Colour Supplement

Articles by contemporary writers

Sunday July 30th 2006

 

Depression part 2: the first week of medication

By Gordon Atkinson

 

 

I do not know the name of the medication I am on. My friend Amy asked me what I was taking and was understandably puzzled when I told her I didn't know. “They're little bitty brown pills,” I said.

The next day I got the name off the medicine bottle and read about it on the internet. I saw Amy a day or two later and she asked me again. To my surprise, I had already forgotten the name of the drug. Nor could I remember anything I had read about it.

Obviously I do not want to know this medication. I'm not ready to get chummy with her. I'm not ready for a commitment. We're not even on a first name basis.

I do know that the normal dosage for a man is 150 milligrams. The instructions say to take 25 milligrams, once a day for 7 days. Then 50 milligrams a day for 7 days, then 75 milligrams a day for two weeks. The doctor said I really wouldn't notice anything until I got to 75 milligrams. Well, all except for the dry mouth.

The dry mouth is the only side effect this medication is supposed to have. It is not supposed to have “certain sexual side effects,” if you know what I mean. But yes, your mouth will be dry.

Here is what it's like to preach while on this medication: Stuff a small marshmallow in each nostril and then sleep for 8 hours breathing through your mouth. Wake up and eat a cup of sawdust. Then stand in front of a crowd of people and talk for 25 minutes.

Yeah. My tongue felt like a tube sock filled with dryer lint.

Last Sunday I emptied an entire water bottle getting through the service. Let me ask you something. If I preached wearing one of those baseball caps that have coke cans on the side and a tube going to your mouth, do you think that would destroy the dignity of the pastoral office?

Not that we preachers have any dignity left, what with the televangelists and Joel Olsteen.

Anywho, that was pretty much it for the first week. Dry mouth, sucking water, wondering what I'm going to feel like when these little brown pills start working.

PART THREE OF THIS SERIES WILL BE PUBLISHED HERE NEXT WEEK (06/08/06).  TO READ PART ONE PLEASE VISIT THE COLOUR SUPPLEMENT ARCHIVE

Gordon Atkinson is pastor of Covenant Baptist Church in San Antonio, Texas and has his own excellent website www.reallivepreacher.com.  We are most grateful to Gordon for his permission to reproduce his essays here.

BACK TO HOME PAGE