Wednesday, June 3, 2009

I'm on drugs!

Well. I'm feeling quite a bit different today. I started feeling better last night while playing D&D minis. At first it was very bad. I was in Games of Berkeley, staring at the new minis that had come in, and thinking "This won't give me any pleasure. I might as well not buy them." But then I thought I'd feel stupid hanging out with everyone who was enjoying the new minis if I didn't have any of my own. So I bought some and played a game. I lost, but it was a good game and it got me feeling normal, like myself again. I also had a good conversation with my friend Paul, who was kind enough to check up on me after reading my "blanket of lead" post.

This morning Quinn is going back to school, having recovered sufficiently from his eye boogers (with the help of antibiotic drops) that he should no longer be eye booger contagious. I also took my first half dose (25 mg) of Sertraline, the generic version of Zoloft, this morning. (Holy fucking shit: in 2007, almost 30 million people in the United States were on this drug. That's like 10% of the country.) It may be all in my head, but I'm definitely feeling some effects: there's an overall hyperness and jitteryness (it could be the cup of coffee), a lack of introspection, some slight tingling on the pinky side of my right hand. Rather weird, I must say. I'm certainly not feeling like a blanket of lead or frustrated, which is nice. But I don't think my writing is as good, either. I have the urge to write very simple, straightforward, declarative sentences, devoid of poetic ornamentation. Of course, maybe that will make my writing better.

Not looking forward to the possible negative sexual side effects, but depression has definite negative sexual side effects so I guess that's a risk I'm willing to take. I'm utterly convinced that that previous sentence would have been written better were I not on this drug. This is very strange: it feels like my Internal Monologue is queiter, that I'm more directly connected to the outside world. It feels like I'm out of my head a bit, which is very unusual for me.

Well, the whole point of this is to be able to get more work done, so off I go...

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Glad to hear it, fingers crossed.

fragilemom said...

Interesting! I wonder if my husband went through any of that when he first took it. He didn't mention it if so.

Anonymous said...

lol...yeah my adopted dtr and I are both on it. (and if it helps neither of us have icky side effects!). It does get better. :o)

Zoloft Birth Defects said...

I've never played DND minis... is it fun? That's cool that you live in Berkeley, my high school friend Dean owns Eudemonia- they have a pretty prolific Magic/card/DND scene, you should stop by! Anyway I came across your site while researching Zoloft birth defects I guess try to get therapy along with any drugs as it seems that most depression is not a medical issue but a clinical, thinking, thought, issue. Like the chemicals in people's brains are not usually much off, it's their circumstances. Anyway, good luck, sorry for the rambling, and say hi to dean for me! -kebs chow :)

Zachary Drake said...

I've played Magic at Eudemonia, but I don't get up to Berkeley as often as I used to. I did get therapy, and had been in therapy throughout this experience. I'm happy to report that I've been off the antidepressants for quite some time now. I think my depression was brought on by circumstance, and while raising a Fragile X son is still often tiring and frustrating, the negative aspects are now much more contained and don't prevent me from enjoying things the way they did two years ago.