O Yawn, Unending Yawn!
Sorry in advance for causing you to yawn. I’ll make it short.
Did you know that “yawn” is a side effect of many medications?
It is.
I used to see this listed as a side effect of medications I was taking. I would think to myself, “Yawn? Isn’t that silly! What kind of a side effect is that? Everyone yawns.”
Yes, everyone yawns (this is something I’d like to address in a later post - yawning in vertebrates), but first - yawn as side effect.
I first encountered yawn in 1998. Shall I out myself and let the world know that I take antidepressant medication? Yes.
I first encountered yawn in 1998, while taking Paxil. “Yawn” was an unending yawn, a yawn never satisfied - that feeling of the need to yawn - the tingling need to stretch in your ears, the weighty tension in your neck and under your jaw.
I’d yawn, but I’d never get the end part of the yawn, the tingly good feeling, the release. No end of the yawn that makes you smile and sigh.
Side note: yawns are physiologically similar to orgasms.
There are some that experience “orgasm while yawning” as a side effect of antidepressant medication (most notably clomipramine, or Anafranil, a tricyclic antidepressant - Psychology Wiki). Me, I get unending yawn, never satiated yawn. Maybe the unsatisfied yawn has something to do with antidepressants and their sexual side effects.
Back to Paxil yawn: I would yawn, and it wouldn’t work the way yawns are supposed to work. The feeling of the need to yawn would still be there, my ears feeling stopped up, and so I’d yawn again, trying to make it a bigger yawn, more full. And I’d be even less satisfied, and more in need of a yawn that did the trick.
And so the unfinished Paxil yawn would continue, on and off, throughout the day. Day after day. Day after day after day after day. Sisyphean, really. Miserable. Sometimes it’d pass, only to return in a week. It began to ache, not physically, but somewhere inside my soul. I was filled with dread whenever I saw someone yawn. Yawn. You can’t stop a yawn from coming - once the yawn potential is there, it needs to be addressed. I couldn’t stop the yawn from coming. And coming and coming and coming.
The reason why I’m bringing this yawn business up is because I’m on a new medication, and I’m once again experiencing yawn.
This time, it’s Cymbalta, and I’m only having yawn in the mornings for maybe thirty minutes or so (I take Cymbalta at night). Considering my Paxil yawn, this is totally fine with me.
Coming up, I would like to get to:
a) yawns as something all vertebrates do.
b) yawns, sneezes, and orgasms - sorta the same thing? How does that work?
Stay tuned. And again, sorry for inducing any yawns.
Here is a picture of my cat yawning:
I’ll see if I can get a picture or video of the fish yawning. My snails don’t yawn. They are invertebrates, so that’s okay.
yawn, orgasm with yawn, Cymbalta, clomipramine
