Mr. Goodbar

What snack would you eat right now?

It’s so simple. Just peanuts and chocolate. Delicious and doesn’t taste cheap like a Krackle or however it’s spelled. I need the protein, because I haven’t had breakfast yet. It’s about 0930, so this is not unusual for me. I’ll get home around 10:30 or 11:00 and I have stuff in the fridge begging for my attention. If I’m hungry enough, there’s leftover pizza. We’ll just see. After getting all my medication back on track, I’m sick as a dog with nausea. There has to be a better protocol for me than this, but going through the rigamarole of trying something new can introduce more problems as you find out that something doesn’t work for you.

I’ve tried Prozac, Zoloft, Wellbutrin, Effexor, and anything else you can throw at depression. Lamictal is the only thing that has worked in 20-odd years. So, I’d like something new that didn’t make me quite so ill, but it might take a year or two I don’t have or want to take. When you’re trying out different meds, it sometimes leads to mood and behavior that seems like you’re off them completely. For instance, Effexor can make you suicidal.

That’s actually a sore point between Dana’s old therapist and me. I thought she was a complete hoe bag. I can safely say they don’t interact anymore, so this story goes all the way back to like, 2015, maybe earlier.

When you are in a psychiatric emergency like your medication wanting you to kill yourself, you are stuck in the shit. You can’t see past your own pain, and someone has to step in because you literally cannot make that phone call by yourself. So, with Dana’s permission, I called her therapist and said that she couldn’t come to the phone herself (currently with her own head between her knees), and explained the problem. She’d just started Effexor and it made her nosedive.

She called Dana back, didn’t tell her to go to the emergency room, and told Dana that if she couldn’t come to the phone herself, then I was controlling and she was codependent. We can explore all that once Dana is out of immediate danger, but first of all, you’re Dana’s therapist and you don’t know me from shit or Shinola.™ I have experience with psychiatric emergencies both from watching myself with an omnipotent third eye, and being the one to take care of my friends when they cannot do things for themselves.

When you are in burnout, can you make a phone call?

I can, sometimes, but it requires a Mr. Goodbar. That I don’t have. I’m on the train back from Zac’s, so I could stop and get one. But I won’t. It’s better in my memory, when my mom and I used to split them.

I particularly need chocolate today because I’m sad. Through no fault of his own (TDY), Zac is going to miss the book signing for “In True Face.” Maybe I’ll just bring a cardboard cutout. 😛 I am sure he would love that. #eyeroll

If I’m lucky, maybe Lindsay will be free that night, because I doubt she could go to the thingme with me, but might be able to meet for dinner before or after. Preferably before, because I’d just be reading in the restaurant.

If I’m alone, dinner will be a Mr. Goodbar It’s my way of taking my mother as my companion instead of Zac. I don’t know how much she knew about spies (you never knew- she read a bazillion autobiographies), but I know she did know quite a lot about chocolate…… and peanuts….. and the fact that you can’t by the King Size because the ratio is off.

I might have come up with that last one myself, but I doubt it. Institutional knowledge seems to come out of nowhere when I take the first bite.