why i am anti-minute rice on a friday night

had i had minute rice, i probably would not have stopped to buy the gourmet cheese and crackers on the way home from lab to stave off my hunger while i fixed a real dinner.

had i not bought the gourmet cheese and crackers, i probably would not have opened the bottle of wine.

had i not opened the bottle of wine, i would not have been happily tipsy while preparing dinner.

had i not been happily tipsy, i would not have been enticed by the packet of kamel red lights on the stand by my door.

had i not been enticed, i would not have gone out on the porch to smoke one with my glass of wine, while i waited for the non-minute rice to cook.

thus, the slow cooking rice i was forced to make to accompany my stir-fry dinner forced me to slow down and savor the wine, and smoke on the porch. i like smoking on the porch. i would almost argue that smoking can be healthy for you because it, at least for me, forces you to slow down -- take a cigarette break as it were -- and think about your life. about what is stressing you out, about why you wanted to smoke. granted, i only do this at most once a week so it's not at a horribly unhealthy level...but still. it is healthy to slow down once in a while. and whether it's slow-cooking rice, a cigarette, a good glass of wine, or what have you that makes you stop and smell the proverbial roses -- no it's not even that. it's not smelling the proverbial roses. i wasn't slowing down to notice all the nice, cheery, hallmark-card, sappy things one tends to overlook in the everyday humdrum of life. i was slowing down to breathe. ok, to breathe a lung-full of tobacco and other carcinogens, but to breathe. to notice what it is that makes me human. what life is all about, the good and the bad. to abstract. to not focus on what i did not accomplish today in lab, and what i probably won't accomplish before i leave for australia, but what the existential implications of being me are. i like to be alone sometimes, and i like to be very social sometimes. thus, i would not be happy playing thoreau out in the woods, isolated from all civilization, communing with nature and discovering how self-sufficient i am, blah blah blah. no, that would not satisfy me for too long. nor would i want to live in an apartment where i am never the only one home in a big city where there is always something going on and always pressure to be doing something and looking my best. that would not suit me either. so actually, perhaps by accident, or at least somewhat fortuitously, i have crafted a rather ideal life-place for me. grad school, in new haven, playing on a boston-based ultimate team on the weekends. there is room in there for the academic, social, atheltic, and reclusive in me. awesome.

this was going to be some wonderfully crafted post, with a point, a thesis, a logical flow to it. i guess that last paragraph kinda killed all hopes of that. so much the better, because there is a lot on my mind and i don't think i could find a common element to string it all together into some kind of nice narrative.

depression is uniquely sucky among physio-psycho-logical ailments. in what other "disease" are you pressured to doubt that you are even sick, and if you do accept that you are sick and choose to seek help, you then are made to feel that you are weak for doing so. would you tell a diabetic to "just suck it up" and eat that donut? would you tell the heart patient to stop being a wuss and go for a run? would you tell someone who was allergic to peanuts that it was all in their head? no, no, and no, so why do we tell people who are depressed to buck up and cheer up and get out of bed and stop moping around?

after a year of ups and downs and playing around with paxil (paroxetine), i advocated for a switch to another med. and dr. spivac, my glorious and flaming psychiatrist, opted for zoloft (sertraline). (i am trying to learn the generic names so if anyone asks me what meds i'm on, i can respond with the obscure scientific names and not really reveal anything about myself other than that i am smart enough to memorize the generic names of my meds.) so yes, i am partaking in another round of "anti-depressant-roulette" because they really don't know how these things work. everyone reacts differently to every drug, even ones within the same class (paroxetine and sertraline are both Selective-Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors).

in a previous post i believe i showed the chemical structure of paroxetine hydrochloride:



and here is sertraline:


and here is serotonin, which is what these drugs are trying to mimic in a way:



so you can see (if you're at all chemically inclined) how they are simliar yet different. (and i don't really know how the uptake of serotonin is inhibited naturally by the body -- if it's actually serotonin itself that activates receptors or what.) and everyone's receptors are different, thanks to our wonderful genetic diversity. maybe one day they will figure out how to predict how a given person will react to a given med -- that would be a very useful and imo attainable application of genetic profiling -- but until then we get to treat our bodies, our brains nonetheless, like an experiment. what dose of what drug treats the symptoms most effectively with the least bothersome side-effects.

so, not only is a depressed patient expeced to cope with the fact that not everyone accepts that they are in fact ill, and that not everyone accepts the treatment they've chose (anti-depressant, talk therapy, or both), they have to weigh the pros against the cons of their drug of choice. are involuntary twitching and disturbing dreams a reasonable price to pay for having the motivation to get out of bed in the morning and make it through the day without bursting into tears? is decreased libido to the point where you can't orgasm a small price to pay for not imagining the different ways you could hurt yourself with a razor blade? do we have a right to demand a better quality of life? or should be just be happy that we're happy, never mind the diarrhea?

so, yes. day 3 on zoloft. and i'm feeling better. the switch has been relatively smooth (a few headaches, some nausea, and only one episode of mood volatility), and my mood has been better. i have even been motivated to get up early and work out. and i dare say i have had less severe urges to binge, my stomach/GI system have been less agitated, and my libido has increased (or maybe it's just been a while since i've had some). i am encouraged.

but also worried. when will zoloft stop working for me (if ever)? will i have to go through this drug-switcheroo every year? will i ever find a doseage of a mediacation where i am stable for more than a month without intolerable side effects? will i have to be on antidepressants my entire life? is that a bad thing?

for the moment i will be content that i am feeling better and that things are working for me right now. i have a lot to look forward to in the coming weeks: nationals, australia, worlds. this is enough of a "drug" in and of itself to cure even my most stubborn mood. hoorah!