Dr Jekyl and frankenstienhyde.

I am prescribed a sleeping pill I need on occasion to help me be strong. I joke, it is to help me sleep.
It is not that I am the sort who normally has trouble sleeping. I have no trouble quieting my mind enough to rest. But one medicine I take, Cymbalta, which is very effective for its purpose, also has the side effect of making it difficult to fall asleep. Not always, but occasionally.

The sleeping pill works great, and even has a slight hang-over effect lasting most of the next day that is pleasant. Warm and calm.

But the sleeping pill has its own side effects that can cause me trouble.

One, is that if I don't go to bed right after taking it, I tend to get a incredible and insatiable hunger. I can easily eat as much or more as all I had eaten the entire day.
(I notice a lot of things that slow one down tend to increase the appetite. Which makes sense. If your tired it is an indicator to the body that you are in some sort of down time, such as winter, so it is a good opportunity to stock up on energy, by eating a lot and storing it as fat. If that were correct it would follow that things which increase energy inhibit appetite. Which is the case (meth, coke, caffeine, etc.). And makes sense because when you are on the move you don't need extra fat or food slowing you down.)

Not only will I Garfield myself just before falling asleep, but I will hardly remember it the next day. The pill inhibits somewhat the formation of new memories, leaving whatever I do under its influence a haze in my memory . Not only that but it tends to cause my dreams to be extra vivid.

With my last moments before falling asleep being fuzzy, and my dreams while sleeping being extra vivid, a certain amount of confusion can occur within me: 'Did i really eat three quesadilla's last night or was that a dream?' Looking in the sink shows that often it was not a dream.

But the effect I least appreciate is the behavior it tends to cause if I am using a computer when I take the pill. I will have a tendency to send long rambling emails, that may or may not reflect my actual thoughts. Sometimes I will receive an email reply to a message I have no memory of sending. When I read what I had written I sometimes feel a little embarassed about what I wrote. Sometimes I may be more open than I would have preferred in that situation with that person. And sometimes I will even say something that isn't true at all. Since I can scarcely recall having sent the message in the first place, I have little hope of remembering what was going through my mind while composing. Maybe my thinking had become so altered I thought at the time that whatever it was i had said was true. Or maybe I was making some weird joke only I understood.

As far as I know it has never caused any real trouble. I only seem to write close friends or family members.

But it is an unpleasant feeling realizing that I have what is almost like another person living within me whose motivations are not mine. And as much as I may plan so that the alternate me won't get his ways, sometimes he still prevails.

I guess It is like I'm doctor Jekyll and Mr hyde, except instead of becoming evil I just become goofy, sometimes embarassingly affectionate.