Sometimes freedom is hard to measure

But if it is your freedom, the feeling of it alone is enough to satisfy any perceived need or desire to put a value on it. It may seem wrong and I can understand the argument against such a comparison but the only thing I can think of is being released and having your rights reinstated after having served time in prison, or moving to the US after having grown up in a "third world" or Communist country, but then again I don't know what that is like either but that is the best thing I can think of so just use your imagination.
It may seem trite to some, but I have been a slave to medication of one form or another for my entire life. When I was a child it was Ritalin, Dexedrine, Desipramine etc... and later Lexapro, Elavil, Wellbutrin, Effexor and several others. If you have a knowledge of these drugs then I guess you see a connection. Well in my case it started as the disparate attempts of my parents to turn me into my brother or something like that. Not to say that he was perfect or anything, they just didn't expect their second kid to be wired backwards and they didn't know that was what made me so hard for them to relate to. Hell, I didn't even figure that out until just a few years ago,..... I shouldn't say I didn't know that is how I am, but I didn't realize until recently that I don't have to be wired like everyone else. In fact I honestly prefer being the way I am, even if it makes my life more difficult, I would rather life be hard and my experiences rich and meaningful instead of it being easier and my experiences being normal and safe. I do have regrets, lots of them, but my mistakes have made me who I am and learning by trial and error seems to be the only thing that works for me. Hey, at least I am aware of it.
Anyway, the new found freedom is for the first time in almost 30 years I am no longer experiencing my life through the fog of mind altering meds. It took me two months of slowly reducing my dosage (which was the highest I had ever heard of for the medicine I was taking) so as to avoid any nasty side effects, which I have experienced before when one or another doc decided to play guinea pig on me. I had no interest in going through that again. So, here I am almost a month after the last dose, and I feel great. I should just say "I feel", because with many of these drugs the general effect they have on you is to deaden your feelings to the point that you can't feel anything at all. So maybe I am just over excited at being able to feel again, but I am going to enjoy it as long as I can. And I am writing this to remind myself later how much I love to feel, happy, sad, excited, horny, whatever. I almost forgot what it felt like to feel so I want to remember what it felt like to not feel. So here's to freedom, however you get it.