Pills

Just hit the drug store.  Let's look at the haul by category, shall we?  There's vitamins in the mix, but they aren't interesting.

First? The easy one.  The prosthetic joint and severed muscles in my left shoulder.

Oxycodone 5mg - Schedule II controlled substance - opioid to treat severe pain

Next, the cholesterol.  I actually eat very heathily.  I went vegan for a while with my doctor monitoring and she concluded that my extremely high LDL is genetic.

Prostatin 10mg - reduces cholesterol

Except that the pill lowers ALL my cholesterol a lot.  It doesn't get to pick and choose.  So I have to get a lot of HDL cholesterol to, you know, stay alive.

Omega 3 Fatty Acids 4000mg

Everything from here on out is on account of my insanity.  "Emotional instability with psychotic features" is the current diagnosis.  The cornerstone of my treatment is motherfucking lithium.  19th century medicine at its finest.  What lithium does is turns you into a completely neutral robot if you're normal.  If you're manic, that dial is turned down from 11 to something a little more reasonable.  It actually inhibits brain activity.  A few of these drugs do.  I am dumber on my pills.  Lithium is important for me.  It dials down the emotions which is good because I do emotions wrong.  I feel angry when I get a gift, grateful when someone dies.  I fly off the handle if someone makes me a sandwich.  Weird.

Lithium 1200mg - used since 1859 to treat mania

So the first thing to do after turning down the dial on all my emotions is making sure I don't kill myself so let's turn up the minimum on the happy dial.

Citolapram 40mg - SSRI antidepressant to treat major depressive disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder, dementia

But if you turn up the minimum on the happy dial, you run the risk of flipping out when you get too happy!

Clonozepam 2mg - Schedule IV controlled substance - hypnotic to treat epilepsy, bipolar disorder, panic disorder, sleep sex

Now we've lowered the emotions, put happy in a midrange.  Time to work on part 2 of the brain, the hallucinations, paranoia... The authentically "crazy" and not just "asshole" part.

Risperidone 0.5mg - antipsychotic to treat schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, autism, dementia, tourette syndrome

Then you start to build up a tolerance and the crazy comes back when the lights are out, it's too quiet, or you are unoccupied, so you need a booster.

Quetiapine 100mg - atypical antipsychotic to treat bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, psychosis, autism

The best description I've heard of thinking on antipsychotics is that it is like walking through mud.  I'm going to add to that that it's like walking through mud next to a sidewalk.  All you have to do is step out of the mud, stop taking the pills, and you'll be able to walk/think just fine.  Go on.  Do it.  I take amphetamines to go all Limitless and counteract the cognitive slush of the pills.  As a bonus, I skip it some days.  I have the option to take a break from THINKING.  It's pretty cool.  There's whiskey in the easy chair and then there's whiskey in the easy chair with a chemical lobotomy.

Amphetamines 20mg - psychostimulant to treat ADHD and narcolepsy, used as a performance and cognitive enhancer, aphrodisiac, and euphoriant

Lastly, a parting word for Cranberry Extract and Diurex because these pills have a lot of side effects including increased appetite, weight gain, and water retention.  The appetite I can control, the weight gain is actually a mystery to me as to how that's a side effect and how that works, but the water retention (which can make it impossible to walk at its worst) is easily countered with a couple of these diuretics.