Up we go

Watching the finale of Breaking Bad last night was a very unique catharsis for me.

By coincidence, the final half season started airing right as my panic/anxiety was in full swing. If I was panicked enough, watching the show actually made my panic attack worse, due to my increased sensitivity at the time.

I love dark content, but certain things (such as the hell Jesse went through) became downright disturbing in a 'I want to stop watching' way. (I still watched it all anyway)

So it was almost unnaturally good timing that those feelings of panic stopped just in time for the finale last week. It was a relief on its own to realize how much better I felt while watching it, so to have the show resolve itself so perfectly (in my opinion) became even more satisfying.

Of course, that doesn't mean I'm out of the woods yet.

Sleep is still impossible. Which is strange, since I no longer feel panicked at all going to bed, or waking up. I just lay there a for hours, going in and out.

I spoke to my psychiatrist today, and she is continuing to have me climb upwards on Seroquel. I'm nervous as hell, but she is right that I have been still on a 'baby dose' of 200mg total. (Any site I read mentions 300mg-400mg as a minimum maintenance dose)

At least I'm off the Klonopin, making this all somewhat less of an absurd medication circus.

So tonight I'm going to try adding 50mg of XR (Extended Release) to my usual 200mg Immediate Release (IR). Take the XR four hours before bed, IR one hour before bed, and my Rozerem 30 minutes before bed. Still a medication circus if you ask me, but I'm feeling better, so I can't really complain too much.

She claims I haven't developed a 'tolerance' to Seroquel, but it seems quite clear that I always sleep like a baby on a new higher dose, and then that diminishes over time. As mentioned previously, reading online it seems like a common occurence as well.

I'm used to being on very low medication. Over the last year I tapered off of Cymbalta slowly, so I was only taking Lithium 900mg. That was it.

But until I get a good night's sleep again - instead of spending the majority of the time laying in bed - I'm open to moving upward on medications.

For now.