3. - 13/07/23

A year and four months of Sertraline Dreams

I only remembered today that I needed to look up whether many people out there experience heightened dreams while taking Sertraline. The answer is a big ‘YES MA’AM’. I’m not going to bother about any of the scientific theories around this, but it seems like ultra-dreaming is a fairly common side effect (at least according to Reddit and Mumsnet, the two internet genders).

A lot of people are describing their distress over their new hyper-realistic nightmares, but I’m identifying with the ones who say that, even though their dreams are now more intense and emotional and heady, they’re not really bothered by them. I’ve always been interested in my dreams, and have been one of those people who could easily go about for a day or a week feeling affected by the atmosphere of a particularly disturbing one. I’ve always been regular in remembering my dreams too, but prior to taking Sertraline, I had to work quite hard to hold on to lots of them after a couple of hours. Now, I have no trouble in remembering any of them at all, and their quality and visual richness is greatly enhanced - the difference, though, is that I’m quite enjoying them. This probably means that the medication is working, obviously, but I’ve been surprised by how much deeper the dreamscapes are in various ways. I used to think that I was a vivid dreamer, but now I think my pre-medication dreams were probably normal. My post-dream anxiety was what made them vivid, maybe.

I’ve had recurring dreams and dreamscapes throughout my life (big hotels with red-carpeted floors, where I’m going round the corridors, up and down staircases or in elevators; giant cathedrals which make me wish I was an architect; huge great tidal waves), but now I’m genuinely revisiting the same spaces from night to night. I can go in and out of the same towns, streets, buildings, and look around in 360. I’m not quite lucid dreaming, but when I wake up in the morning I can still ‘see’ the dream, and look around inside it like I’m dragging the view around inside a virtual tour. I’ve created a sort of city which I can drop myself into a different district of each time, like levels in a game. Classic my-dream features remain: there are winding streets, old buildings, former workplaces, staircases, deceased pets, and still a lot of water. But the colours are brighter, and it feels like I am alive and real in a separate world. Lots of Sertraline-gobbling people are saying they now get confused between dreams and reality, which I can understand.

The first S-dream I remember having began with a semi-static scene, like a screensaver (I’ve noticed there’s a whole lot of computer-based references going on here). The only way I can describe it is, colourful Japanese neon signs, in twinkling rain which is falling on a highly reflective street, through fogging-up glass, with a soundtrack of saxophone-led jazz. Just very crystally.

There is a handful of dreams which I had as a child, which I still think about very often:

1. Standing in the alleyway beside the first house I lived in, looking to the distance over the high wall separating our place from the neighbour Betty’s, and seeing the bare wooden frame of her house fly up into the air, in separate pieces but still in the shape of a house, because it had blown up. This still brings up a sickly fear in me.

2. (Recurring) Getting in the back of the family car, which my mum had running outside the house from the previous dream. My mum tells me she’s forgotten something, she gets out and runs back to the house. The car then starts to drive me away from the house, down the hill and off…

3. (Recurring) I’m at home, just doing ordinary things, and noticing how everything seems fine. Then I feel a portentous dread start to rise in me, and I know that ‘the thing’ is about to happen again. A few moments later, a small train crashes through the wall, or the door, and without running me over it swallows me up. When I open my eyes I’m sitting inside the speeding train, travelling backwards, cramped up in a small windowless compartment which is coated in thick grey dust and is full of bits of old rubbish. At this point in the dream I know it is hell, and that I’m never getting out. This feels like the worst one by far, and I don’t think I’ve ever told anyone about it. In my mind it’s linked to the grimy corners of Bedford Bus Station in the 80s, for some reason.

I’m interested in how much weight humans place on dreams. I recently read ‘Dreaming Ahead of Time - Experiences with Precognitive Dreams, Synchronicity and Coincidence’ by Gary Lachman, who happens to be, among other good things, the former bassist for Blondie. It’s about how everyone is capable of dreaming the future (because what is time anyway), but mostly in mundane and minor ways. I rate Gary as a person, and I like the fact that he is clearly spiritual, in a straightforward and easygoing way. He talks in the book about his long-running use of the ‘I Ching’, the ancient Chinese oracle, and because of this I sought out a copy of my own (the Richard Wilhelm translation with the foreword by Jung is recommended) and have tried using it. Hint: it’s a pleasantly surprising and effective thing to consult, like a little paperback therapist who lets you ask yourself the questions you should be asking. The first day I opened it I was at the local coffee shop, drinking a flat white while idly browsing the contents. When I’d finished my coffee I looked down into the cup, and there was a near-perfect yin-yang of milk and espresso at the bottom.

What I think I’m saying is, I like going open-mindedly down pathways from one book or idea or subject to another, to another, to another, to another…

I’ve run out of time anyway and I need to go to bed (sweet dreams), so here’s some stuff:

• The BFI Player is brilliant - if you don’t want to pay for a subscription, you can still access the archive of free films on there. I’ve spent a fair bit of time watching the old silent footage of weddings from the 30s and 40s (very sweet and sad), and you can also find films by geographic location. There are so many weird things, of various running times, to explore.

  Here is a film about a very pretty, very clever girl who loves peaches: The Peaches

• One morning during lockdown I was waking up, and as I was waking up this tiny short story formed in my mind: Two art critics sit down, with knives and forks, to write a review – their only option being to physically cut up and digest the painting.

• A chirpy little Cockney bird told me that the Tomás Saraceno exhibition at the Serpentine is brilliant - I haven’t been yet, and it comes with a spidey content warning, so if any London-based fellow arachnophobes want to accompany me hand-in-hand (and hand-in-web, arrrrrrgh), then let me know.

  N’night.