A Disabled Day – Navigating Life with Disability and Medication
- Brainz Magazine
- Jan 16
- 7 min read
Written by Justin H. Briggs, Writer
Justin H. Briggs is the author of "Insanity Comes To Mind: A Memoir on Mental Health," which was published on May 1st, 2020. He is a good writer working at being great.
In this deeply personal and unvarnished account, the author explores the intense realities of living with a disability. From the early morning battles of medication routines to the emotional toll of chronic pain and isolation, this article takes readers through a day in the life marked by resilience, survival, and self-reflection. It's a poignant reflection on the complexities of disability, mental health, and the constant search for stability in a world that doesn't always accommodate.
Midnight-3 AM
Waking up in a cold sweat is normal. Whether I dream, have disoriented visions, or sleep like a rock, I am immediately disgruntled upon waking up yet again, not just because I am soaked through the clothes and bedding. The sweat is a result of latent stress, medication side effects, or the probable combination of the two, inescapable realities of disability.
Depending on when I last took my anti-anxiety medication the night before, I may need to add it to my pre-dawn medication regimen. The prescriptions take precedence in life, otherwise, I have no functional capabilities in any way without them. They work best with the necessary minimum caloric intake to metabolize into an effective dosage. That is assuming, of course, that I have any food available for breakfast. I eat things you discard, often.
Concerning drug dependency, considering my perpetual morning routine and taking stock of my past, let it be known that I have combed weed out of the carpet to pack a bowl. I have licked every cocaine baggy I have not shared. And, upon at least one occasion, I was fortunate enough to accidentally snort heroin.
Nothing I have done with regard to consuming drugs or controlled substances has made me feel more of a depraved addict than licking pharmaceutical controlled substances off of my kitchen floor before daybreak. My traumas manifested in physical dexterity loss and foggy, drowsy thoughts, allowing me to drop my pill. Drag your stove out wrong, and you crush the half-milligram tablet that grants you six hours of apathy about your place in the world, so you lick the powdered tile remnants like an alley cat destined for rabies.
4 AM
Hydrate, hydrate, hydrate. Marijuana gives me cotton mouth sometimes. Every prescription I take has side effects, including, but not limited to, cramps, nausea, disorientation, tremors, balance issues, stamina degradation, and virility loss beyond what mere water may alleviate. I have all of the side effects of a cancer patient without the cancer, my hair has greyed and fallen out prematurely.
So, I inject myself with testosterone boosters twice per month. This injection, self-administered, allows not just my sexuality to exist physically, but also the entirety of my masculine faculties to function at the necessary level of a man in his 40s, rather than at the level of a man in his 70s, per a diagnosis from just a couple of years ago.
My pineal gland is shot. My “third eye,” the part of your brain that allows you to dream, imagine, visualize, etc., has run through worse than any dive bar bathroom I have found escape within, from the horrors of my own mind.
Bad news on the testosterone issue as of late, though. My latest primary care physician has determined that my testosterone boosters may be spiking a chemical indicator that I am developing excessive testosterone intake. So, should evasive maneuvers in the form of determining yet another medication alternative prove a failure, I will soon develop the “bitch tits” of Meatloaf in Fight Club fame. Matter of time, perhaps.
5-6 AM
If I can be calm and medicated and avoid throwing up, I tend to drink coffee and smoke cigarettes until dawn. I wait for the sun when it is unavailable. And I pray, perhaps only to it, for obvious limitations of any god yet known. In a mental institution, such as the public facilities I have attended, a patient is not allowed to smoke cigarettes for the duration of their stay.
95% of disabled Americans smoke cigarettes. When the staff releases you from your visit, every other patient reminds you to smoke a pack for them each on the outside. Oral fixation, nicotine addiction, boredom, all valid reasons to smoke cigarettes. I smoke for the false sense of control over my life that a mere cigarette provides.
I will never be able to stop smoking cigarettes at this rate, and statistically, I will still be lucky to die of cancer at all, and not an accidental overdose, suicide, or general degradation of my cognitive functions until permanent mental incarceration or a vegetative state is attained.
Coffee helps; after half a pot or so and a few smokes, the perpetually reinvigorating constipation generally gives way by dawn. I can shit solid most days anymore, at least for about the last year. Most of my 15 years or so under medication are filled with bowel movements beyond definition, aside from “wrong.”
7-9 AM
Ideally, by sunrise, I am not only awakened, shit, showered, and shaved, but I am in optimal hygiene. The first indication of a subject, or person of interest, or suspect being “unwell” is poor hygiene. Brush your teeth, wash behind your ears, and stay clean and groomed.
I have been run off by family and friends for my poor hygiene almost as often as for my emotional outbursts or insane dialogue. Then the cops usually show up, wherever I may flee to, like the monster I wish not to be, and then they escort me to a hospital.
As the caffeine kicks in and the stool plops, I remind myself of the cramping of cuffs around my wrists and the feel of the barrels of service weapons at my temple. This is a necessary mental preparation for every day I may have left to awaken to this condition.
10-11 AM
Double-check meds. Know your regimen, schedule, or attend every doctor’s appointment and prescription renewal; 24/7/365 career being incapable by society’s standards. Then comes the self-loathing, grief for my potential unmet, trauma of lived and unbelieved experiences, despair beyond measure.
By 10:30 AM or so, I tend to need another anti-anxiety medication. Always water with medications…you are going to cramp up anyway, so just keep your piss clear. If I have any wherewithal, I journal to keep my mind occupied. If I feel anything but physical, mental, or spiritual sickness, then I work. Writing is a career I am leveraging a gift through in the hope of financial solvency or even wealth; disability bears a cross per symptom. If all of my crosses are leaning against one another and balanced for a minute, then I can drop bombs from my pen like a Baptist preacher spits The Lord’s Truth.
But my truth is an internal prison that confines my mental and physical health to limits both authentic and perceived, and others will always perceive of me what they will. And that tends to be a perception they go out of their way to ignore about me until they want me to leave. They tend to be naive about my reality, and I ask not for their pity, as even their empathy or sympathy is inherently placating to protect their own sense of mental fortitude.
Noon
By lunch, if I have worked up an appetite at all, I eat food. Minimum caloric intake works for the medications, the wallet, and the waistline, win, win, win. But by this time, I have likely ventured into the outside world for sustenance, food bank, pharmacy check-in, more caffeine but in public, like I am normal.
I keep questionable company wherever I am, for certain, if you just include my own internal dialogue. But I have learned that I am generally unacceptable in any polite crowd, at any bar, or really anywhere outside of my studio. I am not a shut-in but a shut-away, or shut-out, a mutually beneficial dynamic between myself and society at large.
1-3 PM
Pharmacies are a tricky issue consistently, as is insurance, as is reading and following labels. The automated renewal phone lines are no guarantee. And so, when a medication is due for renewal, I tend to initiate the process days in advance, then present myself at the pharmacy in person at least once to confirm the date of pick-up, double-check my availability of funds while I wait, and again ideally purchase the medications in early afternoon when the lines are short. Just a perk of being unemployable.
Around 2 PM or so, I am spent emotionally more often than not, though my energy level tends to need submission. With minimum caloric intake, my daily mood stabilizer/anti-psychotic tends to slow the neuron synaptic firings in my brain. I think. Sometimes, in the calming, I fantasize about sleep.
Then I remember the first piece of medical data administered upon my release to an out-patient facility after my suicide attempt failed: given that my suicide attempt included slashing my wrist to bleed out alone, I was informed that my statistical probability of “suicide by cutting” is 75%. That is a survival improbability too, statistically, but the necessary efforts to improve my health since being enlightened led simply to different versions of the same disabled, inadequate, financially neutered man which I am.
4-6 PM
By dusk, I have exhausted myself physically, medically, and often, sexually. Self-care is important; self-love helps. I then tend to enter a haze as the medications and exhaustion stretch that magic moment between awake and asleep into hours of malaise, leading to a disoriented fade-out you could call sleep, like day-dreaming under the influence of heroin.
The fog lasts long. Memories flutter in and around, fears of the unknown and uncontrollable are muffled in the mind, and all perception of time passing fades as the sun. Since I tend to be alone with my cat and have minimal social responsibilities, the only FOMO I have left is a longing to fall asleep to dream not and awaken never again.
Read more from Justin H. Briggs
Justin H. Briggs, Writer
Justin H. Briggs is a writer located in Manhattan, Kansas, USA. He is more than his diagnosis and less than his potential for success, in his opinion, but he is working on that. His diagnosis of schizoaffective bipolar disorder manifests symptoms of depression, mania, delusions, paranoia, and hallucinations. He is in no way medically certified beyond the occasional CPR certification, but he has been there and done that, so to speak.
