Before we left for Florida last week, I became convinced I was not alone in my apartment. I’m usually not actually alone in my apartment, because usually Carmichael, the muppet/cat I adopted last year, is also at home with me. But he was staying at Chase’s (we keep the cats together in one apartment when we go out of town to make it easier for our friends to feed them. This works perfectly well for them, it would not necessarily work perfectly well for all cats) so I should have been alone. I then heard what sounded like some squeaking coming from the second bedroom/office/litter box/Peloton room and noticed that some of the dregs of carmichael’s bowl of dry food were missing and I immediately assumed the worst.
“I think there’s a mouse in my apartment?” I texted my friends, conveying what I thought was an understated and casual level of panic. “There’s mice in the walls of every apartment,” one texted me back. “You live in New York City.” Fair enough, but mice are one thing I have never had the pleasure of dealing with in eight-plus years of life here. Bedbugs, the occasional cockroach, bad landlords (but I repeat myself)—these are all things I have come to understand as table stakes in a New York City apartment. I have never had a rodent in an apartment, but I’d also never lived in a 90-year-old building until this spring. With Carmichael gone, the temperature dropping outside, and a bag of dry cat food accidentally left open in the closet, it was just a matter of time until this happened. Still, dubious friends convinced me it wasn’t a mouse. Maybe the radiator was finally kicking on, I thought, or maybe I was hearing things.
On Wednesday morning as I wheeled my carry-on out the door I heard the unmistakable skittering of claws on the hardwood and squeaking and I knew my original fears were correct. I had a flight to catch—it was too late to do anything other than silently panic in the Uber to LaGuardia. I had a vision of returning to my apartment today when I got back to Brooklyn, opening the door, and a tidal wave of mice running out the door, or all of my dry kitchen goods pilfered and torn through. This mental image haunted me every day we were in Florida. I would be having an amazing time with friends, sobbing as my friend Jack gave beautiful vows at his wedding ceremony, dancing at the reception, kayaking through the bay, and suddenly reremember the mouse and freeze, with panic gripping my heart.
Have you ever done something the same way for so long and assumed it was just the way everyone did it, only to learn that what you thought to be a universal experience was in fact very individual to you and not at all normal? I recently learned that everyone doesn’t sit bolt upright in the middle of the night sweating with their heart racing thinking about irrational fears far beyond their control. That people aren’t all just constantly thinking about the worst case scenario. That the thoughts that torture me aren’t just like, things everyone deals with on a regular basis. That constant intrusive thoughts aren’t merely a byproduct of being alive.
I thought this was going to be a blog about my new mouse, but alas, I have fooled you—it’s actually a blog about identifying and changing long-set patterns within yourself. It’s funny to grow up and identify so much of your parents in yourself. In myself I see the anxiety that runs strong on both sides of my family, and my mom’s stubbornness to handle and fix problems, especially health problems, herself. For so long I thought I could take care of myself by myself and white-knuckle through the panic attacks, the social anxiety, the feeling of misery that I thought everyone experienced. But if I’ve learned anything in the past few years it’s that I don’t need to make things hard when they can be easy, that I don’t need to struggle when I can just ask for help, that literally nobody would prefer that I be a hero by suffering quietly.
So now, newly home, I have set about to do two things: Chase and I immediately bought and set mouse traps and removed the extremely well-chewed-through bag of dry cat food from the closet, and then I made an appointment with my therapist to talk about medication solutions for when therapy alone isn’t cutting it. Writing this down on one hand feels very stupid, like, it’s 2022 and have you guys heard of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors??? And on the other hand, it feels exactly right for me to be only, finally, at 30 acknowledging that perhaps I, too, would benefit from a little something to take the edge off. I will also acknowledge that I don’t know if this is gonna work—maybe medicine isn’t for me! But maybe it is, and I owe it to myself to at least try it out.
Please also consider a supervised trip with psylocyben, where "supervised" could just mean "in a safe, comfortable place, with someone to look after you, preferably someone who has done this before". There are European facilities for this - perhaps there's something closer to home for you too.
Psychedelics have shown great promise with treating depression and anxiety - far beyond the anecdotal evidence I can supply - and the latest studies about SSRIs is that they may help for a bit, but ultimately exacerbate the problem.
From my personal experience, even microdosing has really helped, and the dosages are so small that there's no trip - perhaps a little "brightening of the world" for a short while.
Whatever course you choose, I wish you all the best.