Lucky 13

It’s been a week since I started taking Efavirenz and can I just say, my week long experience with this anti-retroviral has been pretty much amazing...

Efavirenz is to be taken once a day (every 24 hours), preferably before sleeping. Side effects includes dizziness, life-like dream states, raise in body temperature, etc.

Dizziness – I say it is tolerable. Usually kicks in on the first 2-3 hours. It’s not really dizziness but more on losing balance when walking or standing up. Light headedness, like after taking ecstacy or marijuana or ketamine. Manageable. My senses are floating on mid-air. In local drug addict terms – sabaw. Oh yes, I gotta feeling. A sabaw feeling. My body was already trained for light headedness, after my 2 years of substance use (ecstacy, MDMA, PCB, ketamine, marijuana and social intake of cocabout 0.75g of cocaine).

Body heat – The irritating side effect especially when I just want to fall asleep, or have an 8-hr straight sleep. I usually wake up every 3-4 hours because of the raised body temp. No body sweat involve. Just like having too many alcohol where you face, ears, chest, back, slowly raises temperature.

Dreams – On my first efavirenz, I dreamts of folding blankets of different colors, 3 dimensional reds, pinks and oranges. I know that I’m asleep, dreaming, controlling my dreams. But I cannot stop or just flip the page to the next scene.

Lately, my dreams were becoming almost a continuation of what happened during the time that I was awake. Sort of an epilogue but abstract. Last night, my dreams were sexual. 2 sex dreams.

The first one involves me having sex with…. I know that I was dreaming but at some point, I thought I was really having sex with him. The positions – from him being on top of me, then to us both sitting down face to face, then on missionary, sideways, flipping all over. My goodness… Oh yeah, I remember using rubber. Then what I love most is that we cuddled afterwards. Yes…. I love to cuddle. I woke up… still dry, but exhausted. Buti pa sa panaginip may nangyari na.

Then again another dream of me fooling around with two guys I haven’t met before. Not so familiar faces, probably saw them somewhere. The first part involves me watching them fool around, second part involves me joining them during foreplay. I can actually feel every touch. My goodness. Kung ganito lagi panaginip ko eh di masaya.

I woke up wondering why I dreamt of me having sex with….. we never really talked about doing it. I guess part of me is saying that I want to hold him close to me. Or maybe I just need to have sex, my goodness, it’s been almost 7 months since I had sex.

So going back to efavirenz…. It’s a great antri-retroviral. Manageable side effects. Parang amats lang, lutang ka na, sabaw pa, may kasama pang visuals.