Tag: rage

Losing motivation

There’s still not a lot to say. Alex hasn’t been doing too great lately, and even when he’s in a good mood he has to be wrapped up in a blanket or something that can similarly restrict his hands, otherwise he quickly enters a state of intense agitation which escalates into severe self-injury. Continue reading “Losing motivation”

Looks like we’re in for another rough patch

Alex’s mood has taken a major turn for the worse, as I mentioned a couple weeks ago, but now it’s gotten downright awful. The behaviors we’ve seen in the past three or four visits might be the worst since we placed him in his first home over two and a half years ago. Nothing consoles him, nothing comforts him, and nothing calms him down. I fully believe a regular dose of cannabis in his system would give him an overall better life, but I have to wonder if there’s anything at all that could help him when he gets this bad. Continue reading “Looks like we’re in for another rough patch”

What’s the problem? Why can’t Alex just come home so we can figure this out?

With the recent surge in traffic I’ve seen variations of these questions posted as comments as well as asked directly. Some people think that if cannabis works to calm Alex, then we have no good reason to not take Alex home and just dose him ourselves. Back when Alex was first moved from Salem, one woman suggested, directly to my face, that if we cared enough, we wouldn’t keep Alex in a group home, and that we didn’t have any right to complain because we had made our choice.

I should note that some of the confusion may be due to the Treating Yourself article — as in any article trying to get a lot of information across in a concise way, there are a lot of details left out, and some elements are slightly changed to simplify the explanation of the situation. The article is a great way to expose people to the damaging effects of prohibition, but it does gloss over some details that can make our plight seem confusing.

Unfortunately, the story is a lot more complicated than it seems at a glance. I tend to sound like I’m saying, “cannabis is Alex’s miracle drug”, when I really mean that it is his best option, and probably better for his situation than any drug available. Cannabis is an amazing substance. But Alex’s situation is extreme: Continue reading “What’s the problem? Why can’t Alex just come home so we can figure this out?”

Alex’s sibbing is still a major problem

It’s been about a year and a half since we made the decision to have Alex placed outside the home, and still he has these horrible periods of sibbing (to “sib” means to engage in self-injurious behaviors).

We took some video during a recent home visit (about a week ago) demonstrating just how much rage and anxiety Alex still has. He appears to be “stuck” in a behavior of hitting his chin into his shoulder, and even his bath time doesn’t fully calm him down. Continue reading “Alex’s sibbing is still a major problem”

Another bad day

Today was definitely a lot different than last weekend. We had to watch Alex beating himself up, bite, scream, and generally have a rough time. And every time it seemed we’d figured out what he needed to be happy, it turned out to be a short-term solution. The shower helped… for about half an hour. Food helped for a few minutes. Water helped for a few minutes.

To be fair, we got about a 50/50 mix of happy and sad today, but we ended with Alex very unhappy. Ending on a bad note means he probably continued to be unhappy after we left, and the fact that he started out so happy makes it feel as though we failed him in some way we just couldn’t manage to figure out. Continue reading “Another bad day”

At least we know the hash isn’t hurting him….

We hadn’t been able to give Alex hash (we can’t do it on the premises of the facility, so it’s a tricky problem when he’s too angry to take anywhere), and his mood was improving. We’re not the kind of people to say it’s a miracle cure-all medicine, so naturally we had to consider the possibility that the cannabis was in fact making Alex agitated somehow, even though past experience showed otherwise. People change, reactions to different drugs change, etc. But after this past week, we saw some things that convinced us it wasn’t the hash. Continue reading “At least we know the hash isn’t hurting him….”