Cranial Cringe
Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors, or SSRIs, are a very common family of pharmaceuticals used to treat people with anxiety, depression, and other mood disorders. I was put on Paxil (Paroxetene) in September of 2016. Though I did plenty of research before deciding to fill my prescription, it still didn't fully prepare me for the roller coaster of side effects that came with its regular ingestion. Paxil is a unique SSRI in that it takes weeks, sometimes months, before the effects are felt - the amount in your system has to accumulate, and coming off of it must not be done without first consulting a physician.
In the beginning of February 2017, I was so busy that I had forgotten to refill my prescription. I had been Paxil-free for about 4 days when I realized what it was I was feeling and why. For the first couple days off the medicine, I had mild fatigue and irritation. I would experience fleeting sensations of floating for seconds at a time. By day 3, however, I began to experience what are commonly referred to as 'brain zaps'. A brain zap is is a quick shocking sensation that shoots through your brain. To most they are painful, but to some enjoyable. I personally found the feeling to be a curious one with negative consequences: they were very distracting when I was trying to focus on work or even just carry on a conversation. Vertigo soon followed and I realized these were all symptoms of Paxil withdrawal I had read. The next day, I immediately went to Walgreens to refill my prescription.
February 2017
Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors, or SSRIs, are a very common family of pharmaceuticals used to treat people with anxiety, depression, and other mood disorders. I was put on Paxil (Paroxetene) in September of 2016. Though I did plenty of research before deciding to fill my prescription, it still didn't fully prepare me for the roller coaster of side effects that came with its regular ingestion. Paxil is a unique SSRI in that it takes weeks, sometimes months, before the effects are felt - the amount in your system has to accumulate, and coming off of it must not be done without first consulting a physician.
In the beginning of February 2017, I was so busy that I had forgotten to refill my prescription. I had been Paxil-free for about 4 days when I realized what it was I was feeling and why. For the first couple days off the medicine, I had mild fatigue and irritation. I would experience fleeting sensations of floating for seconds at a time. By day 3, however, I began to experience what are commonly referred to as 'brain zaps'. A brain zap is is a quick shocking sensation that shoots through your brain. To most they are painful, but to some enjoyable. I personally found the feeling to be a curious one with negative consequences: they were very distracting when I was trying to focus on work or even just carry on a conversation. Vertigo soon followed and I realized these were all symptoms of Paxil withdrawal I had read. The next day, I immediately went to Walgreens to refill my prescription.
February 2017
[My] Silent Red Rover
I smoked my first cigarette when I was a junior in high school. The story was pretty standard: my friend was throwing a party because her parents were out of town, and one of my friends who had a pack asked if I wanted one. I said sure, and this led to a few months of occasional smoking late at night in neighborhood parks. I stopped after chainsmoking three consecutively left me with a headache and unfathomable dizziness; come freshman year of college I'd begun smoking again. I smoked consistently through my four years of college, and the yard of my college house contained hundreds of cigarette butts to prove it. Though I continued to smoke through the year, I stopped smoking in December 2016.
That said, this poem is about all the things that get in between us - who we are right now - and what it is we want; who we would like to be. The things that beckon us without a sound, testing our resistance and willpower. Cigarettes were my silent red rover, what's yours?
December 2016
I smoked my first cigarette when I was a junior in high school. The story was pretty standard: my friend was throwing a party because her parents were out of town, and one of my friends who had a pack asked if I wanted one. I said sure, and this led to a few months of occasional smoking late at night in neighborhood parks. I stopped after chainsmoking three consecutively left me with a headache and unfathomable dizziness; come freshman year of college I'd begun smoking again. I smoked consistently through my four years of college, and the yard of my college house contained hundreds of cigarette butts to prove it. Though I continued to smoke through the year, I stopped smoking in December 2016.
That said, this poem is about all the things that get in between us - who we are right now - and what it is we want; who we would like to be. The things that beckon us without a sound, testing our resistance and willpower. Cigarettes were my silent red rover, what's yours?
December 2016
It's No "Ozymandias"
In 2014, I wrote a poem called 'It's No "Kubla Khan"'. It was an allusion to Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poem 'Kubla Khan', the backstory of which has fascinated me since I first read the poem in a high school literature class. In 1797, Taylor had an opium-fueled dream about Mongol emperor Kubla Khan's summer home, Xanadu. The dream was allegedly so vivid that he awoke immediately to write about it, but before he had finished someone knocked on his door. By the time he returned to his desk, he had forgotten the rest of the dream and the poem remained unfinished.
My poem followed similar inspiration, but by 2016 my poem's themes no longer resonated with me. Therefore, it felt only appropriate to follow it with a similarly-titled poem, this time alluding to Percy Bysse Shelley's 1818 poem 'Ozymandias'. Shelley's sonnet refers to the Egyptian pharaoh Ramesses II and the physical erosion of his empire. The theme of the poem was something along the lines of 'Anyone can build an empire, but time will see to its destruction".
August 2016
In 2014, I wrote a poem called 'It's No "Kubla Khan"'. It was an allusion to Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poem 'Kubla Khan', the backstory of which has fascinated me since I first read the poem in a high school literature class. In 1797, Taylor had an opium-fueled dream about Mongol emperor Kubla Khan's summer home, Xanadu. The dream was allegedly so vivid that he awoke immediately to write about it, but before he had finished someone knocked on his door. By the time he returned to his desk, he had forgotten the rest of the dream and the poem remained unfinished.
My poem followed similar inspiration, but by 2016 my poem's themes no longer resonated with me. Therefore, it felt only appropriate to follow it with a similarly-titled poem, this time alluding to Percy Bysse Shelley's 1818 poem 'Ozymandias'. Shelley's sonnet refers to the Egyptian pharaoh Ramesses II and the physical erosion of his empire. The theme of the poem was something along the lines of 'Anyone can build an empire, but time will see to its destruction".
August 2016