My Zyprexa Dilemma (and a Diatribe On Smoking Pot...Go Figure!)

It’s quite amazing the quandary I am now facing. For the first time since January of 2006 I actually feel as though I’m getting my life back. Everything seems to be balancing out the way I remembered it being so long ago when I was in remission. However, my remission is coming at a great cost to me. These little oval-shaped pills, while incredibly effective, has caused me to gain 20 pounds within a period of a month. At this rate, who knows how much I’ll weigh at the end of the six-month weaning regimen the doctor wanted to use. I told him I was willing to go back on Zyprexa under the condition that if I gained any weight I would quit taking it. In one of the videos I uploaded, there was a question posed: which would you rather have—a sane, balanced fat person, or a skinny psychopath? I think I’d rather be skinny again, not that I was ever actually skinny. But your talking to someone who worked incredibly hard to lose 250 pounds. Even a 20-pound weight increase is a depressing thought.

I am to talk with my shrink today on the phone and think I’ve finally reach a point where I am no longer willing to continue to take the Zyprexa. I will be the first to admit that this has been the one drug that has made a significant difference in my fragile state of balance. However, I fear gaining the weight even more so. In addition, the eating pattern is bizarre. I’m not eating because I am hungry and I am wrestling with an increased appetite. It’s like I’ve moved into this grazing mode where I just walk into the kitchen to see what I can eat—whether I’m hungry or not. It’s almost as if there is an oral stimulus attached (similar to problems people have faced when trying to quit smoking).

I really like how I have been feeling these past couple of weeks, even if I do miss my manic highs (which girl group of the 80s did “Manic Mondays”?). I can’t say that everything is perfect, but I am the closest I’ve been to balanced yet, and just in time for my 50th birthday this Friday. I find it absolutely ironic that I was born on 4/20…the international “smoke a joint” day. It’s a shame I don’t have any killer weed I can roll up to celebrate my 50th in style right at 4:20 pm. Life can really suck sometimes. It just kills me that I can’t get high anymore. You know, I don’t drive a forklift at my job, I don’t have to drive a van, or operate any serious machinery where I work. Why should it matter to some egg head in HR that I must pass a random drug screen? I already know what I want for my retirement gift. A QP of absolute golden buds. Thai stick would be nice, but I don’t think the kids these days even know what Thai stick is. Now, some golden hash, no, make that dark, tarry hash, would be quite nice as well. And forget the rolling papers on the killer weed. I’d only use a bong. Less waste and it packs a more powerful punch. Oh, yeah, I forget, I can’t call them “bongs” when I hit the head shops…they are referred to as ‘water pipes” no—like who is going to use them to smoke tobacco in them? Face it, anyone shopping at a head shop has only one thing on their mind…all of the accouterments of fine pot smoking (OK, I grant you, there are people that hit the head shops just to buy incense, but just a few). And, the other day when I was in one, I couldn’t believe how much “water pipes” were costing. Me? A nice ceramic pipe and some screens and I’m good to go IF it wasn’t for these stupid drug tests that I always have hanging over my head. Yeah, corporate America has it all backwards. They don’t care if you’ve got some burned-out alcoholic working for you who reeks of beer or whiskey by lunch and can’t do their job half of the time, but God forbid someone smokes a joint from time to time. OK, I’ll give the corporate dude his due as far as tweakers go, and the more hardcore junkies (one of which I was for quite some time), but cut me some slack if I just want to take a few hits off a bong now and then. And, you know what really bites—I found out from my son one day that an eight-ball of coke costs less than an ounce of some premium weed. Now that’s an insult. Hmmm—I think I have digressed from the point of this post…LOL I’ll get off my soap box now!

Anyway, I’ve made the decision to come off the Zyprexa and I hope I can shed those twenty pounds I’ve gained. I wonder what the shrink will say when I tell him this afternoon during our phone conference. I’ll be the first to admit that the Zyprexa has been the ideal drug bipolar-wise, but I’m not going to grow out of the clothes I have. We’re just going to have to come up with a new game plan.©2007