I have decided that it might be wiser to stop looking for the cameras all the time.

All of this anxious paranoia came to a head on Saturday, after a really lovely week of perhaps-manic partying and the like:

Monday: Bunny funeral, sadness and vodka.
Tuesday: Stephen and I went to wildness, met some nice people and danced, it ended up surprisingly fun.
Wednesday: Cozy times with Katie
Thursday: Alex Castle came over, and he, Stephen, Katie and I drank and played the ungame.  At some point I put on the romper and romped.
Friday: Woke up with a nasty cold sore, but then Jonathan came to visit, we hung out with him and Rob and Stephen, did tarot readings, ate pupusas, had a lovely day into the evening, when Stephen's friend Mario came over and we all did interpretive dancing in the kitchen.

Whew.  I am not usually quite this social.  Problem is, somewhere along this lovely trail of amusing funtimes, I ran out of ativan/lorazepam.  Took the last one on Friday, and work up Saturday with an ungodly case of the withdrawals.

So, no make-up, just a bloody pusing cold sore (lovely!). I work up early after a restless sleep, rife with nightmares of voices outside, the police stalking me, my creditors investigating me, my parents, even, whom I know are way too busy to stand outside my bedroom window.

I woke up around six and decided a booster shot of espresso was necessary.  Had four shots from the machine, then read the wikipedia article on surveillance.  This is probably the worst thing I could have done.  I had taken my usual pillsies that morning (abilify, lamictal, lexapro, but no ativan) and read a little bit of The Peep Diaries, so by that point my paranoid psychosis was in full swing.  Armed with Katie's big black hoodie and peering anxiously out of the curtain, I decided that there must be someone out there watching me.

Looking for the camera, looking for the camera.

And then...the withdrawals began to escalate.  I had chills, shaking, shaking so hard I thought I was heading into another seizure.  Voices whispering watching.  I kept throwing up first coffee, then bile, then water, then mucous, more bile, forget eating anything today.

Katie woke up and we decided I should go to the ER.  This is the sort of decision I had been fearing for along time, because I fear being locked up in the psych ward again, of course, and I'm not so keen on the huge bills.
But, ativan withdrawals can be fatal, and I knew my immune system was way down.

The hospital ended up being not that bad, not at all as bad as I had anticipated and feared.  There was no one else in the Emergency Room except for an old couple and a young women crying hysterically into a salad bowl.  I got in fairly quickly, and after telling my story several times, showing them my prescription bottles and
talking to a social worker who thought the cold sore indicated domestic abuse....soon I was sitting there on the stretcher with a pill of subcutanious ativan dissolving under my tongue.

All the jitters and the voices and the seizure-fear shaking gushed into a warm pile of loopy-loos.  I felt normal again.  I felt happy and silly and calm.  Soon Katie and I were joking about what the devices on the wall must be for, and all was well.

So after that experience, I've decided I must be more careful, both with allocating my prescriptions (I have a pill wheel), and with doing things that aggravate my anxiety.  The night after getting out of the hospital, I watched Lawrence Welk with Katie and Stephen, and drank chicken broth and popsicles.  Slept for the entire next day and night after that.

Now it's Monday, and time to think and work again, if I can.  I'm on my third cup of coffee, and it must stop here, I think, no more caffeine.  Katie-dear is still sleeping.  I have been thinking about what I can do to not feed the paranoid anxiety, and that means:

• not going to things like the Psychiatry Museum of Death
• not researching surveillance and especially not on dubious internet sources
• not rereading The Peep Diaries, as much as I would like to
• taking one mg in the morning and one at night, as opposed to both in the am.
• Stop looking for the cameras.  Sure, they're there, there were several in the ER, even in the room I was in, but it just validates the paranoia to keep spotting them.