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You know what? Keep the smokes, just get inside please.
We have Ginny Hogan on our show next week. It’s sort of a return to form of the classic formula of the podcast shows I do: get a comedian, have them open up about depression, play clips from their standup.
Ginny has dealt with depression but anxiety has been more of a thing for her. And also there has been substance use disorder (she’s sober and in recovery now) as well as ADHD and eating disorders. So there’s stuff going on.
In the interview, I get a little fixated on a story she tells about a habit she used to have: getting drunk, putting on headphones, and walking the streets of New York and San Francisco for hours OVERNIGHT. And smoking cigarettes while she does it. The activity she found problematic during those walks: the smoking!
Yeah but just try to get a pill to write back to you
Here at the Depresh Mode newsletter, we take romance in all the forms we can get it.
A Love Letter to My Anti-Anxiety Medication
Anti-anxiety medication, for me, has made all the difference. My mind now feels clear, versus noisy and whirring. Instead of spending all my energy managing my emotions, I can just be myself. Of course, I still worry about my kids and work and relationships and the world at large — but now I don’t obsess or catastrophize. Instead of robbing me of creativity, medication has actually allowed me to brainstorm more easily, without having to battle anxious thoughts. And I don’t spiral at bedtime anymore. I just read my book and FALL ASLEEP.
“Anti-anxiety medication and antidepressants are not a magic button, and they’re not for everyone,” says my friend Lina Perl, who is a clinical therapist in Manhattan. “But if your nervous system is overly vigilant and turned up to 11, medication can take the edge off. It can help you get to the point where you can take better care of yourself — with sleep, exercise and a larger regimen of care — and then it’s a snowball rolling down a hill.”
There’s a benefit to team sports and also let’s worry
Scientists. You know them, right?
Well, scientists have been examining some huge data sets involving young people and athletics and it seems that being on a team is great and being on your own, not so much.
The data also shows which sport or sports the kids played, allowing the researchers to divvy them up into four groups: those who played only team sports, only individual sports, both team and individual sports, or no sports at all. Ultimately, the study included a total of 17 different sports comprising nine team and eight individual pursuits.
Analyzing those data revealed that, compared to kids who didn’t play sports, involvement in team sports was associated with 10 percent lower anxiety and depression scores, 19 percent lower withdrawn and depressed scores, 17 percent lower social problems scores, 17 percent lower thought problems scores and 12 percent lower attention problems scores.
But of course we need young golfers for our economy to operate, right? Or something?
As for what the parents of a child in love with tennis or gymnastics can do to protect their young competitor’s mental health, Hoffmann suggests maintaining open lines of communication is the best defense. He says frequently checking in to make sure a child’s stress levels are reasonable and that they’re enjoying their experience with a sport is a great place to start. “You don’t want to assume kids are enjoying an activity just because they keep doing it,” he says. Sports, Hoffmann says, can also provide a useful avenue for introducing the topic of mental health to a child.
A kind of cool element in this article is how much Andre Agassi hated tennis. My man REALLY HATED TENNIS. That article links to this one:
I play tennis for a living even though I hate tennis, hate it with a dark and secret passion and always have." So writes Andre Agassi in his new autobiography, Open, published this week. It is 2006 and one of the world's most feted sports stars has just woken up in a New York hotel room, poised to play his last tournament.
Less cynical take: Seahawks take enlightened and benevolent approach to mental health
More cynical take: Team in a league that inherently promotes traumatic brain injury bizarrely attempts to promote mental health
I love football and I love the Seahawks and I hate myself for loving both of those things. There are certain cultural tendencies that are baked into me that I can’t seem to extricate. Alas.
I also believe in open conversation about mental health and am predisposed to support efforts toward that goal, even though I am often suspicious of how sincere and substantive those efforts may be.
Why can’t I just enjoy and appreciate things? I don’t know, man. Man, I don’t know.
Lockett has been a strong advocate for destigmatizing conversations about mental health, brining up his own struggles with anxiety and depression in press conferences in recent years, and also addressing those struggles through his poetry. Lockett sees a world in which people present a sanitized version of their lives on social media and worries that people will be afraid to admit that everything isn't perfect in their own world.
"We don't normalize that we make mistakes, we don't normalize that we lose games, we don't normalize that life happens and trials happen, and because of that we get this perception in our heads that everything has to go a certain way—you've got to be successful by 20-something, and life isn't supposed to look like this and look like that," he said. "The more that we're able to normalize that life is going to look different for everybody, we're able to allow people to deal with their mental health and sit with it rather than looking at all the highlights on social media, looking at everything that's going right for somebody because we never get to see what's not.
The NFL won’t let anyone embed recent game footage videos so here’s Jim Zorn in the 1970s:
Anxiety among scientists, Andre Agassi, and Mel Brooks
okay, now it's my earworm, too, dammit!