lowquality.net

Went to an open mic last night to sit in and jam with some friends. Didn’t play as much as I would have liked but it scratched the itch. Hung out with some peo­ple I haven’t seen in awhile which was also nice and took the fret­less bass out in a live set­ting for the first time since I got it. Those Lindy Fralin sin­gle coil pick­ups sound amazing!

Since I switched the time of day that I take my anx­i­ety meds I have felt like, maybe, the drug’s effects were taper­ing off a bit, but I also thought maybe it just seemed that way since I was prob­a­bly asleep when the drug was at its most potent. Nev­er­the­less, I’ve been– per­haps irra­tionally– con­cerned that the use­ful­ness of the med­ica­tion would even­tu­ally wear out com­pletely (some­thing I’ve read about that does hap­pen, but usu­ally over a con­sid­er­able period of time). Since I seemed to rec­og­nize changes result­ing from the use of the med­ica­tion almost imme­di­ately (which I didn’t expect) I have been won­der­ing how long it would remain as effec­tive as it has been. I have no real rea­son to believe itbe­cause I don’t feel anx­ious or pan­icky but I am start­ing to get to a point where feel­ing relaxed is “nor­mal” and that’s just unusual for me.

At any rate, last night may have been the first I’ve gone out to some kind of activ­ity since tak­ing the med­ica­tion and my con­cerns that the drug was no longer work­ing as potently were dis­missed imme­di­ately.  I found that play­ing music while on the anti-anxiety med allowed me to focus much more on fol­low­ing the song (I was impro­vis­ing unre­hearsed with other play­ers and didn’t know the song) and get more into the music. I even felt myself mov­ing to the music more than I nor­mally might.

There’s always a lit­tle bit of stage fright before I per­form and the drug didn’t remove that com­pletely (which I am thank­ful for.. if this were to become a com­pletely fear­less activ­ity I don’t think I could keep doing it) but instead of feel­ing like my heart was beat­ing out of my chest (which is often the case for even the most rehearsed per­for­mances) it was just a lit­tle pang of ner­vous excitement.

Per­haps I am sim­ply less aware of the drug because I’ve been tak­ing the pill after work (when I am usu­ally less anx­ious any­way), I am more ready to relax around the house and don’t notice a great dif­fer­ence between “nor­mal” me and “under the influ­ence” me.