Malaria prevention may cause an active imagination to be overly-active at night....

If you’ve ever gone on a vacation outside of your own country then you may be familiar with the vaccination process.

My adventure to Africa came with a high recommendation for anti-malaria. This recommendation came with several options in the form of taking pills. Option #1: was to take a pill once a day (there were several pills); Option 2#: was to take a pill once a week.

Seeing how I was going to be on vacation and didn’t want to remember to take a pill once a day I went with taking a pill once a week. The side effects were dreams. I didn't really care about this since I already always have nightly vivid dreams I figured it wouldn’t be much different than normal living anyways.

I realised I was wrong during the first couple of nights when I woke up from a dream that GIANT bugs were attacking me. Every time I closed my eyes I saw these bugs. So I threw the bug net away from me. I turned on the light and found my DEET bug spray and sprayed it all over me, then went back to bed.  I showed those dream bugs!

While on Safari, the tents had no power (luckily I had my trusty head lamp). I was dreaming that I was stuck in bug net and couldn’t get out. Seeing that we were in the middle of nowhere and I couldn’t see anything, I strapped on my head lamp around my head and turned it on.  The bug net wasn’t smothering me but unknowingly I left the light on most of the night. I noticed when I woke up when the lamp was around my head pointing to the top of the tent.

The dreams didn’t stop when I got home. They contine as I have to continue to take these pills for a little while even though I’m back (I guess it's part of the prevention). The weirdest dream thus far was the night I got back.

In my dream I stood there as I was taken apart. Not physically, but the essence of my being; the qualities and personality traits that help make me  As these parts of me were taken away from me, they were placed in tinted but clear Lego pieces. There were different coloured Lego pieces that represented different parts of me. One for my: love, empathy, joy, happiness, sadness, etc..

I watched as all these pieces of me were taken and placed into lego pieces until  all that stood before me were lego blocks holding my separated essence. I couldn’t cry because the blocks that held my sadness and frustration had my tears. I couldn’t be mad, because there was a block that held my hatred.

I stood there for awhile just looking at my blocks.

It felt like it all sat there for awhile until finally activity began with my blocks. Around me different projects began. Like the building of boats, cars, castles and homes... my lego blocks were mixed in with the regular pieces for all these different projects until there was nothing of me left standing before me.

Weird? I think so...

I think the moral of this story is if you ever have to take anti-malaria medication and the side effects say causes dreams, it means causes out of the ordinary dreams...