Tag: Depression

Kindle Consumption: 2023

 

A handful of books were my companions each evening this year as I dozed off, or was wakeful, or inexplicably alert in the wee hours. Some off these I’ll recommend wholeheartedly, while others are not worth your time. 

Menagerie Manor, by Gerald Durrell- Some of us are acquainted with Durrell through his accounts of an idyllic boyhood on the Greek island of Corfu. Durrell continues his obsession with animals in this volume, a collection of stories from Durrell’s years building and maintaining a zoo. The quality of the writing is an echo of My Family and Other Animals; however, in some of the stories, Durrell is inspired again, and I was at times happily transported in his telling of how he acquired and maintained his zoo creatures. Durrell is known for helping to revolutionize the purposes and operations of zoos, yet sometimes I found myself wondering whether a few of his animals would have been more content left alone in the wild. In some ways, perhaps, he never stopped being that ten-year-old kid fighting the odds to maintain his vast collection of specimens. 

Quote of the Day: Sadness or Depression

 

I found that with depression, one of the most important things you could realize is that you’re not alone. –Dwayne Johnson

Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated. Confucius

That’s the thing about depression: A human being can survive almost anything, as long as she sees the end in sight. But depression is so insidious, and it compounds daily, that it’s impossible to ever see the end. The fog is like a cage without a key. –Elizabeth Wurtzel

[Member Post]

 

Around 20 years ago, I developed a dry cough for which my doctor couldn’t identify the source. X-rays and other tests revealed nothing, and I was more than annoyed at the condition. I was a trainer and facilitator, and I knew I would drive my audience crazy (never mind tamper with my own mental health) […]

⚠️ This is a members-only post on Ricochet's Member Feed. Want to read it? Join Ricochet's community of conservatives and be part of the conversation.

Join Ricochet for free.

Join Jim and Greg as they cover President Biden’s latest all-time low approval rating. Despite delivering a Supreme Court Justice and the waning of the COVID-19 virus, Biden’s approval percentage sank to just 42% in the latest CBS New/YouGov Poll.  They also analyze the host of factors contributing to increasing despair and hopelessness in the American teenager including social media, COVID-19, and the media. And in a desperate attempt to appease his increasingly dissatisfied base, President Biden is taking steps to counter “ghost guns” this week.

We’ve Had Worse Times

 

My wife became a US citizen 14 years ago.  She did it on her own hook, after being in the US for 25 years, not because she married me.  But now she tells me she’s beginning to regret becoming a citizen because of all the nonsense we are seeing now.

Yes, racial relations are getting worse and worse and the situation is being driven by race mongers and seditionist leftists.  Yes, the libs are threatening to tax us and take the money in our IRA’s and 401ks.  Yes, an increase in inflation is threatening to destroy our retirement savings.  Yes, inflation is increasing.  Yes, corporations will pay higher taxes, and we will pay more for goods and services as a result.  Yes, people are losing their jobs and status for speaking their minds.  Yes, we are set to waste trillions on the phantom of climate change.  Yes, crime is on the rise even as leftists are calling to abolish the police.  Yes, we have seen continuous rioting, vandalism, and violence in our cities.  Yes, anti-white racism in on display everywhere.  Yes, there is an open season on American Jews.  But not to worry, I say.   The US has seen worse.

Counting Blessings, Even During Covid-19

 

Today was my Sabbath, and it started out as it usually does. But as the day wore on, I found myself feeling the fog and heaviness of the virus: fines being charged in Osceola County for not wearing masks, for one.

I still persisted in my time of prayer, meditation, and study. My restlessness was pervasive, so I finally went outside to admire my many orchid plants, removing old leaves, admiring the mix of white, purple, and yellow blossoms, and enjoying the thought of how the lanai would soon be crowded with color.

Then we went out to dinner to Beef O’Brady’s, a chain restaurant; the food is reliable and the staff is always friendly.

[Member Post]

 

I remember having a conversation a few years back with a retail store owner of Board Games. His business was slowly drying up and barely making rent, even though board games for adults have been in a come-back. Even event/shows which is were they previous made most of their money, were drying up.   Preview […]

⚠️ This is a members-only post on Ricochet's Member Feed. Want to read it? Join Ricochet's community of conservatives and be part of the conversation.

Join Ricochet for free.

[Member Post]

 

“We had to destroy the village in order to save it.” Remember this alleged quote from an unnamed military source during the Viet Nam War?  Well known New Zealand-born reporter, Peter Arnett, has asserted that this quotation was something that an “American major said to me in a moment of revelation.”  This major was allegedly […]

⚠️ This is a members-only post on Ricochet's Member Feed. Want to read it? Join Ricochet's community of conservatives and be part of the conversation.

Join Ricochet for free.

It’s Not a Mask

 

I’m tired but can’t sleep; an experience everyone has at some point. But not everyone fears to close one’s eyes for what thoughts and dreams will rush into the void of sensation. Not everyone screams and mutters without making a sound in a familiar internal battle to “just shut up and go to sleep.”

Mental illnesses are as varied as personalities. We speak of symptoms and causes generally, as with diseases and purely physical ailments, because there is a utility in generalizations and playing the odds. But depression, crippling anxiety, compulsions, hallucinations, and other psychological oddities are not like a rash that looks the same on anyone.

On Quitting My Job

 

“What makes you think you were doing bad work?” Asks the psychologist. Not a real one, just the call-and-response in my cranium.

“Well, there’s only so many hours a workday you can spend on Ricochet when you ought to be doing other things and still think you’re a good worker. I’m not going to sit here taking their coin forever when I’m not providing commensurate services in exchange. It’s dishonest.”

Book Review: I Want To Live

 

“The absolute raw truth of the matter is this: I have no idea what I am doing now, much less what I will be doing a year from now. Years of living my life for another person has left me without a clue as to how to live for myself.” from the book,

“I Want to Live – Confessions of a Grieving Caretaker by Susan D. McDaniel.

Quote of the Day: Homespun Wisdom of Bluegrass Legend Ralph Stanley

 

Ralph Stanley and his brother Carter were born in rural Virginia in the late 1920s. They lived through the Depression, but it didn’t affect them much since they lived on a high ridge, where their parents grew much of their own food, and their mother made their clothes. Ralph says in his memoir Man of Constant Sorrow:

The worst of it was over by the time I was old enough to remember much. Franklin Roosevelt was elected president in 1932, when I was five and already in school. So we had the Works Progress Administration and other government welfare programs coming in to help people out. Our family was never involved in that, either with the work or the welfare. We didn’t pay much attention to what they was doing or what they was all about. We’d see the WPA crews by the roadside, leaning on their shovels and smoking cigarettes. They always looked to be taking breaks and goofing off. We was more used to hard work, and we thought they was soft and lazy. We had our own name for them: the “We Piddle Around” boys.

Jim Geraghty of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America argue that Beto O’Rourke running for president is actually a good thing because it will either show media infatuation can get you elected or burst O’Rourke’s hype bubble. They are also concerned by the alarming rise in mental health disorders in teens that is linked to social media use. And they also give Elizabeth Warren a molecule of credit for defending capitalism, only to watch her then say markets don’t work for health care or education.

This Is My Mind on Drugs

 

I’ve debated writing this post for a long time—not because I’m ashamed of being on an anxiety medication, but because I was concerned that it might change people’s perception of me. But for reasons I won’t go into now, I’ve decided to tell the story. Some of you may say it’s “too much information”; others of you will say I’m weak for taking the drug. Since it changed my entire life and my relationships, I think it’s been worth it.

I’m not talking about the statin I’m taking — high-cholesterol runs in the family — but the generic Lexapro. Here is a description of the drug and how it helps with general anxiety disorder and depression:

Andrew Klavan joins Paul Beston on a special summertime edition of 10 Blocks to discuss faith, depression, and redemption—the focus of his memoir, The Great Good Thing: A Secular Jew Comes to Faith in Christ.

Klavan is an award-winning and bestselling author, Hollywood screenwriter, political commentator, and contributing editor for City Journal. But before his books became films starring Clint Eastwood and Michael Douglas, severe depression took him to the brink of suicide.

Give Me Misery or Give Me Death?

 

Doctors retire. That’s the context of my recent experiment in “detoxing” from two prescriptions, both of which strike me (but not yet the FDA) as good candidates for over-the-counter (OTC) sale. (Most striking detox effect so far: a massive earache.) One is Celecoxib, an anti-arthritis drug. The other is Montelukast, an anti-asthma and anti-allergy drug. What’s scary about selling both these drugs OTC is allegedly death.

Celecoxib is a Cox-2 inhibitor, and those drugs as a class still haven’t completely aired out the stink of death brought on by Vioxx. Montelukast maybe sometimes cause psychiatric side-effects, according to postmarketing reports, raising the specter of suicide (though postmarketing reports could report anything as a side-effect, short of “pet turtle died”). But the most frightening thing about Montelukast appears to be that it’s an effective asthma control medicine, and the FDA is apparently nervous about making effective asthma control medicines available to consumers directly.

Thoughts on Thinking: A Personal Odyssey

 

brainYears ago, I never tired of asking anyone who would sit still long enough some variation on the following question: Suppose you had to choose between having a strong and alert mind but with severe physical limitations (e.g., wheelchair-bound), or a perfectly healthy body and yet be as dumb as a bag of nails. Which would you choose? There was no right or wrong answer as far as I was concerned, though my own preference was for mental acuity. I simply wanted to hear the preferences and thoughts of people I found interesting.

That particular thought exercise loomed large in the mind when I sat down with my neurologist recently, having undergone a series of tests (cognitive, brain EEG, brain MRI, etc.) in the preceding weeks to determine, A) whether or not the mental fog I was occasionally experiencing was real, and B) whether there was a physical cause. “Mr. Carter, you had a stroke,” the doctor said as matter of factly as if he were announcing the Dow Jones daily closing numbers. Well, that was bracing.

It wasn’t recent, he added, though I had already figured as much. Reviewing my personal history, the doctor determined that the stroke likely occurred during an extremely stressful and traumatic event a few years back that, at the time, had me quite literally immobilized, unable to speak, with what seemed like a ribbon of agonizing pain shooting across the top of my head. Yes, I know I should have gotten myself checked out at the time, but personal circumstances made it impossible. At least now I know what happened.