Medication, for Better or for Worse

So the Wellbutrin causes my brain to melt when I ingest mere drops of alcohol, a fact I've detailed in a previous post. I find myself slurring and talking about things I ordinarily would keep to myself. This is annoying.

It's annoying because pre-Wellbutrin I'd been having fun playing with awareness about verbal restraint. Awareness of where my energy goes via the hot air I produce leads me to tone down general verbal incontinence. It means before I speak, I flash on my motivation. This is very instructive.

(My yoga teacher talks about leaking prana, which means wasted energy, and a person can really leak a lot of prana shooting the bull about things that are of absolutely no consequence to anyone. This doesn't mean that I only talk about Important Things. I don't have anything against people who only talk about Important Things, I just don't want to hang out with them.)

Before I added this new drug to my regimen, I usually had the presence of mind to observe my motivation for talking at some point during a day. Sadly, the Wellbutrin turned out to be a verbal diuretic. Talk about leaks. Recently I have found myself going on and on about Martha Stewart, the failed Seattle Commons of ten years ago and how stupid the failure was because look what's happened to South Lake Union anyway, and, the other night at a small dinner party, towels.

I didn't start it. The hostess did. I mentioned, while helping place cloth napkins on the table, how a little girl we had over for a play date recently told me that cloth was best because paper kills the environment. My hostess friend looked at me with a wrinkled expression.

"I don't know," she said. "With all the laundry I do, it hardly seems that way."

I gave her a "yeah, well, who knows?" kind of shrug. She pressed further. "What's your system for towels and napkins?"

Because I have one, I told her. She led me into the bathroom to show me the new bamboo-fiber washcloths she had purchased, ostensibly to offset the environmental damage she was causing by washing all linen items after only one use. We proceeded to stand in the bathroom and discuss our towel-use habits at length. And our bathing habits. At a certain point I flashed on conversations I have had while stoned. I thought, this feels like I'm stoned. Am I stoned? Where's my margarita?

Next day, while filling my pill-dispenser for the week, I cut all the Wellbutrins in half. Soon I'll be Wellbutrin-free.

Will this be better or worse?