I'll be interested to see, now that I've weaned myself off of the acrylics and then the plastic ones for a couple months after because they were so bendy, whether my nails will be as strong as they once were so that I can keep them longish. I have long nail beds, so it's all good even if not.

And, yeah, for practicality of playing instruments and climbing, I'd chop them right off, no issue there.

Deva Curl salons

Is that a salon chain? Because all I'm finding on Google is the Deva Curl products.

I'm not ragging on anyone--if my nails were attractive, I'd make more of an effort, but the beds are flat so when they get any length on them, they're both uncomfortable and kind of ugly. I can't be bothered.

No, no, I didn't feel ragged on. I totally get it, and it's not practical with climbing anyway. I just wanted to make clear that I wasn't trying to rag either. Or sound judgey. Eyebrows and nails are just two of the things that bug me about me when I don't have them the way I like them. More than hair, actually, which I'm not sure I realized until just this second. Huh.

Jen, I did acrylics for a long time and stopped a couple of years ago. My nails were weak for a while but have improved month over month. Now they grow well and look pretty darned good. Not to say it takes a couple of years but I used to keep them short on purpose while they healed and only just recently let them grow.

LeNubian, Jesse, thanks. For all that I'm forthright about work, I'm not that good at this kind of conversation, so I'll have to psych myself up for it.

And I don't want it to be a big deal, it's just that it's a bit difficult to figure out what he means. I mentioned it to my sister and she immediately responded that there was probably an element of sexism in it--that he wouldn't call a man with my demeanor "bristly". She's probably right, and it doesn't help that this is a military environment...

I keep my nails totally short. They're polished right now, mind.

It gave me crazy rage, Howard Hughes-like social anxiety, and almost a year of insomnia. I am clearly not its target patient. Too much norepinephrine already running around in my brain.

I take it to augment my Celexa, because the dose of Celexa needed to control my anxiety eventually sent me into anxiety-free depression. So I'm on the XL in a low dose to counteract that. It's been working pretty well. Sadly, I still want to eat food. I was hoping I'd get the MEH. FOOD. side effect. (I got that with Vyvanse, but Vyvanse was what started the depression, and it didn't lift completely when I went off it.)

Is that a salon chain?

No, any Salon can have a person trained in Deva Curl. But it doesn't just have to be Deva, if someone specializes in curly hair it's usually advertised. I should have mentioned that I look for Deva curl people because I really dig their products.

Oh, that's good to hear, Suzi, thanks. I am noticing that my thumbnails are feeling almost normal, so I'm taking it as a good sign.

But hey, despite the brain probs, do I appear to be decently functioning to you folks?

I've become convinced that prescribing psych meds is an art, not a science. There are enough meds out there, and the reaction of any person to any particular med unpredictable enough, that it's about 1.5 steps above a guessing game.

My BF from HS is a psychiatrist and she said something along these lines once. What she said was they don't really know what pill X works on Person A, but not Person B and why no pills at all seem to work on Person C. I think they learn more about the brain everyday, but I think it's still so mysterious in many ways.

It is actually mostly a guessing game. It's not even 1.5 steps above. Zoloft works for a lot of people, so let's try that! Oh, Zoloft didn't work? Well, how about Celexa? No luck with Celexa? Let's try Wellbutrin! And so forth. That's neither art nor science; it's throwing darts at a board in a dark room.