Weekend Reads: The Remedy to Depression: Cannabis, 4 Blogs and 1 YouTuber
Live, laugh and love your way out of trying to find a love connection in the New Abnormal with an anecdote and some mixed media!
Hey everyone,
I want you to know that I discovered a little secret today. It’s called depression. Have you heard of it? Apparently it’s a syndrome and everyone has it, including 90% of the people I have dated pre- and post-pandemic, and yours truly! And you were worried about TMIs and STIs! (Are we going to talk about Scenes From A Marriage or what?)
Even with the sun shining and enough in my bank account to afford a cappuccino and olive shortbread at Abraco followed by an impromptu trip to Beacon’s Closet, I was MISERABLE. What gives?
How can you not call depression a disease? I live in the best neighborhood in New York City—what’s there to be depressed about? It truly rots the brain to get hung up on so many things, pass onto the person you’re sleeping with by feeling things after trying not to feel anything at all, rationalize it away, and bury it deep in the shame/guilt pile that requires lighting a match. Perhaps with one of these lighters I am selling through Butterfly Club!
What depresses you? The news? Your mortality? The uncertainty of it all?
A little of A, B and C, thank you very much!
Here are some recent articles about depression all within the past 48 hours:
Magic Mushrooms May Be the Biggest Advance in Treating Depression Since Prozac
Kids whose mothers were depressed during pregnancy more likely to be depressed: Study
5 Things That Can Help When You Feel Irritable and Depressed
I thought HPV caused depression, but turns out that the two are unrelated even though everyone has that, too. Depression is the kind of monster that rears its ugly head in many forms, including: alcoholism, abject terror, overeating, oversharing, under performing, sells-imposed isolation, self-sabotaging, and this imposter syndrome thing.
At the same time, can you be a writer and not depressed? I think the two go hand-in-hand.
Lately, I’ve been depressed about all the friends and lovers I’ve left behind. Which is a terrible thing to ruminate on and kills a perfectly good buzz. That’s how I know that depression is a sexually transmitted infection and cannabis is the cure. Mainly because I feel better when I smoke it, even though I col and don’t think about it too hard, try to have a sense of humor, and it improves overall wellness in my sexual reproductive organs. That’s my official scientific statement.
But what do the scientists have to say?
Well, shit. There goes that hypothesis!
In search of inspiration, I’ve turned to musician and comedian Marc Rebillet because I, too, like wearing robes around my house and getting high. Should I become a YouTuber?
How did Candace Bushnell do this again? Oh right, she got divorced and heroically couldn’t get a mortgage despite being a perennially popular chick lit author. The truth will set us free! We’re doomed! (Thank god for celebrity gossip).
From 2002 to 2012, Bushnell was married to Charles Askegard, a principal dancer with the New York City Ballet who was ten years her junior, and whom she had met eight weeks before. They decided to divorce in 2011. She found the experience disorienting, telling The Guardian, "When I got divorced, I couldn’t get a mortgage; I didn’t fit into a computer model. All of a sudden, I was invited to no more couple things. Being single is hard and there’s something a bit heroic about it."
If real and fake Carrie Bradshaw can’t make it, what does this mean for Stoner Bradshaw?!
Point being: dating is hard! Even experts can’t get it right. And it’s tough coming out of this period of time trying to be on and your best self when so many of us are shells of ourselves as we date 40 people at a time who are all happily partnered in ethnically non-monogamous relationships. Good grief, is this the new norm?
We place too many expectations on ourselves and each other that can lead to disappointment and despair. I know because I spent several hours Googling it, along with “What’s the best way to respect oneself while also getting your man back?”
Somewhere in the world, three of my friends’ eyeballs have rolled so far back into their heads I fear they’ll never emerge again.
Well, I am no dating expert, but I am pretty versed in cannabis and I can tell you that it’s a real mood uplifter and great in the bedroom. It can also make you totally fixate and spiral, so try not to do that. So, here I am: a manic-depressive crazy bitch and I don’t even have a good TikTok meme going for it.
I thought about the various ways I could tell you how I cope with it, but ultimately I cheered myself up with a Yerba Buena, taco happy hour at Empellon, and these following reads:
Webworm with David Farrier: Thank gawd someone is keeping things weird. More so, that Joseph Gordon-Levitt is finally being held accountable as a nation’s top bad guy. HE WAS A NO-SHOW FOR A DATE. #GHOSTED. I’m sorry but what in the actual fuck did JGL have going on that was more important than showing up to dinner with David Farrier? Almost reminds me of the time I was half-meditating with Matthew McConaughey over ZOOM last summer then nothing became of that story.
Food is Stupid: Dennis Lee makes me laugh. I never want to eat anything he makes and sometimes worry about his health. Why won’t someone stop him?
It is bullshit that it is fall, and I am pulling out my debit card as we speak to buy myself one of these “Decorative Gourd Season, Motherfuckers” coffee mug while wondering if this is our generation’s version of a Great American Essay. Does Colin Nissan have this framed surrounded by a coterie of decorative gourds? Does he take long sips on his apple cider, smacking his lips and thinking, “Yeah, I’m the guy who wrote about decorative gourd season, motherfuckers. I’m that genius.” Anyway, enough about Colin. Read Dennis Lee. And stop him.
Above The Fold: I actually hate making dumplings. They are labor intensive and require space I don’t have in this tiny 150-year-old West Village studio. But I love eating dumplings and reading words from Leah Mennies! This week, Leah chats with a technicolor cast of dumpling darlings: Linda Miller Nicholson of Salty Seattle, Brendan Pang of Bumplings, Erin Boukall of Culinary Calgary, Mei Yee of nm_meiyee, and Christine Wong of Conscious Cooking. I am envious of all of their delicious flour purses in every color.
David Lebowitz: David Lebowitz’s recent newsletter about foods he misses from America reminded me to be grateful for avocado toast and the baking aisle again. Every once and awhile, I’ll get really jealous he’s in Paris because I miss going to the Cite Pharmacie where I can drop $100 on discount luxe French skincare, the gorgeous markets, cheap wine, my croissant crawl, and remember they’re in a global pandemic, too, and have inferior olive oil to the Spanish and no quality Mexican food to speak of. Happy LatinX Heritage Month, by the way!