I received an e-mail from my old brother linking to a health story on the conservative news site, Newsmax.com, titled Dogs More Effective Than Prozac. The result? I wrote a story!
While medicines such as Prozac are prescribed to treat a chemical balance said to cause depression, my brother and I believe it’s the depression that causes the chemical imbalance. We’re not scientists or anything, so what do we know, right? Still, my brother likens it to adrenaline.
Here’s from Wikipedia’s adrenaline article (as of this writing):
It is released from the adrenal glands when danger threatens or in an emergency, hence an Adrenaline rush. Such triggers may be threatening, exciting, or environmental stressor conditions such as high noise levels, or bright light and high ambient temperature …
The key here is the “triggers”. What if depression is like an adrenaline rush, and it’s a trigger that causes the rush (or depression)? Treating a chemical imbalance, as Prozac does, would not affect the cause of the chemical imbalance, the cause of the depression, right?
Maybe that’s right. Maybe that’s wrong. It doesn’t matter. What matters is…story inspiration!
Although The Life and Times of Daniel MacGuinness is meant to follow the detective work of Daniel MacGuinness, the stories of his case-writer, Jennifer, and Jennifer’s sister, Clara, are part of it as well.
As part of their backstory, Jennifer and Clara each wear matching different-colored contact lenses (one purple, one turquoise). This is a way for the two to be together, even if they are separated, no matter how far apart they may be.
Okay, so just when did they start wearing those lenses? And why? What happened to cause it?
Since the two are orphans, and have been passed on from relative to relative, the obvious was that at one point they go to two different families.
Then what? They end up together again, and everything is good? Nah, that’s not good enough. Although it’s just a rough draft, and far from completely filled out, I’ve written about when Clara and Jennifer were separated.
The parts with Clara go a bit slow (which I like), and cover short periods of time. The parts with Jennifer are either super-short (which I need to work on) or go rather fast and stretch out over a longer period of time (something to be worked out to make smoother).
With Clara being the “problem child”, it’s easy to fit her into an abusive home. She can take it. It won’t break her. I can’t even begin to imagine if Jennifer were put into that situation, and at that age, but if she ever was, I know her little sister would step in and protect her.