Have you seen the commercials for Chantix? It is a smoking cessation prescription medication. All of these pharmaceutical commercials have a long recitation of side effects and warnings. We have heard them for years: constipation, nausea, gas, etc. Everything on the shelf has those side effects. But anxiety, panic, aggression, anger, mania, suicidal thoughts, hostility, agitation, vomiting, abnormal sensations, hallucinations, paranoia, or confusion, life-threatening skin reactions seems a little weird. Then I read this one: You may have vivid, unusual, or strange dreams.
Whoa, dude. Who doesn’t want those side effects? Unusual dreams? It sounds like Woodstock. What is a usual dream? Being chased by snakes on skateboards? Your neighbor parking the space shuttle in your front yard? Going to work naked, but not realizing it until you are there? Flying through walls and hooking up with aliens? Eating a pizza the size of my house? My dog talking to me and sounding like a guy I worked with at Chiat/Day? Sigourney Weaver from Ghostbusters asking me if I am the key master? Outrunning bad guys wearing black robes and brandishing brass knuckles in the restroom at Grand Central Station? I’ve had all of those dreams, yet I have never taken this medication. Damn.
My dreams are normally so unusual, I wonder what kinds of dreams I would have? What is unusual for me? I can see the dream now. I’m sitting in a chair. The light is on. That’s it. That’s the entire dream. Just sitting in a chair with the light on. For me, that is an unusual dream.
