Power Pak - Jack Nicholls
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Update: Bad Medicine Makes For Bad Work
🕑 Added 2024-07-19 20:32:21 +0000 UTC
Howdy everyone.
It's been over a month with no video and I'd better give an update on that and where I'm at. Simply put, I've been thrown off track for a while but have now returned to things back to operating as smoothly as they should come. Planned projects haven't changed beyond some little games batting their eyelashes at me.
So what went wrong the past month?
I said previously I was working on a Consuming Shadow video and that it was ballooning. Well, it blew up too much and the structure that I'd planned for it was no longer working at all. It felt unfocused and messy. Simply cutting things out didn't feel right, so instead I went and chose to just rebuild it from the ground up while approaching things from another and more targeted angle. It'd keep the word count down and keep things focused on the main meat of the video. This plan-of-attack was one month ago today, and was sadly not foolproof.
This year I've felt my mental health get the better of me more often than I'm happy with, impacting my work, my social life, and my ability to enjoy just about anything. It's been an ongoing problem that I normally manage through several areas including therapy, but it's been getting to be a hurdle that keeps climbing higher as of late.
Then a friend recommended a certain treatment that they swore by. It worked wonders for them. My own experience with medication (SSRIs, SNRIs, and others) has ranged from limited success to completely bad experiences, but they said other things hadn't worked for them too and this one did the job. So, whatever, why not, I pursued this and got a prescription filled almost exactly on the day I decided I needed to rewrite the script.
These two life events met like a T-Bone crash between speeding cars.
Without getting specific, the medicine wrecked me. I was expecting there to be an adjustment period, but what I ended up getting lasted over three weeks. I felt sick, weak, dizzy, unmotivated, drowsy and lethargic, it made my depression and anxiety worse than ever, and perhaps worst of all is that my brain was just simply barely able to think. It's a weird sensation to feel there's a hole in your mind and where you used to be able to think, remember, or visualise things, there's instead a fuzzy cloud in the head that swallows everything. Needless to say, work felt impossible in this period.
I wanted to keep up with this since it worked so well for my friend, hoping everyday that the worst would be behind me, but after over three weeks with no improvement, missing social engagements that I wanted to do, I felt it was best if I cut it out. More harm was coming from this than help.
So now it's been a few days after stopping and I feel much closer to normal. I seemed to return quickly too. There might be some kind of come-down-haze, but I feel I am able to safely take the wheel of a car again. Also, I finished two scripts, one of which is the revised Consuming Shadow video, which has also now been recorded and editing has begun (you'll see the other when the time is right). I am hoping to get at least something done this month.
I apologise for the delay, and thank you all once again for your support. While I probably still have to think about my mental health, poisoning myself like I'm a bedbound Victorian patient is probably not the way to go. I look forward to talking to you all again soon.
Stay safe,
-Jack
Comments
fin
Yeah I've been on a few different types of medications, I really do sympathies with how you're feeling. You've built a community that loves you and supports you so hopefully we can help a bit by showing a lil bit of that. If you can beat kings quest then I think you'll turn out alright 🤣🤣. One step at a time!
Freyja Andersen
Good grief that's a rough sounding ride. I'm sorry the reward for your perseverance is "more suffering for longer", though it's good to hear that it's dissipating relatively quickly. Stratus' advice sounds downright sci-fi and I hope that stuff has made it to the underfunded rickety shed that is the NHS, it would be nice to have actual meds that work! I'm glad you're feeling better, and I wish you a lovely weekend.
Air Stratus
All my sympathies and best wishes. I’m well-familiar with the havoc that can come with trying out new meds, and the lows can get… extreme, as you’ve experienced. I’m sorry that you had to go through that, and glad to hear that you’re on the mend. Please take any time you need to rest and recuperate. Should the urge to experiment with treatments ever return, I’ve heard that genetic testing can help match people to meds they’re better able to tolerate. Caveat: I haven’t done enough research to fully throw my own weight behind it, and I went through the old process of trial and error myself. Also, I’m not too familiar with healthcare in the U.K., but it seems like there are a few NHS funded pilot programs for pharmacogenetic testing, and the NHS website says it should be covered so long as a GP recommends it. I’d recommend running it by someone more familiar with healthcare in England before taking my advice wholesale, but it might be worth a shot. All else being equal: I’m glad you’re feeling better, and hope that things improve. Good luck, and take care of yourself!
