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I have lost my will to be social
Fandyien
But Otto, what about us? Registered User regular
But Otto, what about us? Registered User regular
So the title says it all. I've lost my will to be social. I just don't have the urge anymore. I used to be quite the socialite, always going to parties, hanging around lots of groups, doing interesting things, etc. I did pretty bad in school for a very, very long time while I was doing all of this, and it was tons of fun.
Just this summer I've started really focussing on school. Got ADD meds from the doctor, taking 'em fairly regularly to do schoolwork. I am also on antidepressants. I had already used ADD stuff both recreationally and for work beforehand, so I was completely used to every variety. Cue weird planar shift.
I've been working my ass off, doing all my work, keeping up with stuff, etc, for the first time ever. I've lost like 25 pounds, I'm skinnier then I've ever been, etc. But I hate everything. All the time. I am just bitter and goddamn hateful. People disgust me, assignments annoy me (but I do them), and I hate my family (I still live at home). I'm taking six credits in six weeks right now, two fairly intense courses that are keeping me on my toes.
But, I just don't socialize anymore. I go out once or twice a week with my two friends I still see, hang around with other people we know, buy some weed for the week, then go back home. Every day after all my classes I just sit around and get high and play videogames because I'm so tired and I have to be up early. Rinse, repeat. My girlfriend is several states away at another school and I don't see her much.
It's not that I can't. I still talk to people fine. I actually rebuffed several potential friendships because I just didn't see the point. Waste of time, effort. Felt like I'd rather just chill at home and do the things I enjoy; i.e., smokin' a bowl and dicking around on the internet after a hard day of rhetoric and bullshit.
But it's beginning to impact me, I think. I'm touchy and pissed all the time. I'm in pretty ill health because I'm malnourished and I never exercise. I just don't care about shit. I do all my schoolwork and focus on mah future, but I can't rally the gumption to give a fuck about other stuff. I actually dropped half my social group because they were getting into some seriously amoral shit I didn't want to touch, so now I'm virtually a loner. Which I've never been before. And I think it's fucking with me.
What do I do? I'm gonna start biking to class again tomorrow, since that always made me feel healthier and more independent. I've got...oh, five or ten people that have been trying to hang out with me, old friends and newer ones, that I've more or less ignored because I'm feeling so asocial. I can't ignore them much longer without blowing my chance at even chillin' with them at all. Which I don't even really care about.
So H/A, what do I do? Why do I hate everything, even though things are theoretically pretty rad for me right now?
Just this summer I've started really focussing on school. Got ADD meds from the doctor, taking 'em fairly regularly to do schoolwork. I am also on antidepressants. I had already used ADD stuff both recreationally and for work beforehand, so I was completely used to every variety. Cue weird planar shift.
I've been working my ass off, doing all my work, keeping up with stuff, etc, for the first time ever. I've lost like 25 pounds, I'm skinnier then I've ever been, etc. But I hate everything. All the time. I am just bitter and goddamn hateful. People disgust me, assignments annoy me (but I do them), and I hate my family (I still live at home). I'm taking six credits in six weeks right now, two fairly intense courses that are keeping me on my toes.
But, I just don't socialize anymore. I go out once or twice a week with my two friends I still see, hang around with other people we know, buy some weed for the week, then go back home. Every day after all my classes I just sit around and get high and play videogames because I'm so tired and I have to be up early. Rinse, repeat. My girlfriend is several states away at another school and I don't see her much.
It's not that I can't. I still talk to people fine. I actually rebuffed several potential friendships because I just didn't see the point. Waste of time, effort. Felt like I'd rather just chill at home and do the things I enjoy; i.e., smokin' a bowl and dicking around on the internet after a hard day of rhetoric and bullshit.
But it's beginning to impact me, I think. I'm touchy and pissed all the time. I'm in pretty ill health because I'm malnourished and I never exercise. I just don't care about shit. I do all my schoolwork and focus on mah future, but I can't rally the gumption to give a fuck about other stuff. I actually dropped half my social group because they were getting into some seriously amoral shit I didn't want to touch, so now I'm virtually a loner. Which I've never been before. And I think it's fucking with me.
What do I do? I'm gonna start biking to class again tomorrow, since that always made me feel healthier and more independent. I've got...oh, five or ten people that have been trying to hang out with me, old friends and newer ones, that I've more or less ignored because I'm feeling so asocial. I can't ignore them much longer without blowing my chance at even chillin' with them at all. Which I don't even really care about.
So H/A, what do I do? Why do I hate everything, even though things are theoretically pretty rad for me right now?
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This won't be a terribly popular thing for me to say, but I'd suggest laying off the wacky baccy for a bit and see what happens. I found dope made me much more likely to sit on the couch and wank than DO anything. It might not make a difference for you, but it also might help.
I still smoke, but it's more like once or twice a month, not most nights of the week.
I wish I could relate to you buddy, but it's not a situation that I've experienced right down to the letter. I've had periods where I just tell the whole world to fuck off and keep myself to myself. It's a comfortable complacency - everything should be great, but it's not, just like you said, and I think it's due to your work. You've poured so much effort into it, by the sounds of it, that you've got it locked into your head that people are just distractions from the big picture.
Nail two birds with one stone - get in touch with some of the friends you want to keep, who aren't going to get you involved in this amoral shit (you don't need any extra weight on your shoulders by the sound of it), and arrange a dinner, or a roast lunch, or something like that. Explain the situation; good friends will always understand that. Bad ones won't, so fuck 'em.
You can climb Everest and have a cold beer at the top, but you're not going to feel like king of the world without anyone around to share it with, if you get what I mean. Fix the breaking bridges before it's too late. Even if you can't be arsed to right now, you'll end up regretting it in the long run.
If he gave you ritalin and you don't actually have ADD, its basically cocaine, which could explain both your weight loss and your irritability.
we also talk about other random shit and clown upon each other
I'm sure that if you can reduce your dosage or stop taking ADD meds you will find yourself feeling happier and more social.
Weed however usually isn't a problem. I find if I smoke it regularly then i'm more comfortable with being social when high, but if I only smoke once in a while then my body isn't used to being high and will make me feel more anti-social.
If you don't have ADD then ritalin will make you feel motivated for about 4 hours (school work!), and afterwards you will hate the world and everything in it (anti-social tendencies).
Stop taking Ritalin. You're doing unspeakable damage to your body with that plus anti depressants plus cigarrets, keep it up and you'll have a heart attack in your 30's. If you need ritalin to get stuff done, then that's a sign that you're probably doing too much.
we also talk about other random shit and clown upon each other
However, you should probably lay off either the ADD meds or the weed. Personally, if school is that difficult for you without the ADD meds, you should probably lay off the weed (and I say this as someone who has no problem whatsoever with weed).
As for the pot, I realized that the amount of money I spend on it and the friction it generates with my family is starting to be more frustrating then the relaxation I glean from smoking every day, so I'm going to try to slowly cut down my smoking until I feel like I don't need to smoke every day. I've been making progress towards this over the past year, as about six months ago I quit smoking five times a day and started smoking just once at the end of the day. Not going through every day stoned has helped a lot, but I think it may be mitigating my anti-depressants.
I want to call some of my old friends later and try to set up a D&D game where we can just hang, take bong hits, and catch up. I don't really want to, but maybe if I force myself to start interacting with people again I'll be more inclined to do so.
What do you guys think? Does this sound like a solid plan? I can't sleep without getting high at night (I haven't not smoked a day in about four years), so I plan on exercising and proportionately smoking less simultaneously for awhile. Maybe it's just the xanax and vyvanse taken at the actual dose the doc reccomends (something I haven't really done yet, since I'm rather scared of the addictive properties of xanax), but the amount of weight lifted off my shoulders when I'm on xanax and not overwhelmed by stress, anger, and anxiety reallly helps me get a perspective on reality.
What do you guys think? I know these posts are long as boring, but I'm sort of at a integral point in determining whether or not I'll crash and burn like so many people I know.
You say you feel conflicted, and your daily regimen is rife with it. From what I'm reading here, you have three different lives. School, social and personal. You mark out these territories by using drugs, changing your chemistry to match the mindset you need, in order to keep the boundaries between them solid.
With this kind of internal conflict, I would suggest the 'cure' is to find a way to remove those boundaries and simply live one life. If you want to take this school/career thing seriously, and weed interferes with that, then drop the weed. If weed is super important to you, then pick the stoner education track. If this conflicts with family, move out. If you want family then drop the activities that piss them off.
I wouldn't be surprised to find that you feel you have needs that are met in each area that can't be met by the others. School is perhaps something you need to feel like you are progressing as a person, but doesn't let you be yourself, your freinds let you be yourself, but interfere with school and family. Your family accepts you for who you are, but may not like what you choose to do with friends (as an example only, I'm just illustrating the point).
So what kind of life would allow you to have all things? It is possible. You can find friends in school to nerd it up over homework and life tactics to progress and socialize. You can choose to become closer with family to socialize with them, while you deal with school. Pick the life you want, figure out what would conflict between those elements, and remove them.
You're not going to come out the winner in each case, there's going to be some sacrifices in some areas so that you can have an even consistancy going across all of them. In the end though, what you gain is internal stability and a solid foundation on which to build a life moving forward.
You don't have that right now- with all this alter-ego shit going on, any progress in any area is going to tip the balance and force you to work that much harder to keep everything intact. Sooner or later you are going to run out of energy keeping all these things up in the air, and when that happens your shit is going to crash.
Now honestly, this happens a lot, and when everything smashes to the floor, people find a way to pick up the pieces and move on- the worlds have collided, the barriers are down, and so you get to start over from an even consistancy again. Whether you create the same situation twice depends on how much you learned the first time.
It seems like your plane is already going down. You may not be able to choose anymore whether or not you can keep it flying, sometimes all you get is a water landing in the hudson. So do what you need to do to get control over your life, and don't be afraid to make those hard decisions neccessary to keep your passengers (you) intact.
Ritalin, of the various amphetamines, is the most prone to big highs and big lows. People who don't really really have ADHD often suffer from the big lows more than those for whom, let's just say it's more obvious they need stimulants. That's #1.
Weed, and dependence to it, is subtle and very problematic. It does make you bitter, it does make you less passionate, and it does make you anti-social. I don't thoroughly understand why it looks very different from other drug dependencies, but from what I've observed you're describing the ill effects of marijuana dependency, which is further hurt by amphetamine use.
Add to it your malnourishment and weight loss, you have less energy every day which impacts your moods as well as actual actions.
Not wanting to be social, for most people, is not a good thing, so it's good that you came and asked for advice. Even if you don't feel like being social, I guess you have some underlying understanding that continuing down that path will make you even unhappier.
Essentially, get back to real life to feel better. You don't need uppers in the day to make it fun (or work bearable), you don't need psychodelics every night to make the evenings enjoyable. At first, drugs take your normal level of enjoyment and raise them. But when you use drugs for a while, your body habituates to it, and comes to underplay your enjoyment of everyday things because it's under the impression that you'll be on drugs and the drugs will bring it back to baseline, where your body wants things. So when you don't take drugs, while your body is still expecting them, things are significantly shittier than they really are.
You should definitely cut out the pot. Cold turkey, if possible. If you have trouble sleeping, take some Benadryl (generic loratadine) with a beer or a shot of something right before you want to go to sleep.
And yeah, I just finished a long period of unemployent, during which I was getting depressed. For the most part, when asked to socialize, I said "yes," even if I really didn't feel like doing it, forced myself to go no matter how much I didn't want to, and really never regretted it.
As for the pot, I've made posts about that before, and cold turkey is inconceivable to me. Terrifying, even. I'm going to try to cut back slowly with exercise.
My eating habits are all fucked up, though. I eat about half a meal a day on average (though on weekends I eat three full meals a day, roughly), and I cannot eat when I wake up. I just can't make myself do it. Even though I've been up by 8:00 for the past few months, nothing seems to be able to awaken any apetite in my except for a bowlpack, which is absolutely out of the question before I've finished all my work. I also have an extremely sensitive stomach and sometimes get sick as fuck without any real rhyme or reason, though it's slowed down a lot since I started cutting down on munching out before bed and taking other drugs.
I suspect exercise will help get my eating problems more in line. I'd really, really like to move out, but I have no personal assets whatsoever. I am a total dependent. It's immensely frustrating and degrades my sense of self-worth. I have very little time inbetween schoolwork and angry loafing, so I'm thinking I'll look for potential part-time jobs around my campus. Ideally, perhaps, with the campus student tech support department.
Heads up if you go this route: loratadine is generic claritin, marketed for its non-drowsy effects,
Diphenhydramine (hydrochloride) is generic benadryl and will help you sleep while diminishing any allergy or sinus issues you may have.
Do you get any downtime? Maybe you should take an extended vacation and drop acid, meditate under the stars and go on a strict diet. Incorporate a mild yoga routine in the morning for a solid week. That'll straighten you out.
I just started taking Aderall, myself, and it sucks. Zonks you out, but when you wake from your stupor you find you got a shit ton of work done. Plays havoc with my back muscles, however, so I make sure and exercise that area, do stretching daily. I don't take the aderall if I've got nothing to do, however, and I've found this is essential, for every moment your up you must find time to come down.
Currently painting: Slowly [flickr]
Thank you, Rubacava!
As for the meantime, I ran into a few old friends, called up some current ones, and arranged to hang out tomorrow and over the weekend. I'm kinda looking forward too it, kinda not. This is also the first day I won't be getting high at the end of the night in years and years, and, honest to God, I am incredibly angry and depressed about it. I want nothin' more then a bong hit.
Hopefully this weekend will help clear my head and remind me there's something to life other then hateful, intoxicated, hermitude. Also, in reference to MindLib, I quit drinking when I began taking zoloft. It doesn't make me sick anymore, but since I was never really a drinker, I just sorta stopped and haven't missed it. I think I might try having a few beers with friends this weekend, or perhaps later tonight, to see if maybe that's a good way to cool down right now. Habitual alcoholism is terrible so I have no fear I'll replace reefer with booze.
I've lived with ADD (I wasn't diagnosed with the hyperactivity portion) and was medicated with Ritalin from about the 3rd grade to 8th grade. Since High school I haven't had the need for any prescribed medication aside from antibiotics when I had strep throat and such. So ADD doesn't always require treatment, I've managed to earn a Master's degree in Psychology, and I won't pretend it was super easy but it's doable.
I'd really question whether the regular pot usage and other drug interactions are really at the route of a lot of your issues. Again a Psychiatrist or Psychologist would be quite helpful in ascertaining this, they might also help you come up with a plan and schedule to sort of try and go by for the near future to get your eating back on track and help you balance the different areas of your life.
I finished my prescription for amphetamines today so from hereonout I'm going to be tackling my schooldays unaltered. It has been a long time since I did that. I am terrified.
I dunno. It's like, when I get everything planned out and written down I realize that I really do have an opportunity to flip over a new leaf and be rid of these persistent woes. It happened once, when I started the zoloft; I had been stealing stuff and selling personal posessions to get pot, pills, and beer money, skipping class, and doing everything you shouldn't do. I was doing a bunch of random drugs and hallucinogens, and I've quit entirely. That was all before I quit those amoral dudes who I cut off entirely, which had heretofore consisted of my best friend and our associated group. I feel like I'm on the second step on this awful staircase towards stability, and it fucking. sucks.