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05 May, 2006 - 6:34 a.m.
my fucking head

i woke up at 2 am with a splitting headache. i'm not talking "oh, i'll take some asprin and go right back to sleep." i'm talking about i was nauseated and my head hurt so much that it was painful to lay it down, even on a pillow, and i thought i might have to go to the emergency room.

it really freaked me out. i was sound aleep and had been for hours, and suddenly, i'm having this dream that someone has drilled into my skull and is removing the back half of it. i can't believe it woke me up.

i did take some excedrin migraine, tried to go back to sleep, but there was no trying to put my head down. kind of hard to sleep with your head not on something. i thought maybe it might be a pinched nerve, as my pillows are sort of flat lately. so i did some neck stretches, shoulder stretches, a lot of movement to try to free whatever was pinched. nothing helped.

then i thought maybe it was related to the fact that i'm in the process of quitting smoking. i haven't really told anybody because i don't want the pressure of them pointing out to me or judging me on how the process is going. and because i'm not doing it "cold turkey", as they say. as i do work in, am trained in, and have degrees in mental health, and because i do engage in substance abuse treatment, i'm doing one of the other ways of quitting which is shown to be more successful in the long term and which isn't based on the concept that any slip is a failure. this process, like me, is more positively focused.

basically, it's a continual process of bargaining and rebargaining with myself that if i can go X amount of time without a cigarette, and then i feel like i really do need one, then i can have one and it will be ok. and then when that amount of time passes, i decide whether or not i can go a longer period of time without actually hhaving one. basically, it's been based on my hour commute. if i can make it to halfway to work, i can have one. then, when i get halfway, i try to make it into town. then to lunch. then to the end of the day. i've been pretty successful at only having one a day, all the way at the end of the day. which is better than the 7 or 8 i was having every day.

so when i woke up with a headache, i thought maybe i had a brain tumor. maybe a pinched nerve. maybe dehydration (i drank a LOT of water. and then i went outside, at 2 in the morning, and had a cigarette, on the off-chance that maybe it was a withdrawal symptom. i hadn't researched nicotine withdrawal, but i thought just maybe it would be one of them. and because i was in tears and considering going to the hospital over this pain, i figured if it was a withdrawl symptom, it wasn't worth feeling. so i had a cigarette. which means i've had 5 cigarettes since friday, as i didn't have any this weekend (i tried half of one on saturday, but felt finished with it after one puff). and that's a pretty good improvement. better than the 2 packs or so i would have been through.

anyway, so here. i eventually i wound up falling asleep as the pain subsided, and i remember feeling very relieved at the time. and i don't know which of the things i did helped, but at least the pain is gone and i can go to work and be productive today. but here is a page that says some of the symptoms of withdrawal. i would say i've had everything except the cravings in the past week. and that's probably because there's no absolutely NOT having it.

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