It was the drugs, your honor

Then again, sometimes, the problem is too many drugs.

I used to think that titrate was something that was done in laboratories, a mysterious process involving bunsen burners and liquids changing colors, alchemic processes revealing the secrets of the universe, or at least synthesizing cool drugs. Boy, was I surprised when I found out that they were titrating my drugs in me. It's every bit as mysterious a process as what I had imagined, but far less entertaining. I am subjected to every overdose, every underdose, every weird, synergistic effect. For years, 37.5 mg. of Effexor was the difference between an adequate but not complete treatment for depression and mania. I dread the day I will have to change meds. Anti-depressants are notorious for just petering out. If that should happen, and it has happened before with Prozac and Serzone, I will have to taper off the one drug, and then taper onto the other drug. Figure six weeks each way. That's three months of freefall, three months of hanging on by fingernails and willpower, praying that by the time the new drug is up to effective levels in my system that it does what it's supposed to, because if it doesn't, then I have to taper off it, then taper onto another drug, another three month process. I could lose a year of my life to this kind of hell, if the psychiatrist doesn't guess right. (Anti-depressants are largely prescribed based on their side effects. Nobody really knows how they work, so prescribing them is a dice roll, anyway.)

I will say this for Provigil: it keeps me awake. The normal dose of Provigil is 200 mg a day. It comes in 100 mg caplets. (Caplets? Tablets shaped like capsules, and coated.) I have a hyper-skitzy system (I started experiencing drug effects two hours after my first dose of Prozac), so my psychiatrist suggested that I start with 50 mg, if I could break the caplet in half. I took a half-pill Monday morning. I had been up much too late the night before, and was definitely dragging on Monday. At 10:00 a.m., I was still hurting, afraid I was going to fall asleep at my desk, so I took the other half. I perked right up, made it through the rest of the day with no problem. So, Tuesday, I just 100 mg. off the bat. Ah, drugs.

Tuesday became hell. I know a drug reaction when I feel it. Well, that's not precisely true. Drug reactions (bar cool visual effects or synesthesia) feel just like "real" emotional upset; the difference is that the reactions are out of proportion to the here-and-now. One of the things talk therapy is good for is learning to identify the difference between here-and-now craziness and accumulated pain. I was anxious, and felt jagged. I couldn't concentrate, and didn't like interacting with people. I wanted to hide under my desk. When I got home, I holed up in my room with my laptop and played the solitaire game Spider. I even asked for a tray for dinner. I almost never do that. I like eating with my housemates. I think that I've asked for a tray twice before in all the time I've been there.

Fortunately, I live with nice and smart people. Pamela brought me a plate of wonderful stir-fry (her stir-frys are almost universally wonderful) and didn't ask any silly questions or try to cheer me up. After dinner, DDB asked if it would be companionable for him to lie on the bed and read, or if I would prefer he went to his own room. I allowed as how it sounded companionable. I knew that he wouldn't try to talk to me. I continued to obsess on my solitaire game and he lay on my bed reading a Ngiao Marsh mystery. We didn't talk, but it was a comforting reminder that I'm loved and cared for.

I only took 50 mgs on Wednesday. Titration ahoy! Ah, the joys of using oneself as a crucible, the pleasures of being one's own experimental animal. Yesterday wasn't as bad as Tuesday -- just as well. I was just short of suicidal depression on Tuesday. Today, I've only taken 50 mg again. I'm feeling tired, that kind of tired where it feels like you're carrying a heavy weight on your back. I'm not falling asleep, though, and I'm not jagged and miserable.

The problem is the drugs, your honor. They haven't invented the right drugs.

The Democrrats make me want to set my hair on fire

At the moment, really, the most rational possible reaction to the Bush administration’s national-security policy is to light one’s hair on fire and run down the street screaming about Jesus.

Patrick Nielsen Hayden in Electrolite, on March 14, 2003

I feel that way about the Democratic party. I've recently decided that the Democrats, whatever their flaws, are our only hope. Come November 2004, either the Democratic candidate is going to win the presidency, or George Bush the Lesser will. This administration has been so much worse than anything I could possibly have imagined. I can't afford a Quixotic campaign for a third party candidate. Not this time around. So, will-she-nil-she, I'm a Democrat.

Couple five days ago, possibly last week, "Talk of the Nation" on NPR had a show on the future of the Democratic party. It sounded about like you'd expect. Politicians who wouldn't know a direction from a hole in the ground talking about the new direction of the Democratic party. Guys who've never met a blue collar worker socially talking about getting in touch with the Democratic base. Criticisms of the current administration all carefully wrapped in cotton and swaths of plausible deniability. Outbreaks of bi-patisan reaonableness on all sides, assurances that Americans hate the left, and so do the Democrats.

I thought about calling in, and saying some true things. Things that can be documented. Things that are in major newspapers like The Times. Surveys that show that although voters say they don't like leftists, they are in favor of government assistance for health insurance for themselves and for the poor. Surveys that showed that the farther to the left Gore went, the better his poll numbers were. The fact that the Republicans won the presidency by insisting that the votes not be counted, and flying in operatives to ensure this by violence if necessary. More, inferences and obvious connections between Bush and the oil industry, the contract to Halliburton, the money that can be made "reconstructing" Iraq... and I realized that if I called in, I woujld be dismissed as a raving lunatic. For telling the truth. For having eyes. For reading the newspaper.

Really, the most sensible thing to do would be to set my hair on fire and run down the street screaming about Jesus.