Also, there's something I didn't mention out of concern that Lanny could call off the meeting, and rightfully so, in a way. I had my first mild epileptic seizure, and it was both visual and auditory.
I was lying in bed. It starts with this sort of buzzing/humming/static, not so much as a sound, although there may be some overlap, but a feeling in your brain. This is excessive neurological activity beginning to trigger a seizure. I would notice it would ramp up when I closed my eyes, like my imagination was running out of control or I was rapidly descending into pre-sleep dreaming. I noticed that when I opened my eyes and looked at the light on the ceiling and it was out of focus, as if my eyes were cross eyed or unadjusted. I had noticed some minor visual disturbances, particularly tracers, some time after the ER visit, but memantine seemed to take care of them. Then came these auditory hallucinations, which were, once again, like losing control of your imagination, emanating from one corner of the wall and going down a segment, possibly with mild visuals, I'm not sure. Then came the full on visual hallucination of my hand or something near it turning into this shifting black metallic object. After that the full seizure began and I began seizing, my body spasming, but relatively mildly, and reality seemed to be replaced with another room that had just been created. There didn't seem to be anything meaningful about it, or particularly beautiful, just a different unknown room, a fairly small place. I thought I was standing up and walking to the living room to grab some meds and thought for a moment that it was shifting back to normal, but felt a mild sense of panic when I was in what I thought was my living room and the hallucination didn't go away. That would've been pretty horrifying, a seizure that leaves you in a state where reality is permanently replaced by a hallucinated, oddly coherent, alternate world. After that I cam to and was still in bed, so it was all in my mind.
It was like a mild DMT-esque trip and lucid dream.
The particularly interesting thing is, and the first thing that came to mind, was that I recalled reading that electro convulsion therapy was developed due to the observation that after (major?) seizures sometime afterward, once they settled down, their mind seemed unusually clearer and their mood brighter.
And this is exactly what happened! Just while I was feeling lousy, and right before I might Lanny. The sort of hard reset effect may have allowed me to function far more normally than I would have otherwise.
It's like free ECT! As long as it didn't cause any damage, if this happened about once a week while lying in bed that would be great, especially now that I know what to expect.
Could be a side effect of the phenobarbital being fully out of my system, or just lasting effects from that prolonged bout of heavy drinking.
As to why I didn't go the ER, well, on Friday night I made the incredibly stupid mistake of taking half a cup of poppy seed tea after a long break because I wanted to ease some of the depressive symptoms, the sense of pain that can develop (they actually are quite potent acute antidepressants). The first brew of 200g of seeds. I noticed I may have been experiencing respiratory depression, based on breaths per minute and how shallow they were, along with a desire to sleep. Due to the longer time to peak of poppy seed tea and the duration I was definitely worried that if I fell asleep I wouldn't wake up, so I used my Narcan nasal spray, got it without a prescription for free with my insurance at a CVS pharmacy and walgreens is planning to expand it this year. Then the other one in the pack, 4mg each. Well, I woke up alive and fine, but I sure as hell learned my lesson. At least I was responsible enough to buy the Narcan beforehand. Poured the rest of the tea down the toilet and won't use it anymore.
So I don't want to risk having them test my urine and finding opioids in them, which could fuck things up for the rest of my life. Gonna have to wait a few days for it to leave my system.
Brief seizures, especially mild ones, don't cause brain damage, although you can hurt yourself if you fall, but there are clear signs well before it fully occurs, so just lay down. Have 200g of large crystal phenibut which I'll be using at 250mg 3x, then possibly moving down to as low as 200mg 2x as the effects incrementally become stronger. Should add another layer of protection. The memantine and lithium carbonate are great, though, for their effects on the NMDA receptor, limiting excessive levels of glutamate, the primary excitatory neurotransmitter and most common one, IIRC. T-PAIN would likely help as well, as it's mechanism is largely based on glutamatergic modulation.
The neurobiological properties of T-PAIN (Stablon): from monoamine hypothesis to glutamatergic modulation
Prevents and reverses negative changes caused by stress (anxiety counts) and depression. Describes the following effects: Increases/restores neuroplasticity, anxiolytic, cytoprotective (Cytoprotection is a process by which chemical compounds provide protection to cells against harmful agents), procognitive,
"A modification of glutamatergic mechanisms by T-PAIN may therefore be implicated in its ability to oppose the negative influence of chronic stress upon hippocampal neurogenesis, cell proliferation, and dendritic remodeling, processes profoundly disrupted in depressive states (21,44,63). The emerging pharmacological profile of T-PAIN suggests that this antidepressant may serve to ‘normalize’ synaptic function, thereby allowing the chemical signal to reinstate the optimal functioning of critical circuits necessary for normal affective functioning."
