Another blog about Drugs

Here I am again, coming down off another drug. It's called Dexamphetamine, and it was prescribed to me for ADHD.

Wow, it's so weird to be back here again on this blog. I honestly thought I'd left it in the dust. But I should've known I'd always have more to say. More to disobey about. My passion hasn't waned - I've just been... busy. Figuring myself out. 

But I'm so glad to be back.

The old me had such an obsession with being drug-free, and it turns out I haven't changed. My initial resistance to being on medication is back with a vengeance, enough to urge me to put up with awful withdrawal symptoms on my only uni holiday break this term.

I've spent my time resting, and nourishing my body. I made a little cave - a coping mechanism that I HIGHLY recommend - to retreat to (and my psychologist is also a keen supporter of the cave, just so you know).

How did I get here? Its a long story, and I'm not sure my mind is coherent enough to express it. I sure do love an adventure, but I'm afraid I'm getting weary of the more difficult ones in my older age (I'm 31 lol). My mind isn't working well and I've been fatigued to the point of disability, and I believe it is a result of these prescribed Amphetamines.

It's silly to think I could've lasted on them. When reading through this blog by chance today - I have ALWAYS had a thing about being in my natural state, medication free.

Although I am back on my antidepressants, which may be a story for another day. But I will say that I realised by depression was indeed circumstantial - a response to a deeply flawed environment. However that environment is capitalist society, and it won't be changing anytime soon. So the meds help take the edge off, and help me to keep surviving. I don't think there's any shame in that. 

And I don't think there's any shame in being on amphetamines either, for the record.  They're just not for me. They never have been - I've always preferred the more euphoric kind ;). Though I do think it's sad that it's come to the point that our population's most creative thinkers are so disabled by this boring, paperwork and productivity driven work environment that continues to infect and invade our psyches, that they need to take amphetamines to cope with it.

Trying to do routine tasks without amphetamines is like banging my head against a brick wall. I have chronic headaches because of it, chonic frustration from bending backwards into boredom. But there's no chance in hell will I ever force myself to put up with it again, not to earn a paycheck, not for nothing. I rest when I need to, and the world can wait for me.

That's how I feel right now anyway, in the euphoria of discovering myself again post-dexies. I've always loved the new and novel.

It'll likely wear off again, just as the rose coloured glasses of my little dopamine deliverers did, and I'll take them again to help ease that pain. The boredom, the frustration, of squeezing myself into a box that I was never made to fit in.

I think it's only natural to want to ease the pain. That is why I don't judge anyone that takes any kind of med. We do what we need to survive in this world. 

But for me, it's only natural to question why, why am I forcing myself to comply with it all in the first place, when I can simply just... disobey.

Disobey

 

Okay, so I see graphics like this all the time. But this morning this one caught my eye. 

It caught my eye because like many of the messages I see being spewed out to our generation, it tells us that we have a problem. Our problem? Obedience. The solution? Disobedience.

But my problem is that in my opinion, I think people equate disobedience to Anarchy, and widespread resistance against the government and legislation. But there are other subtle ways you can disobey and truly break free.

WHAT DOES IT REALLY MEAN TO DISOBEY?

 To disobey means to cast out constraints. Time limits? Deadlines? No need for these!
Everything that society considers important runs on time. We need to get to our jobs on time, we need to pay our bills on time, TV shows are on at a certain time, and we only have a certain time limit on our holidays... Time must be used productively, they say, as time is limited.
But time limits us! It limits us to a certain amount of day that we can do things that we want to do, as it keeps us thinking about the next "important" thing that we have to do.
Be free of limits! Have days where you chuck out your clock and enjoy what you're doing without watching out for when it will end!


To disobey means to do what people told you you would never be able to do. What's that? Impossible? Unacceptable? Count me in!
Society limits us by telling us we can only do certain things in our lives. We must live life a certain way - get a certain kind of job, have a house and a family. Where do your dreams fit into your life plan?
You will be told that some things are impossible and you will almost certainly fail. Don't be limited - face failure and achieve your dreams!

 To disobey means to push past your pride and your fear. Society's norms tell us to fear others, fear failure and fear embarrassment. My fear keeps me from doing so many little things that would enrich my life and help me connect to others and myself. But fear is NOTHING! True fear may keep us safe but most fear -that comes from obeying norms- only keeps us trapped.

Want to help out that stranger? What are you afraid of?
Want to learn something new? What are you afraid of?
Want to speak about something you're passionate about? What are you afraid of?
Want to dance in the street? What are you afraid of?
Want to tell your parents you love them? What are you afraid of?

The reward may be a lot greater than staying safe and wondering what could have been!
Disobey your fear -and society's fear - take risks and break out of your internal prison to live an extraordinary life.

 To disobey means to be yourself even in the face of criticism. Society teaches us that we need others to like us! We must fit in in order to be liked - this lesson is widely apparent on social media. But how can you ever be someone other than yourself?
Disobey the norm -be who you are, and love yourself for it! You don't need anyone else's approval, but when you start to show your true colours, you will attract those who appreciate them the most.


To me, to disobey truly means to thrive WITHIN an environment that is meant to suppress you and squish you into little boxes. You don't need to live without society, although you certainly can go and live a different life if you wish! But sometimes there are things that keep us here. My family and my career path will keep me living within the rat race of the western world, at least for a while. I may have to obey certain rules, like paying bills and taxes, but that doesn't mean I have to abide by all of them!

ABOVE ALL - Follow your heart and it will lead you to the places that will make your life amazing, even if society tells you different!

<3

The Divine Feminine

I didn't go to Yemaya Festival this weekend to reconnect with my feminine side, I went to a bush doof, as usual, to dance. But the universe had other plans for me.

Adorned with feminine colours, designs, shapes and symbols, Yemaya was representative of the mother goddess of the ocean, the divine feminine. I like to look at the divine feminine at its core aspect - Yin.

Yin is feminine, water, earth, soft, night, dark, shadow, passive, receiving, yielding, gentle, slow, consuming, cold.

In contrast, I am a rather yang person. I am very upbeat, extroverted, bright, bubbly and energetic. I like to control, and I am stubborn and unmoving, unlike the soft, accepting and allowing qualities of the feminine.

But this weekend at Yemaya has changed how I use feminine energy in my life, and it all happened in an extraordinary didgeridoo healing session.

At 7pm on the Saturday night, our group was pretty high and we were in the process of figuring out what we all wanted to do (A mighty task while on LSD). I tried to dance at my usual favourite place at a bush doof, the main stage, with high energy psychedelic trance booming from the speakers. But after a few minutes by myself, I wanted to go back to my friends. 

My best friend declared that she would be attending a didge healing session at 8pm. I'd never participated in the healing spaces at a bush doof before, and was keen to try it out.

We entered the space a bit early to settle in before the healing. It was a large dome-like space, with pink silk sheets drooped from the middle of a ceiling, where a crystal chandelier hung like the crown jewel. I had seen a vagina sculpture in crystal healing space a bit earlier, and noted again the vagina-reminiscent decor.

To tell you the truth, this vagina stuff was quite confronting for me, even as a female (I wonder how my male friends took all of this in). It wasn't until later that I realized that our culture shames female genitalia, and this is why it was so confronting to see a vagina sculpture blatantly staring me in the face.

Despite this, the warm pink sheets and the mood-lit space were highly inviting. There were people snuggled amongst blankets and pillow, with my friend smack bang in the middle. Feeling like a deer caught in headlights, thanks to the overemphasizing effects of lysergic acid, I went straight over and sat with her.

There was a kind of open-mic thing going on, and a young dreadlocked woman named Megan came to sit up at the mic to share her poetry. I immediately thought that this was an amazingly brave thing to do, to open yourself up to a bunch of strangers and trust they would pay you respect. (And that they did, which is a wonderful thing about bush doofs.) Megan, with a strong spoken word and conviction, proceeded to read us multiple poems that are all beautifully blended in my memory, exposing her life with themes of womanhood, children, love, heartbreak, and the body. One that touched me in particular was about fat on the body. I have always hated my stomach fat, wishing it wasn't there, and at the end of the poem she encouraged us, with her soft, kind voice, to touch that problem part of our bodies, and tell it we love it. Light giggles echoed as the room filled with love for our bodies. And when I gently held my stomach and told it I loved it, unlike the other times I have tried, this time I actually meant it.

Megan had set the scene for the healing with her poetry, uniting the room with laughter and love. There was a sense of solidarity within the space as the didgeridoo healing man began to set up. We lay down with our heads on pillows, and a beautiful stranger covered my friend and I with a blanket. The healing ceremony started with a light drumming beat to ground the energies. And as I closed my eyes, the the man said "Let yourself fall into the earth"...

My breath flowing out let me fall deeper and deeper. I was restless at first, trying to relax to the abrasive sounds of the healing didge, which were unlike the more melodic sounds we usually hear from Aboriginal educators who come to schools and cultural centres. I kept opening my eyes to make sure I was still in the room, and my friends were still there. My closed eye visuals were confusing and full of colour. But after a while, I was deep within myself. Deeper than I had ever been before. My breathing was so slow, and with every breath, I felt my body let go of tension. And after the bodily tension was gone, my breathing was penetrating my very inner layer. My whole being was opened by my breath, my inner self expanding and expanding. I was seeing and feeling places so deep within my self that I was sure would take YEARS to access without the help of the LSD (which I like to think of as a spiritual lubricant). My breath finally reached a tiny red tent like structure right at the middle of my being. I was sure this was me, hiding away in there. By now, I had forgotten I was even on LSD, or that I was at yemaya festival, or that there was time. I was now in the deepest meditative state I had ever experienced.

It was about now that the didgeridoo sounds "clicked" into my body. I had started letting go of control and trusting, and my deep breathing had allowed the sound to enter my being and start healing me. But to heal, you first need to get the dirt out. I started seeing all this dark stuff being scraped out of the particles that I consisted of. I was far more than a 3-dimensional matrix, a vast rainbow pixellated like structure that was woven into the space around me and beyond. The didge sounds were like rakes on my being. It kept raking and raking the soul crap into a pile, until a climax was reached and the sounds gently brought us back down, releasing it all, and bringing us back for another round. I surrendered to the sounds which were now making my body arch and twitch, and my breathing got faster as the energy rushed through me and whirlpooled out, taking all the stagnant stuff with it. My gut even churned as if the didge was cleaning out my physical body! I had never experienced healing like this before. When doing more gentle, subtle healing in my old psychic development class, we were told that stuff would come up for us as it was released, but this was like everything was released through me at once. It was super intensive, and there was no denying that it was real.

All of this was uncomfortable at first, I had never experienced anything like this before, nor trusted anything to come so far into my being. I hadn't even seen this much of me before! My body is so much more than anything I could have ever dreamed of. On the very inside, it is as big as the sky, and all of this is contained deep deep deep inside the very center of me. But I never looked! We're always too scared to look, afraid of who we are and afraid of what we might discover. But by letting go and relaxing everything, I was able to peek in, and eventually, let the healing right into me at a deep soul level. I could feel the transformation happening. The didgeridoo reached right into my soul and pulled out chunks of darkness like they were thorns embedded deep into the skin. Now that I had gotten used to it, and I could literally see how beneficial this was for me, I could have stayed there for hours. But eventually I had to get up.

I got up way too fast, like when your alarm wrenches you out of a super deep sleep. I pulled myself out of the deepest parts of me, stood up, literally stumbled out of the healing space, disoriented, and was gasping from the intensity of the healing. It took me a while to be able to think clearly again but the most amazing thing I was feeling that I was VERY grounded. I was right into my body, I could feel every part of it and could feel my feet on the ground. This is a huge deal for me, as a double Aquarius who spends most of her time in her head and the sky. I was stomping my feet on the ground like it was the best feeling ever! And it was - I have NEVER felt to connected to my body, and the earth beneath it. Just, wow.

I was pretty spent and we all wanted to chill away from the intense energies of the party, so we all went back to our campsite. To my surprise, it was only 10pm. My estimate at this point was 3am or 4am. Long story short, I stayed up all night chatting with my dearest friends. I had a sleep, and in the morning, as I walked into the bush, the sun greeted me. I felt it all over my skin, bathing me in warmth. I walked, feeling all the movement in my legs and feeling the solid earth beneath my boots. I took my sweet time, gently stretching in the morning sunlight. So much peace filled me in all the places I had discovered the night before, in all the places that darkness had been removed from. I felt bigger, expansive, and deeply relaxed.

Later that day, I tried to sleep again. It didn't work, so I spent a good couple of hours just lying on my back in my tent, breathing deeply and stretching. I took my time that I never had before, and I stretched my body like I never had before, feeling every stretch as deep as it went, and observing how my body thanked me for it, for taking my time.

That's what I learnt at Yemaya. To take my time, like Yin, like the feminine, which is slow, and gentle, and soft. I learnt how to fully embrace myself, like a loving mother; embracing my body, my whole being, and embracing the chance to heal.
I learnt to yield, to be vulnerable, to let go, accept and receive. Like the vagina yields to the male, yield to the present moment; accept it, embrace it. Let yourself breathe, let yourself relax, and slow down.
Breathing IS acceptance! The deeper the breath, the deeper the acceptance. Slow down, breathe, and accept every part of yourself. Accepting is connecting... Slow down, breathe, and connect to your body and to the Earth. Allow yourself to feel, and be vulnerable, even though it is scary... Allow yourself to receive love and healing with grace, even though it is scary... Allow yourself to let go of control, even though it is scary!

When you let go, when you become soft, when you embrace all that is Yin, the feminine, you literally open yourself up to possibilities, knowledge, love and peace.

You open yourself up to YOU.

Sin and forgiveness

If you take the offical version of God to be true, then when you confess, you are confessing to a loving deity who will immediately release you and fill you with forgiveness. If you take God as I described it in my last post, then when you confess, you are admitting to the core of your being that you did something wrong. This is how I confess. I feel the guilt heavy in my gut, and I say to myself with no words, "alright, I did the wrong thing.. what now?"

The difficult thing about my type of confession is that it takes work to be forgiven. First you have to truly recognize and feel what you have done. Then you have to find the strength and love to let go of that feeling. You don't just say sorry and then your remorse is magically scooped up by the light and taken away. You have to fight your way past the ego, and the ego does not forgive. It wants you to suffer so you remember the pain you have caused yourself and others. This may be a protection mechanism, but it only holds you back from liberating yourself. Once you access the God self, the part of you that is everything, the part of you that loves you and knows you are worth unconditional love, you can forgive yourself and you can can finally let go of the past. You are freed from the pain by forgiveness, but you'll never forget that lesson. The day you can remember the lesson and not feel the shame and misery is the day you have truly forgiven yourself.

The thing about this is, how would psychopaths confess, if they don't feel deeply for what they have done? If they can't confess, they can't be forgiven. In my opinion, psychopaths, who have different brain structures in the areas of emotion and empathy, are the furthest removed people from their true selves. They are so far removed that they cannot even recognize when they have hurt another being, a being who in truth has always been part of them. They are so far removed that they would not ever be able to find a true and lasting love for themselves or anyone else. I wonder how a spiritual being could get so far away from themselves. I guess if you have had a parent with pain, or if your own life pain was so deep that it was unbearable to feel, then the ego would block out anything and everything to protect yourself. Even if it means blocking out your emotions, a release and expression of your energy. And the further they fall, the harder it is to feel again, and they become living demons; a human image of their dark, black hole energy. And you can see it in their eyes, the light has been extinguished.

I'm glad I'm not a psychopath, but I see why they exist. Feelings are hard to feel sometimes. Especially those of remorse and guilt. You can see why their ego protects them from it when you have felt it. I feel terribly guilty for a lot of things I have done, and somehow cannot find it within me to forgive myself for some of them. Maybe it is because I have not received forgiveness from the other person or being. I feel if they are still hurting then I cannot forgive myself. But being attached to their pain isn't doing me any favors. If anything it is probably binding them to their own pain at a deeper level. Still doesn't help, it is like my mind thinks I need to be punished.

Now that I think about it that is such a common mentality in western society... we want to see people suffer for what they have done. We see it as justice. We say "they deserve it". And the reason we can't forgive ourselves is because we treat ourselves the same as we treat others. Deep down we think we need to suffer for the pain we have caused others, rather than being loved and forgiven. Maybe the reason I beat myself up so much is because that's what I've been taught is right.

That is actually pretty messed up.
I guess that's why Buddhism focuses so much on compassion; compassion and forgiveness for others will help us liberate ourselves from our own guilt.

I think it's time to exercise that long lost spiritual muscle, and learn to forgive myself.

Word vomit of illusion and love

I have been doing some thinking over the past week, after a bit of a stint in struggle street, and today the spark has come back in a big way.

Something terrible and unexpected happened to someone close to me, and it snapped me straight out of the illusion I'd gotten stuck in. That illusion is the material world. Yes it's here, and we have to live in it and survive in it, but its not the very essence of our being.

The fact that we are in this amazing universe for a fleeting amount of time makes us insignificant in the scheme of things, and that insignificance brings with it great freedom. We all live in a world where no one can tell us what to do or give us instructions on how to live life. We just somehow evolved here and no one can ever tell us why. So why do we let anyone else on earth control what we do? They don't know any better than we do how life should be. When eventually our whole earth ceases to exist no one is going to remember us. So why do we strive to make such an impression? Who do we do it for? Ourselves? Why do we feel we need to impress ourselves? Is it because we are our own inner judge? The only judge, the only 'god', that rules your life is you. Your intuition is that god part of you speaking to you in a language which isn't tangible and therefore not valued or not deemed 'real' by a materialist culture. In this culture (Alan Watts describes culture as an operating system- a great analogy), we use the 5 senses, mostly the eyes, to determine what is real. A physical, tangible reality. How do you define feeling in those terms? We can describe what feeling is like but there's no way to show another person exactly what you're feeling because it comes from within, not from an external source. So Materialist cultures value those external, easy to see and easy to believe things over internal things. They base our reality on the material realm, thinking that because its real, it must be the source of happiness. And of course god must be some tangible entity external and separate to your own self.

We have so many problems trusting that god self within because our cultures have us so focused on the external that we don't even think that inner self is real, in a sense. I know if I had a physical entity in front of me telling me 'yeah you can do it!' I would be way more inclined to believe it than the invisible inner self that I sometimes forget is even there because I can't see it, I can only feel it in a way that I can't be taught about. You're sposed to get to know it and trust it from the beginning but culture distracts us and we begin to distrust it because it has become unknown, a stranger. A lonely wail at the bottom of your being crying out for you to listen and be friends with it.

Your inner self, is kind to you. Be kind to your self and it can blossom like a friendship. It will be the kindest and most honest friend you can get, and you will find that you will never be alone. You will learn to love your self.

So right now I am hearing loud and clear instructions to go out and make a difference in the world. To unplug myself from this material world and open up to the reality that we are free and nothing lasts forever. There's no need to feel so attached to the physical world, because the end of you is the end of the illusion. There is no need to fear. We are all scared and that is more reason for us to connect with each other. We are so scared of people, but taking chances and risks with people can lead to some beautiful and magical life moments which would never be possible if we didn't trust that foreign stranger who offered to fix our bag at the airport, if we didn't take a chance to do something nice for someone that you don't even know, or if we didn't talk to each other about our feelings. But that part of us is ignored, and we are too scared to connect with others, we were never taught how. Its because no one knows!! Except for ourselves...we already know how to connect. Trust that inner want, the want that seems to terrifying to do but the most rewarding! And helps other people access that deep forgotten part of themselves too. Two awoken souls recognise each other immediately, its that feeling described as 'connection', which is really a re-connection. True reality is that we are all one and even though we are physically separated by our bodies, our soul connection is stitched together like a patchwork blanket in an invisible realm layered right over our environment. Don't ignore that fundamental part of reality. You can't ignore the physical part too, but don't take it so seriously, because it will not be the thing that brings you true happiness.

That's it for Stoned Saturdays.
I'm the rainbow lady, signing out for a good nights sleep.

Peace and love
<3

The body hate epidemic

Today I'd like to tall about something that really pisses me off. The normalisation of body hatred.

So many words are thrown around about how to have a 'better body', 'dream body', 'goal weight', 'flat stomach', 'thigh gap', 'toned abs', 'willpower', 'tight ass' ... I could go on forever. You know what all these things have in common?

1. They point to a certain body type (one that a minority of people have naturally)
2. They imply a need to obtain it
3. They say you can obtain it with certain products or regimes

Also... They are so widespread, that you would think that wanting these things is NORMAL!!

I'm here to tell you this is NOT normal. These diet fads, your low fat pre-packaged meals, your skinny teas, your boot camps, your 30-day challenges, your flab shaping underwear... All of these products are not designed to make you feel better about yourself or create a 'better you'! They're designed for the exact opposite.

Companies make money through a supply and demand system. Weight loss companies need to sell their products, as do makeup and clothing companies. So what can these companies do to increase their sales? Increase demand. And how do you increase demand? You make people feel like shit about themselves by creating an ideal that is so unachievable that rarely anyone will never get it, so everyone constantly comes to your product like its the holy grail and the one thing that will solve all their problems. This self hatred is created in a web of magazines, newspapers and celebrity culture, who profit from the advertisement of these products. NONE of these companies want you to feel good about yourself.

After all, why would anyone want to buy these things if they felt really good about themselves? They'd be happy with what they have already.

These products and phrases masquerade as a normal part of life but what they are really doing is propagating a dangerous eating-disorder mentality. You think you don't have some kind of eating/body dysmorphic disorder? Think again. If you are hopping from one of these products to the next, there is a high chance that you have fallen into a trap. If you think your problem is just that you don't have enough willpower, think again. You can use your existing willpower to get out of the hatred cycle, rather than thinking its something you're deficient in and need more of so you can beat your body into submission.

So how do you get out of it? Develop your mind to think in this broader perspective.

You have been given this one body for your whole life. The atoms in your body were created in the heart of a dying star millions of years ago. The first life form on earth came from within the earth itself, from a rock. There are an infinite amount of possibilities of things that could have gone wrong in evolution, and in the womb. And yet here we are, many years later, miraculously, with one life to live, in a fraction of time that will go unnoticed to the rest of the infinite universe.

So why are you hating on yourself? Your body is a gift from the earth, and you only have one lifetime to use it. Would you rather waste those years punishing this creation that you have been blessed with, or would you rather love, nurture and care for it in all its natural perfection, so it can work its best for you to help you walk, eat, sleep and live your life?

We only have one body and one chance. Don't waste it.

Highs and lows

So I had my first "bad" week this week. I decided to try and take pills for the first time since I went off my antidepressants. The partying was amazing and full of love but I have been paying for it all this week with a big trip right into a depression pit.

Of course it has been a terrible week full of crushing darkness but today I can finally see the light again. It has been a hell of a learning experience too. I think the most important thing I learnt was no matter what activities I'm doing, I need to remember to keep up everything else that is important in my lifestyle - mainly eating healthy and nourishing foods, and keeping my surroundings clutter free. It's one thing to mess with your brain chemistry, but it's entirely another to mess with your brain chemistry and throw all other coping mechanisms out the window. I am convinced my diet has played a huge part in how happy I've been recently... especially considering that I developed anxiety and depression around the time that I started skipping meals.

Of course the drugs played the main role in this scenario, throwing me off balance and unable to go home, hence the shitty diet. So I'm not so sure that I will be choosing to participate in such activities for a while. And when (inevitably) I decide to do so again, I will be mapping out a safety net and bringing a whole fridge of food with me to wherever it is I'll be.

So I've had an interesting insight about serotonin the past couple of weeks as well. I have noticed that I have become extremely sensitive in my emotions since my antidepressants have well and truly exited my system. Not just negative emotions, positive ones too. I feel more connected and emotionally responsive to cues. For example, when I see someone do something nice or someone gives me a compliment, I feel a pang of emotion. It's easy to shake off but it's like something has hit me right in the heart. I don't remember having this kind of thing ever in my life except for the brief euphoria period after I quit everyday pot smoking. Removing the smokescreen of pot is extremely similar to removing the bubble of antidepressants. I am a bare me. Life has gotten a lot more raw and real. It has been truly amazing.

So anyway, back to the serotonin, psychologists don't really know exactly how it works in the brain and in relation to mental illness... Antidepressants were discovered by accident- and because they elevated mood levels, the theory of mental illness became that it was caused by an imbalance of neurotransmitters in the brain. Mainly serotonin, dopamine, and norepinephrine. The most popular antidepressants target serotonin. Recently, I have come to disagree with this theory. It's my opinion that my own natural serotonin levels don't make me depressed, they make me more sensitive, and therefore more prone to depression. But also more prone to periods of intense gratitude and positive emotion. Higher levels of serotonin did NOT make me more "happy", they made me less emotional. Less creative. Less connected.

Serotonin is a complex thing. LSD affects serotonin and norepinephrine levels just like antidepressants, yet scientists are not sure why it affects our perception the way it does (it does not make me feel like I'm on antidepressants, that's for sure!) MDMA also affects serotonin but it again, affects moods differently to antidepressants. Antidepressants certainly didn't make me feel warm and fuzzy and creative! These drugs actually make me feel extremely connected and sensitive, the opposite of what higher serotonin levels have done to me when induced by antidepressants.... So serotonin is a bit crazy and we may never find out exactly what it does. But in the context of natural levels, I don't think that low levels necessarily mean someone is going to be depressed, and that high levels mean that someone is going to be happier. I do think though, that extreme levels outside the middle zone, such as the extreme low I had this week and the mania that I had when my antidepressant dose was too high, can make us very out of touch with our reality. As with everything, balance is the key.


So excuse me as I go and cry over an article about strangers doing nice things for each other... This feeling is why I will never go on antidepressants again even if it gets worse than this week did... and it most likely will at some point.


Peace