It really is a good idea to check drug interactions, even if the product you’re about to take is over-the-counter. I learned that the hard way a while back. It was suggested by my doctor that I take Mucinex because I was coughing and practically drowning in my own mucus. (TMI?)
Anyway, it definitely dried me out, but it also made me even more loopy than usual. I felt like I was floating two feet off the ground. If I turned my head, there was this lag in the rest of the world. I was dizzy, and I couldn’t think straight. I’m pretty sure everyone around me thought I was being melodramatic, but, seriously, I couldn’t function in polite society. (Or even in impolite society.)
Finally, I had the presence of mind to look up drug interactions, between giggles, and I discovered that one of the main ingredients in Mucinex is dextromethorphan, and one of my prescription drugs urges you not to take it with dextromethorphan. About a day after I stopped taking Mucinex, I became balanced and coherent again. Mind you, my thoughts were a lot less creative, but at least I was functional, in my own special dysfunctional way.
The cough lingered for another 6 months, but I was capable of operating heavy equipment again. You don’t realize what a handy skill that is until you’ve lost it. You’ll have to trust me on that.
During what I’m now calling my lost week, I wrote a lot of interesting notes in my “Blog Ideas” list. Some of them I couldn’t figure out after returning to the land of the lucid. But there is one that makes me smile to this day.
I wrote, “Graffiti. It’s ORGANIC!”
Dude.
I remember thinking, “Has anyone ever actually seen someone tagging a building or an overpass? I certainly haven’t. And I’ve been places, and stuff. And I’m kinda old.”
Graffiti seems to appear overnight, fully formed, like mushrooms. Like freakin’ mushrooms, man! So maybe (and bear with me on this), just maybe they grow on their own. Really. Think about it.
Most of the time the words written are illegible and make no sense. That would add up if they weren’t created by a human being. Maybe it’s an entity of its own, and it is trying to communicate with us, but it’s not sophisticated enough.
Maybe graffiti are fungi. Yeah. They grow overnight in various shapes and colors. They don’t move on their own. The plot thickens.
According to this article, the cost of graffiti removal in America alone is about 12 billion dollars annually. (That’s billion with a b.) Maybe we’re going about this all wrong.
If graffiti is a fungus, and according to this article, lots of fungi help us produce helpful medicines (for example, we would not have penicillin were it not for a fungus called Penicillium), then we could be overlooking a valuable resource, here! That abandoned alleyway in the warehouse district might be covered from top to bottom with medical breakthroughs! Yeah! Graffiti might be the cure-all that some believe marijuana to be. (Another substance I should avoid while seeking out blog fodder.)
The bottom line is that graffiti could save the world someday. Remember: You heard it here first.
No more dextromethorphan for me.
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The View from a Drawbridge 