Kill them with your mind, Dana.

One thing I'm glad about with my apartment is that I just have to get my garbage into the dumpster, I don't have to meet a pick up day and drag the bins to the curb.

So apparently its familial, to use the smarts to be more lazy!

My dad was an engineer and he always said the best engineers were lazy people because they came up with ways to spare effort.

On my phone, so no quoting, but yes - what I meant was more "nothing to do." In Peace Corps I had colleagues who got a lot done and seemed to be satisfied with that, and I had other colleagues who "went native" and didn't do shit and seemed really happy. I was somewhere in the middle, miserable.

I totally feel the "is it depression or just me" thing. I will note that as I have treated my depressions dn *especially* my anxiety, it has gotten a lot easier to do things and sometimes I even *want* to do things. I alternate among thankfulness that I've come so far, frustration with what I'm still dealing with, and bitterness about how anxiety has affected every single aspect of my life to date.

I don't have a dishwasher, and mostly I don't care. The last time i had one, we didn't use it. Now I have a double sink, which means his and hers dirty dishes. Each of us does our dishes at least once a day, usually, so it stays under control.

I feel stupid having these obvious thoughts, but my god, how did people cope with pain before modern medicine? Or even before the last few decades? "Sciatica" is one of those things that pops up in Agatha Christie books when old spinster family members complain about it. Ha ha, grumpy Aunt Louise, all she does is complain and exaggerate her pain.

Grumpy Aunt Louise is not playing around. For lunch, I was able to lurch over to the fridge, pull out cold pizza, and collapse back on the sofa. If I didn't have a diagnosis and plan of treatment, I'd lose my mind. Grumpy Aunt Louise is just going to have to live on the charity of family members, and she has to do it without Percocet or Neurontin.

It's just really upsetting to think about, I guess. Poor fictional Aunt Louise.

So apparently its familial, to use the smarts to be more lazy!

Oh, hey, I'm pretty sure I inherited that from my father, too. Although I think he had more Issues than I knew about -- it sounds like he was more prone to depression (or something) than I could see as a kid. Anyway, I think we're the same, but I'm better at hiding my fuck-up times. I think he got fired a fair amount.

Grumpy Aunt Louise is just going to have to live on the charity of family members, and she has to do it without Percocet or Neurontin.

Depending on the timeframe (up until early/mid-20th century), Grumpy Aunt Louise probably had access to laudanum, i.e. 10% opium tincture. She still probably was dependent on others to get stuff done, but she might not have cared so much.

But, yeah, the current mindset of painkillers=bad due to the opioid abuse issue bothers me. Because we developed painkillers for good reasons—pain sucks and can ruin your life.

As the Lexapro dials back the chemical anxiety, my learned anxiety is, well, anxious for a reason to exist. I have blamed myself for random things I have no possible responsibility for for decades, and I've just stuffed it down and worked around it. When the anxiety rises, I try to convince it that it can retire now, go part-time, it doesn't have to lurk around like Hamlet's Ghost looking for purpose. I try telling myself that my thoughts aren't me, but I got into a nasty existential loop of "Well, then, who the hell am I?"

Painkillers are like so many other things -- extremely valuable when used properly, but extremely dangerous when used improperly. When my back has gone out, a little painkiller and/or muscle relaxant goes a long way. But it's a short-term fix, not long-term. Even after surgery, I've relied on less than the prescribed dosages after a couple of days.

Although to be fair, I've never had any long-term pain problems. And I don't know how I'd deal with long-term pain where no other fix was available.

Depending on the timeframe (up until early/mid-20th century), Grumpy Aunt Louise probably had access to laudanum, i.e. 10% opium tincture. She still probably was dependent on others to get stuff done, but she might not have cared so much.

On the days the migraines or the chronic pain are bad, I have been known to whine about the lack of laudanum in my life.