“You’ve been on an antidepressant for 6 or more weeks, and you still feel depressed…”

(as seen in “Good Housekeeping” magazine!”

“…call your doctor if you have thoughts of suicide…call your doctor if you experience muscle twitching, as this may become permanent….call your doctor if…could lead to a reaction causing coma or sudden death…could cause a significant rise in blood sugar…”

What a rude interruption – this is my first time seeing the new Seroquel XR TV Commercial.  I’m cleaning my apartment.  I’ve been ill all week and a burst of energy comes – I must take advantage of this increasing rarity.  I cannot wait to have my surgery done and over with.  I cannot, cannot wait for opiate painkillers to be part of my past, not my present, nor my future.  Yes, I’m “cleaning all the crap out of my room, trying desperately to figure what it is that makes me blue…”  I’m behind, I feel, behind on and with everything.

Including my psych meds – I thought (I swore!) I had an appointment with my new psychiatrist, for our second meeting, today.  Yesterday I could not find a dose of Effexor.  I searched high an low…well, as hi and low as one might when zapping a little…starting to drift into the complete oblivion of Effexor withdrawal.  Walking up a hill before I went to the pharmacy and figured out my mistake took much too long.  I felt like I had gone for a quick run afterwards.  Disturbing.  Disturbing as all hell.

I run to switch my laundry loads and someone has left some clothing and children’s toys as give-away in the lobby.  I find five more tops in my size, including this awesome Wizard of Oz t-shirt – sweet.  I love, what were referred to back in Winnipeg, as “fence free sales”.  Clothing doesn’t make it to the thrift store to be priced.  I fear for a second that this says something frightening about how close we all are to homelessness.  I do not dwell.

I was homeless for three months.  The reality of this did not hit me while I was, but it is hitting me now.  I did things I never thought I would do for money to have a roof over my head at night.  One of the reasons I decided to hospitalize myself was because I needed a place to stay.  I didn’t spend a single night on the street, but I was close.  The shelter the cab driver that stole about 4/5ths of my belongings offered was my “saving grace”.  I think if I had still been at “our” apartment when he got back from some crackhead paranoid mission to stay at a friend’s house for a few nights after being approached by police on the street, he may have seriously hurt me.  My craigslist ad re: my lost baby cat was finally answered.  It sounds like cabbie (“Lennox”, a crack-smoking thief and possibly an illegal immigrant from the United States (why would a New York city cab driver suddenly move to Vancouver, not because anyone was waiting for him, albeit perhaps some horrible feminine personification of crack)…skip a ride if his Yellow Cab pulls up.  He uses his job to pick up prostitutes and runs scams on vulnerable, young women.  He’s absolute scum, and I do not usually say things like that about people, especially if I haven’t spent time with them…well, I spent enough time with Lennox to know) The Vancouver Police Department do not seem the least bit interested in this fellow or his criminal activities (?!?!?!  ) – I digress – didn’t give my cat – a 3 year old tortoiseshell female named Phoenix – to a “good samaritan” who was concerned that I had abandoned my cat when the ambulance picked me up (?!?!?!?  ) but just dropped her off in my neighbourhood.  If you live in East Vancouver, apparently she was seen around Victoria/Lakewood/Nanaimo around first – please keep a lookout, I am offering a good reward!  … …”Phoenix!!!”

“All around America little girls in their Mother’s Pearls looked at the picture and thought, ‘that’s what I want’.  That’s the thing about relationships, you see, sometimes they can look much prettier from the outside.” In the background Sex and the City is on TV.  I have full cable for the next two months since I’ll be bedridden for some time post-surgery, so this and Law and Order or Law and Order: SVU or Law and Order: CI or are always on one channel or another.  I remember when this show actually contained some good social commentary, before it became a franchise, before the movie, long before the second movie.

So, Seroquel XR + your antidepressant, huh?  Block some dopamine, while increasing serotonin, or while… increasing dopamine (on SNRIs, Wellbutrin, tricyclics).  Wow, a pill and it’s antidote!  A cure for depression!  Just puts your life at risk in the meantime.  Makes you gain weight enough to get a little…fuck, depressed!    Yet so many people who take these pills do not know about these outlandish, inherently contradictory claims about serotonin/dopamine/norepinephrine and how these pills are “thought to” work on these systems, that belie the fucking existence of these drugs.  Antidepressants.  Yeah fucking right.  We wish.  And antidepressant “add-ons” now.  “Add-ons”.  As if they were accessories to wear with an outfit, but the “outfit” is life.  Reality.  Not so pretty all the time.

Seroquel XR.  This (video below) wasn’t enough to increase sales of this drug that has already been outlawed in Japan as pharmaceutical companies there released the knowledge to the public via mainstream media that Seroquel, along with Zyprexa (olanzapine) can cause Type-II Diabetes, in individuals previously not at all on the road to Diabetes.  On Clozapine, I experienced a piece of this road myself.  First released to treat schizophrenic psychosis, as it is an anti-psychotic, Seroquel has become all kinds of things.  This, a treatment for bipolar…”angst?” (I cannot quite tell what feelings the actors are trying to simulate, but it seems fairly angst-filled):

The new one, marketing it as an “add-on” to an antidepressant that is not working, is not online yet.  I wish I knew how to do these things.

Well, I’m on an antidepressant – actually, I’m on two! – and when I take Seroquel I feel like a moldy sandwich warmed up.  At least my brain feels moldy when I’ve been forced to take it (in hospital – I refuse to take this drug upon my own will unless I haven’t slept for days, and then still, wake up feeling awful).  You know, decaying, a clear sign of one thing… No, thank-you AstraZeneca “Neuroscience”.

Phew.  I buy a sugar cane at the grocery store for $1.50 because it is beautiful and a rich mahogany colour and the size of a thick walking stick, thus it screams creative project at me.  You could hang curtains from sugar cane and it would look incredible.