I'm not used to doing things without risk.  I like risk...I like to take risks.  Like smoking crystal meth for many years....that was a risk.  Like having risky sex....that ALWAYS risky. Taking risks comes easily to me.  Every risk I have taken in my life has paid off in some form.  Taking risks starts with aiming beyond what I am capable of.  I have complete disregard for where my abilities end.  I try to do what I’m incapable of.   And taking risks allows me to beat myself up.  That is something I am so good at.  Yeah, if there was one thing I'm an expert at, it's beating myself up.

    I have battled addiction, depression, anxiety, self-hate, delusions of granduer, and on and on.. my whole adult life.  I began using drugs when I was fifteen. I found that they helped suppress the feelings that tormented me: attraction to men. I didn’t understand what that was about, nor could I talk to anyone about it.  I became an addict from the get-go.  Addicted to primarily Quaaludes and Speed, but took everything.  What I remember most was that I felt very defective because of my sexual orientation, which caused me to truly hate myself.
 

Notwithstanding the insanity of my life, I was able to graduate college and get a job.  I got a bachelor of music composition degree from USC, then started making sound effects for big budget Hollywood movies.  This is while I took 10 Qualludes a day and snorted a half a gram a coke.  But then I started to have  grand mal seizures.  I desperately needed help. I was told by a kind and understanding boss at work that I had better get clean if I wanted to stay working in the movie business.  Although I hated it and hated everything in the world, I agreed to a 30-day in-patient treatment program at a local drug and alcohol rehabilitation facility. There I was introduced to Alcoholics Anonymous, and was told that if I wanted to remain sober I would have to go to meetings every day for the rest of my life.  That did not sit well with me. I felt like I was in a religious cult. As awful as it was, something started to happen. Things began to change.  I saw other gay people, and heard stories that I related to.  There were other people like me.  I wasn’t a freak, and people wanted to know me, talk to me, and go out for coffee.  For the first time in my life, I was able to accept myself.  Eventually, I came out of the closet, and began the slow process of healing. I was sober for thirteen wonderful years.  I had friends, a career, my self-esteem, a relationship with my family, and all the material things that were important to me at the time.
   
    I wasn’t at all prepared for what happened next.  I was 38 years old, and without warning, my world fell apart.  My partner and my whole circle of AA friends became infected with the AIDS virus and died. This was all in the period of about one year. Life was truly unfair.  All I wanted to do was hide, which is exactly what I did.  I stopped going to meetings.  There was nothing for me there anymore, with all my friends gone.  I carried on with life as well as I could. I got sick of the movie business and decided to go to law school. I was in my early 30's.

    I remained sober on my own for many years, until the pressures of being an attorney got the better of me.  I Started drinking, and then came crystal methamphetamine.  For this workaholic, finding crystal was very sweet. From the moment I started using crystal I was hooked. And I spent as much energy trying to get off of it as I did using it. I would buy it, then flush it down the toilet, swear not to do it again, and the next day be back at the dealer’s house.  I knew I was killing myself, but I couldn’t stop.  What made matters worse is that I had been abstinent from drugs and alcohol for 13 years prior to that. I had some knowledge and experience of a healthy lifestyle. I had tools to stop the addiction, but crystal had its grip on me, and it wasn’t until a close friend died that I was jolted with the reality of needing serious, professional help.

    That was six or seven years ago. I was referred to a psychiatrist who I was told had success with getting people off of crystal. At our first meeting, he declared that I was “self-medicating” with crystal meth, and that my underlying problem was Attention Deficit Disorder.  I was also diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder.  Desperate to get off speed, I accepted his diagnosis and treatment. I was placed on a huge amount of medication.  Plus I got speed. 

. He said he would rather me use pharmacutical speed than street speed, acknowledging that crystal and the stimulants he gave me mimic each other in their actions, except that the doses of meth I was taking were not consistant and probably higher.

I felt better, and was able to stop using crystal meth for 11 months.

During the first year I saw this psychiatrist, he courted me, He came to my house on several occasions, purchased my art, asked me to go to the theatre with me. He was very interested in me as a friend and more. I was flattered and believed his actions were genuine, and that he was a great psychiatrist because he cared about my well-being so much.

After a year of courting me, it became clear that it was not going to go any farther than a doctor patient relationship, and he stopped pursuing me. We continued to have a strong relationship. We used many, many combinations of medications in an attempt to stabalize my moods and to control my ADD.

It is entirely inappropriate what he did regarding pursing me as a potential friend or date, Further, it is entirely inappropriate to prescribe any addictive medication to a person with a history of drug abuse. I did not know this at the time, and I loved the steady supply of speed,

I went back to crystal meth after 11 months and used it in combination with the prescription drugs. I told him, and he said if I needed it and it made me feel better, which it did, it was ok that I used it. He seemed to think it was not that terrible of a thing. He would sit on the floor during our sessions, and was not professional in any manner. I thought he was just being very real and caring.

For the last four years, I have wondered why the medication I was taking was not working. The doctor gave me more and more, and continued to increase the doses. He gave me other addictive medicine, claiming he would rather see me on too many meds than commit suicide, which some bipolar people do.

For the last four years, at various times, I have had a sneaking suspicion that the medications I was taking made my symptoms worse instead of better. I told him this and he never took me seriously.  He had taken an attitude with me because I did not accept his advances. I played a part in that. Since I loved the speed he gave me, I kept asking for more and more. He gave me whatever I wanted.

I have always, somewhere deep inside me, wanted to try to takle life without being medicated. I have gone to at least 6 psychiatrists in the last four years who have told me that the medications and doses I was on were high and a lot, but that I should not, under any circumstances, go off them. All of them, including my doctor, put fear into me as to what might happen if I went off.

I have spent countless hours researching the internet how to get off psychiatrict medication. That's how I found out about you people.  That's how I found out that millions of people have successfully gotten off these medications, and, although it's incredibly difficult, people even celebrate their madness instead of beating themselve's up about it.  What a concept!  So that means that whatever label they gave me is meaningless, and i can go through whatever I have to go through, be it mania, or depression, and I'm not going to die!  It will pass.

So I decided to try. The stories I have read, and the instructions on how to do this, tell of terrible withdrawal symptoms, often lasting years. They all tell of the great difficulty of getting off, but with persistence it can be done.  Last December, I began to taper 3 mg. Risperdal.  In March, I tapered 400 mg. Lamictal.  Two weeks ago, I began to tackle my addiction to speed.  This is the most difficult thing I will ever do.  I love speed.  I had to switch from Dexedrine to Concerta, because I was abusing (snorting) the Dexedrine, and you can't abuse Concerta.  I had been on huge doses of speed...Ritilan, Adderall, Dexedrine....my doc had no idea what he was prescribing me, and just sent me perscriptions in the mail.  So coming off speed has brought me to my knees.  To be continued....