A smaller cocktail

I saw my pdoc yesterday and he has reduced my medication cocktail - taken me off two meds. I've been having huge tremor issues (very embarrassing) and trouble with short-term memory. Now I'm only on four meds, much better than six.

Trouble is, I woke up at 3am and couldn't sleep again.

The flupenthixol I take as an anti-psychotic is a stimulant and it's now making me feel like my old self. Happy and energetic. It feels very good. And my tremors are not bothering me as much.

Now all I need to worry about is getting enough sleep.

Nevertheless, I love this up feeling. I should be able to accomplish a lot.

4:15 am - ever earlier

Good morning. It's 5:10 am and I've been up for almost an hour. Every day I seem to be getting up earlier - no need for more sleep. I've been getting about six hours sleep a night yet don't seem to need more, except for one or two brief naps during the day.

This is kind of nice. It makes for long, fruitful days. Yet I worry a bit about it as well. This is not normal, is it? Good thing is that I do feel tired at the end of the day - ready for sleep by ten o'clock. Though I'm very busy and active, I don't feel like I'm high.

The long mornings are wonderful though. Those early hours are the best part of my day. Lots of time to sit in my comfortable leather chair with a cup of coffee, just mulling things over. Time to journal, read my Bible - though I don't do enough of that, and pray - though I don't do enough of that either.

But, to tell the truth, I am a bit worried about these early risings - these short nights. It's not normal, is it? I'll try and get in to see my pdoc next week and go over this with him. About time to see him anyways.

Sleeping: an act of trust

It's a coincidence - or is it? - that Susan of Bipolarwellness just finished talking about sleeping problems, searching for solutions that might help Kira out. I had been planning on doing a post about the problems of getting rest. It was the topic for our last Living Room meeting.

Some of the practical solutions to getting to sleep are well covered in Susan's post. But there is a spiritual angle to this - one I haven't seen discussed too much anywhere. I read a wonderful book by Mark Buchanan and loved it so much that I am in the process of reading it again. The Rest of God: Restoring Your Soul by Restoring the Sabbath deals with rediscovering what it means to truly rest. One of the things Buchanan writes about is sleep.

I want to share with you what he has to say on this topic:

Sleep is "...a relinquishment. It is a self-abandonment: of control, of power, of consciousness, of identity. We direct nothing in our sleep. We master nothing. We lose ourselves and are carried like children or prisoners into a netherworld alternately grotesque and idyllic, carnivalesque and elysian. In sleep we become infants again: utterly vulnerable, completely defenseless, totally dependent. Out of control.

"...So sleep, besides being a necessity, is also an act of faith.

"...we give ourselves, regardless of our unfinished business, into God's care. We sleep simply because we believe God will look after us."