New Data

So a new study has come out from England suggesting that the modern anti-depressants are not clinically more effective than placebo. I don't really know how I feel about that. Half the time I'm not sure if my depression is real or if I'm engaging in some sort of cowardly escapist self-deception, so why should I be any more confident in the treatment. I know it does something. The dreams and the sex don't seem to me to be placebo effects. Something is going on in my brain and it's something I can feel. I don't know if Prozac is better at causing side effects than it is at treating depression and anxiety. That would certainly be irony.
I know the stuff isn't perfect, I believe if it were I would feel better. The motor wouldn't run all the time, the anxiety wouldn't consume me the way it does. The waves of self-hatred, the unseen, unheard, breakdowns in the shower or at work, the self-destructive thoughts triggered by frustration, all these would ease. It seems that Prozac is a lifeboat with a leak, and I don't know if it will float, swamp, or sink. I just know that jumping out of it is more than I can face.

Fluoxetine Dreams

There is an apparent blood-level of medication that I tend to pass on the way up and on the way down where my dream-life becomes very active. Usually it happens when I change levels of medication, run out and skip a few more days than I should, or when I start to get attenuating effect from my current dosage. In fact it seems to be a decent barometer of when things are about to go south with my condition. Right now I'm getting used to my new higher dose and I'm still in the vivid dream stage. As a matter of fact I've been there longer than the normal couple three days, and I wonder about this. I guess we'll have to wait and see.
In the meantime, I just need to deal with the night-time strangeness. The other night I dreamt a party at my parents' house and late in the evening all the parents of these adult people at the party came to pick them up and they were all of a really advanced age. One of the people at the party was a coworker, only for some reason her name was Mavis.
Another time I had a dream about being chased through my best friend's backyard by a couple of hippopotamus'. Then there was the strange carnival where I had to play home-run derby using a tightly rolled towel as a bat, and the one where I wandered through a labyrinthine parking garage, mad at my wife because she let the car get stolen.
It's entertaining, anyway.