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decouching
Thursday, March 10 2016
I didn't feel great when I awoke this morning, and when I took my temperature I still had a slight fever. But after taking my usual 400 milligram dose of ibuprofen, I was soon able to walk around, and it would be after nightfall before I would feel a need to return to the couch. I decided to take a 60 milligram dose of pseudoephedrine not as a study aid but for its on-label use as a decongestant. Being a stimulant, it might have been the thing responsible for keeping me off that couch for the rest of the day. But being a decongestant, it also kept my sinuses and lungs from filling with thick viscous snot.
By late morning, it's safe to say that I was probably feeling a little better than the value of my mood's default set point. The pseudoephedrine no doubt played a role in this, but it might have also had something to do with the full resumption of my normal caffeine habit. (I'd been in something of a caffeine-withdrawal while convalescing; I had only been able drink a few sips of tea on rare occasions.) Furthermore, there must be a certain jubilation that comes with the restoration of 100% of a body's energy and comfort after four days of horizontal misery.
I even had enough energy to join Gretchen when she wanted me to come along for a walk-through of out rental property on Wall Street. Our tenants there had announced their intention to move out on April 15th, so Gretchen had advertised its availability (at $100/month more than our old tenants' rate) and already had four or five people email to say that they were definitely interested.
The boys weren't home, so we let ourselves in and had a look around. It was clean but cluttered, "staged" in the haphazard way one would expect from a couple dudebros. But everything seemed to be in working order and there wasn't much wear & tear. Some paint would be necessary for a bedroom door that had met with an impact injury, but that was it. I was delighted to see that their beer of choice was sixteen ounce cans of Stewart's-brand Mountain Brew Light. Evidently that is not something that causes young men to pound holes through plaster walls.
On the way back home, Gretchen dropped off our tax materials at our accountant's office, and then we went into the newish CVS at the corner of Washington and Schwenk to get me some proper cough medication. Back in the cough section of the cold & cough aisle, we were amazed to see that there are now "extended release" cough medications that cost $50/bottle. But for a little over $5/bottle, one can get 20 gelcaps each containing 15 milligrams of dextromethorphan completely uncontaminated with any other active ingredient. Conforming to my vision of OTC utopia, that was what I took to the cash register. The cashier asked for my birthday, and I thought she was asking for my CVS card. "I don't have one," I replied. Then I realized that she needed my birthdate because, sadly, (due to the free dissemination of information on the internet) dextromethorphan abuse has become a serious problem with the youth of today (a totally different "youth of today" than the one that was around when I was among the pioneers of dextromethorphan abuse advocacy on the web). "Oh, in case I'm a kid buying it to get high!" I said as Gretchen announced her birthdate.
Though I wasn't much troubled by a cough today, this evening I nevertheless took a five gelcap (75 mg) dose of dextromethorphan. I wanted to see if this would produce a mild psychonautical experience. (A normal recreational dose is more like 350 mg.) It turns out that it had a noticeable effect, putting a gentle hard-to-describe oddness on my evening (and also making me feel more sociable than my normal setpoint). This might have had a little to do with the grapefruit juice I'd drunk earlier; according to the Wikipedia entry, there are chemicals in grapefruit that intensify the effects of dextromethorphan and other drugs. I was feeling this mild buzz as I watched the latter half of the trailer for the new series Vinyl with Gretchen. I will watch anything that involves the frantic disposal of a body. So far it's Boogie Nights meets Fargo (the teevee series). What's not to love? Okay, I'll answer that question: the extremely non-linear unfolding of events. That just seems a little too precious at this point, like floor-to-ceiling subway tile in kitchens is going to seem in the year 2030.
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