Zoloft: The Actual God of Dreams by Paige

Zoloft: The Actual God of Dreams by Paige - July 2017 Scholarship Essay

If I were given the honor of being able to give an educational TED Talk, I would discuss the issue of Zoloft’s effect on dreams within a small percentage of people. It would entail various information based on the nightmare/night terror and vivid dreaming side effects. Also, I would inform the audience how little people realize that their anxiety is being suppressed and stored within their subconscious instead of being healthily dealt with. Therefore, this leads into the importance of this TED Talk because when your anxiety is being “forced” by the medication to reside in the subconscious, it can cause it to wreak havoc over you in your dreams since you’re in a more vulnerable state. Since I deal with this issue myself, I wish to enlighten others of this issue so hopefully there can be more understanding of how Zoloft works and motivation to help those people who are affected negatively.
Even though few are affected by this lesser known side effect, it still has an enormous impact on those people. It can happen towards the beginning when the person starts to take Zoloft or when their doctor suggests that they raise the dosage. In my case, the nightmares and vivid dreams didn’t appear until a day after I increased my dosage to seventy-five milligrams. At first I thought nothing of it, it was just a simple nightmare that appears every so often. However, as the days went by, I was having nightmares one after the other and every night that I would wake up multiple times in the dream, but not in real life. Also, I would actually wake up drenched in sweat. My reasoning led me to think I was under a lot of stress which was a good guess with me being in college and finals were on their way. However, I soon became terrified to fall asleep because every night I would see myself die in a different way. The moment when I knew I needed to call my doctor was when one morning I woke up screaming and flailing my arms trying to fight off some unknown attacker while scaring my roommate half to death.
After multiple calls, my doctor was confused and frustrated as I was.
“You shouldn’t be having these side effects this late into taking the medication,” he said.
But, I was and I needed answers that he couldn’t provide. Therefore, it only left me and possibly many others at the suggestion to lower your dosage and hopefully it will go away. How is that helpful for people who are suffering, losing sleep, and missing work or class because of this medication that’s supposed to prevent that?
As the majority of society knows, people who suffer from Depression, Anxiety, PTSD and other related problems are recommended to take Zoloft if needed. At first, it seems helpful to those who don’t experience the black box side effects since your anxiety isn't on your shoulder and the depression isn’t weighing you down. However, after a couple of doses you start to notice that your anxiety feels like it’s literally being held back by a filter of some sort. Guess what? That’s the anxiety being suppressed and even though you can feel it seep through in small doses to your conscious mind, its fun hasn’t begun until you fall asleep where you can’t fight back.
As stated prior, my situation led me to decrease my dosage which didn’t help. Instead, I had to wait out the attack on my subconscious and pray for it to go away. Night after night, I would toss and turn and flail my arms and legs like a puppet that anxiety was the marionette for. I thought, “was my anxiety really this bad before I started taking Zoloft and I didn’t see how much control it had over my daily life?” Sure, that was a good possibility, but then I realized it wasn’t me who handed it power over my dreams and subconscious; it was Zoloft.
Eventually, the nightmares didn’t appear as often and I wasn’t scared to fall asleep anymore. However, my dreams are still vivid as ever. That period of fear and confusion helped me gain perspective of how people suffer in a different way most of us don’t think about. Also, I gained more knowledge of how Zoloft works that I wish to share with others in order to help them feel less alone and confused. Therefore, this would be what my TED Talk would entail since all of them help enlighten those who are in the dark.