What I have discovered about my new prescription allergy medicine is that it produces a kind of physiological arousal that leads to fascinating mental states. Last time I took one, I didn't sleep for two days. I found it to be quite a handy side-effect, since I had a lot of things to do, and this extension of my waking hours gave me loads of extra time. There was an initial, uncomfortable period of adaptation, in which I lay in bed at night expecting to fall asleep. As soon as I gave up on this hang-up and got up again, I found being awake to be as pleasurable as always. I'm often irritated by the necessity of sleep anyhow. It seems grossly unfair that I should have to drop everything I'm enjoying to surrender my consciousness every day. What's worse, I fall asleep and become completely vulnerable to whatever insane puke-scented burp of psychological detritus my mind decides to expel. For hours, helpless.

I am afraid of death. I'm fiercely dedicated to staying conscious.

This time, about eight hours into my "24 hour" prescription allergy medication, I'm experiencing a heightened premonition of danger that I would liken to paranoia. Paranoia-congruent thoughts come to mind with ease, like: why did the Object of My Former Crush barely speak to me on my last ambulance shift? I'm convinced she found this journal and has figured things out. She's embarrassed or just deeply disturbed at my decision to invite her into my personal foible/fable. Not that it changes much. Everyone I know eventually finds the Tales.

Until they do, it's wonderful having a secret like this one. The mere presence of information that I chose to withhold (for now) from colleague and new friends creates a sense of the future -- the possibility of a time when the secret will be revealed. When it comes to light, like when fellow Probationary Member Steve found the Tales, I always experience contradictory senses of excitement and disappointment. I am revealing myself, and not much can compare to the thrill of a moment when you surrender your defenses and allow yourself to be known. But in the process, the power is weeping out of my secret, and it is becoming just like everything else in the world.

The tinted brown plastic bottle in which I obtained my prescription allergy medication warns that I may experience "drowsiness." Mmm, yes, maybe after a couple days of manic wakefulness. I have a theory that my body is more sensitive to drugs because I'm a vegetarian. I'm not sucking down commercially-produced flesh, soaked with recycled antibiotics and other nastiness, and this keeps my system in a more delicate balance. The folks who make my prescription allergy medication probably set their dosage and acceptable level of side-effects based on the drug-riddled physiological characteristics of the omnivorous public.

Okay, pesticides on vegetables, I admit that. Did you know that there are standards for the maximum allowable amount of pus that can be present in milk? Increasing number of dairy farmers are stuffing their cows with Bovine Growth Hormones to increase their milk production. An unfortunate side effect is that the cows are more susceptible to infection, which can cause pus to mix in with the milk. So to make sure the milk doesn't surpass the pus-limit, the farmers shoot the animals up with antibiotics.

Here is something else that my allergy medication is whispering biochemically to the tissues of my brain: there is something terribly wrong here. Something is malfunctioning in my delicate clockwork. Tight springs are getting ready to burst and razor-slide a single hot wire into some softly murmuring mechanism. I am forgetting something terribly important, like breathing. I should concentrate on breathing. I should avoid operating heavy machinery.

This is why my youthful experimentation with mind-altering substances never turned into a lifestyle -- I'm always afraid I'll get stuck like this. I'll never have my mind clear again. Stuck in a bad dream thinking it's real. Good as dead.