The Emotional Color of Perception


I have an evil twin.
He comes out and takes over my body and mind when I am on 30 milligrams for two days in a row. Yesterday was one of those days.
Today is a 60 day, so I can really see the sharp contrast between the two personalities I currently exhibit.
What is it like to suffer from Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD)? (And when I say "suffer," I mean that EVERYONE around me suffers as well.)
When the "real" me, the undrugged me, comes to the fore and takes the wheel, everything is different.
It is not that any stimulus triggers the anger or rage, it is that the anger or rage is simply stuck in the "on" position. I could be in a stimulus-free environment, with the perfect air temperature, food, drink, and comfort, and I would still be borderline furious, wanting to destroy the entire universe.
Yesterday, all day, I was raving, passionate about the littlest thing, adamant about it all, and wanting to argue with every detail, every minute fabric of every idea. The slightest sound set me off, and in the absence of sound, I sat, clenching my fists, Hulk-like, imagining myself smashing things to smithereens and enjoying the destruction.
It was hard to be around me yesterday because I argued, I sat, sour-faced, I stayed silent, simmering with the pressures of rage just underneath the weakest of covers. I tried to keep it at a minimum, but as the day wore on, I just could no longer see anything but anger --at everything and at nothing. It was my all-consuming reality. Hulk, without the calming-down period. Just hulking rage all day, with me, trying to contain it so that I didn't flip out completely --but trust me, it was in there, spoiling for a reason to launch the nukes, gleeful at the prospect of war.
Scary and shameful.
Today is the complete opposite. I am calm, relaxed, happy, un-annoyed, and feeling like a normal human being again. It feels like I was gone the past day or two and now I'm back. Things that would have just added to the fury have returned to being normal things like the remote control's being just out of my reach or the toilet paper roll's needing to be changed.
I am essentially a different person on 60 mg. I like this person. I want to be this person. That other person scares me, especially because I can hear him in the distance very dimly, and he is berserker rage and fury, pacing the background, just waiting to get back to the controls.
I don't like that I am two people. I don't want that anger and rage in me anymore, but it is always there.
The 60 milligrams I take can be a problem all its own: I am fat, and I cannot exercise without getting the zaps, and if I get any testosterone built up in me, the rage gets even stronger and more capable.
I'm hoping zoloft or lexapro can help me get off the zap thing I deal with now.
Getting there is the challenge, and it is a dangerous one.
So the Doc gave me Xanax to help sedate the MEAN, and I'm hoping I can get down to no Cymbalta so I can start the next GAD pill.
The really scary part about this is that when I am in the grip of the MEAN, it feels right and just and like it's really me. And the voice of normalcy and reason that I possess on 60 mg becomes the distant voice, totally ignored or even unheard.
Brain chemistry colors my emotional perception in a way that is undeniably obvious to me.
Who am I?
It depends on how many milligrams I have had.

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