It is 1:19pm on a Friday afternoon. Just a few weeks ago I would be wrapping up my work and heading to the clinic for Spravato.
Spravato is an interesting medication. First of all, your body does not react the same way every time in terms of side effects. Sometimes you might feel awful and sometimes you might feel almost high. It’s a relatively new treatment and within a few treatments I could see why the doctors seemed excited by it. The side effects you feel when receiving the medication help you to relax. If you pair that with some positive music, positive affirmations, etc, the treatment itself is rather therapeutic. But that is just the side effect!
I did not realize how much the Spravato has been helping until now that I have gone from weekly treatments to now having gone two weeks without treatment.
The most fascinating thing Spravato has done for me is to turn down the negative noise in my head. No Spravato, more noise. Think of it like how they depict having an angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other shoulder. Now imagine the devil never NEVER stops talking. The angel tries to weigh in but the devil is loud and overbearing. All you can hear are the thoughts of the devil on your shoulder. The thoughts of your short comings, your failures, your biggest weaknesses are flashing in a show of dominance. And it was only a matter of time before the worst of it all has returned.
I cannot stop thinking about Bic. I have not Bic-ed since before Thanksgiving, but every day it gets harder not to. And the urge to hurt myself gets stronger and the images start flashing through my head like the worst slideshow you have ever seen. All the gore you can imagine but I will spare us all the details.
And it’s a constant spiral of thoughts. If I think about one negative thing is just snowballs into an avalanche of self-loathing. Every single thought, if left alone, leads to me wanting to die. It is just the way my brain contorts things. It is the devil that takes control and screams over the delicate warnings of the angel.
Spravato helps to turn down the devil’s volume. It helps me to hear the other side. It takes away some of the explosive intensity that leads to Bic. It somehow manages to do whatever it is my brain needs it to do and it helps me to feel so much better.
I am feeling so incredibly hopeless right now. Over 30 years looking for relief. Some things helped here and there or for a period of time, mostly I just learned to live with it. But over the years I have grown weaker and find it so much harder to pretend that all is well.
I was so scared to try Spravato and now I am scared I may not be able to continue taking it at all because now I have to get new insurance and go through the approval process all over again.
I am desperately trying to get things moving as quickly as possible, but of course, the holdup is a letter from my previous employer stating why my insurance was terminated. I got the letter from my previous insurance saying I had coverage, but that wasn’t enough. The odds of that happening in any semblance of a hurry are pretty much slim to none.
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