{"id":361,"date":"2006-07-30T14:11:00","date_gmt":"2006-07-30T20:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/royblumenthal.com\/wordpress\/?p=361"},"modified":"2006-07-30T14:11:00","modified_gmt":"2006-07-30T20:11:00","slug":"2006-07-30-long-dark-teatime-of-the-zoloft","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/royblumenthal.com\/wordpress\/2006-07-30-long-dark-teatime-of-the-zoloft\/","title":{"rendered":"2006-07-30 Long Dark Teatime of the Zoloft"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"float: right; margin-left: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;\"> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/royblumenthal\/202063685\/\" title=\"photo sharing\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/static.flickr.com\/59\/202063685_7b7250c025_m.jpg?w=605\" alt=\"\" style=\"border: solid 2px #000000;\" \/><\/a> <br \/> <span style=\"font-size: 0.9em; margin-top: 0px;\">  <a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/royblumenthal\/202063685\/\">2006-07-30 Long Dark Teatime of the Zoloft<\/a>  <br \/>  Originally uploaded by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/people\/royblumenthal\/\">royblumenthal<\/a>. <\/span><\/div>\n<p>I&#8217;m now on my fifth day of starting Zoloft, a medication akin to Prozac, used for fighting depression, and, in my case anxiety.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve been distrustful of psychiatry for decades. Especially the decade after reading THE LOONEY BIN TRIP, in which feminist bipolar sufferer, Kate Millett, finds herself incarcerated not once, but twice, in a mental institution, against her will, by her lover.<\/p>\n<p>Things have changed.<\/p>\n<p>Medications now are cleaner, more targeted, more predictably helpful.<\/p>\n<p>For me, the anxiety is the hectic thing. Depression I&#8217;ve coped with all my life. But anxiety. Jeeeeeez. It&#8217;s the worst.<\/p>\n<p>Right now, for instance, I&#8217;m sitting drawing heavy gulps of air to try and fill my lungs. <\/p>\n<p>Shouldn&#8217;t the Zoloft be helping?<\/p>\n<p>Well, yeah&#8230; in a few weeks. Right now I&#8217;m still in the side-effect zone. Which translates to the feeling that I&#8217;ve drunk 40 cups of coffee. I&#8217;m jolting around the place, but unbearably tired too. But hey. Should wear off by tomorrow night.<\/p>\n<p>When I got home earlier, I decided a cup of tea in darkness would be exactly the right calming thing for me to have. Hence this pic.<\/p>\n<p>This painting was made using <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ambientdesign.com\/artrage.html\">ArtRage 2.11<\/a> on a Toshiba Tecra M4 tablet pc with a cuppa tea to hand. Lipton, if you&#8217;re wondering.<br clear=\"all\" \/><\/p>\n<div class=\"blogger-post-footer\">Roy Blumenthal is a writer, director, artist, and <a href=\"http:\/\/snipurl.com\/visualfacilitator\">visual facilitator<\/a>. Hire him to make pictures of your meetings or workshops.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>2006-07-30 Long Dark Teatime of the Zoloft Originally uploaded by royblumenthal. I&#8217;m now on my fifth day of starting Zoloft, a medication akin to Prozac, used for fighting depression, and, in my case anxiety. I&#8217;ve been distrustful of psychiatry for &hellip;<\/p>\n<p class=\"read-more\"> <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/royblumenthal.com\/wordpress\/2006-07-30-long-dark-teatime-of-the-zoloft\/\"> <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">2006-07-30 Long Dark Teatime of the Zoloft<\/span> Read More &raquo;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-361","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p521FP-5P","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/royblumenthal.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/361","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/royblumenthal.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/royblumenthal.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/royblumenthal.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/royblumenthal.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=361"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/royblumenthal.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/361\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/royblumenthal.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=361"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/royblumenthal.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=361"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/royblumenthal.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=361"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}