Day: 57

day fifty-seven:

emotional/mental state feels better than in months--attitude is solid--outlook realistic--although the meds feel transparent and side-effects are all but gone, there is no doubt that cognition and perception is/has changed/altered under the influence of these psychoactive elements--I am, in a very literal sense, On Drugs--as such, my decision making process is different--I do things now I was adamantly opposed to premed--good or bad is another question for another time but the fact remains, the meds have changed how I interact with facts/data/input and other people--these changes have been beneficial but there is also a sadness, as one feels with a death, when something that was, is gone--I am not as I was--nor am I self-aware enough to know exactly how, to the level of detail I would like--like shedding a skin but still blind--you know it feels different and you know it is different but you can't quite see it clearly yet--it is as if I do not know myself

emotions blunted at the high and low end--although I can't remember feeling the high in a long, long time so it might be better to say the emotional range on the bottom end is missing, blunted, removed, numbed, dulled--just gone--I miss feeling at my former depth--as painful as the pain was, I miss it--numbed or dulled is perhaps inaccurate--there is no sense or feeling of being medicated as there was in the first four weeks--I know the absence only by contrast with what was before and it just feels missing as opposed to masked

libido stronger than ever--sexual function fully returned--although ejaculation remains slightly more difficult, sensation is as it was and orgasms are as they were--and for the record, dosage, 100mg of Setraline a day, has not been altered or changed in any way--one thing is clear--I will never take sexual function for granted again and the ability to have an orgasm seems more magical and mysterious than it ever did before