Sad Foods, Or: Everything at the Corner Store Wants to Kill Me

Here’s a chicken-and-egg for you: Which came first, the lazy prefrontal cortex signaling classical signs of depression or the low-energy body that must be dragged about from room to room without a seeming will to even exist? If you’re anything like me, you’ve spent many an hour kicking the tires of this brain tickler.

For many years I assumed I was one of those unfortunates born with a vitamin Prozac deficiency. It was a conclusion backed up by, if not originating with, the lab coats who I ran to for answers. But what if my mood is actually based in my body? (As if the brain weren’t of the body, but that’s for another day.) What if my brain merely interprets an illness originating in the gut, for instance, as depression and is making up stories to back up its conclusion?

What if my food is making me “crazy”?

Accusations Of Mental Cruelty And The Hunt For Lord Mirth

Is that him? Lord? Lord?

To go to bed frustrated, despondent, or angry is to frequently enter shock therapy.

In my case, I was still smarting from my decision to go public, the withholding of a blessing from (and it may surprise them to hear themselves described as such) key members of my circle, and professional setbacks and frustrations. A familiar feeling of emotional drowning, in other words, was fully engaged by the time my brain cycled down into that deeper level of analysis known as dreaming.

I was in a kitchen. Something in my throat tickled, but the muscles that would normally vibrate the windpipe wouldn’t engage. The tickle remained. It grew in my awareness. I obsessed over not having the basic, elementary mechanism to sooth that discomfort. To scratch. I was starting to panic. What was wrong with me?

Then another thought took it to the next level.