Tag: Depression
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Depression Is Like “Thought Cancer”
Slowly — too slowly — our culture is beginning to understand that depression isn’t just one person feeling blue because their life sucks. It’s a health issue with causes and effects that can be treated and ameliorated. The human brain is, by far, the most complex, complicated organ in our bodies. It’s also the organ…
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Anthony Bourdain’s Passing – Three Years Ago Today – Reminds Us How Important Our Mental Health Is
Three days before Christmas 2016, I came within literal inches of killing myself. I was at the deepest point in a decade-long depression. I got lucky in the aftermath. I got well. But, even as I finally got my depression under control — the mood stabilizer I take moderates my emotions which allowed me to…
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Alcohol On Airplanes Was NEVER A Good Idea Actually; Now, Cannabis, On The Other Hand…
On May 29, American Airlines joined Southwest Airlines in suspending alcohol sales on their aircraft. Southwest did it because its passengers were becoming increasingly abusive over mask issues and when those abusive passengers started drinking… . We live in alcohol culture’s thrall the same way we used to live in Big Tobacco’s thrall. It wasn’t…
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Never Mind Walking A Mile In Someone Else’s Shoes, Try Seeing The World Through Their Eyes
The reason organizations like the ASPCA use pleading, wide-eyed dogs in their fundraising appeals is because they work. Maybe those people who fear photography captures something of their souls are on to something. Even a photo of a pleading animal’s eyes touches us deeply (as compared to the actual animal itself, pleading directly to it…
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Alcohol + A Pandemic = Terrible Decision-Making
I stopped drinking alcohol just over four years ago. I didn’t “have to” per se, but the mood stabilizer I started taking gives all alcohol a grapefruit skin-like aftertaste making it completely unpalatable. Given a choice between drinking and not being depressed, I’ll take the latter, thanks. And anyway — it’s not like consuming alcohol…
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Dear American News Media — The Way You Deal With A LIAR Is The Same Way You Deal With A DRUNK — You REFUSE To Argue With Em…
I stopped drinking alcohol about two years ago. I didn’t have to but the mood stabilizer I’m on gives alcohol a terrible aftertaste. It was an unexpected side effect — and, frankly, I’m grateful for it. When I say I didn’t “have to” stop drinking, what I mean is, I didn’t stop because I perceived…
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What Being Deeply Depressed Taught Me About Life — And Being Happy
Three days before Christmas 2016, I came within literal inches of harming myself, perhaps fatally. It was pure impulse — a flash of self-directed anger that I’d been building toward for a decade. Oh, the irony… even as I plotted to off myself, I didn’t know (or admit to myself) WHY I felt this terrible…
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Each & Every One Of Us Is Making It Up As We Go Along — Every Day; Why Not Own It?
I’ve told this story here before. Three days before Christmas 2016, I came within inches of bullshitting myself to death. That’s how I thought of it not long afterward — after driving straight to my doctor’s office and pretty much demanding that he write me a prescription for the mood stabilizer I had researched and…
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Notes From A Former Drinker — Drinking Culture Is Really, Really, REALLY Stupid
Perspective is the damnedest thing. For the overwhelming majority of my adult life, I was a drinker. I never thought of myself as an alcoholic though I drank at least 2 glasses of wine every day. Religiously. I prided myself on making not merely a good martini but a great one (I still do as…
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We Live In A “Golden Age Of Bullshit” – And Its Patron Saint — Donald Trump — Is Killing Us
If ever one word captured the age we live in — it’s “bullshit”. And could a man embody & epitomize bullshit any better than Donald Trump? Shameless plug first — I just finished (and I’m agent-shopping) a book: How To Live Bullshit Free (And Other Showbiz Tales). It’s a painfully funny, brutally honest, name-dropping Hollywood…