dingus

Nice. Love finding unexpected money. Every drawer in my home is a junk drawer tho so it's hard to find stuff. I've never been good at staying near and organized.

The point is that GPS map services factor in traffic data...

I know roughly how long it will take for me to drive the several hour trip to my mom's house when there aren't any accidents or construction work. It's those factors that affect my ETA.

I believe it, but it's just not necessarily always from that lol

It's not. I don't have a stricture and the thing in the OP happens to me sometimes. It's like very very occasionally, I swallow weird...and it's almost like a cramp or something odd happens where I get pain from swallowing. It gives the same energy as when you accidentally inhale your own spit, but it relates to your esophagus instead of your lungs.

Random monologue no one asked for.

It's weird. I've gone from periodically depressed and unhappy similar to the left to growing increasingly less and less relatable to memes about hating life. Now I'd say I'm toward he point where I lean more towards the right but without the overt optimistim and proselytizing. Idk if something changed in my brain or what. It's like I have filled up my time lately with too many things nowadays so I don't have much "downtime" to ruminate on things that make me sad. I did change psych meds for the umpteenth time about 4 months ago. Maybe it might actually be affecting me. Weird to think about? Dunno.

This person's whole account is filled with bizarre stuff, really

Personally, I prefer long form content. I don't enjoy things like YouTube shorts and whatnot.

Huh? What's wrong with an Uber or taxi? I don't get what you don't understand about it. It will take you exactly where you want to go.

Some examples of where this mode of transportation has a big advantage:

If it's too long to reasonably travel by bike, especially in current weather conditions
If there are no nearby bus stops
If the bus line doesn't come very often (ex: several hours for a bus to arrive at the stop you're at)

Love the shot! Whatcha drinking?

I don't know. That's the problem. I have never felt like anything had much of an effect beyond some obvious intitial negative side effects. I think because mental health medications are so slowly acting that I just cannot for the life of me me tell anything.

Here are my experiences:

DAILY MED TRIALS:

Escitalopram (Lexapro), an SSRI, 10 mg - Initial intense fatigue that sucked major ass. After about 1-2 months, the fatigue faded and my mood got a bit elevated and my anxiety lessened a little bit...but I'm not sure how much of that was the medication versus natural mood cycles. A major life stressor happened though and my mood and reactivity started to go all over the goddamn place again, but even worse than before because of the greater stressor. I discontinued the medication after several months.

Lamotrigine (Lamictal), an anticonvulsant, 200 mg - The titration process is incredibly, painfully slow so you don't have a dangerous reaction to it. I experienced very intense itching almost every time I would step up the titration process, but after a while on any given dose, it went away. And then when I had bigger step ups near the end, I didn't get the itching side effect any more. I was in the depths of my major life stressor and found that it didn't seem to help a ton with my mood fluctuations and reactivity. It is really hard for me to tell what sort of effects it may have had if at all...sometimes I would think that I felt a lot calmer, but other times not at all. I was on it for much longer than escitalopram, and am almost off of it. The step down from this takes a while too, but not as long as the step up.

Quetiapine XR (Seroquel XR), an antipsychotic, 50 mg - This one scares me and I don't like the idea of being on it long term. I am on a very low dose... generally at this level it is only used for sleep and anxiety, so the negative long term effects are mitigated a bunch. Like escitalopram, I noticed initial fatigue on this which really sucks, but it went away after a while. I also experienced intense hunger initially (which is how many gain weight on it), which again seems to have gone down after a while. I have been on it since late January and I have been objectively way more stable than I have been in the past year. I am less reactive and am baseline a bit more chilled out and less anxious about some things. But I'm not sure if that has to do with more distance between the life stressor and having gone through more intensive therapy while on it. Needless to say, I guess I'll be sticking with it for a while, even if I'm not sure about the long run.

Many people comment on sexual dysfunction with SSRIs and antipsychotics. I had sexual dysfunction before these meds, so this has not impacted me to my knowledge, but it's something to think about. Lamotrigine does not affect sexual function.

"AS NEEDED" (NOT DAILY) MED TRIALS (taken for anxiety and acute distress):

Propranolol, a beta blocker/high blood pressure medication, 10 mg - I found it useful before a job interview once, but otherwise I did not find it of much benefit or noticeable effect.

Hydroxyzine (Atarax, Vistaril), an antihistamine - I was initially given 25 mg but found it way too sedating. I now have 10 mg pills which aren't very sedating, but I'm not sure how helpful they are.

Clonidine (Catapress), an alpha agonist/high blood pressure medication, 0.1 mg - This is incredibly sedating. I split the pills in half to 0.05 mg, but it still can be pretty sedating. I found the sedative effect a bit desired when I have been freaking out, but other times it makes me more depressed when I am already not feeling good.

Overall, I have not found "as needed"/prn medications too useful to me. If I am having an acute anxiety attack, they take too long to "kick in" to have much benefit. (Can be like an hour to start noticing an effect). And if I take one at the wrong time, I can get depressed from them tbh. They are useful if you can anticipate when you are going to be anxious (like the job interview I said).

Good luck out there.

Well. So I took a lot of dance classes growing up. It was a very important part of my life. I wanted a tattoo for that, but I didn't want something obvious like a ballerina. Thought of a black swan. This doesn't really read like a black swan as much as I'd like (I think the legs are proportionally too large or something) and it's not exactly dark enough, but I thought the stencil looked sick so I went with it anyway. I think she did a great job! The only thing I might want to change about it in the future would maybe be getting it darkened. But yeah I know there is a balance between darkness and readability of details.

I'm planning on getting a tree on my thigh soon (unrelated) and have been trying to figure out who and where to choose booking it. So far my tattoos are all from different people, but I really liked the vibe of the shop and artist for this particular one. I think I might ask her to do my tree also.

I do think it looks pretty cool...but what about washing your hands? That's the main issue with it I'd think.

So how do people react when you walk into the vet office and tell them you have an appointment for Balzac lol

OP, are you sure you are actually dehydrated? Are you getting kidney stones?

Most people don't need to actively concentrate on drinking liquids. Your body will tell you when you're thirsty. It's a weird internet fad where people try to drink like a gallon of water a day. It's not necessary. Your body tells you when it's hungry and it tells you when you need to drink liquids. You're not going to die from failure of the body signaling you to eat or drink.

Now, if you've had kidney stones, your doctor may tell you that you need to be drinking more water.

Beyond that, excessive water drinking is just the latest fad right now. It's not necessary.

I had to Google this to make sure you weren't fucking with us.

Holy shit!! I cannot believe this is a real animal!! Why he look like that???

Thank you. That's very kind of you, but I think if I wasn't going to figure out anything at this point in my life that it's just not going to happen. To describe things to people, I describe any sort of sensation that I feel in my crotch region as no different than if you were to touch your own elbow. You can touch or rub or lick or suck your elbow any which way you want, but it's not going to feel at all pleasurable (I'm sure there are some people but that's not really the point of my analogy).

It won't necessarily feel uncomfortable, just won't have any pleasure associated with it. If it's so complicated that I can't even figure out where to begin with finding even mild pleasure, then I don't think there's hope. It's likely broken. Idk. I'm 32 btw.

As someone with a clitoris, sadly a (likely rather small) population of us still will never know. Mine seems to have come out nonfunctional from the factory. Sometimes I wish I could feel sexual pleasure like how a majority of the planet seems to.

Huh? Hasn't this been known for years and years already? This isn't groundbreaking. I was taught this in school many years ago.

Ok I'm stupid here but I have a hard time with psych meds because I literally do not ever notice effects beyond the initial tiredness of most meds. I think because they are so slow-acting that I can't tell if something may be doing anything.

And then since you don't stop them abruptly either, I can't tell if they had any positive effect on me. I've had negative withdrawal effects like "brain zaps", but beyond "withdrawals" I'm at a loss.

My providers always have a hard time with me because I can never tell them if I feel like something helps me or not. I always just lean towards the latter because if it's so minor that I don't notice then it seems like it's not really beneficial? Idk.

Any guidance or advice?