davymac
davymac on Hacker News
This is a sad reminder of what I sounded like when I was having a break down. Poor guy can’t see he’s having an episode. I’ve been there. No one ever would have convinced me otherwise. I hope he reaches out to a mental health professional at some point. I’m guessing he’s going to alienate himself from those around him personally and professionally if he hasn’t already.
“No better”? I’ll disagree there.
“This is when I reseted it and decided to return it”
- I respect this. I’m honestly very curious what you’ve decided on in its place.
Yeah, I swear this is being posted so often it’s becoming something I’m starting to ignore (kind of becoming the boy who cried wolf)
It feels like the more recent versions of these articles are more poorly written. This article, however, was much more reasonable.
+1 I love Alex’s channel. Highly entertaining!
Yeah, lots of stuff on Quackwatch about him. Not exactly flattering. I’ll pass after reading that stuff. Broken clocks being right twice a day and all.
I think most anyone on HN associates “scrapy” with the python library that performs a similar-ish function. I would highly suggest renaming, for many reasons, but other than the reason above, also googleability
Without health insurance, yeah, it’s way cheaper.
Whoa, never heard this view. I guess it makes sense to question it if you’ve never had it happen. As a former alcoholic, I can tell you it’s definitely real, although I guess maybe not for everyone. It happened to me almost every time I drank, but I drank hard and fast. Blackouts to me were just a fact of my drunkard life.
Watching a video of yourself tell an invented story to a group of friends and strangers will make anyone a believer of blackouts. My response to the video was:
“Holy shit that’s hilarious, I wish I was there to see it.”
Must be a great feeling to have Chris Hadfield, himself, tell you he’s happy to hear the good news.
Hell, I feel humbled by proxy just because I saw his tweet!
“...Unless one or the other initiates force...”
If someone was making fun of an awkward, possibly autistic looking man, because he had long untrimmed fingernails (or whatever insecure insults bullies dish these days)... would it be your business? Would you step in? What if the person being ridiculed wasn’t a stranger but a friend, would you step in? What if it was your brother?
Everyone is allowed to defend themselves, but in big crowds, people put up with a lot more bullshit to keep the peace for those around them, even when it costs them a great deal of anguish.
..My point being that even though we wish these situations were black and white, our humanity should make us see the gray. So sometimes when we see someone considering jumping on a social grenade for us, we should consider doing the same for them.
1st incident is understandable if you look at in a different light. I have 5 sisters and I’ve heard this often enough that it’s become a reflex of mine to pretend to be a stranger’s best gay friend in order to make it much easier for them to get out of an awkward situation without causing a scene.
(FYI - Not gay, it just makes it easier to give non-verbal queues to the girl, that I’m trying to be a ‘sista-from-anotha-mista’. Most girls understand I’m a stranger doing them a solid within a split second. Once the situation is defused, girls always thank me for saving them from having to punch a guy.
“No worries, I got 5 sisters, I know what it means when a girl is pissed yet politely smiling between clenching her teeth and fists”... they’re not defenseless, just in a position they hate being in because if they defend themselves they risk looking like an asshole.
The girl got up early to get good seats and she probably didn’t want to give them up to avoid the guy, as well as didn’t want to put her foot down and risk awkwardly standing next to the creep in line for a long ass time.
The first situation was something that was a tough call of whether or not to intervene, and she was upset she didn’t. Understandable.
Second was silly... A female staff member, doesn’t matter who she’s employed by, was trying to help fellow humans relieve the pain in their bladder by guiding them to the (mostly) empty women’s bathroom. I’ve literally done the same things for a long line at the women’s restroom when there was only a two person line at the men’s.
(I simply said: “Hey ladies, there are 5 empty stalls in here, I’ll hold the line out here... whoever feels like they’re going to piss and/or shit themselves, head in. Let’s see if we can knock down the size of your line.”)
Stop turning your disappointment in yourself onto others. You’re hurting not helping, unlike the nice female attendant at the overcrowded bathrooms.
I’m sorry you had to see such an awful comment. I’ve been in your situation, and it will get better. Even if it doesn’t feel like it will.
Some solid actionable items have been suggested by others in terms of finance, but as far as health goes, get to a psychiatrist immediately. Even without insurance, paying cash will likely be around $300. Generic prescriptions can be picked at numerous places for very cheap. I believe wal-mart still sells most generics for $4 for a month supply.
An anti-depressant won’t cure you but it will speed up the process of recovery dramatically by buying you the time to dig yourself out of the hole.
At that point hopefully you’ll have enough energy to begin to improve your overall health, e.g. exercise and diet. These are usually the first things you should do, unless you’re in the psycho-motor-retardation phase it sounds like you’re describing. In which case meds first.
There’s a theme here. Everyone sees your comment as an attack, or at best in very poor taste, but you. Your replies have only cemented that view. Sounds like OP isn’t the only one that needs help.
This was a fantastic write-up. Learned a lot! Thanks for documenting your process like this!
A gay man raised in Alabama.
Cloud guru courses seem like something I want to do but the first time I watched one on Udemy (via work subscription), I couldn’t stand the presenter because he spent half the time promoting his other products.
I’ll have to give it another go and see if I can make an “ignore this sales pitch section” for others to save their ears/time.
That Russian music was so cool
I have big scar on my thumb and it still works great for me. What do you find is most problematic about it for you?
Ditto. My brother uses some of our stories in his stand-up act sometimes:
Mom: “Unplug the phone! The government is listening to our conversations!”
Brother: “Mom... of course they’re listening, but I don’t care.”
Not OP, but this isn’t always true. Might be true for slow brewing depression, but not for biologically triggered mental changes (triggered by some diseases, some drugs, etc). There’s also the chance that it was a gradual uptick that wasn’t noticed until it was too late.
Sorry for your loss OP.
Get LSD for a new perspective. Not a joke.
Unrelated: love your handle
I would add be careful with cutting off cold turkey (it depends on how dependent you are physically). Also, while tapering down, develop good “healthy addictions” to replace it with. Many times exercise and CBT is enough. Try that first. Expect depression to kick in. If you feel the need to return to booze even with those changes, medication may Be needed as you may be self-medicating, although your description sounds fixable without it.
Please don’t ever recommend the internet quack Mercola to anyone. He will and probably has gotten people killed with the garbage on his site.
I noticed that rest only somewhat helped, but was significantly more effective if absent of any worry of external responsibilities.
E.g.
If I took vacation from work and didn’t tell my girlfriend about it so she wouldn’t worry about me and text me incessantly... I could turn off the thoughts/worries of the outside world completely for a few days and that made a pretty dramatic difference. I didn’t cure me at all, but it took me out of the really dangerous zone after about 2 days.
Also, sleeping in a hammock, haha.
So much better than breathing stale air for 2 days.
This is more circumstantial however, as my trigger at the time was accumulating too many perceived responsibilities and fearing failure. To be honest I feel the triggers are nearly irrelevant, but removing myself from them gives me enough temporary relief for my body to get out of stress mode. Which in turn removes some of the depressive overhead to give myself a golden window of opportunity.
Fair point. I like this view. Seeing all the anecdotal ways people have gotten themselves out of severe episodes may not work for the person seeking help, but it may give them enough hope to keep looking for the next approach before calling it quits for good.
This works very well for low-grade depression for sure.
There seems to be a threshold where this type of intervention becomes completely ineffective (personal experience).