May 12, 2020--Zolofting

To make it through our daily interrelated crises, almost everyone I know is seeking distractions. If like me, beginning as early as 4:00 am in the morning.

TV, even for worldly friends and family who I did not know have much less watch TV, or if they do, drastically limit their viewing, they say, to anything from the PBS NewsHour to Masterpiece Theater, watching television these days seems to be at or near the top of virtually everyone's favorite escape.

But if friends and I have a few drinks and I confess my guilty interest in late night Hogan's Heroes, I am regularly surprised when they whisper that they too love Colonel Klink and Sergeant Schultz, who famously "knows nothing." 

Knowing nothing--how appropriate for our current era where I prefer to escape with Hogan and postpone until 2025 watching the brilliant but deeply depressing, too close to home Plot Against America. 

If curling up with Hogan doesn't do the trick (and even I can't watch the Honeymooners for the 100th time), there is always a reliable bag of chips or a glass of Port.

Which brings me to Zoloft.

I likely could have benefitted from this anti-depressant decades ago, but whenever I moved to give it serious consideration, echoing in the recesses of my agitated mind was my father's admonition--"These drugs are for woman. Men don't use crutches [not even for broken bones I wondered?] Stop whining. Can't you act like a man?"

Fearful of confronting him, and very much wanting to be a man, I was left to fend for myself, which wasn't always a bad thing.

It took me until recently to raise the issue of psychotropics with my neurologist. 

I said to him, "Thanks in large part to you my PD is under control. That's the physiological part. Can we now work on the psychological?"

He smiled and said, "What took you so long?" 

He waved me off with a smile when I began to stammer an explanation. Which included the bit about my father and crutches.

He indicated he had heard similar stories many times from his male patients and, without sturm und drang, suggested I give Zoloft a try.

With my hand tremor ramping up (it is my anxiety barometer), seriously concerned about what side effects might do to me, I asked, "This won't turn me into a vegetable, will it?" 

"I can't tell you how many millions take Zoloft and drugs similar to it. It has almost no side effects and is compatible with your L-Dopa."

For three months I've been taking one tiny Zoloft pill by five every morning to allow it time to get rooted in my body before confronting the agitation I spent the night spinning and which, for so many years, has made me crazy.

Call it a crutch, claim it's not for real men. What I can report is that my life has been changed and with Zoloft, if I have to, I can get through six more months of Trump. And even feel good about life.

May 3, 2108--Pornhub

One of the things I try to keep up with is the neurobiology of pleasure. 

What is the nature of pleasure and how does the brain process it? What are the electrical and chemical events that fire when we experience pleasure?

To laypeople (which includes me) it would likely come as a surprise that there is a battle among researchers and clinicians about the nature of pleasure itself. Are all pleasures basically the same or is there a hierarchy of pleasure, with certain ones "higher" than others? 

The disputants, reported the New York Times, are about equally divided.  

One side in the conflict asks if the pleasure we receive from art and other aesthetic experiences is categorically different. In other words, not so between the lines, is the experience of art a higher form of pleasure as contrasted with the less-refined enjoyment we receive from food (particularly sweets) and sex. As a result, the title of the piece--"Mona Lisa and Pornhub as Equals?" Note the question mark.

Taking the other side in this struggle, neuroscientist Julia Christensen, in an article, "Pleasure Junkies All Around!" writes about the responses to ballet in contrast to, say, our addiction to sweets--have we turned into "mindless pleasure junkies handing over our free will for the next dopamine shot" which, she claims, is equally present in the brain as the result of engaging in social media, watching pornography, craving a sugar fix, or attending a dance recital.

This jumped out at me because of the dopamine that is a part of the L-DOPA compound I take for my PD because when I take my pills I am not aware of any heightened sense of pleasure except from the realization that it helps control the slight tremor I have in my right hand. I suspect there is no firing in the pleasure center of my brain, just this awareness and thankfulness. That feels like enough.

Researchers do not agree whether enjoying a da Vinci results in a different neural process than visiting McDonald's or Pornhub.

For those who claim that all pleasures are pretty much the same when it comes to brain function, to quote the Times, "why don't people ever orgasm from pleasure associated with food or art?" 

It turns out that they do! 

According to Debra Herbenick at the University of Indiana's Center for Sexual Health, eating a ripe tomato or reading nonerotic literature have been reported to provoke an orgasm. So too, apparently, does walking barefoot on wood floors and doing pull-ups. Though, in regard to the latter, I have my doubts.

August 12, 2017--Milk & Cookies

It's 3:00 pm.

At a much earlier time in my life, it was when my mother gave me milk and cookies.

Now it's time for meds, my L-DOPA.

Sic transit . . .