I walked out of my GP surgery after a seven-minute appointment this morning with a prescription for sertraline – not weighing down my pockets, but being sent through a system and on to my pharmacy. I’ve had my first tablet today. I’ve joined the ranks of the mentally medicated.
I was surprised at how apprehensive it’s made me. It’s absolutely the right decision – that’s not in question – but I am a little nervous about side effects and stuff like that. This is going to be the first time, that I can think of, that I’ve taken any medication that alters my brain chemistry. Certainly anything that’s meant to do that.
I’ve had my time with one thing or another, and I’m sure I may dance with something again, but nothing that’s actually available through prescription. So who knows, man? In three weeks’ time, that’s when we’ll maybe start to see a difference – a change for the better, hopefully. Until then, I’ve got some potential side effects to wade through, which can include dry mouth, nausea, gastrointestinal issues, headaches, dizziness, drowsiness or fatigue, difficulty sleeping or vivid dreams, or tremors. So that’s fun.
The rest of it, in the common category, I’m not too fussed about. I definitely don’t want the nausea, because I really don’t enjoy that. I mean, who does? But these will pass. These will pass. And hopefully then we are on to sunlit uplands, as they say.
I had a fairly busy morning with a lot of activity in quick succession. I hot-footed it to my GP and walked there with five minutes to spare, and I think my watch thought I was… well, I think it might have logged it as a very, very slow run, because I was doing a very, very fast walk. The watch will log activity as a workout, optionally, and I think it might have.
I didn’t leave enough time for a leisurely stroll, and I thought I wasn’t going to make it, but I did, with about five minutes to spare. The doctor called me in. All in all, it was maybe a six-minute meeting. I sat down, presented a letter I’d had from my therapist to say, “Here’s a recommendation” – not a specific drug recommendation, but “we recommend drugs”.
It was a brief sort of conversation about, “How do you feel about that?” and I’m like, “Listen, it’ll be great to medicate with actual medication, as opposed to what I have been medicating with.” So yeah, it was straight on to “Let’s have a look, see what’s jumping for you,” found the one that will hopefully have the least complications with the several other medications that I’m on, which are all for blood pressure. I’m hoping over time that the blood pressure will start to come down as things improve.
So that is that.
I walked out and I was kind of choked up and had that punched-in-the-back-of-the-throat kind of feel. I don’t know if that’s something you’ve experienced – when there’s a bit of a well of emotion, sadness usually, or some kind of deep feeling that lodges itself in the back of the throat and can be quite painful. I felt that for a bit, then took a more leisurely route back, straight to the pharmacy, picked up everything I needed, got an early haircut, and was back. Had a couple of good phone calls. So I’m all set for an interesting week. Yeah, who knows, man?
Right now I’ve got a pork shoulder in the oven which, apart from being in the oven, I am treating like my own child. This thing is being looked after and cared for. It’s been drying for about eight hours in the fridge after being covered in salt, patted dry, then covered in salt, scored, all that stuff. Then re-salted again, allowed the salt to draw out the moisture, patted dry again, then given a final salting and into the oven at, I think, about half-twelve or ten to one – something like that.
Into the oven for half an hour at blazing hot temperature to crisp up that skin, get the crackling going, and then low and slow now until about half-five, at which point it should be lovely and tender with excellent crackling that would be worthy of those irritating people on TikTok who take crispy things they’ve cooked and then run a knife over them to get the scrapey sound. So that’s something to look forward to.
I was just lounging about last night and thought, “You know what would be interesting? How long could I let this pork shoulder dry for, the skin, before cooking it?” And I thought, yeah, let’s get it out now, get it salted, shove it in the fridge and leave it for eight hours. That was a fun little project, and I’m looking forward to seeing what comes of it.
Cooking is one of those things that I’m finding more and more is really centring, especially low and slow. I wonder if that’s why – here’s a theory, a burgeoning theory – I wonder if that’s why so many men in beards and plaid shirts get into low and slow cooking. Because it’s got that element of planning, it’s got that element of dopamine – the seeking and the reward.
My understanding is dopamine is not the pleasure chemical; it’s about motivation, the seeking hormone. The dopamine levels are up at the beginning because you’re anticipating this wonderful thing you’re going to make. Then, over a bit of time – maybe this is one of those things, if you’re very much prone to being tossed around on the horns of head-hormones – it can be very easy to keep wanting to open the oven and take a look and see how it’s getting on. I’m really trying to avoid doing that.
I do that with the slow cooker all the time, because you put something in for six hours in a slow cooker and you’re not seeing any action until hour three at the earliest, and then hour four is when stuff actually starts to happen. So you’ve got all this time where you’re just waiting and hoping that something’s going to happen, hoping that you get some kind of thing, and then you get the little dopamine spike again.
So yeah, I bet – I wonder if – obviously there’s the whole “men like to cook stuff” as a concept, especially meat, all that business. But I wonder how many men buy smokers because it’s better for them than taking antidepressants. Because it keeps them on an even keel and gives them something to focus on.
I can see that: throughout the week, getting ready, thinking about what you’re going to cook, going out and sourcing the right cut of meat, the right piece of meat. You get your big brisket or something, spend the Monday at the butcher’s picking out the right thing, then some time during the week you’re thinking about the right rub, you’re doing a dry brine, whatever. Then Saturday comes around – or Friday night – and you’re getting things prepared, and Saturday’s the big cook. I can see all of that being a thing, because it’s that cycle you can look forward to.
So yeah, maybe that’s why. There’s at least a Substack post in it, if not more. There’s definitely something there.
We’ll see how today goes and see what comes of it. I’ve got potentially weird dreams to look forward to, which is good because I’ve been having weird dreams anyway, so that’s kind of par for the course.
One of them – see, my problem with my brain is that sometimes it creates its own memories when it comes to dreams. There have been times when I’ve had sequels to dreams, and it’s only in adulthood that I’ve realised: you never dreamt the original. But for some reason your dream has implanted a memory of this being a revisit of a previous topic. But then I’d have remembered dreaming the original dream. When I realised that was a thing my brain did, I thought, wow, that’s incredible – my brain can have sequels to dreams and have a kind of memory of having dreamt it, but when I think back, that memory isn’t actually tied to anything. I never actually dreamt that thing.
There are a couple of weird dreams I’ve been having, and I go through phases. I don’t know how it is with you, but there have been times when I’ve gone through slightly light sleep, having kind of auditory hallucination-type stuff. It sounds a lot weirder and worse than it is.
I used to remember having audiobooks on, or going to sleep with an audiobook on, then turning it off because I don’t like that thing of going to sleep and losing my place. But then I would be awake a little bit later at night hearing the audiobook. It wasn’t until a week or so had gone by that I realised I wasn’t actually hearing an audiobook, because I’d try and figure out a way to make it stop, look at my phone or something, and then realise, oh no, I guess I was just dreaming it.
I think I had that with one of my cats for a bit – I used to hear her meowing. I’m less sure whether that one was an auditory hallucination.
One of the weird dreams I’ve been getting is waking up with this sense that I’m part-way through trying to solve a puzzle or a problem, but somehow I don’t have all the information and I don’t even know what the problem is. It’s like walking halfway through a play that you’re supposed to be in and having no idea what the lines are, or no idea that you were even supposed to be in a play, and then suddenly you’re in a play. It’s such a strange feeling. That one’s come about fairly recently, and it feels recurring in as much as I think it’s recurring. I don’t think my brain is implanting that it’s recurring.
Then the other one that has been recurring for a long time – and this is so textbook, like route-one dream – is the one where I’m trying to achieve some sort of goal. It could be a simple goal like leaving the house. It could be meeting a friend for something. It could be trying to pass an exam or something like that. And there are always different things getting in my way. There’s always just something else that will prevent me from reaching that goal, and then another thing will prevent me from reaching that goal. It builds and it builds and nothing ever gets done.
Well, there’ll be time to revisit that, potentially tomorrow. I’ll have more updates for you on the old brain tomorrow as well.
In the meantime, thank you so much for listening. It’s been a pleasure.
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