Icosahedron

I feel a little drowsy but for the first time in a very very long time I could easily fall asleep when I got into bed. And by a long time I mean years. I’ve had problems with sleeping ever since junior high school or so, but it has gotten worse.

University was not a good environment for trying to fix it, especially with the frantic atmosphere, coffee-drinking, and all-nighters. I don’t drink coffee any more, by the way. Every night I usually had problems sleeping. On those rare occasions when I avoiding thinking about much I could fall asleep, but I could easily get excited and then my mind would race.

But three days ago as reported in the previous issue I started the drug known as Seroquel, the active ingredient being quetiapine fumarate. It has several purposes, one of which is to reduce the symptoms of mania in bipolar cases.

And lo and behold, it seems to have done something. In fact the first day I took it I could sleep. It’s pretty nice in fact. However I did experience some drowsiness, and in particular, the first two days that I took Seroquel (25mg the first night and 50mg the second) I felt really tired even after waking up, it persisted throughout the morning. And I got a lot of sleep as well -about 10.5 hours each night.

I feel less agitated but a bit more sad sometimes. The highs have been diminished, as is expected. I feel less talkative, and it’s more of an effort to keep a conversation going with most people. I can still talk to close people alright though, so it’s not as though I have brain damage.

I was thinking, you can learn a lot about your personality when you’re bipolar. Although it’s fairly terrible to fluctuate between two extremes you learn about what doesn’t change. Yeah, although I experienced euphoria and depression, I felt that something was always the same. Something inside me. Being like this gave me an insight into me - I feel I really understand what exactly is my personality and soul, if you will.

It’s nice because it’s reassuring to know that there’s something in there that’s solid and secure. I feel I have an intuition about the expression “you can’t change someone”. That solid core inside I think is something you can’t change, at least not easily. Perhaps if you’re struck by lightning then it could change…who knows?

Occasionally I a regretful though takes flight, indicating that if I had realised earlier, perhaps I wouldn’t have lost so much. But on the other hand I truly can’t regret any of it, because that was my experience that’s valuable and it happened, so there. I am happy that I’m here now. Three years ago I was uncontrolled and in some sense very helpless. But now I feel I have a better chance at achieving my goals.