Summer gets us down, these last few years. We've no idea why. Maybe it's just because the season moves so damn fast now. In the Stroock family we have dance recitals at the end of June, then July fourth in the Berkshires, before you know it it's my birthday, and then August. We get downright depressed, existentially so.
Since 2005 we've taken pills for that.
It was late summer 2017 that our medication regimen broke down completely. Like, just stopped working. We were white knuckling for months. Man, I could feel the chemical imbalance. In truth it'd been happening since late spring. 'What do you mean, after a decade they stopped working?' we asked the doctor. No one ever told us that would happen. We got a new doctor.
Eighteen months ago we were on three meds. One pill made us sleepy in the afternoon. Another kept us awake at night. A third was to help us go to sleep. Note, we weren't up at night because we were sleepy in the afternoon or vice versa. We could power through the afternoon sleepiness and would still wake up at 2 AM and not be able to get back to sleep. The third pill raises cholesterol. Effect/side effect. Count on it. There's an 'as needed' pill too. Take one of those and all the bad feels just go right away. This pill should be illegal.
When we remarked to the doctor that we still got cranky and irritable, the doctor wanted to prescribe a 4th pill. 'Whoa!' we said. We eventually concluded that where three pills failed four was not the answer. The more meds you're on, the worse you/they are doing. Two pills we can understand. One to combat depression, one to combat moodiness.
We take one pill now. It treats our symptoms and knocks us out at night. As we mentioned above, we're down a bit now, existentially so. And a bit moody and snappy too. We just resubmitted World War 1990: The Weser and are ready to hit the panic button. Last week we looked at the old pills we used to take. We keep them in a drawer. We read the side effects and decided, 'Naaaa...'
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