Antidepressants Kinda Don't Suck

Many of you know from earlier posts that I have depression.  What a lot of you don't know, is that I've had this most of my life.  I have very early moments of depression that I've talked with very few people.  I used to get sad and upset for no reason.  I remember once.  This depression is something I've always lived with and sometimes forgotten was there.

This year, the depression has been back, nastier and more vicious than ever before.  The last time I had depression this bad, I was sixteen.  I remember the absolutely worst case of depression.  I made a mask out of duct tape and sealed my face completely shut to the point I couldn't breathe.  I had some trick handcuffs I'd picked up from winning tickets at the fair and slipped them on, behind my back, around a clothing rod in the closet.  My intent wasn't to take my life, it was to play a dangerous game and "escape" before I passed out.  As it turns out, if you exhale with enough force, you can blow duct tape off of your face.

My depression lately hasn't been giving me a desire to commit suicide.  I've had really bad thoughts, however.  Thoughts like, "If I got into a horrific accident, life would get a lot simpler."  I don't like those thoughts and finally got my ass in gear.  I tried to get a psychiatrist at first.  The referral instead was to a licensed social worker.  Though helpful, I knew I needed medical help as well.  I arranged an urgent medical appointment with my Primary Care Physician.  I explained my case and what I was after.  The doctor didn't agree fully with what I wanted, but did agree that I needed medication.  I was prescribed Effexor XR.

This was seven days ago.  Since that time, I have learned two very important lessons.  I have learned that medication can help.  I also learned that the internet, as vast and informative as it is, does not have any decent accounts for what to expect when you take Effexor XR.  I tried to find out what to expect and when. I wanted to know what this crazy ride was going to be like.  Unfortunately, there was nothing to be found.  So, instead, I'm going to start accounting my trip down on the medication drug trip.

Effexor XR Your First Seven Days
Day 0:  The first thing you need to know is that everyone is different.  I cannot attest to what your personal experience will be like.  You could be allergic to the medication.  Other medications can interact with your medication.  Your body chemistry may be different.  So what you are getting is an account of my trip, and hopefully you'll share some of my experiences.  If your doctor is like my doctor, your first week will be half-dose to get your body ready for the medication experience.

Day 1:  The first day is a day in which you going to feel like a fucking bus ran you over.  Your body has absolutely no experience with the medication.  For me, it took about three hours before I felt anything from the medication.  When it kicked in, it felt like a hazy had settled into my head.  It was sort of like coffee withdrawal, but it wasn't quite the same.  The hazy feeling never fully went away, but it did lesson.  By the time I early evening, I was very groggy.  I couldn't focus on anything and could barely stay awake.  I went to bed very early (about three hours earlier than typical).

Day 2:  I woke up in the middle of the night, likely unrelated to the medication.  When I did get up for my normal hour of wake, I didn't feel as hazy as the day before.  By the time 10:00 AM had rolled around, the haze was there and was still less significant.  I was still having focus issues, but it wasn't as bad as it had been the day before.  At one point during the day, I had a depressive thought and much to my surprise, I was able to swat it away as if it was nothing.

In the afternoon, my focus continued to be just "okay".  I was very ditzy and forgetful.  But as the day progressed, I felt this energy in the back of my head.  I couldn't quite figure out what to make the energy or do anything with it.  As the day progressed, I found myself feeling more social.  Still, in the evening the drowsiness kicked it up a notch and I found myself going to bed early.

Day 3:   On this day, I realized I was having more dreams than normal.  They weren't strange, I just recalled having them which is not normal for me.  I found myself more productive than usual and was able to write two blog posts without any real issue.  I was restless during the day and found it hard to focus on things.  During the day I was more alert than typical.  I realized I was actually smiling at one point.

Day 4:  My concentration was only okay in the morning.  I felt depressed around noon and had trouble keeping it out of my head.  I was able to focus on stuff and get a lot of things done.  At one point, I felt a desire to clean the fridge and actually went through with doing the entire fridge.  It was a project I had wanted to do for a while and just hadn't felt the energy to do it.   However, this was the extent of the energy and creative endeavors were hard to accomplish.  I was tired from about 7 PM on.

Day 5:  This day was horrible and perhaps worse than before I took the medication.  I had occasional moments of strength, but the entire day was a constant wave of moments of up and down.  I was drowsy for most of the day.  I was have trouble processing emotions.  I was finding myself easily able to be picked up mood wise, only to crash again.  I recorded one down slump being about three hours in the afternoon and followed by a moment of good, positive energy for three hours at night.  Again, I went to bed early.

Day 6:  This day was better than previous day, but hardly an improvement.  I did realize this day that something that should have generated lots of anxiety, did not generate any anxiety.  I was having more moments of being alert and awake.  The moments lasted longer than any of the previous five days and I was able to do a lot of projects I had been putting off like cleaning out my car.  I crashed for an hour in the afternoon around 1:00 until 2:30.  I also got a very nasty headache in the evening.  It was also the first evening I didn't have the drowsy symptoms.

Day 7:  This brings me to today.  Today was the first day I went all day without a crash.  I had trouble focusing first thing in the morning, despite being alert, but I got a lot of stuff done at work.  I mean, an EPIC amount of work done.  After work, I had a lot of energy available.  It's still hard to tap into that energy, but I was able to.  I was also able to break through some of the focus issues today.  I didn't feel drowsy at all today until 7:45 PM.


So that brings me up to this moment.  I'm about to head to bed, and I feel like I've had a very good day.  I'll update my continues progress as it happens.  For now, I hope those of you reading this starting Effexor have an idea of the ups and the downs you can expect as your body adjusts to the medication.

The Fire Ants of Doom!

It saddens me to announce that my Grandmother has lung cancer.  I have a lot of fond memories and stories involving my Nana, including the story posted last month about the dinner with Stephen King.  Eastport is a place I spent a lot of summers.  My grandparents loved to watch me, my parents loved to get rid of me for a week, and I could entertain myself for hours.  There used to be an old fashioned store where you could buy Root Beer floats and used books.  There is no question that my writing interest was development from my summers in Eastport.

Eastport has tons of stories, and I may eventually getting around to writing about them all.  One story, the one I'll tell today, is about the fire ants and the anthill of doom.  In Maine, fireworks are illegal.  And my dad, being the progressive that he is, provided me with half-a-brick of firecrackers on a regular basis.  Fireworks are nice, and watching them explode is fun, but I've always been the kind of person who likes to take something fun and do something productive with it.  Legos were mansions and fireworks were the instruments of revenge.

Eastport is an international shipping port.  It isn't a major port, but it has had lots of imports from around the world.  Well, somewhere along the line, one of the ships managed to get some sort of fire ants in a shipping container.  I've never seen these ants before and attempts to research them online have led me again and again to ants that aren't native in the US.  So yeah, these ants were unique.  And they had a home just outside of my grandparent's house.

The bite is most notable.  The bite hurts like hell.  They have absolutely no problems biting anything they come across.  If you walk through a field with a nearby ant hill, they will be all over your leg and do a lot of damage.  I hated these suckers.  So, when I had those firecrackers, I got revenge.  I used to throw them down on the ant hill and blow them up, only the issue was that the main hive was built into a piece of stone bedrock (not sure the actual type of stone and it's gone today).

Somewhere along the line, I learned that the ants loved watermelon.  I would shove firecrackers into the watermelon, wire it up like a master, 12 year-old demolitions expert, and set it down by the hive.  I'd go inside and read for an hour or so.  Then I'd return to watermelon swarming with ants.  One light of a match and it was time for fun.

Of course, the first time taught me an important lesson of physics.  Twelve firecrackers going off will send ants skyward.  What goes up, must come back down.  And they did... onto me.  I learned the hard way that if I was going to do this, I needed to run faster.  I experimented a lot with fuse settings, but honestly, the best way to destroy those suckers was to light the fuse and run.  And I got really skilled at running fast.

The ironic end to the story is that the ants no longer exist.  Eastport needed to do some infrastructure work about eight years ago.  When the city encountered the bedrock housing those ants, they had to remove it.  They did so with TNT.  I still can't think of that without a smile creeping across my face.  It couldn't have happened to a worse species on the planet.

The Stephen King Post

Photo of Stephen King's Home in Bangor, ME.

When I was one-and-a-half years old, my family had dinner with Stephen King.  The dinner happened at my grandparent's house in Eastport.  Eastport is a port city in Downeast Maine.  Though it is a port city, and has its own airport, the only reasonable way to access the city is by car.  In order to drive to Eastport, you have to drive through Pleasant Point.  Pleasant Point is a part of the Passamaquoddy reservation.  The most notable portion of this drive is a stretch of road with ocean on either side.

For reasons I'm not entirely certain, my father's side of the family was having dinner with Stephen King.  I know that my aunt was involved somehow in the reason behind this meal.  Stephen King is a wonderful philanthropist and my aunt worked for the harbor during this stretch of time.  I suspect it was a dinner following Stephen King doing one of his many charitable contributions to the State of Maine.  I don't know for certain.  What I do know is that the dinner took place at my grandparent's house.

For as long as I have known my grandmother, she has always had strange, people-hating cats.  At the time this story took place, her current cat had another particular trait; he loved to curl up in the backseat of parked cars.  You see, while Eastport is technically a city, it's only one in political structure.  The actual population of the city resembled the size of a small town under normal definitions.  There was little crime and everyone left car windows down and doors unlocked.

Stephen King came to dinner, met me and my family, and after socializing, climbed into his car to start the three hour drive drive home.  As the story goes, Stephen King driving through Pleasant Point  when my grandmother's cat, woke up, jumped into the front seat and raised a kind of hell only a person-hating cat could. The incident scared the crap out of Stephen King.  He somehow dealt with the cat, turned around, and drove all the way back to my grandparents house.  Once there, he somehow managed to wrangle the cat into his arms.  He carried it over to the front door and politely returned him to my grandparents.

The conclusion to this story came later when Stephen King's Cujo was published.  In the book, the five-year old Tad has a strikingly similar description to two-year old me.  Also the description of Donna was equally similar to my mother.  When Stephen King later published On Writing, he admitted that during this period of his life, he was in a dark place and doesn't remember where he got the idea from for this book.  In fact, he confesses only vaguely remembering writing parts of the book.  As far as I'm concerned, this cat incident was at least part of the inspiration behind his book, Cujo.  

Dialogue and Motivation

Let me start by saying I promise to never post a blog without first rereading it.  My last blog post was written while I was tired.  I posted it without so much as giving it a second's glance.  I had promised to edit it the following day, but only managed to get to it yesterday.  I was embarrassed by what I read.

When it comes to dialogue, I'm not an expert.  Dialogue is an area I frequently find myself struggling with.  My wife is the local expert.  One of her pieces of advice is to pay attention to conversations in television, real life, and literature.  It is most definitely a useful trick.

I'm going to compare two opposites: Alf and Dark Shadows.  The two television shows differ in every way, but one (two if you count the fact that both have a character named Willie).  The dialogue for both shows is terrible.  I've been watching through Dark Shadows slowly over the last several months.  Last night we reached the 111th episode available.  I also recently watched the pilot of the 80's sitcom, Alf.  One show is a soap opera drama with the supernatural.  The other is an episodic sitcom about an extraterrestrial.

Dialogue should be simple.  It is the choice of words characters use when speaking to each other.  We are exposed to dialogue every time we have a conversation.  Yet, with so much exposure, you'd think that writers would be able to piece together believable conversations onto a page.  Unfortunately, this doesn't happen.  There are a few reasons for this, but I think one of the most blatant sources for this poor writing is motivation.  This is part of the reason I find that Dark Shadow's dialogue is scores better than the dialogue used in Alf.

Everyone has motivation.  When we speak, we aren't just blurting something out at random.  We have our reasons for saying what we say.  This is just as important in writing as it is in the real world.  When writers forget this, the purpose of the dialogue becomes muddied.  Often times, writers will forget the overall character in exchange for the momentary motivation.  In the pilot of Alf, Willie has this wonderful line:

Willie:  "Alright, alright.  Just give me one day, okay.  If I can't get Alf going, we'll tell someone.  Just one day."

The dialogue makes me weep inside.  Not just because of how terrible it reads, but because of Willie's motivation.  This is the type of concern one would have with in-laws that won't leave.  However, Willie is talking about an alien from another planet.  After an earlier piece of dialogue, it is established the military would probably do experiments on Alf if they had him.  So, his argument is for a single day before they tell someone.  It's as if Willie completely forgotten about what will happen to Alf should the military find him.  This is a momentary motivation convenient for the single scene.  A more fitting piece of dialogue would have been, "Just give me one day.  If I can't get Alf going, we'll figure out something."  In the alternative piece of dialogue, it leaves a sense of uncertainty with Willie.  It might be tell someone, or it might be getting Alf to find somewhere else to go.

Meanwhile, over in Dark Shadows land, the characters have their motivations, they just have dialogue that isn't well written.  In Episode 321, Sam Evans, at the decision of Maggie Evans, has set a trap for Maggie's attacker.  A rumor has been spread to summon her attacker to the home where the sheriff's men are waiting.  This plan has been building for a couple of episodes now.  In one scene, Maggie is in her room when Sam comes in.

Sam:  "There are men all over the place.  Now if you hear anything, you just give a yell and they'll come running."

The motivation of Sam is present.  He is trying to comfort his daughter, Maggie.  The line doesn't even read that poorly out of context.  In context, this is clearly exposition.  They could have shown the men, or let the reader assume the Maggie knows.  Instead, we hear Sam say something to Maggie that the audience needs to know.  It is irritating (especially if you've watched all available 111 episodes up until this point), but it is within Sam's character.

The moral of the story is to make dialogue better, always make sure you know the motivation behind the speaker.

The Second Cliche

For my second blog post, I'm going to take about cliches and the developed character. I won't go so far as to say well-developed characters; that would require a much more in-depth analysis. Cliches work better when the characters are developed. When a show or a piece of fiction has two-dimensional or underdeveloped characters, the cliches will stand out.

Before I can get into the interaction of a cliche with a developed character, I need to talk about what a cliche is. A cliche is a basic story concept that has been used so frequently that my eyes have started bleeding. It's easy to think of examples with little or no effort. Looking around my apartment, I can find lots of examples. Eureka, while a great show, uses the "smart geeky boy who can't talk to girls", the "protagonist in a land where everyone gets the world around him but him", and "father can't talk to his child" cliche. The DVD boxset of Jeeves & Wooster has the "the butler is smarter than who he works for" cliche. To demonstrate the common place of cliches, look at Terra Nova. The show is rife with examples of the same, "father can't talk to his child" cliche that is found in Eureka.

Side Note: If you want the official terms for these cliches, you are welcome to head over to TV Tropes. I must confess I don't browse the site very much.

The difference between the good use of a cliche and a bad can be attributed to many factors. For me, the biggest difference is character. A well-written character is going to pull the reader or viewer to the character's reaction and away from the formula being used. Sheriff Jack Carter and his daughter Zoe conflict with each other on a regular basis in Eureka. This, at the most basic level, is no different than Jim Shannon's conflict with his son Joshua on Terra Nova.

Zoe is a troublemaker with no direction. She's taken up a life of petty crime and her father has just hunted her down at the start of the show. Her issues stem from the parental situations in which her dad, a US Marshal, and her mom are divorced. Carter is embarrassed that, as a law enforcement agent, he's transporting his own daughter as a fugitive. In Terrible Nova, Jim and his family have violated a world's law limiting families to four. His family has five. Jim punches out an enforcement agent and is sent to jail for breaking the family count act. For some reason, this puts Josh at odds with his dad. This rationale is never explained well. In later episodes, Terrible Nova plays out the relationship between Josh and Jim. It makes things better, but the detachment from the show from the initial, obvious cliche use never fully healed.

Take my story from the last blog post. It wasn't particularly good. The characters were flat. In order to soften the effect that the cliches have on the story, I need to develop the characters more. I broke out Rory's Story Cubes and rolled the dice. I'm not making a full story this time, so cherry picked five dice to create a some ideas for character development. Here is the new draft of the story.

There was once a happy couple that lived in a house. Thomas had decided to do something special for Kelly to show his appreciation. After counting his pennies, he realized he didn't have enough to buy the set of dolls that Kelly had loved. Frustrated, he went out looking for a way to earn some extra money. He spoke with a neighbor and was able to make the rest of the money he needed by working in the neighbor's garden.

He gave Kelly the present that night. After spending a moment to ponder the package, Kelly unwrapped a pair of dolls. The night was suddenly interrupted by a dragon from out of town. It landed on the guard's tower and setup camp in the parapet. The appearance of the dragon created a bit of drama for the family. After a heated conversation with his wife, Thomas decided to go to investigate. From the top of the tower, he saw the dragon hanging out on a parapet below. Thomas took a giant ball and tried to drop it on the dragon's head. In retrospect, the act was a bit of a reach. The ball missed. He decided it had been a case of bad judgement to try and slay the dragon. He was upset, but after dancing a jig at home, he felt much better.

The story still has the same cliches. They are still obvious to the casual reader. Only now, Thomas is better developed. You can almost see why he might want to go out and defeat this dragon. He was, after all, having a special night at home when the dragon appeared. This development and motivation could make some readers see his character and focus more on him and his desire to show Kelly his appreciation. Unfortunately, this development is limited to one section of the text. It will take many rolls of the dice to fix this story up.

The First Cliche

I don't have the humor of the Bloggess. I don't have the artistic talent of Allie Brosch over on Hyperbole and a Half. I don't have the near-perfect grasp of the English language like my wife does over on Tales of an Intrepid Pantster. I'm not sure I have a claim to fame, but if I did, it is the ability to piece together unique stories either devoid of cliches or using them in a mostly harmless way.

I hate cliches. And while I might enjoy a story that takes a cliche and spins it in a different direction, the use of the cliche never leaves me completely satisfied. Overuse of cliches will result in a wall thumper at worst and my weekly mockery at best (I'm looking at you Terra Nova!). On the other hand, good cliche use gets my attention and works devoid of cliches get my praise.

I haven't decided the full direction of this blog. I know that I'll talk about writing, television, books, movies, my cats, my wife, Upstate New York, and subjects I probably shouldn't mention. I will regularly be deconstructing and constructing story elements. If you are a writer, I'm sure you'll get at least two pieces of advice for every piece of dredge I offer. If you like reading blogs, this is a blog. If you don't want to see your favorite shows ripped apart and insulted, you need to find new shows to watch. I'll definitely talk about cliches. Someone needs to declare war on the suckers.

I'm going to try and write an entry once a week. That's the closest thing you will get a promise. I'll also try and include random writing in each post. For day, I'm going to create a story using some dice I got for Christmas. It's from the game, Rory's Story Cubes. I have two sets. You roll the dice and put together a story based on the pictures you have. In future posts, I'll use these dice to talk about how I construct stories and work to avoid cliches. For now, I'm being lazy and just creating a random story and pointing out the cliches.

There was once a happy family living in a house. The night had been a peaceful so far. Thomas had just given Kelly a gift to open. After spending a moment to ponder the package, Kelly unwrapped a pair of dolls. The night was suddenly interrupted by a dragon from out of town. It landed on the guard's tower and setup camp in the parapet. The appearance of the dragon created a bit of drama for the family. After a heated conversation with his wife, Thomas decided to go to investigate. From the top of the tower, he saw the dragon hanging out on a parapet below. Thomas took a giant ball and tried to drop it on the dragon's head. In retrospect, the act was a bit of a reach. The ball missed. He decided it had been a case of bad judgement to try and slay the dragon. He was upset, but after dancing a jig at home, he felt much better.

The story, at its core is pretty dull and ripe full of cliches. Peaceful life is disrupted by an outside force that is given a monstrous appearance. Male decided to take his approach against the wishes of the female and tries to defeat the beast. Male makes an attempt to stop the beast and fails. I'm willing to bet you can take this plot summary and apply it to thousands of popular stories. I took a brief look at my bookshelf and only had to scan as far as my collection of Andrew Lang. That's the start for a large chunk of fairy tales.

The first step to dealing with cliches is to recognize them. The worse the writing, the more they stand out. Better writers paint the cliches in pretty colors to hide them. It is possible to water a cliche down until it is unrecognizable. However, if you don't know it's there, you can't water it down.

If you're curious, the story took approximately two minutes to write.