Showing posts with label London. Show all posts
Showing posts with label London. Show all posts

Sunday, February 24, 2013

Stilnox: My experience

That horrid sleep drug Stilnox is back in the media again after it came to light that the Australian men's Olympic swim team had used it to get high before competing in London last year.

What the f-word (as Noo would say)?

Stilnox is a horrible drug. I've had a fair bit of experience with hypnotic prescription medications such as the benzodiazpines Zanax, tempazepam, Valium and I even once took half a Rohypnol, but never did I feel more out of control as I did when I was on Stilnox.


Stilnox has been linked to up to 91 deaths in Australia
"including 31 poisonings and two falls from great heights involving abrupt or bizarre behaviour".

Don't get me wrong, it felt good at the time, but the next day I felt like shit. I couldn't move my limbs because they felt so heavy. So much so that I had to call in sick for work. I had only the vaguest recollection of the night before and when I checked the Stilnox box I discovered I'd taken four tablets, instead of one. That was the scary bit.

I was staying at my boyfriend's place at the time. I was supposed to just take one tablet and go to sleep but it must have felt really good and I swallowed another. I remember feeling like I was on a floating bed on the sea. I felt chilled out and relaxed and euphoric, kind of like being on ecstasy but without the speedy edge. I must have taken the other two not long after and floated around until I passed out. I was just lucky I was in a safe place.

I actually didn't take the drug to get high. I was prescribed it by my regular GP as a sleep aid for my first flight to London. In the week leading up to my departure I was anxious as hell. I was about to relocate to the other side of the world and I was leaving Australia for the first time in my adult life.

In 2003 when I had been prescribed Stilnox I'd never heard of it. I had a routine appointment with my doctor to get all my check ups done, like a pap smear and breast check, before heading off to the UK. I asked my doctor for some help to sleep on my 24 hour flight across the world. My doctor told me Stilnox was considered the better drug over tempazepam because it wasn't as addictive.

I'm pretty sure that advice has changed over the last decade as more research comes to light suggesting that Stilnox is not a safe drug. In this article from the Sydney Morning Herald the misunderstanding that Stilnox is the safer than benzos is discussed further.

When the time finally came for me to leave my family and friends and head overseas I had my trusty little pack of goodies in my bag for the flight: lip balm, moisturiser, magazines, and Stilnox. In the airport I was desperate not to cry. I was doing possibly the most scariest thing I'd ever done and my anxiety was through the roof.

As soon as I was seated on the aircraft and the seatbelt sign was turned off I proceeded to make my way through several Jack Daniels and dry. The aircraft was half empty which was a blessing as I was seated in economy. I had three seats to myself and I remember stretching my legs out across them, bourbon in hand, while watching the movies after having popped a Stilnox and waited for sleep to take over. I just wanted to close my eyes and wake up at Heathrow.

Just as was my previous experience I didn't fall asleep. I was careful on that first leg as I knew I had to disembark in Singapore and then reboard for the final stretch to London so I only took one pill. I drank a shitload though. Free booze, what can I say?

Back on board and I was determined to sleep the remaining 12 or however many hours it was until we arrived in London. Still alone in my aisle I continued to drink and pop pills. I vaguely remember sloshing bourbon all over myself and asking the crew for cloths to wipe myself down. I must have been a right sight.

Next thing I knew I was asking for yet another bourbon and dry when I was curtly told by the cabin crew that we were shortly to arrive at LHR and would I please take my seat for landing. But we were just in Singapore! We'd only just left, hadn't we? How could we possibly be flying through British airspace already?

Confused and bewildered I sat down. Looking out the window it was clear that it was in fact morning and I had arrived in the country that was to be my home for the next two years. Scary.


I have never taken Stilnox on a flight since or in any other situation and I never will again.


Now, back to those silly swimmers, what were they thinking? All those taxpayers dollars to send those kids over to London to compete for Olympic Gold and they spend their "bonding" time wasted on Stilnox and Red Bull. Not good, fellas. Not good.


Have you ever tried that evil drug? What was your experience? What do you think about our Aussie swim team living it large on prescription meds and energy drinks?


Hope you're all having a great weekend.

V.








Thursday, July 19, 2012

Ode to London

London I love you
I miss you with all my heart
You took me in but spat me out
I knew it from the start

Despite the gloomy winters
When the sun would barely shine
The summer days were oh so long
I quaffed a lot of wine

I lived upon the River Thames
And heard its history whisper:
"We love a pint, you'll drink all night
  No matter how hard you resist it!"

English pubs with open fires
The bell would chime at 10
Then back to mine we'd go
And party til who knew when

The morning Tube would come
My body cold and shivering
Into work I'd struggle
My brain still soaked and blithering

The working day would end
Sitting at my desk
The tinkling of the drinks trolley
Would reignite my zest

I could go on and on you see
But this story won't end well
I don't blame you London
It was me who jumped and fell

I love you London
Still miss you with all my heart
I will come back to you one day
We'll make a brand new start


English Festival Season 2006
Wearing my motto emblazoned across my chest


Love
Vanessa








Friday, November 19, 2010

Food glorious food!

It's Friday again! I can't believe how time flies the older you get. Noo's perception of time must be so different from mine. One week probably seems like forever to him, whereas for me, it is over in the blink of an eye.

It is a miserable day here in Sydney, cool and overcast with a stickiness to the air which suggests rain. It is 7.30am and Noo is sitting up eating Nutella on toast in a slow and steady manner which includes occasionally rubbing his Nutella covered fingers though his hair. I am starting with a delicious cup of black Campos coffee which is a smooth as velvet and gives me the jump start I need in the morning.


We have been out all day to the Museum of New South Wales to check out the dinosaurs (or 'Saus as Noo calls them), shopping around town (even though I am completely skint) and generally just enjoying walking around this city of ours.



Food glorious food

I've talked previously about my entire family's obsession with all that keeps us fuelled and satisfied (ie food), which is also pretty obvious from some of the pictures I've posted in the past (particularly see my birthday post). I'm sure a lot of us bandsters have foodie tendancies.

I have always loved to cook, except for some strange reason, I lost my cooking mojo after I moved back from London in 2008. I don't know if it was because I gave up drinking, or because of mostly living with my parents since then (I get an inferiority complex cooking for mum). I don't know. Even when I did have my own place for a short time before Noo was born I couldn't find the inspiration or the creativity within me to come up with the dishes I had done before.

You might ask why I just didn't use a recipe book. Well I did, but even looking through great cook books and online recipes, they didn't inspire me to put knife to chopping board. I'd eat good food if it was cooked for me by my family or if I went out, but generally I was a slack arse at home and had little interest in what I ate. I'd be happy with cheese slices and crackers if that was all that was in the fridge.

For the years preceding this gourmet rut cooking was a sort of relaxation technique for me. After working all day at the office I would drop by the supermarket on the way home to collect whatever I needed for dinner that night. After dropping my handbag on the floor and getting changed out of my suit, preparing the food would relax me and help me wind down for the evening. I loved it. And I was great at it. I cooked meals for one and dinner parties for 12 and canapes for 30. I cooked Spanish, Italian, Chinese, Thai, Indian, French, whatever style food. Breakfast, lunch and dinner.

While I was living in London and single I still had this ritual on most weekday evenings (not much eating was done on the weekends). While I was there I took a photo of every single meal I cooked using my mobile phone. I don't know where all those pictures are now. Probably most went the way of the phone (landfill) but I did find 38 of them which I have put into a collage using a nifty program called Shape Collage.

Cooking in London

How cool is that!

But like I said, in the last three years I've had a kind of cook's block - writer's block but with food. By having the band installed and starting this blog, I think the block is starting to lift. I'm back in the kitchen!


Clockwise from top left - haloumi, lentil and pumpkin salad; smoked chicken, orange, fennel and quinoa salad;
avocado and tuna spaghetti, crunchy tuna salad with pepitas and sunflower seeds

It is only early days yet but I'm getting there. It is incredibly hard to be motivated when I've got Noo to look after. He is so fussy with food that it makes it hard to cook up anything interesting that we can both share and who has the time or the energy to cook two dinners every night?

I've just got to take it step by step, meal by meal, and I'm sure before I know it I will be entertaining again.

Thank you again for reading. Thanks again to all my lovely followers and especially you cool chicks who always write lovely comments - I love every one of them.

Hope everyone out there has fantastic weekends.

V.

Monday, September 6, 2010

On the night before surgery...

Well, this is my "night before" blog. I've been thinking about what to write all day, as well as reading loads of other blogs, but I haven't been able to come up with any profound last words before I go under the knife, so I'm just going to type and see what comes out...

I've been quite consumed with anxiety about it all but not because I'm fearful of the surgery or the anesthetic. Quite the contrary, I don't mind being sedated and having that lovely dreamy feeling when you wake up. I'm not too scared about the pain either, I figure I endured a 39 hour labour when Noo was born, I can endure any pain that I might be inflicted with. What I'm really scared about is what losing weight means to me.

I am at the tail end of what has been a very long, very hard journey that started in 2007 when I had a massive breakdown.  One minute I was living and working in London, the next being admitted to a psychiatric and rehabilitation hospital in Sydney's eastern suburbs. Its been an incredibly hard and bumpy road that has found me here, typing this blog getting ready to be banded to help me shed the fat I've been hiding behind while I heal what have been some pretty heavy emotional scars.

Before 2007 I was a bubbly, funny and energetic party girl. I lived to party and have fun. Then something very bad happened and all that came crashing down. The year that followed was a living hell. I started to self medicate with drugs and alcohol and when I finally came back to Sydney it was to detox to save my life.

Getting sober at first was like being striped clean with bleach. I had nothing to help me hide from the thoughts in my mind and was forced to face what my life had become. I was 32 and I had nothing but a massive UK credit card debt and a serious drug and alcohol problem. I was not the cool party girl/rock chick, in control of her habits, as I had somehow managed to convince myself I was. In those three weeks in the hospital I began to realise I had no idea who I was. Since I was a shy teenager who discovered drinking alcohol gave me the confidence I could never have alone, I had made drinking and partying the central part of my personality. Now that it was gone I was left open like a raw weeping wound without a band aid. 

In the hospital I was put on various medications to help with detoxing and with the deep depression I now found myself in. Over the last three years I have tried eight different anti-depressants and about five different anti-psychotic/mood stabilisers (which I don't need any more). Some of these medications really affect your appetite and by not being able to drink, I was seriously drawn to food - particularly chocolate and any other sweet food.

Chocolate is addictive and affects the same neuro pathways as drugs and alcohol do. With my increased appetite thanks to whatever meds the psychiatrists had me on I became obsessed with chocolate - it was my new cocaine! 

Finally, after four admissions and almost a year to the day of that terrible thing that happened, I found out I was pregnant with my son. It was make or break time. Get sober and live and raise a little baby out the ashes that was my old life or, well, the or just doesn't bear thinking about.

So I was preggers. The first 14 weeks I had horrific morning sickness and couldn't eat so actually lost 13 kg.  I got down to my lowest weight since giving up the booze, etc, and was 83 kg as I headed into the second trimester. By the end of my pregnancy I was completely infatuated with lollies and chocolates and fruit and ice cream and anything sweet I could get my hands on! Most importantly though, I found a new hope and could finally see a future for myself as I fell deeply in love with the little baby that was growing inside me.

By the time Noo was born I was 104kg. In the few weeks and months following his birth my weight never really dropped below 95 kg.  I was hungry all the time. Seriously starving 24 hours a day. I would eat whenever he needed a feed, even throughout the night. My appetite was bigger than it had even been on those horrible mood stabilisers! I complained about it to my doctor and it was just put down to the fact I was breast feeding. I also started to get other symptoms - profusive sweating, sleeplessness, and extreme anxiety. I began to feel like the world was going to end. I had this overwhelming feeling all time of impending doom.

Once again I went back to my GP and I was seeing a psychiatrist weekly but still my symptoms were put down to being a new mother who was breastfeeding. I was also on a massive dose of an anti-depressant which was giving me a strange side effect that my head would experience a buzzing sensation whenever I moved. Both my GP and the psych put it down to anxiety and kept increasing my dose.

By the time Noo was just over 3 months old, I was losing it and finally I was admitted to a psych hospital again to come off my meds to try another type of anti-depressant. As is routine when you get admitted to these places, the hospital's GP ordered a stack of blood tests. I was later called in to see the doctor and told that my thyroid was malfunctioning and was extremely hyperactive, to the point where he thought I might have Graves Disease. I had my laptop with me so was straight on to Google when I got back to my room. Symptoms included, anxiety, fast metabolism causing increased appetite, profusive sweating... I could not believe it! Here I was thinking I had regressed back to the depressed state I was in back in 2007 and what really was the issue was that I had a thyroid problem! 

I was furious to say the least.  I'm still not over it really, will never be, that my doctors did not test my thyroid function given my extreme symptoms. I suffered for about 4 months with a newborn who I was struggling to care for because I was losing my mind. When I finally got to see an endocrinologist I was diagnosed with postpartum thyroiditis. Phew! That was well over a year ago and my recent appointment with the specialist confirmed that the thyroid disease has righted itself and is functioning at normal levels now.

Wow, this has become a much longer entry than I expected but I suppose it goes to how I find myself here, on the eve of my gastric band surgery.

I tried many diets in an attempt to lose the weight I had gained including Weight Watchers (x2), Jenny Craig and two sessions a week with a personal trainer. Still nothing was working, or it would work for a couple of weeks to a month and next thing I knew I was falling into bad habits again.

In one of my stints in rehab I met an alcoholic girl around my age who would eat very little food. I must have asked her about it and when she told me she had a gastric band I was completely intrigued. When my Jenny Craig diet failed last year, I started thinking more about that young woman and began researching all about laproscopic gastric band surgery. I have read everything, I think, there is to read about it, and I knew it was the thing for me.  I know I have a lower BMI than most people who have the procedure but for someone who has been in the overweight/obese category for most of my adult life, I really think its the right thing for me.

So I've been sober two and a bit years and I am the mother of the most wonderful little boy. Getting pregnant got me sober and being a parent keeps me sober.  I don't know if anyone would understand this but being obese also keeps me sober. I hardly ever go out at night and I haven't even thought about another relationship or men in general, since this whole saga began. At the beginning, I was too broken for a relationship, now I'm just too fat. But a healthy relationship is something that I want but it frightens me so much at the same time.

Will losing weight and feeling good about my body be enough to make me want to go out and meet people but also tempt me to drink again? Its a frightening thought but honestly, I don't think so (the drink party I mean, not the meeting people!). Writing this blog has made me realise that. I am so far away from that shell shocked girl that came back from London in June 2007. I am a strong and resilient woman who has come back from the brink of oblivion and I'm ready to let go of this mask, this armour, and let the new and fabulous me come out and shine!

Next time I post I will be banded! It is midnight so I must go to bed.

Vanessa