Better living by Cintra Wilson page 2
The first drug we tried was P. I had been doing such a ghastly amount of aimless sobbing and self-medication with Excedrin PM and six-dollar Merlot that I was thrilled to be told that in four to five weeks I would probably feel much, much better. As any depressed person will tell you, four or five weeks is a second Ice Age, but I was infected with a small germ of hope, so I drove the tumbrel down to Thrifty and bought my expensive little tickets to what I hoped would be the land of well-being.Within four days I found myself sleepless and rabidly bizarre, with my eyes sunk into my skull like a dessicated raccoon's and an absolute dead certainty that I was feeling far more lucid and much, much better, except that I was definitely going to have to kill myself right away, as soon as I got it together to write the letters.
This attitude only struck me as odd when I found myself weeping openly at the testimonial of a preternaturally cheery Hispanic gas station attendant who cornered me over the beef jerky at the mini-mart: "Eh! Jou only leeve one time! Ees not good to be sad. You got to be happy! Smileen! OK!" and then sang a festive folk song in his native tongue and did a manic little dance with his oil rag. His words were the balm of angels, and I immediately stopped taking the little pink Death Mints (as I had fondly begun calling them) and went back to my unkempt doctor.
"Well," he said thoughtfully, taking the pencil out of his dark, furry ear, "wanna try Wellbutrin?"
"Sure!" I said, thinking it would be truly romantic, since it was the antidepressant my boyfriend was on and I thought we would be even closer on the same cute chemical wavelength.
My first few weeks on Wellbutrin were like the rocketing ascendancy of the retarded guy in Flowers for Algernon. Dogs had complex and colorful personalities. I read and memorized obscure dates in thick textbooks. My sex drive blasted through the roof, and even though I didn't climax every time I sneezed, my entire body was a joyously attuned erogenous zone. I woke up each morning with a list of productive things to do in my head and accomplished them. I walked around like Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins, braying popular show tunes, clicking my heels, and sweeping old women off the sidewalk in order to ply them with open-mouthed kisses. "There oughta be a law against how good I feel!" I crowed merrily out of the blue in supermarkets and post offices.
Several weeks later, at the peak of my chipperness, I got vaguely upset after a minor phone altercation with my boyfriend and found myself with an amazingly violent fit of physiological shudders not unlike an epileptic seizure. "Gosh, it must be the Wellbutrin!" chirped Dr. Strange. "Wanna try Prozac?" I said I'd think about it.
Today, my expensive and reputable psychologist decided that I might have Adult Attention Deficit Disorder and asked me if I would consider getting on something like Dexedrine or Ritalin, since my drug history indicated that I had a liking for speed. I said I'd think about it. I figure that if medical science is going to root around in my brain like a bunch of chimps trying to fix a helicopter, I might as well opt for the most entertaining prescription.
I've been off all pills for two weeks now, and every time I crack one of the long-haired textbooks I was devouring like airport novels last month, it looks like a vast and unintelligible calculus equation and my eyes cross and I want to watch TV. Dogs look dumb again. I'm cynical and annoyed. The world I live in is a dark and bitter place filled with malicious greed and inconsolable grief. And hey, for now, it's nice to be back.
