When I went to the shrink last Wednesday I told him about being super irritable to the point where people were noticing. Hell, I was noticed the change first. Not only was I irritable, I was downright dangerous. The possibility of road rage incidents was coming back with a vengence. Anger management was out the window.

We discussed the situation and he said the irritability was probably due to the Zoloft working too well and throwing me over to the manic side of my mood stabilizer which has been working just dandy. He said that happened a lot with some antidepressants and while there were a lot of options, maybe we should cut my dosage in half before jumping to a different medicine. He said he knew what Zoloft did and was reluctant to put me through a new course of monitoring side effects.

And, so, Monday night it hits me. I've been through this enough to know. There's no easing into an altered state. With me it's simply BANG, you're dead! We were out to dinner and the situation wasn't going too well -- The waiter didn't listen to the wife, who tends to chatter too much, and messed up her order; and, in doing so, forgot to give me some extra condiments. Since I'm not one to bring fault to a situation, I let it ride, all the while letting the waiter's ineptitude simmer inside -- and before I knew I went from okie-dokie to depressed.

The next morning (yesterday) I was still depressed and sinking lower, so I called the clinic and told the nurse what happened.

"Are you suicidal?"

"No."

"Okay, I'll tell the doctor. We should get back to you within 24 hours."

I guess it was a good thing I rarely get suicidal because 24 hours is a long time to wait for someone to solve a problem.

Unable to find solace, I put myself into doing things. In other words, I worked out of the depression.

An interesting outcome of the situation was that I was able to write a little once I made the decision not to be depressed. It wasn't much, maybe a sentence or two, but it was tapping into the creative and pulling out a string of words that fit the puzzle.

The nurse called back just before the clinic closed. She said my shrink wanted me to go back to a full dose of Zoloft and we'd talk about the situation the next time we met.

As far as I'm concerned we already had that conversation. 50 mg of Zoloft puts me over the bar and I become dangerous to myself and others. 25 mg keeps me in familiar territory, it might be sad territory, but at least it's safe.

The choice was simple. I still didn't feel all that well, but at least I'm not mad for the silliest reasons.