association

[mellowtigger]

Antihistamines make me loopy. I know it, but sometimes they're still a necessary evil. I've been doping up on antihistamines over the last few days to help rid myself of a sinus infection. When my sinuses dry out, the infection airs out and goes away. It worked. The infection is gone, but the underlying allergies remain. It's been a few years, I think, since I relied on this many antihistamines. They're having their usual bad effect. Besides not thinking straight, my emotions are messed up. At least I've successfully caught up on missed sleep.

A brain thinking certain thoughts does a good job of finding a chemical emotional state to associate with it and store them together in memory. Unfortunately, the reverse is also true. Give the brain a chemically induced emotional state, and it finds associated thoughts to match.

I've grown unaccustomed to the feeling of lonesome. I learned in childhood to define lonesome as loneliness that only gets worse if I try to be around people. I find that I live better the less I'm reminded of other people in the world. My monkeysphere is very small. Recently, I find that my 2-person sphere is missing 1 person. Usually, I inhabit the sphere just fine with me and my 2 cats.

I know that this current state will pass. I wish I knew what was triggering my allergies, though. It's unusual for me to experience allergies in Minnesota at this time of year. I want to drop the antihistamines soon.

Comments

[furr_a_bruin]

What antihistamine are you using? Claritin (loratadine) and Zyrtec (cetirizine) are available OTC and as fairly inexpensive generics these days, and have much less of a sedative effect than other OTC antihistamines. (Costco's house version of Zyrtec is around 4¢/pill, though that's in a quantity of 365.)

Of course, the sedative effect of Benadryl (diphenhydramine) isn't such a problem if you take it at bedtime, as long as it doesn't leave you excesively groggy in the morning.

[mellowtigger]

I had to go look them up.
night: a Nyquil generic with doxylamine succinate
day: a generic tablet with phenylephrine hydrochloride

Back when I lived in Austin, my allergies were a year-round problem. I used Claritin and Zyrtec when they were prescription only. I know that one of them (perhaps both?) caused frequent night time restless legs. It disrupted my sleep so much that I've never been tempted to use them again. Maybe I should try each of them, though, to see if "the other one" works without restless leg problems.

I figured out what's likely triggering my allergies. I am most sensitive to mold. One of my landlords pointed out this afternoon that we've received 1/3 of our rainfall this year during the last month. All the wetness probably has fungus (mold) fruiting over the whole landscape.

[furr_a_bruin]

I've never heard of restless legs as a side effect to the less-sedating antihistamines, but everyone's unique.

Mold... ugh. When things get really bad, I wear a filter mask - it looks odd and isn't a complete solution, but it does seem to help.

The other thing you might consider is cromolyn sodium nasal spray. ("NasalCrom" is the OTC brand name, but it's available as a generic.) It's not a decongestant, it's a "mast cell stabilizer" - the idea being that it prevents the mast cells from releasing histamine in the first place. It worked magnificently for me - as long as I remembered to use it every 3 hours. You might get a good response at less-frequent dosing.

[mellowtigger]

Good idea. I remember being on a prescription nasal spray for a while, but that name doesn't sound familiar. I do remember that I gave up on it because using it caused my fingertips to peel skin. I assumed it was "blowback" from the spray reaching my hand. It'd be worth another look to see how cheap the generics are now.