News You Can Use?

I work for a non-profit conservation organization where at one time a common practice would be to circulate amongst its staff cutting edge science papers that consisted of research that was relevant, revealing, and potentially guiding to how the organization worked to fulfill its conservation mission.  It was with those halcyon memories in mind that I came upon this particular summary of a publication in the Journal Nature:

http://www.sfu.ca/pamr/media-releases/2012/study-predicts-imminent-irreversible-planetary-collapse.html

Relevant quotes:

Global-scale forcing mechanisms today “include unprecedented rates and magnitudes of human population growth with attendant resource consumption, habitat transformation and fragmentation, energy production and consumption, and climate change,” says the study.

Human activity drives today’s global-scale forcing mechanisms more than ever before. As a result, the rate of climate change we are seeing now exceeds the rate that occurred during the extreme planetary state change that tipped Earth from being in a glacial to an interglacial state 12,000 years ago. You have to go back to the end of the cataclysmic falling star, which ended the age of dinosaurs, to find a previous precedent.

“Society globally has to collectively decide that we need to drastically lower our population very quickly. More of us need to move to optimal areas at higher density and let parts of the planet recover. Folks like us have to be forced to be materially poorer, at least in the short term. We also need to invest a lot more in creating technologies to produce and distribute food without eating up more land and wild species. It’s a very tall order.”

Organizations exist under the assumption that you can “get there from here”, that there is a workable solution that lies within the reach of our institutions and socio/political/cultural systems.  This article suggests otherwise.

As such, it is not likely to be circulated amongst organizational staff – no one within the non-profit I work for (or anywhere else) for that matter knows what to do with this type of information other than hope that it is wrong and continue on.  If the paper is to be believed, it suggests that the game is all but up for modern human industrial cultures, and that there is little hope to be gained for avoiding collapse and its associated mass human traumas within the next few decades.

Its interesting to observe how the analysis → conclusion → strategy →strategy implementation flow chart problem solving approach that is hard wired into our institutions systemically rejects any piece of information that has no chance of coming out the other side of the process intact, no matter how valid or sound the flowchart input analysis.  For the current example, there is no meaningful organizational response to the information in this article, other than to acknowledge that either attaining organization mission is impossible if the message is on target, or acting as if the analysis and conclusions are flawed and not to be trusted.  And we humans have an abundance of very effective psychological mechanisms that stop us from landing in a state of cognitive dissonance, which intervene before we actively and openly contemplate such dilemmas.

One of my favorite all-time quotes is from the author Ed Abbey, who wrote: “there is hope, but not for us”.  My hope lies within the knowledge that it is possible to achieve a way of life that is congruent with and accounts for the limitations, foibles, and beauty of human life, and yet is consistent with a sustainable co-existence with all other species of creation.  I’m not quite sure what this way of life looks like, but whatever it is, but I am quite confident that it is at the opposite of the spectrum from what we currently have.   And we won’t be able to get there from here without the collapse of the unsustainable. 

For better or worse, therein lies my hope, its realization ever so unlikely to be witnessed by my own eyes,  a hope that inherently consists of uncontrollable events incomprehensibly horrible coming between where we are now and its actualization.

A welcome reprieve.....

Yes, yes, first post in quite a while now.  

Hell sometimes relents.......the last two weeks I've almost been sleeping "normally" - between 6-8 hours per night, and feel energetic, rested, and enthusiastic during the day (I did have one relape of two 2-hr nights in a row, but otherwise OK).

I'm not quite sure why.

Perhaps a change in diet??  I did start eating lots of yogurt with breakfast in the moring at the beginning of this period of good sleep. Its not the first time the my sleep seemed to respond to adding something to my diet.  About 3 years back, I started eating meat after being a vegetarian for 25 years. Upon this diet change, I almost immediately started sleeping normally.  This unfortunately wore off after about 4 months, and thus I returned to insomnia hell.

I wonder if this is a similar change. A wild guess at what is going on might have to do with hormones - sometimes meat eating can raise testosterone, so I oftern wonder whether I was low in testosterone, and whether low testosterone that was causing my insomnia.  My most recent testosterone test came back middel of the range, maybe a bit on the low side, but not suggestive of a major problem.

Yogurt is full of pro-biotics, and recently there was a reserch article out about how mice fed yogut were more sexually virie - again, maybe a testosterone link. All I know is that I'll be continuing to eat lots of yogurt in hopes that my sleep stays normal.
I am a happy camper......for now.

"Terrible Process" Indeed

After 15 years of engaging in spiritual practices, after having a number of them apparently “backfire” via life-altering unanticipated consequences (insomnia, seizures), the cynic in me in now in unassailable ascent in terms of many aspects of my life outlook and attitude.  I  remember back to the elation I felt when I started zen practice, the sure footed intuition that kept me rooted in the path for years.  At the start of my practice, I was alienated, isolated, and depressed.  Now 15 years later I am..... well....... mired in a very different brand of alienation and isolation, and during sleep deprived times, depression. 

I remember reading this quote for Trungpa Rimpoche years ago.  Now I feel like I fully know its truth:

"How many of you are just beginning a spiritual practice?" A number of people raised their hands in response. He then said: "Fine. My suggestion is that you go home. At the back door they will give you your money back and you can go home now and not get started on this very difficult and terrible process. It is a lot more difficult than you know when you begin. Once you start it is very difficult to stop. So my suggestion to you is not to begin. Best not to start at all. But if you do, then it is best to finish."

To be sure, I'm psychically in a much better place than when I started my zen practice so long ago.  But I wonder whether that is just the effects of practice, or just age.  If I could turn back the clock, knowing what I know now, I just might have heeded the advice in this quote.

Casualty of Meditation - Seizures and insomnia

Strike one:  Intensive meditation started my bout with insomnia back in 2003.  I’ve posted about that before, but its worth mentioning again, because just about anyone reading this (save those very few who know what kind of strange side effects meditation practice can have) will find it hard to believe.   The palpable somatic energetic sense that suppressed my ability to sleep arose directly out of meditation practice – it was (and is) an energetic sensation that I’m readily able to perceive.

Strike two:  After 15 years, meditation now appears to be producing epilepsy-like symptoms – minor simple partial seizures, and what are probably gelastic seizures (which are far more common).  They are most intense during meditation, but they now  can appear when I do yoga (especially the gelastic seizures) and even tai chi.  I’m not sure whether long-term Zoloft use has primed my nervous system for the development of these symptoms – they are exacerbated by Zoloft use.   I first started noticing them 4 years ago.  I saw a neurologist, got an MRI, had EEG’s done – all tests registered normal.  But the seizures continued (simple partials – at worst, I would fall down, unable to control at all the right side of my body, by body consumed by jerky movements, but able to control my left side a bit).  They disappeared when I stopped taking Zoloft.  But now they have re-developed despite the fact that I’ve been off of Zoloft for 9 months now.

The paradox is that I can’t put meditation aside.   Especially without the drugs, it was the one practice that worked for me.  I can’t stop – I tried for 7 days last month, and it was clear that I would not be able to continue abstaining from it.

I’ve worked with some of the most experienced zen teachers on the east coast – they had no helpful suggestions for these issues, which is one of the primary reasons why I no longer practice zen in a formal setting.  I’m between a rock and a hard place, trying to keep my life from becoming a complete wreckage from these problems that to a large degree were induced by intensive meditation practice.

Where is that Reset Button?

Over the past few months, I've been mulling over a number of strategies to re-set my body's sleep system, to return the halcyon days when the ability to sleep on any given night, regardless of circumstance, was never in question, and was never a limiting factor.

My intuition tells me that a re-set button exists somewhere, but I have at best a vague idea of how to find it.   I have two basic approaches - both involve temporary drastic changes and up to a month of time dedicated to nothing else but re-setting.

Just about 25 years ago I set out on a 500 mile, 7 week hike along the Appalachian Trail through the southern Appalachians.  I was 22 at the time, and the experience was exhilarating, mentally demanding, and physically stressful.  At the time,  this backpacking journey was in part to find a way out of the despair that I associated with the bleakness of day to day wage-earner living, suburban/urban industrialized life trappings and surroundings (I was living in New Jersey at the time), and seekign relief from introvert-brand overwhelm from trying and failing to live up to my own early 20's brand of social self- expectation.  The trip succeeded - the combination of extreme physical exertion, sublime natural surroundings, and backpacking brand social camaraderie from folks I met along the way was exactly what I was looking for.  But it was limited to the trip itself.

I've since looked to meditation practice to bring some of what I used to get from long wilderness backpacking trips into my life in a way that was not constrained by setting (I can meditate anywhere).  Which brings me to insomnia - if insomnia is indeed a side effect of my long standing meditation practice, and I am unable to put meditation practice aside because of the demands of my day to day life, maybe the reset button lies back on the trail.

If my sleep patterns were normal, I would not choose backpacking in the mountains as a way to spend a month of free time.  Been there, done that.  But under desperation, perhaps that is where the way forward lies.  On the trail, I'd experience the same physical exertion (with a body that is probably much less resilient than it was 25 years ago) in a setting that would enable me to set aside my meditation practice for an extended period of time.  So the basic ingredients are:  lots of bone-wearying physical activity, no meditation, sublime physical environment (woods and mountains) for 30 days.

The other option is a deeper dive on meditation - to go on extended solo retreat, and do nothing but sitting, yoga, and tai chi.  This by far is the riskier option, and one I am less likely to take.  A few years back I did a hermitage retreat in a small cabin on a side of a mountain on the grounds of the zen monastery I used to practice at.  I spent days alone in a 10x10 cabin - no electricity, only a small wood stove, a zafu, zabuton, and mattress (and camping gear).  Hours and hours of quiet zazen without distraction in the woods.  I slept like a baby through the whole experience (though was on 25mg of zoloft at the time).   Maybe doing something similar can push me through to the other side of this sleep issue - if there is another side.  Therein lies the risk.

Choices - if nothing else, I am lucky to have them.

Parade of the False Alarms

There is a risk that I'm posting about this too hastily and may yet need to reverse my course again (if I should be so fortunate), but I'm laid low once again by what might be the false promise of the serotonogenic supplements.  Its baaaaack, and I am a miserable puppy for it.  I had a tear of three normal nights of sleep last week - so simple and so utterly human a pattern it was - go to bed, fall asleep, wake up feeling great.  Last sunday it returned - I was forced to practice conscious nocturnal bed laying, at least till I took a restoril to knock me asleep (probably a big mistake).  So it began anew - the next night, it was a Lunesta.  As for that medication, it has outlived its usefulness.  I've maybe averaged taking about 30 Lunesta each year over the past few years, and it has stopped working for me.  Now, I take the pill, and it takes about 2 hours for it to finally knock me out.  Then I wake up 4 hours later feeling hung-over.  And worst of all, more often than not, is that I've noticed that I become really depressed later in the day - to the tune of suicidal thoughts and utter life-negating unassailable loneliness and hopelessness.  And that is much less the case when I do not take the pill and get only 4 hours of sleep (like last night).  The pills are a psychological crutch, and most of the time make you worse off for their use than if you had not taken them at all.

Sill I'm left with a sinking abyss-like feeling, as if my life is being eviscerated and dismembered into a pile of refuse that sits and waits......for sleep.

My “a-duh” moment: Brain Damage and SSRI’s

This should not have been so hard to grasp for me.  Zoloft, which I took in large doses (200mg) for a year in 2000 and just under 6 years in smaller doses (25-50mg; 2006-2011, with a few 3-4 month “off” periods) is an SSRI.  The acronym alone is informative and should have provided a clue “serotonin re-uptake inhibitor”.   It blocks your nervous system from re-assimilating  the serotonin that your body produces.  Its effects are supposedly to help with depression.  I took it as a sleep aid, which worked for a while.

The big “a-duh” moment  is my recent  realization (epiphany even) that the body, being the adaptable thing that it is, will probably eventually produce less serotonin if its re-uptake is blocked by some ingested pharmaceutical, in a quest for equilibrium.  This is a hypothesis that is not too hard to infer with a little bit of biochemical awareness and common sense.  I should have thought of this years ago.  And just as my thoughts were turning in this direction, an Internet search turns up this article http://www.psychologytoday.com/print/68229, which suggests as much.  This may explain much about why I have such low serotonin levels.   My last Zoloft pill was July 2011 – my ability to naturally produce serotonin is probably still impaired.

Its sobering that my insomnia may be fallout from SSRI–induced brain damage, with uncertain irreversibility.  BTW, I’ve relapsed back into insomnia-land despite my new serotonogenic supplement regime – hopefully temporarily. 

Exactamundo

Not so long ago I wrote about my instinct to avoid the rat-race as a life strategy for avoidance of the worst of the stresses that our modern industrial western way of life insists upon us as "normal". 

I often read Charles Hugh Smith's Of Two Minds blog - one of the reasons why I don't write profusely is because I need to avoid as much as is possible feeling overwhelmed that he speaks of in the following link, and, simply because others such as he can hit the nail on the head much more eloquently than can I:

"But what if our state of being overwhelmed is the causal consequence of living in our consumerist-State system? What if the system itself is nothing but an overlay of sociopathologies?

The tragic irony of this is that we are all so overwhelmed by daily life in this system that we lack the mental and emotional strength to analyze its sociopathologies."

http://charleshughsmith.blogspot.com/2012/04/overwhelmed.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+google%2FRzFQ+%28oftwominds%29

Bravo!

The Serotonin Elixir

Is this the end of the road for my trial by insomnia??  I am allowing myself to hope.  10 days ago my naturopath started me on serotonogenic dietary supplements, (a test indicated serotonin levels at the lowest 2% of the reference curve!!!) and after a week on 100mg of 5HTP right before bed (along with Magnesium Citrate and a Melatonin supplement with B6) I'm starting to sleep normally again - I think.  Three nights of 7 plus hours does not yet a happy ending make, but I am feeling human again, at least for now.  My life just may begin anew - out of the darkness.

It is very interesting - in 2006, after a failed attempt at CBT for insomnia, I went on 50mg of zoloft.  Zoloft immediately restored my sleep, but its sleep inducing effects waned over the years.  I got off it for good last summer.  Since zoloft is a serotonin re-uptake inhibitor, I wonder if my body decided that since the serotonin that it was producing was not being readily re-absorbed, that it did not need to produce any.  So after ceasing zoloft - whammo - full scale insomnia (though it took a good 4-5 months for it to develop into its most acute form).

What do I care about theories though if I can now return to the land of the living?  Onward.

The Race Avoided

Even as far back as in high school (circa 1980), I can remember looking around at how people lived their lives (in suburban New Jersey outside of New York City) within the dominant work/consume/commute/procreate paragdim, and having a visceral reaction of aversion.  I had a clear sense that something was profoundly awry with what I was seeing, so at the time, I had a telling vision of what I did not want out of life.  This perception was the starting point for a winding and unconventional route of rat-race avoidance, filled with its share of success, failure, joy, and angst.  While I have found a livelihood solution that works for me (for as long as it lasts!), I can easily recount multiple blog-pages worth of tradeoffs along the way.

Things would have been far worse had I not had this sense.   My bell curve tail-end degree introversion and sensitivity served me well in this regard.   I’m certain I otherwise would have been chewed up and spit out by now had I wholeheartedly entered the race in camp real world.  The lifestlyes we have created and find so seductive are ever- increasingly out of alignment with the underlying perceptual and cognitive dimensions of mind-world interaction.

Reading this article triggered this train of thought, which is a particular type of reflection that I find useful to revisit when I focus on the more problematic aspects of my current experience of life. 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/apr/09/america-prescription-drug-addiction

No end to it

So what to do when it seems like there is no way out?   If anything, my ability to sleep has diminished in the past two weeks to the point that every night  is a replay of wakefulness and light if any sleep, and every day is a despair filled pit.  It honestly feels like my life is over.  I can't plan to do anything, I don't socialize, I barely scrape by at work.  And on weekends, I sit at home in a sleep deprived stupor. 

I continue to force myself to do sanity-saving activities.  Yesterday I went on a hike in the mountains, though it took me 2 hours of stumbling around to get my day hike stuff together.  This morning, after another piss-poor 4 hours of sleep, I grogged myself up, forced myself to do 40 minutes of yoga and a little meditation, which helped immensely, before I commenced with trying to slog through the rest of the day. 

Paperwork accumulates, I no longer clean my apartment, I'm no longer interested in playing music, and the near sleepless nights play out one after the other in agonizing succession.  I feel like the end of the rope is near.  I have no ability to think or interact with people, so my isolation in insomnia is almost perfect.

I have no control - I do all I can, have tried almost everything there is to try to remedy the issue.  I feel like all I can do is surrender to the black hole. 

I Remember......

Tantalizing memories of evenings full of the unspoken and implicit assumption that I would be able to sleep:  Of being able to plan to participate in social events without reservation, taking the ability to awake in the morning after a full night slumber very much for granted; of falling asleep once at my desk at work, unable to resist the pressure to sleep; of falling asleep during long drives to field sites in my consulting days; of going to conferences and sleeping fine on the floor of a motel room between beds in a roomful of people........

My life was once like this, until the fall of 2003, when it all changed for reasons that I don't quite understand.  Now most mornings are accompanied by the thought of "how much longer can I keep this up", driving to work trying to strategize the path of least resistance to get through the day.  Though I am single, have no family responsibilities/kids, have no money or debt worries, work no more than 40 or so hours a week, my time is still not my own.  My time by necessity is dedicated to self maintenance rituals that theoretically maximize my body's ability to sleep, but in reality fall well short of the mark.  Yesterday:  1 hour of intense weight training after work, drive home for dinner, some e-mail correspondence.  Then 30 minutes of tai chi, 1 hour of listening to a meditative drum CD while in supported shoulder stand, then under the sheets for what seems to be my latest pattern - 3 - 4 hours of fitful sleep with relatively rapid onset, then awake and strung out.  I did an hour of meditation between 4-5 AM (which turned out to be unusually deep), hoping that would enable me to get some more sleep, but nothing more than 2 hours of subsequent wakeful bed laying ensued.

Sigh..........is there any other option other than trying to get as comfortable as possible within this abyss?

A mission for the groggy

I suppose one of my motivations for posting here is to unequivocally lay to rest the assumption that all cases of insomnia are a state of mind rather than an affliction.  I'm sure that many cases are, but mine clearly is not.  After 8 years, I've tried just about anything and everything that I've heard of, and have come firmly to rest on the conclusion that my sleep mechanism is in a state of physiological/biochemical dysfunction that started when I was 39 years old.

So, for the record, I've tried and given good faith efforts to:

• Sleep Lab/ apnea assessment
• Cognitive Behavioral Therapy
• Pharmaceuticals
• Talk therapy
• Diet restrictions (gluten, sugar, caffeine, etc)
• Sleep psychologist
• Acupuncture (3 different occasions)
• "energy work" and massage
• Ayurvedic assessments
• EEG and MRI assessments (assessed because of association with problems with simple partial seizures)

And I continue to engage in, with persistence of my insomnia:

• Meditation (1-2 hrs/daily, 14 years of practice, over 10,000 hours of cushion time logged over the years)
• Weight training (2x/week, total 2 hrs/week)
• Cardiovascular exercise (4-5 days a week: hiking, running, biking, exercise bikes, xc skiing, swimming, etc)
• Yoga (2-3 times/week)
• Tai chi (1x/week)
• Gluten free diet, vitamin supplements, avoiding alcohol, avoiding TV (I don't even have one) or computer time before bed.

I have a low-stress job that I enjoy (for the most part), and because of a habitual money saving habit, I have a decent financial cushion, no debt, and no money stress.  I don't have a family to take care of, so no family-related stress.  I live in a rural area and take frequent hikes in the mountains.

I am not depressed - I have been depressed before in my life and now it creeps back in when I am completely hamstrung by insomnia (and, after effects of medications like Lunesta clearly make me depressed).

My life-maintenance activities are beneficial, and maximize my ability to function given the amount of sleep deprivation that I deal with, but they don't "cure".

If my insomnia is anything but an affliction, I have a huge cognitive or conceptual blind spot that I'm unable to see.  I am convinced that this is not the case.

My latest theories of causality:

1. low testosterone (recent blood test was not below reference level, but was low for my age)
2. benign brain tumor (glial cells in hypothalamus)
3. poorly understood side effects of spiritual practices (chi/prana imbalance, kundailini, etc)

Scary Good

Just to be sure, this is not an April fool's post:

I typically to get enough sleep to feel well rested 2-3 days out of the month - I only sleeps well enough to feel "normal" after I have accumulated via my brand of insomnia a staggering sleep deficit that overcomes my sleep mechanism dysfunction. 

I would be in total despair over the lack of effect on my sleep patterns of all the good-faith self maintenance efforts that I engage in (yoga, tai chi, meditation, weight training, hiking, bicycling, running, gluten free low sugar diet, regular bed times, managing excess stimulation, vitamin supplements, etc etc.) except that the benefit of all these activities on the days when I happen to sleep well are remarkably apparent.  Simply put, when I am blessed by minimally sufficient sleep, I feel scary good.

Engaged, energized, enthusiastic, friendly, sharp, resilient, optimistic - and more even - all are apt descriptors of how I feel when the sleep gods decide to smile ever so slightly upon me.  It lasts only until the next restless night, which is usually  only a mere hours away.  And it is marked by a bit of confusion on what to do with all the energy I have.  My sleep-deprived life is a study in isolation - no energy to do hardly anything except drag myself to work, stagger through my self maintenance activities, and then stumble around my apartment like a zombie.  My days are habitually structured to reflect my energy levels - avoiding all but the essential.  But it all gets turned on its head when the sun briefly shines - playing music, contradancing, writing, socializing, seeking out friends and looking for dating opportunities.  I want to do it all at once, but then the sun sets and and I'm back to rattling around in this infernal abyss of sleep deprivation.

The scary good part is enabled, I suspect, by the gluten-free diet and Vitamin D supplements that the naturopath that I've been working on my insomnia with has proscribed.  I've been gluten free for 8 months now, and have been on Vitamin D over a month, which a blood test revealed that I was highly deficient in (18 of whatever units Vit D is measured in).  Before these dietary measures, even when I did manage to sleep, my life was still a slightly more leavened version of dragging myself around.  So in some ways, I feel like I've reversed 15 years of the aging process.  Its too easy to torture myself over thinking about  sleep related  "what ifs".

Pulling out all the stops....

Often, it seems like that I need to dedicate nearly all my non-work hours to sleep-promoting self-maintenance activities in order to have any chance of being able to retain my ability to function and hold onto my means of livelihood.   When internal insomnia currents are strongest, they resist my every effort – I could, after a typical work day, lift weights for an hour, do 30 minutes of intense cardio exercise at a gym, come home and cook dinner, read or play music a little, then meditate for an hour, and still not be able to fall asleep.  This summer, I had a sleepless a night or two after intense day-long hikes in the mountains (8-12 miles) involving quite a bit of elevation gain.  A woman I was dating at the time was astounded and said half kiddingly that I was “hopeless”.

I seem to be on the cusp of a similar delicate sleep ability right now – yesterday after work I went right to an hour-long tai chi class, then did 40 minutes of weight training and 30 minutes of cardio at a gym.  Right before bed I  listened to a monotonous drum tape for an hour while in a supported shoulder-stand position, and took 6mg of melatonin.   And from all that, I was only able to generate a very light and fragmented sleep-state.  I woke up at 2:30 and took 6 more mg of melatonin, drifted back into light sleep land, and woke up with a too familiar feeling of groggy buzziness at 4:30.  I then resorted to an hour of zazen (zen meditation), and finally settled into a deep dream-state at about 6:30, only to awake for good at 8AM.  

This typifies my life.  After all the pro-active sleep promotion last night, today, I’m happy to report that I’m functional, alert, and friendly.   While I sometimes wonder why I’m such a social oddity – educated, fairly intelligent (IMHO), well-employed, and still single at 47 years (with a few LTR’s in my past), at least half the time I thank my lucky stars I don’t have a family to support.  I simply would not be able to manage it all – high degree of introversion, 40+ hour work week, family responsibilities, and a need to dedicate much of my free time to self-maintenance activities just so that I have a hope of sleeping a little.

The Insomnia Abyss

Time to resurrect and redirect this forsaken blog.  I've decided to use it to document and chronicle an issue which has flattened and eviscerated my life: a chronic sleep disability.  And I use the word "disability" very deliberately here, because it is an issue which has not yielded to 8 years of treatments and approaches of all sorts of orientations.  For me, I am convinced that it is a basic dysfunction of a crucial physiological/psychological need.  And the need to document it arises because I am utterly alone in my understanding of my brand of insomnia as such.  To the unafflicted, its a curable matter of de-stressing, exercising more, eating right, practicing good "sleep hygiene", thinking positive, etc etc.  My own brand of insomnia has defied 8 painstaking years of efforts of all of the above, which I'm sure I will get to detailing at some point.

In my aloneness within the insomnia abyss, in the depths of the despair, depression, impaired cognition and reasoning, when I'm able to barely function well enough to hang onto my job and then retreat to my home, unable to socialize or even clean my apartment, feeling like death warmed over, I sometimes wish it were a better understood affliction just so I would not be so alone within its walls.  Cancer would be easier in this respect.  I say this recognizing that probably every person battling cancer (terminal or otherwise) would readily trade places with me.  And now, more times than not, as they would trade with me, I with them.  If my affliction were understood, I could describe my situation to others and and not receive the blank stares that I mostly get when I try to explain my zombie-like presence at work, my hermit-like existence, my vanishing from the activities that once sustained me and provided me with social outlets.  Nor would I have to think up excuses for bowing out of planned activities when I'm too blotto to function.

I work, I eat, I take up space, I hardly sleep.  That is my life, once which offers me a profound basis to question the value of its existence.  So if I'm able to continue writing here, I hope that it at least offers me the knowledge that my experience has been documented, and maybe it will provide the solace of commiseration to the few others who may be experiencing similar.