Political cartoons and memes

[Barbara]

What are SSRI's ??

Very helpful information. You're saying that workplaces are somehow off limits for young men to meet women ?
When did THAT change happen ?

Dating sites seem to be considered the near universal solution in Western societies, at least the American one.

Do you have anything to say about those ??
Would you advise anyone to ever use such an artificial avenue to meet people ?

[eish]

Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors are antidepressants. The short-term effect is to make someone feel better, in the long term they are merely addictive and damaging to brain chemistry. Young women are put on them in their teenage years--when they are naturally confused and emotional--and never taken off again. The reason for this is quite simple: the quitting procedure doesn't work because the pharmaceutical company has no interest in it working and every interest in keeping people on it.

SSRI's have a roughly hyperbolic response curve. It means that when you take twice as much, you feel less than twice as good. When you take half as much, you feel more than half as good. (If we momentarily describe the effect as just “feeling good.”)

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Instructions from pharmaceutical companies to psychiatrists are generally, that the medication is easily weaned by reducing the dosage once or twice over a few weeks. For example, it may be to cut the dose in half for two weeks before going off the medication.

So what happens is this: Let's say you're on 2000 mg/day of some medication. You have passed the low point in your life that made you want antidepressants and you want to go off. The doctor, following instructions, puts you on 1000 mg/day for three weeks. You feel just fine during those three weeks because 1000 mg/day has almost as much effect as 2000 mg/day. Then you go the next step, which is an equally big change of 1000 mg/day in dose down to zero, but it is a much larger change in effect because you were still on more than half the effect when you were on half the dose. It's a big shock to your system, your body had adjusted to the daily medication over months or years, so your serotonin levels change very much and you feel horrible as soon as you go off. Many patients get severe depression or become suicidal in that phase. It is diagnosed as a “relapse,” so now you are put back on the medication for life.

An actual correct way to wean yourself of the medication would be to follow the hyperbolic curve of the effect so that you take steps of equal effect rather than equal milligrams. For example, maybe you take one step from 2000 mg/day to 1000 mg/day, then the next step from 1000 mg/day to 500 mg/day, then from 500 to 250. (Each of those would be equal if the response curve is exactly hyperbolic.) Then, maybe your body has adjusted enough to go to zero. And you would do this over a much longer period than the one prescribed.

Unfortunately, doctors are not taught this and the pills are not manufactured in small enough doses to allow it. (I've read of patients opening their pills to split them up in smaller doses at home in order to be able to get off this addictive poison.)

It's in a sense not the fault of doctors not being taught this. On the other hand, they have some responsibility for not taking the effort to find out while seeing what is clearly wrong in front of their faces.

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[Cornelius]

It's in a sense not the fault of doctors not being taught this. On the other hand, they have some responsibility for not taking the effort to find out while seeing what is clearly wrong in front of their faces.

Nasty stuff. I always get paranoid whenever I do anything bureaucratic or 'official' now, because it seems everything is mined with choices like this. Seems small, but turn out to ruin your life down the line.

"So, will your car be blue, or red?"

"Oh, uh... red."

"Would you like heated seats?"

"Eh, no thanks."

"Do you consent to have carpet tacks embedded into the airbag?"

"Probably- wait, what?"

"The manufacturer has to have you sign a little waiver or something, said it's a cheaper way to secure the airbag mechanism to the housing, I don't see the big deal either way..."

[Barbara]

Cornelius, you mean the carpet tacks are meant to hurt or kill the person ?! Oh my goodness.

NEVER pic a RED car by the way, if anyone ever reads this.
Asking for trouble, as, to me, it's the Devil's color [=Communism]

Only go for blue but ideally as dark a blue as possible
Hold out til you get that color - if it's not there, it means you have the wrong car on the lot in your sights.

Helpful Hints from Barbara !

[Barbara]

eish, do you have any experience with any of THESE medications ? This is for the probable fiance of someone I know, who is getting baptized soon, God willing.

She asked me anxiously what about these medications.
I know ZERO ; i am COMPLETELY the wrong person to ask.

Do you recognize ANY of these names ? Take your time, not a rush.
Just if you can ask around, it would help a lot
IN CASE some or all are like the SSRI syndrome, I should alert her to tell him.

I don't believe in ANY medication for anything.
But i recognize that many people are brainwashed by society and physicians to accept them as a normal solution to their problems.

So i can't just say "don't take any of these" - though I would LIKE to.
This is an older man, 82, so it's hard to undo all that programming.
Tho worth a try.

I'm SURE the amount of the damage they DO to anyone is incalculable.

That was fascinating what you wrote about the Serotonin syndrome.

Toby Rogers is QUITE right.

"taking Metoprolol 25 milgrams for his heart palpitations. He has been taking this at higher doses 100 but now at 25 miligrams.
He said he has been taking for 15 years

IV of zometa. - zoledronic he has been taking this for two years every three months quarterly for his bones he thinks.
Tamsulasin also called Flomaz taking for bladder or prostrate not sure
He is taking venlafaxine for hot flashes one a day
Allopurinsol taking this for gout."

[eish]

First let me correct myself a little (because I'm pedantic): I wrote that the example I gave would be exact for a hyperbolic relationship when I really meant exponential. The point being, you don't have to be absolutely spot-on the bullseye with how you wean yourself off these medications but you do need to take into account the nonlinearity of the dose-response curve because it is significant.

That brings me to one of the things you should know about modern medicine: it isn't as exact a science as it pretends to be. In real science everything is an approximation. Physics is built on approximations. Chemistry is. Biology is. Every model is wrong, the point is to use a model which is close enough to correct in the matters of interest in that domain in which you use it.

Modern medicine pretends that you cannot use a natural product safely or effectively because the dose in the plant is not exactly controlled in the way that a lab controls a dose during safety & efficacy studies for pharmaceutical approvals. It is true that it isn't--it just doesn't matter. That's because the weight of the patient isn't exactly controlled, so you don't know exactly what dosage/kg you are getting anyway, only approximately. The pills also aren't manufactured in tiny increments, so you get the nearest pill size rather than the exact amount measured off for your body weight. People are not biochemically identical, so you get medication tested on a small subset of the population which may not be representative of yourself and hence the dose is not at all as exactly tuned to yourself when you get it from a pill. You don't eat the same things as the people in the studies. Etc. It's the same lame excuse the FDA uses to ban traditional foodstuffs like tamarind and black nightshade. Thousands of years of eating it isn't proof of safety because the exact chemical composition is not the same from plant to plant.

“Perfect is the enemy of good enough.”

I can't give specific advice on these medications. Outside my field of expertise. In broad terms it sounds excessive, however suddenly dropping them can have a very severe negative impact. It also won't do to just drop the pills if the causes are not addressed. Gout, for example, is the “disease of kings and king of diseases.” It is caused by lifestyle and is very much debilitating. Without changing the lifestyle, probably for a long time, dropping the medicine is not an option. He wouldn't be able to function very effectively. Severely limiting rich, meaty foods and things like tea would probably help if you could convince him to (not likely).

Anyway, you asked about men approaching women at work. Totally off the table. This very famous meme is not even an exaggeration. If she thinks you're attractive, not a problem. If a woman doesn't like it, the man is fired and blacklisted from all major work places for life. So men can't risk it at all.

I have to work with a woman who's had three guys fired so far. In case you are wondering--refusing to work/associate with her also constitutes “sexual harassment” today. Anything that a woman considers uncomfortable.

Boomers & Gen X fooled around in the workplace, then clutched their pearls pretending to be so outraged against men approaching women. So they made it forbidden for the next generations. And they gave unlimited power to screeching harpies. Sure, the average woman at work may not respond like this. It doesn't matter because if a man flirts with one or two women at work and gets rejected, the third or fourth reports him and it's over forever before he can find a wife.

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The people who are the actual sexual harassment problem, however, continue to get away because they don't need to care about rules which they force on the rest of us.

Please forgive me, this is very unsavoury content and foul language so maybe you don't want to watch it at all--especially in Lent. I'm putting it here anyway. This is how the criminals who make rules about fake “sexual harassment” actually, unambiguously and disgustingly harass the poor women who are forced to work under themselves.