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[cosmolinguist]

I'm doing a follow-up survey for the Ipsos REACT covid study I was in earlier this year. It's just asked me how many units of alcohol I've had in the last 7 days and there's no option for "there was a Pride and then there was the day before the pride when we didn't know it wasn't pride yet until we were near some nice pubs."

I just told diffrentcolours that I've been asked this and he said "This question is biphoic." Heh, it is!

(The survey actually had really good options for sexuality (straight, gay, bi, ace and pan, plus a write-in field) and gender (male, female, non-binary, and write-in). Always good to see that.)

Also, lol what a time to ask me how I've been in the past fortnight. My anxiety and depression have given me like half the physical health symptoms on their list: fatigue, chest pains, headache, loss of appetite, inability to concentrate... (Thanks to later questions, I was able to make it very clear that these symptoms was because of pre-existing anxiety and depression, but I did laugh at first at how dreadfully ill I looked on paper.)

As part of this survey, I did my first (even half-assed) PHQ-9/GAD-7 in some time, it wasn't scored obv but I was smashing that "nearly every day" button more than is usual even for me! My depression is treatment-resistant and I've never been given any anxiety treatment so I'm used to high scores but sheesh.

I wasn't surprised though. Last night at bedtime I really struggled to calm down. I thought wow you've really acted like a depressed person today, but then I realized it wasn't just "today": my body image has been at a low ebb and I've had anhedonia for weeks. And then I thought that's nothing, remember how you had months of acting like a depressed person before you started feeling like one?

Disappointingly, all this looks like things are still getting worse and not getting better yet. It's very inconvenient.

My sleep has been atrocious, utterly awful even by my chronic-insomnia standards. And I slept better last night, so that's a bright spot in all this. It's just impossible to do anything good for my mental or physical health if I'm not sleeping.

Comments

[jesse_the_k]

I'm so sorry to hear re: your sleep troubles.

(My prescriber offered me hydroxyzine, which a) works and b) is cheap and non-addictive. Just knowing I have something available minimize my insomniac panic.)