Monday, August 3, 2009

Mepho Dreaming

Mepho is the anti-malaria medication that I am taking, and a side effect of this once weekly pill is very weird and lucid dreams.  Don’t go to the wiki page because Mepho sounds like the boogeyman drug, but I have not had problems with it up to now (knock on wood).  I decided to write a few of the dreams that I have had in only one night (that I have been able to remember, at least), and each time I wake up with a start, wondering if it was just a dream, or if it really did happen.

Dream #1: I was talking with a meter tall chocolate bunny about investigating a crime involving another chocolate bunny.  We went to the hutch with search dogs, but the dogs kept eating the chocolate bunnies, so we had to have numerous burials for the bunnies we accidentally killed with the dogs.  After a while, one of them woke up and their ears poked out of the freshly dug grave like a zombie would in a zombie movie, and started helping us solve the crime. 

[Note: I had just finished the first season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, so I think that may have something to do with the ears poking out of the grave …]

Dream #2: I was dancing with another PCV when we started melding into one person.  We fought about which site to return, where to travel, who we wanted to talk to, who we wanted to see, and just basically everything.  We were like two people in one unambiguous blob.  It all got so intense, and the blob heated up so much that it nearly burst in flame. 

After that dream, I woke up in the middle of the night with a start, and for a few moments, I was horrified and thought that it had really happened.  After a minute or two, I realized that I was not in a blob, but under my mosquito net, and that I was laying on my bed, in my bedroom, in my house.  You can imagine the relief I felt.  While it was not necessarily a nightmare, it was just really weird.

Dream #3: I was teaching my KG-1 class, and the kids kept flying around the classroom.  I was nearly at my wits end when I started zapping the kids with a stun-ray type of device and they all started to fly lower and lower until they finally settled in their seats.  At that point, all the kids lost their flying capabilities. 

There were several other dreams that night, but I could not remember them.  These kinds of dreams usually occur the night of the weekly dose, or the next night.  I have heard stories of the medication affecting a person so much that they have to switch to Doxy or Malrone.  I hope to avoid the switch to Doxy because Doxy makes you extremely sensitive to the sun, and that’s not a good thing if you’re living in a costal area right on the equator. 

At this point I am just enjoying the vivid dreams, so hopefully that will still be the case when I COS.  

DISCLAIMER

This blog consists of my personal thoughts and opinions. It does not in any way reflect the position of the United States Government or the Peace Corps.