I feel like dust. My brain hurts. Living hurts. I am constantly freaking on a number of dangerous issues, some of which could plausibly end up okay and some that will not. My crushing irrational anxiety is hurting hard. My mind is flooded with negative images. Everything that I see and hear summons a painful memory. I'm barely capable of doing business, let alone pretentiously *****ing in the Bipolar Check-In thread. Today's tactic is to mount an early pre-emptive defense and double down on the benzodiazepines. I didn't take any benzos during more than 120 hours of isolation drills, and I feel like I've earned them. It takes quite a few benzos these days to make Lefty a dull boy, which is tolerance, an indication of addiction, another dangerous issue to worry about.

I'm going to see a prospective backup pdoc tomorrow to establish Continuity of Operations should my current pdoc abruptly decide to put his guns in the ground. I've been practicing expressing all that has gone wrong, and all that I would like him to do about it, as clearly, concisely and honestly as I can, without prompting him immediately commit me to an inpatient facility, which I might need but cannot afford. Someone has to answer the phone. Someone has to write estimates and contracts and disclaimers and do the 2016 taxes, none of which is worth worrying about, but I'll worry about it anyway.

It seems highly unlikely that the second prospective pdoc will have any plausible alternatives to my present predicament, but I'm due for a surprise. The first prospective backup pdoc's suggestion was certainly a surprise, one which I can't discuss because he might be following the Bipolar Check-In thread. Love ya, doc.

Changing treatments can be costly: if I was to replace the Depakote, indicated to suppress my cycling, which it doesn't, with an alternative, my brain might find that transition temporarily but prohibitively exciting, prompting an inexorable rise into hypomania, and the circus comes back to town.

The image of the day is Fu Xi's Hexagram Table, which some will hopefully find a refreshing respite from my usual admittedly psychotic imagery of Russian military aircraft, female DPRK military officers, puppets, United States' Sixth Army psychological warfare leaflets, Taepodongs, SS-18s, teary obituaries to Iris Chang, very angry T'ang dynasty sculpture and axillary hair.