Long rant, sorry, skip down to the *** for the fun part…

I was an ER nurse for ten years in inner city Baltimore.  Absolutely loved my job for a solid 8 years.  Then running charge every night during the outbreak of Covid, with zero staffing support from the administration just broke me.  If you know anything about nursing, and especially the ER, 1:8, 1:9, 1:10 nurse-patient ratios aren’t just unsafe to the Nth degree, but they’re illegal as hell; that went on for months, because it wasn’t “in the budget” to hire travelling nurses or adequate staff.

Anyways, I went on to be a travel nurse for several months and made an assload of money, but I’m still broken.  I’ve been floundering since last May… spent most of the last year fighting for my life against suicidal ideation and alcoholism, and then finally got on antidepressants again.  Wellbutrin and Viibryd (a newish medication similar to Lexapro, but doesn’t yet have a generic).  They helped my brother a ton, and helped me a handful of years ago when I was going through a depressive episode, so I figured why not.

The health care system in the US is sort of fucked.  Anyone on this forum probably knows that, especially medical personel.  So without insurance, I sought care thought the online app, Cerebral.  Basically Doordash for psychiatric care.  An amazingly well-intentioned app, more than fitting for a time of quarantine/lockdown and an vastly increased need for psychiatric care.  Except Doordash works.  If I order a sandwich to arrive in 27 minutes, it’s here in 25.  Long ass story short, Cerebral’s infrastructure is apparently run by half a dozen drunk gophers.  Wellbutrin, a well-established antidepressant was cake, but getting monthly refills for Viibryd has been a f—king nightmare.  It’s a constant battle between the painfully-polite “care coordinator” and multiple visits to my pharmacy to realize that whatever provider is assigned to me through the app is way too lazy to simply approve the monthly hold on the refill for a new/”exotic” medication.

Ergo, I’ve been off Viibryd for 8 days now.  Not without 20+ messages through the Cerebral app to try to obtain approval (the ironic part is, my CVS pharmacy acknowledges that they have multiple refills, but there’s apparently a monthly ‘hold’ on it which my provider must approve each month before it can be dispensed).  But at this point… fuck. 

I thought it was just sleep disruptions at first…. I slept a total of 4 hours in 4 days to the point where a couple ER nurse friends dragged me into a walk-in psych urgent care… as an ER nurse I obviously know what to say to not get admitted (because let’s be honest, that would be horrific), kinda figured things might even out, and actually started getting a little more sleep.  Until… shit…. I’m still taking Wellbutrin (I previously stockpiled a shit ton of it, since the provider on Cerebral was reluctant to prescribe 2 drugs at once – and I’m absolutely terrified of the “brain-zap” withdrawal symptoms I’ve experiences before coming of Wellbutrin).

***All this goes to say, I thought I was good, a week out from running short of Viibryd and having zero luck with trying to get more from the drunk-gopher-run Cerebral app, but fuck man.  I’m not ok.  It’s only now starting to get real.  Hallucinations now and violent outbursts (totally uncharacteristic of me)… I have blood all over my face and zero idea how this happened, apart from a shattered microwave window and some broken dishes.  I genuinely abhor violence.  That’s why I’m freaked out. Also, general insane behavior… sitting out on my stoop for an hour in a tshirt while it’s 18 degrees, laughing like a maniac.

The one upside is that my side hobby as an artist… the stuff I’ve been cranking out over the last week has been absolutely fire lol.

I’m not a crazy person, never have been.  I’ve a degree in psychology from an Ivy league school and a masters in nursing.  What the fuck is going on, and what the actual fuck can I do to mitigate this insanity before my neighbors call the cops?