this is from page 2 of an article talking about strange psychiatric, mindf*ck side effects people have experienced when taking the stop-smoking drug chantix:
The term suicidal ideation looks pretty dead on the page, and if you were ever to experience such a symptom, it’s unlikely you’d pick up on it right away: “Here comes that damned suicidal ideation again. I had better call my physician.” For me, self-destructive fantasies slowly began cropping up as cartoonish flights of fantasy—nagging, almost imperceptible chatter that became a little more concrete and domineering with every passing day.
A week into my Chantix usage, I started to feel as if the city landscape had imperceptibly shifted around me. Mundane details began to strike me as having deep, hidden significance. The neon arch above McDonald’s: The lights blinked on and off in some sort of pattern, and I needed to crack the code. One of my co-workers was messing with some papers: What is he trying to imply with all that damned crinkling? Sitting in the subway: A man hurries to get inside. His hand, holding a cup of coffee, gets stuck in the closing door. I watch the hand wriggle. The lid bursts open and steaming brown liquid hits the floor. Fingers twitch and splay. Coffee splashes in crisscrossing slats through the subway car. It was a sign—something bad was going to happen.
now, people, that last paragraph: that’s my everyday life, every single moment of consciousness. and here someone is writing about it as if it’s some psychological aberration. it’s often been said, by many people i’ve known, that it would probably be best if i were never to take acid, and that my brain as it normally is seems to be what other people get like when they’ve had some hallucinogenic drugs.
and i can’t be the only one whose normal brain is as the brains of people on serious, mind-altering drugs.
