Am I ever in control?

[Guest guest]

Okay, lets get this over with. I’ve felt a need to write

about this for a long time.

Whenever I get into a deep thinking mood which, I admit,

is not very often, I always seem to come back to the same

conclusion. And, the way this connects to the chronic

pain group is this: The tremendous amount of drugs that I

put into my system makes me nothing more than a big sack

of chemicals. Then, depending on the current mix of

chemicals at the time, I may react in several different

ways to a given situation, including ways that I may not

want to act but have no control over!

You see, people like to think that they are really in

control of their lives. But, at least in my case, most of

my daily life is tremendously influenced by the mood I am

in and so is the way that I act and react to a given

situation.

The problem is that I do not really have full control of

these moods. In fact, whether it is rage or anger or

being calm and thoughtfull or frustration or paranoia or

any other of the many moods that it is possible to be in,

I usually have little control about how I will feel at

any given time. And, the reason is simple. My moods

depend almost totally on what chemicals I have in my

system at the time.

So again, I am really not much more than a rather large

sack of chemicals. Deprive me of certain chemicals and I

will act and behave in a certain way. I may be angry at

my wife and even express overwhelming rage towards her

because, on that particular day, I had a very large IV

infusion of steroids for the MS. Or, I may be the exact

opposite in the way that I act towards her because, on

that particular morning, I had received my monthly

testosterone shot necessary to help me my osteoporosis and

because my body no longer makes its own. This shot can

have some very strong side affects (which I mostly

consider positive, thankfully).

So, am I really, at any time, in control of what I may do

or say or how I may react to any situation? I wonder.

Sometimes, I feel as though I am on the outside watching

myself do and say things that I seem to have no control

over. The psychiatrist calls this disassociation. I'd

call this “having my big bag of chemicals screwed up”.

If I only knew the right formula …