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invincible-selfxmade-punk · 1 year

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I've been in a very odd mood or at least have felt odd all day. I think it just has something to do with the fact that the year is ending. One more day of winter break tomorrow and then Monday back to work. I am definitely not ready to go back to work. I did not miss the kids at all.😅

I'm not sure I'm able to gauge what kind of year this has been.

I have been relatively healthy. I have not been in the hospital. And I have not missed many days of work. That has been a blessing.

My eyesight has gotten worse but some days it is better. I am hoping a corneal transplant this coming year will change that and will help me have better eyesight everyday.

I think most of my mobility problems has really been chalked up to anxiety. Because instead of fight or flight, with me it is freeze and I cannot move when I am anxious. I think if I can maybe up my dose of anti-anxiety meds it will help me.

I did manage to get on some ADD meds but so far they have not done anything, but of course it is a very low starter dose.

We lost our oldest cat, Gray, in April. We had him for 14 years and he was not a kitten when we found him so who knows how old he actually was. It still hurts a lot because he died of liver and kidney failure. And I keep wishing that we could have done something for him, but we are just so poor.

This month we finally got a new cat and he is the sweetest, most docile, lovable thing in the world. All he wants to do is eat and snuggle. The other cats have not been very welcoming but I'm hoping they get used to him soon.

It's been a very rough year teaching the covid generation, who are emotionally first graders, intellectually third graders, but physically 5th graders.

We have a new principal and that has been pretty good. I am still shell-shocked at how vicious the previous principal was with me during my last evaluation in May.

I am old and disabled enough at this point in my life that I know teaching is pretty much all I'm going to be able to do for the rest of my life. But that is a good thing because it is what I love and it is what I have wanted to do since the early 2000s and I am very very lucky to be able to have a job doing it.

However it is daunting to grow old. Whoever said growing old is not for sissies definitely knew what they were talking about. It frustrates and terrifies my husband and he cannot deal with it at all. He is constantly worried about me and then blames me for that worry as if this is something I have chosen to do just to spite him.

In years previous to covid I would make a great countdown of how many movies, live wrestling events and concerts I have gone to. This year I have not seen one single movie in a movie theater. There is not one in town or at least wasn't until recently. And I cannot see well enough to drive myself out of town anymore. Plus it takes a lot of money to do that: gas money, $30 for the tickets, $30 for lunch or dinner, $20 for popcorn & a soda. Since we have moved into a bigger house where we are paying for everything: rent water garbage electricity Etc there is not a penny to spare.

But we were lucky enough to go to one amazing concert(Def Lep/Joan Jett/Poison, Motley Crue).

I'm just extremely grateful to have a job, to be healthy, and still be alive.

I'm hoping for a blessed 2023 for everyone.

As someone born in '70s I could not even have conceived of living this long to be able to even say that I lived into the 2020s---- if I stopped think about it too much it blows my mind.

#happy new year #Spotify #aging #actuallyautistic #year in review #year end post

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heartlesslywhumping · 5 years

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do you have any recs for poisons to use in a whump? like not to instantly kill the whumpee/victim, but to make them hurt for a long and copious amount of time before they die? there would be a window in which someone could try and save them (and potentially succeed) as well. I'm writing a whump right now and am in some desperate need of help because I can't find any suitable... thanks! I know it's a lot to ask, but if you have any sources to go to or any ideas that'd be great!

I have many! Here are the top 5 that come to mind and are potentially recognizable to your audience.

Remember that anything I say here can be affected by magic, sci-fi, or really anything you want :)

Ricin is a great one! It’s often been sent to government officials so there’s some fairly easy to find info on it, people got curious as to what exactly it was and how it worked. What I know about it is as follows

It can be inhaled, eaten, or injected but is most potent when inhaled or injected.

It takes a deliberate act to be exposed to ricin. There is no natural way to expose someone to it or be exposed to it. Exposure is a deliberate action.

It is a protein in a castor oil plant.

If heated, it is no longer toxic

It can take up to a day for symptoms to show up but it can kill you within three days. If the victim survives more than five days, survival is likely

There is no known antidote to ricin

Victims who ingest the protein get severe nausea and diarrhea. If it is inhaled, the patient will also have difficulty breathing and fluid will build up in the lungs. They end up with an irregular heartbeat, low blood pressure, and seizures. This can last for up to a week. The patient can die of shock and multiple organ failure.If you ingest the protein, treatment can usually reverse the symptoms and patients will survive, though they may suffer long-term organ damage. A man was poisoned with ricin in Las Vegas in February of 2008 and fell in to a coma for more than a month. The Bulgarian writer Markov first showed a fever, was admitted to the hospital, and died three days later.

Another awesome one is Fugu Poison (Tetrodotoxin) This one is most commonly found in marine animals and fish! It is found in the Japanese delicacy Fugu. People still die from improperly prepared or sold fugu. Here is what I know

You only need a little bit to die. I believe roughly 25 milligrams can kill a 75kg human.

Most commonly it’s been ingested, I don’t know if there is another way to take it or be exposed to it.

There is no known antidote save for stomach pumping and forced vomiting, although some people have made a lucky recovery

It is believe to be 1,200 more potent than cyanide

It can take anywhere from 20 minutes to twenty-four hours to kill you

Symptoms begin approximately 3-45 minutes after ingestion.

Symptoms include: lightheadedness, vomiting, dizziness and weakness, muscle twitching, aphonia, pleuretic chest pain and convulsions, hypotension, depressed corneal reflexes and fixated diagonal pupils, headaches, difficulty breathing, paralysis, respiratory paralysis and asphyxiation.

A dramatic poison is strychnine. This one isn’t as toxic but I enjoy the style of it. It’s actually fairly common and is found in many pesticides, all those google searches for “Strychnine for sale” aren’t by psychopaths by probably by people needing pest control. Probably.

You can ingest it, inhale it, or have it injected.

It is a white, odorless, colorless powder. (Some say it tastes bitter)

It kills through dramatic and excruciating muscle spasms that continue until your body dies from exhaustion and you also can’t breathe anymore

Initially, a victim might just seem excitable (though they would also be in pain)

Symptoms occur after 15-60 minutes

Symptoms include: Agitation, apprehension or fear, ability to be easily startled, restlessness, painful muscle spasms possibly leading to fever and to kidney and liver injury, uncontrollable arching of the neck and back, rigid arms and legs, jaw tightness, muscle pain and soreness, difficulty breathing, dark urine, initial consciousness and awareness of symptoms, respiratory failure (inability to breathe), possibly leading to death, brain death, shortness of breath, unbearable feelings of anxiety, restlessness, twitching and spasms gradually develop and lead to violent tetanic seizures in which the head is bent right back to the buttocks, so that the spine may be broken. Breathing may cease for intervals of one to two minutes at a time; in this event the seizures may also stop, only to recommence at the least excitation - a loud noise or a gentle touch - until death from exhaustion finally supervenes.

There is no known antidote

If a victim survives past 24 hours, recovery is likely

Want to poison by making them eat it? Feed them amatoxin. It is found most commonly in Death Cap Mushrooms, which look like other mushrooms so cook up something tasty and kill a whole dinner party.

Apparently it tastes very good

I believe it must be ingested

It remains toxic whether raw or cooked

After 6-12 hours nausea, abdominal cramps, profuse watery diarrhea, and signs of dehydration show up

After that, the victim seems to recover but their liver will continue fail

Death occurs after 3-7 days although death may occur within the first 24 hours from massive fluid loss.

Symptoms include: espiratory tract, headache, dizziness, nausea, shortness of breath, coughing, insomnia, diarrhea, gastrointestinal disturbances, back pain, urinary frequency, liver and kidney damage, or death if ingested or inhaled

Symptoms potentially include: irritation, burns, redness, severe pain, and could be absorbed through the skin, irritation, corneal burns, and eye damage if absorbed via eyes.

Besides liver transplants and some penicillins, there are little treatments or antidotes.

I read somewhere that victims often slip into a coma and die, but I can’t find the source so that’s debatable. This is the internet after all.

You could go for some significance, foreshadowing, or easter eggs by using Hemlock. It was famously used by Socrates as his death penalty.

Drinking it’s tea can make you feel initially drunk

Ingestion is the most common and effective way to suffer but prolonged contact can also lead to poisoning.

Some mythology says that the plant didn’t turn toxic until after the blood of Jesus fell on it after his crucifixion

Poisons last on the plant even up to three years after death

Goats seem unaffected

Symptoms show up as quickly as 30 minutes after exposure

Symptoms include:trembling, burning in the digestive tract, increased salivation, dilated pupils, muscle pain, muscle weakness or muscle paralysis, rapid heart rate followed by a decreased heart rate, loss of speech, convulsions, unconsciousness or coma, central nervous system depression, respiratory failure, acute rhabdomyolysis, or breakdown of damaged skeletal muscle, acute renal failure, death, seizures, rapid heart rate, frothing at the mouth, and respiratory distress, nervous trembling, salivation, lack of coordination, rapid, weak pulse, respiratory paralysis, occasionally bloody feces and gastrointestinal irritation

Death occurs 48-72 after 48-72

There is no antidote although doctors will likely try to assist in breathing, secure your airway, and remove the hemlock from your digestion track,

I hope that was helpful! I would recommend doing further research on your poison of choice to really get the details right but make sure not to bog down your writing with too much explanation, most people far prefer angst to hyper-accuracy.

If you would like, I would love to be tagged when you finish your work! I’m always on the lookout for new fan fiction and whump 👀

Good luck with your writing!

#whump prompts #writing prompts #writing reference #writing resources #friendly-neighborhood-ash #poison #brief religion mention #heartless answers

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chevd-blog · 7 years

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‘Cause I Fell on Black Days.

I want to discuss a very serious subject matter today, one that I feel is still very poorly understood in the public discourse, at least in the United States. This is a subject matter that is very intensely personal for me. Admittedly, I am nervous as I type these words. I wonder how you, the reader, will react. Will you judge me unfairly? Will you be sympathetic? If you've never been where I have, or felt what I've felt, part of me wonders if it's even possible for you to grasp what it's really like. But then, I realize, I have to try. Even if it's ultimately a futile pursuit, it's my responsibility, as an artist, to try to make you understand.

Today, I want to talk about depression.

I feel the dialogue on this subject has slowly been improving over the past few decades. There was a time, I know, when the subject of mental illness really wasn't discussed at all, and I'm glad that we can at least now conceptualize an in-depth conversation about it. But it's still not enough. I know depression can be difficult to talk about in concrete terms, partly because it's a very emotionally charged and unpleasant topic, but also partly because, to so many people, it still seems invisible, in a way that other disorders or maladies are not. But I am here to argue that it is not nearly as inconspicuous as it seems, and that it needs to be taken seriously.

On Wednesday, of course, the world lost a true legend of music when Chris Cornell, the lead singer for Soundgarden and Audioslave, died in his hotel room after a show in Detroit. He was 52 years old. The news hit me like an atomic blast. I was absolutely devastated. For me, it was every bit as much of a loss as Freddie Mercury or David Bowie. I mean, Soundgarden was a big part of my adolescence. I got my copy of Superunknown around the time I was 15 or 16, and to this day, it remains one of my all-time favorite albums. I was lucky enough to see Cornell in concert at Lollapalooza '03 in Atlanta, when Audioslave was one of that year's two big headliners (the other being Jane's Addiction). I got badly sunburned, and then, by the end of the concert, completely soaked by a sudden storm that had appeared while Jane's Addiction was setting up. But even despite all of that, it was one of the greatest concerts I've ever attended, and a large part of that is due to me getting to see Cornell performing live. His voice was unearthly, in a way that can never, ever be replaced.

So imagine how I felt when I learned that his death had been ruled a suicide. It was like Robin Williams, all over again.

And I know, it's not really a unique perspective, by any means-- but I do feel like my personal proximity to this phenomenon obliges me to speak. Since Cornell's death, I have heard the question posed-- the same question that crops up whenever something like this happens: "Why?" Why would he kill himself? He was famous, he was successful, he had a family and friends and bandmates and legions of adoring fans, among which I count myself. By all metrics, or at least by all of the ones we value in the West, he should have had a strong will to live. And then, of course, there's the inevitable accusations of selfishness, because how could he abandon everybody who cared about him, and throw everything away like that?

But it's not that simple. Believe me, I know what I'm talking about.

For anyone who might not be aware, I have myself suffered from depression for much of my life. It first surfaced in a clinical capacity when I was 18, around the time I began my first year of college. Even though it took that long to manifest as this thing we call 'depression', I contend that its roots extend all the way back to my childhood. I didn't have a happy childhood. My parents were always quite supportive of me, but where I grew up, there really weren't too many others who were. I spent my childhood in an extremely socially conservative region (northern Georgia, in smalltown suburbs a few hours from Atlanta). I was smart in an area where athleticism was the most important thing. I was agnostic in an area where everybody was strongly Christian. I was a northern transplant in an area where people still felt raw about losing the Civil War. So, I didn't have many friends.

To my dismay, that didn't change very much when I went to college in Florida. I thought that going to an art school would result in me having more in common with others, and being able to form better social circles. Instead, I still felt like an outsider. That first year, living with two roommates who both came from the same place and already knew each other, I very frequently felt like a third wheel, and ended up confined to my bedroom most of the time while my roommates had friends over, just because I really didn't feel like they wanted me around. It was in that climate-- having had an actively hostile childhood, and not receiving the relief and social support I so desperately needed at college-- that my depression was properly formed.

The type that I experience is called dysthymia, or neurotic depression. It's a bit milder than standard clinical depression, but lingers much longer, too. In my case, it's a life sentence. I've come to terms with that. I know how it goes-- I'll be fine for a few months, and then BAM! Something will trigger me, and I'll sink into it for a few hours or days, before rebounding. A trigger doesn't have to be a big thing; it could be something as small as somebody saying the wrong thing to me, or something insignificant not working out the way I had hoped. I don't take antidepressants, because I have decided that I am not comfortable with altering my brain chemistry and potentially experiencing unwanted side effects. The reason I mention all of this is because one reason depression is such an elusive subject is that it is a different experience for everyone who has it. I can only really speak from my own experience.

When it first occurred, it came in waves of intense despair which lasted hours, days, even weeks. All my energy, all my vitality, was drained. All the joy, all the color, was sucked out of life. I became trapped in a seemingly endless spiral downward, to a place in my head where daylight and reason could not permeate-- to a lonely place where I became convinced that there must be something wrong with me, because nobody seemed to appreciate my company. Maybe... maybe this was a sign, that I didn't deserve to exist.

I hesitate to talk about this here, because I fear that others could interpret this incorrectly, and think I desperately need help. But I ask you to bear with me, and understand that I have grown much more accustomed to my depression, and I have a much better feeling for when I legitimately need help and when it would actually be detrimental to me. I don't want authorities called on me, or anybody to worry needlessly over what I have to say next. That said, here goes:

I have had thoughts about suicide myself, many, many times, and if I'm going to be honest, I probably will again, eventually.

It's difficult to explain to people what goes on in my head. I don’t make such an admission as a cry for help, because I can honestly say my own depression is lessening as I age. I don’t experience bouts as severely or frequently as I used to, and they are much more manageable for me now. I have grown and matured, and stabilized much more than when I was 18 or 20, or even 25. I don't truly consider myself in mortal danger anymore, because when I experience an onset of depression, it's now like a rote routine that I know how to navigate. For me, there is a line between thought and action that I will not cross. The thought crosses my mind, but I can hold myself in check. First of all, I'm squeamish about the thought of actually going through with it, even in my deepest lows. Secondly, I have loved ones who do care, and I have weathered my depression long enough that I have gradually gained the ability to force myself to consider them. Thinking of suicide is nothing but a kneejerk reaction for me now, a temporary coping mechanism when I don't have the mental resources to cope in any other way.

Doesn't mean it's pleasant, of course. Depression isn't just a mood-- it's a period of vulnerability. It's a delusion of futility. It's a catastrophic cascading system failure in the person's operating system. It's a cycle of negative emotion running roughshod over everything else-- logic, reason, and in many cases, positive emotional attachments to others. All those things Cornell had going for him-- fame, success, loved ones, a promising future-- they become reduced to background whispers, while the darkness is shouting through a megaphone. I always bristle when I see someone who hasn't experienced suicidal ideation firsthand claiming that it's selfish, because that's not really the right word for it. You don't know what it's like. Ego has nothing to do with it (save for, perhaps, not being present enough). In general, it's more like being involuntarily intoxicated-- your perception becomes skewed and impaired, to the point where you have difficulty making accurate judgments. For me, it's a subconscious monologue, making me feel worthless, like I'll always be alone and unloved, even though I know it's completely untrue. Some people experience anhedonia-- a clinical inability to feel happy. Some experience an unshakable all-encompassing grey fog of numbness. I have experienced both of those in the past, too.

But the key, I think, is that depression eats hope. I would even go as far as to call depression a "hope disease", in the same sense that cirrhosis is a liver disease or nephritis is a kidney disease. When you are depressed, hope disappears; you feel like the future is written in stone, and it's going to be bad. Or you feel like there's no hope that your present condition will change, so why bother anymore? That's the reason depression is so dangerous. Hope is important for people to survive; it's a fundamental component of the will to live. But when hope is broken, that will becomes compromised. It isn't that it's impossible to hold onto it-- but it becomes much more of a heavy burden to do so.

And much the same as you wouldn't tell someone with cirrhosis or nephritis to just "get over it", you can't tell somebody with depression to "shake it off" either. It doesn't work like that. Remember, this isn't a mood, it's a system failure. If I had any control over when and how intensely I feel depression, do you really think I would consciously choose to feel so bad that the only thing I can do is crawl into bed in a fetal position and sleep until it's over?

Again, I can't speak for everyone who experiences depression or suicidal thoughts. In some cases, I do think medication is a vitally important component for treatment. Suicide hotlines do important work, as well. Personally, I have found that counseling is the most effective thing for me. But if we're going to tackle this issue, the thing that I feel is of paramount importance first is that we do so from a position which is both educated and compassionate. Our media tends to be sensationalist about... well, everything, really, but mental illness has been particularly caricatured-- as being less of a problem than it is, or being the motivation behind tragic criminal actions such as shootings, or being a sign of serious character flaws like moral bankruptcy. We have to stop putting the stigma of depression on the person experiencing it. Who I am when I am depressed is a separate entity from who I am normally. It's like somebody else is in the cockpit, somebody that I only vaguely recognize. Take it from someone who knows, because he's felt it-- when depression is trivialized, or stigmatized, or treated as an inconvenience, or misinterpreted as just someone being self-absorbed, not only are we completely ignoring the building on fire, we're actually dumping gasoline on it. Be observant. Reach out to others who seem isolated or sullen, but respect their wishes if they want to be alone. If you've got loved ones who experience depression, take an interest in it, and ask them about it sometime when they aren't mired in it. Give them a nonjudgmental space to speak freely about it. If you suspect somebody you care about is in the grips of depression, the best thing you can do is to ask what he or she needs. If the person needs support, try to be supportive, or help find someone who can be. If the person needs space, give them space. And in any case, please, I urge you, BE PATIENT. Keep in mind, no one chooses depression-- it chooses us.

#depression #suicide #chris cornell

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