326: Fire the Stage Manager!

Fire the Stage Manager!

[00:00:00] Intro: Tired. So tired, Overtired.

[00:00:04] Christina: You are listening to Overtired. I’m Christina Warren, and I am joined as always by Brett. Uh, by Brett Terpstra. I was gonna say Brett Severns. Guntzel. Uh, would be, which would be funny. Now

[00:00:15] Jeffrey: Big news.

[00:00:16] Christina: News. Your two favorite podcast host got married? No, uh, by Jeff Severns. Guntzel and Bre Terpstra.

[00:00:23] Christina: How are you guys doing?

[00:00:24] Brett: So well tired, but good.

[00:00:27] Jeffrey: I, uh, I tore my meniscus at, um, at a bookstore,

[00:00:35] Brett: What, uh, what, what bookstore

[00:00:37] Jeffrey: uh, I

[00:00:38] Jeffrey: was

[00:00:38] Brett: a bookstore over the Jungle Gym?

[00:00:40] Jeffrey: no. Every bookstore I realize is ableist because you can’t get down to that bottom shelf if. You know, if you have any trouble like squatting or bending over or eye problems, whatever. So I was, I was at Dreary Lane Books in Grand Moray, Minnesota, which is right on Lake Superior.

[00:00:57] Jeffrey: It’s an amazing, tiny, [00:01:00] independent bookstore. And it is a great example of how good curation can make a small bookstore feel big. And I like to go there. We go there every spring break, uh, to Grand Mare. And I like to go to that bookstore and look at every book, um, just scan every shelf. And I was squatting down to scan the bottom shelf and something July 4th like happened in my left knee and I tipped over.

[00:01:26] Christina: Oh no.

[00:01:29] Jeffrey: And then a couple days later when I’m home, it swelled up super bad. And I went to, by the way, orthopedic Urgent Care. Right. That’s a thing. And. And that is amazing. And if you go to the rich suburbs, uh, nobody’s there. And so you get right in. So anyway, how am I doing? I’m actually doing good, but my knee hurts and I, I, uh, it’s been pointed out that it’s a, it’s the nerdiest thing ever to tear it at a bookstore.

[00:01:55] Christina: Well,

[00:01:56] Brett: the show notes, what was the name of that book?

[00:01:58] Jeffrey: Uh, Drury [00:02:00] Lane. D r u r y. Like the muffin man. Yep, exactly.

[00:02:05] Brett: Yeah, I, I, I figured it’s, I love independent bookstores, so, we’ll, we’ll put ’em in the show notes. Maybe, maybe someone will be like, Hey, I want to go to the place where Jeff, uh, Torres Meniscus,

[00:02:16] Jeffrey: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:02:17] Brett: if you, have you guys ever been to literati in Chicago?

[00:02:22] Jeffrey: God, I lived in Chicago, but no, when, how long has it been

[00:02:24] Brett: I have no idea. A while, but I don’t know, at least five years, maybe 20 for all I know. But great bookstore,

So quick note from the editor. The bookstore I’m talking about here is actually in Ann Arbor, and I visited on the same trip as I went to Chicago and I mix up my locations. But the reason Jeff had never heard of it is because it’s in Michigan.

[00:02:47] Christina: no. The one, the ones that I know, and I know Seattle has some, but I’m gonna be honest with you, Seattle’s a city kind of sucks and.

[00:02:53] Brett: has,

[00:02:54] Christina: Portland has Powells. I, yeah,

[00:02:56] Jeffrey: they have

[00:02:56] Christina: say, I was gonna say, Portland has Powells and then in New York it’s Strand [00:03:00] and, and that’s just like the best, um, like

[00:03:04] Jeffrey: I was just getting into this with someone like Powells is Strand, but better somehow.

[00:03:09] Christina: Yeah, agreed. But, but, but it’s one of those things like, like, like the strand was like not far from where I worked. So I might

[00:03:16] Jeffrey: Yeah. Amazing.

[00:03:17] Mental Health Corner

[00:03:17] Christina: I might have told the story before, but I had this, it was like the greatest day ever where, and it didn’t start out that way. Uh, I think this is actually a good segue to Mental health Corner.

[00:03:25] Christina: I got off the subway, it was like 8 45 in the morning, which for me was early cuz I never got to work like in time for the 9:00 AM meeting. That was just sort of a known thing that I was gonna either be on the call or I’d be coming in late. Cuz like, I just didn’t, I just was not a morning person. So unless I was on TV at.

[00:03:44] Christina: 7:00 AM or 6:00 AM or something. I was not in the office early, get off the subway, and I just like had this overwhelming sense of dread and I was like, I can’t do it today. I can’t do it. I can’t go in, I can’t do it. And so I made up an [00:04:00] excuse because back then, and this was like six years ago, like you quit seven years ago.

[00:04:04] Christina: Like you couldn’t say, oh, I’m having a mental, I need a mental health day.

[00:04:08] Christina: So, um, I get, I, I make up an excuse, like I was like, oh, I just threw up or something or another. I was like, I’ve gotta go back home. But instead of going back home, I was like, I don’t really wanna go back home.

[00:04:20] Christina: I know I can’t do anything else. Like, uh, like I can’t do work today, but I don’t know what else I could do. So I went to the Strand and I walked around and like, as soon as it opened, like I had to wait like a couple minutes and I walked around there for a while. I wound up buying a couple of books and then I found like a 10:00 AM showing of, of, of Spotlight, like, cuz that was in theaters then at, at, at the, at the, uh, Regal In in Union

[00:04:43] Jeffrey: Is that the one about the Boston Globe’s coverage of the sex scandals in the church.

[00:04:47] Christina: Yes. And it’s a, just a fantastic journalism movie and it’s just a great movie all around. So I see that movie at like 10:00 AM in a fairly empty theater. And keep in mind, I’m, I’m within blocks of my office, so I, at this point I’m like, Hmm, [00:05:00] I got lunch, but I was like, Hmm, you’re gonna have to go home because somebody will see you.

[00:05:05] Christina: So then I like went to Prospect Park for the afternoon and then I went home and it was like the greatest day.

[00:05:11] Jeffrey: That’s nice. That’s

[00:05:13] Christina: like I, I, I played hooky, but it was like it was much needed. And then like, I, I was able to come back to work like the next day and like actually be able to function. So,

[00:05:21] Jeffrey: I, in my experience in New York, we lived there for like three or four years. Like those days where you’re like, fuck it, I’m walking around. Like it’s got that sort of Ferris Bueller’s whimsy to it, you know? It’s such cuz you can go anywhere and you can do any kind of thing and it’s so great. Anyway. I love that.

[00:05:38] Christina: Anyway, so that, that’s, that, that’s my like bookstore slash mental health Treat yourself story. Go, go, go to a bookstore. Go to the go, go to the movies, go to the park.

[00:05:50] Jeffrey: Yes. The. Oh man. So I used to work in warehouses. It’s pretty hard to feel bad about calling in sick to a warehouse. Um, [00:06:00] and I did one day and it was a, it was a music distribution warehouse. It primarily distributed independent labels related to, or adjacent to reco disk, which had like Frank Zappas whole catalog.

[00:06:12] Jeffrey: And they had like evidence, which had like sunrise whole catalog. It was just an amazing warehouse and we would get amazing visitors. Henry Rollins came once to talk to us when he, he started this really cool label with Rick Rubin called Infinite Zero back in like 96 or seven. And it was just meant to get stuff back into print that was most important to just the two of them.

[00:06:32] Jeffrey: Um, and Henry Rollins, for all the weirdness of that dude came and addressed just the warehouse workers to tell us how much these albums and these CDs mean to him and how grateful he is that we’re helping to get them out into the world. That is classy.

[00:06:49] Christina: Yeah, it is.

[00:06:51] Jeffrey: And then, and then the other thing that happened was I called in sick one day and I learned at the end of the [00:07:00] day that Bootsy fucking Collins had visited the

[00:07:03] Brett: Oh, do you miss

[00:07:05] Jeffrey: who was a hero of mine. Going back to when I was a kid, that was my first concert, was Parliament Funkadelic like, and I loved him so much and I was so sad. And I have an autographed CD thanks to my friend Joe, but it doesn’t feel good. just reminds

[00:07:22] Jeffrey: me

[00:07:23] Christina: weren’t there.

[00:07:24] Jeffrey: I wasn’t doing anything wrong. It was a shitty warehouse job. Like I shouldn’t have been punished like that.

[00:07:28] Jeffrey: Bootsy Collins. I could have shook his hand. I could have just heard him, you know, talking. Yay.

[00:07:33] Brett: then you, you never missed another day again after

[00:07:36] Jeffrey: Yeah, no, I got fired about two weeks later. I, I, uh, I was, I was, uh, the first strike was the president of the company came into the warehouse and there was a vending machine right next to the door. And I was on the floor with my arm all the way up the vending machine trying to get a candy bar.

[00:07:54] Jeffrey: And he just looks at me and he goes, get out of there. And then a couple weeks after that, I organized a [00:08:00] pallet jack race where we would all just like, you could use ’em like scooters and the corporate meeting offices look down over the warehouse. And at one point I see in that window, like the entire administration leadership looking down on us, just like shaking their heads.

[00:08:15] Jeffrey: And so anyway, eventually I got fired, which was the right, right thing for them to do. Um, and, uh, anyhow, call in sick days.

[00:08:25] Brett: Sick days. Mental

[00:08:26] Jeffrey: I don’t have to do that anymore.

[00:08:28] Brett: All right, so speaking of mental health days, um, I, should I start, I.

[00:08:35] Jeffrey: Do it. I just wanna point out that Brett is talking to us as his cat is in the foreground, staring at him.

[00:08:41] Brett: staring me down.

[00:08:43] Christina: and and I’m like, I love your cat so much anyways. All right. Go on.

[00:08:46] Jeffrey: What are we talking about, Brett?

[00:08:47] Brett: okay, so the, the first update I have is, um, a week of microdosing mushrooms. Um, I wrote a blog post about this, [00:09:00] um, and things were going really well, uh, except l l did not appreciate that I was so publicly putting illegal substance use out on the internet where it could be linked forever.

[00:09:14] Brett: And, um, so I, I. Redacted the post. And, uh, I put up like a, Hey, you know, when things are decriminalized, I’ll tell you more about this, but I think it’s okay to talk about here. Maybe you won’t put anything in this show notes, but, um, I, I found the right dosage of the, the current strain of mushrooms I’m getting is about 200 milligrams a day.

[00:09:39] Brett: And at that dosage, um, like there’s no, no visuals, uh, y you don’t feel like you’re tripping at all. Like, that’s not the point. Um, but, uh, definite mood elevation, definite attention, um, improvements. And, uh, I feel emotions, a wider range of emotions than I usually [00:10:00] do. I get, I get more excited and more empathetic and, uh, it, it, it was going really well and it wasn’t causing any mania.

[00:10:10] Brett: But then I had this snafu where, so I went to the hospital back in December. With cuz my watch told me right, that, that my heart rate was elevated. And then, uh, the doctor at the last time, I got a refill for the first time, she’s like, I can’t give you a refill on Vivance until I hear from your doctor. And my doctor does not respond to messages or emails or calls even.

[00:10:42] Brett: Uh, the only way I’ve ever talked to him is to see him in person. Um, so fortunately I had a meeting, uh, an appointment coming up soon and I did, I went to see him after I had been off five for about three days. And he said, there’s no problem. Uh, like it was a [00:11:00] fluke that you were in the hospital. There’s no reason to stop your meds.

[00:11:03] Brett: And most cardiac events, uh, aren’t exacerbated by stimulants anyway. Um, So, uh, he, he, he said, sure, go ahead, uh, continue the Vince, I go back to my doctor who as I’ve mentioned before, is moving to another practice. And the in between her denying my refill and me getting approval from the doctor, she had officially left the practice and discharged me as a patient and could no longer fill my prescription.

[00:11:32] Brett: And so the only option was to go back to my doctor and ask him to fill it until I can see her again. And like I said, he doesn’t respond to anything, so I didn’t have a lot of hope. Um, I, I sent a message through the portal and I made a phone call and talked to a sympathetic nurse, and a day later he did come through and I got my Viva.

[00:11:54] Brett: But when I’m off Vivance for a few days and I take it, boom, manic episode. [00:12:00] So Thursday night I didn’t sleep at all. Um, released a whole new project. It, I love it. It’s great. Um, but.

[00:12:09] Jeffrey: I am not caught up on that.

[00:12:10] Brett: Yeah, I haven’t written about it yet. You’ll see it soon. Um, but in the, in, I slept last night, uh, pretty well. I think the manic episode was short-lived.

[00:12:22] Brett: Um, I don’t seem to be manic today, so it was like a one day cyc cyclo theia kind of event. So that’s where I’m at now. Coming, coming off a manic episode, have my vivance back, um, learning more and more about microdosing and getting really good results from it. To summarize, in summary,

[00:12:46] Jeffrey: That’s. Great. I was just talking to my cousin the other night about, uh, his experience microdosing and it’s super frustrating how far ahead of the laws, um, this particular thing is. You know, it’s [00:13:00] like really frustrating cuz it’s technically schedule one. It’s illegal to have, but everybody I know who has tried it and it’s five, six people have only reported for them very positive effects.

[00:13:13] Jeffrey: And that’s just, that’s a small sample

[00:13:15] Brett: I mean the, the medical community though is very much interested in decriminalizing hallucinogenics so that they can continue what have proven to be very hopeful studies thus far. I think Washington, is it Washington that allows me medical use of mushrooms.

[00:13:34] Christina: I think so. I think so. I, I, I don’t know the details, if that sounds right, because most things

[00:13:40] Brett: I know there’s at least one state that lifted the ban on

[00:13:43] Christina: it might be Colorado,

[00:13:44] Brett: and maybe acid, maybe it was Colorado. They were, they were leaders in the weed decriminalization.

[00:13:50] Jeffrey: I think it is. In fact, I’m, I’m looking at a Colorado public radio story called Stressed Out. Busy Moms say Microdosing mushrooms makes life easier [00:14:00] and brighter. Um, and it is, yeah, it’s, it’s great. And I just wanna read one of these sentences, mommies, who microdose are among the fastest growing groups of followers send us mommies, who microdose and, and also the photos in this are by my old colleague, Hart Vandenberg, who’s a wonderful photographer and a wonderful man.

[00:14:18] Jeffrey: I put it in the show notes.

[00:14:20] Christina: here. All right. He here. Here’s where it’s decriminalized. It is decriminalized. And, and this is according to the Wikipedia page, which is the status of psycho, uh, cylo mushrooms. Um, and then they have like possession sale, transport, cultivation, and then the notes. And so the United States just for possession.

[00:14:37] Christina: Sorry, let me scroll down to where this is. I really do hate Wikipedia as the, the way they do tables, honestly. Um, in the future, I will use chat g p T for this because I bet it will be in a, in a prettier way. All right. It is illegal, but decriminalized in Seattle, Washington, and Arbor, Michigan. Oakland and Santa Cruz, California, [00:15:00] Summerville and Cambridge, Massachusetts, Oregon.

[00:15:02] Christina: So the whole state of Oregon and Washington, DC and it’s legal in Colorado,

[00:15:07] Brett: All

[00:15:07] Jeffrey: Oh, okay.

[00:15:09] Christina: decriminalized in Seattle. Um, but, but it’s interesting that it’s just Seattle. So I’m like, okay, is it just the city of Seattle? Is it like the other, probably is just the city. Um, and, and it’s decriminalized in Ann Arbor because, you know, you gotta, you got, you, you gotta like let the, the, the rich like coy toy folks, um, have access, but also, I mean, honestly makes sense I guess from like a medical

[00:15:33] Brett: It’s a, it’s a big, yeah, it’s a big college town with a big medical program,

[00:15:38] Christina: right? Yeah. That, that’s what I’m saying. So that, that makes sense. Ok. Oakland and Santa Cruz. Santa Cruz. I can see Oakland feels a little Okay. Um. Because there’s not, it’s not like there are good hospitals in Oakland. There are good hospitals in Palo Alto. Uh, there are good hospitals in San Francisco. I don’t know if there are good hospitals in Oakland.

[00:15:56] Christina: Um,

[00:15:57] Jeffrey: There’s gotta be good hospitals in Oakland.[00:16:00]

[00:16:00] Christina: I, I, I, I don’t think so, but, but I will let

[00:16:03] Jeffrey: Fuck you Oakland.

[00:16:04] Christina: I will let listeners correct me. Um, what I’m sure is wrong, uh, Summerville and Cambridge, so, you know, Cambridge makes, makes sense. All of Decriminalize, all of Oregon and Washington, DC within Colorado is just like fucking legal dude. We don’t care.

[00:16:17] Brett: I, it’s, it’s so weird that it’s by and large, so like city by city, like, is it just that hard to get state legislation passed that the cities, the city’s real, like, we’ll, just within our, with our, within our borders. You’re

[00:16:31] Christina: Probably, and, well, I don’t know, like in Washington, in Washington state, I feel like it’s something they could probably get passed, but I don’t know. But I also know the, the, the Seattle City Council, who’s I hate. And I, I think that they’re completely like incompetent and I’m so glad that the piece of shit, um, city councilwoman is not running again.

[00:16:55] Christina: Um, sorry, uh, to people who are, are fans of, uh, uh, [00:17:00] Kshama, um, Saan, but she fucking sucks. Um, but

[00:17:04] Jeffrey: coming after everybody Oakland, the city council.

[00:17:07] Christina: mostly just Seattle. I’ve just been pissed off at Seattle for the last couple of weeks to be totally honest with you. Um, but, uh, but, but my, my city councilwoman is a, she fucking sucks.

[00:17:16] Christina: She’s the fucking worst person in the world. Um, she’s like the, she, she, she’s the person who makes all socialists like, look bad because she’s such like a, like a, a, a, she’s so left. She’s like, it goes into just like a, it, it, it goes into parody status and literally like makes everything that we fight for like harder because of assholes like her.

[00:17:37] Christina: Um, but, uh, I, I, I can see it having no problem getting past in, in Seattle City Council. I would think they could do it statewide though. Maybe it just takes more time. I don’t know.

[00:17:50] Brett: Minnesota still hasn’t legalized weed, but we can have

[00:17:53] Jeffrey: We’re close.

[00:17:54] Brett: Yeah,

[00:17:55] Jeffrey: Yeah, it’s, it’s pretty much, I mean, we have a completely Democratic government at this point, [00:18:00] and so it’s one of those things that’s just gonna kind of slide right through.

[00:18:03] Christina: Yeah. I, I read this, this deranged National Review article this week from some, like, I felt very sad for the family, but that was just like, wow, you guys are completely taking this out of like blaming the wrong thing who are going on this anti, like, legalization of marijuana scheme because their schizophrenic daughter who overdosed, it’s very sad.

[00:18:23] Christina: They blame her schizophrenia on the fact that she like smoked weed in college.

[00:18:27] Brett: huh?

[00:18:28] Christina: it’s like,

[00:18:29] Brett: Is that legit?

[00:18:31] Jeffrey: That’s not what they mean when they say gateway.

[00:18:32] Christina: that’s, that, that, that is legit.

[00:18:34] Brett: I’m told that my drug use may have caused my bipolar. Um, it, it, there are other members in my, on my mom’s side of the family that had bipolar, um, all of which are dead now. But, um, I was told by both my therapist and my psychiatrist that drug use, uh, in a young brain can lead to [00:19:00] complications such as bipolar disorder.

[00:19:02] Christina: I, I think, and I don’t know cause I’m not a doctor, but the studies and the things I’ve read are that if you have something that’s latent that’s already there, it, it’s possible that drug use at a young agent, it depends on the drug and, and, and marijuana. I think that there’s, there’s some dis, you know, there’s some confusion about this.

[00:19:19] Christina: I think it would have to be a lot, and I think that it would have to be a very specific circumstance. Could be the thing that could like maybe. Like set someone off, like unlock what’s already there. But I think that it’s like a, a massive reach to be like, this caused it, because as you said, like you’ve got other members in your family, you don’t know whether they did, you know, drugs or, or, or not.

[00:19:40] Christina: But it could also even come down to like, well this could be, you know, medications that you’re on. Um, could do things too. I think there’s some people who might be, you could make an argument, are predisposed, um, to cer to developing certain conditions. And maybe like drug use speeds it up, but,

[00:19:58] Brett: I had bipolar [00:20:00] symptoms, uh, in high school and I didn’t really get into, I was, I was drinking in high school, but I didn’t really get into like any massive drug use until I was like 16. So my first couple years of high school, I was definitely displaying symptoms of mania and depression, uh, before

[00:20:23] Christina: B before. Uh, there’s also, I think, an argument to be made that people who are, uh, you know, potentially, um, having symptoms might be seeking out drugs to

[00:20:34] Brett: Oh yeah. Yeah. See, that’s the thing is when I, when I think about like my, my heroin addiction, um, it very much like I sought it out because of my, my mental kind of imbalances, my needs, um, like the need for dopamine and the need for a kick, and the need for a way to numb my feelings. Like it was all very much like my [00:21:00] mental health led to that kind of addiction.

[00:21:04] Brett: I don’t think, I don’t think normal, happy people seek out heroin.

[00:21:08] Christina: right. No, I, I don’t think, like, yeah, I mean, I, and, and I don’t know who does, I mean, like, I think maybe you’re bored, maybe you know, you don’t know whatnot. Like, because I, I’ve certainly done certain drugs when like had nothing to do with like the state of my mental health, which is like, okay, fuck it.

[00:21:23] Brett: I wanted to do something dangerous. I get a real kick out of throwing caution to the wind. And I couldn’t think of anything more dangerous than, than doing hard drugs.

[00:21:33] Christina: no, fair enough.

[00:21:34] Brett: I get, it was real exciting. It still is. The thought of like, doing drugs is very much appealing to me. Like all of my bad experiences combined don’t make it any less appealing.

[00:21:48] Christina: Is, is it that you know that you could die? Is it the risk factor? Like, or, or is it the taboo in it being illegal and dangerous?

[00:21:54] Brett: it’s the taboo. And just knowing that it’s gonna feel really good and, and I can forget about [00:22:00] everything else for a little while. Not just problems, but forget about everything else and, and just focus on, on, you know, the drug. But

[00:22:10] Jeffrey: Did you, did you watch, um, fear of the Walking Dead?

[00:22:14] Christina: I did, I, I watched like the first few years.

[00:22:18] Jeffrey: was, so this character Nick played by Frank Delaine, who’s just amazing in this role. Um,

[00:22:24] Brett: right?

[00:22:24] Christina: Yeah.

[00:22:25] Jeffrey: and I, I was just curious if you had seen it, like there are all kinds of stages of his experience that get represented and he, I think he does a really powerful job of representing them. But there is this moment where he’s been almost like willing to be reckless when things are getting dangerous around his family.

[00:22:43] Jeffrey: And, and there’s a point where I believe he has to sort of make a decision and, and his family’s, you know, urging him not to, and he makes this point of like, I’ve been close to death so many times, like I’ve died. You know, he’s like, I’m, I’m ready. But he talked about sort of how [00:23:00] he kind of hit at that thing, about the risk of it.

[00:23:03] Jeffrey: Um, which is something that like, I don’t think people often understand about heroin addiction or heroin use is that, That sense of like walking up to the ultimate line potentially and not knowing how you’re gonna come out of it, is that, is that, I mean, does that resonate or is that kind of a fair reflection of

[00:23:20] Brett: some extent. I just, I’ve never, like, I started thinking about my mortality at a very young age and, um, I think I just kind of accepted that I’m gonna die one way or another. And it wasn’t necessarily a thrill to like seek out death, but it didn’t, it didn’t scare me. So I don’t think, I don’t think that was a reason I did it.

[00:23:43] Brett: I don’t think that was where the thrill came from. Um, but a side note, A D H D people, it’s, it’s been theorized that, um, we exist because in an evolutionary capacity, [00:24:00] um, A D H D people are the ones. Notice when things are wrong, fastest, and in situ, in pressure situations, we’re the ones that take control.

[00:24:10] Brett: We’re the ones that are like, suddenly come into our own. We’re like, no, I got this. And we’re willing to take risks. We’re willing to do dumb things to like save the day. And like for like early man, and even, even early le even post Ad Man, like that kind of characteristic needed to exist within a community.

[00:24:35] Brett: Uh, it’s less so now, now it’s more of a detriment, but like in especially a hunter gathered society, it, it makes a lot of sense. You would want, you would want the ADHD

[00:24:45] Christina: you would want the person with, with, with the low impulse control. It’s so interesting cuz my adhd, like, I don’t have like lack of impulse control. Like that’s not one of my, that, that’s like not one of my symptoms. Uh, which is, um, which is interesting. I don’t think [00:25:00] that I’m not, and, and I’m not trying to like make this a across gendered lines because I just don’t know enough.

[00:25:04] Christina: But I do wonder if, because there is a, whether it is, uh, genetic or, um, um, if it, if it’s like a, you know, sociological thing, you know, you see the difference a lot of times. Like, uh, and I know this from my mom, like you can observe very clearly little boys who have a D H D in the classroom. Like it’s very, very obvious little girls.

[00:25:26] Christina: It’s not. Usually because they don’t have the same lack of impulse control. And I don’t know, like what the reason for that is. I don’t know, again, if it’s like a, you know, a, a genetic thing, like a chromosomal thing or if it’s just like a, a, a conditioning thing

[00:25:41] Brett: yeah, no, I, it definitely presents differently in, in females

[00:25:45] Christina: 100% like, like because, because the thing is is that I definitely was a lot more, and I wouldn’t say I had impulse control, I was just more like, I don’t give a fuck. Like when I, before I entered elementary school, I was definitely, like, my personality was definitely much more like, [00:26:00] um, outgoing and like, they called me the wild woman and I would like, do you know some things that you might, might strike you as, as, as impulse things.

[00:26:09] Christina: But, but then I don’t even know how to like grip that cuz I’m like, okay, if you’re two years old, like, what, what, what does that mean? You know what I mean? Um, but um, I didn’t, I didn’t have any of the symptoms when I was in elementary school. People never would’ve thought that I was adhd, but then looking back at it and I’m like, oh, no, I, I had those things.

[00:26:28] Christina: It’s just I was able to cope with it very well, and it was hidden.

[00:26:31] Brett: well, yeah,

[00:26:32] Christina: I don’t, I, I didn’t get diagnosed until I was, you know, like 15.

[00:26:35] Brett: same with autism too. Like girls at a young age become better at masking symptoms than boys do.

[00:26:43] Christina: Totally. Although I, I think like for my A D H D, it wasn’t even a masking thing per se. I mean, Like some, there were, there was some masking. I would mask my depression, but like I didn’t feel like I was masking, you know, like I, I remember when I got diagnosed I was like, this is insane. And it was [00:27:00] one of those things that, that I even like blamed.

[00:27:02] Christina: It’s funny kind of going back to the topic, like I’ve been on Prozac and Prozac is the thing that seemed to kick off like the most overt a ADHD symptoms I’d ever had where I was no longer able to control if, if they’d been there before, like I would maybe put things off then I would maybe, you know, kind of get into scenarios where I would have to, you know, kind of crunch.

[00:27:19] Christina: But I was always able to do it and it was never a problem. And then, Prozac, I was like literally unable to focus on anything. And I, I’ve never, I’ve never felt more like stereotypically ADHD in my life than like, when I was on that drug. And then even going off of it, it didn’t stop. And so there was, you know, like is not, you know, these things are not correlation.

[00:27:41] Christina: Whatever correlation’s, not causation, whatever that the phrase is. But there was like a, an instinct where you wanna say, oh, this happened because of this, but like, I, I don’t think that would be an appropriate thing for me to be like, oh, I went on this antidepressant and that’s what caused my A D H D.

[00:27:57] Christina: Like, because I can go back and I can [00:28:00] look at, oh no, I had these other latent things. Now did it exacerbate a thing that was already in my mind and maybe have it present itself earlier and were acute. Than it would have otherwise. Sure. Um, but like, I, I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t say that we need to ban Prozac the same way.

[00:28:17] Christina: You know, like, again, I guess awful as I feel for the, the, the individual family whose, you know, daughter, like, went from being seemingly perfect to having schizophrenia and then dying. It’s like, you know, she was, she was schizophrenic. She wasn’t going to be okay if she’d never smoked pot, you know?

[00:28:35] Brett: yeah. Yeah. That’s really interesting, uh, that, that Prozac connection though,

[00:28:40] Christina: Yeah.

[00:28:41] Brett: that’s not a, that’s not a side effect I’ve ever heard

[00:28:43] Christina: no, and, and it’s not one that anybody else has ever seen, but it was so acute. It was literally like an overnight thing. Like it was literally a, a like, you, you’re taking this drug and a complete important, a comport, an important component of your personality completely changes.

[00:28:58] Brett: Doesn’t Prozac [00:29:00] have like a one month titration period? Like I, I’d be curious like what, what chemical reaction happened? Uh, because like for depression, you don’t even see depression symptoms get better for, I think it’s a month.

[00:29:14] Christina: It depends. And, and I’m very sensitive to medication, um, especially in SSRIs, which is why I can’t take traditional SSRIs. And, and we found this out because I went on like 15 or 16 different ones in a, in a small period of

[00:29:29] Brett: I know how that goes. Yeah.

[00:29:31] Christina: And, and there, there’s another component there, which is my, um, my age was one thing, but my body weight and my bone age was another.

[00:29:41] Christina: And this was before a lot of doctors had experienced prescribing these sorts of things, essentially to children. Because when I was 15, my bone age was eight and a half and I weighed like 68 pounds. So, you know, um, how so, so yeah, like, so they’ll, [00:30:00] they’ll scan your, your wrists and stuff and they’ll like compare like the size and like the density and things of your bones.

[00:30:06] Christina: And,

[00:30:06] Jeffrey: Oh yeah. Bone density is part of it.

[00:30:08] Christina: and, and they’ll, they’ll, they’ll age it that way. And, um, I, I was so small and, and like hadn’t gone through, you know, puberty and all those things that, it was one of those things that like having, you know, they were having to look up on, on their, you know, charts and things, okay, how, how do we even dose this?

[00:30:24] Christina: How do we even prescribe this? Because the normal dose would be this. How do we give, how, how do we dose this to someone, you know, um, this size. Um, and so which was, which was a challenge. So, um, I don’t know, like it could have been a, but, but it was one of those things where it was within days. It was definitely within a week where I noticed on Prozac it was like an instantaneous.

[00:30:48] Christina: Oh, I, I can’t focus, I can’t pay any attention. I remember my mom sitting in the, um, kitchen table with me trying to run flashcards for me to learn my biology, like study for a biology test, and her just [00:31:00] being almost like in shock because her straight A, like type a like child, like, couldn’t focus on her face and couldn’t remember one thing to the next and couldn’t stop fidgeting and couldn’t, you know, have any amount of, of, of, um, like recall.

[00:31:18] Jeffrey: Yeah. Wow. Huh.

[00:31:22] Christina: So, I don’t know.

[00:31:24] Jeffrey: Yeah. Bone d not to like, but, but bone density was something that we had a member of our family who, um, was having just kind of had two weird stress fractures outta nowhere, and bone density is the kind of thing that you have to have the right doctor to even bring it up. I mean, we went to a couple of doctors, nothing came up.

[00:31:44] Jeffrey: Then all of a sudden it was like, I think I called my cousin to talk to him about it. He’s like a, he’s a podiatrist, and he’s like, first thing he said, get the bone density checked. No one had done that. It’s so interesting how, how you can, how there can be such a big thing that just gets missed.

[00:31:58] Christina: Yeah, no, you’re [00:32:00] right. And, and that’s something like, I always have to like bring that up whenever, um, I have any sort of, you know, like, like break or whatever. Like, I had to mention it when I was hit by the car and like, I broke my wrist, bring it up. I was like, soap, you should know, you know, I had to go on certain things and like, I, you know, my bone is deep age.

[00:32:17] Christina: Other stuff I’ve, I’ve less, like, I, I was basically told when I was a child I was like, yeah, you’re gonna have osteopenia, osteoporosis. Like, it’s, it’s not a will you, it is a when will you thing. Like, it’s, it’s, you know, it’s like, you know, um, so, you know, I had to point that out. I was like, might look okay in this thing, but this is not the way it goes.

[00:32:37] Christina: Like, even if you, if you meet me in person, like you’ll notice like my bones are still very small. Like I’m, I’m, I’m a small person, but like my bones are like petite in a way that it’s like, you know, I, I appear smaller than I am.

[00:32:50] Brett: So you’ve been tw, you’ve been 29 for at least five years now. Do you think your, your bone age

[00:32:55] Jeffrey: Oh, good question. Good

[00:32:57] Christina: That is a good question. I don’t know. I should get that. I should get [00:33:00] that done. Um, I don’t know because it’s possible that it could go higher, like, you know what I mean? Like, it’s, it’s possible. Like, no, no. Cuz it’s, it’s possible that like, that, that it could, that it could inverse. I don’t know.

[00:33:11] Jeffrey: Or could you take your actual age and if your bone age is younger, use that in a little bit of math to be able to really, truly say,

[00:33:19] Christina: I mean that’s, I mean, that is sort of like my, my like rationale for, you know, remaining as young as possible, as long as. Is the fact that actually, you know, I’ve got like a five and a half, l