I read too much

I spent part of today chasing a prescription for Sertraline, and at five o'clock I finally obtained the small plainly labelled box containing 14 pills. I chased it because I wanted to make sure I could start taking them tomorrow. Father Badger has taken the day off and then he's at home as normal for the weekend, and I'd rather not be alone when I start to take these pills. I also need to start on them before I chicken out.

I made a tactical error, you see...

I read the NHS website page on the side effects of Sertraline. It made for uncomfortable reading, not because the list was long but because many of the side effects were listed as likely to affect as many as one in ten people! I see that as rather a high hit rate.

I then made a much more idiotic mistake...

I read the leaflet in the pill packet. Oh. My. Word. The NHS appear to have been sugar coating it. Here are the edited highlights (because the full details would take far too long to type):

Very common side effects (more than 1 in 10 patients): Insomnia, dizziness, sleepiness, headache, diarrhoea, feeling sick, dry mouth, fatigue

Common (1-10 out of 100 patients):

• Sore throat, anorexia, increased appetite
• depression, feeling strange, nightmare, anxiety, etc.
• visual disturbance, ringing in ears
• palpitations, hot flush
• etc.

Uncommon (1-10 out of 1,000 patients):

• hallucination, [insert variety of mental states]
• convulsion, amnesia, etc.
• osteoarthritis
• etc.

All in, there must be upward of several hundred possible side effects listed, both physical and mental, and of varying degrees of impact to life as we know it. I particularly like "terrifying abnormal dreams".

They may as well have just put in large red type: this will probably screw you up in some way.

I need to find a way of blanking this out of my mind before tomorrow morning.

Image courtesy of vorakorn / FreeDigitalPhotos.net