Letters to No One

Letter 2

Dear No One;

They have started me on Wellbutrin, I am not sure how much. Some might, upon being told they are going to be put on a potentially mind altering medication, ask about it first. I am not that sort. I do not know how much I am taking. One pill can only be so many milligrams, added to my current lithium regimen. As I have no frame of reference for dosage, knowing the number would give the perception of understanding and nothing else. Speaking of false perceptions of understanding; I dislike subjective measures of mood. On a scale of one to ten, one being the lowest and ten being the highest, how are you feeling now? My doctor and I had a conversation eighteen months ago about the limitations of self-reporting mood metrics. He emphasized that it was less about the number itself than the patterns revealed over months or years of recording, which could then be cross checked against themselves. I still think it is as likely to give false positives as true, given the untold discrete influences that inescapably shape any such number generated. I used decimals for a few of my first numbers. It got stale. I produced several alternative
metrics, bringing in the chart where I had recorded numbers for about three weeks of thrice daily questions along with my conclusions from the data. What obscure color do you feel like right now? Stammel? Are there objective measures of mood? Perhaps not. Behavior changes are the next best thing. Since I began taking Wellbutrin I no longer sleep through the mornings. It may have nothing to do with the pills, my sleep patterns have changed before for some or no reason. It is a good change, whatever the case, my mornings are more productive when I am awake for them. There have not been any side effects to note, the lithium has never given me issues either. When I began taking lithium, there was an internal conversation that went like this: Do I feel different? No. Are you sure? Yes. Maybe it's a placebo. It's not a placebo. They could be testing to see whether I reported a cessation of symptoms, and if I did, believe that I'm faking because I never had the real drug. Psychological symptoms are often relieved by placebos, that's the point of them being psychological, it would not prove anything and anyway all the things you said to them were true. BUT THEY DONT KNOW THEY WERE TRUE...and even in cases where inmates have been used in drug studies there was at least semi-informed consent and they were working on treatments for real diseases and they were decades ago... It could still be a placebo, you signed your consent without reading the paper. This is ridiculous. You are ridiculous. I am going to ignore you until you go away. Curses. Being awake all the time means I have gotten my Mythopoeia writing out of the way before lunch and I hardly know what to do with myself. Evangelion fan art looks like the thing.

Yours,
(15-4-26)

PS: This letter was written to the soundtrack of ParallelWorld3 by Yucat.