#because my brain does not have chemicals without anxiety

[givemewallywestorgivemedeath]

Man it'd be horrible if I had superspeed. I procrastinate everything to the last minute and it's only in the final hour that my panic levels are high enough to make enough adrenaline in my ADHD riddled brain to counteract the Nothing Response™ and actually kickstart The Task™.

It's bad enough that I literally wait until the last possible second to do anything ever but if I had superspeed?!?! BRUH. I would be waiting until the last second. Because I would have so much time!

And you know the time blindness would be infinitely worse with relative time. Like goddamn, I barely understand the flow of time as it is and it's been consistent my entire life! I can't imagine navigating that when it isn't consistent.

[techramonic]

A Comprehensive Analysis on Eric Harris, 3.

Disclaimer: This analysis/psychoanalysis is limited only to analysis as a means to reflect and understand the people involved. It is strictly informative. Just like all of my posts, I am detached from the media I write about and solely focus on the people to understand their psychology, for others to gain insight. There is no room for me to romanticize or glorify anything I write because I am only here to explain. I understand and research, but I do not condone. Thank you.

note: This is all solely based on independent research. If I may be wrong with the medical aspects of this post, please correct me. I would appreciate it a lot.

Fluvoxamine Maleate

Just a few days before the shooting, Eric was promptly rejected from his application to serve in the marines. Despite his desirable qualities, he was rejected for the sole reason of being tested positive for consuming a prescripted drug after rejecting that he was off any medication. With a trace of Luvox in his system, theories speculate that the drug's side effects played a role on the events that have transpired. Luvox is a medication prescription drug that is used to treat mental illnesses such as Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD), anxiety, depression, and others. While there are positive effects, the downside are heightened sensations of dread, irritation, depression, and arising violent behaviors. It also has a chance to increase manic symptoms, especially if taken in particularly large doses.

Anti-depressant usage, effects of overdose, and detoxification

When taken over the prescribed dosage, Luvox can lead to increased agression and suicidal ideation and tendencies. Eric was in anger management therapy after being on probation alongside Dylan for attempting to steal a vehicle containing thousands worth of valuable electronics and tools. After getting caught, Eric openly expressed his difficulties in managing his anxiety and explosive anger issues that his counselor said, "he frequently blew up and often cried." Revealing that this influences his homicidal and suicidal thoughts, so he was prescribed Fluvoxamine, which is a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRIs). These drugs increase the capacity of the brain to receive serotonin.

According to an interview with Eric's friends, they speculate that Eric was off his medication completely for sometime. Abruptly stopping medication can lead to the development of a more violent response. For some people, drugs are able to fix their chemical imbalances, but it can also lead to withdrawal symptoms of taken for over the duration of 6 weeks. Abruptly discontinuing anti-depressants can lead ro rebound depression or relapse. Symptoms may return stronger than before. Furthermore, SSRI's such as Luvox and Prozac take about 5 days to linger in one's system before subsequently washing off.

In a period of 11 months, Eric and Dylan have been under a juvenile detention program at Jefferson County district — this was in 1998, just a year before the shooting. They were allowed to leave the program by early February 1999. After finishing, Eric wrote a letter contained in his juvenile diversion program file. He states, "I learned that thousands of suggestions are worthless if you still believe in violence."

After public demands for stricter regulations on SSRIs after the tragic shooting, Luvox was temporarily banned in 2002. By 2008, drug manufacturers had reformulated Luvox to a controlled-release version specifically designed to treat OCD, excluding indications for depression or anxiety. Subsequently, the FDA approved Luvox CR for the treatment of OCD. The label does not explicitly prohibit prescribing it to the pediatric population, it notes that the smallest dose "may not be appropriate" for children, without providing further explanation.

Eric was about 17 at the time of taking the medication, which means he is part of the pediatric population. Though it's still unclear if he was taking normal doses for a long period of time or taken more than what was prescribed, it is clear that there was negligence with prescribing a child a SSRI that has the posibility of worsening their already apparent symptoms.

Columbine was really a case that opened the public's eyes into the dysfunctional aspects of society and institutions, transcending even to the medical field.

[ideas-4-stories]

Cross Guild romance AU -

Buggy makes his own explosives, which doesn't sound all that important until you sit back and think of the ramifications and knowledge required for that. Buggy is damn good with chemistry, math, physics, and I bet he was the brain to Shanks's brawn on the Oro Jackson; he'd probably have been all over Crocus whenever he could to learn more about anything and everything.

Crocodile and Mihaw don't really put the two together, given that they see Buggy primarily as an idiot and coward. It's when an epidemic spreads on the island that some odd things click into place-

Buggy has forgone the big costume, is in comfy and sturdy clothes. His face is painted minimally, hair tied into a tight bun, bandana on, and he's working side by side with the medical professionals. He's elbows deep in checking vitals, organizing charts, and even synthesizing medications. More members are sick than not, and they go under a near-quarantine lock down to handle the illness. Between working in the medical tents and taking care of his people, Buggy has also had a hand in organizing for resources to be sent and delivered.

Neither Croc nor Hawk had even considered some of the balls Buggy has gotten rolling. They both have very strong immune systems, so they rarely face or think of illness or sickness as something to prepare for or to account for, but this just exploded one day seemingly without warning, and the clown had a plan in motion by eevening.

It's at this point that they begin to wonder if maybe there's something more to their Chairman than they first thought...

((Bonus points, they catch Buggy coming back from a long shift at the medtent, sent off by the other's to get some rest, so he's just at that sweet spot of tired enough to lose filter. They ask about the medicines, and Buggy goes on a mini infodump about chemicals, hormones, enzymes, antioxidants and antibiotics, mentions that he and a few others already have a few batches baking, and sleepily chuckles about how "the simpler ones seem to work well so far, thank goodness. I was worried... *yawn* that I'd have to dip into my supplies for my testosterone... *falls asleep at the table*.

Croc just becomes the Spiderman meme of "TRANS???" when Buggy wakes up))

I LOVE this is an understatement, this is so good!!! I love Competent!Buggy so much!!! Why can't the clown be a fucking genius while being clown-failure babygirl he is?

Buggy having a plan by evening is because he has so much anxiety, I mean, look at the poor clown! It's always the things that he didn't think of that happens that gets him in trouble. But this, he can do this. I also love the headcanon, that Buggy learn a lot of things from Crocus, so he has this in the bag!

It would be funny if Buggy could be fine in a really bad pandemics, but the flu and whatever the happened near Laugh-Tale is his biggest sickness problems. What am I saying, back to this cool ask!

Buggy being competent because he doesn't want his crew to die or get really ill, not because he needs them to work, but because he wants them healthy and happy. Buggy forgoing the pillow onesie for something better, and not taking that much time on his makeup is so good, that just shows how he priorities his Nakama before himself is so cute! I have a headcanon that Buggy has a least a Field Medic degree or a Nurse one. Mihawk and Crocodile watching at the sidelines is what I see them doing, because like the clown's being competent and they see there's not much they can do in this.

Yes, on Buggy rambling on and on about things he does, I want Buggy to infodump so hard. Like really really hard, Buggy could go on and on about things that interests him for a while.

Buggy is every gender and nothing at all to me, and the spiderman meme with Crocodile is the only one pointing at Buggy while Buggy is confused and sleepy, while Mihawk is just there on the sidelines. Is really funny to me.

[onlycosmere]

The Gift of Not Feeling

by Janci Patterson

I want to tell you a story about my friend Brandon.  It’s been eighteen years since this happened, and in the intervening time I’ve told this story to fewer people than I can count on one hand. 

I have kept it to myself largely because I know Brandon isn’t the kind of person who wants the good things he does blasted to the world, and I never wanted to embarrass him.  And if that’s what I’m doing now, I’m sorry for it. 

Last week, someone wrote an essay I won’t link here (as you’ve probably read it and I don’t like giving it clicks) that treated my friend at once like a circus freak who lacks feelings and also somehow as someone who is uninteresting and undeserving of attention. The article also treated two separate communities I love with contempt. I seethed about it for a couple of days, but I didn’t really entertain the idea of saying anything online, because it’s not my place and responding to the media is not professional. 

Then yesterday I read this, and I finally had something I wanted to say.

I met Brandon Sanderson when I was twenty-two years old.  I was just finishing my undergraduate degree and he was just finishing graduate school, and we had some classes that overlapped.  From there, we were in a critique group together and were part of a social group where we all hung out quite a bit.  None of us had families yet, and Brandon’s first book would come out during those couple of years, so none of us had intense career demands yet either. 

At that time in my life, I was a mess.  I had arrived at adulthood with several chemical and behavioral disorders that I did not yet understand.  My brain would sometimes and without warning explode in a horror show of fear and shame and pain so strong it felt physical.  I didn’t know what was wrong with me—indeed, I had been suffering from the depression and anxiety for so long that, in my mind, they were me.  I had no way to separate what was happening inside my head from a reality outside of it.  To me, everything I felt was real.  Because my mind filtered everything that happened outside of me through a lens of terror and agony, the world was terrifying and torturous.  In short, I was living in hell.

Most people, when I tried to describe what was happening in my mind, reacted in unhelpful ways.  I don’t blame them—very few people are equipped to know what to say to someone suffering as intensely as I was.   They would try to minimize it in an effort to minimize their own discomfort.  They would try to fix it, when it wasn’t something anyone could fix.  Or, worst of all, they would react in horror, having deep and terrifying feelings of their own about what was happening to me.  It was empathy, but it only reinforced to me that I was scary, Iwas broken, I was wrong.

And then there was Brandon.  Brandon has the fine distinction of being the first person in my life to suggest to me that what I was reacting to, the reality I was living in, was not in fact real to anyone but me.  His first and honest reaction to what was happening inside my head was genuine and unfeigned interest.  It didn’t matter how big or terrifying the emotion was.  I could tell him I hated him (and did) and his reaction, every time, would be to say, “That’s so interesting that you feel that way.  Why do you feel that?”

Why indeed?  I didn’t know why I felt that.  Brandon taught me the words “cognitive distortion.”  He taught me that reality could warp as it entered my brain, that the reality I was reacting to might not be real at all.  It might be all in my head.

Of course, it’s not helpful to tell a depressed person that their problem is all in their head—when it’s done in a dismissive way.  But Brandon wasn’t dismissing me.  He believed I had a genuine and difficult problem—but that problem wasn’t me, and it wasn’t the world around me, either.  It was as if I had spent my entire life living in a box, and I didn’t even know it.  I thought the box was the real world.  I thought the box was me.  I thought the box was all there would ever be to life, and, I think reasonably, I didn’t really want to live it anymore.

But along came Brandon Sanderson. He opened the lid to the box, looked around with interest, and said, “it’s so interesting that you live in here.  Do you know that there’s a whole world outside of this box?  Do you know that other people don’t see you the way you think they do?  Do you know that you exist, separate and independent of this box? Do you know that the box isn’t you at all?”

My whole life I had assumed that my illness and I were synonymous.  Everything that happened inside my head was me, so if it was bad and wrong and a mess, then I was bad and wrong and a mess.  There was no escaping from it, because everywhere I went, my entire life, I would always be me, and it was me.  And then my friend looks at me and says, as if surprised, “Why would you think that’s you?  It’s not you at all.  It’s happening in your head and it isn’t normal and you exist completely separately from it and it doesn’t have to be this way.”  It was as if he assisted my will save to disbelieve the illusions, and suddenly I could see it:  The horror I was living in was just chemicals in my brain.  It was just thoughts in my head.  And yes, depression is real in the sense that chemicals are real, and thoughts are real. And I would never want to minimize the very real effect it can have on the people who suffer with it. But it wasn’t reality.  It was a powerful illusion, but it was only an illusion, and if I could learn to think outside of that box I was trapped in, I could be free.

I could tell you about the other help I needed at that time.  I could tell you about how I needed to move, and Brandon found me an apartment.  I could tell you how I needed medical treatment (obviously), and Brandon helped me navigate resources to make that happen.  I could tell you about the time he sat with me in the ER and told me that the doctors weren’t taking me seriously, and they should be, and I needed to keep talking to people until somebody did.  But none of those things are the point of the story.

The point of the story is this: Brandon gave me the most important gift anyone has ever given me in my entire life—a gift that I am absolutely certain is the only reason I am still alive today.  It’s a gift that has made every good thing in my life possible every day since.  He gave me the gift of not feeling.  Instead of getting carried away in his own emotions when he saw what was happening to me, he gave me the gift of reflecting back to me a logic and patience that a person can only have when they keep their emotions in check.  I owe everything to that gift, so you can imagine the fury I feel toward anyone who would denigrate it.  Brandon is not a freak.  He’s also not the perfect paragon of virtue people sometimes present him as.  He is a person—flaws and all—with a very powerful gift that saved my life, and I doubt very much I am the only one.

Here’s the rest of the story: it took me a couple of years to climb out of that box.  I had professional help.  I did CBT.  I learned to retrain my brain to see the world outside of the lens of depression and anxiety.  For a long time, when a depressed thought would come into my mind, I would ask myself, “What would Brandon say about that thought?  Would he accept that as reality?”  And if I knew he wouldn’t, I would make myself reframe the thought, hammering it into shape until I found a thought about myself that I believed Brandon would accept.  I wanted so badly to live in his reality, the one he saw outside of that box.  I wanted to be able to see myself the way he saw me, as a person with a problem and not a person who was a problem. 

After a few years, I got my mental health to a place where I no longer lived in a constant emotional crisis.  At almost all times in my life since then I’ve been somewhere on the healthy part of the mental health spectrum.  Notable exceptions were during the postpartum period with both of my kids, and one year during the pandemic when I got hit with several personal crises at once.  Even then, I knew I was not the illness.  I knew I existed separately from it.  I knew I could crawl out of the box again, because it was only a box, and not the true reality I knew existed beyond it.

Here’s the thing about my friend Brandon—I owe everything to him, and I’ll never be able to pay it back.  He wouldn’t want me to.  He would be horrified if he thought I felt like I had to.  I joke about Brandon asking me for a favor when he asked me to finish Bastille for him—because that “favor” did a lot more good for me than it probably did for him.  But the truth is, if I am able, I will always do a favor for Brandon Sanderson.  Not because I feel like I have to pay him back, but because it feels so good to give literally anything back to a person who gave me so much.  (And that’s not even counting all the professional opportunities, or the fact that he talked me into dating my husband.) 

But really, I will never be able to pay this back.  Never ever.  So I do my very best to pay it forward.  When I encounter people who deal with similar issues, I do my very best to give them the gift of not feeling.  To sit with them and let them say all the scary things in their heads, and to react with genuine interest, but without emotional reaction.  I have sat with people who want to die, and done my very best to reflect back to them that I’m not afraid of their feelings, that I will of course want to make sure they are physically safe, but that I don’t think it’s scary that they have those thoughts, and that I think they are a real, whole person outside of those thoughts and those thoughts will never define them.  That skill has served me well.  I may never be a person who experiences little emotion (ha!) but I have learned to be a person who can set aside emotion when it’s necessary, and I learned that from Brandon, too.

So I am grateful for that gift.  The gift of not feeling. Because not feeling most definitely does not mean not caring.

Over the years, I have listened to a lot of opinions about my friend Brandon.  I have heard people say things with authority in both the positive and negative, things that I knew to be both true and false.  I’ve never felt the need to correct these things—he’s a public figure and people are going to see the persona and think what they want about him and it’s not my place to try to turn that ship.

But if I could tell you just one thing about my friend, it’s that he’s wonderful. Not because he writes books, and certainly not because he’s perfect, but because he’s a person, and like all people, he has unique gifts that enable him to make a difference in other people’s lives.

[thelampisaflashlight]

Occasionally, I, like, "forget" I'm mentally ill.

I'll have days where I'm anxious/generally just not doing well in the ol' brain box, and won't be able to place why, and then I remember, "Dude, your brain chemicals are fucky. Take a moment and reassess."

And while having an awareness of the fact that I have a bad brain doesn't stop the physical symptoms of it (you have to kinda gear down from that, ya know, doesn't just go away like magic) it does give me more clarity.

So sometimes I'm just sitting there, trying to do basic shit and shaking.

Like, I will be trembling and struggling to use my phone, because my fingers won't cooperate, and I will be fully aware of the fact that it's because I'm having an anxiety attack, but can't do a damn thing about it, so I'm just there, frustrated at myself.

But also, because I do CBT (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy), it's me going, "I know why I'm upset, however, I cannot control this reaction beyond what I'm already doing." and that makes the part of my brain that doesn't like not having control screech.

I go for long periods of time where my stress/anxiety levels are at, like, a 7/10 from the point I wake up until I go to bed at night.

My head's so screwy sometimes that things that are arguably/actually good happening fucks me up.

Part of it is down to genetics/being born this way, and the rest stems from trauma and the side effects of going through a majority of my life without being dinged as anything other than a functional human being.

Did I have my intelligence questioned a lot because my anxious mind needs to ask for clarity/clear instructions on things other people think are obvious?

Yes.

Did not having the resources set forth to help me learn how to deal with this/having people see me as "normal" but stupid make me want to stop asking questions and just beat me down into a person who just went along with whatever or just do nothing at all?

Also yes.

Sometimes, I wish I had had more help growing up, but I also look at the help I did receive and go, "This wasn't helpful or what I needed." or "Why did they let this person be in charge of x or y when they clearly hated it?"

Stuff like that, ya know.

Mostly, I just think if I had known as a kid what was going on inside of my head/had more words to describe how I felt I might have been better set up to tackle the world around me.

But, then again, I could have also wound up exactly where I am now, and I have to wonder if I'd see that as a grander, much more painful fall than the one I took entering into society.

[samuwhal]

We need to change how we talk about self-help techniques.

By self-help techniques, I’m talking about: grounding, mindfulness, meditation, breathing exercises, physical activity, and--the big one--yoga. I have struggled with my mental health since I was fifteen, and just now, I am realizing how much these things can actually help. I am almost twenty-six years old, and I will have been in therapy for ten years this fall. Let me tell you, I have spent so much of that time renouncing these tools. Recently, though I’ve realized that: holy shit, they can really work...but man they are offered to struggling people in the worst possible light.

TL;DR: Just because suggestions about ways to manage mental illness are framed as “you have to try it or you want to be sick” doesn’t mean that they can’t actually work or that you are invalidating yourself by trying or being helped by them. Featuring personal anecdotes and a boat metaphor.

I know I am not alone in that the idea of these techniques and exercises just made my skin crawl. They made me feel vulnerable in a way which really scared me, they felt impossible to initiate in the moments needed most, and--ultimately--they felt incredibly diminutive. Think about it: people getting sucked into rapids will drown cursing your name if all you do is insist they have to “ride the wave.” “Fuck you.”

When I began taking anti-depressants, it was not without a fight. I’m lucky; my parents were willing and able to put me in therapy as soon as I asked. But with medication, they were concerned it was a shortcut, that I would be on pills for the rest of my life, and that the chemicals would change me and do “the work” for me, as if this was an issue of character development and not brain malfunction. Why wouldn’t I just do something relaxing when I was upset? Why wasn’t I leaning more into my spirituality? Why wasn’t I letting anything else help me?

And that’s the problem! I tried to explain that I would be able to use those techniques easier if medication brought my overall symptoms down. You wouldn’t expect me to paddle upstream against a tsunami, but I could feasibly make progress against a strong current. Even at that point, if I go over rapids, I want a fucking life jacket, not somebody with their feet firmly planted on the riverbank shouting, “Try yoga!” Though I of course continued therapy in addition to medicine, I still resisted any advice having to do with self-help because of that sentiment.

To be clear, I’m still very pro-medication and for eliminating that stigma. Really, though, when somebody is having such debilitating symptoms--emotions--that they feel like they are getting pulled underwater and gasping for air, it’s not fair that the solution could be something as effortless as breathing in while counting until it’s better. That sounds like bullshit. Mental illness physically hurts, but to outsiders, it’s all in your head, and it would be fine if only you could step back and appreciate how good you have it. If “mindfulness” works, then maybe those people are right, and that can’t be true. It hurts too much to be true.

However, I want you to know that your struggles won’t be any less legitimate if something simple actually does end up helping. I have two stories here:

1. Last year, after wanting to start for ages, I finally began exercising: just going to the gym a couple of times a week. My goal was only to feel better in my body, not really to do anything for myself mentally. I even hired a personal trainer to write work-out routines for me to follow, both to hold myself accountable (I won’t skip if I’m paying someone) and just so I wouldn’t be totally lost the second I walked in. But I have felt so many unexpected mental benefits, as well:

Getting my heart rate and breathing elevated--and continuing to exert myself through it--has kept me steadier when anxiety starts to set in. I feel more confident knowing that I can lift heavy things, run distances, and because I did something productive. I’m not stress or bored-eating, not necessarily because I’m afraid I’ll “put the calories back,” but because I’m simply more regulated. I have been sleeping better since pushing my muscles has reduced my lower back pain. I don’t procrastinate showering if I’ve just gotten back from the gym. When I sit down to schoolwork, I focus easier if I had exercised. Something something endorphins. I know I’m starting to sound like a “bro,” but the point is that these are huge benefits to exercising that just don’t get mentioned by the people crudely suggesting that it will fix your depression.

2. A couple of months ago, I was having a bad night, and the “don’t believe any negative thoughts about yourself after 10 p.m.” rule had gone out the window. I did what many of us have taught ourselves to do and asked for a lifeline: I texted my girlfriend in the same room (because vocalizing it was too hard) asking if she would come over to sit with me. I didn’t even realize I was having an anxiety attack, but she did. At first, I felt too frozen and in-pain when she asked me to sit up from clutching the fetal position. Instrumentally, though, she said that she wanted to help, but I had to help myself, too. She was throwing me a ring, but I had to swim and meet her halfway. I sat up.

She held me and led me through a “find five things in the room” exercise, and fuck me: it helped. No, I wasn’t cured. I’m still not. But this broke my self-destructive loop, and I was able to go to sleep relaxed. This was an epiphany for me. I could have provided myself this tool, this comfort, the entire ten years I’ve been dealing with this shit! Instead, I’ve just been enduring it, hoping against everything pulling me down that--instead of drowning--I’ll eventually kick the riverbed where it’s shallow enough to stand.

When self-help techniques are offered to mentally ill people, they tend to be used as a “gotcha:” you could easily be better, if only you wanted to try. To be completely fair, this isn’t always the meaning. However, it only takes a couple of those microaggressions to ensure you shut down when your therapist or a concerned loved one asks if you've tried "grounding” before.

Please, take it from me: these tools aren’t just leaky arm floats that people who never even needed to learn how to swim offer just to feel better as they watch you struggle. They are a life jacket to keep you afloat when you tip, a wider paddle to outrun the rapids, a better rudder and tiller so you can actually steer, a bailing bucket for when things get dicey, or pontoons so you won’t tip so readily. Trying self-help techniques doesn’t disclaim what you’re going through, they just might make it more bearable.

And you’re worth that.

[violentviolette]

Hi, can you talk a little on ASPD and dopamine? And also, I guess, dealing with addictions as they form, in context if this disorder?

Thanks!

theres actually a lot of research into the chemical aspects of personality disorders and it all really does boil down to trauma and genetics causing lots and lots of dysfunction with nuerochemicals, transmittors, and receptors. so ppl with any personality disorder are going to struggle a lot with things like dopamine, seratonin, and other chemicals

the dysfunctions fall under two main catagories, either a lack of ability to produce dopamine and seratonin, or a lack of ability to absorb them. i had some genetic testing done about 6 or 7 years ago because i was having no luck with antidepressants and struggling to find medication and it turns out my brain lacks key seratonin receptors. so things like ssri's which help u produce more seratonin and dopamine were useless for me because my brain *is* producing those chemicals properly, but i lack the receptors to be able to absorb any of them, which is why my issues are so persistent and resistent to treatment. i can absolutely flood my brain with seratonin and it wont do shit, cause i have no way to take it in

the hilarious other side of that is that u can absolutely have too much dopamine and seratonin in ur brain, and if too much builds up with no way to process or flush it, u can get things like seratonin sickness/syndrome which can cause anything from fever, chills, diarrhea and other flu like symptoms to seizures and death. as well as dopamine overloads, which result in things like anxiety, mania, hyper impulsivity, insomnia, psychosis and hallucinations, aggression, and more. which are all absolutely symptoms of cluster b personality disorders

because of this there's been speculation and theorizing (that does have supported research but more is still needed) that a key component of cluster b pds is an excess of dopamine in the brain without the ability to process it. so we end up with all of the negative side effects of having our brains swimming in dopamine all the time but dont get any of the actual positive effects of that that we're seeking. which like. love that for us /sarcasm. but it does very much explain a lot of the reasons that cluster b pds are so difficult to treat with medication and why our problems are so persistent

which then plays into addiction, and could explain why we seek out dopamine in such high quantities and are prone to such risk taking behavior to get it. if we're lacking in receptors, it makes sense that our brains would then require HUGE hits of dopamine to feel anything, because our brains need to be swimming in the stuff in order for us to feel the positive effects but that then leaves us with a huge excess that we cant get rid of which then causes problems. whereas a normal person would need only a tenth of the dopamine we do to absorb it and wouldnt be left with the overflow.

this also then makes treating and dealing with addiction much more complicated. because the problem is no longer finding healthier ways to get dopamine, because the amount of dopamine we need to be effective is actually the problem, not how we're obtaining it. which means the problem is figuring out how to either grow new neuroreceptors (which is possible, but difficult and i admit im not as well read on how the science works there because brains complicated), or how to retrain our brains to rely less on dopamine for satisfaction. which is also doable but sucks big ass.

[jimothysomebody]

Recovering From Post Acute Withdrawal Syndrome

It's difficult to gauge exactly where to start, considering the many nuanced factors that lead me here. For awhile it felt like I was dealing with some wretched mystery ailment. After my breakup there was a period of time where money was tight and I wasn't eating well, in part because money was tight and in part because of a long struggle with self image, self loathing, and just a warped and unhealthy perspective of myself. What a stupid, stupid thing it was to subject myself to that degree of harm and malnourishment. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

In late March, somewhat coinciding with my old vape pen breaking, I began to feel a bit unwell and I wasn't sure why. Brainfog, difficulty concentrating and remembering, poor sleep (and that's saying something) headaches, strange dizzy spells and a weird feeling in my head, unusual episodes of elevated anxiety, stress, and depression beyond what is 'normal' for me, stomach issues, changes to my appetite, fatigue, apathy. Some days were better than others, some days were hell, other days I may have one awful episode and be otherwise fine the rest of the day, sometimes a day or so would pass without incident at all and I'd feel totally normal.... but these terrible symptoms kept coming back

Initially I believed it to be the lingering effects of having been anorexic from early February to the beginning of April... but April, May and now most of June have come & gone... and these symptoms have persisted.... what else could it have been?

I figured, outside of the extreme episodes of anxiety, the most likely cause was the effects of tapering off of, and eventually quitting weed. The conclusion I drew was that, surely, I must be experiencing Post Acute Withdrawal Syndrome, brought on by increased use of medial grade weed and an increased vaping of delta 8 around this time. It was also my theory that because I didn't do it daily, just used a *lot* every few days or on weekends, that my inconsistent pattern of high dose usage was keeping me in a state of withdrawal that wouldn't stop until I made myself quit. My preferred method was vaping, but I began with edibles July of 2023... for nearly a year my already chemically imbalanced brain became accustomed to a regular supply of THC, surely... surely the cessation of cannabis would have put my brain in a state of crisis and rebellion as it attempts to reset the dials back to my “normal”, right? Much of the literature I read seemed to validate my worries, between credible medical publications from all over, the US, Canada, Australia, the UK, I poured over the findings and data of medical professionals and everything seemed to point to that... what has now worried me the last 42 days I've been sober was the fact that, for most, they seem to be through the worst of it within 2wks to a month... but still I contend with these symptoms. Maybe...just maybe, I was too hopeful and by some twisted hellish coincidence I was, unknowingly, affected by something more dire... there are many, many far more life threatening conditions that share many of those symptoms in common... and that thought has come and gone since March... Friday afternoon I finally humored my paranoia that told me to stop toying with my mortality and went to the ER to get checked out.

They drew blood, did urinalysis, an EKG, chest xrays, and a CT scan of my head, every test came back normal, nearly everything was ideal, save for what results have been effected by a recent brief regimen of prednisone to help with my tenosynovitis (which also significantly improved my withdrawal symptoms)... and in the sea of test results even those *slightly* abnormal results didn't bother me, knowing exactly what caused them.

The test results have given me a lot of peace of mind... I now know definitively, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that what I am experiencing does not have a physical cause... it is instead chemical as my brain tries to regulate itself back from a year of a lot of vaping and edibles. I do not have brain cancer, any brain damage, any debilitating neurological condition, internal bleeding, blood clots, nor do I have any heart or lung condition. No abnormalities were detected... It's just withdrawal, and I can get through this. I've been tempted to vape, a few times. I miss having a mild high, but mostly I miss the relief that comes with it for my anxiety, my depression, ptsd, mild pains, etc. There hasn't been any strong compulsion or urge to use again, in fact not unlike my alcohol I still have (almost 7 months sober now) my vape pen is in plain sight just on my bedside table, where it has, literally, been collecting dust since May 12th. I have had one or two dreams about weed/vaping though, which I suppose isn't a totally unheard of sort of dream to have for people quitting.

I'm set to see yet another therapist soon in July, and shortly thereafter, I imagine, another doctor. I'm not sure what the plan of attack will be, considering the chemical imbalance is now influenced by quitting weed. In the past I've seen a lot of success with SSRI's like sertraline/Zoloft, in treating my depression, with some positive changes to my anxiety as well, it'd certainly simplify things to be on just one med but I'm not optimistic that will be the case, nor do I don't know just how effective sertraline would be while recovering from PAWS... I do know this much, compared to how I felt in April I feel, generally speaking, significantly better. I do still experience all the symptoms I've described but to a lesser degree and with less frequency and diminished duration compared to how I had been previously... it is my belief that, with time and resolve I will make a full recovery from this horrid months long trial. I really think I'm gonna be okay.

[sfiltron]

Not to be a hater, but I'm tired of watching so many posts (on Instagram, I have been using it a lot lately bc of friends and it is destroying my brain /neg) talking about "boyfriends" and "girlfriends" and "I'm great at flirting *gives a heart to an story and never talks*".

I had been living in a blissful world where having a partner was something that some people on the internet and my sister had, not an overwhelming constant of teenage worry that had people crying because. I'm so tired of friends thinking about it constantly, friends being desperate to "not be alone", hearing all these stories about friends' friends having terrible miscommunication with their partners.

I'm tired of hearing about something I kind of get the appeal but don't really understand, I'm tired of hearing my friends getting hurt by feelings I can't get and at the same time feeling like I can't help them. I want them to not feel these complex feelings about someone they don't really know, I want to see them happy, meeting people they don't get overly attached before knowing if those people are at least decent human beings, and I want everyone to stop playing this games of trying to meet others without "looking like a creep", and I want them to not be scared, and I want them to be strong enough to cut contact with people that does them wrong.

I don't know how to help them, because, by literal words, they are both getting weird chemicals in their brain that makes them not control for who they fall over, AND there is this weird societal expectation for when you want to get to someone that I can't BEGIN to understand, since NO ONE TALKS ABOUT IT, but it still looms over people's actions, it is an implicit vibe, and I don't know if it's people's anxiety derived from having a crush, or if it's something deeper, but it MADDENS me.

I'm just- My personal mental health is exponentially better this time where I have a good chunk of friends, and I have gotten socialization and all that shit, but it also feels like I'm still an outsider, like I'm looking through a window at all this people with their own struggles that I'm having trouble to comprehend because I don't have them, and I'm supposed to just accept it, accept that this is reality, and the only thing I can do is recommended better forms for them to communicate.

I need less romantic love in this world. I want people being friends, I just want good groups of friends, and everyone working on having better communicate.

[microdosingwithjoe]

I'm Joe. I'm here to help you get the most from cannabis.

I’m an enthusiastic cannabis supporter, writing in the *hope* that a few people will read this, but it’s mostly for my own therapy; writing relaxes me and makes me use my brain. If you’ve accidentally stumbled on this blog, I’m not a flake, and this is good advice for cannabis users.

Cannabis gets you high, fixes any number of aches and pains, and a lot more, through your endocannabinoid system (ECS). It's also the most improperly used and abused drug in America.

Most people think cannabis is like ibuprofen, or liquor; if two pills or two drinks work, three will help their pain go away faster, or get them higher.

Well, it does at first.

Your ECS is different over the long haul because just the right amount will get you the best buzz or the best treatment for your ailment. Sure, the first couple of times you overdose, you might get a mind-bending high, but excessive use just spirals into abuse in a matter of days because your ECS rejects chronic overdoses and becomes dysfunctional.

This is the most important fact to realize: your ECS is made to respond to your body’s own chemicals. Even though THC and cannabis’ other active ingredients use your ECS therapeutically, THC is many, many times more powerful than the natural components it replaces.

Your goal is to push your ECS to its peak performance level for your purposes (getting high, killing pain) the way you want it (alert, sedated, energetic, relaxed, etc.) without triggering an overdose reaction.

When your ECS gets overdosed, it rejects more and more THC, so you must use it more and more, and the high gets shorter and shorter.

This cycle quickly spirals out of control, especially in people with addictive tendencies. You can't become physically dependent with cannabis, but you can get psychologically addicted, much like coffee, where you crave it habitually, like mornings just aren't the same without it. Symptoms of withdrawal include mild anxiety and bitchiness.

More importantly, all that is unnecessary, and you get your best high by not crossing that overdose threshold.

Nobody has all the answers yet, but I can help with the most critical issues that get you the best effects. Everything after that is just trying to find ways to improve our collective experiences as new knowledge trickles out from new scientific cannabis studies.

This very simple method I will introduce you to is very effective at getting the best high from recreational cannabis and the best results for medical uses, like treating inflammation-driven joint pain or reducing anxiety in the long term.

I’m going to teach you #HowToGetHigh.

I have studied cannabis for almost 9 years now. I studied it because I had huge success with the first strain I had that worked for my chronic pain, but I was unable to replicate that success. Finding out why some cannabis strains help my pain better than anything else I've ever tried while others do not, or even worsen my pain, was and still is not common knowledge.

My debilitating chronic pain was inspiration for finding out how and why cannabis works or doesn’t work.

The knowledge I gained didn't go unnoticed. I teamed up with another patient, a cannabis specialist attorney, the former director of our state’s medical cannabis program, a neuropathic surgeon, and the executive director of a top ten cancer treatment center to form the Medical Cannabis Alliance. I wrote the first Medical Cannabis Patient Guide reviewed and approved by a major cancer treatment center, a Medical Cannabis Patient Guide, and a Medical Cannabis Provider Employee Handbook. I was also Deputy Director of our state’s NORML organization and lobbied for medical cannabis issues.

Nowadays, after legalization, I’m just a patient and a stoner, but I wanted to share my knowledge with you and learn about your experiences.

With over 450 different active ingredients, cannabis, unlike liquor or ibuprofen, is too complex to know everything about it. There are decades of research ahead before we can reliably predict its effects as a recreational drug or as a medicine. The fantastic thing is this infinite variation could someday lead you to the perfect buzz for the moment in time or the best treatment for your ailment(s) ever.

Cannabis is nontoxic, and mostly harmless, so experimenting won't harm you. Cannabis is the gentlest drug and the gentlest medicine on earth; even a 10,000X overdose goes away after a good night’s sleep. That alone should tell you that this drug does not play by the same rules as any other drug.

If you're intrigued by that, follow along with me.

I recommend reading the piece about your Endocannabinoid System first, The Entourage Effect second, and then the microdosing in under 48 hours to get microdosing asap. You won't be sorry.

I always use the name “cannabis” and not “marijuana” because the origin of that term is racist. I appreciate you using “cannabis” here, but not going to lecture you if you don’t.

5/28/23 A sidenote. I still have about 3/4 of a gram of this 3.5-gram nugget 4 months later. Microdosing works!

[mastermagician332]

Vent post because I could use any feedback the world can offer right now

Cw: period mentions, vomit mentions, Covid mentions, diabetes and discussion of illness in general

Since I got Covid at the end of last year I've been struggling with a weird, unexpected symptom that I hear isn't as uncommon as I initially thought: my bloodsugar is a wild animal right before my period starts. Diabetes is common in my family so I've been taking measures to monitor my own situation at home and track the good and bad days, leading to what follows.

In the week before, I've noticed this pattern of happenstances repeating itself.

I'll have a sleepless night. This often includes leg cramps, feeling like I'm feverish, general discomfort without a clear cause and my brain just will not shut down.

When I do finally sleep, I wake up nauseous, feeling light headed and shakey. Typically this is the sign that my bloodsugar took a nose dive during the night, and I always test when these symptoms start to make sure I handle it accordingly.

It cannot be avoided: I will vomit at least once. It doesn't matter if water is all I've had or a meal to boost myself back up. In the first 3 hours of being awake, my body is going to launch a protest that seems very counterproductive to getting what it needs.

The rest of the day I will struggle with dizziness and fatigue that typically lessens over the day, with the help of the determination to eat and refuel.

This is the frustrating part: It will either signal the start of my period, or it will rinse-lather-repeat until it does.

Its so hard to tell if this is a hormone issue, a bloodsugar issue or both? And being seen for it is a joke, I have been turned away for these same symptoms and told its just sleep deprivation, eat something and sleep and I'll be fine. And I mean kinda? But that doesn't give me answers on why these things keep happening the way they do. Why its timed so perfectly with the shift of chemicals in my body. And calling out from work once a month is a terrible idea, I need solutions.

I have ADHD and have to set reminders to eat.

Sometimes when I lay down at night my brain becomes a loud, anxiety powered hamster wheel that won't let me sleep.

I try my best to stay on top of it and still have crash days.

The worst of it is feeling like I'm perceived as lazy by my peers when I have the those days. If I had a dollar for every time I've been told its my own fault that I don't sleep well I could probably buy Tumblr. Nothing fits the saying "kick them while they're down" like telling someone with a chronic illness that its their fault for having it at all, that they did it to themselves. I don't choose sleepless nights or rough mornings, they happen against my efforts to prevent them.

I feel like I'm rambling here but if you've read this far, and have experienced anything like it, or even know someone who does, I'd love to hear from you. I'm currenly typing this from my recovery nest after another bad morning so if someone out there has advice I'm all ears.

[gravityandmomentum]

Mixed feelings on contamination OCD, solid 6/10 disorder

Hey so contamination OCD is a bit of a rough thing I've dealt with for years, but I never really talk about it. Maybe that will help me deal with it? I dunno. Hope it does. I already wrote a whole thing about it and retroactively added this intro paragraph,

so:

Contamination OCD sucks. Basically "Yeah I think everything could kill me" disorder. There's a Wiimote in the corner of my room with a leaked battery and it's been sitting there for months without being cleaned. You know, because of the technical possibility that if handled, the battery acid could somehow get in my eye, and could possibly cause blindness. I mean, that is super unlikely, but it COULD happen. But I guess it won't. Actually I very frequently worry about random chemicals somehow causing me to lose my vision. Maybe I shouldn't have read about acid attacks when I was a kid... (How did I ever clean battery acid without worrying about this in the past?)

OCD also gives you this weird skill where you can very meticulously track potential cross-contamination events, with chronological order and scary accuracy. Basically a spider-sense, except bad. You can completely forget what caused the "cross-contamination" or even what chemical or germ may have been crossed, but you still have all the spots and event orders marked. Super obnoxious. Hardest part is trying to explain the whole tangled web of events to anyone else, honestly. Sequences can go months or even years between events, too.

And if you touch a "contaminated" object, your brain marks the body part that touched it. Gets this weird tingly nerve sensation and everything. In a way, that can trick you into believing the object was truly "contaminated". Doesn't matter if it's 100% irrational and no other person would ever realistically perceive this "threat" or be harmed by it. Yet it's all very intense and feels so real. Sort of weird knowing you can't actually trust a sense to be reliable. I guess interpretation is a whole entire medium that exists between our senses and our mind.

Okay so contamination OCD is incredibly debilitating, but like, I'm not gonna pretend that I'm not at least a little impressed by how good it is at tracking stuff. Maybe I can find a way to make that useful, but I think it might be too intrinsically wrapped up in anxiety for common applications. Oh well. Feels nice to talk about it.

[rachelflad2022]

Chemical Bliss: Activating Happiness Pathways in the Brain 😍🧠

Well, it's officially that time of year where the days get longer and the nights get shorter thanks to Daylight Savings. No more do we need to worry about seasonal depression, at least for a few months. Society will experience less darkness and more light as we make our way to summer! Thank you to sugarsprinklesoul for the post I re-blogged earlier this week, which gave me the idea to do some research on the topic of activating "happy chemicals" in our brains. I encourage you to read this, do your own research, and find the ways you too can release these chemicals to live your life to the fullest!

So the first "happy" chemical is Dopamine, which is considered the "reward" chemical and is a neurotransmitter that is made in the brain and acts as chemical messenger between the nerve cells in your brain and the rest of your body. According to www.myclevelandclinic.org, Dopamine plays a role in movement, memory, attention, sleep, learning, pleasure, mood and more. Dopamine can be released by completing a task, eating, and taking care of yourself. For me, releasing Dopamine would mean first completing my daily tasks. I am a person who makes a list of my daily chores (like dishes, vacuuming, laundry, taking care of my daughter and so on) and completing it in a timely fashion. Next would come selfcare, which for me, would be a nice long shower. I love using face masks to relax. I also have a back massager that I use when I get stressed too.

The second chemical is Oxytocin, a hormone and a neurotransmitter. According to WebMd, hormones travel through the blood and act on cells. Electrical signals in your brain and nerves cause chemicals called neurotransmitters to release and act on other brain and nerve cells. Oxytocin does both.‌ It is the hormone responsible for positive emotions like trust and happiness and is known for releasing love hormones. The post that was shared by myself earlier this week states that playing with a dog or a baby can help activate these chemicals, also holding hands with someone you love can too. For me, spending quality time with my husband would release this hormone. I am a romantic, so I like holding his hand.

The third chemical is Serotonin. I found a great article about Serotonin on Harvard's Health website, an article written by Stephanie Watson, which can be found here: Serotonin: The natural mood booster - Harvard Health. In the article, Watson says that Serotonin levels can be linked to depression if they are low, however, it is possible to raise levels without medication. She says one natural way to increase serotonin is by working out. "When you pedal your bicycle or lift weights, your body releases more tryptophan, the amino acid your brain uses to make serotonin. This boost in serotonin (along with other endorphins and other neurotransmitters) is why many people get that feeling of euphoria known as a "runner's high" after an intense workout." Another way to release Serotonin is being in nature, near water, meditating and getting sunlight. I personally feel a Serotonin boost when I am out hiking with my family: in the woods, with people I love, and getting sunlight. My regular family hikes are what I am constantly looking forward to, and my husband and I made sure we regularly take the kids outdoors to explore.

The last chemical I saw on this blog post was Endorphins, which deal with pain relief. This particular chemical is one I am not as familiar with, but learning more about every day, as I try to rely less on taking medication when I am not feeling well. I am still on anxiety and depression medication and 100% believe that if that is what works for you, you should take it! There should NEVER be a stigma for doing what's best for your own health and I am pretty open about taking this medication because for me right now, that's what works. However, I am trying to find more natural ways to help with my depression issues. Endorphins help boost self-esteem, give you relief from pain, and reduce stress and anxiety. Again, running can be a solution to releasing endorphins. Essential oils help as well. So, I didn't know this until I did some research, but the term "Endorphin" is a mixture of the words “endogenous” (meaning produced within the body) and “morphine” (an opiate pain reliever). They are known to give a sense of euphoria. Laughing with friends and eating dark chocolate would be a great example, and probably the two best examples for myself personally.

Well, after doing some research and finding out ways to help boost my mood and relax me, I personally find this information valuable and will probably go further in the research. I've always been someone who is interested in psychology and related studies. I encourage you to do your own research and find some healthy solutions for you to be able to release these chemicals for your body (it's good for it!).

In a world where sometimes the negative outweighs the positive, a little selfcare goes a long way.

#selfcare #love #dopamine #oxytocin #serotonin #endorphins #humans #humanbrain

[abishekmuses]

Come Some Way

I feel inspired today. I'm writing this without any idea of what I'm going to write about. Just wanted to put pen to paper - or in this case, cursor to dialog box.

I feel flooded with a sense of "yes-we-can" today. Sure, these feelings are transitory and not to be trusted but it still feels good. I see a lot of opportunity around me.

I feel chuffed at the possibility of being able to express myself through writing. What an incredible miracle - using words to express stuff that goes on in thought-form in your brain box? language has never ceased to amaze me in all these years of living on this planet.

I want to write more frequently. I've been saying this for more than a decade now - but well, there you go. I do. I want to hone my craft and get really really good at writing. I wish to be able to create moods and share subtle inner feelings through words. I think the way to achieve this is by writing everyday and by reading a lot.

Something that I understood quite recently with life is this - when you feel bad, it's not necessarily because of something that's going on then - it could also be just a habit pattern of sympathetic arousal - what does that mean?

say you encounter a tiger in the woods; It's scary as fuck and your sympathetic nervous system activates. Your body secretes adrenaline and you go into fight or flight mode. Energy is redirected to strictly necessary functions in order to ensure survival. Unpleasant stuff, subjectively speaking. now, because we have these ginormous cortices (cortex - outer layer of the brain) that can remember the past, extrapolate into the future and work in abstractions, we have the unique ability among all animals to simulate this kind of "encountering a tiger" response in us, at will, even in the absence of any large carnivores.

Memory and Imagination are amazing things but they are also the reason why so many people feel so bad so often. Their brains' threat detection circuits are always on and people are going through their lives swimming in stress chemicals. In my own experience, there was a long history of poor decision making and extremely high levels of uncertainty. This led to a huge complex of sub-optimal coping mechanisms which each gave rise their own web of negative emotions and coping mechanisms. Before you know it, everything sucks all the time and you don't think it can ever end. Now, you get into addictions - because something's gotta give. it hurts too much otherwise. That just fuels the problem - you have even more difficulty making the kind of decisions that you need to make in order to get out of the morass of your life. It doesn't feel like it can ever end. This endless cycle of depression, anxiety, self-hate and poor life choices. Well, it can. it takes time. But it can and today, I stand here as proof that it can. It wasn't easy and it didn't happen overnight. But that whole web of suckiness can be burned. Here's the thing I actually wanted to talk about before I started rambling - the thing that I found out quite recently in life is this - when stressful/negative emotions come up in an intense manner, you don't need to do anything about it. You just need to understand the mechanism of how past experiences and habits are responsible for them and let them be. they eventually go away! This might sound super obvious to a lot of people but to me it wasn't. It was essentially a get-out-of-jail-free-card when i discovered this.

All you have to do is sit and wait, and it goes away? damn. I spent years winding myself up and getting anxious about the fact that i was getting anxious. So many. thousands of hours listening to wise guys on the internet. Reading posts on how to "make it" in life. Jeez. The magic trick is to simply realise how the mind-body system works and then, making good decisions while also understanding that you won't get positive chemical feedback for a while - until you undo all that negative emotional patterning that has now created a pervasive complex of neuro-endocrine (i.e chemical) patterning in you. To put it more simply - you've probably come out of the stupidity that caused you the misery in the first place but now, when you're getting your shit together and doing the right things, you still feel bad. That's a. discouraging as fuck and b. confusing as fuck because now you feel disoriented, demotivated and lost. You don't feel good when you do the difficult thing, so why do it at all? Why not just watch porn, jerk off and smoke weed? That's why this breakthrough was so big for me. All you have to do is sit and surrender to your negative emotions, without any resistance. They leave you 100% of the time, if you don't reinforce those patterns again with your mind. Now, that's easier said than done. Takes some experience, skill, nuance and determination. That's why I said earlier that it doesn't happen overnight. But it does happen and boy does it feel good!

[sethredia]

straight up i think period-induced anxiety is the worst. like i have gad so im already anxious constantly but it normally settles at a not-great-but-manageable background hum if that makes sense? but when im on my period that shit goes from like a casual 4/10 to a fucking 14/10 sometimes.

ill be already a lil spooked about x or y thing on a normal day but when im on my period? i cant fucking sleep because im thinking about it and my chest is getting tight and i can feel my heart rate kick up and i roll over and get on my phone to distract myself and yet i know im distracting myself so the distraction doesnt really work and on and on until its three am and i pass tf out

its more manageable when im at work, right, because theres Stuff To Do at work. there a Job Tasks and then Job Distractions which are, in their own way, a different form of job task to me. is it the same fanfic i opened the night before to read but couldnt get through because my stupid, chemical deficient, hormone-addled brain wont let me focus on it? yes. is it different now because im at work and work is an entirely different vibe so now i can get through that story (and maybe a few others depending on length)? also yes!

anxiety example: my boss texted me last night, or i guess now that its gone past midnight would it be the night before last?, and said (frankly very ominously? like even without the anxiety disorder it would be spooky methinks) “call me before you go in tomorrow” and i was like “oh shit oh fuck what did i do i dont think i did anything i mean i had a weird hiccup with counting the drawer out at the end of the shift because i was doing 18.50 in my head instead if 17.50 so i had an overhang of a dollar and so maybe me messing with the dollar while i was trying to figure out what happened showed up and looked weird on the cameras and she saw it and she wants to talk to me about it???” and so that morning i did all my get-ready things and went back into my room, grabbed one of my stuffies for emotional support in the same way i do to make dentist appoints and shit, and bravely called my boss

and then. she said she just wanted to check on if it would be safe to have us open the store because of the snow that night. she lives in the next town over where it snowed a lot (7.5 inches. she stuck a ruler in it and sent me a picture later lol) and wanted to check on road conditions and just a general vibe on it f whether people would be out and about (it snowed in my town 3 inches. if im being generous. most of it melted off before noon. according to my boss, it continued to try and snow where she was on and off all day. what a wild difference like ten miles does to the weather!).

i got so so so scared over like a dollar worth of figured out before i left the building confusion that my boss wanting to just. be a good person. was like nowhere in my thought process.

related but only slightly: i got freaked tf out over one singular dollar and had that shit figured out before i went home for the day, whereas my stupid fucking coworker who is like technically my manager (i think if i had to put a title on her it would be like assistant manager but idk she doesnt have a title on our work schedule but shes above all the team lead kids but i also am that but i know technically shes my boss and she makes ~a dollar/hour more~ than i do so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ) ALWAYS fucks up the drawers somehow. like our manager wants the end count on the drawer to be between $149.50-150.50. Why there is dont know but thats how it goes right? WRONG. every single time i come in and have to open a drawer after this lunatic has closed the night before, the drawers are over $150.50. it is not hard to stick another dollar into your bundle. drop the extra dollar. the drawer should not be at $150.75. drop the dollar. put it at $149.75 please god. this happened today on both drawers (small store; we only have two registers and only have shift overlaps on weekends and evenings so it works).

what Also happened today was that we have little paper slips that go into the drawers so you know what amount theyre supposed to be tallying out to when you count them next to know if everything is good or not. the paper said $150.65. i counted that fucker like six times, did the math on two different calculators three times to make sure it wasn’t me mis-hitting a decimal or something, and discovered it was actually at $155.65. five whole dollars. like im sure for a target thats not a big deal — still noticeable and youd absolutely get yelled at but like big picture and all — but for us thats a decent chunk! this woman simply does not double check anything she does regarding the cash drawers and it outrages me.

ALSO ALSO yesterday i counted out my drawer and it ended on like $150.30. within the boundaries. she put it in for the when the other closer came in. i left at 2:30, this other girl came in at 6:30, so somewhere in that four hours she recounted the drawer. we have a binder we write our numbers in for ~Accountability~. she wrote and initialed that it was at the $150.30 i counted it out to. this drawer, for the three or so hours its running that evening, handles no cash. written in the binder it has a big ol NO CASH written through in the Cash In and Deposited sections. the drawer closed at $150.75. where??? did that extra??? .45¢ come from??? and like what a weird amount too! thats not a two-quarter whoopsie, thats a whole mess of coins. four dimes and a nickel. a quarter and two dimes. other combinations im too tired to list. and like when i counted it that next morning it was at that $150.75. which is impressive, as the last time a NO CASH she wrote that had different starting and ending numbers, it turned out that there wasnt actually a difference, and that the original starting number was in fact still the amount in there. her ending number was also off by like .37¢ or something that time so like.

man. tell me you dont count out the registers properly without telling me you dont count them out properly.

anyway all of this is to say: periods suck and i hate them and i fucking wish i could sleep instead of worrying about what im currently worried about.

[rnacreative]

I stared at the bottles of pills for twenty minutes.

Could I really do this again? Had I gone too long pretending I didn't need it?

In a Xanax induced state from the previous night, I sighed heavily beginning to read the labels and side effects.

Anxiety. Depression.

Words I was all too familiar with.

I had meds off and on before, but I didn't like how they worked with me. I kept the Xans, as immediate for panic attacks and the anxiety thought loops.

I didn't use them too often until I started therapy to heal.

It was like I opened my own pandoras box. Learning what boundaries were and taking away those intense emotions with EMDR. A life saver for a fucked up human like me. It is what it is. Trauma does that to you.

Eventually, it became more bearable as I looked inside the shambles of my soul.

It took me a long time to realize I had the power the whole time. Instead, I let people take these pieces of me away until I am left to rebuild again. It's different every time, disguised with good intentions.

I stayed away from meds but the Xanax. I was careful not to get addicted.

2020 and on hit, and my brain was rewired again. Then I moved and got myself into the mental health field. My brain was still processing that I didn't want to be with my ex, but I couldn't move again. So I stayed. Stuck.

My creativity exploded, and I channeled my frustrations and emotions elsewhere in an environment I couldn't change yet.

Then, it started to pile up, and I began to realize that I was always in survival mode. I still am.

When you stop being there, your body can't distinguish.

The threats are no longer people, but words that hurt you or actions and lack of boundaries. The shit you fight for when you're healing.

One thing led to another, after leaving that environment, I thought maybe things would get better, and my brain and body would understand that we are okay.

No, turns out when you're finally out of the thick of it, you're left behind with these ruined pieces with a terrible response to stress.

So, here I am, debating with myself over fucking medication because of fear. I'd rather be a wreck than not feel anything at all or lose who I am st my core level.

Then, I thought back, the past few weeks where nothing worked anymore, and I stopped functioning in all aspects of my life.

Then, I started saying what I needed without fear anymore as my nerves light on fire. How I need those boundaries and some goddamn relief.

I took the medication.

It is perfectly okay if it's chemically made.

I am giving it my best. It's okay to admit defeat and try all the options first.

Why did medication have to be so scary?

Remembering where I came from and who I am now... she needs to be taken care of in healthier ways. Her voice has always been silenced, in phases throughout her life.

Always an advocate for everyone else, but not myself. I'm a hypocrite, but you know what?

I am advocating now.

My younger self would be proud.

We are taking care of each other now.

💚