Erin

“The number of episodes, and it’s a very rich literature [documenting this], is associated with more cognitive deficits,” he said. “We are building more episodes, more treatment resistance, more cognitive dysfunction, and there is data showing that if you have four depressive episodes, unipolar or bipolar, it doubles your late-life risk of dementia. And guess what? That isn’t even the half of it…. In the United States, people with depression, bipolar, and schizophrenia are losing twelve to twenty years in life expectancy compared to people not in the mental health system.”
― Robert Whitaker, Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America

“If I had a view like this to look down on every day, I would have the energy and inspiration to conquer the world. The trouble is, when you most need such a view, no one gives it to you.”
― Jennifer Egan, A Visit from the Goon Squad

“In studies of first-episode bipolar patients, investigators at McLean Hospital, the University of Pittsburgh, and the University of Cincinnati Hospital found that at least one-third had used marijuana or some other illegal drug prior to their first manic or psychotic episode.10 This substance abuse, the University of Cincinnati investigators concluded, may “initiate progressively more severe affective responses, culminating in manic or depressive episodes, that then become self-perpetuating.”11 Even the one-third figure may be low; in 2008, researchers at Mt. Sinai Medical School reported that nearly two-thirds of the bipolar patients hospitalized at Silver Hill Hospital in Connecticut in 2005 and 2006 experienced their first bout of “mood instability” after they had abused illicit drugs.12 Stimulants, cocaine, marijuana, and hallucinogens were common culprits. In 2007, Dutch investigators reported that marijuana use “is associated with a fivefold increase in the risk of a first diagnosis of bipolar disorder” and that one-third of new bipolar cases in the Netherlands resulted from it.13”
― Robert Whitaker, Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America

“We should be choosing what we want to keep, not what we want to get rid of.”
― Marie Kondō, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing