The Return

 So yeah.  That's what it looks like when I don't want to admit something.  Nearly a full year since I've made an entry here, and to put it succinctly, it's been because I haven't wanted to admit my level of dependance on THC.

I'm doing better these days; I talked to my most recent psychiatrist more about getting back on ADHD meds, since they'd helped so very much during college, but KPs guidelines state that I need to be showing "improvement" to get them when cannabis is in the picture, even when it's for a medically valid reason.  I'm happy to report that I was able to muscle through November almost entirely clear of using the straight THC.  My primary interventional is now mostly CBD at a 10:1 ratio, and I'm using significantly less in overall volume as well.  Which means I've just gotten to restart said ADHD meds, though it's early enough that I'm not really seeing a distinct response.

I'm still at the point of wanting the THC more than I'm comfortable with, though.  I've gone from going through nearly a gram of 93% pure extract to averaging 1-2 hits per day, and I've finally managed to get taking a hit out of the array of actions that my body chooses from for idle frames.  Still not using it exclusively for pain or for pleasure; I'd really prefer to solidly hold to one or the other, just so that it's not so easy to backslide, but I'm realizing that it's part of how I've been goalposting when I need to do something that sucks, or that I'm too tired or defeated by pain to do.  "You just need to get to the finish line, then you can take a hit and turn off for a few minutes."  It's maladaptive, in the bigger picture, but effective enough that I'm inclined not to put too much worry into it at the moment.

Migraines and depression are doing better - I spent a good portion of the summer doing transcranial magnetic stimulation (feels getting kicked in the frontal lobe several times a second by a two year old; weird, but effective) and had a reasonable response to that.  Not so much a decrease in symptoms as feeling better in general to have a concrete example to point to where I've been actually trying when my brain is being shitty.

Around December things started moving.  Discussions with the current neurologist turned up the fact that the guidelines for botox migraine treatment had evolved in the decade or so that I've had that treatment, and the amount I'd been having injected each treatment over the last few years has actually been under what's considered to be clinically effective, which netted out as them having the head room to increase that amount starting with the December treatment.  Seems like it's noticably increased my durability.

At nearly the same time, I began a course of ketamine treatment, and I have to say that it's been one of the most weirdly effective therapies I've ever had.  Put up with being chemically locked inside your brain for a couple of hours while the focus of said brain is razor thin, and I now get to enjoy a level of resiliance and ability to reframe issues as being temporary.  It's magic, but thoroughly strange.

I've also come out to my everybody since last posting, and that went oddly well, after so many years of worrying.  No outright rejections, at least to my face, and some support where I absolutely wouldn't have expected it.

I've also been engaging a lot more with the local transgender community, both online, and occasionally in person.  Hard to take, a lot of my antisocial tendancies make themselves heard when trying to plan, but really good for me.  Hoping to continue the upward trend and have a better year in 2023.  We'll see where it lands, but one piece of that is getting over avoiding this blog, when it helps so much.  Cya next time!