I forgot to take my brain meds for two weeks and all it took was a socractic shouting match to realize it
I've been exhausted and headache-y for the last 2 weeks. I've been having trouble focusing at work and zero energy/motivation to do anything after getting home. This isn't entirely uncommon but that's been going on this long has been odd.
It was all I could to watch a little TV in the evening with the wife and maybe nap with the cat. I've never been big on naps â its a combination of well-engrained "must be productive" capitalism and also the sheer amount of stuff needing done around the house â But this week I took a nap, I think, every single day? That's odd.
Friday evening, I as watching Make Some Noise1 and having an internal battle about the handwriting stuff I"d been doing. I had been, legitimately, enjoying it for the first week, but the last few days has been an absolute slog. Something was amiss so I interrogated myself about it...
A Soft-Bodied Descent Into Remembering Things That Matter
Cast:
- ABM â Conscious self, armed with intent and a vague moral obligation to journal before sleep
- Psyche â Soft, limp, vaguely damp, in a state of full emotional molasses
Setting â A couch. A screen. A house in quiet revolt against momentum.
ABM: Okay. One more scene, then weâre journaling. Itâs not even about reflection anymoreâitâs momentum, right? Ritual? Brain compost?
Psyche (entombed in fleece, face half-lit by flickering streaming light): We are not moving. This is now a sedentary tomb. Youâve mistaken inertia for peace, and I wonât correct you.
ABM: You used to like journaling.
Psyche (a slow exhale, like air escaping a beanbag full of secrets): That was in the time before. Before the heaviness. Before the blanket became a way of life.
ABM (sits up, squinting suspiciously): You were actually kind of on top of things last week. You were doing the handwriting on your own. What happened?
Psyche (burrowing deeper): Entropy. Cosmic rays. Seasonal affective malaise. Mercury in Gatorade. Take your pick.
ABM (stands with resolve; remote clicks off Dropout.TV mid-bit): No more episodes. Up. To the desk. Pen to paper. The ghost must be exorcised.
Psyche (flops fully horizontal like a protest pancake): No. I am goo. Mist. You cannot command mist.
ABM (trying to lift own body with tragic dignity): Then Iâll carry us. Drag us. Whatever it takes. I refuse to rot here with popcorn kernels in my navel.
Psyche (smiling faintly): Youâre gonna drag yourself around the house like a haunted marionette? Okay. Letâs see this tragedy unfold.
[ABM begins to drag his psyche-self, lurching across the room like a man in a low-budget exorcism film.]
ABM (breathing heavily): What have we been eating?
Psyche (softly): Just⌠empty calories and echo.
ABM (pauses, blinking): Wait. This feels⌠familiar. Like when the color drains from fruit. Or when we forgetâŚ
Psyche (sits up slightly, blinking with unexpected clarity): When was the last time we took the little mood bean?
ABM (searches the internal cabinet of memory, only to find cobwebs and static): Ohhh... oh no.
Psyche (in dawning horror): I wasnât just being dramaticâIâm chemically diminished!
ABM (half-collapsing, half-laughing): Youâre not lazy, youâre malfunctioning. The serotonin mines are empty and the dwarves are on strike.
Psyche (weakly but with resolve): Then we must find the bottle. Take the bean.
ABM (nodding solemnly): But first we crawl to the pill drawer like pilgrims in a house built of couch....
Jack's beans got misplace
Where "beans" are my fluoxetine and, with it, my sanity. It would seem that when I last refilled, rather than condense bottles correctly, I topped my refill of the magic beans with a different magic, meaning I'd been double-dosing something else (nothing bad) and went cold, slimy turkey on the really important one.
With a bevy of photographic databases online, I've sorted out the happy-makers into the correct bottles and will be fine but...
I hadn't felt like this in some years. In a way, I am grateful that I noticed and was able to suss out the problem where, so many years ago when I was yet a nascent eldritch horror, I'd simply have disappeared into the pit of fleecy-despair. Maybe I"d emerge when someone noticed. More likely, I'd have not figured it out until my next refill.
So. Here we are, then, an echo of The Dark Years, years remembered with a grim determination to never return â years etched into my skin as a tattoo totem to keep my brain in check â but also still it persists like a sickening shadow in flapping in the wings.
In conclusion or something
Good things: I figured it out and have rectified it. And, of a way, the writing helped do so. Bad things: This headache isn't going away any time soon. And also, I had forgotten about the GI issues a "new" dose of SSRIs can create....
Footnotes
I finally opted to pay for my own subscription rather than using a fried's log in because I have been devouring Dimension 20 and the plans have device limits. I didn't want to be taking up that much device time.↩