That’s awful, Rich, very sorry to hear it. Especially as it’s an insurance issue that triggered it. As a retired person, can you get access to Medicare to replace what you lost? I hear you about wanting to stay off the Paxil, but if it’s really helping with mental balance, it may be the lesser evil.
Isn’t it generic?
Something you should know, cash prices for drugs are arbitrary (unless it’s different in Florida).
In New York independent pharmacies would charge say $80/1 month supply for something you can now get for say $5 in Walmart/Target. I think Walmart has a national low generic price, and target has competitive prices.
On cutting services:
Last night I spent half an hour navigating the verizon website’s ADD/CHANGE services and couldn’t figure out a way to remove services (such as VLDD Long Distance Shortfall Charge which basically means if you don’t make enough long distance calls they’ll just charge you $10 /month.) Apparently you must call to remove services. Bastards.
Hey Rich. You don’t have to go back to Paxil. All of those drugs are a bit of a crapshoot and what works for one person may not work for another.
BTW, I loved getting rid of my depression, but I hated the tamping down of most every other feeling that went along with the fix. I didn’t want to kill myself any more, but I wasn’t exactly thrilled with life either. Anyway, I am out the other side of that shithole for about nine months right now so I am pretty happy. Good luck to you and hang in there.
That sounds awful, Rich. If you now do think the drug was helping you feel better, you might consider going back to it, especially if the alternative is self-medicating with a lot of alcohol. I’ve never suffered from clinical depression, but do have bipolar mental illness in my family (thankfully completely treatable in this case with lithium carbonate–which doesn’t work for everyone unfortunately). Good luck.
RichVR
6587
Thanks for the replies, people. It helps a lot. Long story short, I’m back on the Paxil, or the generic, paroxetine. I was buying the generic. So the wife and I discussed the matter. Ultimately it was up to me. My decision is, even though Paxil is a flawed solution, it’s better than the the other choice. I’ll be taking it as a stop-gap measure until I can find a better solution. The bottom line is that I thought it wasn’t helping at all, but it was. A lot more than I considered. If anything is a lesser of two evils choice, this is. I have read all of your posts and I have taken them to heart.
IB, while I’m retired due to various injuries, I’m not yet eligible for Medicare. OTOH I am considering getting a lawyer and trying for some form of disability. The thing is, this sort of rubs me the wrong way. Not that I don’t need it. Just a personal thing I have to get over.
wisefool, like I said this and all of my prescriptions are generic where applicable. But I appreciate your council.
Kemper, I am glad that you were able to get out of the spiral. I hope to be there one day. Thanks for your thoughts.
Papageno, ultimately that was the way I went. I’m sure that you understand the difference between medicated thinking and unmedicated thinking, going by what you wrote. While I won’t expect any results, being back on the drug, for at least a week and maybe four weeks. Just knowing that I’m taking it gives me hope that I’ll be less of a raging bastard really soon. It also gives me time to be more contemplative. I don’t know if that makes sense. But when I knew that I was taking nothing, it made things worse. I feel that I have no control when I’m not medicated. Just taking a pill, no matter what it might do in the long run, makes me feel like I have some control. And hey, that means a lot.
Sorry to have hijacked the thread. Thanks again for your kind words.
I have resisted the urges of my anal retentive tendencies.
The above was just a random thought.
Fuck!
Hehehehe, anal, hehehehehehe
My random thought of the day is…
Half the office isn’t around (mostly on vacation), I wonder if the colleagues who are will realise if I leave at lunch. Hmm…
I’ve posted about this before, but my powers of musical prescience continue to surprise me. I woke up this morning with John Mellencamp’s cover of “Wild Nights” going through my head, and I do love that song’s bass line. But after I got my kids fed and dressed and off to school, I stopped by the grocery store to pick up a couple of things and heard they were playing that very song. Actually, the Van Morrison original, but still – spooky. Come on, you know it is.
Hmm, that is spooky. What I’ve found myself humming lately is Cyndi Lauper’s “True Colors” for no apparent reason. I then try to figure out what set off the chain of associations that ended up with me humming “True Colors” but I never succeed. I mean, it’s an OK song, but if I’m gonna think of a Cyndi Lauper song, why not “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” or “She Bop”?
I will now have three songs in an endless loop in my head for the rest of the day.
We don’t portray robots in the best of ways in the US (Terminator and Matrix movies for example) like they do in say, Japan.
So, I’m not real surprised this happened. More than likely just jerks being jerks.
I was reading the Wall Street Journal today, and they had an article on sentiments around Southeast Asia on whether Japan has apologized sufficiently for war crimes in WW2. The Japanese feel about 45%-25% that they have, while the Australians and (surprisingly) Malaysians are more mixed (30% yes, 30% no, 30% don’t care, just about).
The South Koreans, on the other hand, are more decisive: 98% of South Koreans say the Japanese haven’t done enough; only 1% thinks they have. I know Japan and South Korea have a long and brutal history full of each despising the other, but that’s a remarkable uniformity of opinion. I don’t think Americans would poll 98% against kicking puppies.
Sarkus
6596
Well, those other countries only had a few years of Japanese occupation at the most while Korea had decades of it. The treatment of the Koreans was pretty terrible for all that time as well.
Maybe the anti-carb brigade will finally shut up (I doubt it.)
TL;DR
After analyzing everything from how much carbon dioxide and nitrogen they were releasing to their hormone and metabolite levels, the researchers concluded that that calorie-per-calorie, low-fat diets beat out low-carb diets. During the study period, the minimum detectable difference in cumulative fat loss was 110 grams.
On average participants lost 463 grams on the low-fat diet vs. 245 grams on the low-carb diet. The researchers projected out what might happen if they stuck to those diets for six months and found that the low-fat group would end up losing six more pounds on average than the low-carb group.
Well, it wasn’t too long and I did read it.
“translation of our results to real-world weight-loss diets for treatment of obesity is limited.” …while the study was “rigorously conducted,” it “doesn’t really portray real life situations.”
Anyway, diets are for fools. People need to follow a sustainable strategy for reducing caloric intake and increasing calorie usage (exercise) and then stay on track once they achieve their goal. Easier said than done, but it is the only thing that actually works long term.
Also, I hate the recent rise of the term “optics”. It’s the same old corporate-speak that co-opts terms that only tangentially make sense. Another irritating example is “bandwidth”. Fuck that shit.
How do you feel about synergy, or paradigms, or being proactive and/or disruptive?
RichVR
6601
Don’t forget ‘artisanal’.
That’s hipster talk. Whole other pile of bullshit.
