today i am awake but asleep. yesterday i was asleep but awake. it's 7:54 AM, and it feels far too early to be this bright. that cyan blue fresco beams down on me with smug indignation. too much. my right knee throbs with a dull ache. my patella is framed by a lopsided 'C' made of black kinesiology tape.

good morning. i present to you a cautionary tale about the perils of medicalizing your circadian rhythm. moral of the story: pay attention to what you put into your mouth.

it all starts tuesday night (today is thursday morning). i went with tony to see fabiana palladino perform at my least favourite bar in the city. despite the venue, she put on a fantastic show: a cool falsetto, crooning over reverb pedals, bass rippling in a warm staccato, bodies sway under blue light and fog. a real moody affair. after the show we went back to my place and drank wine while tony played me songs through his iphone speaker. i took my prescribed 150mg seroquel xr and waited for my eyelids to get heavy. we went up to bed and slept erratically in fits and starts, waking up every hour to the other person writhing around, or to the sound of my cats sprinting across my 600 sq ft. apartment and knocking shit over, meow meow, noises i typically sleep through but that tony's presence made me cognizant of. around 7am he gave up and drove home, and i slept soundly for another two hours, until my alarm went off and i clocked into the time-tracking app on my phone.

after snoozing a few more times i got up, half-rested, put the kettle on the stove, ground some decaf beans. i was splitting in two again, neither here nor there. pretty often i get the sense that my mind and body are operating independently. sometimes my body acts without permission, meanwhile my brain does that hamster wheel thing where the fat neurotic rodent living inside my brain hijacks my synapses. while waiting for the water to boil i absently grabbed the bottle of seroquel xr left on the counter from the night before and palmed 3 x 50mg, put it in my mouth, and swallowed. moments later realizing that it was not, in fact, vyvanse. shit.

i turned off the stove and immediately went into the bathroom to try and puke it up. i shoved fingers down my throat, retching slightly, and managed to produce around a tablespoon of liquid bile. i watched it congeal into cloudy blobs on the surface of the toilet water. like frothy pond scum. i tried a few more times, but there was not enough food in my stomach to trigger a meaningful upchuck. i pulled my hand out of my mouth in defeat, fingers covered in caustic slime, knuckles bright red from stomach acid seeping into abrasions. i don't think i'd make a very good bulimic.

my only remaining option was to ride the wave. i decided to stack 40mg vyvanse for good measure. who knows, maybe they would cancel each other out in a dopamine antagonist vs reuptake inhibitor deathmatch. in my head i decided it would be a fun little science experiment: who would win the eepyness wars? in one corner we have the two time heavyweight champ, quetiapine xr, in the other — rising underdog, lisdexamfetamine. lets fucking gooo

i made a normal cup of caffeinated coffee and sat at my desk to begin my shift at the spreadsheet factory. within 30 mins the seroquel hit me hard. eyes drooping again. i struggled to maintain focus on SKUs, my eyes crossing as i filtered products with names like Zoo Friends Toddler Backpack and Modern Mama Meal Box. eventually the vyvanse did kick in, but it made me feel even more like a zombie, straddling the border of stimulation and sedation. it felt strange and artificial. it kind of reminded me of the one time i tried a calvin klein, just to see what all the fuss was about, but the coke ended up cancelling out the ket and vice versa, and all i was left with was the worst of both worlds. i dont get it.

i made it through the work day and spent a few hours lying on the couch, completely destitute, i nipped out to get some indian food, felt like a freak on the streets, tried to watch an episode of angel but kept getting distracted, then spent the next several hours in a hyperfixation spiral researching memantine, an ndma antagonist and dementia medication that's prescribed off-label for various mental illnesses. also a fan-favourite in r/nootropics. it has a similar mechanism of action to ketamine, my favourite drug that i can't enjoy responsibly. god i love dissos...

by the time 11pm rolled around, the seroquel had completely dissipated from my body, leaving me wide awake and slightly agitated. it was the inevitable consequence of living in a 24hr cycle of consecutive 6-hour half-lives.

(maybe the memantine will fix me)

i turned off all the lights and laid in bed with eyes wide, staring at the ceiling, feeling obligated to at least give it a shot, but i just knew it wasn't happening, not without my sweet sweet 'queluudes. i listened to drunk people on their way home from the bar, screaming and laughing in a chorus of frenzied frenglish. it didn't take me long to succumb to the comforting glow of the macbook screen. i scrolled various reddit posts and read stories about people getting caught cheating in leetcode interviews until the sky went from black to blue.

i got up and took another 40mg vyvanse. sat on the couch and read a chapter of tony tulathimutte's private citizens, waiting for the amphetamines to kick in. and now i'm back on the borderline, a drug-induced nothing, head buzzing, listening to normal people start their day while i wait for mine to be over.

i guess the seroquel won that round — K.O.