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Terrible Tolerance and Waiting

By Health, ThinkingNo Comments

If you take medication for anything, including mental illness, over a long period of time your brain and body develops a tolerance. This means that the medication becomes less effective.

How long a tolerance takes to develop depends on the individual. You may get a tolerance quickly (weeks or months of use) or slowly (years or decades of use). The process of developing a tolerance is so gradual that you might not notice straight away. In fact it might take you quite sometime to understand that the symptoms of illness are returning and that you need to have your medication reviewed. Here is a line graph that shows drug effectiveness over time:

tolerance-drug-effectiveness-over-time

Tolerance: Drug Effectiveness Over Time.
Copyright © Antony Simpson, 2019).

When your brain and body develop a tolerance you have two options:

  1. Increase the dose of your medication.
  2. Change your medication.

Any increases in dose or changes to your medication should be done under medical supervision. Some medications have withdrawal effects, which you may experience if you suddenly stop or decrease the dose too rapidly. The withdrawal symptoms range from relatively mild to extremely severe.

I am on a mood stabiliser medication. Developing a tolerance to this medication is beyond terrible. It’s awful, frustrating and occasionally overwhelming. At times it feels like I am being tortured.

I visited my GP some months ago and explained how I was feeling in mood. My GP referred me to the Community Mental Health Team. I waited 4 weeks for a twenty minute telephone assessment.

I was passed onto a Pharmacist Prescriber, another 4 week wait. She appeared to be concerned about hypomanic symptoms that I’m experiencing including:

  • High levels of anxiety.
  • Increased energy.
  • Difficulties in falling or staying asleep.
  • Increased productivity.
  • Obsessional thinking.
  • Being very irritable and frustrated.
  • Switching between tasks without finishing any of them.
  • Increase in desire to have sex.
  • Feeling on edge and being unable to relax.
  • Writing a lot.
  • Fidgeting.
  • A couple of severe mixed mood states per week.

Although many of these symptoms may seem positive at first glance, when your mind takes them to extremes they become destructive and are damaging to your physical and mental health.

The Pharmacist Prescriber doubled the doses of my medication. This proved ineffective. She discussed my case with she with a Consultant Psychiatrist whom wants to see me. Another 5 week wait.

All this time waiting and struggling. All this time of lacking a quality of life. I can’t even sleep off the severe mixed mood states.

I totally understand how underfunded the NHS is and in particular how under resourced mental health services are. So far I’ve waited 13 weeks (3 months and 1 week).

The wait feels eternal and I am beginning to feel that nothing will ever change. I know rationally that neither these last two emotionally driven thoughts are correct. Yet it can be difficult to disregard how you feel.

On the plus side my first book Mental Health Wisdom – Developing Understanding & Empathy is coming along well and at a quick pace due to the hypomania. It is due for release in October of this year.

Write soon,

Antony

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Book Review: The Tales of Beedle the Bard by J.K. Rowling

By Amazon, Books & Authors, ReviewsNo Comments
tales-of-beedle-the-bard-jk-rowling The Tales of Beedle the Bard has been written and illustrated by J.K. Rowling. It contains five classic children’s stories, aimed at young wizards and witches: The Wizard and The Hopping Pot, The Fountain of Fair Fortune, The Warlock’s Hairy Heart, Babbitty Rabbitty and Her Cackling Stump and The Tale of The Three Brothers.

After each story are notes from Albus Dumbledore from the Hogwarts Archives. The introduction explains that Dumbledore wrote these notes about eighteen months before the events that took place at the top of Hogwarts’ Astronomy Tower.

Each of the tales in The Tales of Beedle the Bard are superb, magical and thought-provoking. They carry moral messages about: kindness, perseverance, vulnerability, tolerance and wisdom. Dumbledore in his notes discusses the stories messages, reveals more about his history and life at Hogwarts.

My only criticism of The Tales of Beedle the Bard is that it was too short (at 109 pages). I absolutely loved reading the stories and Albus Dumbledore’s thoughts about them. So J.K. Rowling, just so you know, if you do a More Tales of Beedle the Bard, you’ve got a guaranteed sale from a fan here.

Each copy of The Tales of Beedle the Bard that’s sold leads to a donation of £1.61 to Lumos, a charity working to change the lives of disadvantaged children. Lumos was founded by J.K. Rowling after she read about the terrible poverty some children live in.

The Tales of Beedle the Bard by J.K. Rowling is available to buy on Amazon.

Review soon,

Antony

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Book Review: Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank

By Books & Authors, History, Reviews4 Comments
Diary-of-a-Young-Girl-by-Anne-Frank

I remember being at school in that history class, the desks lined up facing the front. The old floor wooden, worn and dusty. The view from the third floor windows down to the concrete playground. And yet, I never really found myself looking out of the windows wishing to be elsewhere. Why? History fascinated me. We had one of those great teachers who was so enthusiastic about her subject. Yet despite this my memory of what we covered isn’t great.

However I remember seeing clips of a film about the Anne Frank Story, perhaps we watched it all, I don’t remember. But I recently remembered bits of the story from class and wanted to learn more about Anne Frank. So I bought and have recently finished reading The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank.

The Frank family were Jews at the time the second World War started. They along with another family had the foresight to hide from the German authorities. They knew from German propaganda that the authorities were blaming Jews for the problems the country had. They also knew it would not be long before they faced persecution if they didn’t hide. The Frank family went in to hiding in The Secret Annex, which is the place Anne Started to write her diary.

Anne starts off by introducing herself and explaining she wants a friend that she can write to and tell her deepest thoughts. She names this friend ‘Kitty’. Then she begins to write regular dated letters always starting “Dear Kitty”. These entries start by covering a lot about her family, the food they eat, the other family in the Annex and how they get on (or not).

You continue to read on through the diary and you start to see that this was a very intelligent girl. She self analyses, shares her dreams (of being a writer) and a huge driver in her life is to improve herself. As her body begins the transformation from girl to young woman she writes about the changes she is under going both physically and emotionally. She starts to get frustrated with her parents, they don’t understand her; she starts to have feelings for the boy who lives upstairs Peter. You begin to connect with her and remember your own adolescence, the dreams you had and your first crush.

Throughout The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank, Anne keeps you informed on what is going on in the war and what the families living in the Annex think it means for them. Anne discloses how her paralysing fear gets the best of her at times and she reflects on how lucky she is to still be alive. She often thinks about her friends from life before the Annex and wonders what’s happened to them.

Although in the war things are going well, Britain and the other Allies are making progress; things worsen at the Annex. The are break ins at the factory below The Secret Annex, the food is poor with little nutritional value and toileting is limited. But at least they are alive with renewed hope that British and other Allied troops will soon be at their rescue. And then the diary ends.

Throughout the diary I looked for those famous words “In spite of everything, I still believe there’s good in people.” But I never found them.

The Afterword explaining the details of the families discovery in The Secret Annex by the authorities and what happened to the the two families members individually as well as their hiders. The conclusion also covers what’s happened historically since then. Otto Frank (Anne’s Father) deciding to publish the diary, the diary selling well, the house of The Secret Annex being saved from demolition and becoming more than a museum. Become a place were people can learn tolerance, in the hopes nothing like this ever happens again.

The Afterword explains that the famous quote (above) was actually said by Otto in a news paper interview after the diary had been published.

I felt that I knew Anne after reading her intimate diary and that she displayed the true spirit of humanity. The true spirit of humanity consisting compassion, hope and love on all levels. That through dark and tough times we should keep these good aspects of humanity and know that we will come out of the dark times stronger. The book is a aids as a reminder of the mass genocide that happened during the war and that intolerance breeds the conditions that would be necessary in order for mass genocide to happen again.

You can buy The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank on Amazon.

Write soon,

Antony

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I aim for posts on this blog to be informative, educational and entertaining. If you have found this post useful or enjoyable, please consider making a contribution by Paypal:


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