Meanfully Blogs

  Was I an addict before I was born?  Well, I'm not a scientist but every family I grew up with that had an addiction of some sort has at least one addict in each generation of the family. my mother, unfortunately, gave birth to 5 of us and each one of us is addicted to something. I won't talk for the rest I will only talk about myself. my addiction is Gambling. My mother's addiction was alcohol.  Are the two related?  As far as I've read there is a link to certain types of addictions being linked but as far as alcoholism and gambling the two are not linked together I have not read everything, but as far as I can see the addictions passed down are usually of substance rather than a gambling addiction.  I'm not sure I believe that but hey. It's the science right they never get things wrong. Can I blame my mother's fabulous genes for my addiction? or the trauma of growing up with an addict, I cannot. As far as I have read there is absolutely no link between ...

I had an accident at work, nothing too important. I just fell because a cleaner took a piece of a drainer from the floor leaving a hole and didn’t leave a sign, the joys. So, I asked for the company’s doctor as in Spain when you have a working accident you have to go to the company’s insurance doctor, my boss didn’t know about it, so I was told to take a taxi and try different medical centres until finding out which one is covering the company I’m working for. To sum up, it took me three hours since I had the accident and several calls to be seen by the doctor, luckily it's nothing serious, but this is going to leave a mark on me about how important I’m for the company I’m working for, I mean if I’m 5 minutes late they call me and they move earth and heaven to get to me, but if I injure myself, I’m on my own. This little story helps to talk about how mental health works in Spain, if you are struggling, you go to the GP and they’ll prescribe you antidepressants and benzodiazepines o...

So how it started,  I was hanging out with a new friend and she used to love going to the casino. For the most part, I found it boring and pointless because I thought it was a waste of money. But then I tried it one day. I put two euros into the machine and of course, I didn't think I was going to win anything that day but I said just let me try it.  The next day she went again, so I decided to go with her. This time I put five euros in and I won like 50 Quid. I thought that I won the lottery. After that, it kind of became a habit to go every day or at least when we had the money, I wasn't working at the time.  I was on social welfare so I was trying not to spend too much money down there but it became a thing where we go in and spend like five or ten euros and I thought I was in control of it but it very quickly became a point where I wouldn't have control about how much money I put in and I was living for the win Living For The Spins For the free games.  Living for...

My anxiety made me go vegetarian.  It may sound crazy, but a treat of anxiety is overthinking and boy, I'm a master of it. It wasn't the first time I went vegetarian. When I was a teenager I tried for a few months but it was hard without my family's support.  But this time was different, I was living almost alone in Ireland, as my roommate was more time travelling than at home so I used to spend a lot of time on my own, so one day I watch the typical video anti-meat, just after buying a lot of cold meat to fill up my fridge, and I felt terribly guilty about it. Now, with time I can see that it was the somatisation of my mental state, I wasn't well, but I didn't know yet.  There’s nothing wrong with being vegetarian as long as you don’t lecture everybody around you with endless guilt trips, I wasn’t one of those, tho. I just decided that eating meat was poisonous and very harmful. I did lots of research and started to take vitamins and learn about vegetable proteins....

  APRIL 11, 2023 I'm weaning off my medication, it's a quite short process, to be fair. Just three weeks, of course, I have to keep an eye on how I'm doing, but that's all it takes, based on my public health psychiatrist, I feel like she just told me that because she knows I'd probably go cold turkey. I’ve been seeing this psychiatrist for the last 6 months, it took me to reach my lowest point, being on the edge of a psychotic episode to be seen by a psychiatrist from the Spanish Medical system, because this is how it works: we visit a GP who prescribes everything and only send you to visit a specialist when you’re really fucked up, it’s not the best system to be fair, especially if you take into consideration that it’s the only Medical cover most of the population can afford. But leaving aside my ranting about the Spanish medical System, which will be discussed in a future blog, here I’m after visiting this psychiatrist for 6 months, I started being sceptical abou...

  MARCH 27, 2023 I’ve been having spasms when I go to sleep for the last two years. In the beginning, I thought it was shivers from the cold, we were living in Ireland at the moment in a damp house. But, then we moved to Spain and the spasms didn’t stop, plot twist… It’s anxiety. How can this be possible? I changed my whole life and still have the same issues. I told my GP about it, and he decided to prescribe me Alprazolam 5 mg as a sleeping pill, it’s the same composition as Xanax, I didn’t know at the time, I learned this the first time I met a psychiatrist and he decided to remove it due to the additive effects. Then, the spams came back, and of course some withdrawal symptoms, the joys of taking Xanax. And of course, lots of overthinking about having to use pills to sleep and the worry about having to rely on them.  This year has been stressful and my spams have become stronger, now every time that I go to sleep I suffer cramps, but somehow I manage to sleep, well I’m mos...

  MARCH 20, 2023 I'm planning to stop taking medication after the Summer and see how I get on with everything, I'm scared as fuck, as I don't want to go back to the abysm, that's what I call my depression, this last year had been one of the worst years of my life.   I haven't been able to keep a job for more than three weeks, I wasn't this bad when I was a teenager, I used to quit those jobs I didn't like but rarely get fired, but since I started this journey I got fired from five jobs in a year, it's a lot, and as I said before I tend to focus on the wrong, so I blamed the pills for it, thankfully my psychiatrist told me that probably the pills were the least of my problems, she was right, of course.   But, I still trying to make sense of the fact that when I decided to face my demons I wasn't able to work, at least to keep a job. I've been suffering anxiety my entire life, and somehow I've been able to be functional, not have the best ment...

        FEBRUARY 28, 2023 I'm coming from the Pharmacy I went to get my new sleeping pill prescription, they didn't have those pills and the advice from the pharmacist was that the better to sleep is a bath in the sea. I would like to say that it didn't bother me or I laughed at the joke, but it wasn't a joke, I'm starting to get used to people believing that depression and all the side effects are not that big deal, but it is.  In my case, 2021 was the first time I started to medicate for depression/ anxiety, firstly I was diagnosticated with General Anxiety Disorder, but it turned into one of the worst depression stages I've been in my entire life, luckily I'm getting out of it and looking to stop taking them soonly, that's why I would like to talk about my own experience as someone who had a lot of prejudgments.   Before starting to talk about pills, I have to say that took me a long time to accept that medication could be helpful to me, I was super s...

FEBRUARY 28, 2023 We highly believe that talking about it is the first step to recovery if you suffer from depression. We are not professionals. We talk about depression from our perspective and want to create awareness about it. If you feel that you need help, you have to seek medical help. Do not be afraid of talking about it. Here you have some misconceptions about depression that can help you to start a conversation: 1. It only happens to women For some strange reason, there are some men out there that still struggle to talk about feelings, bear in mind that being vulnerable doesn't mean being weak, but the opposite. Acceptance of our weakness is part of becoming a strong person, don't allow your weakness to define you. 2. Depression is a sign of weakness As said above, being vulnerable is not a weakness. On the same note, depression is unrelated to the strength of someone s character. It is a serious medical condition like asthma or diabetes. 3. It can be simply snapped up...