Reid's Motion Sickness

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(This turned out to be deeper than I meant for it to be. That was not the original plan. But I still love how it turned out.)
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Currently, motion sickness is thought to arise from conflicting information processed within a multimodal sensory system whose function is to determine the individual's motion relative to his or her environment. This has been coined the neural mismatch theory.

Motion sickness is a pretty normal thing, and doesn't need to be pinned to a condition or syndrome, as it's so common among all people. It's caused by environmental factors, such as car rides, boats, roller coasters, etc.. When your senses get conflicted by your eyes seeing one thing, your muscles feeling another, and your inner ears sensing something else, it sends your body into a state of discomfort. This often results in vertigo, nausea and/or vomiting, headaches, pallor, or general pain.

Now getting motion sickness sucks, and is not pleasant in the slightest, so imagine getting it every time your were ever in a car for more than five minutes or when you so much as walk and read.
The lucky fellow who has to deal with exactly that would be Doctor Spencer Reid of the Behavioral Analysis Unit in the FBI.

He's tried immunotherapies, avoiding triggers, distracting himself, and even preventing methods his medical doctor gave him. None of it worked, or even eased his symptoms.
The only thing that seemed to do any good was his medication. He had a patch on his arm that fed him antihistamines, but sometimes that wasn't enough for long drives or plane rides. So he also had an oral booster for his chronic motion sickness. Dimenhydrinate.
Dimenhydrinate sold under the brand name Dramamine among others, is an OTC drug used to treat motion sickness and nausea. Dimenhydrinate is a combination drug of diphenhydramine and 8-chlorotheophylline.

It's basically just a pumped up Adderall. He was given a prescription for it from his doctor after they found out the prevention remedies weren't working.

But after Reid's Dilaudid addiction, he was nervous to use any medications again. Pain meds when in hospital, Benadryl for allergies, Vicodin for his knee pain, and his prescription for his motion sickness.
His fear of getting addicted to another drug had plagued his mind and caused him to neglect his health and comfort.
Since the Tobias Hankel situation and his recovery and sobriety, he's been dealing with his motion sickness for two years with no medication or assisted-treatment.

The BAU understood his decisions, and tried to support him, but they couldn't help but worry and try and push him back into medicating his motion sickness. It was so bad now, that Reid couldn't even get through a jet ride without taking a trip to the bathroom. He'd vomit, have to lay down, avoid reading files, and just generally stop working on cases while on the jet. They didn't want to say it, but it was effecting his performance and judgment on cases. They were worried that soon enough Struass would fire him because of his compromising health issues.

But what they didn't know was that Reid was just as fed up as they were.

One day, a few weeks after he had stopped using his crutches and cane for his knee injury, the BAU had hopped on the jet and were heading to the other side of the country. This trip would be over five hours. Most of the agents were used to Spencers routine. Get on the jet, lay down for ten minutes, vomit for ten minutes, lay down again, vomit again.

But today, he was acting a bit different. He sat on the small couch, where he usually laid, and just sat there for a few minutes. The plane had left the ground and he still didn't try and lay himself down and go to the bathroom. It was obvious he was still getting uncomfortable and nauseous, but he just wasn't doing anything about it. He sat there staring at his book bag that he set in his lap when he entered the jet.

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