Subaddiction

On the other side of another round of medication trials. My medicine cabinet now contains the following prescription medications:

• Seroquel
• Neurontin
• Lithium
• Ambien
• Cymbalta
  
• Synthroid
• Lipitor
• Levoquin
• Prevacid
• Combivent
• Advair
• Albuterol

The Synthroid seemed necessary following my first blood test to measure Lithium levels, which indicated that the Lithium had caused my thyroid to stop functioning and raised my TSH level to 5.6

After spending hundreds of dollars in a few weeks on these medications and the associated doctor's appointments, however, I stopped taking most of them. I'm now taking nothing more than 25mg of Seroquel at night to help me sleep, and a few puffs of my Albuterol inhaler each day if I'm having trouble with wheezing or shortness of breath.

I'm sleeping better, my anxiety level has plummeted, and I'm concentrating better too. I seem to have recovered from the bronchitis (or whatever it was) as well. I don't feel depressed and I don't feel hypomanic - I feel pretty even.

Once again, my goal is to wean off the Seroquel completely. I have plenty of time to do that since my prescription is for 100mg pills, I have most of a bottle of those and 2 refills left on that prescription.

I am becoming more and more convinced that I, and hundreds of thousands if not millions of others like me, have fallen in to a sort of addiction purgatory: we are not full-fledged drug addicts looking for a high, but neither are we uninterested in maintaining a drug-induced state. We are uncertain of the medical necessity of the medications we've previously been prescribed for insomnia, anxiety, depression or mood instability. These medications are ours for the asking but we're not certain we want to take them - we're just certain we feel better when we have them at our disposal. I, for one, have always done better on little or no medication - I've known this for many years and yet I still go through phases (like the one I just exited) where I end up with new prescriptions for close to a dozen drugs that I then don't take. Or don't take for awhile.

You would think that tapering off Seroquel would be easy at this point. 25mg is not a thereputic dose - Seroquel doesn't even come in a smaller dose and this one is physically tiny (trying to cut it in half would probably simply pulverize it). And yet the likelihood is that one night I will decide to take more - not because I can't sleep but because I simply have the urge to. This is what has always happened in the past. I will take more and then at some point a little more, until I am back up to 100mg again. I will see my supply of the drug dwindling and make another doctor's appointment. At the same time, my ability to focus will decrease and my anxiety and mood instability will increase. I will decide to take some of the other medications in my medicine cabinet as well and will gradually become less stable, and more certain that I need to be under a physician's care. I won't take the medications as prescribed, either - the doses I swallow will be small and sporadic. This will gradually lead to another one of the phases I just went through. If I discuss this with my doctor she will likely tell me it is all a symptom of a psychiatric disorder. I will agree just long enough to get more prescriptions, and the cycle will begin again.