Another most peculiar dream last night. I've written before about my dream "map," the sense of orientation my dream-self often possesses. Since starting the Lexapro, the overall tone and sensibility of my dreams has been "off the map." They have an unfamiliar character, a strange cast to them, and I am unable to orient my dream self within them. I can only attribute this to the chemical workings of the SSRI. It seems reasonable that a chemical with such broad neurological effects in waking life would also affect the sleeping life.
In my dream, I had taken advantage of the five days' worth of inpatient psychiatric care provided by my insurance, and checked myself into a psychiatric ward. I was in a plain, institutional-looking room, wearing plain, institutional-looking "clothes"--pajamas, really. In one wall of the room was a sliding window, such as you might find in the reception area of a doctor's office.
It was locked, but there was a screwdriver-type tool on the window's ledge, and I was able to open the lock, slide the window back, and grab a big ring of keys on the receptionist's desk on the other side. My dream self knew that these were the "keys to the hospital," so to speak. They were of all sizes and shapes, and one of them was tagged "Pharmacy." I really wanted that key: I could only imagine what was in there. All my favorite synthetic opiates, Vicodin, the works. I knew that such seeking was symptomatic of addiction, but no matter... I was going to get that key, get into the pharmacological storeroom, and figure out some way to break open the narcotics cabinet when I got there (all the Good Stuff, you see, is generally kept under its own lock and key).
But I never quite made it that far. I ended up closing and relocking the window, then opening it again, never managing to actually get the key and set off on my mission. But even when I noticed that there were four or five cameras in the room, watching me fixedly, I kept at it. Opening the window, grabbing the key-ring, putting it back, closing it, opening it again. Then I heard the bustle of staff returning from lunch, and I left the room to wander the halls.
As it turned out, there was a bank in the front of the hospital. One of the halls just opened up into it, and there was nubbly bank-style carpeting, and desks with comfy chairs for financial consultations, and ropes on brass stands to control the lines for the tellers. So there I was in my pajamas, knowing that everyone knew that I must have wandered in from the psychiatric ward.
I think I may have headed back to make some more tries for the Pharmacy key, but the tail end of the dream has dissolved in waking memory.
Now, I tend not to analyze my dreams too deeply. I believe that their function is in their occurrence: just by having them, my mind is doing what it needs to be doing to maintain itself. But I find it fascinating that the SSRI is affecting the methods that my sleeping mind uses to do that work. The symbology has a different feel to it, my sense of myself as a dream individual is different, and the emotional resolution that I bring with me from sleep into wakefulness has changed. I don't know whether the process has become more effective or not, I just know that it's changed.
Of course, this bit of introspection could all just be from the 99+ degree fever I'm running right now. Looks like my rainy night ride a few days back was a bit much for a body that's not quite used to getting all of the exercise it's now getting. So today, when the weather was gorgeous for riding, I've been camped out on the couch with the cats, the television, and various aromatic teas. Pea is about halfway through her whirlwind tour of Italy, so I've got the house to myself, which is good in some ways, lonely in others, and a detriment to housekeeping.
Hopefully, I will be recovered enough to get up at 6AM on Tuesday to speed to the mall, grab my reserved copy of Halo 2, and spend the day blowing things up using the Big Television Downstairs That I'm Only Allowed To Play Videogames On When Pea Is Not Around.
Late night fevered thoughts, but on Sunday, when no one's watching, so it's safe.
