-up on the bus, but you still need to take your cocktail of drugs and there's no time. So you end up having to book a taxi instead, which on it's own isn't all that expensive. But when you start to make a habit out of it, that £6 a day, slowly becomes £30 a week, which is £120 a month or about £1200 over a working year. And you're already spending £8 for a box of 'Nurofen Plus' every three days, which in a year becomes £976. So you're actually forking out £2000 a year to not only fund your little habit, but also to allow you to indulge in your habit, without being 'discovered' by the people you work with. 

And that's only beginning to tell the story. Because you know you buy more than that when you take into consideration all the times you decide to go mad and take more. Then there are all the taxis you have to take to get to a pharmacy in time to buy your fix before it closes, the bus fares to take you out of town to use unfamiliar pharmacies and then, as time goes by, the money you end up forking out when you begin to start ordering these drugs online. One day you wake up and realise that the reason you don't really have any money to do anything is because you're spending a fucking fortune buying stuff to keep you from ending up curled up in a ball, crying into your pillow whilst you agoinisingly vacillate between throwing up and shitting weird brown liquid out your ass at a 100mph.

And yet, if you're like me, you manage to allow all of this to go on in your life, without ever letting onto anyone that you're actually going through any of it. For the past six or seven years, I've been a functioning narcotic addict. I've invested so much time, money and energy in not only feeding this addiction, but doing everything I can to keep it a secret. I've lied to doctors, pharmacists, friends, family members and also my other half in a way too, by omission. I've kept this secret for so long it's just become part of who I am. I'm used to it. I can't remember life without it. And because I remained functioning up until last year (when I suffered a nervous breakdown due to the culmination of a whole number of factors coming together at once) I've never hit the kind of rock bottom addicts need to feel in order to become spurred on to do anything about it. I still live in my nice home, with my lovely fiance, in my little bubble of contentment, surrounded by nice things and I've never had to do anything desperately upsetting in order to obtain my fix. It's been too easy for me to develop this addiction and maintain my addiction for as long as I have. Hence my long term experience as a functioning addict.

I suppose you're all wondering if by my being so honest about all this, I'm planning on doing something about it. The main reason I allowed myself to slip so readily into abuse and addiction in the first place was because I felt as though I needed that artificial 'high' to counteract the nastiness and systematic undermining of my self worth, doled out to me by my cruel and controlling ex boyfriend. But he has been out of the picture ever since I grew a pair of balls and managed to gather enough strength to throw his ass out of the house, one cold November evening, back in 2007. Since dumping him I regained a sense of who I am and whilst the confidence and self-esteem still elude me, I somehow managed to attract and keep my current partner, who has made me happier than anyone else ever has in my entire life. I shouldn't need the crutch of this addiction any more, because I'm loved, liked, respected and practically worshiped by this guy. But that's not how addictions work. They creep in under the radar and latch onto any part of your psyche that's weak enough to convince you that you need that 'little something-something' to get through the day. 

I don't really get much of a high from the amount I take any more (and I'm already taking a dangerous amount, so upping the dose every now and then is seriously playing with fire) but on those occasions when I think I might need that crutch of inner warmth and comfort, it's usually because I’m feeling really down on myself for one reason or another. Maybe I'm eating too much, going off plan on my diet, gaining a little weight, not fitting into some item of clothes, feeling inadequate next to the girlfriends of my other half's friends, seeing myself in the mirror....all just central to my issues with self-esteem, self-confidence, self-hatred and ultimately my disordered eating too. My addiction didn't want to leave when my boyfriend did, so it found another bunch of issues to latch onto and allow itself to continue to fester under the surface.

Deep down I know that I should do something about it. Deep down I know that I'm damaging my stomach with all the ibuprofen and my liver with all the paracetamol. I also know that I'm messing up my mind too, because of the damage narcotic addiction does to a lot of your mental processes. I don't know which of my little brain fogs are down to the narcotic abuse or the current amount of anti-depressants and anti-anxiety meds I'm taking. I know that I keep having these weird little slips of memory, forgetting what I'm talking about in the middle of a sentence, struggling to remember certain words I want to use that seem to be on the tip of my tongue yet evade me at that particular moment, forgetting how to do basic mental arithmetic....all the kinds of things that someone of my intelligence would never normally suffer from. It's nothing major but it can be a bit annoying. I guess I should ask my doctor if the anti-depressants/anti-anxiety meds could be causing these mental blips, but if he says they shouldn't be, I could then be opening a whole can of worms by then having him worried enough to try and look into why it really is happening. Urgh...

I'm just not in the mood to give this shit up now. Just as I'm not in the right time or place to quite fucking about with my eating and start behaving like a normal person again. All this bullshit is so emeshed in the overall personality and persona of who I am, I don't know what I'd be like without it. And that kind of scares me. I might not like me much right now, but I'm used to being this way. If I get rid of all the crutches and crapness, what will be left? What if that makes things worse? Better the devil you know than the devil you don't right?

Wow. I can't believe I just wrote all that stuff. I didn't realise that I had so much to say about the subject. But I guess it was like a dam of thoughts and feelings that I'd kept all bottled up for so long, it turned out that there was a lot I had to say on the matter. Before today, the only other person I admitted any of this to was a friend I met through this blog, who shares a helluva lot of experiences, ideas, problems, thoughts, likes and dislikes with me. I opened up to her because her own candid honesty just blew me away and I had so much respect for her. I felt like if she could find the strength to open up, I needed to grow up and put on my big-girl panties and find the balls to tell at least one person the truth. If only to give me a sense of objective perspective and perhaps even a little support from a like-minded person. As it turned out, this person I told just made me feel completely at ease and so I felt that, seeing as how this blog is anonymous, I should really use the opportunity to speak freely about what I've been going through. 

Maybe it will explain a few things; maybe it will make for interesting reading; or maybe it'll serve as some kind of warning to anyone at risk of developing an addiction to prescription drugs, over the counter drugs or any other kind of drugs. I don't know. I just needed to be truly honest about stuff going on in my life, because if I'm willing to tell y'all about how I stick my fingers down my throat after eating my binges, I might as well tell y'all that I'm a fucking junkie too. Because like it or not, functioning or whatever, I AM an addict and it plays an even bigger part in my life than my disordered eating – I think. I dunno. It's all the same shit really. Just my fucked up head using whatever method it can to cope with getting through the days, be it via drug abuse, disordered eating or having anxiety issues. I guess I'm more of a mess than I like to let on and seeing it all here in print really makes me stop and think I should do something about it.

But just not right now. Just not today. I'm not ready to do anything to fix my fucked up brain at the moment. Right now I just want to carry on getting through the days as relatively unscathed as I can, existing in my pretend world of make believe perfection. Not to mention the fact that I still suffer from all the physical issues that actually require me to take painkillers for a genuine reason. Meh...I'm too tired to fight anything and too fat/ugly/far gone for anything to be remedied with ease anytime soon. So I guess I’ll just keep on keeping on, like a swan on a lake who glides along gracefully so that all onlookers think that their movements are effortless, whilst all the time the little legs are flailing like mad underwater, just struggling to keep their damn bodies afloat.

I'm both ugly duckling and swan, all at the same time. Funny huh? Oh well, I've said far too much for one day. I've gotta sign off for now and remove myself from all this soul-bearing. I've practically vomited my spleen all over the place telling y'all, all of this. I need to go eat an entire giant Toblerone with fruit and nut now to re-sully my recently cleansed conscience.

Sorry for blathering on at y'all for so long.

Stay awesome folks

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