It's a struggle, my friend. Such a struggle. It's exhausting managing dependence. Doctors rarely seem to appreciate just how much will-power and energy it takes to maintain an even keel when you're someone with a history of drug-use; it takes
everything out of you.
I'm as American as I am Canadian (by lineage, I mean), and I love aspects of the US, but I hear you about it
not really being "the land of the free". Seems like things are looking up, though, in some states at least? But I really feel what you're saying; many times have I lamented the fact that I can't se
If you ever get a chance to try cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT), I've found it really helpful for making my depression easier to handle (I was diagnosed with persistent depressive disorder in my early 20s). Which, in turn, makes it a little easier to keep my drug-use within healthy-ish parameters, and gives me a little more energy to work with each day.
It's a nice alternative to talk-therapy in that it provides you with the tools needed to cope with depression; the whole "teach a man to fish" vs "give a man a fish" thing. Talk-therapy is useful, but it gets expensive fast, and I've found CBT to be much more cost-effective with much longer-lasting benefits. It took me a while to make using those tools a habitual thing, but my quality of life improved significantly once I did. You can also probably find a CBT work-book online for free, or torrent one.
A lot of CBT tools might not work for you (that was the case with me), but it's more about providing you with a big 'ol toolkit and letting you play around with different things until you amass a collection that works for you.
It's also usually conducted in a classroom-type setting, rather than one-on-one, which some people (incl. myself) find less intimidating. I imagine it's more expensive in the US, but in Canada, CBT courses cost around $100 for ten two-hour classes, which is a hell of a lot cheaper than a $150/hour therapist.
You've probably already heard of it, I just thought I'd mention it on the off-chance that you hadn't, or on the off-chance that you (like me, before I tried it) have previously written it off as being pseudo-science or not worth the time/money. CBT, in my opinion, is a really excellent treatment that pretty much anyone with mental health issues or a history of addiction benefits from. I truly believe it should be a mandatory class in high school; it's certainly more useful than almost everything else they teach you.
As an example of something that I thought sounded REALLY dumb until I tried it, there's a CBT tool called "dunk yo face" in which you fill a large bowl with ice water and hold your face underwater for 30-60 seconds. Sounds dumb, but the shock that the ice water delivers forces a lil psychological 'reset' of sorts that can, for example, totally short-circuit drug cravings. The benefits only last a short-while, but by interrupting negative thought loops it lowers your perceived emotional intensity, which allows clear-headed problem-solving if you're stuck in a self-perpetuating negative feedback loop that has you freaking out. It sort of hurts, but there's a reason why people who self-harm to manage mental-illness do so; pain and discomfort are effective tools if used correctly. This, though, isn't self-harm, obviously, without the galaxy of issues that self-harm raises.
Mindfullness gets a bad rap (and is a big part of CBT), and I used to assume that my problems were too great to benefit from something so simple (ditto stuff like meditation or breathing exercises). But I am consistently amazed by how well it actually works, even as someone who traditionally solved their problems by administering substances. There's situations in which I find CBT tools as effective as low doses of benzos, and it feels really empowering to solve problems that seem insurmountable using only the power of the mind.
CBT is, imo, a
truly valid and
surprisingly effective method for handling depression, anxiety, or most other psychological bugaboos. If you've tried it in the past and thought it was a crock of shit, it may have just been that you had a bad teacher... there's so many CBT tools that, if taught/learned correctly, you should find at least a few that work.
Sorry this comment is all over the place, I unintentionally took a mild caffeine overdose, which makes my writing a bit of a shit-show
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EDIT- P.S., have you ever tried clonidine? I'm not prescribed it any more... I stopped all Rx drugs over the Summer as part of an experiment to see if I could get by using only CBT and talk therapy. Used to take citalopram (max dose), bupropion (max dose), gabapentin, clonidine, trazodone, and quetiapine (Seroquel). Clonidine ranked as high as gabapentin in efficacy, without a problems related to tolerance.
Everyone's different, but it was a wonder-drug for me in terms of helping anxiety. I too feel like I need stimulants to manage my depression, and I too used ephedrine (and caffeine). Both were better than nothing, but the anxiety they generated was really detrimental to my well-being, and made me asocial and more likely to abuse drugs to deal with it.
BUT, the clonidine took away most of the negative effects of the ephedrine, and had next to no potential for misuse!
Lots of drug users only think of clonidine as a tool for opioid withdrawal, but I found it to extremely useful for making stimulant treatment (without having access to the better Rx stims) a more feasible/realistic way to handle my depression. Also helped with my Generalized Anxiety Disorder.
Idk if you depression has a big anxiety component, but propranolol (the beta blocker) was also useful. Both propranolol and clonidine are often pretty easy to talk a doctor into trying, ime.
I too need to take
something all the time to avoid feeling like imma kill myself or give in to hardcore addiction. And I've found the trick is to find things that don't have abuse potential but still work okay, like clonidine or caffeine or nicotine or valerian root or gabapentin (I hate caffeine and eph, and both make me anxious as balls with a come-down that feels worse than that of low-dose amp., but they help a tiny bit, maybe not unlike ephedrine for you.)
Doesn't stack up to recreational drug use or hard(er) Rx drugs, but if you look at it not as an alternative to real drugs but as an alternative to drug abstinence, it's certainly better than nothing. I wish I had access to dexamp or even lisdexampfetamine, but... neither of us had legal access to those, and both you and I are stuck making the best of this sometimes/often shitty hand we've been dealt. At least we're not dead or living on the street, right?
Good luck with you week, buddy.
-Dus Aster
