Medicated #001

It’s been a few days since the last post on the topic of my chronic, depressive state and its medication. A few things have changed since then.

My dosage has been doubled, after the doctor found my toleration of side-effects to be adequate. The side-effects that remain, or that have re-emerged with the increased dosage, are expected to wane with continued medication.

Particularly helpful though, has been that coffee has not only lost the metallic taste I’d been tasting these past few weeks, but actually tastes as wonderful as it did when I first got hooked in the 1990s. Notably, this change of taste has occurred with the same brew; same hippy milk; same Demerara sugar; same batch of free-trade Rio Coco and all in the same proportions.

Food in general has improved in taste. In fact, it’s all improved across the board, just by varying degrees – the least, at least noticeably, and the best, well, it’s been incredible.

I’d been wondering why people had been flattering me on my cooking. Meals that I’d considered drab, have managed to elicit praise over the years, and the possibility has occurred to me that in cooking for a depressive with a stunted sense of taste, while not trying to produce something overpowering, may have produced something subtly wonderful – for other people.

The judge is still out on this, mind you.

Sex hasn’t given me an afterglow since 1992, so there may be that to look forward to. In fact, the last time I had afterglow, it was in response to a leg workout in 1993. I’m looking at re-joining gym this autumn, so maybe I’ll get my giddies there as well, or perhaps just instead.

My concentration seems a little partitioned at the moment though. There are things I can read and focus on at the moment, with quite a good deal of clarity, and while I can hold an entire response in my head (to this post and some of the subsequent comments on the MTR defamation issue), point-by-point, I can’t get it out on the page in the same state. I suspect I’d disgrace myself with a word salad resembling the content of the Sokal hoax.

This post I’m writing now doesn’t involve nearly as much interconnected thought, so I can break it down into thought-sized segments without losing track. I make no promises about the proofing.

My sleep is starting to come in less fragmented blocks. Last night was the first night of sleep I’d call ‘normal’; seven hours with one brief awakening. Prior to this, my best night of sleep was broken up into four and two-hour blocks, with a two-hour break in the small hours of the morning I spent doing a few domestic chores. All the rest has been worse, but has followed a steady curve of improvement up until now.

I don’t know if it’s the medication, or the accumulating sleep deprivation I’m yet to catch up on, but I’m yawning an awful lot. This is not to say that this is unpleasant. It’s rather stress relieving actually, if at times a little inconvenient (like now).

A few random observations; stupid people seem funnier and less irritating than before; it’s becoming increasingly difficult to comprehend the logic/motivations behind my past errors of judgement; I appear to have regained a certain amount of dexterity and there’s a lot more spring in my step; I’ve become a poor judge of temperature as my tolerance seems to have increased; I’m more calm at rest, and I’m a lot more photosensitive (sunburn is now easy to achieve with only a little exposure).

With the prospect of my prose changing over this transition, I’m going to try logging my experiences for the next few weeks before reviewing the writing. I may also critique some of my earlier work in light of this changing frame of mind. It could get interesting. It may not. It may be interesting that I thought it could be interesting.

This could all be babble. At least I don’t have cotton mouth.

~ Bruce