Stimulating

Since I started this blog it has been my goal to try to write every morning. I emphasize the word try, because I know that some mornings will be more hectic than others, some days I just won't be in the mood, and some days I simply won't have anything to say.  I don't want to put pressure on myself to write when I'm not "feelin' it," but making it a goal to do it every day means (in theory) I'll write more often than not.

It's been over a week since my last post, so what's the deal?

While there have been a few mornings when I've gotten caught up working on other things - I do have a show coming up in February, after all - I wouldn't say that I've been especially busy. And I've got a whole list of topics I want to cover, so it's not that I don't have anything to talk about. So is it my mood? Well, sort of. Don't get me wrong: I'm still feeling great most of the time. But the stimulating effect of the Wellbutrin has been affecting my sleep and the resulting morning grogginess has been making it difficult for me to get any writing done.

Sleep has been an issue for me my entire life. My mom tells me I slept so much as a baby that she'd have to wake me up to feed me or play with me (sounds like the perfect baby to me). As a kid I would sleep for 16 hours if no one woke me up. In high school I missed my first period classes so often I had to take summer classes in order to graduate. As an adult I've been reprimanded at work countless times for being late. No matter how much I slept, I never felt like I'd had enough. I'd wake up feeling groggy and annoyed. It would take me a good hour to really feel awake. The very concept of becoming a "morning person" was as foreign (and unattainable) to me as trying to become a different species.

Enter: Technology!

About a year ago I discovered an iPhone app that tracks your sleep quality and wakes you up at the perfect time in your sleep phase so that you feel rested and relaxed. It wasn't long before I was happily hopping out of bed as my alarm played gentle tones, gradually increasing in volume. Mornings took on a whole new meaning to me. I looked forward to the extra time to work on projects and went through my morning routine of feeding the animals and making a pot of tea with a spring in my step. Now, after having used the app for this long, I frequently wake up without the help of my alarm. I'm not sure I could sleep in late if I tried. As my doctor put it, I'd retrained my body and virtually eliminated one of the more common symptoms of depression. Well done!

Since I've started Wellbutrin, however, my problems with sleep have shifted in the other direction. I'm no longer sleeping too much, I'm sleeping too little. Or, at least, I'm not sleeping as well. According to my handy little app, my sleep quality (measured by how much movement I do during the night using the phone's accelerometer) has gone from 90-95% to around 75%. I'm still waking up before my alarm, but I feel...too awake? It's like I've been jolted out of sleep and have no choice but to get up, otherwise I'll just lay in bed tossing and turning and feeling jittery. It's sort of like that "cracked out" feeling you get when your illicit drugs won't let you get to sleep...um...not that I have any first-hand experience with that.

I wasn't concerned about it at first, but three weeks of unrestful sleep have begun to take their toll on me and I'm noticing that I'm feeling cranky and having a hard time concentrating. These were symptoms I was experiencing when I was deep into my depression, and it's frustrating to be experiencing them again when I'm generally feeling so much better. It doesn't feel exactly the same as it did before - the crankiness and inability to concentrate are coming more from a place of being "too high" rather than "too low" - but the resulting behavior is the same: I can't write. I can't focus. I am short-tempered. I even had to cut a dog walk short the other day because the dog was misbehaving so consistently that it was just more than I could handle in that moment. I thought this was something I could learn to deal with because the benefits this medication have been so positive overall, but now that it's affecting my work I know that I will have to address the issue more directly. I can't just sit back and hope that it evens out.

I have a followup appointment with my doctor next week to discuss the new medication, and this is something I will bring up. Perhaps a lower dose will help, or maybe we'll try a different medication altogether. I'm a little disappointed, though. I really thought I'd lucked out and hit the jackpot on my first pull. But I know that the human body is a little more complicated than, "here's a pill that will make you all better," and my three weeks out of the fog have given me the motivation and enthusiasm to keep trying until I get it right.