Tag: Depression

Two women in a public bathroom passing a pad in a yellow and white wrapper between them

Let’s Talk About Periods and Mental Health

Genevieve2 Comments

May is Mental Health Awareness Month! One lesser-tackled mental health topic (in my opinion) is that of periods and mental health.

Invalidation: Public and Self

We often see in media the idea that a woman on her period is “crazy”- invalidating language that means it’s ok for others to ignore her feelings. I think it’s important to recognize that the hormonal changes we experience don’t suddenly make us different people. I, for one, become rather cranky, but not because I’ve developed a new set of preferences and opinions; I just have a lower tolerance for irritation. A much, much lower tolerance. Things that at any other time would simply make me shake my head suddenly either make me briefly, intensely angry or likely to burst into tears.

I find myself downplaying the effects of my period on my mental health all the time. I think it stems from its temporary nature. I know that it won’t last long, so it seems silly to let it take up much space on my list of mental difficulties. When I’m seeing red because somebody put a spoonful of cooked rice in the dishwasher and ran it, I invalidate myself. I tell myself that how I feel doesn’t matter because it’s caused by temporary hormones and my reaction is disproportionately intense. And it is temporary and more intense than is warranted. But the reality is, it’s extremely uncomfortable to experience month after month. Each small instance of unreasonable mood swinging adds up to something with tangible impact.

But it’s ~Natural~

Having a healthy menstrual cycle is a positive thing! If women for millennia have been dealing with theirs, why should I let mine be a roadblock for me? I’m sure women millennia ago thought it sucked just as much as we do, if not more. Modern methods of dealing with it hygienically and the availability of painkillers probably makes menstruating a good deal more comfortable for us. (Of course, there’s a conversation to be had about poverty’s restriction of women’s access to these modern resources. Not everyone enjoys the comforts of disposable period products. Here’s a good resource for learning about period poverty.)

There are definitely positive ways of talking about periods; their position in the menstrual cycle plays a vital role in fertility and reproduction, after all. That doesn’t eliminate the damage that periods can do to our mental health, however. We can recognize the beauty of a natural, cyclical process while also shaking our collective fists at Mother Nature.

A grid of tampons wrapped in plastic with no applicators on a light blue background
Photo by Natracare on Unsplash

PMS and Depression

As many as 3 in 4 women experience PMS. Symptoms include mood swings, irritability, crying spells, social withdrawal, and a host of uncomfortable physical symptoms. That alone is more than enough to be impactful when it comes to a person’s periods and mental health. And what about people who have a mental health diagnosis in addition to PMS? According to the Office on Women’s Health, “Many women seeking treatment for PMS have depression or anxiety. Symptoms of these mental health conditions are similar to symptoms of PMS and may get worse before or during your period.”

Personally, I can say with certainty that when I’m really struggling with my depression, my suicidal thoughts and the urges to self harm are worst leading up to and during my period. In fact, my period started a few days into my hospitalization in 2019 – a connection that I only made later on. The effects of the hormonal changes may be temporary, but my period is a setback to my mental health on a regular basis. And with an extremely serious thing like suicidal ideation, any factor that worsens it is nothing to be dismissed. Sometimes, even when things are getting better, I have sneaky, destructive thoughts because of hormonal fluctuations.

In those cases, it is helpful to remember that my period is to blame and that it will pass. I have to strike a balance, though. It’s easy for me to bully myself into feeling bad about slip ups and setbacks because “it’s just my period.” Hormones are powerful and their effects are very real, no matter how temporary.

Managing Periods and Mental Health

There are many ways to manage PMS for a better relationship between your periods and mental health. Many people find that lifestyle changes through diet, exercise, and healthy sleep are enough to improve their PMS, but your doctor might suggest other options as well. Hormonal contraceptives can help even out the dramatic peaks and valleys of hormone changes. For some people, PMS rises to the level of PMDD, or premenstrual dysphoric disorder. This can be treated through a variety of interventions.

It’s unfortunate that conversations about the mental health effects of the menstrual cycle are reserved only for certain private settings and are kept to a quiet minimum. Periods are a fact of life for many people. We should be able to discuss them openly as a legitimate factor affecting mental health. A survey of 1,500 women found that 58% have been embarrassed about their period at one point or another. 62% of respondents were uncomfortable even using the word “period.” Thankfully, there are many initiatives fighting stigma and working to provide resources to women and girls around the world, and we can keep the conversation going.

How does your period impact your mental health? Have you experienced period shame?

close-up-of-dandelion-seed-head-with-green-grass-below

Switching Antidepressants: Emsam Update

Genevieve3 Comments

I’ve been taking Emsam, an MAOI antidepressant, for a few days now, and although I can’t say that I feel amazing, I think I do feel better than I did before I started. The two weeks between ending Wellbutrin and starting Emsam were a struggle, but hopefully will be worth it.

Emsam comes as a patch that you wear for 24 hours and then replace with a new one. It’s an adjustment to not just plop some additional pills into my organizer for the week. It’s ever-so-slightly more labor-intensive this way, but I think it has been easier for me to accept than previous medicine changes have been. I have some kind of hang-up about pills and how many I need, so adding a new one always upsets me. Even though Emsam is a new antidepressant for me, it seems to have bypassed my usual judgments by virtue of being a patch. Perhaps my inner critic is secretly a child placated by cool stickers.

I’m noticing some insomnia, but nothing horrible. In fact, the napping that had returned when I stopped Wellbutrin has been reduced again. Sometimes I still attempt to take a nap because, well, my napping problem is partly fatigue, partly escapism. So even though I still try to pass a few hours by sleeping, it hasn’t been working since the introduction of Emsam.

As a result, I’ve been doing a lot of yardwork. The dandelions are quickly taking over the backyard. Luckily, endlessly repetitive tasks are my jam. I’m digging them up one by one, a byproduct of which is some unintended soil aeration! I also took down all of the rabbit fencing that I used to make our backyard fence taller because Stella was jumping it last summer. That solution did not work for long.

In fact, she jumped a six-foot-tall fence in pursuit of a squirrel the other day, so there really is no containing her unless she’s on a strong tether. Might as well get rid of the unsightly fence addition. She causes me so much anxiety sometimes, but she’s still a wonderful dog.

black-dog-with-pointy-ears-lying-on-blue-blanket-with-tongue-sticking-out
Blep

Historically, I’ve been mean to myself about napping because I tell myself I should be doing something productive with that time. Now that I’m not napping (pretty much), I have lots of time to get stuff done. And I’m still mean to myself. What a surprise.

In sporadic bursts, I’ve been searching for a new job for a while. I’ll get started on it, saving postings, updating things, applying to a few here and there, but not really dedicating myself to it because my current job is “ok.” I know that I’m avoiding it. It used to be that I’d be mad at myself for wasting time by napping. Now that I’m not napping, I’m mad at myself for STILL not tackling it, despite having plenty of time as a conscious person. Then again, it’s only been a few days since I started Emsam, and perhaps it will make things easier with some more time.

I’m attempting to heed my therapist’s advice about how a gentler approach is more effective and that no, you won’t become a stagnant blob of disappointment if you stop beating yourself up about your perceived lack of progress. I’m unconvinced, but I’m trying.

scattered-white-pills-in-upper-right-quadrant-on-light-blue-background

Goodbye, Wellbutrin. Hello, MAOI.

Genevieve5 Comments

A week ago, I stopped taking Wellbutrin so that I can try Emsam, an MAOI. (I have to wait two weeks between ending Wellbutrin and beginning the MAOI.) I think it was good timing that my most recent ketamine infusion was around the same time I stopped taking Wellbutrin because I’m already feeling pretty terrible. I have the sense that without it, this change might have been even more abruptly bad. Maybe it’s a good setup for when Emsam just blows my mood out of the water, right? A nice contrast will really emphasize its effectiveness. One can hope.

It’s safe to say that Wellbutrin was holding my hypersomnia at bay, and now that I’m not taking it, I’m basically a koala. (They sleep 18-22 hours per day, and not because they’re high on eucalyptus – they’re just dedicating lots of energy to digestion.) It would be great if I could selectively dedicate all the energy I save by sleeping to something else, like hair growth. I could be a brunette Rapunzel in no time.

It is endlessly disappointing to me that I can’t seem to function very well without antidepressants. You’d think I would have accepted it by now. And yet, every single time I change one of my medications and experience a sudden worsening of my depression, I get all upset with myself for not being able to handle it.

I considered this move for a while. SSRIs and SNRIs haven’t helped me much, so branching out to an MAOI seems worth a try. Wellbutrin was clearly helping, particularly in the motivation department, but it was still less impactful than I had hoped. Eventually, I decided that giving up the motivation that Wellbutrin gives me in the hopes that Emsam will help me even more is worth it. It does kind of suck that I can’t go directly from one to the other, though. Two weeks sans antidepressant is proving to be challenging.

A big part of me wanted to just leave things the same and continue to try to build on the benefits of Wellbutrin through my own “natural” efforts. Something that I wrestle with constantly is my uncertainty around what I should expect of myself. It never seems right to say, “I can’t do X because of depression,” because it pains me to be limited by my own brain. So, I continue to struggle far below meeting my perfectionistic standards for myself and then am crushed when “I can’t do X because of depression” turns out to be somewhat true. I never allow myself any grace when depression slows me down.

So, in the end, I’m feebly trying to convince myself that trying yet another medication is fine because if I could have worked my way out of depression by now, I would have. It’s important to do the work I can do day-to-day. But, as anyone with depression knows, it’s tough to do the things that you know are good for your mental health when your mental illness won’t get out of your way. Not impossible! Don’t get me wrong, I’ve been exercising, keeping up with my job, trying to eat 3 meals a day – the works. But that can only get me so far, and most of it tends to fizzle out when I’m in a mental place like this.

I felt okay on Wellbutrin, but ideally, I don’t want to settle for okay. But if Emsam doesn’t work out, it is nice to know that Wellbutrin is something I could return to. For now, I’ll just keep working on my Rapunzel hair and waiting for Wednesday of next week, when I can begin my MAOI experiment.

marbled-swirl-blue-and-white-with-brown-center-of-spiral

Some Benefits of Ketamine for Treatment-Resistant Depression (for me)

GenevieveLeave a comment

My last ketamine infusion was much less trippy than the previous one, so I’m relieved to say that I remember absolutely none of it. Much less fun to describe, but also less persistently, somewhat threateningly bizarre. We skipped the magnesium this time, and I did not have any sudden, limb-jerking spasms. It’s good to know that was likely the culprit. When I can’t remember an infusion, I feel pretty curious about the off-putting gap in my memory. I always think it’s interesting to know what I experienced during a ketamine infusion, and when I can’t, I feel like I’m missing out on something that I just can’t access. Thankfully, the benefits of ketamine for treatment-resistant depression remain even when I can’t remember them.

Eating Food

I’ve been having some problems with nausea and appetite since starting Wellbutrin. They mimic what I feel when I’m really depressed, just amplified. Food is not appealing, neither in my imagination nor my mouth. When it’s time to eat, my goal is to find something that’s least unappetizing. Eating it is a strangely empty experience, as if I can recognize the flavors but can’t assemble them into something I like. The closest analogy I can think of is that it’s like the difference between sound and music. For a few days following a ketamine infusion, that problem is gone. It’s easy to pick something to eat, and not only does it register as, say, a grilled cheese sandwich, but my brain is also willing to exchange it for dopamine. Things taste like how food should taste, and it’s great.

Making Decisions

Ketamine makes the days following an infusion feel remarkably lighter. The difficulty I have with making even small decisions is much improved. I just go about my days without getting stuck at every turn. Speaking of turns, I’ve really been enjoying my morning walks with Stella. When we come to an intersection, I let her choose, and we amble around a ridiculously inefficient route that’s different each day. I am typically a very routine-driven person, so this microscopic spontaneity is a teeny, tiny sign that says
“ketamine helped!” If the ketamine wears off or some other factor occurs and my depression gets worse, I tend to become more rigid in the route we take. I’m sure Stella prefers our ketamine-lightened walks, and so do I.

Thinking about the Future

The bigger benefits of ketamine for treatment-resistant depression, for me, are centered around my attitudes about the future. Depression makes me feel hopeless, and ketamine lifts that – sometimes just a little, but sometimes a lot. I’m not sure what determines the degree of helpfulness, but it’s always a welcome effect. It makes it easier to imagine myself making changes and taking big steps.

Other benefits of ketamine for treatment-resistant depression that I notice include:

  • Sleeping less
  • Feeling more social
  • Experiencing something called “fun”
  • Feeling satisfied about completing a task
  • Noticing little things that I appreciate or find interesting
  • Reduced suicidal thoughts (hasn’t been much of a problem recently, but I’ve definitely noticed that in the past)

Lately, I’ve noticed that the most noticeable changes stick around for a few days or a week, then things level off to a pretty neutral place where I’m neither jazzed about life nor am I in the pits of despair. By three weeks, I’m in something like the salt marshes of despondency; not inescapable, but pretty unpleasant.

That is a completely individualized timeline. Everyone is different, and I get the feeling from the forum I’m on that there are a lot of people who go much longer between needing ketamine infusions. I kind of try not to think about it because of what they say about comparison, I guess. (They = various quotes)

Musings about Medication

hand-holding-stack-of-smarties-candy-in-palm
This was tagged “medication” on Unsplash, and I thought, “that’s a weird swap of the typical ‘pills aren’t candy, kids!’ warning.” (Photo credit: Sharon McCutcheon)

My medications may change again sometime soon, and although I just said that getting ketamine infusions for depression makes making decisions easier for me, I’m setting that choice aside for now. It’s harder to decide soon after an infusion because I feel like I don’t need to change anything. I feel better, therefore, I should keep things the same. But, ketamine wears off at some point, and even though I feel “better,” should I stop at that point? Maybe I only feel a fraction of my potential “better” but it seems like a lot because it’s better than abysmal. These choices are always hard. I don’t want to settle for just ok, but I worry that I’m expecting too much. Maybe this is exactly how happy people feel – they’re just more grateful for it.

But then a couple of weeks pass and I slowly start sliding backwards into napping and apathy and isolation, and I realize that there was no in-between. It was mildly happy and then increasingly depressed. There must be something more than that. I habitually blame myself for depression in the short term. A bad day or week makes me think that I let myself wallow and didn’t try to change things. I think that I’m lazy and burdensome and why can’t I just be cheerful? But when I look at the long-term – the years I’ve spent with depression – I feel kind of robbed. It’s easier to see the trends of it and the forks in the road where I didn’t pick the option the non-depressed me would have chosen. I may try to blame myself for all of that too, but the more reasonable answer is that depression has been in my way. Sometimes, that perspective makes me determined, and all of the other times, it makes me tired.

My last few months have been saturated with medication changes and mood fluctuations. I go up and down, up and down, and I’m thankful for the ups, but there’s something about the downs that feels so much more impactful. Despite the incremental progress I’m making after starting Wellbutrin, I feel completely insecure in that success, like it’s just visiting and will have to leave soon. A large part of me says that would be disastrous and I’ll just have to claw my way forward from here on out because losing ground would be unacceptable. I guess we’ll find out.

black therapy dog with pointy ears laying on side raising head with one eye closed while covered in dry grass

My Unofficial Therapy Dog

Genevieve6 Comments

I’ve started bringing my dog to therapy. Does she sit with me and look patiently into my eyes while I cry? No, definitely not. She spends 10 minutes wandering around, smelling the smells of the week with great vigor. She pokes the diffuser with her nose, sticks her whole head in the trash can, and squeeeezes behind my therapist’s chair to not-so-sneakily smell her belongings. Then, she goes back and forth between the window and relaxing on the rug, ears perked up, listening for outside sounds. She comes over to me for pets and cookies every once in a while, but mostly, she’s just nice to have around as my unofficial therapy dog. She’s completely oblivious to my human problems. Looking at her blissful ignorance during therapy is like a brain palate cleanser.

You can’t help but wonder what she thinks of this development. Here we are, in this room we come to sometimes for no discernible reason. Pretty comfy. New smells since last week. 8/10. Would be better if I got second dinner. All that matters to her is that I feed her, walk her, and let her sleep at the foot of my bed. She’s a simple creature – intensely curious and frustratingly smart – but simple in that she really doesn’t need a lot to be happy.

She shares some of that innocent joy with me. She makes me smile every single day. It doesn’t matter how depressed I am – she does something goofy or sweet and has no clue that I find her antics ridiculous. Like how she leads with her face when encountering snowdrifts, or her exasperation at me taking constant photos of her, or the many, many hilarious faces of Sleeping Stella.

Sometimes, when I try to change something in my treatment(s), my depression says, “No, thank you.” Changing my medications has not gone well for me in the past, but I continue to clutch my personal dream of reducing the number of things I pick up from the pharmacy. I recently added a drug which required me to get off of something else, which overall, does not seem to have gone well. The options now are complicated and I don’t particularly like any of them, but I still have Stella! The routine, obligatory outdoor time, and turbo-boosted zoomies have done me immeasurable good. She demands my attention and action, and there’s really no telling her to just go entertain herself. Our walks are sacrosanct to her. No replacements. And no skimping on length, either!

This was part of my goal in adopting her, and it worked in more ways than just the responsibility of it. I thought that it would be healthy for me to be forced to get out of bed and do things, but that the emotional reward of that would come during my good times. I wasn’t expecting my unofficial therapy dog to be able to careen through the fog of my depression and make me smile every single day. A smile or laugh every day certainly doesn’t fix everything, but it’s something to be thankful for.

upside-down photo of woman and black dog lying next to each other showing movement in photo
“We’re snuggling! This’ll be cute.”

large-translucent-orbs-of-blue-and-purple-tones-on-dark-blurry-background

Post-Infusion Confusion: The Ketamine Chronicles (Part 32)

GenevieveLeave a comment

My experience of receiving IV ketamine for depression this time around is now almost completely lost in the recesses of my brain. I do remember having an odd, somewhat uncomfortable feeling early on that I recognized from one of my recent ketamine infusions. My best description of this feeling is that my thoughts were physically too large for my head and too fast to really grasp. But what was most interesting about this infusion was what happened afterward.

First of all, I was so incredibly disoriented that when I thought that my mom was driving in the wrong direction, I asked, “Wait. Where are we going?”

“…Home…?” She replied. It then dawned on me that we were leaving my appointment rather than being on our way there. I was so impaired that I didn’t even remember going to the appointment at all.

The second very strange thing that happened post-infusion was that I began having brief, uncontrollable muscle spasms combined with sudden knee buckling that affected my entire body. I was wobbling along, trying not to fall in the parking garage, when it hit me. My arm shot out in front of me, flinging the apple juice I was holding onto the floor, and the rest of me doubled over for a second. It felt sort of like when you fall asleep sitting up and then violently jerk awake. Except, I was walking. For the rest of the afternoon/evening, this happened in varying degrees at least once per hour. At least, that’s my estimate. Then again, maybe we shouldn’t trust the person who couldn’t even remember going to a ketamine infusion.

The muscle spasms are mysterious but may have been due to the magnesium we’ve been adding, which helps some people see better results from ketamine. We plan to skip it next time, as it hasn’t made a dramatic difference for me, mood-wise. While magnesium may not be important for my depression, something was very different about this experience. The infusion itself seemed the same, but the bizarre visual, proprioceptive, and even auditory components extended far past the time when they usually disappear for me. I can only attribute this to the other measures we take in the effort to slow down my metabolism of ketamine, plus the somewhat recent increase in dose, but to be honest, I don’t know why this one was different.

Generally, by the time I’m capable of putting my shoes on to leave the clinic, things look pretty much normal. This time – not so much. Once home, I noticed that a piece of crumpled paper appeared to have cobwebs on it with tiny insects crawling around inside it. At first, I was completely fooled. Fascinated, unsettled, and fooled. I peered at it from a close-but-safe distance, trying to get my eyes to focus on its movement. I tried alternately holding my breath and blowing on it to see if the gentle movement was actually caused by my own proximity; I tried holding my hand above it to feel for a draft, and I tried touching it with another piece of paper. But, no matter what I did, the cobwebs continued to wave slowly back and forth at their own pace, and the small bugs never explored past the cobwebs. My little tests helped me realize that it wasn’t real, but I was so interested in it that I continued to stare.

Eventually, I dragged my eyes away from the paper to look behind me, and when I turned back, the bugs and cobwebs were gone. After the rather large amount of time I spent engrossed in a crumpled piece of brown paper, I suddenly understood via first-person experience why ketamine’s effects make for a useful clinical model of psychosis. The entire event was bizarre and deeply unsettling in a way I can’t quite describe.

My eyesight was frustratingly blurry, to the point that things actually looked clearer without my glasses. I’m not sure exactly how the physics of that works, but wearing my glasses seemed to make it much more difficult to focus my eyes than it was without them. Attempting to lock my gaze on something flat and relatively close to me, like texts on my phone, made the object recede and push forward into subtle 3-dimensionality on repeat.

Perhaps the most persistent phenomenon of this post-ketamine experience was the sound of voices next to me. I’ve been re-watching a show I like lately, and at some point in the afternoon, I realized that I had been “listening in” on the dialogue of several fictional characters off to my right for at least an hour — not sure about that timeline, though. Their voices sounded exactly like the actors’ voices; so much so that I felt I could identify the person speaking at any given time. There seemed to be a choppy plot- not one familiar to me from the actual show. My brain must have created a whole new plot, but I couldn’t tell you what it was. I again reminded myself that I was just not quite past the effects of ketamine, and that it would pass. It wasn’t that I ever thought those fictional people were actually next to me; the voices just wouldn’t stop. It was like listening to a podcast that I couldn’t turn off. I kept trying to distract myself with something else, but I would eventually drift away from it, back to the voices. Then, after what felt like a few minutes, I’d remember that it’s generally not good to be hearing voices and would try to distract myself again. I was moderately creeped out, but mostly exasperated by the fact that I couldn’t reliably corral my thoughts back to reality.

All of this – the experience of seeing and hearing things so long after an infusion is distinctly new to me. There have been times when I thought I heard things post-infusion, but I’m never quite positive that those sounds weren’t real, and they always happened much closer to the infusion. It seems possible that I might have just been thinking about that show and gotten pulled into an imaginary scene, which doesn’t necessarily count as hearing things. But the cobwebs – which I also saw once during an infusion when I left my eyes open for too long – definitely appeared to be taking up space in the real world, and long after I’m usually good to go.

Today, I feel much more like myself, although I’m strangely exhausted despite doing basically nothing all day yesterday. My vision is still a tad blurry, which I think might have been the scopolamine patch I was wearing, which can dilate your pupils. I’m going to make a checklist before the next time of things that I need to do when I come home from a ketamine infusion. It’s difficult to keep things straight when you can’t remember whether you even made it to the infusion in the first place! I’m going to take this weird continuation of my ketamine infusion experience to mean that it might be more effective against my depression this time. Or, maybe it’s a really bad sign and nobody else ever experiences this. When I find out, I’ll let you know.

If you liked this post, consider starting at the beginning of the Ketamine Chronicles, or visit the archives to find month-by-month posts.

Search & Rescue Elephants and Other Therapy Tidbits

Genevieve3 Comments

My mental health has once again taken a turn in a not-fun direction, which I attribute to some recent medication changes. So, instead of sitting here thinking, I should write something. I can’t think of anything to write, and then putting down anything I do write as being the worst drivel ever to appear on my screen, I’m going to take you on a little diversion.

Did you know that an elephant’s sense of smell is twice as strong as that of a bloodhound’s? (C, that documentary led me astray. Google says twice, not four times.) This is what I said to my therapist the other day in one of my many futile attempts to distract from the topic at hand. We’ve also discussed, among other things, a documentary I watched called “Octopus Volcano,” how scallops have eyes, and what “horse” is in ASL. Usually, when I share a fun fact like this, there’s a brief exchange, and then she goes, “Well, that used up about a minute and a half.” And then we’re back where we started, just a little more entertained. This time, I think we probably used up, like, at least three minutes with the elephant fact. It may have been the most productive time-wasting fact I’ve ever pulled out of my sleeve. We got going on a train of thought that I think has some incredible real-world promise.

Just imagine: search and rescue ELEPHANTS. The police force brings out the specially trained sniffer elephants in super-wide trailers. They step down, decked out in vests that say “DO NOT PET. I’M WORKING,” but the vests are really just tarps secured around their bellies with bungee cords because the elephant service vest market just isn’t there yet. Soon, they’re working in airports, sniffing for bombs and drugs. All floors have widened stairs and elephant-safe ramps, and next to the dog relief areas are rooms with piles of dirt for the pachyderms to toss over their backs. Retired sniffer elephants spend their golden years relaxing with their family herd with frequent visits from their old handlers, revered as heroes for their invaluable contributions. I think we’re on to something, here.

“Sir? Sir! This is a service animal. Please don’t feed her the limp lettuce off your hamburger.”

Is this a breakthrough? Did I have a breakthrough in therapy?! Yeah, yeah, it’s not about me, but a striking realization is a striking realization. Elephants are the next sniffer dogs. Maybe they’re not as motivated to please humans, and they do need to eat a tremendous amount of foliage as they travel great distances throughout the day, but I think those problems could be overcome with some creativity. There really is no limit to what you can take away from therapy.

Non-sequitur segue! Other problems that can probably be overcome include my current difficulties with changing my clothes and eating and getting work done and my general depression problems. Titrating down on an antidepressant can be tricky. I’m trying to figure out whether this dip in my mood is because this antidepressant was helping me more than I thought it was, regular old withdrawal, ketamine wearing off, or any number of other variables. I suppose time will tell. Let’s persist in our efforts to overcome wacky, theoretical elephant scenarios and the challenges of living life.

P.S. Good luck to the Google algorithm in trying to figure out what the heck this post is about. 🙂