Calm Focus

The Human Condition is a fascinating thing. After not drinking for eight months, I drank every single day for four. (As an aside, what a wonderful, wonderful four months it was!) At some point however, after Christmas and before New Year, I stopped drinking again altogether - it simply wasn't working for me - and stopping I believe, is responsible for the seriously weirded out dreams I've been having here lately - uncovering an über-surreal reality. Go me.

Additionally, I ran out of blood pressure medication sometime after my birthday and before Christmas. I was hyper-aware of being out of meds, drinking, and not-exercising (I have some sort of silly correlation which prevents me from working out when I drink daily or something). I also decided the whole ace inhibitor thing was absolutely not working for me - it was damaging my calm - so I asked my doctor to put me back on the beta blocker, citing the above, which he not only agreed with, but also acknowledged by putting me on a norepinephrine-dopamine reuptake inhibitor and suggesting I chew nicotine gum. In his defense, I admitted I was thinking about chewing tobacco again, and while he supported rotating dopamine substitutions as a rule, wasn't entirely keen on smokeless tobacco, so I'm giving that a try. The funny thing about nicotine gum is in the instructions - they're written entirely from a cessation point of view, up to and including quitting the gum; not a word about beginners starting to chew nicotine gum for my specific purposes.

Despite all that craziness above, which should have adversely affected my health, my BP never got above 130/80. He therefore cut my previous prescription by three-quarters. Whatever life-changes I've gone through have apparently been notably stress reducing. Numbers don't lie. I'm basically on a 1/4 maintenance dose until I lose weight.

Were I depressed, the norepinephrine-dopamine-reuptake inhibitor would take weeks for me to notice. As I'm not, I'm expecting results in about a day. Given my history of being fanatically self-aware, I'll be sure to detail all the fascination here xD