Medications.

For all things medication.

Prescribed, over the counter, unprescribed, self-servicing or illicit.

Also, supplements, intravenous boosters, bum-tablets...

You name it.

What works, what der'n't.

Anyway, I've had a ropey couple of days cos of a change I should'f predicted I don't mind telling you.

I still feel weird and wrong.

I feel that only The Countess can relate.

I’ve stopped my anti depressants. For the first time since autumn 2015 through to autumn 2017.

The last time I did that, by 2016 I was having an extended burst of energy, doing things like booking nosejobs with the guy who does all the telenovela stars, on a whim deciding to take my son to see the opera live in Caracas (where I carried on regardless through the gunfire and mass starvation while he seemed unsettled by it), having at least twice weekly nights out that generally started at 3/4pm and continued until 3/4am, and going through no fewer than three men a week. And I felt on top of the world. This, in hindsight, seemed like I should’ve taken that as a warning that all was not so well.

At that was on the ‘on the rails’ half. Then my grandmother died, and by the second half of 2017, after he was found playing football alone in the streets of Knightsbridge in the middle of the night, I had to have meetings with child protection social services, at which my lawyer told me to be cooperative and do the ‘reflective diary’ they suggested, (and not keep snapping things like ‘he has a f-ing key’ when I was asked, at what they billed as a ‘first chat’ in that passively threatening way the state has, how he’d get in), as a show of willing to buy time before he frightened them off with legal hardball.

I’m hoping this attempt to become anti depressant free will be a more sensible and sustainable one. So far feeling good, chilled out, positive, although the withdrawal of electrical zapping is there. About another week should sort that.

Anyway, I only really take the very finest pharmaceuticals now.

The only illicit things I ever liked were the one with a slang name related to what’s on garden lawns, and the one that shares a nickname with a product of the Coca Cola family.

When my son was 3 or 4 I came to the conclusion that daily stoner sessions weren’t compatible with single parenthood or making a living. So I keep it for special occasions and one offs.

I do look with real envy at the lovely premises opening up in California et al, and hope we aren’t too far behind here in the UK. Lots of people would make passionate ‘budtenders’

My favourites are Wyllow, Sherbinskis, and Herbarium. I’d happily shop in them all. I can picture Wyllow on the Fulham Road, and Sherbinskis would fit nicely on Notting Hill Gate. Herbarium would look lovely in the ground floor of some new housing development instead of a Tesco Metro.

One day soon

https://www.shopwyllow.com/dispensary

https://mgmagazine.com/business/retail-merchandise/culture-and-cult-stature-sherbinskis-is-a-new-breed-of-dispensary/

https://herbarium.la/first-time-visit/

Gnome?

Nightjar wrote:I feel that only The Countess can relate.

Yesterday I could have related, because I felt very low at the prospect of the 2-day recovery period.

But as usual, now I'm halfway through, I feel better.

Does vodka count as medication anyway?

Interestingly I had a reminder this morning that the chemist I have my prescriptions sent to is closing down, and I have to nominate another.

(That isn't elliptical dr*g slang by the way, about my dealer having been arrested or anything.)

SiberianPrincess’sMidriff wrote:Gnome?

Yes, gnomes. Lively things when they’re crushed into a fine powder.

Fangirl Three wrote:

Nightjar wrote:I feel that only The Countess can relate.

Yesterday I could have related, because I felt very low at the prospect of the 2-day recovery period.

But as usual, now I'm halfway through, I feel better.

Does vodka count as medication anyway?

Interestingly I had a reminder this morning that the chemist I have my prescriptions sent to is closing down, and I have to nominate another.

(That isn't elliptical dr*g slang by the way, about my dealer having been arrested or anything.)

I’m afraid I have to say no. Having a mother who thinks it’s medication, and most of her friends are heavily reliant on it too, it’s the one substance I pretty much refuse to be around. It’s poison. It’s fair enough once in a while as one ingredient of many in a cocktail, but that’s not how people who are reliant on it or basically drinking it by the bottle generally consume it. It’s a step up from drinking meths in the gutter, but not by much. I’ve really never seen it go well, particularly if someone drinks it alone - passive suicide.

Brandy or whisky, neat (just one glass, if old enough to hold a glass, or no more than the dregs around the rim of the bottle rubbed across the gums if too young to be trusted with a crystal tumbler) can be medicinal in some circumstances. White spirits no - they’re basically poison. I sometimes see babushkas dodging death for another day in godforsaken parts of Russia on Google images or YouTube, and it wouldn’t really be a surprise to find out they were all actually in their 30’s and just off on a girls night out.

My mother will drink it for breakfast - like all addicts they lie, so she’ll often put it in a mug and swear blind it’s ‘just water’ - the only thing that’s watering is everyone’s eyes from the strength of the fumes coming from the cup.

Or she’ll sometimes go on health and fitness kicks - which involves filling a sporty water bottle with Smirnoff, and pretending she’s refreshing herself after feeling the burn. With each gulp the slur gets worse, and the snarl starts.

Woe betide you if you say ‘what’s in that bottle?’ - it’s 0-60 in a second flat, the defensive aggression is terrifying. I’m honestly amazed she managed to never be sacked - she had access to all those miniatures for hours at a time.

That ain’t medicine.

Chronic booze consumption counts as self-prescribed medicine.

It may not be very effective in the long round, but it still counts.

For the purposes of this thread at least.

That said, we already have several booze themed threads, so...

How booze interacts with other medications (of all colours and stripes), for good, ill or downright weird, is another matter though.

it’s the one substance I pretty much refuse to be around. It’s poison

Did you not post a week or so ago about drinking a whole decanter full of spirits?

There's a lot of measles going round at the moment, and a lot of talk about how it's a serious disease and not to be taken lightly.

Having been born too early for MMR, I've never been sure whether or not I've been vaccinated against measles. It depends on what part of the country you lived in.

I had the bright idea today of asking my GP, and she immediately confirmed that I had the old-style measles single vaccine, in 1971.

Fangirl Three wrote:

it’s the one substance I pretty much refuse to be around. It’s poison

Did you not post a week or so ago about drinking a whole decanter full of spirits?

No. I posted about finishing a partially full decanter of whisky, about a month ago. This conversation, and what I said, relates to vodka. For further avoidance of doubt, if it was all spirits, I’d have said ‘they’ rather than ‘it’, because while they are spirits, it is a spirit. It, and they too, are not medications.

It, and not they, have ruined my mother’s life and that is what I was speaking about. The fact that I finished a partially full bottle of something else, and regretted it, and paid for it with two or three days of illness and have barely touched a drop of anything since, has nothing to do with what I said above.

I have watched vodka ruin the life of one parent and take the life of the other. Everything I said in that post above relates to vodka, not spirits, vodka alone - from my own view of living alongside it, to how it can go well for certain cocktails but not by the bottle. And yet, I sometimes drink cocktails containing it.

However, now it’s been raised, yes it does apply to any alcohol being regularly drunk ‘by the bottle’. I certainly felt poisoned after a partial decanter of whisky, and that’s a rare thing. I believe my mother, for instance, has got used to operating with that level of after effect, as do most heavily dependent users.

I’ve gone and read from the top. The answer I provided is about vodka (and the parts that aren’t are clear enough because the types are then named), and the question I bolded was about vodka alone. If I were to write it fresh today, I can’t see how I could’ve been clearer. I thought I was actually being generous in sharing something both relevant to the question and so searingly painfully personal, not to mention ongoing.

‘Is vodka a medication?’ - in my view no, and then I explained why. I take on board Nightjars observation that any preferred substance can be used to medicate in the strictest sense of the word. I’d probably only say that the only medicinal benefits it can ever provide are palliative rather than curative, because it’s my experience that drinking lots of it over a long time is an act of slow suicide, via a process of obliteration.

I can understand the appeal. I’ve done it with sleeping pills and weed and various things. If I had the tolerance to withstand feeling physically unwell, or at least physically less well than I know I could otherwise be on a regular basis, I might do it via alcohol too. I’m just lucky that I don’t have that tolerance so, apart from occasional situational occurrences, I can keep it as a social thing to be done in public, with good company.

I’m aware that with both parents as alcoholics, there’s likely a weakness or a propensity within me that I need to be aware of so I’m OK with my alcohol consumption as is - months without, the occasional binge, and periods of light consumption where I get back into the habit of wine with a meal, usually with friends but once in a blue moon alone, (and I always pay for the latter in feeling mentally and physically ill afterwards).

Medicinal, no, the opposite.

Anyway, I’m pleased to say that after giving up my anti depressants, the symptoms of withdrawal have really subsided and there are almost no more electric shocks. Last month I had a lot, and felt very dizzy at times.

I’ve made peace with the fact that I’ll probably always be ‘on and off’ them, because that seems to feel empowering to me. ‘I’m never taking these again’ is something I’ve done before and was an automatic gate to failure.

I took this from not smoking - half serious attempts to give up, never again etc, all failed. The first time I said ‘I’ll still have one now and again if it’s offered’ and it’s been four years, plus about 30 happy cigs in that time.

As soon as I decide to be absolutist with myself, the universe refuses to cooperate. It’s taken a long time for me to learn something that valuable - don’t set impossible challenges, factor in the odd lapse of judgement.

I didn't mean to trample on sensitive issues with my light-hearted remarks.

Interestingly, it's never occurred to me to see one spirit as more deleterious than another. They're all just ethanol, water and flavouring.