Gutter balls

This morning’s quake was a short, sharp jolt. It wouldn’t have lasted more than a second or two. Some people seem to think it resulted from the current supermoon.

On Tuesday – the first of the month – I lowered my Efexor by another notch. I’m now on 225. I’m hoping that by when I finally reach zero I might be able to *feel* again. I experienced some minor panic attacks on Wednesday between about 4 and 7pm. Whether they were withdrawal symptoms (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SSRI_discontinuation_syndrome#Venlafaxine) I don’t know. I’ve also had a cold (again) this week.

I spoke to Richard on Thursday – he’s been going through a rough patch lately with depression. Thankfully he has a fairly extensive network of support in Auckland, so I’m confident he’ll come through this difficult spell. He takes one of the tricyclic types of antidepressant. My Efexor is an SNRI. Citalopram, the stuff I took from 2001 to 2009, is an SSRI. Then there’s the MAOI type, which sounds like it was discovered on Easter Island (Tracy takes one of those).

We had a record turnout of sixteen at Monday’s autism group. Surprisingly, given that 80% of people on the spectrum are male, nine of us (including the facilitator) were women. I can’t say enjoyed the group that much, mainly because of the high turnout. Of course in Auckland there would often be twice that many in attendance but you could move around more easily and didn’t feel quite as “locked-in”. This coming Friday there’s a showing of Blackadder III at the Repertory Theatre. Tracy is a huge Blackadder fan and suggested that we see Friday’s performance. I’ll be going, along with four or five others (women only as far as I know). At Monday’s group, people recited lines verbatim from Blackadder and a bunch of other shows. Now Blackadder is very funny I agree, but I never obsessed about it (or any other programme for that matter) to the point of word-for-word recall. I’ve always struggled to fit in, and on Monday it seemed I didn’t even fit in amongst the misfits.

Last weekend’s lead story in the Dom Post was of a 33-year-old autistic man who has been denied a basic human right by being allowed outside for less than two days in the last year. It’s shocking to read of such cruelty in such a progressive part of the world as this. It would be amazing to help somebody like him. Going down that path is one of my four ideas of what my next job should be.

On Thursday I went to the depression group at the noodle bar on Cuba St. I’m not sure what to make of that group. A lot of the talk revolves around online dating. Relationships have been off the map for me for such a long time that I have very little to add to the conversation. There are two NZ-based dating sites: Find Someone and NZ Dating. If you just want sex, apparently you join the latter – I think it has a “shag now” facility, a bit like the “buy now” button on Trade Me.

The depression group also arrange “events” at the weekend every now and again. Today nine of us went bowling at the Lanes in town. For some reason socialising has become even harder for me of late. I found it very hard to relax. We only played one game: I opened my account with four rather embarrassing gutter balls and had just 20 at the half-way point but finished on 85. We then sat in the sun, then I had a coffee with the six-foot-five bloke; like most people there's more to him than meets the eye.

My parents are coming up on Thursday for three days, so I spent most of yesterday cleaning my flat.