I offer a general apology for my behavior, which has been erratic and damaging to others lately.
Physical changes in my brain and associated emotional distress have at least temporarily warped my personality. My current view of the world is so obviously distorted that I can’t say definitively what is going on. Some of you have had similar experiences and may understand what I mean, but you don’t have to; you can just say I’m nuts, and that’ll do.
I’ve been an egotist, a professional patient, and needy to the point of requiring unavailable levels of reassurance. I’ve been quick to anger and easily triggered into huge floods of emotion by things that other people have found trivial. Much of my behavior only made sense in a context I can’t expect anyone else to share.
No one is required to accept my public or private apologies, or to put up with me at all for that matter. I’ve been angry, demanding, suspicious, deeply depressed, irrational, and completely terrified for a long time now, beyond the capacity of most reasonable people to accept. For a shorter time I’ve been open about those things here, which in retrospect was a terrible mistake on many levels. I would not fault anyone for writing me off, as painful as that might be.
Some of you have been privately critical of me, in the best sense, without damning but without finessing the point. It wasn’t easy to hear some of those things, but harsh truth was better than easy. That’s seriously the most valuable thing any friend has given me, ever.
It’s not assured that I’ll survive this experience at all, much less that I’ll emerge as someone you’ll want to know. Wish me luck even if you’re wishing me goodbye.
Be My Blog 
Godspeed to you and I’m in your corner…virtually anyhow.
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FWIW, I went through a nearly identical situation when I quit self-medicating. It cost a lot, and to this day I get angry when people spout lines about being a better person for having suffered. Nobody deserves to suffer. Almost everyone does though, and some more than others.
The whole thing did make me determined that I would never go back. I experience anxiety and depression every day, but manage it through a conscious process, and by refusing to deny myself something worthwhile every day.
It’s been about 15 years now, and it’s more or less habit now, though I do still experience a couple of debilitating days a month, on average, with increasingly rare periods where it’s sustained for a week or more. It’s not a fair price, but it’s manageable.
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Afterthought…
This will likely have no direct usefulness for you, but: It really helps that I’ve been trained as an actor. It’s difficult not to sound like a total flake when I say this, but the craft of acting (not make-believe and not faking) really does allow me to experience things more normally. It’s a little pathological, but it’s a pathology of my choosing, and I’m good enough at it that when I act normal, I get normal reactions from most people most of the time. By influencing the external reality, I give myself a more workable environment to cope with the internal conditions that I can’t fix.
Again, no advice. I’m just providing a little context that might help you define the problem space better.
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Honk honk. I’ll always be around even if I’m nuts too. What you’re doing is really brave.
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> My current view of the world is so obviously distorted that I can’t say
> definitively what is going on.
Shit, I hate when that happens. My experience is that perspective gradually returns, and that in the meantime, while one’s own framing mechanisms are erratic, the perspectives of those who’ve been trustworthy in the past are the best guide for decision making.
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Prognosis
Enh, you’ll be fine. You’re too reasonable to be otherwise.
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We love you Conrad.
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