We put up our Halloween decorations yesterday. Glowy pumpkins and strings of spiders. It feels like October. We also celebrated the beginning of the All Hallows season with homemade vegan mushroom stew (three types of mushrooms and red bell pepper in a wine sauce) and cherry cobbler for dessert. Yum! My folks brought a huge box of dried shitake mushrooms for us from China, and we tossed several into the stew. I offered Hobkin a sliver, but he was dubious and after nosing it around, decided it couldn’t possibly be food. He likes button mushrooms well enough, and, of course, he loves red bell peppers. He didn’t get any cherry cobbler, though.
Had my p-doc follow-up this morning. Asked him if I could try Provigil to combat the incredible sleepies and exhaustion I’ve been feeling. He was game, but it’s not on The List of meds preferred by my HMO, so I’d have to pay for the whole thing out-of-pocket. AGH! Too rich for my mental disequilibrium. So we decided to go a different course. He prescribed me Adderall. Well, cool. That works too, although I’d rather not be on an amphetamine, but if it gives me too much of the jitters, we can then switch me to Provigil and have it HMO-covered ’cause well, we tried the preferred one and that didn’t work . . .
I feel like there’s a certain slapdash approach to the makeup of my pharmacological cocktail, but at least I’ve got some input with what the bartender puts into the shaker.
Writing Stuff
New Words: 300+100
New words on “The Better to . . . ” and a couple editing passes on “Shim Chung.” Flow is not happening. My muse needs to be beaten with a stick, the hussy.
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I’m currently taking Provigil for the same reason you wanted to try it. If I didn’t work second shift, I don’t think my insurance would cover it either.(it is prescribed for people with Shift Work Sleep Disorder and yes there is such a thing)
It does help with the faitgue, but it makes me very chatty. The first time I took it, my supervisor asked me what I was on, cause I was talking non-stop. Yikes! It’s similar to drinking several cups of coffee in a row. I call Provigil my legal speed.
“it is prescribed for people with Shift Work Sleep Disorder and yes there is such a thing“
Oh, I know! I worked third shift for a year and it just about killed me. Never again. Blargh.
“It does help with the faitgue, but it makes me very chatty. “
Hee. That might be a good thing for me, since is oftentimes dismayed at how laconic I can be. A bit of enhanced chattiness sounds like a positive side effect.
Mushrooms…bellpeppers…wine sauce…:drools: Oh, yummy!! You know, we grow shiitake mushrooms–it’s almost time to start soaking them. (Soaking=the process that ‘wakes up’ the mycillium and makes the mushrooms start to sprout). Then a few more weeks, and it will be mushroom time!
You grow them? Neat! Do you have like a cellar or mushroom fields or something especially for them? I’m not sure what the proper growing environment for cultivated shitake would be. I assume dark and damp?
Yes, indeed; dark and damp. Although, we keep them not-too-damp during the summer/winter. A regular sprinkling (sort of like a gentle rainfall, I suppose) usually suffices. But then in the fall/spring, we actually soak them in water, to be sure to saturate them, and move them to someplace that’s dark, damp, and cool. Within a week or two, the little buttons start breaking through the bark of the logs, and before long, they’ve grown into lovely large shiitakes. And oh! those are good!
We keep ours in a shaded, enclosed area of our greenhouse, under the misting benches. So, the general atmosphere is pretty damp, in addition to the spraying. Then, when it’s time to fruit them, we move them indoors to a corner of the studio (because it’s much cooler than the greenhouse, and because the studio’s rock-and-concrete floors can take the wetness of newly-soaked logs. 🙂 Probably there are better ways of doing it, but this is relatively inexpensive, and works well for me.
My muse needs to be beaten with a stick, the hussy.
Beat the strumpet!
Fooie. She ran away! Dammit.
You all are nicer than I am. I usually skip “hussy” and “strumpet” and skip right to “hellfire-spewing bitch.”
Adderall…Ick. Almost as bad as Ritalin. Both of them give me the jitters. Of course, Prozac gives me the jitters too, so…
Prozac doesn’t give me the jitters at all, and I got a pretty low starting dose of Adderall–so low that I think I may need to double it. I took a nap an hour or so after I took my first Adderall today. Not an impressive stimulant effect there. Although I’m thinking jitters would be preferable to the fatigue and lethargy that are my day-to-day of late.
I would speed like crazy for about 30 minutes on the Adderall, and then crash and sleep. My doctor could not believe it!
The Provigil worked wonders for my daytime fatigue, so I hope it does the same for you! Unfortunately, it just stopped working for me one day, but that is a problem with my disorder. I have strange reactions to meds and they almost always just stop working one day. 🙁
Wow, you got a 30-minute high from Adderall? That’s so weird. Although I have heard that it can affect some people much more intensely than others. Sucks that Provigil stopped working for you. Not to mention also being weird.
That’s one of the reasons I want to get on Provigil over Adderall, actually. Supposedly, Provigil doesn’t have the same tolerance/addiction build-up/let-down that Adderall does. Meh. Chemistry woo.
Regarding previous Hopkin the wonder steed posting…LOL. When I was a kid, I tied Barbie to Pixie the mini-dachsund’s back. Dachsunds, like skunks, aren’t make fer ridin’. Barbie flopped off and was dragged on her head for several feet. Pixie then whirled around and yanked her off with her teeth.
Barbie suffered much as my hands. So did poor Pixie.
I think Hobkin, with his fierce looking teeth and claws, would be a better fairy body guard.
Mushroom soup sounds tasty.
Pat Kirby
*snerk* Poor Barbie!
I suspect there would have been blood if I’d tried to tie a doll onto Hobkin. He barely tolerated the little Santa suit we trussed him up in, and that was years ago. He’s gotten less tolerant about affronts to his dignity as he’s gotten older.
Definitely a better bodyguard than a mount. Although if he could be convinced not to eat the sitees, I think he’d make a sumptuous couch.
There’s another option other than Adderall and Provigil, it’s called Focalin. I don’t know the exact diagnosis required for it though. I fall into a very broad diagnosis of Bi-polar, manic depressive, ADD, and Sudden Rage Syndrome, I think it’s a combo of the ADD and combating the sleepiness the other meds cause (my shrink might even stretch it and classify it as narcolepsy). Provigil tends to be so pricey and not always covered because it is the medication of choice of the Department of Defense for pilots and high alert type jobs. Focalin seems to work about mid-ways between the mellowness of Provigil and the pure force of Adderall. I don’t know the mechanism or how the drug functions, but there are no interactions with my dozen other meds that I take daily. Just more info if you need other options.
Love & Hugs,
FahKingNut
Thanks for the info! I hadn’t heard of Focalin before. Definitely something I need to research and perhaps see about bringing up with my p-doc at the next follow-up.
I’m usually somewhat lethargic also. And a bit spacey and daydreamy by nature – that’s the ADD and why I take Adderall. I’m on a fairly low dose but certainly higher than when I first began taking it. Because it is a combo of amphetamines it is a good idea to start low and ramp up to a level that works. At my normal dose, if I’m tired enough I can fall asleep after taking it, but it generally makes me much more alert and less foggy-headed than without. (I take Prozac, too, and that does not make me anxious at all.)
Yep. I’m pretty leery of being on an amphetamine long-term, so I definitely want to stay on the lowest effective dose possible. Prozac doesn’t make me anxious either, although it was supposed to not act as a sedative for me, and it seems to make me drowsy. Or maybe it’s not counteracting my sleepies like the doc said it might and they’ve gotten worse. Yay for pill popping. Well, maybe.
I have a blog!
Go me. Now I just have to work out how to use the damn thing. Like friending people and everything. Oh well.
Re: I have a blog!
Yay!! It’s about time, woman!