An update with the .25mg xanax I’ve been taking for anxiety this week. I take less than 1.25mg every other day.  The moth at my front door the past 10 days is a brilliant iridescent glowing green, gold and amber. With the xanax, it’s a plain brown moth. This is the kind of dumbing down of the senses I don’t like about prescription meds.  Don’t get me wrong, it kicks the temporary anxiety, but I don’t want to live in a world this small and dull all the time.

On stressful days, I’ve alternated days with Calm’s Forte, valerian root, ignatia amara and calcium.  I buy all my supplements very cheaply online at www.vitacost.com.   When things settle down I’ll stop the meds, I’m not an addictive personality.  Having a good sleep helps.

A friend asked if I knew what was causing my anxiety.  I replied, ‘What’s causing it? Oh maybe a friend who just passed, family recovering from surgery, a galpal recovering from a stroke, a gapal who won’t recover so we’re doing her paperwork and I’m locating all the files and family, a nephew in jail and I’m making all the calls for family to the court and getting records and such. Just the usual LOL.”

I’m having revelations about the Xanax as it relates to blocking intuition and creative capacity. Definitely when I take the Rx I can count on not having any creative ideas.  I have zero motivation, but I know to just stick to my discipline and do my work, to make myself go through the motions.  That even if I can’t really get in the slot for meditation, I sit for the sake of sitting for the full time anyway.  That even though I don’t feel like it, the work has to be done, the calls have to be made, the appointments have to be gotten to, the right foods have to be eaten and I have to work out, meditate and do yoga when I’d rather lie around and do nothing and think nothing.

Maybe a lesson is to not just learn more about anxiety and have a big taste of it myself for reference, but to observe that when I take the Xanax, while it knocks the anxiety right out, it takes away from motivation and desire and passion and joy.  It makes me feel blaaah and kinda bummed out, so I wouldn’t want to take it all the time.  Maybe it’s the combination of all the things going on around me that makes me feel a little bummed. And maybe people who take it all the time don’t realize it is taking away their drive and their joy.  Maybe it’s making them feel a little melancholy, too.

But what if I have anxiety all the time? I don’t but I know many who do.  That would be the time to look into lifestyle changes to relieve stress.  I feel I already help friends do that with my work, but maybe I need to step up my game or change it up.  My current M/O is that I believe most problems can be solved by stress reduction.  The less stress we’re under, the greater clarity of mind we have and the more we recognize how powerful we really are.  The more powerful we feel, the better life decisions we make.  Maybe I under-estimate the amount of stress friends are going through.  Maybe that is a reason why I was given a flare up of anxiety myself.  It wasn’t even a panic attack, although I felt on the verge.

I spoke with someone yesterday that as we spoke, I got the distinct impression she takes Xanax, I could feel the vibe of it in her. I’d not taken any since 2 days before.  She asked me to email her a link to my blog for something else and my guess is she will read my anxiety blog and call me and tell me she takes it. She might take 2-3 times what I do.   I recall after I’d had morphine in the hospital for 8 days in a row in 2004, months later I went through a stage where I could sense when someone next to me had ingested opiate derivatives.  I knew what that vibe felt like now, so I’d recognize it when I saw it.

I did find an interesting side effect.  When I take the Xanax, my hands don’t hurt that night.  A September 2000 car accident caused carpal tunnel in both wrists as well as nerve damage.  When I was going to the neurologist and had the real hand pain in the beginning, he gave me Elavil.  Nerve pain shows up at night because that’s when your hands stop moving, so it can keep you awake.  Elavil is also an anti depressant.  I recall I took it for a week after my dad died because my boss was in trial and I was basically the only one who could help him in court that week on that particular case. I told the doctor that I needed something to keep me from crying in court every day for a week yet wouldn’t knock me out.  He prescribed Elavil and it worked fine.  It didn’t stone me and  let me observe the grief yet not feel the need to cry and such.  Apparently why it’s used for nerve pain is that Elavil increases the chemical seratonin in the brain (which can have an impact on pain), along with effecting several other of the brain’s neuro transmitters, therefor decreasing nerve/neurological type pain.  But who knows how it affects spidey sense and mental clarity or if it will kick the anxiety which is the main issue.   As usual, the anxiety seems less of an issue when I’m not in the midst of it.

A friend remarked “How cool that you know your moth that way.”  I study the moths at my door because I know they are messengers. Everything is a messenger when you let it be.  I looked up MOTH TOTEM MEDICINE and found this:  “Moths are associated with the north, the region of rebirth and renewal. Change and progress – as each stage of their life cycle, they are something new, something different.  The majority of moths are nocturnal, creatures of the night, pathfinders.  They can negotiate their way through even the deepest glum, but know when they cannot make progress, so take the time to rest and revise.  Often moths are masters of camouflage, and they wrap themselves snugly within their wings. Moth represents security, comfort and warmth.  Moths bridge our world to the other worlds, they teach us about safety and security (both physical and emotional), and show us to be comfortable with who we are.”

Another timely message:  got it, read it; read it, got it.
Thank you, brother Moth.
Andrea

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