Sidepedaling

Okay, so watching boxing is boring, but that doesn't necessarily mean that boxing itself is boring. During the summer I was going out jogging to get exercise, but now that it's cold and icy out, I'm not fucking doing that anymore. Plus I hate jogging anyway.

Since I needed to find some other means of exercise, so I decided to give boxing a try and got myself an instructional DVD and one of these. I figure hey, why not try something that could be a good workout and potentially relieve stress at the same time? Something comes along that pisses me off so I just go and beat the shit out of the heavy bag for awhile. Sounds like a plan.

Actually lately I haven't been getting all pissed off to the point where I want to go beat the shit out of something. Okay, well, despite my temper and short fuse I really don't ever get that pissed anyway. Seriously.

Still though, I'm always high-strung and frequently stressed even when it's unwarranted sometimes, so what gives? Maybe it's the anti-anxiety meds I'm on to try and help combat my shyness. The medication I'm on is a benzodiazepine, and benzos are a CNS depressant. Apparently the way they combat anxiety is by putting me to sleep, and then I can't be anxious while I'm asleep. And then I'm also too tired to be stressed. Better living, or sleeping, through chemistry.

Seriously it was wearing me down so much that I finally had to cut back to just one dose a day in the evening. When I was taking one in the morning too I would be dragging ass all day at work, on several occasions nearly falling asleep while someone was talking to me. That's not good.

I almost didn't start taking them after reading about the potential side effects and withdrawal and shit. Yeah, I was too anxious to take my anti-anxiety meds. Hey, read some of that shit and tell me that you wouldn't have some anxiolytic anxiety. Finally, though, I thought to myself, hey, risk is part of the game if you wanna sit in that chair, so I finally got going with the meds.

Not sure if they're really doing anything after several weeks aside from making me feel like I'm drunk without any of the fun parts (in addition to making me sleepy they can also make me feel a bit lightheaded). Of course sitting at home alone most of the time hasn't exactly given me much of a chance to do serious field-testing. So far though if I'm around a big group I feel pretty much the same as always.

Okay, I guess maybe I do feel a bit more relaxed when I'm out and about though. And my moods are a bit more even than they were before. Of course when I say "before" I'm referring to when I was starting to take the medication, and I would have a lot of mood swings. Of course I could be that way before, so it's hard to say what the fuck is going on.

In the end though I don't have seriously high hopes for this latest experiment. Of course, I recognize that meds aren't going to actually solve my problems, I have to do that on my own. And maybe that's part of the problem. Well okay that's the whole problem. But what I was referring to is that maybe people who think that their prozac is going to fix their problems can actually bullshit themselves enough to where they get their shit together and get to work on doing something.

I've been on anti-depressant medications at two other points in my life and they didn't do shit. Then there was a short stint where I was seeing a therapist and he was always coming up with ways for me to combat my social anxiety and I would always shoot them down. It got so bad that he actually said he didn't know if there was any point in coming in for any more sessions. That's right; I am so stubborn and difficult that my brain is completely resilient to chemical changes and I had a therapist give up on me. So that's probably not good either.