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Every year around this time, I go to the Veterans Affairs (VA) Hospital for my yearly physical and get my blood drawn and get all of my levels checked.

Over the past few years, my liver and kidney functions have been declining, and last year they both had reached dangerous levels that had the doctors concerned. Their explanation for all of this was that I was drinking too much. So last year, after the doctor told me that my liver and kidneys were starting to lose their functions, I quit drinking and didn't drink until my wife and I were in Thailand for Steemfest, and while there, I drank sparingly.

After Steemfest, my wife and I went back to not drinking any alcohol, until recently we bought a bottle of whisky and drank two times over the past two months. I just had my recent check up at the VA for this year's physical and my results came back and my kidneys are starting to fail.

This would explain a lot of my recent problems I have had over the past two years with my concentration, muscle twitches, and loss of body strength, even though I am staying active.

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For those of you that aren't familiar with me, I served in the military and in law enforcement and have been through some pretty serious situations. Those situations have left permanent mental scars that I deal with on a daily basis, and the VA's way of dealing with it was to medicate me.

As I was given the results from the latest blood tests and it showed that all of my internal organs were still declining, despite the fact that I had been following their advice of pretty much quitting drinking alcohol all together and being more active (I walk around 60 miles a week), the medication they give me was the only other thing that could be causing this.

So I began to research all of the different medication they had me on and the side effects and even how they could all interact with each other, something that I had been worried about from the start, but something they didn't seem to care about. I found that most of the medications were extremely hard on the kidneys and I had been taking them multiple times a day for many years. I had even been taking one of the medications at the maximum dosage that they could give someone and if you go any higher, there was a chance of seizures, and my doctor had once told me that he thinks that we should go higher. When I told him no, he suggested another medication in its place, but I told him I didn't want anymore. They have been trying to over medicate me for a long time now.

So where do I go from here?

I have started to ween myself off of all of the medications, except my blood thinners because I think those are necessary. I would like to go cold turkey and just quit taking all of them, but I know that is not possible because stopping mental health meds is a bad idea and has to be done slowly.

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I have forgotten some of my meds while I was traveling before and have had some weird side effects like brain zaps and weird mental fog where it felt that I was just floating through the day on auto pilot and I want to minimize any of those side effects.

I think it will take about 3 to 5 months to completely ween myself off of the medication safely. I am going to be going the more natural route. I will be looking more into meditation and other stuff like that. I am hoping that this whole thing will awaken my brain as well and that this brain fog can finally be lifted once and for all.

Thank you for taking the time to read this and I hope that it all made sense. If you need someone to reach out to and are having a hard time, you can always talk to me. I am just a DM or a comment away. We are all here for each other.