Mental Health Overtime with Alex Cox

[00:00:00] Brett: This episode is brought

[00:00:05] Brett: to you by Notion.

[00:00:07] Introduction to the Season Premier

[00:00:07] Jeff: Hello, everybody. This is Overtired. This is Overtired, the podcast you’ve been waiting for all year. And here we are. This is episode 341. I don’t know what it’s called yet, but I’m here with Christina. Hello, Christina.

[00:00:22] Christina: Happy New Year.

[00:00:24] Jeff: Christina Warren, for those of you who are joining for the first time because you needed something new this year.

[00:00:29] Jeff: Uh, Brett Terpstra, hi.

[00:00:31] Brett: Yo,

[00:00:32] Jeff: And we are starting 2024 with the amazing Alex Cox. I’m so excited about this. Hello, Alex. Amazing!

[00:00:41] Alex: qualifiers on how you define amazing, but so happy here on the season premiere of Overtired.

[00:00:50] Christina: Yes. Yes.

[00:00:51] Jeff: premiere! Oh yeah, let’s make it a season premiere. Is it episode 400 because

[00:00:55] Jeff: way that only we do our episode numbers? We juke stats! We juke [00:01:00] the stats, as they used to say in The Wire. Alex, host of, host of, co host of the podcast, uh, Dubai Friday, and, um, and haptic. fm. I listened to Dubai Friday, about three episodes, just to get ready for this, um, thing, and I really love that

[00:01:15] Alex: Oh, I apologize. Oh, goodness, goodness

[00:01:18] The Appeal of Conversational Podcasts

[00:01:18] Jeff: much. Do you know what it reminds me of? One of the earliest, the first podcast I listened to, I actually listened to it in order to write this article about podcasts for a magazine, uh, way, way, way, way back, and it was the Don and Drew show,

[00:01:31] Christina: my god,

[00:01:31] Alex: Oh yeah.

[00:01:33] Jeff: it this couple, was this couple in their barn, I think, and I think in Illinois, um, and they were really, um, Fucking funny.

[00:01:42] Jeff: And the whole podcast was just the two of them talking to each other. And I remember being like this format I love. And to this day, I way prefer two people bullshitting to something super produced and beautiful, like a radio lab or anything else. Not to diss any of that. It’s an [00:02:00] amazing amount of work, but it’s like public access TV, man, but it’s just a little bit better.

[00:02:04] Brett: How about four people bullshitting?

[00:02:06] Jeff: Four people bullshitting is great.

[00:02:08] Alex: my sweet spot is always the number three, so I’m absolutely ruining your season premiere. But I think with the amount Merlin talks, we kind of even out three people.

[00:02:21] Jeff: Also, four people is fun, because it’s like bumper cars. and I kind of that. So welcome.

[00:02:28] Alex: I’m so glad that I get to be here. Thank you so much.

[00:02:31] Jeff: Thank you. Well, should we? Let’s do this. What are we doing? We doing some mental health? Corner? Who wants to go to the corner?

[00:02:38] Brett: our format. That’s our, that’s our formula.

[00:02:43] Alex: I

[00:02:44] Jeff: we can refresh. What is Mental Health Corner, Brett? Hit it.

[00:02:47] Mental Health Corner (Part 1)

[00:02:47] Brett: Okay, um, what is Mental Health Corner? Mental Health Corner is three and sometimes four people describing where they’re at and what they’ve been through in the last week. In this [00:03:00] case, like the last month, it’s been a while. Um, but, uh, just like, uh, it’s a check in.

[00:03:06] Brett: It’s a, it’s a way to, I don’t know, like, I feel like we learn a lot. I get a lot of email from listeners and the one thing they always mention is the mental health corner. Like people find something they can identify with. Between all of us and our various diagnoses, uh, we, we actually relate to a large portion of our potential listeners.

[00:03:32] Brett: So,

[00:03:33] Jeff: and I think beautifully, no pressure, no expectation. Like early in the podcast, Brett and I would be talking and he’d be like, you should talk about this on the show. And I’d be like, no, or he’d be like, you should talk about this on the show. I’d be oh yeah, maybe. so, uh, there’s no pressure to do anything at length or be any kind of level of vulnerable.

[00:03:50] Jeff: It’s just, uh, it’s the corner, man. It’s a little place.

[00:03:52] Complex PTSD and Religious Trauma Syndrome

[00:03:52] Brett: corner. Um, so, I’ll kick it off if that’s cool, um, I have realized that, [00:04:00] uh, my CPTSD, um, one of the symptoms of that is black and white thinking, where I need, I need everything to be true or false, black or white, good or bad, evil or, or beneficial, and I don’t Okay, so, it’s, intellectually, I can, I can find the gray areas, and I can live in the gray areas, and like, my favorite TV characters are not good or evil, they are complex characters with, with justifications and reasons and history and background, and intellectually, I love that, but I find that In, like, an argument or in even like a simple debate, um, I need all the evidence to either send me to the right or to the left.

[00:04:51] Brett: To the black or to the white. And I’m constantly this two dimensional scale. I’m like, okay, now I believe this. Okay. Now I believe this. I’m willing to change my mind, [00:05:00] but it’s a binary and that’s not super productive, especially when you are partnered up with an autistic person who literally everything is great to them.

[00:05:11] Brett: Um, and before they can say, oh, that’s a great idea, or that’s a bad idea. They have so many questions and like, I want to start the conversation with. That’s a great idea. And here are the potential problems we might run into, but they want to start the conversation with, okay, so here’s, here’s what I see as potential issues and before I can tell you, this is a good idea, we need to solve these problems and I have this very bulldozer mentality, like if I’m faced with a problem, whether it’s a coding challenge or a work challenge or just something I want to do in my life, I just go.

[00:05:51] Brett: And I deal with problems as they come up. I solve things on the way. Half the time I end up going back to the beginning and starting over with new information. And [00:06:00] that’s fine by me. Like, I don’t wanna, I don’t wanna think about it. I don’t wanna plan. I just wanna attack it head on. Um, which is Kind of stupid, um, for, for most people, but it works for me, but it all comes back to this idea of like not being able to exist in gray areas emotionally.

[00:06:21] Brett: So that’s what I’ve learned in this last month.

[00:06:25] Jeff: And CPTSD, CPTSD is Complex

[00:06:29] Brett: Complex Post Traumatic Stress

[00:06:32] Jeff: I feel like is still a term that’s only becoming familiar.

[00:06:36] Brett: and it’s not in the DSM. Like, uh, my diagnosis is PTSD, um, but the kind of like sub genre. Of that is complex PTSD as a result of religious trauma syndrome?

[00:06:49] Alex: RTS, RTS isn’t in the DSM either, right? Because that’s something that, you know, both, I think it’s being recognized, obviously, [00:07:00] in the, quote, professional, psychiatric psychological community, but Also, uh, like you and other folks I know have both the, mostly tra trans folks or folks similar to you, Brett, who grew up in that environment, and I just really applaud the folks who are coming o forward, coming forward sounds like a very, I don’t know, like a gross term, but just talking about it in a way that makes sense.

[00:07:30] Alex: unfortunately, is needed to validate it to, again, quote, professionals. And

[00:07:37] Brett: Right.

[00:07:38] Alex: thank you for sharing that because I, do you think that’s also like a byproduct of bipolar stuff? You’re still diagnosed with

[00:07:48] Brett: Vice versa. Yeah. I’m diagnosed

[00:07:50] Alex: I was curious.

[00:07:51] Brett: But bipolar is a symptom of CPTSD. Emotional dysregulation a symptom of CP as are [00:08:00] attention disorders. Um, like this all comes like my and like I said, in the DSM, I’m just PTSD. And, like, that can explain all of my other various diagnoses. So, even though that’s the one I got the most recently, it’s also the one that I feel is at the root of everything else I’m diagnosed with.

[00:08:21] Brett: Uh, which is quite the trip. When you, you, like, live your life believing, I am this, I am this, and I am this. These are my diagnoses. These are what are, uh, what, what the medical professionals have labeled me as. And then to find out, oh shit, this is all This is all stemming from a problem I didn’t realize I had until I was 45.

[00:08:44] Finding the Right Psychiatrist

[00:08:44] Alex: Yeah. I always find that sort of unhinged and shocking, the way that it’s, our diagnoses are often pushed on us in such a binary, and the reason I’ve stayed with [00:09:00] My psychiatrist of, uh, ten years. I switch, like, therapists the way I switch underwear, but which is often, I clarify,

[00:09:09] Jeff: you mean switch

[00:09:10] Christina: I was say, that lot of

[00:09:11] Jeff: you change underwear?

[00:09:12] Alex: just, yeah, just not, not so much the, uh, I suppose the, I don’t know, this only show where I would say that, say that, a lot, but I’ve been with the same psychiatrist for, gosh, like, almost fifteen years because his whole Yeah.

[00:09:29] Alex: Methodology, which is wild for a white guy in the suburbs of DuPage County, which is in Illinois, to be like, Alright, yes, you are bipolar, you’ve been misdiagnosed as depressed because people see you as a teenage girl, and these antidepressants clearly are bad for you, but let’s not label that, let’s treat the symptoms.

[00:09:57] Alex: rather than pinning down a diagnosis. [00:10:00] And that’s stuck with me, but I have seen it go the opposite way for so many folks, and I understand, like, gosh, I understand, I think, how difficult that must be because of, like, other binary terms that have been prescribed. So again, thank you so much for sharing this.

[00:10:19] Alex: I know you did on another episode, but I wanted you to explain what PTSD was again.

[00:10:25] Jeff: a big deal.

[00:10:26] Christina: It is a big deal and, and I, I, I, um, I completely relate to you, Alex. I’ve had the same psychiatrist actually for more than 20 years and when he retires or dies and, and I’m not trying to be like, uh, morbid here, but like he’s in his, he’s in his seventies. So, you know, uh, he’s at some point, I, you know, I’m, I’m hoping that he will be active until, you know, he just keels over, but like, I don’t have 20 more years with this guy and I’m.

[00:10:54] Christina: I’m like terrified of that because I’m like this is literally, uh, he’s, he’s unique in that he is a psychiatrist that will [00:11:00] also do, uh, therapy and he, and he listens and, and I, uh, for, for a white guy from the South, despite like we don’t share a lot of the same political opinions, that doesn’t matter.

[00:11:10] Christina: He’s very open minded about different treatments.

[00:11:20] Christina: It’s, it’s a, it’s a stressor to even think about, okay, like, where would I even go to start to find someone else? Right. Because, and, and, and I’m in a very fortunate position where for me, money’s not even part of that because he doesn’t accept insurance anyway. So I haven’t had, you know, like, you know, so, so I don’t even care like, oh, well, who does your insurance cover?

[00:11:36] Christina: I’m like, that’s. That’s not part of the equation here. It’s like, how do I find somebody? How long do I have to get in? Because when I started seeing him, you know, 20 years ago, I was, uh, my, because my previous psychiatrist had, uh, was hired by an insurance company. Um, uh, and I loved Dr. Baker. Dr. Baker was Great.

[00:11:55] Christina: And he was the first one that I’d found, I think after like five or six attempts when I was a, you know, starting when I was like 13 or [00:12:00] 14, um, when, um, he left private practice, I was on a wait list to get into my current, uh, psychiatrist for months. It was the better part of a year. So I’m like, and I had this guy that I used to just call Dr.

[00:12:15] Christina: Kevorkian, who would just basically like write me a script.

[00:12:18] Jeff: Friend of the

[00:12:19] Christina: Yeah. Yeah. I, that, that, that, that’s literally like what called in my live journal. I was yep. Saw Dr. Kavorkian today. You know, got, got script for, for my, for my stuff. You know, just completely just, so yeah.

[00:12:31] Christina: When you find those people, it’s, it’s important, but it can also be really distressing to your earlier point when, you know, we, we don’t get diagnosed with the right things because of certain characteristics that we have. And then we, it’s like, oh, now we’re adults and, and we have all this stuff. And I’m like, well, yeah, that might’ve been useful to know earlier.

[00:12:48] Brett: I will say my, my, um, psychi, my psychi, my original psychiatrist retiring was the worst thing that has happened to me. Um. There [00:13:00] is a dearth of psychiatric professionals where I live, um, so I got pawned off from, uh, uh, an aged and well experienced psychiatrist onto some PA from Iowa.

[00:13:12] Jeff: And that was definitely pre, like, you could just get on Zoom with

[00:13:15] Brett: Yeah, yeah, they took me off all my meds, and it was, and I two years trying to get back to some kind of stasis.

[00:13:26] Christina: I mean

[00:13:26] Brett: And I lost, I lost my job. I got divorced. Like, shit went bad.

[00:13:32] Alex: would literally, I probably would die, like that is one of the most dangerous things I’ve ever heard happening to someone, it’s like, oh my god!

[00:13:42] Brett: It was, it was rough. Psychiatrists do get old, though. It happens.

[00:13:47] Alex: Gosh, I didn’t even really think about this until now, because I, he’s, he’s like, in his, gosh. It’s a little bit younger than my [00:14:00] parents, like so mid, mid to late 50s. And I’m realizing now, because I right now don’t have insurance and he, I basically have an under the table deal. I realized because of that privilege of growing up in the suburbs and I am so worried that I’m gonna just be, in order to, like, get my Lamictal, end up going to one of those, like, Uber, uh, psych doctors where you can be like, I, I, uh, Have, uh, uh, trouble paying attention.

[00:14:36] Alex: Here is your Adderall. I know that is being, uh, sort of, uh, cracked down on, but man, I am gonna start looking into that now.

[00:14:48] Brett: I I will, I will try to come for you insofar as Lamictal is, like, even your average MD, uh, like general practitioner [00:15:00] will prescribe you Lamictal. it’s not a scary drug for most prescribers. kind of Yeah. And it’s, it’s solid. It’s proven. Um, and if you, if you find yourself without a psychiatrist, you can often go to a general practitioner and say, look, I have this diagnosis.

[00:15:18] Brett: I need this med. And, and they’ll fill that for you.

[00:15:22] Christina: Yeah.

[00:15:23] Alex: is so common that perhaps I’ve acquired it in a different way when my has been out of town, and I irresponsibly, which is, I mean, another thing that is important about having doctors who are willing to learn, grow, and change, because when I was younger I was on lithium, which most, was most common, yeah, and

[00:15:46] Jeff: there.

[00:15:47] Alex: as soon as, as soon as possible, it was like, hey, there’s new thing, Lamictal,

[00:15:52] Christina: Oh, yeah.

[00:15:53] Alex: yeah.

[00:15:54] Alex: Oof.

[00:15:55] Brett: Did you have a bad reaction to lithium? Oh, here’s Lamictal. Why didn’t we start with to begin [00:16:00] with? I don’t

[00:16:00] Christina: Or, or, or,

[00:16:01] Alex: a patent longer is the answer.

[00:16:04] Christina: yeah, that’s exactly it. That’s exactly it. One is, one is cheap, one is not. And it makes sense. Well, it’s funny because when, um, uh, I was, I was misdiagnosed with, with being bipolar because I pissed off that psychiatrist. I mean, that’s actually what it

[00:16:16] Alex: Oh, you mean you were a little, you were a woman and you were angry,

[00:16:20] Christina: Oh, No. Well, and she was, no, she was a woman too, but, but I, I spoke really fast cause I was mad about something and I, she was really insistent that I stay on a certain antidepressant. I was like, you’re getting paid with the drug companies. This is why you’re prescribing this for me. You’re, you, you refuse to get off, you know, this bandwagon.

[00:16:34] Christina: I’m telling you it no longer works. It was working. Now it is not working. I need to go on something else. And she was just refusing to do anything. And I was like, you’re clearly getting, uh, you know, paid by the drug companies. Turned out I was actually correct. Um, but she was upset about that. So she was like, oh, well you’re bipolar.

[00:16:47] Christina: Yeah. And, um, and so, uh, put me, uh, first on, on, on Lithium and then on Lomyctol. Neither of those were, I’m not bipolar. So it was not a good for me. Um, but to that point, [00:17:00] you were saying about being able to get like a, a, you know, regular doctor to prescribe. I think this is, uh, just a, you know, And Christina is like, you know, FYI for anybody out there, note, get something in your file, get some sort of diagnosis from your psychiatrist so that you can keep it for your own records so that if you are in a situation where are there your insurance changes, your psychiatrist retires or they go off somewhere else or whatnot and you have a hard time getting your records and it’s not as easy to get our own medical records as it should be.

[00:17:27] Christina: You have something so that if you are in one of those scenarios where you’re like, shit, I have to get my ADHD meds. I have to get my antidepressants. I have get. know, whatever,

[00:17:36] Brett: no GP will prescribe ADHD meds unless you have an official diagnosis on your record. Um, and that diagnosis requires testing, um, and, and psychiatric approval. Uh, once you have that, most doctors are willing to kind of. Um, I guess Ben, like there’s, there are a lot of rules [00:18:00] that GPs have to conform to around things like Adderall and Biobans.

[00:18:04] Brett: Um, and, and the one thing that will tip the scale in your favor is having that official diagnosis. If you have, if you’re going to someone who accepts insurance, when they file Their claim to the insurance, it has to include your official diagnoses. So going to someone with insurance kind of guarantees that you have that on your record.

[00:18:27] Brett: Going to someone off insurance, you may have to pursue, uh, and make sure that they have a clinical DSM approved diagnosis on your record.

[00:18:38] Christina: right. Yeah.

[00:18:39] Alex: you guys are my favorite podcast. in past, it was sort of the Opposite for a lot of people, like, I was locked down, like, I don’t want any GP, anyone know that I’m bipolar because I turning, yep, well, not even that, because I was turning 26

[00:18:57] Christina: Yeah. And you were like, oh shit, I’m not going to get health insurance because[00:19:00]

[00:19:00] Alex: eh, right. And I was so worried also about getting a job like, yes, HIPAA, but people get around that.

[00:19:09] Alex: Luckily, I found I was employed by people, a bunch of weirdos like me, so it was not a problem whatsoever. And, uh, Now, like, I’m, we’re like, you know, going through health. gov and I’m, you know, one of those obnoxious Bernie Burrows who really wants universal healthcare, but at least Obamacare, uh, or whatever it is called now, it’s like, oh no, we, like, it is good, we have your pre existing conditions, which is Is something I did not know until, like, a few years ago, and was still masking it as much as possible.

[00:19:44] Alex: You guys are just the best podcast. Oh,

[00:19:47] Brett: when I did my intake for Oracle, um, bipolar was listed as an accepted disability. Um, and they didn’t make you declare, they just asked you, are you, do you have a [00:20:00] disability? And then they all the possible things. So I checked the box for yes. And that gives me a certain amount of protection.

[00:20:07] Jeff: like, I also think of this as a superpower.

[00:20:10] Brett: sure, but, but like, if, if worse comes to worst, I can say. Look, I have a disability and this was clearly defined in my intake. And that’s kind of new for me because I did always bipolar a liability when taking a job because I knew my bipolar could fuck with my ability to do my job. Um, and now I have a certain amount of protection, um, legally,

[00:20:38] The Affordable Care Act

[00:20:38] Christina: Yeah. No, is, is really important, which is really important. And, and, and, and, but it is, it’s one of those things that obviously varies where you work and, and all that stuff. And there is still stigmas there, uh, but it’s decreased a lot. And yeah, I mean, with the, uh, Obamacare or, you know, whatever the, whatever it’s called, um, uh, ACA.

[00:20:56] Christina: Yeah. Um, like that was a, for all the [00:21:00] critique that I think a lot of them are, are correct. Um, you know, there’s

[00:21:03] Brett: On both sides. I

[00:21:08] Christina: no, not, not

[00:21:10] Alex: by both sides you mean Democrats and obnoxious progressives like me, sure!

[00:21:16] Christina: well, yeah, yeah, but, but exactly,

[00:21:17] Brett: mean, people who support single payer, I guess, have the, have the most beef with

[00:21:23] Christina: right, well, and they’re, look, they’re very valid things to criticize it for, because it did make things worse for some people, and it, and it did make things more complicated, and I’m not going to

[00:21:31] Alex: website didn’t

[00:21:33] Christina: The website awful.

[00:21:34] Brett: It got capped

[00:21:35] Christina: Of course,

[00:21:36] Brett: the Republicans then, who could hold it up and say, look, it’s not working these,

[00:21:42] Christina: no,

[00:21:42] Brett: riders we slid

[00:21:44] Christina: No, you’re completely correct, but I’m just saying, like, even putting all that aside, what I always say to people, because, you know, we have like friends of ours who will like talk about, it is ridiculous how much I have to pay, you know, for health insurance and, and, and whatnot, and, um, you know, through the, um, uh, the, the various, uh, marketplaces and whatnot.

[00:21:59] Christina: And they’re not [00:22:00] wrong on any of those things. Not that that’s the ACA’s fault, but yeah, the website didn’t work and whatnot. But the one thing I will defend that forever is I’m like, look, that got rid of the preexisting condition. B. S. that for me, when I, you know, I was, I was able to stay on my insurance for a year longer than I should have been able to, and I don’t remember why, but they basically, we were able to get something done.

[00:22:20] Christina: And then when I was 27, it was basically, uh, you know, I was like, okay, well, my meds at the time I was, it was taking ProVigil, which was not generic then. And it was like 1400 a month. And that was, that was like. You know, with the insurance discount. And, um, then I, you know, like, Cobra, I think, was like 1100.

[00:22:41] Christina: So I was like, well, yeah, I’m gonna have to pay for Cobra. Because my med cost is higher than that, right, but I couldn’t get insurance any other way and, and because of where I was working at the time, like, we didn’t have insurance yet, and so it was one of those things where, like, I had to wait until the company got big enough to get, like, proper health insurance, and then, fortunately,

[00:22:58] Alex: Yes.

[00:22:59] Christina: passed, [00:23:00] you know, but, like, and I wasn’t in a unique

[00:23:03] Alex: position.

[00:23:03] Christina: So, so I was like this weird position where I’m like, you know, like 25 and I’m like healthy and I’m, I’m white and I’m a woman and I have, I’m thin, like all my health stuff is like perfect. Like I’m like the cheapest person to insure, right? And like I can’t get insurance because I have, you know, I was diagnosed with, with depression when I was 13 and you know, and it’s just like, okay, great that America is excellent.

[00:23:25] Christina: Um, but

[00:23:26] Monafadil and More

[00:23:26] Brett: you ever, did you ever explore black market Manafeddo?

[00:23:30] Christina: I did and, and I remember talking to about it

[00:23:32] Jeff: Tom Waits song.

[00:23:34] Alex: Christina, help me. What, what

[00:23:35] Jeff: That’s a really good Tom Waits song.

[00:23:37] Christina: Yeah.

[00:23:38] Jeff: black

[00:23:38] Alex: it sounds like a hot Natalie Portman movie to me.

[00:23:41] Christina: It does. Oh my God, really does. Black Market and Modafinil. It really does. No, so Modafinil is the actual drug that is provincial, which is now generic. But yeah, but Brett, you used to buy it off of like Amazon. No, you used to get it off of, um, uh, uh, the, um, um, whatchamacallit, uh, the,

[00:23:59] Brett: dark [00:24:00]

[00:24:00] Christina: yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:24:00] Christina: Didn’t you get it off of, uh, Silk Road?

[00:24:03] Brett: Yeah, basically with, with, I bought it with Bitcoin and like this is during the two years after my psychiatrist retired and I was just fucked. And I was looking for way

[00:24:15] Christina: account is locked.

[00:24:17] Brett: exactly. Well no, that’s because I tried to buy Vyvanse on the black market. Yeah. And that’s, and that’s when, and that’s when my pay, my Bitcoin wallet was like, okay, you’re out.

[00:24:30] Brett: Um, but the Monafidil.

[00:24:33] Jeff: Because Bitcoin has

[00:24:34] Brett: never got in trouble for the Monafidil, um, and that, that, that was, it was alright. Um, it was not, it

[00:24:42] Christina: was not

[00:24:43] Brett: a stimulant, um,

[00:24:45] Christina: Well, yeah, when Modafinil’s not as similar, I mean, it is and it’s not, it’s controlled, but it’s not the same thing. So, like, it, it’s, like, I used to do the two of them together. I used to have Dexedrine and, Modafinil together and, and I’d like to have them both back again, but it is expensive.

[00:24:58] Christina: My husband recently was prescribed [00:25:00] Provigil, um, in lieu of his, um, Adderall. And, and he’s, he’s liking it, but, but he’s also, I think, kind of having a hard time with it a little bit because he’s like, I don’t get that speed. I’m like, no, you don’t cause it’s not that.

[00:25:13] Brett: awake for fuckin

[00:25:14] Christina: Right. Yeah. Cause it was originally a narcolepsy drug and then it turns out it also gives you a tremendous

[00:25:18] Brett: it was originally, originally developed for the army, allow soldiers to not sleep.

[00:25:24] Christina: Correct. No, genuinely. Like,

[00:25:26] Alex: our version of, yeah, if folks have read the book Blitzed, which I, it’s a book about Nazis and meth, and it’s

[00:25:37] Christina: Oh

[00:25:38] Alex: to Nazis in any way, but it also goes into, like, the American drugs versus, yeah,

[00:25:44] Christina: Yeah. Well, no. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. I remember this. Um, there’s another one. Um, cause like all these things, um, so are wind up and, and this is what winds up ruining it for us who are trying to do it correctly is that all the athletes wind up using this stuff. And so it winds up fucking people who need it for [00:26:00] real reasons because athletes figure out how to like drug themselves to, to perform better.

[00:26:03] Christina: So like. Provigil was used that way and a bunch of other things and a bunch of other hormones and other stuff, which is difficult for regular people to get because, you know, uh, Balco, uh, um, that’s a throwback and, and other people were doing that, but, um, um, there’s an interesting book. Um, I’ll try to find it for the show notes.

[00:26:20] Christina: Uh, Blitz is a good one, but also about like the East German doping regime, um, it, for the Olympics, like during like the, the Cold War era. It’s freaking insane, um, all the shit that they would do and like the ways that they would dope, um, their athletes to perform well, um, it’s like insanity. But yeah, um, I, I contend that one of the reasons that insurance companies don’t to this day, like, Cover, Modafinil, um, as well as they should, like they’ll put caps on it and certain things and make it hard, is because, uh, What’s Her Face, who, who had like, she won a gold medal for, for Sprontane and some other things.

[00:26:58] Christina: She was like a really famous, um, [00:27:00] runner and then she was like, ProVigil was amongst some of the drugs that she was found to have in her system when she was, when she was doping. Um, and,

[00:27:08] Jeff: like, family tree slash, um, intersecting histories that surround every single mental health drug is kind of amazing. Like, we originally made this to stimulate bats to like, it’s just like a weird the other day, this is I just, while we’re on the sort of like, the border of like, Vyvanse and meth conversation, or like, Vyvanse and hard drug conversation, like, the other day, I’m off of Vyvanse now, I was taking like, 40 milligrams, which I never should have been, it was my own fault, I asked for an increase, but it was just, I was developing like, a twitch, and it was just not good, and I also realized like, I was having like, a prolonged manic episode, and it didn’t occur to me that it might be the Vyvanse, but anyway, I decided I was going to try to like, Break that dosage down a little bit.

[00:27:52] Jeff: And even though years ago, Brett taught me how to do that with water, which I forgot, I tried to like cut it like cocaine, which is like cutting [00:28:00] cocaine on a dollhouse coffee table. Like, it’s just like, it’s that just this little bitty amount and you just kind of, how do I get, you know, I was trying to make a 10 milligrams out

[00:28:07] Brett: Not, just to be clear, not to snort it,

[00:28:10] Jeff: No, no, just to throw it in some water and take it. Um,

[00:28:14] Brett: because snorting Vyvanse doesn’t work, I

[00:28:16] Jeff: no, it doesn’t. That’s the

[00:28:17] Christina: No, that’s the whole point Five Ants.

[00:28:19] Jeff: molecule so that you can’t snort it like

[00:28:21] Christina: exactly. That’s, that’s, that’s the only thing is Dexedrine, but with one thing changed, so you can’t abuse it. So they took like literally the thing that had the patent that had retired, like that had been retired earliest. They didn’t even use Adderall, they used Dexedrine because that’s the one that the patent like expired like in the 70s and they were like, Oh, what’s the, how can we get the most value out of this?

[00:28:39] Jeff: Dexterdine is the one that used to be over the counter, right? Like, for

[00:28:42] Christina: No, no, no. That was Dexatrim. Which was, which was

[00:28:45] Jeff: in ninth grade, and I didn’t eat for like five and I lost all kinds of weight, and then I was like, I think I’m starting to

[00:28:53] Brett: that same, uh, wasn’t that, uh, what’s in Sudafed?

[00:28:57] Christina: yeah, exactly.

[00:28:58] Brett: that they use meth?

[00:28:59] Christina: Ephedrine or[00:29:00]

[00:29:00] Brett: Ah, Fedrin,

[00:29:00] Christina: Yeah. Yeah. I think so. Dexatrim, I think was ephedrine. Yeah. But

[00:29:04] Brett: you also used to be able to buy a Fedrin at gas station,

[00:29:08] Alex: Merlin loves to talk on Dubai Friday about how much he misses a veteran. And I’m like,

[00:29:12] Brett: I used to

[00:29:13] Jeff: Oh man,

[00:29:14] Brett: I used to do like tabs

[00:29:16] Jeff: uh, what, but what’s the, what’s the, what’s the, what’s the brand? What’s the brand from? No, no, when we were kids, uh, there was, uh, Nodo’s.

[00:29:26] Brett: was caffeine.

[00:29:26] Jeff: That was just

[00:29:27] Christina: It was just caffeine. Although, you know what? I did find this out the hard way. Um, if you took, you, you timed it just wrong and you took your Nodos and then you, you know, it maybe didn’t kick in for a while and then you took your Dexedrine, the two could fuse. And the end result was basically like being on, on like a massive Coke vendor.

[00:29:50] Jeff: Yeah, the end result was basically Jackson Pollock

[00:29:52] Christina: I mean, I have video of me somewhere, this happened to me twice, and it was like, it was insane. I’ve like, I, like, my friends, I [00:30:00] remember the first time it happened to me, I was like 16, and they were like, what the fuck? And I’m like, I don’t know. I’m like, I think my dodo’s and my dex is being infused, and now I’m magic, and I can do anything.

[00:30:09] Christina: And I was like, and they were like, they like took me to like, I’ll never forget this, we went to Long John Silver’s, so like they could, they were trying to get like food in me to see, you know, like if that would sober me up. It did not work. Um, and I was like trying to like act low key, like not. Completely out of my mind, like, wired on meth or whatever, like, all day, did not work.

[00:30:28] Brett: I would like to offer the disclaimer that everyone on this show right now is currently a responsible drug user.

[00:30:36] Christina: I mean,

[00:30:36] Jeff: I’d like to offer the little piece of history that without being able snort Adderall, Adderall, I never did, but without being able to snort it, you would have never had like Power Pop.

[00:30:46] Christina: That’s true.

[00:30:47] Alex: Powerpuff Oh, oh, okay, there we go.

[00:30:50] Christina: you’re not wrong. I mean, look, uh, but rock and roll wouldn’t exist without cocaine. There’s a lot of things we could say that, like, wouldn’t exist without some of, uh, our, our,

[00:30:58] Jeff: and roll wouldn’t exist without Little [00:31:00] Richard.

[00:31:00] Alex: mean,

[00:31:00] Christina: I, I agree.

[00:31:02] Jeff: cocaine in Little Richard.

[00:31:04] Brett: Right,

[00:31:04] Christina: that’s what I’m saying. That’s what I’m saying, man. But yeah, no, we’re, we’re responsible drug users and, and everything I take is either prescribed for me or legal in the state of Washington.

[00:31:12] Christina: So there’s that

[00:31:13] Brett: Because we’ve grown up. So we’re, we’re at 30

[00:31:17] Alex: mean, I still, I’m too, I’m just too afraid. I’m like, I’m

[00:31:20] Jeff: Same. I remain too afraid. I remain too afraid. I’ve never done, except for some gummies recently as my first drugs.

[00:31:28] Alex: Oh, yeah, I guess

[00:31:29] Christina: Oh wow, you’re straight edge.

[00:31:30] Alex: uh, yeah,

[00:31:31] Jeff: wasn’t straight edge and I wasn’t disposition. I was just, it was just where I was at. All my friends were either throughout my life, like including people I dated, they might be junkies. They might be like, they might be giants. Um,

[00:31:41] Brett: was to, that

[00:31:43] Jeff: of drug. But, but what happened was people just knew this about me without me telling them.

[00:31:47] Jeff: So no one did drugs around me. there were people I didn’t know were snorting Coke before every show when I was in a band, but they were just like, let’s Jeff doesn’t have to see I’m I’m not a little porcelain, like.

[00:31:57] Christina: no, well, no, see, love how we have the full [00:32:00] spectrum because like, like Brett has been in rehab and is like recovered and like had like a serious like addiction. Like you have never done things, Alex, you’re saying the same way. And then I feel like I’m like the person who’s just like a minimal but casual, like I will do edibles and stuff.

[00:32:13] Christina: