Apologetics

To justify to myself the use of Cymbalta, an anti-depressant I have recently started.

The first two days it felt rather like heroin, or some other opiate. This isn't good when I'm depressed: It gives me even more justification to recite Keats, and tell you how "My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains my senses, as though of hemlock I had drunk, or emptied some dull opiate to the drains, one minute past, and Lethewards had sunk..."

But by Day 3 I had settled into a kind of numbness. Is numbness good? My emotions are blunted, though still present. And normally this would seem rather a terrible thing to me, but my emotions have been so intense for so long that I can barely handle them.

It need not be a permanent thing. "Depression" is a natural result of so many pressures from so many directions; when they pass, this can pass.

Last night I slept and woke. I went to sleep when I intended, at midnight; I woke when I intended, at 7:30; this is the first time since I have been in Oregon I have managed this.

My usual strategy: To spend most of my time drinking and socializing. This doesn't work here. The bars of Roseburg are dens of sorrow, broken dreams and lives spent in quiet desperation. Anti-anti-depressants. (That seems hyperbolic doesn't it? But I am completely serious.)

How long has it been since I have known peace, or silence, or solitude, or calm reflection? Years? Ever? How long have I been running?

And ultimately: Since when do I need a justification to take a drug to feel good?