bluegreen17 | never enough love in my life,so i've gotta have chocolate to survive

tuesday i had a horrible day at work.i had a sort of run-in with my boss,and then started panicking about losing my job.i have so many problems right now,including financial,that it would be even more devastating than it normally would be. anyway,later on i got up the courage to ask to speak to her privately,and we kind of sorted things out. still,it cast a pall on my day.

wednesday i had a great day.

this really cool synchronicity occurred. i bumped into two old friends that i hadn't seen in a really long time in the space of an hour. that was really nice. i sometimes feel like i have no friends,and in truth i really don't feel like i have many people i can just call up to chat or invite over,but at the same time i feel like any of the friends i've had over the years are still my friends,even if i'm lousy about keeping in touch (i'm one overwhelmed woman a lot of the time...sometimes i barely survive the day,so i try not to beat myself up about this too much). that was a nice realization.

today was okay. i can't believe how much work i'm not getting done,but the workload is really heavy. one really great thing about the new boss,though,is that she's increasing the payroll rather than taking the option of keeping the payroll down and increasing her bonus...for which i'm very grateful and i admire her for. so i'm starting to slowly get some help,as we all are. and i like quite a few of the new folks,even if very few of them are guys! overall,though,today i feel a bit sad.

now,i am going to make a sad observation...i had a great day on wednesday,and i ate a lot of chocolate on wednesday. bingo! stimulants make me feel better. the wellbutrin helped for a while. but then i develop a tolerance for it,and i have fewer and fewer good days,and return to my quite chronic sadness.i used to love the high i got from coffee,but i stopped drinking it because of my acid reflux. i'm not supposed to eat chocolate for the same reason,but it's not as bad as coffee for that. last year i tried really hard to give up chocolate. i've given up other foods that were bad for me,and eventually didn't care. but after two weeks or so of no chocolate,the cravings for it just got worse instead of less.

sometimes i don't know if there is any hope for me and my fucked-up brain! but i hope anyway because sometimes i don't have much else!

and,no,i don't want to try any more antidepressants. haven't heard a lot of good from people who have actually taken them. plus,how would i pay for them?

oh,well,it could be worse.

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actually, chocolate has other chemicals that induce feelings of well-being - read more:

http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/choco.html

Chocolate is good for you! I'm seriously convinced that dark chocolate saved my life in 1994. Seriously. But if chocolate's making your reflux worse, here's hoping you find a low maintenance dose so you don't need to eat so much of it.

Thinking of things in chocolate besides the caffeine--have you tried magnesium supplements? Magnesium deficiency can cause depressive moods, and many people are deficient in it. Since it's a pretty cheap supplement that's easy to find and I've seen it mentioned elsewhere this morning, I thought I'd mention it to you here.

I do know people who have done well on antidepressants, but I'm with you on not wanting to try any more of them.

Here's hoping & praying that you find ways to make your life more fun to live in the near future.

I don't know the whole story, of course, but I feel I can sympathize - I was on Prozac during high school because of what I was told was clinical depression; I also was given some Zoloft when I was a freshman in college. During some other periods during that time, I was taking Ritalin for ADD to help me concentrate. In more recent years, I've been furiously experimenting with the effects of food on my blood sugar and consciousness. So psychopharmacology has been very much on my mind for a long time.

So, aside from the fact that I think cognitive therapy is a terrifically useful tool, I wanted to provide some information about the idea of caffeine use. Now in my own case, I'm not convinced yet that caffeine isn't just helpful as a band-aid on another problem, which might be caused by the proteins in wheat and dairy, but it does seem to be helpful regardless, and some research seems to confirm that. In particular, one book I have makes the claim that synthetic caffeine might be better for mood than coffee. The book is "The Caffeine Advantage" by Bennett Alan Weinberg and Bonnie Bealer (2002). Here is an excerpt from pages 110-111:

Scientists have discovered that caffeine pills such as Vivarin exert a far more powerful beneficial effect on athletic performance than the caffeine we get from coffee. Although no studies have yet been completed making the same comparisons for mood effects, anecdotal evidence is growing that the mood-enhancing power of pills is more profound and sustained than anything coffee can deliver. [...]

[Describing a case study of a depressed woman: ] Like many other people, she tried caffeine pills when, one morning, she didn't have time to prepare and drink her usual cup of coffee. The effects were nothing short of amazing: Her depression lifted, and her fatigue dissipated. She had never experienced such benefits from coffee, so she continued experimenting with caffeine pills. [...]

[Going into possible reasons for why this therapy works for some people:] Another mechanism might be caffeine's ability to shape the operations of various neurotransmitter systems that affect mood. For example, in people with migraines, caffeine restores the balanced functioning of the serotonin system and thereby relieves the headache.

The book suggests a starting regimen of 200mg in the morning and 100mg around lunchtime. Personally, I do better on around half that, but I experiment a lot. Pluses: it is an appetite suppresant. Minuses: it is also a diuretic. Anyway, according to my father (an M.D.) it is one of the more harmless drugs known to man, and according to both this book and my experience, synthetic caffeine neither becomes ineffective through tolerance buildup nor causes stomach problems. And hey, generic No-Doz is a lot cheaper than antidepressants.

wow.that's amazing,especially that you don't build a tolerance to it. i'm supposed to stay away from caffeine because it weakens the esophagal valve and acid gets in the esophagus.so i wonder if this doesn't do that. i do wonder about synthetic caffeine in general though. i do know it's a diuretic,though i'm probably wouldn't get dehydrated because i have a good water-drinking habit. my doctor was amazed when i had a sinus infection and he gave the standard 'drink lots of fluids' instruction. i told him i drink 8 glasses a day (though i've since cut down to about five or six intentionally...i'm not a very big person and i don't know if EVERYONE needs 64 oz. a day...i had to get up four hours into the night every night,so i thought maybe my bladder was telling me something. it seems better now. and i'm rarely thirsty,so i think i did the right thing.)
also,being an appetite suppressant would be great.when i feel better mentally,i can resist snacking. i found this to be true when the wellbutrin was working. and i've put on extra weight with my emotional eating...so this is definitely worth looking into...thanks for taking the time to share that with me!

Glad if it was interesting, and hope you didn't feel like it was a sales pitch; like I said, I'm not sure how I feel about it either.

amazing, especially that you don't build a tolerance to it.

Well, you do build a tolerance in that you can tolerate more of it when you're used to it, and you undergo withdrawal if you suddenly stop using it, but what I've read is that the improvements in concentration don't diminish even with regular use. They did a study and gave four groups of people a short-term memory test. one group was of regular coffee drinkers who drank coffee right before the test. another group was of abstainers who didn't drink coffee right before the test. the other two groups were regular users who abstained, and abstainers who had coffee. The first group did the best on the test, better than any of the other three.

Yeah, it probably would be important to check with your doctor to see if synthetic caffeine would be OK or not re: your esophageal condition. It's possible that it's just the acid in coffee that is the problem, but maybe that is simplistic. A random internet resource: "A pH of 4.9 to 5.2 is the preferred range for a 'good cup of coffee.'" - "The caffeine content and the flavouring should not affect the pH." (http://educ.queensu.ca/~science/main/concept/chem/c10/C10LARP1.html)

Another page that implies that caffeine does not affect coffee pH: http://www.cs.hmc.edu/~smikes/caffeine/detecting.html

in truth i really don't feel like i have many people i can just call up to chat or invite over,but at the same time i feel like any of the friends i've had over the years are still my friends,even if i'm lousy about keeping in touch
This is a lot like me and my friendships. I had a similar occasion last month when I got in touch with more than a couple friends I hadn't talked to in almost a year. It's a wonderful feeling catching up and realizing that the connection of friendship is still living and breathing even after all that time.

I'm hoping your feeling better today... and thing at work are going smoothly.

I understand the "Chochlate" theme... as well as the acid reflux :(

never enough love in my life,so i've gotta have chocolate to survive

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