#only musical he’s watched in the last like 15 years is wonka cause he’s a timmy boy

[kieran-culkins]

the wizard and iiiiiiii tiiiiiiime

[lovemesomesurveys]

1. have you ever gotten soap in your mouth for cursing? do you think that’s right to do to kids who curse?: Nope. I didn’t say any curse words as a kid for one, but also I’m pretty sure my parents wouldn’t have done that if I did. They would have just talked to me about it and tell me not to say them. I personally don’t like the soap punishment, I think it’s dumb. I’ve heard of some parents who use hot sauce instead, which is just horrible. I understand if you don’t want your kid to curse, but you don’t have to torture them. Just talk with them and explain why it’s not nice to say and that kids shouldn’t speak that way or whatever. Don’t make too big a deal about it. Try not to curse around them either, that’s where they likely hear it and you can be an example for them. If talking doesn’t work then take something away like a toy or some computer time or whatever. I think it’s also important to reward kids when they’re behaving, even just acknowledging it. That can go a long way.

2. what age do you think is appropriate for kids to start watching horror movies with lots of gore?: Well, I personally don’t think kids should watch that at all. I’d say wait until they’re in high school. 

3. do you know what the word “polyamorous” means? and did you ever hear that song by breaking benjamin?: Yes I know what it means, no I haven’t heard that particular song by them.

4. how many bug bites do you currently have?:  Zero.

5. what’s one word you always have trouble spelling and can’t remember the correct spelling of?: Whenever a question like this comes up, “onomatopoeia” always comes to mind. That’s a word I never use except for these questions haha, but yeah I can never seem to remember the spelling, I have to Google it each time.

6. what’s one band that really sucks live?: I’ve never seen a bad live performance, but I’ve heard things about some bands that I haven’t seen, such as Maroon 5. I’ve heard they’re pretty bad. :X

7. do you go to warped tour? why or why not?:  I’ve never been.

8. do you have any wind chimes outside your house? how many?: Yes, a couple. 

9. do you know someone who actually had someone give them a bouquet of real roses and one fake one, and tell them they’ll love them until the last one dies?:  I’ve never heard of that lol but awww how corny and sweet.

10. which do you like better, firefox or internet explorer?: Firefox out of the two, but I use Chrome.

11. who is the most attractive person on your street?: I haven’t seen all my neighbors, but I don’t find the few I have seen attractive. 

12. do you have a flat stomach? would you ever wear a belly shirt to show it off?:  I have a flat stomach, but noooo you’ll never see me in a crop top. I’m waaaaay too self-conscious for that.

13. which do you prefer on yourself, long or short hair?: Long, which is what I have, but it takes more energy and maintenance than I can give right now and I should just cut it short again. :/ I just can’t bring myself to do it for some reason, though.

14. what about on your preferred sex? long or short?:  Short.

15. with eyebrow piercings, do you prefer the ring or the curved barbell?:  I don’t care for eyebrow piercings, personally.

16. have you ever pierced something yourself? why and what was it?: Nooooo. I would never. I’m terrified of needles and don’t do well at all when getting blood work done, and that’s by professionals. I could never attempt to pierce myself with no experience at all. I’d also be scared of doing something wrong or causing an infection.

17. would you date someone who was five years older than you?:  Maybe. I think that’s the oldest I would go.

18. i heard of a girl whose boyfriend cheated on her with a 13yearold (he’s 18) and got her pregnant, so she left him. what would you have done if you were in her situation?:  Omg. I’d have left him, too, but I also would have reported him.

19. how old was the youngest person you ever found attractive? and how old were you?:  Just a year younger than me.

20. isn’t it annoying when you’re trying to start conversation with someone and all they say is “yup” or “really now” or something like that?: Ugh, yes. If they’re clearly not into it or they’e distracted then forget it, what’s the point? I can’t keep a conversation going if the other person isn’t putting anything into it nor would I want to even try.

21. if you have aim, do you have any linked screen names? how many?: AIM died.

22. which of your favorite bands released a new album last?: Hmm. I’m blanking at the moment.

23. are you waiting for any bands to release new albums? which ones?:  Not in particular, but I’m always down for new music.

24. what’s your favorite store for buying cds and such at?:  I haven’t bought a CD since like 2011. I usually just went to like Walmart or Target. I also bought a few CDs from a place that sold old records/albums/cassettes, though. That’s also the place I sold all my CDs to.

25. what’s the point in buying dvds like “girls gone wild” and other porn if you can get tons more online for free?: I don’t know, ask someone who watches porn. 26. if you had to have one drug (illegal ones, like marijuana and cocaine and all of them) right now, what would it be?: Marijuana is legal here, but that’s the only drug I would do.

27. would you ever get a sleeve or a half sleeve on your arm (we’re talking about tattoos)?:  No. I only want one little one.

28. do you have a wireless mouse and/or keyboard?: I have a laptop, so it has a built-in trackpad and keyboard. 

29. do you think your biological parents love each other?: Yes.

30. do you have callouses on your feet?:  No.

31. did you see the commercial for that “foot grater” on tv that basically shaves the callouses off of your feet? isn’t that nasty to think about?: Gahhh, yes. 🤢 It was so gross.

31. what’s your favorite color combination (ex. pink and purple)?: I love pastel colors together.

32. ever been to watchmovies.net? what do you think of the quality of the movies there?:  Yeah, back in the day. I totally forgot about that. The quality wasn’t too, too bad on the ones I saw.

33. what’s one movie you’re dying to see but haven’t had the chance to see yet?: There’s a few movies that were supposed to come out this year that I wanted to see, but that’s obviously not going to happen. 34. would you rather live alone in a huge mansion or alone in a small studio apartment?: I don’t want to live alone at all, but if I had to choose I’d definitely choose the small studio apartment. I wouldn’t want to live in some huge house by myself. That would make me a lot more anxious and uncomfortable. I don’t even want a big house like that for my family and I, it’s just so unnecessary. We’d only need a house big enough for 4 adults and a doggo to live in. 

35. if you came across child porn on your computer, what would you do?:  Omg, that would mean I was hacked somehow. I’d be disgusted and horrified and try to get rid of it as quickly as possible. Are you supposed to report that kind of thing? I would think so, so that it could be taken down and hopefully catch whoever distributed it.

36. what’s the last computer game you played?: The Sims 4. It’s been a couple years, though. I get urges to play, but I’m too lazy.

37. what’s the name of the street you live on?: I’m definitely not sharing that.

38. would you ever dye your entire head blonde?:  No.

39. what’s the randomest thing you ever heard of someone collecting?:  *shrug* I have a rock collection, so who am I to judge. lol.

40. how often do you use “<3” or “:]”?: I don’t use :], I use :) Anyway, I don’t use emojis or smiley faces super often, but sometimes when I feel they’re fitting. I know some people who get a little carried with them.

41. isn’t it annoying how people walk around thinking hollister logo tshirts and ripped jeans are preppy, even though those things would never be allowed in a prepatory school because of the dress code?: >> *stares blankly in “I don’t care”* <<< Hahaha, for real. 

42. how do you feel about abortion?:

43. what’s one thing your grandmother does that you can’t stand?:  She doesn’t do anything that I can’t stand. My grandmothers were/are (my maternal grandmother sadly passed away 15 years ago) sweet, loving, and adorable. haha.

44. did you ever notice how it’s more tragic if a younger person dies than an older person, even if they both died of the same cause?:  Loss of my grandparents was heartbreaking for me, I had a really hard time with their loss. Them being older didn’t make it any easier. I think why people find it even more devastating when a child dies is because they were so young and hadn’t even had a chance, yet, like their life had just begun. There was so much still to experience. They should have had a lot more time. Even a young adult because it’s like their life is also kind of just beginning in a way, perhaps they just started or finished college, were about to start a new job, or were about to get married and start a family. They, too, have so much still to experience and should have had more time. But still, losing someone who is older is still just as sad. I think some people just can sometimes find a little comfort in the fact that they had lived a long life and got to experience a lot. 

45. when’s the last time you snuck around, and where did you go?: I don’t have to sneak around. Never have.

46. how often do you wash your hair?: Every couple days.

47. do you think the price for a movie ticket is too high these days?: Well, these days movie theaters aren’t even open. However, I don’t think it’s the movie ticket price that’s too high, it’s getting stuff at the concession stand that racks it up. The food and drinks are ridiculously overpriced. I just have to get some popcorn, though. I miss movie theater popcorn with salt and lots of butter.  48. have you ever been to a drive-in movie theater?:  Yeah, a few times as a kid. Actually, the last time I went was to see the Willy Wonka movie with Johnny Depp when it came out. I wish they still had drive in theaters where I live. I think they should make a big comeback, I mean that’s perfect for social distancing. We can stay in our own cars, closed off from others, but still enjoy movies on the big screen.

49. what’s your favorite musical?:  Sweeney Todd (the one with Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter). 

50. what do you think of dr. seuss?: I was a fan as a kid, I loved his books. They’re classics. I actually have a Star-belly Sneetch stuffed animal, which is a character from his book, The Sneetches. 

[theconservativebrief]

I am going to die in this dentist’s chair.

My eyes are closed, but I can still see skulls outlined with white against a black background. I have an epiphany: God is death. I’m in the midst of a real-life version of the hallucinogenic ride in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, all in my own mind.

A monitor emits a steady beep, and for a second, I think I’m flatlining. But no: I’ve just completed my first infusion of ketamine, a veterinary anesthetic (often used on cats and horses) sometimes used illegally as a club drug called Special K.

I am here because I cannot stop thinking about suicide. I’ve been in therapy on and off for more than 30 years, since I was 5, and on depression medication for more than a decade. Nothing seemed to work. I couldn’t stop imagining killing myself in increasingly vivid daydreams.

As a journalist who covers health and medicine, I had read about the success of experimental trials that used ketamine to treat depression. My therapists had recommended extreme treatments like electroshock therapy, a procedure that frightened me due to reports of memory loss from those who had undergone it, but had never mentioned this. But I was getting desperate for a serious intervention.

After some research, I concluded that ketamine was not only more affordable but just as effective as sending electrical pulses through my brain. (About 70 to 85 percent of patients with severe depression who try ketamine treatment say it’s effective, compared with 58 to 70 percent of ECT patients.) I told my doctor I wanted to try it.

It wasn’t my goal to be on the vanguard, just to get better, but I am an early adopter of a treatment that could one day help millions of people with chronic depression. After a full treatment cycle, my suicidal thoughts went away. And depression isn’t the only psychiatric illness the drug may combat. Studies are being conducted on ketamine’s efficacy on anxiety, bipolar disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, and even obsessive-compulsive disorder.

That’s how I wound up glued to that dentist-style chair at a clinic in Houston envisioning skulls, as an IV drip steadily infused me with a drug I’d thought was reserved for rave-goers.

Most people familiar with ketamine know it as either a veterinary medicine or an illegal street drug. But it’s been approved by the Food and Drug Administration for anesthetic use for humans since 1970. Its rise as a treatment for depression, a legal but off-label usage not yet approved by the FDA, is even more recent.

Ketamine’s antidepressant effects were revealed in a Yale study in 2000. Over the next decade, researchers continued to explore its potential as a treatment for major depressive disorder. Asim Shah, a professor and executive vice chair at Baylor College of Medicine who co-led several of these studies, told me that doctors have long been curious about the euphoric effects of ketamine. A lot of people given ketamine as an anesthetic “would start smiling or laughing,” he says. “That’s the reason that many people before have said, ‘Oh, maybe it can be used for depression.’”

As of now, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) like Prozac and multiple-receptor antidepressants such as trazodone are among the most commonly prescribed drugs to treat depression. Yet studies show that only around 37 percent of people who use these drugs experience full remission. The number drops past the first year of use.

Ketamine is an NMDA (N-methyl-D-aspartate) receptor antagonist, which means that it targets glutamate absorption in the nerve cells, unlike traditional antidepressants, which raise serotonin levels by blocking the reabsorption of the neurotransmitter. Glutamate is associated with excitability — among many other brain functions such as memory. Researchers like Shah believe that as the brain metabolizes the ketamine, new neural pathways are created that help restore function obliterated by depression. It’s this effect, not the experience of hallucinations or dissociation, that can help treat depression.

Despite its association with the platform sneakers and vinyl pants of the 1990s club scene, ketamine abuse began in the ’80s. People who take ketamine recreationally do so for its fast-acting high, which is typically a floating or out-of-body experience coupled with euphoria. But it’s not the kind of party drug that will bump up your social skills. After all, it is an anesthetic: Users retreat into their minds and experience hallucinations, sometimes reporting religious experiences or even a feeling some compare to rebirth. Drawbacks of recreational use of the drug include risk of overdose, dependence, and high blood pressure.

But for someone experiencing intense depression, that “rebirthing” can be therapeutic.

What people who have never battled depression don’t understand is that it has little to do with “feeling sad.” Sadness is a flesh wound, a knife cut that might sting but eventually heals. Chronic depression is blunt force trauma to the head, locking you into a pattern of negative thought and throwing away the key.

On my quest to find a fix for my depression, I was shuffled from practitioner to practitioner like a poorly behaved foster kid. By the beginning of 2018, my psychiatrist said I had tried (and failed) nearly every class of drug aimed at treating depression. I was fresh out of options and desperate enough to try something more experimental.

When I decided I wanted to try ketamine, I went to the Menninger Clinic in Houston, a respected psychiatric clinic I had written about, to figure out next steps. I was an obvious candidate, as I had been on antidepressants for more than a decade and had shown little improvement; I just needed to be approved for the treatment after a consultation.

I met with Justin Coffey, the medical director of Menninger’s Center for Brain Stimulation Services, to discuss my history and we reached an agreement: I’d try two infusions of the drug, and if it had a positive effect, I’d do four more. At Menninger, this cost $600 for each session, and it’s not covered by insurance. If not, electroshock therapy would be my next step.

I arrived and got a basic work-up in the pre-treatment room. In addition to weighing me and taking my blood pressure, a nurse tested my reading ability, memory, and basic awareness (the date, where I was). Dr. Coffey came in to discuss what to expect over the course of my six treatments. That number is typical for this treatment, but because it’s still experimental, so is the number of doses necessary to work. Coffey was open to the idea of me needing more if six didn’t provide lasting results.

His frightening warning: Since ketamine is a dissociative anesthetic, I might feel like I’m leaving my body and experience a “bad trip,” as opposed to a more euphoric hallucinatory state. But if I were to go into this state, I could tell my nurse, who would stop the infusion or add a counteractive drug, the anesthetic midazolam, to lessen that effect.

The nurse inserted an IV and flushed it with saline to make sure it was flowing correctly; then we moved into the treatment room with its dentist-style chair for my infusion to begin. I would receive half a milligram of the drug for every kilogram of my weight, a very low dose compared to what recreational users inhale or inject. About 10 minutes into the treatment, the tree I was watching through the window separated into two. Soon, it was difficult to keep my eyelids open at all.

And then I was gone, down the rabbit hole of hallucination. My mind skipped through grid-style maps of city parks. I occasionally took a deep breath or wiggled my fingers just to remind myself I still could. I later learned that what I was experiencing is known as a “K-hole,” which is rare at the low dose I took.

Each infusion lasted 45 minutes. After my first one, I had a nurse play the cast album of my favorite musical as the drip began. Instead of running wild, my mind became immersed in the music, albeit in a deeply dreamlike state. Each time, it took about 15 to 20 minutes after the effects of the treatment wore off for me to be able to open my eyes and start walking. Afterward, I was exhausted. The half-hour Uber ride home felt like hours as I longed for the warm embrace of a nap.

Immediately after each treatment, I felt down. But by the time I woke up the next day, I was in less psychic pain and had more purpose. I would start the day on my long-neglected spin bike, feeling motivation that I’d lacked for months. Lunches with friends no longer felt like they existed just to show them I was still alive and making an effort to get out of the house. I was beginning to connect with the world outside my head again. I noticed myself smiling more. According to Shah, feeling the effects of ketamine within 24 hours of treatment is typical. “It is the most rapid-acting treatment for depression,” he said.

After the final infusion, I had the initiative to start writing again. The following week quickly filled up with activities, both work and fun. I was living for the first time in months. It’s been three months since my last treatment, and I’ve even started to feel excited about my future. Shah says I am unlikely to need another dose — I was in the roughly 70 percent who achieve remission after one series of ketamine infusions.

In technical terms, as I’ve said, taking ketamine had caused my brain to release glutamate, the neurotransmitter responsible for “excitatory” responses. But despite all his years of research into the drug’s chemistry, Shah admits, “No one knows the exact mechanism of any medicine.”

If I do need additional doses of ketamine, it probably won’t be an infusion. Thanks in part to Shah’s work, an intranasal version of the drug is expected to receive FDA approval as soon as next year. The side effects of the nasal inhaler, known as esketamine, are practically nonexistent next to the K-hole I experienced; patients would even be able to take the treatment at home. I’m a testament that it can work. And soon, ketamine will be accessible to people (who can afford it, since it likely will be expensive and not necessarily covered by insurance) who have all but given up on fixing their depression.

I had come to believe that my depression was a terminal illness. But the so-called party drug may have saved my life.

Alice Levitt is a writer and editor specializing in food and medicine. She is lucky to live in Houston, Texas, home of the world’s largest medical center.

First Person is Vox’s home for compelling, provocative narrative essays. Do you have a story to share? Read our submission guidelines, and pitch us at firstperson@vox.com.

Original Source -> “I tried ketamine to treat my depression. Within a day, I felt relief.”

via The Conservative Brief