Rod and Karen discuss Rod’s work week shifting, the wrong address on deliveries, Karen goes to brunch, Jeenyuhs documentary, car break-in, Ukraine memes, Biden SOTU, loud sex 311 calls, lotto winner ducked calls, Chaney Jones, Supreme Court not hearing important cases and Momoa and Bonet working it out.
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I haven’t watched the Kanye doc yet, but listening to this episode did remind me how much I loved his music when I was in college. So I re-downloaded College Dropout and I started feeling sad and realized some of us probably still need to mourn the loss of the person he used to be or what he represented back in the day.
Oh well.
Also I really hope y’all got the package I sent, I saw the show notes and it made me so anxious. Like “oh no, what if the address on the website was wrong, and the USPS is trash sometimes, and I misplaced the tracking number so if it’s lost it’s just gone forever.â€
I calmed down about it tho, I hope y’all like it and burning it isn’t too complicated.
Iman
I am leaving Five Stars for the title alone. Thank you Karen and your Best Half for always doing the damn thing!
I’d like to remain anonymous. It’s very long. Sorry about that.
Hi Rod and Karen, I’m writing in about your comments about Kanye. I really want to thank you for approaching it with empathy. I too, am bipolar. I’m bipolar type 2, like Bassey. Our “highs†aren’t as high but our lows are pure hell. Most of us will spend the majority of our lives depressed. Personally, now that I know more about the illness, I’d estimate that I’ve been depressed for about 90% of my life.
I remember reading Basseys book where she talked about being depressed for years. I thought about how horrible that must’ve been for her and how I hoped it wouldn’t happen to me. Then it did happen to me. One day I felt “fineâ€, (my “healthy†is still on the depressed side of the seesawâ€), but suddenly it got way worse. It felt like somebody turned the lights out on my life. All of a sudden I could barely do anything. I’d manage to go to work but I was often late and unproductive. And when I got home from work I was so mentally and emotionally drained that I’d immediately go to bed. My weekends were spent laying on the couch because I didn’t have the energy or interest in doing anything. I couldn’t even eat my favorite foods or do my favorite hobby, golf, anymore. I had to cancel plans and lose money on stuff like festival tickets because I simply couldn’t get out of bed.
This was my life for months and months. Then the pandemic hit. The world was scary and I lived all alone. The little interaction I got with others through work was gone. The world was going to shit, so naturally my depression got worse. Eventually when I couldn’t take it anymore I told my psychiatrist that something had to change. We’d tried so many different combinations of meds but they didn’t work or the side effects were untenable. He recommended that I try something called TMS.
TMS is basically sending shockwaves to your brain. It’s very expensive and insurance companies love to not pay for it. So I was paying $75/day out of pocket for daily treatment for 7 weeks. In addition to being expensive, it’s pretty painful. It feels like a woodpecker is going HAM on your brain for an hour 5 days a week. The good news is that it worked. The bad news is that it made me realize that my whole life I’ve been depressed. I never felt better than after that treatment. I was able to do things without having to psych myself up first. I didn’t realize this is how other people live. It felt so foreign to be able to get out of bed or do things without a second thought.
Fast forward to September 2021 and my doctor wanted to change my meds because it makes me at high risk for diabetes and heart disease. Plus I had been doing really well for about 6-7 months. So it seemed like a safe enough time to ween me off of antipsychotics. I didn’t really notice any changes. I thought life was going well. I told my doctor and therapist that life was great and felt like I’ve never been happier. People who saw me kept mentioning how happy I looked.
Around the beginning of February 2022 I started to notice I started to feel drastically different. The lights had gone out again. I thought it was the birthday blues. Then I got an alert from my budgeting app about my spending. I’d been avoiding the app because I was having too good of a time. For some reason I opened the app this time. That’s when the damage hit me like a freight train.
I normally spend about $8K per month including my rent and bills. In September 2021, the month where we cut my meds, my spending was up to $12K. Then $15K in October and $19K in November. Then in December I spent $50K! I only spent $20K in January 2022 because at that point I was basically broke. The wildest thing, is that I don’t even remember spending most of it.
Seeing the damage I’d done caused me to spiral into depression even more and the shame was crippling. I needed to tell someone but I was scared to tell my doctors or therapist because I was afraid they wouldn’t trust me anymore. Eventually I told my closest friends.
I don’t know what exactly I was expecting, but they were so loving and encouraging. Your empathy for Kanye reminded me of their empathy for me. They reassured me that I will be alright and that I can rebuild my life. I needed to hear that and it gave me the courage to tell my therapist what happened. He too was very encouraging and reassuring. They all made me feel like my life wasn’t over despite my mistakes. And that I was still worthy of love despite the reckless behavior of my hypomanic episode.
I’m so sorry for the long ass email but hearing Rod talk about Kanye made me cry. I’m still deep in the throes of crippling depression but I feel confident enough to tell my psychiatrist about it at my next appointment.
But I’ll be honest, I wouldn’t mind if I died young. I don’t want to deal with this shit forever.
Thanks for reading, I needed to get that out.