MrsDoyle

Too late for me. But thanks for telling me my computer wasn’t good enough for Win 11 and forcing me to install Linux. It was a breeze, and computing is fun again.

I live near a big estate that breeds pheasants for game shooting, and for several years my garden was visited by a succession of male pheasants. Eventually they’d be tame enough to eat from my hand, and sometimes they’d bring their lady friends along. One day there were 15 pheasants in my garden.

I don’t see them any more because I stopped feeding birds altogether, after one of my neighbours got a predatory cat and I started finding corpses, mainly small songbirds. These days it’s just wood pigeons and magpies, none of which seem inclined to make friends.

Good question. It’s hard to recall exactly, but I felt in the end that I wanted to try living without their help. I weaned off them gradually and felt ok. Then after a few years I felt the symptoms of depression return and resumed taking them for I think six months. This was nearly 20 years ago. I haven’t suffered depression since.

I know other people on SSRIs have talked about a flattening of emotions, but I never felt that. They didn’t make me happy exactly - it’s more that they enabled me to feel optimistic.

I describe my experience of SSRIs as cleaning the very dirty windows of a room and being able to see out at last, and to see the room itself with all that extra light, and to enjoy the feeling of sun on my skin.

I still remember the first time I woke up in the morning without a knot of dread in my gut. I was on SSRIs for a year, and then took them again for another six months later on. That was all 20 years ago or so.

Carrots are dirt cheap where I live. I buy a kilo, peel them, chop them into batons and store them in the fridge in an airtight container. Satisfying crunch and full of vitamins. Dip into humus for extra yum.

Microsoft drew the line. They wanted me to buy a new computer for their new OS. Not happening.