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Old 10-08-2012, 05:42 PM
  # 8 (permalink)  
Obladi
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Join Date: Jul 2012
Location: Baltimore, Maryland
Posts: 6,069
So I had a similar "aha" moment awhile back. I always wondered what was wrong with me, when did this all start, what led me here, and I couldn't figure it out. I know that in some schools of thought (such as AVRT), the "why" doesn't really matter, but even before my drinking became such a serious issue for me, I knew something was off.

I was going to a therapist for a time and it seemed like everything started when I was in my early teens. When I told the therapist I was molested during that period, he said "ahh, so this is when you started feeling like you were off." I said, "No, this was just further proof."

Driving home one day a full year later I realized! I was ashmatic and took a medication that by my mother's account drove me bonkers, made me wired. And the way she tells the story (and I've always believed it), I thought very carefully about it before I would decide if I wanted to take the medicine. But what I remember now is that I secretly LIKED that feeling. Yes, it was physically very uncomfortable, but I loved the being wired part.

I looked it up that evening, and this medication contained a barbituate, ephedrine, and alcohol to boot! (And now that I think of it, I also took a prescription cough syrup that certainly also contained alcohol.) I stopped taking this medication in my early teens.

And I think a whole host of symptoms followed that were really the beast clamoring, but I had no idea WHAT to make of it, what was causing it. I just felt "bad" and "wrong" and "off" and "different." And those feelings were with me well into adulthood. Until... I started drinking and allowed myself to see that as "ok." Which it was, mostly.

Until it wasn't.

I know it's neither here nor there as far as AVRT is concerned, but to me, this is a really helpful insight that has given me peace about something I had been struggling with for far too long.
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