[!@#$%!]

Originally Posted by m1rr0r dash

...my experience fits more with this than what rob's talking about...

and yes, i've continue to smoke after realizing that, yes it has affected my productivity, and yes i sometimes get irritable when i don't smoke for a while. this is true for both tobacco and weed. i used to get slammed sometimes when i first worked at offices for spending 10-15 minutes of every hour standing outside smoking cigs. that's fully 20-25% of my productivity down the drain right there. but i was far from the only one, and when you throw in making coffee and drinking it while standing outside chain smoking, there were people there who spent closer to 30-35% of every work day on the entirely unproductive task of feeding their dependencies.

as far as medicated life goes... i've also spent a couple of years walking around like a zombie on meds my psychaitrist was feeding me and my ex-wife was telling me made more "mentally stable." i was entirely weed and alcohol free for around 3 years. i was taking fairly high doses of risperdal, seroquel and other atypical anti-psychotics that my doctor was telling me could help bi-polar disorder, which is what they said was causing my periodic problems with depression and that i just didn't recognize the periods of intense productivity and creativity coupled with often serious sleep-deprivation (so called hypomania) as problematic.

within the first 3 months of taking these medications, i had gained nearly 30 pounds. i began sleeping upwards of 12 hours a day, yet i was still falling asleep at my desk at work. on more than one occasion i had serious problems judging distances while trying to park my car, and not even parallel parking. for a short period i lost the ability to establish a mental image of the space around me. for example while driving on the highway i would glance in the rearview mirror and see a car in the next lane over a little ways behind me. when i looked back at the road in front of me, i could no longer see in my mind's eye how far behind me the other car was. i'd find myself checking my mirrors almost constantly and still only narrowly avoided a couple of accidents. i had trouble picking up an object from the desk in front of me with my eyes closed, even if i had just been looking at it. as an aspiring architect this was truly frightening.

even after finding a combination of meds that didn't have me falling asleep at my desk and stumbling on the stairs, i eventually gained around 40 pounds and my risk for diabetes had gone up fourfold. i was still sleeping 10 hours a night to feel as rested as i used to feel after 7 or 8. and i found that if i didn't take my medication, i would be literally unable to fall asleep for hours, doze off for an hour and half, then wake up and stare at the ceiling until the sun came up. i gradually stopped hanging out with my friends, lost all interest in my career, and slowly began hating myself.




since then, i've gotten divorced, quit the meds, gone back to grad school, lost nearly all the weight (i'm down to 135 from 165), become a far more sociable person and eventually resumed smoking weed on a fairly regular basis. if that's not a good thing, i don't know what is.

ha ha holy shit man. yeah some meds are hardcore and will fuck you up. you have to be a proactive patient not just take it lying down. i take a bit of zoloft on occasion, just to snap me out of some moods when the light diminishes (i get the seasonal blues,purely physical, nothing cognitive) and that helps. but i couldn't be on that on long periods because i like the occasional cocktail or beer or bottle of wine. (a side benefit of zoloft is that it takes you forever to cum and it's better than tantra ha ha ha). but i digress.

this shituation. also depends on the doctor. my own shrink rather than trying to force me to be normal taught me how to live happily with my own eccentricities (that was the therapist not the prescribing psych). this is why i'm typing at 6pm in my pajamas here, ha ha ha-- i don't fit into a corporate environment and never will.

then once i had this prescribing shrink that was feeding me paxil and i felt i was overdosing once the spring returned and i was smoking and drinking coffee & getting more naturally high, so i told him & we stopped. he once also gave me some fucking lithium, and there i was navel gazing all morning until i picked up the phone & said man, i have been sitting here all day doing nothing, i have to go to school, i can't take this fucking pill and he said "ok stop". problem w/ meds it's a trial and error and you have to provide adequate feeback, but if you encounter an authoritarian asshole it can be problematic. i'm a picky customer tho. anyway i don't take anything these days.

about the cigarette post-- last summer i had to finish a project to get paid right before a trip to new york for which i needed money and not only to travel but it was a business trip that required investment so i had this financial gun to my heand and i had to do-or-die, so i bought a pack of smokes & nicotined my way into a fat paycheck. i just left all the gory details out of the post.

and yeah i dont like wasting too much time. i waste some time here and it gives me pleasure, but i wanna get into some hardcore writing and feel this interneck gets on the way some times and i should waste time in more fruitful ways.

i used to go out w/ this chick that was an awesome novelist who shall remain anonymous and she rarely wrote emails-- she believed she had only limited "writing energy" and she could use it for the internet or for her novel so she wisely chose the latter.

so i just finished work and here i am squandering my awesome seed in the whorehouse.

i'll go flog myself.

ha ha no, i need dinner-- actually... lunch!

anyway congratulations on what seems to have been your very beneficial divorce. and whatever it is you're doing right.