Well, I've made it to the end of yet another work day. No stimulants today. 5th day off of Xyrem. I did notice some more difference throughout the day in my level of sleepiness. It definitely appears to be returning to its old ways - ever so slowly.

Adding to the uncertainty of all of this is the fact that I am starting to slip back into being depressed about life in general. I know depression can cause a person to feel tired and sleepy and fatigued, so I suppose there's even the possibility that the sleepiness I'm noticing now is from being depressed and not from my Xyrem-free/stimulant-free body. Who knows. I don't think I'm all that depressed yet, so I'm fairly certain it is the N/IH and not depression. Time will tell.

I got a little more sleep last night - almost 7 hours. I noticed a difference when waking up this morning - I had a harder time waking up than I have been. This is pretty significant. Before I started taking Xyrem, waking up in the morning - or any other time - was an enormous struggle. My body would constantly be fighting me and trying to fall back asleep. I'd set multiple alarms for staggered times and either sleep right through them or turn them off in my sleep. Or I'd wake up just enough to hear the alarm and turn it off and then immediately fall back asleep. Trying to wake up was like trying to fight off a drugged state of sleep before the drugs have worn off. Once the Xyrem started helping me, I would wake up in the morning and actually feel relatively awake and I didn't have to worry about falling back asleep and fighting to stay awake. It was such a bizarre feeling for me at first. I got used to it pretty quickly though. This morning I was quickly falling back asleep after my alarms went off (still using a couple of staggered alarms, just to be safe). I wasn't as bad as I used to be, nowhere near like that. Each time I woke up enough that I think I would have been able to stay awake had I willed myself into doing so. I didn't want to though - I woke up feeling rather depressed, the bed was comfortable and warm, the room temperature was chilly, and I really just wanted to stay in bed and sleep. So I allowed myself to succumb to the sleepiness for about 45 minutes, waking up enough to hit snooze every few minutes, before finally making myself get out of bed and stay awake.

I didn't have any problems on the drive in to work. Since arriving at work I've been sleepy here and there, and a couple of times I've caught myself with my eyes closed, nearing the point of dozing off. So it would seem that with every passing day I'm getting closer and closer to the full-blown EDS symptoms of the past. I'm interested to see how the rest of this day goes.

I have a lot of things I want to write about, and little-to-no time to write about any of them. So here are a few of them in a nutshell. I will hopefully be expanding on some of them in the near future.

Barack Obama / Jeremiah Wright
I have been aware of the recent controversy surrounding Barack Obama and his former pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright. I had not paid any attention to it until today. I had not watched any of the Jeremiah Wright videos or read any of his comments that were causing such an uproar. In other words, I had no idea what the controversy was about. I didn't watch Obama's speech about race the other day, nor did I read the transcript. The one thing I had done prior to today was read a few articles yesterday; articles that were about people's reactions to Obama's speech.

Today I pulled up a couple of articles that talked about Jeremiah Wright's comments, and watched a few video clips on YouTube. After that, I watched Obama's speech in its entirety. Finally, I read a few more articles about people's reactions to the speech.

1) I thought the speech was excellent.
2) I'm disgusted with the level of outrage at Wright's comments.
3) I'm disappointed at the way people have responded/are responding to Obama's speech. I don't have time to go into detail right now, but I'm particularly disappointed at the reactions of white Americans, or at least those that are being reported by the mainstream media. (FYI: I am a 27-year old white male.)

Iraq war; five-year anniversary
"Anniversary" is typically thought of as a positive word. Calling this an anniversary is technically correct, but it feels very wrong. This is not positive.
My oft-promised post about the Iraq war will have to wait a little longer. After getting myself up to speed on the Wright/Obama controversy, I've decided that I need to write about this first. I think I have a somewhat unique perspective on it, as a white male married to a woman of mixed descent. I don't know if anybody will read what I have to say, or even care what I have to say, but I feel compelled to write about it anyway.

Idiopathic hypersomnia/narcolepsy
I've been feeling very discouraged/depressed lately, because my idiopathic hypersomnia has been getting worse (or the meds have been helping less) and I've been wrestling with severe tiredness much more frequently. It's hard to stay positive when you're this tired all the time. Anyway, the past couple of days I've been trying to find positives about this. It hasn't been easy, but I think I've found a couple. More on this at a later time.

Fahrenheit 451
I've been reading Fahrenheit 451 the last few nights, a few pages at at time. I have to fight myself to put the book down and go to bed. I would have stayed up all night and read it in one sitting, had I been able to stay awake and not had to get up early for work the next day. It is an incredible book, and I highly recommend it. I'll probably be talking about it more in the coming days.

I've been in a funk, more or less, for quite some time now. At times it crosses the border into what I can only imagine is depression. I've never really felt like I was depressed for any length of time before, until recently. Occasional - sometimes frequent - moments where I'd feel quite sad, sure; but not depressed. Lately, though, I've been feeling quite depressed for days on end. I can't imagine what it must be like for people that have depression much more severely than I've been feeling, and who have it all the time. My own little version of it is bad enough, but at least I don't have it for weeks/months at a time, and it's not so bad that I can't motivate myself to still function relatively normally. Anyway, there are a multiple reasons for why I've been feeling this way. Most of them I am aware of; some I probably have yet to discover. More on that later perhaps - just wanted to mention it briefly now as a precursor to the following.

Before I wiped out this blog to start anew, I saved a complete backup of all of my old posts. Just a little while ago, while in one of the aforementioned blue moods, I decided to skim through some of my old posts. Why? Well, I was under the misguided impression that reading my posts from a time when I was posting regularly and had at least a handful of readers might help cheer me up a little bit.

If only it had. Unfortunately, it had the opposite effect. Reading some of my old posts depressed me even more, especially the ones that talked about my personal life. They were depressing posts, for the most part, and reading them now made them even more depressing as I realized that most of the problems I was struggling with in my life at that time are still very much present and alive in my life today. You'd think that in 4 or 5 years time I'd be able to do some self-improvement and resolve some of those issues. You'd think that, but you'd be wrong. I really need to get my act together.

Edit: Iraq has been on my mind again quite a bit lately. I'm going to try to transfer some of my thoughts to the screen over the next couple of days and post them here. In the meantime, I will be reposting some of my posts about Iraq from the old blog, to form a background to the new posts that will be here in the next few days.