The Final Revenge of the Evil Dex

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Why am I blogging at one in the morning? It’s the Evil Dex™, of course.

A few months ago I restarted the dex and this had very positive effects on my cancer load. Hooray! However, it’s always been the case that the longer I use it, the more sensitive I get to it. Years ago I started out at 20 mg and this has steadily decreased to 8 mg. By now even this is too much, so we addressed this by switching from 8 mg once a week to 4 mg twice a week.

This worked well at first. Thanks to the smaller dose I could still sleep on dex nights with the help of a big slug of Ambien. But that slowly gave way. Initially the Ambien gave me about six hours of sleep, then five, then four. A few weeks ago it dropped to two, which meant it was having no effect. Even without Ambien I usually snooze for a couple of hours after I’ve been up all night.

Now it’s gotten even worse: I’m literally not sleeping at all until the following night. The dex is just laughing off the Ambien.

So that’s that. I’m already using the highest safe dose of Ambien and it doesn’t work. What’s more, since I’m taking the dex twice a week, I have two sleepless nights per week as well. Blah.

I suppose I can try other sleeping meds, or perhaps some combination of a different med with a return to 8 mg of dex once a week. It can’t hurt, though I doubt it will do much good.

Anyway, that’s why I’m blogging at one in the morning.

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WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

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