unwantedfinal by Peter Graf
I do not feel quite ready for a posting but do feel obliged to explain to the few people who care what is happening with me why there have been no postings recently.
I have talked recently in these postings about the sense of death that has been with me since a month or so after my son, Peter’s, death. I have been open about it and have talked about the blessings of living in the shadow of death, like the calming, considering what is really important impact. Three or four weeks ago I was talking with my therapist about it and also how my sleeping medicine at night was not working so well. At my next visit to my psychiatrist she told me it was not the sleeping medicine at night but my antidepressant that I took in the morning causing the problem. She quoted my therapist note about my sense of death. She wanted me to try a new anti-depressant. After talking with many people recently to accept mental illnesses and try new medication I said I would try it. She gave me some samples from the drug manufacture and told me how to phase out the old and bring in the new one in a 10 day period.
I did and starting to feel more and more uptight, agitated, talking too much and my mind was speeding. After 10 days I was really feeling that way and wanted to stop taking the new medication. However, my wife, in her wisdom, mentioned that sometimes after changing medication things need to settle down and to give it one week. I did and by the end of the week we both agreed the medicine was making my feel and act hyper, a stigma I have lived with for many years. My psychiatrist is out of town so I stopped taking the new medication and slowly reintroduced the old one. The new medication did take away my “sense of death” but I did not want to lose it. If I am going to be “next to normal” I rather live in the shadow of death than speeding on this new medication.
One advantage of being hyper is that you see more closely the connection between people and events. When I come down all the way I hope I can remember these observations and can explain them. So that is it. My sense of death was drugged and is slowly returning.
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