48 hours W/O Venlafaxine

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︎︎︎ Jiv Johnson

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︎ June 3, 2025

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Thinking of Venlafaxine; thinking of the Tripartite Pact; thinking of the years in which there was a global pandemic; thinking of various thought crimes; thinking of dodging some folks that aren’t looking for me; thinking of the long line at the weed dispensary in Cincinnati, Ohio; thinking of photophobia; thinking of optic nerve and retina hyperactivity beneath the smart-lighting systems now-popular in American retail; thinking of Forever 21; thinking of the song “Seventeen Going Under”; thinking of geometric, bright pendant lights; thinking of eye strain; thinking of an electric lineman pointing down at big text ALWAYS TEST YOUR GLOVES! and cut-away to insulated rubber gloves gripping a live, 10,000 volt running wire; thinking of relapsing into drinking—actually, no; thinking of quitting Venlafaxine; thinking of pinball machines; thinking of [all-caps] D R U G S; thinking of Jung’s work on synchronicity; thinking of synchronicity; thinking of how, at one point, all myths were commonly accepted as factual; thinking of Mikey Miles, the actor and artist, and his forever-enduring, forever-happening mythology on Instagram; thinking of invoicing clients for work performed and completed months ago; thinking of thinking; thinking of old poems; thinking of the word ‘old’; thinking of Venlafaxine; thinking of how I shouldn’t ever think of the pleroma; thinking of Rachel, whom history and theology have had seemingly little interest in; thinking of how, the Biblical Tragedy named Rachel passed on, in-transit, on a road outside Bethlehem, giving birth to the last child of Jacob, his only son to be born inside the boundary of Canaan–the promised land; thinking of Benjamin, the son who killed Rachel, in vivo, on a road outside Bethlehem; thinking of destiny; thinking of the stray Maine Coon we’ve taken on as an outside pet, which litters the sunroom and garden with mutilated corpses of lizards; thinking of the worms; thinking of an upside down Toyota Corolla and Ford Fusion; thinking of the fraught sense my voice must exhibit, on the phone with my psychiatrist, begging for an emergency fill of Venlafaxine; thinking of Venlafaxine; thinking of the years through my life in which I did not know love; thinking of the years in love in which I did not know anything; thinking of how assets always equal the sum of liabilities and equity; thinking of personal income statements; thinking of the flow in which a claim instigated by a policy holder travels through near-endless operating processes until an actuary finally factors it into a loss triangle; thinking of Tyler Childers’ rise to country stardom; thinking of Lawrence County, Kentucky; thinking of Louisa, Kentucky, where I’d once driven, to see the T-Shaped Bridge that connects two different parts of Kentucky with West Virginia; thinking of a recent study published in the NYT indicating the long-tail death of the semicolon in American writing; thinking of Rachel and Venlafaxine; thinking of Tylenol; thinking of County Tyrol, in Austria; thinking of the phrase, I came across, which said refugees from the Tyrolean Winter gathered with great frequency… leading to my need to look up Tyrol; thinking of refugees and asylum claims; thinking of genocide in the 21st century; thinking of the lost Exegetica of Basilides; thinking of what Basilides called “The Reign of Gospel”, an age beginning with Jesus Christ’ teachings becoming popularized; thinking of how Basilides was fatalistic concerning martyrdom and metempsychosis, how suffering a la persecution by the Roman state of early Christians was not due to their Christianity but because of sins they had committed in past instances of existence; thinking of how the generation of a World Seed on Minecraft is effectively the same as what both Basilides and Valentinus thought happened at the moment of creation; thinking of how all my time spent reading doesn’t create more time for me to exist; thinking of how drugs are the only ‘thing’ I’ve found to extend time spent existing (figuratively); thinking of Venlafaxine; thinking of how I’ve propped thinkers who believe, quite literally, in Genesis via Minecraft World Seed Generation, onto a high pedestal of knowledge; thinking of checking in to a mental hospital; thinking of missed bill payments; thinking of mortgage payments; thinking of the mold-spotted napkin sitting at the bottom of my Ford Fusion’s driver-side cup-holder, which has sat there, existing in it’s own decay, for an amount of time which is multiple years longer than the total length of the most recent global pandemic; thinking of the length of time things can last unnoticed when one isn’t forced to look at them; thinking of Venlafaxine, the anti-depressant classified as a serotonin-norepinephrine reuptake inhibitor (SNRI), which I’ve taken at a maximum doseage for around nine years, until beginning to decrease doses, just recently; thinking of Rachel dying in-transit giving birth to Benjamin; thinking of Benjamin, whose original name, Ben-oni, meant Son of Sorrow, rising through history to create a small yet important tribe of Israel which included the likes of King Saul, first leader of Israel, and the Apostle Paul, the second most important Christian figure besides Christ himself; thinking of a fracture or wound in the body, becoming beloved if given enough time; thinking of my body; thinking of scarring around tissue; thinking of Venlafaxine