Well I hope I'm happy. I finally have it in front of me, a chemical I've always been afraid of. The face stealer, the soul changer, I don't know what to think about it. I talked with the doctor at the welfare clinic for about 5 minutes, he asked how I was doing, I said not so good. He asked if the Wellbutrin (bupropion) had produced any beneficial effects, and I told him it had been about as effective as sugar pills. Then he told me he was asking if it produced any beneficial effects, and I said like I said, it's been about as effective as taking sugar pills. His next words were "Let's put you on some Prozac."
Before all my adoring fans start sending me dozens of emails warning me of the dangers of that drug, I should mention that nearly everything frightening about it has been pure media hype, as far as I can tell. But still, such a strong social reaction to it, and some of the disturbing "side effects" just leave me all worried and stuff. Many people hide behind a mask of despair, and Prozac lets them discard that mask and change themselves into someone else, who's not so bad. It worries me because I am a mask; there's nothing underneath. I am exactly what I do, and nothing more than that. As I tell people I'm an open book, and there just isn't anything good hiding deeper than I can see. It's like a quiet void...
I don't want to take this drug, but I still don't have a job, and I still missed summer session at school, and I can barely get dishes and dinner done, much less any occupation that takes more than one hour of devotion. It just hurts too much to do things I care about. If anything about me is true, it's that there's something broken and unless I heal it I'm not going to succeed in any of these things I'm trying to do, not even in leading a sustainable life. If Prozac changes me, destroys me and replaces me with someone else, maybe it wouldn't be such a big loss.. I know if I suddenly lost most of my life, waking up not knowing anything that has happened since I was 9 years old, I'd surely be a better person, probably happier and more functional too. There's just too much failure and frustration and despair and loathing in the years after that, too much trying and being kicked down, until like a beaten puppy I just can't muster enough will to try again. If that all went away even with all the wonderful things I have learned, and the dear people I have met, I don't think I would miss it.
Not to say that Prozac gives you amnesia. What it's supposed to do is mess with your head, giving you a higher threshold of tolerance for stuff that would normally really bother you. Depression is, in a way, externally caused. It's just getting so distraught and imbalanced in the head that even the slightest thing will set you on a course for another little death in the soul, a mood crash. It seems spontaneous, because most people take those things in stride, but from what I've read people with serotonin problems have trouble taking normal things in stride (like mortality? go figure.) and instead find them emotionally scarring. Prozac is supposed to insulate one from that, and in theory once the mental wounds stop opening at every little not nice thing happening, they'll heal enough that we can feel more robust again, even if the drug is taken away.
There are some scary stories though. I think it's that face removal thing that really terrifies me. If in insulating myself from my injuries, I end up losing my personality, the stuff that makes me me, well in a way it's a kind of suicide. It's not nearly as bad as total annihilation, but it is a mood altering drug, one of the most powerful on the market. The only thing I could take that's more extreme would be MDMA, Ecstasy, the big E. Ecstasy like Prozac is an SSRI, though more powerful by orders of magnitude. And another order down from Prozac is Paxil and the others. Invented in 1989, revolutionizing the psychiatry of depression, Prozac has saved so many people from self destruction, but it's not the little guns I'm playing with anymore.
Would I commit suicide if I could go on living as someone who could handle the world? I think I would do that in a heartbeat. It's just so scary though... what if it doesn't do anything at all? What if something ugly happens to me? What if even after feeling good I still can't see any reason to live in this mortal world of inevitability and doom, and use my newly enabled mind and body to do something... to trap myself forever? I know death is the exact opposite of an escape from my doom, but still... gods I just don't care. If it takes me away, changes me forever, or doesn't change me at all, I just want to be able to make stories again...
If Prozac, and then I get a job, and do well in school, and start turning out a chapter or a drawing, or a song a day, at last able to work on what I care about without cramping up inside my head, I think that'll make me happy no matter what horrible fate awaits every single one of us. If with my income and my friendliness I find a distant place to work and escape this soul killing, polluted, allergy ridden valley, I might just start... oh dear, my owner is going to get here, and I won't have dinner even started. I have to go... :shudders:
