Melatonin

So I have embarked on yet another pharmacological journey with yet another serotonin reuptake inhibitor--this time it's paxil. I was getting sick of thoughts that repeatedly circled around my mind like particles around an accretion disk, that would not leave me alone until they finally flared as intense behavior, mental paralysis, or blog entries. It should come as no surprise that my mother is on paxil, and that there is no doubt a genetic component to my behavior. It's actually changed her personality for the better--she's calmer, less intense. So I figured what's good for the goose is good for the gander.

Now, much of what I'm feeling is no doubt a placebo effect--I've only been taking it for a week, and most SRI's take at least a month to have any noticeable effect. But I do feel a change. And I wouldn't be me if I didn't say I feel rather ambivalent about this.

On the one hand, sure I still have certain thoughts that I hold onto more often than not, but the urgency and the sense of helplessness that I have no control over these events are gone. There is a lack of intensity to my feelings--sure I may be sad that I really dropped the ball recently, but it's a distant, clinical sadness instead of a keening, depressive sadness.

On the other hand, this lack of intensity has hampered my urge to create and my enjoyment of anything creative. Listening to my Ipod on shuffle leads at best to a harmless nostalgia. I'm reading novels out of a sense of inertia instead of a sense of wonder. I can barely be bothered to write the second short story.

I'll give this thing a full month on the chance that this is simply my mind going through changes, and that I'll be in a new equilibrium soon. Maybe grey is how life is supposed to be.