So I am still tapering off Zoloft since this “aha” realization only happened this week… Everyone please take my extra serotonin, please!!! (/s)

For real though, being depressed was its own terrifying animal and I hope anyone suspecting it gets the help they need. I’m glad I could work through it with meds and now therapy, but it’s crazy how delicate the balance needs to be with brain chemicals!

I had definitely thought that as well! But then I googled it and found there can be “major interactions” between Adderall and Zoloft, and that Adderall can actually affect serotonin (not sure if it promotes more serotonin or inhibits reuptake). It must be some kind of compounding effect?

But great point on the Zoloft! It seems it was definitely an OD factor, especially if there is more serotonin floating up there “naturally” and the re-uptake inhibition becomes way more effective. 😬

(I’m still actually dealing with tapering off Zoloft, but oh my gods I am so much less physically anxious already.)

On the flip side, too much of that sweet, sweet serotonin will fuck you up. At the very least, it’ll make you sweat like a stuck pig while you (unknowingly) begin tiptoeing toward the precipice of full-blown serotonin syndrome.

Source: Was on Adderall 30mg plus tiny 25mg Zoloft dose “for anxiety maintenance” for two years. Well, at some point this past fall and spring, I must have started making more serotonin naturally or magically idk, not a doctor or witch doctor. And I only recently reread the serotonin syndrome symptom shortlist and finally put two and two together. One’s face should not literally drip sweat walking around a 74° house to grab laundry and one’s heart rate should not be spiking to 160bpm merely attempting to put gotdamn makeup on that very same face, the face full of fuckin sweat fountains.

I wasn’t just maintaining my anxiety, I physically manifested my anxiety in all the worst ways.

I get where you’re coming from, and you make a point with “deplorable” being meme-ified into some twisted identity thing. But I also think the collective “basket of deplorables” doesn’t apply here. Harris isn’t calling Trump supporters weird; she’s calling just him weird.

This does a few things: it keeps the focus on Trump, allowing supporters to distance themselves from the statement. The lack of attachment to any particular action, statements, belief, etc. lets a person think about it “nakedly.” Why is he weird?

Yes, we both know why, but this flips the script from the last 10 years from “here are various reasons why Trump is horrifying and could also be considered weird” to “Trump is weird, I’ll let you chew on that.”

It’s all in the delivery. Stating what he is without explaining why.

I think it’s worth returning a bit of agency to people in general to assess how they feel about that statement and come to their own conclusions. Edit: Especially because many of these people have attached themselves to Trump because they feel they have no agency otherwise. Could this be a means to cracking through the brainwashed masses? Something akin to, “wait, why am I idolizing this guy again?” Wishful thinking, yes, but being"plain weird" is such a broadly sweeping generalization that something should organically pop up in trump supporters’ brains, without our prompting.

The following was initially part of a reply to another person:

Maybe the simple, gentle, “everyday” language here is truly the point? There are so many things to attack about Trump, so many legitimate concerns for his fascist, racist, sexist, ad nauseum behaviors. We’ve heard it all before. But simply calling him weird could spark a little reflection in his supporters and would-be voters while obviously delivering a shock to Trump’s vanity.

It’s not something you can easily deny as a conspiracy theory or fake news or any other excuse about his words and behavior. The man is weird. And psychologically, I think it’s harder to defend a person described that way, or at least makes a defender get a little self-conscious. Trump being deemed weird is really indefensible, and I think it could work in deflating the cult of personality around him.

Not everyone can identify maniacal dictator rhetoric for what it is, and the power dynamic is clearly alluring to Trump supporters. However, knowing a weird person or even being called weird at some point is something almost everyone has experience with.

It’s uncomfortable. It makes you ask yourself what it is about a person that makes them weird and how you should deal with it. It prickles something very basic in the human psyche. So I think they’re on to something here. It might give supporters pause and will most definitely give Trump a complex.

Maybe your annoyance (understandable) is part of the point? There are so many things to attack, so many legitimate concerns, that simply calling him weird could spark a little reflection in his supporters and would-be voters, let alone the obvious shock to Trump’s vanity.

It’s not something you can easily deny as a conspiracy theory or fake news or any other excuse about his words and behavior. The man is weird. And psychologically, I think it’s harder to defend a person described that way, or at least makes a defender get a little self-conscious. Trump being deemed weird is really indefensible, and I think it could work in deflating the cult of personality around him.

Not everyone can identify maniacal dictator rhetoric for what it is, and the power dynamic is clearly alluring to Trump supporters. However, knowing a weird person or even being called weird at some point is something almost everyone has experience with. It’s uncomfortable. It makes you ask yourself what it is about a person that makes them weird. I think they’re on to something here. It might give supporters pause and will most definitely give Trump a complex.

Thanks for the link! The prudent thing would be for me to just not donate monetarily. As you said, no sense in jeopardizing my situation over what would maybe be $100.

As far as I can tell, political activity outside the building in which I work should be fine as a contractor employee and not a directly hired government employee. Maybe I can just offer to shuttle people to/from polling locations when the time comes!

I got the email at work this afternoon, and boy did I let out a sigh, not so much in relief, but in hope. Good for you for finishing your presidency on top, Biden. I hope he, Harris, and their staff are seeing the (general) commendation in communities like this. I really hope we can rally people to get behind Harris; I think it will be so much less of an uphill battle now to get the indifferent and the disillusioned and the “but they’re both old” voters out there with confidence.

I was holding back on donating, but I want to pitch in now. Does anyone know if you can donate as an employee of a federal contractor (i.e. I don’t hold the contract or a subcontract, I get paid by the contractor like any other employee, but my badge does say “contractor”). I can’t find a confirmatory answer online, and I don’t want to make a compromising donation since “not a federal contractor” is a requirement in the ActBlue fine print.