The Thursday Downer (on Thursday) + Various

Uhhhh, so The Daily Mail reports: 'Low serotonin levels do not cause depression, according to a major review. Today's landmark findings call into question society's ever-growing reliance on antidepressants like Prozac. Millions of patients take selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, designed to boost levels of the 'feel-good' chemical.' 

Most anti-depressants are SSRIs, Selective Serotonin uptake Inhibitors. We've been on 'em since 2005.  Serotonin levels and SSRIs are all a fancy of way of saying someone is 'a bit off' and by giving them this pill, they get to normal. There's also this from the Daily Mail, 'At the same time, a raft of studies have suggested they don't work any better than a placebo.'

Our late FB friend Kathy Shaidle once wrote, 'Anti-depressants' work.' After going on the sauce in the mid-2000s, we were calmer less cranky, less irritable...BUT anti-depressants have side effects. One pill kept us up at night, one pill made us tired during the day. The meds wear off after a while, that was a nasty little surprise. Once we tried a new medication and found it hard to restrain ourselves from saying exactly what we thought, like, 'Why don't you shut the fuck up?' Over the long haul, we do feel numbed over. We take only one pill now, mostly just to get to sleep, though it is an SSRI.

We no longer believe the benefits are worth the side effects. 

NJ.com says Bruce Springsteen is a man of the people: 'As the first crop of U.S. concert dates for Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band’s highly anticipated 2023 tour went on sale Wednesday, fans were met with exorbitant prices on Ticketmaster caused by the website’s “market priced” system, allowing ticket prices to fluctuate due to demand.' In some cases, tickets cost thousands of dollars. Who would pay that? Bon Jovi is better.

The heatwave continues here in New Jersey and we have at least another week of 95+ temps. We asked Mrs. Stroock, and she agrees that this is what summer was like during our Northern Virginia days. We knew we lived down there too long when we moved to NJ during in July of 2001 during a supposed heat wave and we didn't think it was that bad. 

Speaking of the south, today is our Naches, MS born grandmother's birthday. Every Sunday at her house she'd put out a NY Giants placemat for us. There'd be ice cream and homemade chocolate sauce. She once knitted us a tank sweater. Our niece is named for that woman, and we intend to pester her all day. In fact, we're doing that this very moment. Fifty years in New York and she managed to keep her southern accent. This is what it sounded like, 'Suthunus confowm' -slowly.

The Thursday Downer (Supplemental)

Summer gets us down, these last few years. We've no idea why. Maybe it's just because the season moves so damn fast now. In the Stroock family we have dance recitals at the end of June, then July fourth in the Berkshires, before you know it it's my birthday, and then August. We get downright depressed, existentially so. 

Since 2005 we've taken pills for that.

It was late summer 2017 that our medication regimen broke down completely. Like, just stopped working. We were white knuckling for months. Man, I could feel the chemical imbalance. In truth it'd been happening since late spring. 'What do you mean, after a decade they stopped working?' we asked the doctor. No one ever told us that would happen. We got a new doctor. 

Eighteen months ago we were on three meds. One pill made us sleepy in the afternoon. Another kept us awake at night. A third was to help us go to sleep. Note, we weren't up at night because we were sleepy in the afternoon or vice versa. We could power through the afternoon sleepiness and would still wake up at 2 AM and not be able to get back to sleep. The third pill raises cholesterol. Effect/side effect. Count on it. There's an 'as needed' pill too. Take one of those and all the bad feels just go right away. This pill should be illegal. 

These are the dreaded SSRIs.

When we remarked to the doctor that we still got cranky and irritable, the doctor wanted to prescribe a 4th pill. 'Whoa!' we said. We eventually concluded that where three pills failed four was not the answer. The more meds you're on, the worse you/they are doing. Two pills we can understand. One to combat depression, one to combat moodiness. 

We take one pill now. It treats our symptoms and knocks us out at night. As we mentioned above, we're down a bit now, existentially so. And a bit moody and snappy too. We just resubmitted World War 1990: The Weser and are ready to hit the panic button. Last week we looked at the old pills we used to take. We keep them in a drawer. We read the side effects and decided, 'Naaaa...' 

The Thursday Downer

Unfocused and generally lackadaisical writing yesterday, but we did start three scenes and made plans for three more. We're writing in exactly the way we wrote for Battle of the Three Seas. Stop and start, wondering who the fuck goes where and why, what's the thingy the Admiral would use for the other thingy, who tells him about the new thingy? Remember what a slog that was? Should be better this time though. We have a Chilean ship in Task Force 60. All they really do is observe. It's a way of showing what's happening. They could be superfluous, but we love the idea of a Chilean ship being in the task force.

It's baseball's opening day. We're going on a decade not really giving much of a crap. The last baseball thing we were into was the 2015 NY Mets. That team was a lot of fun, even if they blew it in the World Series. We can't watch baseball anymore. We hate the way the game is played. 

Which brings us to the Thursday Downer.

 [Why are you bringing this back?-Ed]

Dunno. Don't feel like writing up the Israeli elections.

[More like week three with Mrs. Stroock away-Ed]

And we're just generally pissed off and going through one of our medication skeptical phases.

[Ah. You are of course...-Ed]

Yes, yes, fully medicated. You don't fuck with that.

You really can't. Getting off that stuff is a bitch and if you do it wrong it's almost exactly like quitting smoking, or worse. For you normies, let there be no doubt, anti-depressants are habit forming drugs. If you drop them you get 'brain zaps', which is an apt description. They're almost like little bolts of lightening in your head, quick bursts that make you dizzy. It's a bizarre feeling.

We don't think we're over medicated now but we know we once were. We mentioned to the shrink that we were a bit irritable, even with the other meds, so the shrink prescribed more. That made three different meds + a 'take as needed' pill that should be illegal. You can stuff a family in an ice box, take one of those babies, and be perfectly ok with it. So we axed the third medication, arguing, 'If two meds failed, three is not the solution.'* We didn't argue, actually. We've made it clear to multiple parties on various occasions that we and we alone are the arbiter of our medication. Our word is supreme and final.

*Now that we think about it, we just stopped and nothing happened.