Mental Health Blog - antidepressant treatment review

After a weekend working, I’m just trying to put something up on this blog—so you don’t forget me.

I’ve felt lethargic the last few days—I don’t know if it’s the Effexor or just being lazy.  I didn’t hang around for the big goodbye to meat after church (before Lent starts).  I needed a nap, and I needed it bad.  When I’m sleepy I can forget all about food.  (I should be sleepy more often.)

I think the medicine is helping as far as my anxiety is concerned.  I haven’t felt jittery or anything like that.  I’m just not as bright-eyed and bushy-tailed as I would like.  But what can I do?  When you take meds like these, it comes with the territory.

I have some Lenten reading lined up:  “Letting Go Of Baggage” and “Five Steps For Spiritual Growth,” both by Dr. Peter Kalellis.  It may not seem like the usual Lenten fare—you know, stuff like “The Wisdom Of St. Umptyscratch Of The Really Holy Mountain.”  My mind is too fried for me to go sailing into deep theological waters these days.  Better to keep it within the self-help genre, I suspect.

Other than that—not a lot to report that’s newsworthy.  (Not that it’s ever stopped me from writing about it, anyway.)  The wife and I have been watching Hazel the last few evenings (I ordered a DVD set).  I hadn’t seen that show for many years, and we’ve really been enjoying it.  Let me tell you…that woman is a trip!  It’s funny how you see things differently as an adult than how you saw them as a kid.  Hazel was cute back then, now it’s hilarious.

Well, I better get to sleep.  It’s Monday, after all.

Hi girls,

A little general knowledge about the shoe.

In some women, shoes are the essence of fashion.

There are women who are hobbyists and others who use then as antidepressant treatment.

If there’s one thing most of us agree on, it’s that shoes have to be comfortable.

There are a variety of styles, colors and models to choose from, depending on the tastes of everyone and personalities.

You have to love your shoes, ejoy them & treat them well as they are an important part of our image.

For each occasion and event, there’s an appropriate pair of shoes.

Heeled shoes highlight the elegance.

Girls, on the market there are several heel heights, when buying a shoe heel we must take into account the proportion with our legs.

And a pair of sneakers to go to the gym has to be comfortable!

Anyway, every women’s footwear has its own special charm.

It’s been a while since I’ve done one of these, but since the last one I have read at least one if not two textbooks, so I figured it was time for me to add another with an interesting thought.

Besides counseling, treatments for postpartum depression include both allopathic and natural remedies. It is important to understand the physiology of depression to appreciate the pros and cons of each. In general, the current rise in depression mirrors increased levels of stress in our lives – estimated to be a hundred times greater than that faced by our grandparents. The more stressed we are, the more catecholamines (adrenaline) we produce. Serotonin balances the effects of these, but overproduction of catecholamines makes it hard for the body to make enough serotonin to keep up. Without adequate serotonin, we become anxious or depressed on an ongoing basis.

Drugs like Prozac and Zoloft, which belong to a class known as SSRIs (or selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors), keep serotonin circulating in the body. But they do not increase levels of serotonin; instead, they cause the body to use up its reserves by pulling them into the nerve synapses. Adverse affects include violent outbursts and suicidal urges. Natural aids to serotonin production include the amino acid tryptophan (concentrated in shrimp, tamari soy sauce, raw crimini mushrooms, cod, snapper, halibut, chicken breast, scallops, turkey breast, and tofu), omega fatty acids, vitamins B-6, B-2 (riboflavin), and B-3 (niacin), folic acid, and magnesium. The supplement 5-HTP (found in most health-food stores) may be especially helpful, as tryptophan converts to this before converting to serotonin. Coffee, chocolate, and cigarettes must be strictly avoided.

This quote came from Elizabeth Davis’ Heart and Hands 4th edition, pages 213-214.

For more quotes check out other posts in the category Something to Think About.

Sharon Begley’s cover story for Newsweek reports that in just over half the unpublished and published studies regarding the efficacy of Prozac as an anti-depressant, Prozac was found to be no more useful than a placebo.

Here’s an excerpt from the article:

In just over half of the published and unpublished studies, Kirsch and colleagues reported in 2002, the drug alleviated depression no better than a placebo. “And the extra benefit of antidepressants was even less than we saw when we analyzed only published studies,” Kirsch recalls. About 82 percent of the response to antidepressants–not the 75 percent he had calculated from examining only published studies–had also been achieved by a dummy pill.

The extra effect of real drugs wasn’t much to celebrate, either. It amounted to 1.8 points on the 54-point scale doctors use to gauge the severity of depression, through questions about mood, sleep habits, and the like. Sleeping better counts as six points. Being less fidgety during the assessment is worth two points. In other words, the clinical significance of the 1.8 extra points from real drugs was underwhelming. Now Kirsch was certain. “The belief that antidepressants can cure depression chemically is simply wrong,” he told me in January on the eve of the publication of his book The Emperor’s New Drugs: Exploding the Anti-depressant Myth.

The 2002 study ignited a furious debate, but more and more scientists were becoming convinced that Kirsch–who had won respect for research on the placebo response and who had published scores of scientific papers–was on to something. One team of researchers wondered if antidepressants were “a triumph of marketing over science.” Even defenders of antidepressants agreed that the drugs have “relatively small” effects. “Many have long been unimpressed by the magnitude of the differences observed between treatments and controls,” psychology researcher Steven Hollon of Vanderbilt University and colleagues wrote–”what some of our colleagues refer to as ‘the dirty little secret.’ ” In Britain, the agency that assesses which treatments are effective enough for the government to pay for stopped recommending antidepressants as a first-line treatment, especially for mild or moderate depression.

However, as Jonah Lehrer points out on his blog, this might not be the whole story.  Scientists have recently found that Prozac may have important other uses.  For example, it has been found to help cure Lazy eyes in rats.  Surely a drug for lazy eye will be a big seller.

Here’s an excerpt from his post:

I’m currently working on a longer article on a related subject, so I won’t go into detail here, but I think it’s worth pointing out that anti-depressants might still prove to be a very useful class of drugs, just not for depression. To understand why, it’s important to realize that antidepressants don’t work the way the way the big pharm companies tell you they work, at least on their websites.

Their neat little story goes like this: antidepressants increase the brain’s supply of serotonin, thus correcting our chemical imbalance. This implies that sadness is simply a lack of chemical happiness. The little blue pills cheer us up because they give the brain what it has been missing.

There’s only one problem with this theory of depression: it’s almost certainly wrong, or at the very least woefully incomplete. Experiments have since shown that lowering people’s serotonin levels does not make them depressed, nor does it worsen their symptoms if they are already depressed. And then there’s the “Prozac lag”: although antidepressants increase the amount of serotonin in the brain within hours, their beneficial effects are not usually felt for weeks.

But just because antidepressants don’t work via some silly and obsolete chemical model of depression doesn’t mean the drugs don’t trigger important changes in the brain. In recent years, scientists have found that the little blue pills modulate the neural pathways of plasticity, up-regulating trophic factors and neurogenesis. Because they make our mind more malleable – and help counter the the toxic effects of stress – the drugs have potential implications far beyond the treatment of depression.

Consider this 2008 study by Italian researchers, published in the journal Science. The scientists were interested in seeing if fluoxetine, the active ingredient of Prozac, could increase the potential of brain cells in the adult rat. They studied animals with severe cases of “lazy eye,” a condition characterized by poor vision in one eye due to underdevelopment of the visual cortex. The scientists showed that fluoxetine gave brain cells the ability to take on new roles and form new connections, which erased the symptoms of the disorder.

I have to pick up my psychiatric medications on a daily basis, because when I was feeling extremely depressed “for no reason”, on my 25th birthday (not yet knowing that I was pregnant, and the number 25 has always showed up in strange places in my life – maybe you have such a number) I took an “overdose” of clonazepam, not intending to harm myself, but because I wanted to sleep for several days and forget about everything going on around me – the pressures to perform, at school, at work, in relationships, in bed, for my family.  Not to mention my financial situation, deteriorating by the day.  Because I was honest, phoned my doctor when I woke up (only 4 hours after I took the pills) to make sure I was going to be okay – and also told her that I had enough Effexor in my possession that I would have taken that had I wanted to kill myself – I have had to pick my meds up every morning – making sure to keep a consistent schedule to avoid brain-zaps and shakes – for the past 3 months.

Since then I have accomplished much at school, have a wonderful new living space with my partner that really feels like home, and I’ve been feeling pretty damn good about myself.  I have been feeling like I’m figuring things out in this city, the system at school, realizing who my true friends are, etc.  I made an eye appointment and bought new contact lenses, put together a 50 page student loan application for “insufficient funds”.  Business has been taken care of, I’ve been pulling it off.  I have even seen my GP three times in the past two weeks, by request, and I always arrive five minutes early, except for the time that I ran 15 blocks in 15 minutes because traffic was bad – I made it at the exact time of the appointment.  We had figured out what kind of pain medication I needed to take and how often to treat the symptoms of my endometriosis – codeine, straight up – tylenol (of any kind, including “T3s”) raises my liver enzymes by 200 points.  I would imagine that my liver is somewhat vulnerable after being fed 30 different psychiatric medications over the past 6 years.  She wrote a prescription that would last me a few months so that I would never have to worry about being stuck in pain with no option other than the ER.

I was just feeling too good.  I had to be put in my place.

I went to the last appointment before leaving for Peru today, to get a letter stating that these are my prescribed medications for customs officers.  We also agreed that I should have my codeine raised slightly during the next 5 days while I have my period.  She complimented me on my scholastic successes and wished me a good trip, handing me a prescription for the temporary increase with the letter.

Figuring I would take care of the pharmacy trip right away so that I could work from home without having to leave for the rest of the day, I walked into the Shopper’s Drug Mart that I have filled all of my prescriptions at since moving to Vancouver in June.  I walked down an aisle to get to the pharmacy at the back of the store, and a woman ran past me, two seconds later a man appeared, and to catch her, pushed me into a display wall.  Ouch.  He has her in a headlock now and is dragging behind the “employee’s only” door.  The staff got a kick out of the situation – a security guard catching someone who had been trying to steal vitamins.  I did not receive an apology when the man walked past me while I was handing my prescription over to the pharmacy assistant, although the assistant asked me if I was okay.  ”Oh, just fine.”

So – 4 extra pills for the next 5 days, still picking everything up daily, and then a release of the amount of medication I need while in Peru (my GP confirmed this over the phone while I was in her office).  She interpreted the prescription and told me it would be ready right away.  I sat down to wait for another $13 vial of a few pills (dispensing fees, paid daily for the past three months.  Approximately $400 per month.  This has basically bankrupted me, hence the “insufficient funds” application).  While waiting, several individuals came in for their daily dose of liquid heroin (methadone).  Then things take a turn for the worse.

The only pharmacist that has ever mistreated me at the Shopper’s Drug Mart, the others and their staff knowing me on a first name basis and enjoying early morning chats, walks up, holding the prescription.

“I can’t fill this.  It cancels all of your other prescriptions?”

“It’s just an increase for 5 days while I’m menstruating.  I was here to pick up my usual meds earlier this morning and I told another of the staff that I would probably be getting this from my GP.”

“I won’t give you any pills, other than the four extra for today, if you don’t fix this.”

“How would I go about fixing it?”

“Do you want me to call your doctor?!?”  She looks extremely annoyed and angry.

“Yes, please.”

She apparently speaks with my doctor and asks her to fax a prescription that is written differently, I give her the $13 and get a little emotional.  ”I’m sorry that I’m upset, but I feel like I’m being treated like a criminal for being on psychiatric and pain medications.  It seems like it’s automatically assumed that I’m a ‘drug seeker’, when I’ve never even considered using opiates recreationally.”

“It’s your doctor’s fault.  She should know how to write a prescription.”

“I think she does.  She’s one of the most respected GPs in the city and has been writing prescriptions for 30 years.”

“No, there is a female (why the pharmacist needed to make a comment about gender I do not know) pharmacist that works at her office and she should know how to write a prescription.”

My partner then enters the store.  He was buying groceries across the street and was concerned that I had been in the pharmacy for half an hour when we both expected this to take 5 minutes.  My partner was previously “banned from her store”, to use this pharmacist’s words, for “causing a scene” when he went to pick up medication for me after surgery, and they threatened to withhold it for a reason that I either forget or was never determined.  After handing me the four pills, we walked away, arm in arm.  I was feeling a little traumatized.  I hear dangerously close footsteps behind us.  The security guard, coming to apologize after all?

“Excuse me?”  It is the pharmacist.

“Is your name Chris?”

“Yes.”

“I banned you from my store.”  She then directs her gaze towards me, “If you ever bring him in here again, I will not dispense any of your prescriptions.”

“I didn’t bring him here he was just worried about where I was because this took so long so he came to look for me…”

“Do you understand?”

“I wasn’t trying to…”

“No. Do you understand?”

“Yes.  I will switch to a different pharmacy when I’m back from my trip because of this ‘disturbance’.”

“Please Do!!!!“

“Okay, I will.  Thank-you.”

We go home.  I respond to several e-mails from professors, and one from my dad, and have a long talk with my partner.  I notice it is 4:30pm already.  I should get started on the proposal I am to submit to one professor by the end of the day.  But, I also better call the doctor’s office to make sure that the fax was sent.  Often the receptionists forget to fax prescriptions, or the pharmacy’s phone line is busy, etc.  I’ll call the pharmacy first, as not to bug the females at the doctor’s office.  I am transferred to the pharmacist.  She’s still on duty.

“Yes I got the fax but your doctor wrote it wrong.  I can’t give you your pills tomorrow.”

“How could she have written it wrong again after you specified how she should write it?”

“Do you not know how to add and subtract? Your previous prescription was cancelled and 258 – 189…”

“I know how to add and subtract. Now what should I do to fix this situation?”

“I don’t know.”

“Should I call my doctor?  I don’t know if she’s still on shift, but…”

“You do whatever you want to do.”

“Okay.  And I will switch to another pharmacy as soon as possible since I seem to bother you so much.”

“I will give you your pills tomorrow, but after that, I refuse to dispense you any medications.  You are no longer allowed at this pharmacy.”

“But what if…”

“Tomorrow.  That’s it, then you’re on your own!“

“Alright!!!”

I call the doctor’s office and explain the situation to the receptionists, who are able to put me through to my doctor.  I breathe a sigh of relief in my head.  Having the power that she does as a doctor she will be able to fix this immediately, and I’m sure she will not be impressed with the pharmacist’s comments that she does not know how to write a prescription and that I can neither add nor subtract.

“Hi, what’s going on?”

I explain the situation, beginning with the security guard scene, the accusations, and inform her that this pharmacist threatened not to dispense any of my medications.

Loud sigh.  ”You know, you can be…okay, I’ll call her, what’s the phone number?”

“Can you call me back after to let me know what I can expect?”

“Yes, I’ll call you back.”

I am fuming as I wait by the phone for half an hour, too enraged by the pharmacist’s condescending comments and unable to concentrate with this hanging over my head.  Tears come.  Why oh why do I have to deal with these situations constantly when I have so much else to do?!?!?!

The phone rings.  Another sigh of relief in my mind as I answer.  I should have known better.  Why do I never know better…

“Okay, so you can pick up your pills there tomorrow, but you’ll have to find a new pharmacy for Friday.”

I am still crying.

“When you get distraught you are very demanding and can be rude to people and yell at people.  You have to realize that this is just how things go in life, you can’t get so upset all of the time and take it out on others.”

“I don’t believe I do…I have a lot of work to do for school, and having these issues hanging over my head all of the time is not necessary, is it?  There is no pharmacy on campus, I have to be able to rely on the fact that I will get my prescriptions each morning.”

“But you get like that, it’s not just that one pharmacist.  The whole staff there finds you demanding and my staff has told me about you yelling at them.  Everyone has been complaining.”

“I have never yelled at them, I’ve just called when I don’t know what’s going on with my prescriptions…”

“And you showed up here in tears!  You just get so distraught.  You have to realize that is just the way life goes and you need to learn how to deal with people.  It’s respectable that you’re pursuing your academic goals, but these things are more important.”

This exchange goes on for some time.  I tell her that I have a great relationship with every one at that pharmacy except for that one pharmacist.  That I always tell her staff that I understand they are busy and are not responsible for the pharmacy’s mess, but that I need to know if I should be expecting brain-zaps and excruciating pain the following day.

“Yes, but you just…”  She stops herself from lecturing me further on my interpersonal skills, called “exceptional” long ago in a reference letter written by my undergrad supervisor.  I knew she was stretching it with that one, didn’t I?

“We all have to deal with these things.  Give me the phone number of another pharmacy, a smaller one, close to you and I’ll have the prescription faxed to them tomorrow.”

“Okay, there is one right by the station as well called ‘Maggie’s Pharmacy’, and another Shopper’s Drug Mart close-by.”

“No, you have to stay away from Shopper’s Drug Mart now.  And actually no, you better come here to pick up the prescriptions so that you have them in your hot little hand, you know?”

I suppose she is suggesting that her staff may not execute her orders to fax the prescriptions because of my offensive conduct towards them in the past.  Tears!  Heaven forbid…

“Yes, yes, I know what you mean.  I’ll make the trip to pick them up.”

“Okay, and call me before you leave for your trip to let me know what pharmacy you are using.”

For a good twenty minutes, I am incapable of conversation, even with my partner.  Do I treat people horribly?  Am I, as I said during first year university once, “Bad at Life.”? – much to my roommates’ dismay, yet I wore this statement like a badge for some time before I turned twenty.  Should I just go on permanent disability and have my medications delivered so that I never have to leave my apartment, thus having to interact with others?

My academic goals are “respectable”, but I’m not the type of person suited to reaching such goals.  I’m a psychiatric patient.  And now I suffer from chronic pain on top of that!  The dissonance between my conversation with the GP  in person and this unexpected phone lecture scares me.  For several moments, impossible to know how long it was now, I internalize her comments.

It’s true.  I’m messed up.  I’m not like other people.  I can’t do the same things.  Do I treat my professors and peers this way too?  Most likely!   Should I go into hiding?  Yes, the general public should not be subjected to this mentally disordered monster.  Those other pharmacy employees were faking the smiles.  They shook their heads as soon as I turned to leave.  They were mocking me by calling me by my name.  They didn’t believe that I was a graduate student and teacher.  Each vile of pills with a sticker with my name on it that they ever filled they did while suppressing their own rage at having to give me a precious tablet, having to count the number of pills on a daily basis.  Of course.  That would be infuriating.

The feeling is slowly fading now, and I feel completely numb.  Emotionally exhausted.  I must have been crying and believing that the “doctor knew best!”  for longer than I thought.  I take one tablet of clonazepam, right on schedule so that my hands don’t start shaking.  I write this.

Now, I must write a proposal for a project for my methods class within the next three and a half hours.  It will be subject to dissection as the last one was.  Words and sentences underlined and in need of correction.  Almost every sentence.  Sometimes both a sentence and a word within it.  After all, my research lies on the professor’s back.  It’s really his project.  I will try to conform to his preferred way of writing.  Then I will go to sleep, and wake up when I usually wake up, between 6:30 and 7:00, and walk to Shopper’s Drug Mart one last time.  God, please don’t let that pharmacist be the one on duty.  Another mistake.

Be careful what you wish for because it will not come true.

I’ll say my goodbyes, and the employees will breathe a loud sigh of relief once I am out of earshot.

No other pharmacy opens before 9am, in the entire city, never mind my neighbourhood. I will have to start going to bed several hours later, and trying to get up later.  I hate doing this.  I love working during the silent morning, finishing up by sunrise.

It is no longer my right though.  A slap on the wrist for bad behaviour.  That’s just life.  I shall deal with having to pick up prescriptions every morning as every one else does, right?

I feel nothing.  My character has been erased for the evening.  I hope this does not offend.  I suppose it won’t – emotionless is what you want me to be.  I hope you’re happy, then.  I feel like shit, but I’ll do anything to make the pharmacy team and my doctor happy – their lives, after all, are of more value.  I am risky.  I could fall off the map anytime, considering my psychiatric “case history”.  But while I’m around, I better not get distraught, ask people to carry out their jobs, or cry.

Awesome.

Every time I lower my dose of Paxil I feel really sick. Soooo close to being off of it, yet so far. I don’t think I’m going to get off of it anytime soon. Feeling tooooooo shitty right now.

Furious Seasons recently posted an article about a former AstraZenica employee who was pressured to bury evidence about the extreme weight gain associated with the mood stabilizer Seroquel.

This isn’t all that surprising, although it is still beneath contempt.  I guess “possible side effects include morbid obesity and type 2 diabetes” doesn’t have quite the same ring to it as “possible side effects include weight gain.”  After all, people hear “weight gain” as a possible side effect of medication and generally think 10-15 lbs.  I’ve seen people on mood stabilizers literally gain upwards of 100 lbs in the course of one year, probably doomed to a lifetime of judgment from doctors and bystanders who wonder why they just don’t have the willpower to put down their fork.

When drug companies and medical professionals grossly downplay this severe and potentially fatal side effect, patients are unable to make an informed decision about their treatment, or, if their medication is compulsory, they aren’t at the very least warned that a few hours after taking Seroquel, regardless of whether or not they are the least bit hungry, they are probably going to feel a compulsion to binge eat like a vampire thirsts for human blood.  (This is experience talking.  In fact, in the hospital we all experienced en masse what we came to refer to as the “Seroquel Munchies.”)  For reasons unknown- because no one entirely understands how psychiatric medications work- antidepressants and mood stabilizers seem to block the brain’s “I’m full; stop eating” signal, causing people who are taking them to keep eating long after they are full.

Abusive (or at least unethical) medication falls under the category of things the general public doesn’t think are part of modern, compassionate mental heath treatment. As with nearly every other psychiatric horror story, I can assure you it is alive and well, particularly in the public health care system.  (The grayish-green shells of human beings who could barely speak or write their own names from all the drugs that were forced on them in the state hospital will haunt me to my grave.)

To some extent, I think involuntary overmedication is pretty much inevitable in treating psychological crises, and I know I was given more than therapeutic doses of my meds while hospitalized for good reason- to keep me alive- but there are limits.  For example, a friend of mine, who is the nicest person you could ever hope to meet, (I’m talking Mother Theresa nice) was a patient while I was in the crisis center, and though he was as far as humanly possible from harming himself or anyone else, he was kept on the maximum security ward about 90% of the time, and every time he insisted on leaving the center, the psychiatrist increased his dose of Abilify.  Abilify is usually a very stimulating drug, but for whatever reason people with ADD sometimes have the exact opposite reaction to psych meds, and combined with the fact that he had been homeless and probably weighed a buck ten at the time, eventually he became so lethargic (“Abilified” as he called it) that he would fall asleep and wet his pants during group therapy.  This was a person who never so much as raised his voice to anyone, much less made any physical attempt to escape the building; all he ever did was repeatedly insist he didn’t belong there because he wasn’t suicidal or an addict (the two reasons people are generally admitted to the crisis center).  He was manic, and he needed to be stabilized, but there was no justifiable reason to medicate him to the point he completely lost control of his bodily functions.  Mostly I think he just annoyed his psychiatrist.  (Even I will admit that when he kept trying to convince me biblical verses proved Job was a Buddhist and wouldn’t shut up about it, it got on my nerves.)

Overmedication isn’t the only issue with inpatient treatment.  From all I’ve ever heard from people who have been involuntarily committed, psychiatric hospitals will generally choose the newest drugs possible to treat their patients.  This may not sound like a problem; it might even sound like a good thing to people on the outside looking in; (newer is better, right?) but there are actually two things seriously wrong with this.

When I was in the hospital, pretty much everyone was on Effexor and Seroquel- two medications that, at the time, were just this side of FDA approval; which meant they were years away from being available in generic form.  Since most of the patients at the state hospital were unemployed and/or homeless, it’s likely to assume they didn’t have top of the line insurance policies waiting for them on the outside.  Basically, they had become dependent on medications they could not possibly afford out of pocket, and for which they would have to move a mountain to convince Medicare or whatever crap prescription coverage they had to cover them.  Low income prescription plans will never cover brand name medications without a fight so long as there is a generic alternative, which, in the case of new generation antidepressants is completely asinine, because they were formulated specifically for people who haven’t benefited from drugs that have been on the market long enough to have generic equivalents.

Even worse, however, is the fact that it usually takes a few years and a class action lawsuit or two for all of a drug’s side effects to come to light.  Perhaps a hospital uses the pharmaceutical kickbacks to offset its operating costs, but the side effects and long-term consequences of using the latest medications to treat its patients is impossible to predict.  I was in treatment with one woman whose bladder completely shut down and had to be catheterized.  Her doctor merely said, “Wow, that’s interesting.  I’ve never heard of that before.”

One of the earliest use of plant-matter was by burning it, breathing in the smoke. Some plants would help with respiratory problems, some with nausea or head-aches. Some plants would calm and relax, others were considered to open the mind for the unseen – the world of the Gods.

So of course I was not surprised when I stumbled upon this article:

Burning Incense Is Psychoactive: New Class Of Antidepressants Might Be Right Under Our Noses.

Because the last few periods have been pretty horriffic in terms of mood swings, I’ve actually begun using my ipod calendar not just to track it, but to warn me ahead of time like some sort of PMS Doppler.

The level of depression, anxiety, and uncontrollable crying is…embarrassing, especially since I can see how irrational it is from a mile away. But that’s the whole point with all of these mental disorders — they’re evidence of how difficult it can be to act rational because the irrational can be so rational.

I have been concerned, for some time, that I have PMDD, which is not something you go around telling people. Continue Reading »