Like Molasses

Dear All,

About eleven years ago, I was in a drug study for Remeron. At that point they didn't know that the drug must be taken at night, so I took it whenever I remembered. Taking that drug marked the beginning of the end of my old life in Boston.

On Remeron, I remember not caring about anything because I felt good, oh so good. I remember that one day I was working in the box office at a theater in Cambridge. I had been the fastest and most accurate cashier that they had, so they put me on one really busy night with another very fast cashier. They actually had to open another box, an unusual event, because I was moving so slowly. One of the managers came in to tell us to move a little faster (she did it in a nice way) but I was incapable of moving any faster. This also happened another night at the concession stand. I had always been the number one concessionist because my sales were consistently better than anyone else's. I lost my number one spot. As a result, I started making less money, and was in some real trouble. I was never number one after that. It never occurred to me to tell anyone what the problem had been, and that it was just temporary.

I left the survey after those incidents. I wrote "I know that this drug is not right for me. It is very effective as an anti-anxiety, but I am moving like m0lasses, and I can't both do that and survive. I know that it is your job to get this drug tested, and that you would try to convince me to stay in the survey, but I just can't. One valuable thing that it has taught me, however is that there is more than one reaction to my life." And it was true; it was the same life, I just didn't feel the same way about it. I realized what it meant to "let it roll off". I had, theretofore, been unable to brush off nastiness by others. To me, their action equalled my reaction.

I find myself on Remeron again, but I am having a different experience now. Every drug that is added to my cocktail brings out new facets of my personality. Still- if I were under the same pressure that I had been under while living in Boston, the constant provocations and slurs, I don't know if I could actually deal with it. People there are so hard on one another. Yet, instead of having the rough edges knocked off, becoming smooth, they became rougher, nastier, harder. Meanwhile, I was becoming bruised, mashed between others into a pulpy acquiescence, and thus the small daily snobberies, and unkindnesses took their toll.

People there told me that I was too sensitive to others, too nice, too accommodating. I thought that being upset by a customer who had just called me a "sloth" was not a matter of being too sensitive. I felt I needed to say something back; my friends told me not to, despite the fact that it was just wrong for the customer to say something like that. They told me to "suck it up" because this was the hard reality of my situation: I had to be nice and the customers didn't. So- I learned not to be quite so sensitive and accommodating. I tried to be even tougher than that, but I felt I was losing my empathy, my humanity- that just to survive, I was suppressing my real self and becoming somehow indecent. In short, I expected the worst from myself and others and was never disappointed.

Now that I am back in the city in which I reached adulthood- I am a changed person. While I don't automatically expect the worst of people, the fear of being emotionally needled, poked, prodded and jostled once again is always there. The will to help is still there, but it is tempered by not wanting to do too much for others, lest they take advantage of me, or take me for granted.

Whereas the last time I took Remeron I was in a haze, I am now able to think rationally. Whereas the last time I was on Remeron, I moved too slowly, now I move at an acceptable pace because I take better care of myself. I take my meds at the appropriate times, and have taken steps not to be in chaos all of the time. Where as I was unsettled, single and my mother was still alive the last time that I took Remeron, I have now lived in the same place since 2001, and am married. What appropriately or inappropriately my mother one did, she can no longer do because she is no longer alive. Whereas I was once an angry, over-medicated little girl playing house, I am now of the alpha generation, and the important decisions, for better and worse, are mine.

I think that I am now in a place where Remeron can do more than teach me about my life, it can help me live it.

Sincerely,
Betsy