294: Barely There

# Barely There

[00:00:00] **Jeff:** Hello everybody. This is Overtired. I’m one of your hosts, Jeff severances. Gunzel and I just got outta my prepo shower. And I’m here with Christina Warren and Brett Terpstra. Hello, friends

[00:00:19] **Brett:** I have always said that cleanliness is next to podcast or

[00:00:23] nurse.

[00:00:24] **Jeff:** podcast.

[00:00:26] **Brett:** Yes.

[00:00:26] **Jeff:** Hi,

[00:00:28] **Brett:** Hi

[00:00:28] **Christina:** Hello?

[00:00:31] **Jeff:** wait, Christina, why don’t you tell us

[00:00:32] where you are because people

[00:00:34] can’t see, but I can tell you’re not where you would be

[00:00:36] normally

[00:00:37] **Christina:** yeah. I’m not where I would be normally. So I’m in Atlanta. I’m at my parents house. My mom’s birthday is today actually, as we’re recording this, so happy, 75th happy 75th birthday mom. Um, very, very, uh, happy to be here with her. So I

[00:00:51] am in, um, the, uh, the bedroom that I stay in when I’m at their house. So I’m basically like in a nice, like, it’d be like, like a nice Airbnb[00:01:00]

[00:01:00] **Jeff:** Mm-hmm nice.

[00:01:01] **Brett:** you are 10 years younger than me, but your parents are the same age as my parents. Did

[00:01:06] they have you really late?

[00:01:08] **Christina:** Yes.

[00:01:09] **Brett:** Is your sister older?

[00:01:11] **Christina:** Yes.

[00:01:12] **Brett:** Okay. So you’re, are you the youngest

[00:01:14] **Christina:** I’m the baby. I’m the baby. And she’s older. And then my

[00:01:17] parents were, frankly, they were older.

[00:01:18] when they had my sister,

[00:01:20] so

[00:01:20] **Brett:** I mean, my parents were older when they had me. So

[00:01:22] your parents I, I can’t do math,

[00:01:25] **Christina:** yeah.

[00:01:26] **Brett:** that’s, that’s, pretty advanced.

[00:01:28] **Christina:** Yeah.

[00:01:29] **Brett:** All right.

[00:01:30] **Jeff:** Yeah, well, my parents were 24 and it did not work out. something to be said for waiting a bit.

[00:01:41] **Brett:** uh, yeah.

[00:01:44] **Jeff:** here

[00:01:44] **Brett:** I’m the oldest, but my sister’s only six years younger than me.

[00:01:48] **Jeff:** Hmm. Are you, so none of you have

[00:01:50] steps or anything like that. You’re

[00:01:52] dealing with the, uh, the, original set.

[00:01:54] **Brett:** I

[00:01:54] **Christina:** Aboriginal said OG OG, OG rents,

[00:01:57] **Jeff:** Yep. I just had an [00:02:00] amazing step kid experience where, so my mom was married twice and the second marriage was when I was like, end of junior high, beginning of high school. Um, and I had a stepbrother and a step sister at that time. We didn’t get along any of us, but somehow after my parents, after their parents in mind divorced my former stepbrother and I.

[00:02:21] Like inseparable. We started hanging out. He’s five years older than me. We started hanging out. We started taking road trips to New York to see bands. We, we started a band, we made an album. We toured together for a couple of years. Like we became completely inseparable. And in the process of that, I became close with his grandparents, which had nothing to do with my family or my step family and his mother who was like kind of vilified in our family wrongly.

[00:02:47] And so I, I sort of built this whole weird, separate family. And about, um, three weeks ago, my brother who lives in Brooklyn, uh, came to town and, and said, Hey, I’m, I’m cleaning out my mom’s [00:03:00] garage. Could I get a hand? Could you help me? So I go over there cuz I love his mom and she loves me and I’m sitting there and I’m cleaning.

[00:03:07] My mom’s ex-husband’s ex-wife’s garage and, uh, and, and someone comes by like a neighbor and she’s like, oh, have you met my son, Frank? That’s my stepbrother, former stepbrother. Then she looks to me to introduce me and, and we both just smile at each other because realize there’s like, no name, what she was trying to do was introduce her ex-husband’s ex-wife’s son.

[00:03:32] Right? Like, there’s no name for that. And I just felt like this is exactly what it’s like to be a step. Like it’s so confusing. It has no fucking rules. Right? Like there’s no prediction as to how it’s gonna, uh, it’s gonna go. Um, so anyway, you pick your family, I guess.

[00:03:47] **Brett:** Yeah, I, I, I have no idea what that’s like.

[00:03:50] **Jeff:** Yeah.

[00:03:50] **Christina:** I don’t either cuz like my parents have been married for 50 years, but

[00:03:54] um, like

[00:03:55] literally, uh, but like April was, was their 50th wedding anniversary. [00:04:00] But um,

[00:04:01] yeah, but, uh, but I love that. Like you became close with the, with your, your step siblings, like after everything happened, like that’s, that’s just so fascinating to me.

[00:04:11] Um,

[00:04:12] **Jeff:** weird.

[00:04:13] **Christina:** How did you even stay in touch? Cuz like, this is just me guessing how I would act. I imagine that if I had step siblings and then we didn’t get along and then we were no longer related, like by any measure, you know what I mean? Like we had no reason to even have to be around each other. I cannot imagine even like being around the person.

[00:04:32] I, I think that I would just be like, that would be where I would be like, yeah, you know what? I’m just gonna, not ever see this person again.

[00:04:39] **Jeff:** Yeah, well, that is how I think it would normally go because it was my older brother. Who’s my stepbrother. Like he lived with us on and off in the five years that our parents were married. Um, but he was just kind of a Dick to me. And he like, he’d like handcuff me to the dog kennel or whatever. It’s like total older brother shit.

[00:04:57] But for, for reasons, I don’t still [00:05:00] don’t fully understand. And he doesn’t either. We just tried to revisit this a couple years after the divorce, he invited me out to dinner and do a show and we ended up talking, you know, into the early hours and, and he kind of went, whoa, this little brother of mine’s kind of cool.

[00:05:13] And I was like, whoa, this older brother of mine likes me. And, and we just, like, we just started hanging out and we don’t really understand why, but I did, I did come to realize recently, um, that, and, and he kind of, I think he basically agrees that this must be it is that we actually didn’t know how to say it or feel it exactly.

[00:05:32] But we grieved the loss of that family. Like. We may not have been close, but we were very typical, younger and

[00:05:39] **Christina:** but you were family, right? Like you, yeah. Yeah. Like he, he like, he was a Dick to you, but he was your big brother. He was a Dick that way. And it probably would’ve been a thing. And again, I’m extrapolating here cause I’ve never had a brother I’ve never had steps, but I would imagine that like how he treated you, if he’d been blood related.

[00:05:55] Would’ve maybe been less annoying to you. You know what I mean? Like you still

[00:05:59] **Jeff:** Yeah. I’m like [00:06:00] who? It’s kind of like when you have a step, you don’t like, you’re like, you’re not my fucking dad. It’s like you not

[00:06:03] **Christina:** that’s what I’m saying. It’s like,

[00:06:04] **Jeff:** you’re handcuffing me to a dog kennel.

[00:06:06] **Christina:** it’s like, it’s like, who the fuck are you? You’re not my brother. Yeah, exactly. Cause like my sister sucks. I mean, she doesn’t, but like when growing up, like she would do like shit to me and, and, and I would do shit to her too, but you know, like she’s my sister and I can say she sucks.

[00:06:21] If someone else says she sucks, they’re gonna die. Right. Like I’m allowed to talk about it, but no one else can, but I have to imagine that if it was somebody else who like, I had no blood relation with, you know what I mean? Like wasn’t born and raised with and they were like that. I’d be like, okay, genuinely who the fuck are you do not handcuff me.

[00:06:38] Right. So. But, but I think you make a good point, which is that like, everybody kind of grieved the loss of like that more familial, like unit and that, that experience. And I’m glad that he was at least able to being older, like take the initiative to reach out and do that and that you guys have a, have a good [00:07:00] relationship.

[00:07:00] **Jeff:** Yeah. Because the only thing we had done prior to that, between the divorce and having dinner and going to a show was he came over before going to Europe and he, and he traded me. He had, he brought all his pat Bena records and he goes, I’ll trade you these for your backpack, which was my school backpack.

[00:07:16] And I was like in a heartbeat. I was like, fuck. Yeah. Like I, I literally gave him my backpack. I had no other backpack to go to school, which says a lot about how I felt about both rock and roll pat Bena and school. And, uh, and so we made that swap and then we didn’t talk for a long time. But the, the official thing is when we realized how tight we were, we did the, uh, pinprick blood brother thing.

[00:07:37] And that’s not recognized by law, but it’s, it’s, it’s the reason that most people that know us know us as brothers and don’t even realize, we just decided to say, we’re brothers now. So

[00:07:48] **Christina:** no, I totally, and also, also, you know, the prick thing, it, it is recognized by like playground law, right?

[00:07:54] Like

[00:07:56] **Jeff:** Totally. Which is a vicious kind of law.

[00:07:58] **Christina:** it really is. [00:08:00] Yeah.

[00:08:01] **Jeff:** Blood

[00:08:02] **Christina:** Hmm.

[00:08:03] **Brett:** this summer has made me realize how much I don’t I’m I’m not close with my siblings at all.

[00:08:09] **Jeff:** what do you mean the summers made you realize

[00:08:11] **Brett:** This summer, both both of my siblings came for one week, stays in town with my

[00:08:17] parents. So I only saw them a couple of times while they were in town. But man, my

[00:08:23] brother is

[00:08:24] unbearable. Like you want pretentious, you think I’m pretentious, you should meet my brother

[00:08:31] **Jeff:** friend of the show? Brett’s brother

[00:08:33] **Brett:** and my sister, my sister, I love like, I think my sister’s great, uh, a little religious for my taste, but we just, with a six year difference and me going off to college before she was even in high school, like we were never close. We, we barely know each other and I enjoy her and her husband and her daughters are fantastic.

[00:08:56] They’re just great nieces. Uh, but I’ve [00:09:00] realized we just, we don’t connect in any kind of

[00:09:03] real.

[00:09:04] Way, it sounds like you are way closer with your stepbrother than I ever have, but your former stepbrother than I

[00:09:12] have ever been with either of my blood siblings.

[00:09:15] **Jeff:** Mm, yeah. Yeah. It’s a, it’s a blessing. You’re where do they live? They’re spread throughout the country

[00:09:20] **Brett:** Yeah. Wesley’s in Atlanta. And, uh, Atlanta’s in like somewhere in Ohio Dayton, maybe. I don’t know her, her husband works for the department of defense. If I recall correctly. He does, he does laser shit. He’s an engineer who does laser shit. And he loses me very quickly when he starts telling me about work.

[00:09:46] Uh, but we get to talk about like, he, his company, like his, well, his organization within the company kind of adopted this startup mentality, which I’ve been through before, when you’re in a large [00:10:00] corporation and your team starts doing scrum and, and standups. And, and you’re just like, yeah, I, there’s a reason I don’t work for startups and I don’t need that in my, in my corporate

[00:10:13] **Jeff:** laser scrums though. Laser scrums. That sounds fun.

[00:10:19] **Brett:** Yeah. We had, we had a good conversation. We, we went for a hike. It was, I I

[00:10:24] like Joe and

[00:10:26] Lana

[00:10:27] better than I like the rest of my family. And I still feel like I barely know them.

[00:10:32] **Jeff:** Mmm, family corner

[00:10:38] we, totally just did family corner.

[00:10:40] **Christina:** we we totally did just do family corner. Yeah. I, I could, I

[00:10:42] could, yeah, my sister and I

[00:10:44] it’s similar, like we’re

[00:10:45] six years apart. We know each other, but like we would, neither of us would choose to be friends with the other one if we were not related. Um, but since she has had the baby, you know, we are closer.

[00:10:58] And like I said, like, I can say she sucks. If [00:11:00] someone else does, then I’m gonna get mad. Um, I don’t know. It it’s, it’s more complicated I think, but it, but

[00:11:07] there, there are some similarities. Certainly I, I can relate to what you’re saying there. Uh, I, I think the big thing for us is we’re just very different people and we always have been, and we’re both headstrong and we’re both like opinionated.

[00:11:20] And so we’re very different, but we have that similarity, which means you’re going to clash, you know?

[00:11:27] **Brett:** Yeah.

[00:11:28] **Jeff:** Mm-hmm totally the.

[00:11:30] **Brett:** Does this segue into a mental hor health corner? Pretty

[00:11:33] well.

[00:11:33] **Jeff:** Sure. But can I just say that, that, because I have post shower hair,

[00:11:37] I’ve got kind of a KKI

[00:11:38] from Greece thing going on with my

[00:11:40] **Christina:** Kind kinda

[00:11:42] **Jeff:** I’d

[00:11:42] **Brett:** it’s pretty good.

[00:11:42] **Jeff:** I mean, I love KKI.

[00:11:44] In fact, my stepbrother

[00:11:45] played KKI in Greece anyway.

[00:11:46] **Christina:** oh, wow.

[00:11:47] **Brett:** see it all full circle. I love

[00:11:49] it.

[00:11:50] **Jeff:** wow. Mental health corner.

[00:11:52] **Brett:** So Jeff,

[00:11:54] a theme song,

[00:11:56] **Christina:** do,

[00:11:57] **Brett:** you know, I

[00:11:57] **Jeff:** would be like,

[00:11:59] **Brett:** [00:12:00] so the, the software we’re using to record does have a soundboard and I’ve considered figuring that out. The thing is, if you don’t, if you don’t play a sound, when you

[00:12:11] start, when it gives you the final tracks, it doesn’t start the soundtrack track until you play the first sound.

[00:12:20] So nothing syncs up correctly.

[00:12:23] **Jeff:** no weird.

[00:12:24] **Brett:** So, if we were going to do it, we could easily just play the intro music that I usually insert in post. We could play the intro music, do the intro and then have a soundboard. And yeah, like, uh, transitions to sponsor reads transitions to mental health corner

[00:12:42] or gratitude could all have

[00:12:44] theme songs.

[00:12:45] Um, and

[00:12:47] and I kinda like the idea. I just haven’t gotten the technical aspects of it figured out

[00:12:52] yet.

[00:12:53] **Jeff:** All right. All right. Well,

[00:12:55] **Christina:** Yeah, I’m kind of into it. I will say like, you’re the musician, uh, you two are the musicians like I’ll, I’ll

[00:12:59] **Brett:** [00:13:00] Oh, we should get Aaron to pitch in and write theme songs for yeah. Friend of the show. Aaron

[00:13:08] Dawson.

[00:13:09] **Christina:** Yes.

[00:13:10] Aaron we are just volunteering you now. Then we, we pay you

[00:13:13] like,

[00:13:14] we’re just volunteering

[00:13:15] your, your time to, to, to do this, but yes, that would

[00:13:18] **Brett:** Aaron is a very talented

[00:13:19] musician. It would be, we could pair.

[00:13:24] **Jeff:** Yeah, we’re rolling in money.

[00:13:26] **Brett:** Yeah,

[00:13:27] **Jeff:** Give us some of that

[00:13:28] sweet sponsor

[00:13:29] **Brett:** we got

[00:13:30] three sponsors today. We

[00:13:31] **Jeff:** give us some of that sponsor coin

[00:13:33] **Brett:** some custom music.

[00:13:36] Speaking

[00:13:37] of should, should we do a

[00:13:38] sponsor

[00:13:38] read before? No, we’ll do, we’ll do mental

[00:13:41] health corner and then we’ll just pile on the sponsor

[00:13:44] reads.

[00:13:45] **Christina:** we’ll just do sponsor sponsor, uh, sponsor central. I don’t

[00:13:49] **Brett:** Yeah. Yeah. And

[00:13:50] with, and we’ll make up some theme music as we go Yeah. All right.

[00:13:54] All right. So

[00:13:55] **Jeff:** God. What if we played island music all the way through the sponsor reads. Anyway. Sorry, go ahead.

[00:13:59] I’m sorry.

[00:13:59] **Brett:** is [00:14:00] island music is like, uh,

[00:14:02] **Jeff:** Yeah.

[00:14:03] **Christina:** Yeah,

[00:14:03] yeah.

[00:14:03] **Jeff:** drums. You got the yeah.

[00:14:06] **Christina:** be some animal

[00:14:06] crossing

[00:14:07] type

[00:14:07] **Jeff:** Little animal crossing vibe. Exactly. I always thought our podcast should be more

[00:14:13] like animal

[00:14:13] crossing.

[00:14:14] **Christina:** I mean, same, to be honest, because animal crossing is the

[00:14:17] best, but.

[00:14:18] **Brett:** never played.

[00:14:20] never played.

[00:14:21] animal cross.

[00:14:22] **Jeff:** Oh man.

[00:14:23] **Brett:** I just play threes. That’s like, yeah, that’s it. That’s it. That’s

## [00:14:27] Mental Health Corner

[00:14:27] **Brett:** all I

[00:14:28] **Jeff:** all right. I got one. I can start mental health

[00:14:30] corner up.

[00:14:30] **Christina:** All right. You.

[00:14:31] **Jeff:** I, I am just like, I don’t even have a,

[00:14:34] uh, so I

[00:14:35] take medication like

[00:14:37] anybody at certain times

[00:14:38] in the day, and I have

[00:14:39] never successfully had a

[00:14:42] system that has me taking my medication at the same time. In the same point of the day, every day. It just, I can’t get it right.

[00:14:51] Not with reminders, not with pill organizers. It’s always I’m off by an hour every day or

[00:14:56] **Brett:** Can I tell you about metae?

[00:14:59] **Jeff:** Is this a [00:15:00] sponsor? Oh,

[00:15:01] **Brett:** no. It’s this app that I use on my phone and, and I get notifications on my watch and on my phone that it’s time to take my meds. And if I don’t acknowledge it within. Half an hour. Like it sends them every 10 minutes and then after half an hour, it plays, it uses the emergency notifications to play the sound of a, to play the sound of a

[00:15:23] pill bottle, shaking to let me know that I have completely missed my med window.

[00:15:30] So I’m never more

[00:15:31] than 30 minutes late

[00:15:33] taking my meds. And it has worked for years now.

[00:15:36] **Jeff:** So alerts and even those kinds of alerts don’t work on me. I, I just brush ’em off and get pissed off. They just pissed me off. Like, cuz the thing is, it’s not there’s there are no real

[00:15:48] consequences to me taking my

[00:15:50] meds a little late. Right. It’s just that what I would like to be doing is taking them and I’m told this helps taking them

[00:15:56] consistently at the same point in day, you know?

[00:15:59] [00:16:00] And, and like I, um, I have not, I took a, I used some app with my watch that did a similar thing like that and it, it worked some of the time, but not all the time. Cuz sometimes what happens to me and I don’t know if this is like a, some internal resistance to be worked out with my therapist, but sometimes what happens to me I’m like, no, not now.

[00:16:18] I’m not gonna take my meds now I’m doing something else right

[00:16:21] **Brett:** That’s so

[00:16:22] **Jeff:** I don’t wanna be the guy that has to take meds right now.

[00:16:26] that’s part of what must be going on in my head,

[00:16:28] but

[00:16:29] **Brett:** so so no app, no app can help you.

[00:16:32] Is

[00:16:32] **Jeff:** No man. No, it’s just like, you know, well maybe

[00:16:34] **Brett:** re you. rebel against the very idea of a schedule.

[00:16:39] **Jeff:** yeah.

[00:16:40] **Brett:** Yeah.

[00:16:41] **Jeff:** yeah.

[00:16:42] **Christina:** can, okay. I can sort of understand that

[00:16:43] cause I’m, I

[00:16:44] can

[00:16:44] be

[00:16:44] similar, but I do have to wonder, I mean, okay. You’re saying that there’s not,

[00:16:48] um, like consequences

[00:16:51] or whatever, so I get that, uh, but is it.

[00:16:55] Is it that like, it it’s too much effort for you to grab your pills then and [00:17:00] do it? Or, or what is it?

[00:17:01] Because like, if, if like, if the pills were right there and you have like water right there, would you take it? What is it? Is it just being told you have to do it like, like what what’s what’s the hold up? Cause I would think, cuz I can be similar, but like if my pills are right there and if I’ve got water, then I’m, I’m gonna go ahead and do.

[00:17:17] **Jeff:** Right, right. The big problem is in the daytime because I, I, I am very, even if I have a schedule I’m following my brain is very scattered through the day. Um, and, and even when I’m taking my ADHD meds, like I’m just all over the place. And so actually it’s very easy for me to go, oh, I gotta take my meds.

[00:17:35] And cuz I do have a reminder at least once like, oh, I gotta take my meds. And then I just like totally forget for an hour that I haven’t taken them. And sometimes on weekends I can not take my meds until. Well in the midday, cause I just keep forgetting, but it’s like, do you know? I mean, for me, the way I’ve experienced, what I think is ADHD is like, it’s something that makes no logical fucking sense.

[00:17:56] It’s like, how is it possible that I was going to do this [00:18:00] thing? And then I completely forgot I was going to do it until three hours later. Right. When I remembered, oh, right. I was like, how is that possible? Like it hurts my brain. Right. Cause I am, I am a systems person. Right. Like I do have systems and I really, I have a need to organize things and I’m quite good at organizing things.

[00:18:16] But I have this part of my brain that just resists that or, or is totally unable to sort of come along. And, and that’s the part of me that I think causes me to take meds at different times. Night is different like at night because what I take makes me drowsy, um, Sometimes am like, it’s like, you know, it takes about 30 minutes for the meds to kick in.

[00:18:35] And I maybe like it’s, it’s nine 30 or 10 30 or whatever. I’m like, well, I should take my meds, but I don’t know. I wanna be tired in a half hour. That’s another problem. So anyway, ,

[00:18:45] I

[00:18:45] **Christina:** The night ones I can’t really help you with. But the other ones, I guess what I would say is like, what’s helped me cuz is, is just like making it as accessible as possible. Like, you know, if, if I know where I’m usually going to be, and then if an alarm goes off or whatnot, then [00:19:00] like it makes it that much harder for me to just ignore what I need to do.

[00:19:03] I don’t know.

[00:19:04] **Jeff:** Yeah. That makes sense. I mean, actually you’re making me realize I’m sitting here with my pill thing and I’m a half hour late on the

[00:19:10] **Brett:** That’s the sound that Medisafe

[00:19:12] **Jeff:** don’t I, segue to somebody else while I take those pills?

[00:19:15] **Christina:** Yeah, I was gonna say, take your pills.

[00:19:19] **Jeff:** else has some corner? Some corner talk.

[00:19:22] **Brett:** I, uh, I can go.

[00:19:23] **Christina:** Yeah, you

[00:19:24] **Brett:** I, uh, So I had that like long period of what we, what we called hypomania. Um, and I’m now having a long period of hypo depression, where I’m just like, I’m sleeping too much. I’m having trouble getting going. I’m having trouble starting things, but not in this complete block kind of way that I’ve run into in the past.

[00:19:52] Not in this, like I just can’t do anything. It just takes me a little extra work right now. And [00:20:00] honestly,

[00:20:01] I can live with this, like, You know what I get, like when I’m stable and I’m like, oh my God, I miss being manic. And this is horrible. And I, I don’t, I don’t feel like I can do anything cuz I’m too stable.

[00:20:14] Like if I can have just mild mania and then mild depression, I feel like I could, I could sustain this. I, I sh like this is absolutely not medical advice for

[00:20:26] anyone, especially anyone suffering from bipolar. Like, don’t take me too seriously,

[00:20:33] but like, I, I, can live with this. This is livable,

[00:20:38] I think.

[00:20:39] **Jeff:** I have a question for you this, this last streak without any, um, manic episodes or any real low episodes, was that the longest that you can remember?

[00:20:51] **Brett:** Um, yeah, but I have a very short memory. I have like an ADHD memory and. I have stomach issues. [00:21:00] And when they start up, it would be really helpful to remember what I ate like two days before. But I don’t, I don’t remember. So for me, like the present is like all, all I really have. So yes. Um, the 3, 3, 4 months I went through of stability was the longest I can remember in my memory, but I also had two years where my ADHD meds got cut off.

[00:21:32] And, uh, that, that led to

[00:21:36] long periods of stability. There were still manic

[00:21:39] and depressive

[00:21:40] episodes in there, but I’m pretty sure during those

[00:21:43] two years, I

[00:21:44] probably had an equal amount of stability. Just it’s I don’t remember.

[00:21:50] **Jeff:** I I ask because I, you know, having listened to you

[00:21:54] kind of

[00:21:54] check in on. Spell that, that, that, you know, those months that you

[00:21:59] didn’t [00:22:00] have

[00:22:00] any manic episodes in your starting to talk about how, um, you know, you, you sort of miss having a manic episode or it made you think of made you kind of feel like hints of desires for drugs that would make you feel high or manic.

[00:22:15] And I, I was wondering at the time and wonder now, is that a, is that a phase of a long period of, um, no manic episodes that you might get to the other side of and, and go, oh, wait, I’m, I’m not, I’m not feeling as strongly that what is my identity without mania or, you know, cause that’s what I feel like I heard you saying is like, who am I without mania?

[00:22:42] Right.

[00:22:43] **Brett:** yeah. That’s accurate. I also, I don’t know

[00:22:45] what what’s on the other side of that.

[00:22:47] **Christina:** right.

[00:22:48] **Jeff:** mm-hmm yeah, of course. Who, how could you know? Yeah.

[00:22:53] **Brett:** but then I had a manic episode and it made me fucking happy. So I’m not complaining.

[00:22:59] **Jeff:** Yeah. [00:23:00] Interesting.

[00:23:00] **Christina:** Well, I think,

[00:23:00] I think, I think, what it

[00:23:01] is is like you’re used to it, right? Like, you know, you

[00:23:04] know, the

[00:23:04] mania, right? Like you, you.

[00:23:06] **Jeff:** Yep.

[00:23:06] **Brett:** the devil. I

[00:23:07] **Christina:** It’s the w know, it’s predictable.

[00:23:09] You you’ve found ways to

[00:23:11] make it work for you in certain situations. It’s not

[00:23:14] debilitating where you go into almost like a psychosis sort of thing.

[00:23:17] Whereas some people who have bipolar do, right, like there, there, there mania episodes are not things that are, are useful at all and, and, and can be really, really dangerous, um, yours aren’t. And so if it’s not sustaining and it’s whatnot, like you almost also, I mean, if you’re honest with yourself, you probably enjoy the high a little bit.

[00:23:38] Right. Like,

[00:23:39] **Brett:** Oh, for sure.

[00:23:40] **Christina:** right. So, so for you, I think it’s something, you know, that you understand, and then if you don’t have it, you wonder, okay, well, am I going to have the, the ability to be creative and to, to get things done and whatnot without it, right? Like, like what, what is it without.

[00:23:58] **Brett:** What was, what was the, [00:24:00] there was a, I can’t remember if it was a show, it was Anne Hathaway as a bipolar. I think it was an episode of that.

[00:24:07] **Christina:** Modern

[00:24:07] **Brett:** Uh, modern love. Yeah. Yeah. Like I related to her in that show, I thought that was a spectacular, um, Example of the kind of bipolar I experience. Um, when I’m, when I’m manic writing a line of code that works gives me this huge dopamine burst and like, and then I’m away from my computer.

[00:24:37] And all I wanna do is get back to my computer and write another line of code. And it is it’s highly productive and not at all dangerous, I’m not spending money. I’m not hurting relationships other than maybe not participating in them, but like it’s very productive and yeah, I’ve heard what other people go through with [00:25:00] mania.

[00:25:00] I’ve seen it in other members of my family and I’m grateful that I don’t have that kind of psychosis and, um, binge spending and, uh, like destructive behavior. I just, I don’t have that. And for me, it, it just kind of. It works?

[00:25:21] **Jeff:** Hmm.

[00:25:23] **Brett:** No, I, I, I can’t, I can’t complain. I feel like I, it, El said it this morning. Like my career is kind of built on

[00:25:34] my bipolar, like, everything that I have is the result of, of things that I’ve accomplished and things that I’ve done as a result of mania.

[00:25:45] And, and we talked about this, like how, I don’t know yeah. Who, who I

[00:25:48] am without it. Um, and, and, and Christina was pretty insistent that,

[00:25:55] you know, I am a perfectly productive human being [00:26:00] without mania. I have, I have not proven

[00:26:03] that

[00:26:03] **Christina:** Well, you are perfectly productive

[00:26:04] It might not be

[00:26:05] the same though. I’m just saying, like, I’m not say

[00:26:08] **Jeff:** not excessively productive,

[00:26:09] **Christina:** I’m not, I’m not,

[00:26:10] I’m not saying that you, I, I’m

[00:26:11] not saying that,

[00:26:11] that like, like I just say this from my own experiences of being like, who am I, if I don’t have the depression and, and whatnot, like you are still you and you can still get things done and you’re still creative and whatnot, but it’s not going to be the same.

[00:26:25] Like, and, and now it doesn’t seem like it’s something you’ve had to worry about because you have this. But I, I do always worry anytime anybody says, and I, I worry about myself when I say these things like, who am I without X? Because that becomes like an existential question. And, and I think that, that a lot of times we, we assu we, we make correlations between things that we’ve always known about ourselves and, and give them credit for things that they shouldn’t get credit.

[00:26:54] **Brett:** I read this really fun. It was a collect, it was a, an Instagram [00:27:00] story, but it was all of these collections of writings about how we pick up. Aspects of our personality from people we love even just for a heartbeat. And, and if you take away all of the heartbreak in your life, you’re left with an emptiness.

[00:27:21] Not, not that you are less of a person, but if you take out all of the heartbreak, you’re left with these voids that people try to fill with more love and more drugs and, and more work. Um, and it’s it really made, this is, this is irrelevant to what you were just saying. just like something about this, not knowing who you are without X.

[00:27:46] Like it made me realize, yeah, like I have picked up some affectation or some belief or something that gives me pleasure from every relationship I’ve ever had or been

[00:27:57] in whether sexual [00:28:00] or

[00:28:00] romantic or just friendship. Um, and those have all become like a real part of me.

[00:28:07] Like they definitely add up over time.

[00:28:10] **Christina:** One of my.

[00:28:11] **Jeff:** or relationship with drugs, relationship

[00:28:13] with mental health.

[00:28:14] **Brett:** absolutely.

[00:28:15] **Christina:** my favorite quotes from one of my favorite

[00:28:16] books ever, although the book

[00:28:18] hasn’t aged particularly well, but I still love it. Um, invisible monsters by, by Chuck, uh, Paul check, um, the, the, the quote is, uh, nothing of me is original. I’m the combined effort of everyone I’ve ever known.

[00:28:30] **Brett:** Yeah,

[00:28:31] exactly. That’s

[00:28:32] **Christina:** And I, And I, love that.

[00:28:33] So the scene is that the two main characters are writing or they’re actually at the top above the, um,

[00:28:40] um, Seattle where I live the freaking the tower. What is it? You know, the the

[00:28:44] stupid,

[00:28:45] **Brett:** the

[00:28:46] **Christina:** space needle. Thank you.

[00:28:47] **Jeff:** the needle of

[00:28:48] **Christina:** Yes, they’re on top of the space needle and they’re writing these postcards and that, that have these things, um, uh, you, I think they like distributing them out or whatever, but, but they write these things down.

[00:28:57] And anyway, I think that some of it is. [00:29:00]

[00:29:01] It’s supposed to be kind of trite, but I, I love that quote. Anyway, there’s also one that’s like when we don’t know who to hate, we hate ourselves. Um, and, uh, but, but, but you know, nothing of me is original line, the combined effort of everyone I’ve ever known. I that’s.

[00:29:15] I think about that quote, when you say that, cuz I feel a similar way. I think that that’s, that’s probably universally true for a lot of people, you know?

[00:29:22] **Brett:** Yeah,

[00:29:22] **Jeff:** Everyone they’ve ever known. I mean, it’s kind of this infinite, you know, it’s just really quite beautiful.

[00:29:28] **Brett:** no, I, I absolutely think that’s true of every single human being. I think that’s just how,

[00:29:34] uh, the psyche and relationships work.

[00:29:39] **Jeff:** Yeah.

[00:29:39] **Brett:** anyway, Christina, your turn.

[00:29:42] **Christina:** So, um, I

[00:29:43] guess, so I’ve been with my

[00:29:44] parents for a week and, um, and,

[00:29:47] I’m going back

[00:29:47] on Monday and it’s been really nice to be here. uh, the the dogs have had some, like my parents’ dog has had some

[00:29:53] health, uh,

[00:29:54] uh, drama. Um, he’s

[00:29:56] okay. Fortunately, but that’s led distress. Um, [00:30:00] and, uh, my mom, ironically, it’s been interesting.

[00:30:05] So my mom’s, you know, she’s retired, she’s a therapist and I’ve had to kind of play therapist for her this week. A little bit more of just a sounding board. And I credit this podcast a lot with it. I think that I have like better insights into some things, but she was seeing this doctor she’s gonna get a different, um, internal medicine doctor, because this doctor is clearly out of her mind.

[00:30:24] Like what it is is this doctor I’m sure is fine, but doesn’t know her. And my mom is high strung. And my mom is like very type a and my mom is like kind of a high keyed person, but so she goes in and she’s read these things on her chart because they put everything on the chart before she goes in and she’s reading the stuff that she understands enough of to be dangerous, but doesn’t get all the context up and it’s freaking out.

[00:30:47] And then the, the doctor, her first response is, oh, you clearly have an anxiety disorder. So I’m gonna put you on Prozac or I’m gonna put you on other stuff without even knowing her. And then my mom’s like, I’m, [00:31:00] I’m not going on this. And then she’s like, oh, well you need this, this and this, you know? And just like being very dismissive, very kind of ageist also.

[00:31:07] And so I was just like, Yeah, you probably are OCD mom. Yes. You do. Probably could benefit from anxiety things, but you’re 75 and you’ve managed this while your entire life, and this is not going to be helpful for you at this point. Like, you know, like I I’ve dealt with a lot of, kind of my issues because I’ve had 20 plus years of therapy.

[00:31:27] It’s different. Right. Like I, you know, you have managed, you don’t need this, so it’s, but it’s sort of been interesting talking to my mom because in some ways it is sort of like looking at almost like a mirrored version of myself, you know what I mean? Like I’m like, I’m like, oh, this is where I get a lot of my fucked up issues.

[00:31:47] Um, and, and I mean that in the best way possible, cause my mom is the best person in the world, but, but yeah, that’s that, that’s sort of been interesting.

[00:31:56] **Jeff:** home in the

[00:31:56] **Christina:** Yep.

[00:31:58] **Brett:** Yeah, I I’ve [00:32:00] become, um, convinced that my father has ADHD, like has always had ADHD and

[00:32:06] **Jeff:** friend of the show. Brett’s father.

[00:32:08] **Brett:** Yeah. Like I thought

[00:32:09] I thought it would be interesting to see what he would be like now

[00:32:13] if it, if his ADHD

[00:32:15] were treated, um, but also he’s in his seventies and

[00:32:20] he’s retired and he’s done fine. His whole

[00:32:23] **Christina:** That’s the thing, right?

[00:32:24] **Brett:** career.

[00:32:25] And like, what’s the point,

[00:32:27] **Christina:** Well, that, that’s sort of the problem, right? It’s kind of like, yeah,

[00:32:30] you’ve, you’ve made this work. like,

[00:32:31] what are, what are you, what are you going to do? You

[00:32:33] know? I mean,

[00:32:34] also, is it a good idea to give

[00:32:36] people in their seventies? Amphetamines? Probably not. Right.

[00:32:39] Like,

[00:32:42] You know what I mean?

[00:32:42] Like my, my dad is definitely ADHD and I don’t think he ever went on Adderall or anything with it, but he definitely is, but also like found ways to cope and, and it’s, you can be kind of maybe sad to think, well, wow. Maybe their life or other things would’ve been better if they’d had access to things. But at the same time, it’s also a [00:33:00] little bit affirming to know, you know, and this isn’t true for everyone.

[00:33:03] Cause everybody has things in different degrees, but like, okay, you, you can, you know, survive slash thrive slash whatever, without these things. If, if you have to

[00:33:13] **Jeff:** right,

[00:33:14] **Brett:** Can I, can I share an interesting note that is only marginally related? Um, a as I want to do, um, a recent peer reviewed study has shown that people suffering from ADHD do not have a lack of dopamine. We just have we over process. Um, and serotonin, I believe

[00:33:41] like we get our, our normal amounts of serotonin and

[00:33:47] dopamine from everyday life, but our receptors eat it up way faster than anyone else.

[00:33:55] **Jeff:** I mean it I’m gonna peer review That,

[00:33:57] right now. That, that, that has just like a [00:34:00] logic to it

[00:34:00] that I really makes

[00:34:01] **Brett:** So which means, which means like we, we treat it with medications that increase things like dopamine, but if we could instead treat it by altering the receptors to behave in a more normal way, we could treat ADHD without stimulants, which is it’s

[00:34:24] it. It’s interesting to me. I, I do find with

[00:34:27] stimulants, I think they’re a great treatment, but

[00:34:30] if, if you could treat

[00:34:33] ADHD without stimulants, that

[00:34:34] could

[00:34:34] be, that could be

[00:34:36] groundbreaking.

[00:34:38] **Jeff:** Hm.

[00:34:38] **Christina:** it could be great, right? Like it could be really good cuz I, I think that there are downsides to like the, the stimulant stuff, right? Like there are some very real things so that

[00:34:47] **Brett:** Especially, especially in young

[00:34:49] **Christina:** I was gonna say, especially in young kids and especially, I think in people who might be predisposed towards, you know, addiction and other things, and people who don’t want their hearts to explode and all kinds of stuff,

[00:34:58] **Brett:** Sure.

[00:34:59] **Christina:** you know, like, [00:35:00] yeah, that, that could be amazing.

[00:35:01] I hope that they do more research on that. And I hope that, that the, they like, they’re more, you know, peer reviews at the peer review thing, like to figure stuff out. Like, it’d be really good to see.

[00:35:10] **Brett:** in recent years it has become so difficult to get stimulants and it has become, uh, such a taboo for a doctor to prescribe stimulants to anyone of any age. And if ADHD treatment could move

[00:35:25] beyond the requirement

[00:35:28] of, you know, schedule one schedule two drugs,

[00:35:32] then. Then we might see a broader treatment of ADHD, especially in vulnerable populations.

[00:35:40] **Christina:** Yeah, that, that, that’s

[00:35:41] actually very true. And actually, if I can go on one rant real

[00:35:44] quick, before we go into sponsor, uh, central sponsor island. Okay. So something changed actually talking about ADHD stuff, because I had to, it was a pain

[00:35:51] in the ass. So right before I left Seattle, like I went to get my meds filled and this was like August

[00:35:58] 1st. And I went [00:36:00] to get like a refill of, of, of my medication and they couldn’t fill it because on July 26th, The DEA changed a law where they had previously allowed doctors to, or pharmacies to add your address birthday or whatever, to your prescription manually. Now your doctor has to write it in their own hand.

[00:36:23] **Jeff:** Oh, yeah. You mentioned this last

[00:36:24] **Christina:** Oh, I mentioned this last week. Yeah. Well, I’m gonna write about it again because

[00:36:27] **Jeff:** it’s crazy.

[00:36:28] **Christina:** nuts. And then I had to, because it was a pain in the ass for me to then get my, my stuff filled this week. Like I, my, my shrink mailed it to my house. It was fine. My parents’ house. It was fine. But then, you know, it was a problem of like finding a pharmacy that had the number of things in stock.

[00:36:43] And then you can’t call like, like the pharmacies can’t call internally to find out if the other ones had the drugs, you have to actually ask the patient, call all the different Walgreens to find out who has the thing in stock.

[00:36:56] **Jeff:** Ugh.

[00:36:57] **Christina:** So that’s, that’s why continuation rant from last [00:37:00] week. I’m sorry.