`urp` groannnnnnn……
How in the name of all that is reasonable is it possible to eat this much and not blow up??! I just polished off a huge enchilada dinner, complete with salsa and chips plus a slice of flan to top it all off, and even though I feel like a beached whale I know damn well I’m going to be hungry again before bedtime. I’ve got only three more nights of Zyprexa to go, so the voracious appetite should soon be a thing of the past; but the way I’m scarfing food now I feel like I could gain ten more pounds by the weekend. Yikes!
I may not have put on much thus far, but in the mirror I see a fuller face and a bloated abdomen. I feel thick and lazy and unmotivated, like I did before I lost the sixty pounds. My eating is so out of control, in fact, that I promised my family and friends that I’ll never have another psychotic episode again as long as I don’t have to take medication that makes me wolf down everything but my shoes! (They just laughed at me and reminded me that I wasn’t exactly in charge when this latest go-round with mania took matters to a whole new level.)
There is one other drug that does this to me, and that’s prednisone. I have to take a short course of it every couple of years or so when I have an asthma attack that won’t quit, and not only does it make me hungry as a bear, it touches off my mania and dials up the crazy a few notches. Oh goodie, just what the world needs. Last time I was on that, I had what I now know to be a mixed episode, and for the space of a week I was laughing through tears as I blasted political opponents on the Internet and almost got myself banned from a favorite website for inviting another member to remove his cranium from his rectal vault. But, I digress.
I would like to find out some day what makes some psych meds so likely to induce overeating. The irony of it all is really just too much: mood stabilizers took away my lifelong tendency to eat compulsively (hence the 60-lb. weight loss), but Zyprexa makes me so hungry that I could sock away enough groceries to feed a Third World country for a weekend. The fact that it is also extremely efficient at tamping down mania makes it worth using in a crisis, but I feel sorry for people who have to take large doses or stay on it for very long. I’ll stick with my Geodon, thank you. (Although it could be said that if Geodon had been totally effective, I wouldn’t have needed the Zyprexa. Ouch.)
Oooh, look, is that pumpkin cheesecake??
bpnurse 