The Best Thing to Happen to Brains Since Consciousness
April 15, 2008
The tide of Seraquel-induced side effects is rolling in. The beach is just out of reach, and the waves threaten to suck me under to drown me, wash me up, and send me off a Zombie. Luckily, I brought arm floaties, oblong white arm floaties, with Provigil on the side.
This pill gets popped by a surprising majority of the whack-jobs sufferers I associate with. Whats more surprising is the utter lack of complaints. I personally spend a great deal more time down than up. Take an average and it would seem pseudo-rational that the mood stabilizers hold me steady well below the functional threshold. They do. And Provigil, also known as Modafinil, takes that baseline and rockets it up to normalcy. It doles out clarity and energy with amphetaminic gusto, boasting no common side effects save headaches and nausea. Loved by all, Modafinil is so badass it claims its own fucking class of drugs: eugeroics*. I’m so inspired I composed a narrative to detail my experience:
The Appetite loss has not gone away, but he was lonely. Lamictal’s side effects must have hated him for the higher dose and ostracized him. Maybe he just thought he was too cool for them. Regardless, it was clear they hated each other. So he set about pulling together his own gang, invited fatigue and the ever endogamous Memory loss and Aphasia. Akisthisia (thanks alterego) came too. They kicked some ass and took Lamictal off the radar. Then things got ugly. Drunk with power and high on victory they turned on their their facilitator. They tried to commandeer my brain. Memory loss proved weak in battle. Hell, I hardly remembered he was there, but the verbal assault did to me what my inability to sit still does to everyone else. Pissed me the fuck off. The situation was dire, I was being zombified one neuron at a time. One of those fast zombies, that runs up and rips out your jugular. With my teeth. Just as I resigned myself to the one click purchase of “Brain Soufflés”, a coated crusader soared over the ridge and down the esophagus. He made short work of the cognitive impairments, reducing them to sniveling inconveniences. Then, in epic woo style hand-to-hand he wrested the focus knob from Aki and laid him out cold. Only appetite loss was spared the slaughter, switching sides in a last minute betrayal. The dust cleared, and there he stood, relief lettering catching the light. I didn’t know what to say, how to repay him. Of course he hadn’t killed them, superhero’s rarely do. He just locked them up to fight another day. He told me the best repayment was payment, and happily collected his ludicrous fee. Broke but at ease, I waited for my cookbook to arrive. Brains!
Anyway, Provigil is the sun to my brain fog. If you can stomach dropping $5 a pill, it comes highly recommended. If your frugal and patient there’s always Adrafinil, the $1 alternative which metabolizes into Modafnil. As an added bonus, unlike its Schedule IV big brother, it is available sans prescription at your favorite online pill pusher. But don’t take it if you don’t need it. The last thing I want is to inadvertently encourage a race of super-humans. Yes of course I’m jealous of your dizzying drug fueled intellects, but it’s mostly fear of the inevitable genocide you’ll visit on the inferior. Maybe this post was a bad idea. I’m going to buy a gun.
*it shares this distinction exclusively with siblings Adrafinil and the upcoming Armodafinil (Olmifon and Nuvigil, respectively)
Abandoning Meatspace
April 15, 2008
Hiccups, appendixes and the functional disparity between listening and reading. Just three of the multitudinous sign posts on the road to atheism. (Considering implications of omnipotence I’d prefer no deity to an incompetent one.) Jumping sides, some people marvel at the miracle of evolution, the brilliance and wonder of mother nature. These people are idiots. If you gave me three billion years and all the resources the choose what lives and who dies, you can be damn sure I’d do a better job than that bitch. Blundering blindly, haphazardly choosing the first workable solution to a problem is the folly of retards and city employees. I’m not saying mastery all living things is trivial, but I’m sure I’d get the hang of systematic ecological subtleties in the first few hundred years. Then I’d begin engineering my visionary paradise. You’d love it. I’d breed you to love it. But I’ve digressed.
Humans are held hostage in a poorly designed, and as of this posting inescapable, meat cage. We have needs and limitations well beyond our control. Sure, we can live easy, but a life of leasure is a one way ticket to misery. It’s retarded, but that’s how it is. We have to learn making things easier doesn’t always make them better (Microwave anyone?). We need to get outside, exercise, we simply aren’t built to sit around. It doesn’t work. We need other people. We’d like to think cell phones, emailing, twittering, instant messaging, text messaging, facebook messaging, and fuck-knows-what messaging are all bringing us closer. Get a ruler. We didn’t evolve dividing distances by the speed of light. We thrive on direct human contact, and die without it. We have all the technology to live a lazy life of recreation, but we just aren’t designed for it. It destroys us. I only wish there was a god to hate.
Drug Jollies
April 14, 2008
When the hell did my medicine cabinet start looking like a pharmacy? One failed drug after another, all shoved behind the mirror. I organize them into groups. Morning, midday, and night neatly laid out and shining with a hollow promise of stability. Of sanity. It started with a single slip, a 6″ x 4″ harbinger of tribulation. A future slipped to present. The future still. Shadows at my back and on the horizon. Depressing. These days I hand my druggist prescriptions by the fistful.
I needed a new psychiatrist. We didn’t communicate. I talked, he didn’t listen. I told him I was sensitive to medication, a paternal inheritance, and he kept upping my dosages. I kept halving them. I guess I didn’t listen either. Doctor’s don’t seem to like the idea that drug tolerance varies. I beseech them with tales of insanity, extreme lethargy, unstoppable agitation all wrought from medications taken below dosing instruction. To no avail. I don’t think my new doctor listens either, but he’s friendly. I like him, and I think he’s the best I’m going to get. He gave me some new drugs. This time, five was the magic number .
Topping the list is Lamictal, one drug that promised me low side effects and delivered. I barely notice it’s working, probably because it isn’t. Not well enough to stop depression anyway. At least the effects are enough to notice; the mild insomnia, weight gain, and verbal issues. Thankfully, they hover bearably above my threshold of awareness. Lamictal’s followed by its cousin Abilify, nothing has ever calmed me so well. So well in fact that I am incapable of anything more trying than the occasional trip from bed to the bathroom. A previous doctor’s prescription cryptically labeled it “For Thoughts”. I don’t take it. Antithetically, Provigil is a godsend, it gives me back my ability to focus, to be myself. Other drugs restrained my attention span to that of a newt. I couldn’t engage in reality, in anything, for more than a few minutes before my eyes would glaze over and untenable restlessness set it. To be an ever eight year old is simply unacceptable. Ambien is there for the insomnia. It keeps me from tossing and turning as I ponder the ramifications of sleep dependence. I tried abusing it once, just quadrupled the dose. Most told me it is a good time you can’t remember. One told me never to try. I hope I had a good time. Finally, Seroquel, a new ingredient in my personal brand of brain chemistry, and a new kid in bipolar’s pharm scene. I’ve barely begun, but I feel good. An indication of nothing. I won’t know if it is really working unless I never have a full depressive or manic episode again, ever. Side effects are mild and seem to include nothing more than a loss of appetite. It may be the answer. At least it brings hope.
I really don’t like drugs. Well, except for the weed I don’t smoke anymore, but I believe an herbal classification is more accurate there. Cannabis aside, I wouldn’t take anything for a long time. My lack of medication was lonely among the few points of contention I battled around with my parents. The doctors started telling me I had no hope of a normal life without them. When depression left me another university semester unfinished, I was finally ready to listen. I dare believe drugs can aid my struggle, to hope to storm the mountain with powder coated allies armored in orange plastic. I certainly don’t want to fight alone. It’s just that five seems like a crowd.
United States Postal Success
April 14, 2008
I was all set to rail on the US postal service, even worked out a few good zingers in the shower this morning. But, to my grave misfortune (and others great fortune) my research suggests they shouldn’t be admonished at all, in fact, they should get a fucking medal. My planned reproach began by deploring my financial obligations to the organization. Like many, I really don’t do snail mail. Aside from the occasional magazine and rare personal letter I actively dislike everything that little tin box spews forth. Why should my taxes subsidize the endless barrage of unnecessary bank statements, bills (I handle my finances exclusively online), credit card offers and coupon cards? they shouldn’t. And they don’t. Apparently USPS even turns a $600 million profit.
Berating them for home delivery was to be my pièce de résistance. Foiled again. I figured we were wasting tons of valuable postage on men with silly costumes and giant knapsacks. I figured wrong and the figures are right here: The average mailman, or letter carrier as is the pc term of times, rakes in about $48k/year plus benefits. The National Association of LCs has a paltry 300,000 members. Throw those numbers in the math box and discover that were talking a budget cut of almost 1% for firing them all. I am not going to guesstimate infrastructure budgets; I no longer care about the balance between adding 200 million P.O. boxes and taking 200 thousand goofy wrong sided trucks off the road. It’s brazenly obvious that this is hardly the postage slashing bonaza I expected. Rates go up to 42 cents on May 1, and suddenly I can’t seem to remember why I cared so much.
Needless to say, their profits and delivery efficiency caught me off guard. I need some time to sort out my feelings. What do they do with all that money? Avenue of reproach? Unlikely. My Pride Hurts.
Doctors, Their Clocks, and the Progress of Time
April 12, 2008
Brace for cliche, but I’m sick of Doctors being so damn late. With the exception of the blissful period where my doctor and neighbor were one in the same, I have never had the pleasure, nay courtesy, of a timely appointment. These people went to school, a fuck ton of school, the idea of scheduling a little wiggle room is certainly not beyond their grasp. I would even go as far as guessing temporal divignation is taught in the same class as handwriting obfuscation: Fundamentals of Frustration Induction. The office today was at least clever enough slow their clock five minutes, but what they really need is a clock which <i>runs</i> slow. Now, to my point, I’m starting a new product line, doctor clocks. They run at 5/7 the speed of normal clocks. By the time five rolls around it is barely noon, half days and less pissed off people. Tell your friends. Tell you physicians. I’m gonna be fucking rich.
Alkali Unrest
April 11, 2008
I am not sure how much longer I can tolerate lithium. The hand tremors I can handle, but the dulling of wits and restlessness are unbearable. It hones right in on the verbal centers, leaving me gasping for words like a fish in an oil well. Beyond that, I have the attention span of a six year old and I haven’t held a position for more than forty seconds in over a week. Over two thirds of the major psychological crises I’ve had in my life have been caused by drugs intending the opposite. As such, I feel pretty justified ignoring the overactive prescription pad of my psychiatrist. The man is as much of an idiot as I am presumptuous fuck, and I am finding more peace in the converse of his recommendations then his advice has ever brought. Tomorrow I meet with a new doc, hopefully he can help, but I am skeptical: the man answered his phone and scheduled my appointment himself. Smells of small potatoes.
Imagined Scarcity
April 11, 2008
A response to my last post, which was rife with anger but lacking in explanation.
There is only one real reason for war and if you think it’s love you’re full of shit. We kill people today for the same reason we’ve always killed people, for more. Survival of the fittest, strength overpowering weakness with injustice and inhumanity. In times past, we had better reason, not good reason mind you, just better. Food was scarcer, shelter and resources more difficult to obtain. But in America our cultural propensity for dissatisfaction has left us with a gluttonous bounty we disregard in relentless pursuit of more crap. We don’t need any more, we just can’t seem to see that. Granted, there are a few straggling dregs of society who remain cold and hungry in the midst of our plenty, but they are the exception. We don’t need to fight and we don’t need more oil. If the price of gasoline goes through the roof, take less roadtrips. You might argue the threat of economic collapse, and there may be something to it, but fuck your need (and my hypocrisy) for a million worthless durable goods. If you really think people should die for your right to iphone, nothing but my penchant for non violence is keeping me shoving a Ralf Lauren pullover down your esophagus. We have plenty of food without even tapping the tens of thousands of acres we spend tax money on not farming. …frack…I’m losing focus now, I’m just gonna have to let this one peter out.
Tags: politics
War and Price
April 11, 2008
I grew up an American. I mean really. Stars and Stripes, Country Music, Support Our Troops, Freedom is Security, War is Peace, the whole bit. Until one day I woke up and realized I was just an american, war was savage and soldiers are murderers. Yes, fucking murderers. Homicidal maniacs, out killing to take what they want, maybe not for themselves, but for things equally worthless. Personally, I’m unwilling to die for anything unless it is to save someone…directly, not for any idea, not for any cause, not for any piece of shit land, and certainly not so I can keep running my kids to soccer practice in a fucking tank. Call me unamerican, unpatriotic, both true, but for the love of god be sure and call me a contentious objector. Canada is a bit chilly for my taste.
Tags: politics
1 Too Many. Lies. 5 Too Many.
April 11, 2008
Baseball, stupendous game. Slow? certainly, but what the fuck is everybody’s rush. Unfortunately, after spending nine innings with my brother’s employees I am unable to shake my lingering anti-societal awareness. Frankly, I do not want to spent the better part of my life, forty to sixty hours right out of the prime of the day, working. Even working such hours for myself (and they would certainly be longer) seems obtusely boorish. I’ve awoken to the fact that there is no one out there to tell me what I am supposed to do with this life, but I am damn sure that isn’t it. Rotting away for financial causes seems paramountly hollow. It’s enough to make me want to run away to the forest…or marry rich. There’s no broadband in the forest.
Voicemail, Intercoms, and Forces of Insanity
April 10, 2008
There are few things in this world I cannot stand and though many (erroneously) may believe it but a minor inconvenience , cell phone answering services make the list. In brighter times you had messages like: “Hey this is Bob, you’re a fat worthless son of a bitch, leave a message *beep*”. Elegance. Simplicity. Now, I can hardly not reach anyone without sitting through half an hour of “If you want to page someone press 8, if you want to harangue their mother for rearing them press 6, if you want to FUCKING SCREAM BECAUSE YOU JUST WANTED TO LEAVE A GODAMNED MESSAGE PRESS 89…” and so on. A friend of mine, had the gaul to change that very message to Spanish so I can’t even be sure exactly what is causing me to strangle him with the cord. Just kidding, cell phones don’t have cords. I bludgeoned him to death. Which brings me to my next point: airplanes.
Most of the time you get away with blessedly sparing cabin announcements. A weather update here, a timezone check for those who can’t tell america from a piece of dog shit there, nothing too serious. But occasionally, every now and then, once in a while you get that conceited son of a bitch who simply loooooves the sound of his own voice. Sure, I love the sound of my keyboard, but I’m not forcing you to read this, unlike this particular brand of asshole who drones on and on giving you, his helpless captive, every bit of useless bullshit he can dream up. I can’t not listen. I am simply incapable. My brain devotes a whole fucking lobe to language comprehension. I can turn my headphones up until my ears bleed, but for the life of me I cannot tune out someone speaking to me over an intercom, no matter how much of a rambling sadistic douchbag. The real tragedy is the post 9/11 security measures. Have you ever tried to slit someones throat with an issue of skymall?
Tags: airplanes, douchbagery
