Adventures in Psychopharmacology

So, the story is that I kept on having lucid dreams/nightmares, who knows why -- maybe it's the 6 years of compiled sleep deprivation from MIT -- and it's turning me into a zombie, which is unfortunate given the requirements of my every day life. So, I went to my doctor. And he prescribed:

TRAZODONE

Wow. Trazodone. Thirty seconds with Google and you learn it's an ineffective anti-depressant kept around for its sedative side-effects. The hope of my doctor was that it would restore my sleep architecture so that I'd stop waking up during REM, forget my dreams, wake up rested, the whole deal. A miracle cure for weeks of unrest! Instead it knocked me out, regularly, for 10-14 hours and left me feeling distracted, dizzy and logey during the day. It also didn't really affect the vividness of my dreams. And I was characteristically perky and happy the two or three days I didn't take it.

Rather than helping my situation, the trazodone was ineffective and more than a little scary. What a waste of psychopharmacology.

Last night, I dreamt about a lone tribe of ninja turtles (evolving from the sand and puddles, building wells, aportioning land, egalitarianism shifting to nepotism) standing up to the new and improved society (tyrranous technologists from across the shore) who were trying to get the noble Donatello (now a tiny remnant of proto-turtle society) to sign some giant (literally) bill/confession that would be used by the improved turtle society to embezzle money from the Giant Space Empire. And the once-egalitarian society felt like '100 Years of Solitude', living in an incestuous house on the top of the hill, filled with murderous sister/cousins, secrets, and people that kept pet goldfish in clear pockets on their clothes and purses. At one point, there was an all-out war/murder spree. And for a little while, the society of green-wearing, goldfish-loving, swamp drudgers reset, only for me to see the seeds of destruction re-sown by a woman who'd drugged, seduced and been impregnated by her brother (my host) to induce murder. It had a similar feel to the dream where I cut together a video for class, and I had to build a spaceship and film myself going to the moon, alone, and dying... stop-animation and in-camera editing. It won awards after I transmitted it from space... but when I got back, no one believed it was me. When I woke up this morning, in a fugue of turtle power and cursing Jose Arcadio Buendia, I was distracted, tired, dizzy and disoriented.

Holy crap; am I not trying that again. Anyone want 1000mg of trazodone?

Personally, I feel the solution is never as easy as some magic pill.