Reply #27: one other suggestion

[incontrovertible]

I apologize for the unsolicited advice, but I feel like I'm talking to myself as a 21 year old, a long time ago.

For someone in your present state, and with your apparent condition requiring paxil, it is critically important that you eat as well and as healthily as possible.

Until you get your SSI, this may mean taking a bus to a soup kitchen - that's fine, I had to do so myself earlier in my life, and you'll meet a lot of other democrats who've been screwed out of their employment under the Bush economy. If you feel at all guilty or unhappy about this, just resolve yourself to volunteering at such a facility when you're in a better place in life. I've done this myself as well, and it's profoundly rewarding.

WHEN you get your SSI, I implore you to buy a little guidebook on nutrition. You don't have to eat cucumbers with cottage cheese and call them "nachos," just learn what equals what, in terms of "This is a starch. I need x many servings of starch a day. This is a good fat, I need this for energy through the day. This is a saturated fat - it'll make me feel tired and groggy. This is high in sugar - it'll give me a rush and then knock me out later today." You don't have to radically alter your lifestyle, but knowing what's what will make a profound difference in the way you feel day-by-day, which will make a huge impact on how you perceive and interact with the world around you.

I point this out because, it's been my experience that most people don't figure this out until about their thirties, unless they make an effort to learn it. I think it's because it takes a lot of living to build up enough life experience to understand, "oh, if I eat this today, I'll feel like this later." Because, you see, how does one know that the way one feels isn't just the way one feels?

I'm not the world's healthiest eater. Breakfast for me is a large cup of coffee with cream and sugar - I have to start work early and hit the ground running. Lunch is like a tuna sandwich or a salad, so I don't crash at 4 p.m.. Dinner, me and my wife try to cook ourselves, just for money reasons, but if we don't feel like it, I get something to go from Luby's (a cafeteria company here in the South). But I insist that we eat at least ONE full meal a day, with vegetables, starches, meat (some kind of protein and fat if you're a vegetarian), etc. Otherwise we'll be complete wrecks after a couple of days.

So I would definitely recommend one "square" meal at least, per day, and also that you find a nearby cafeteria - for $6.00 in most cities, you can have a very good meal.

I would also take the opportunity to ask the rest of the DU community: What would be your recommendations on what to buy, have on hand and make, on a very small amount of money? Something that would cost as little as a box of macaroni and cheese, but actually be healthy?

I would recommend this book:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0883965917/103-4515794-3416665?v=glance&s=books

And this one:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1580171265/ref=pd_bxgy_text_1/103-4515794-3416665?v=glance&s=books&st=*

Both are good.

An added bonus of knowing this stuff: If you can cook, and do a good job of it, and do it without being asked, trust me - your roommates will appreciate it, and you'll have one less thing to be down on yourself about. If you devote some of your SSI moneys to keeping the pantry stocked, then so much the better. It's VERY difficult to be resentful of someone who made the delicious casserole you found in the fridge, when you were just looking for the can of spray cheese.

I know you've no reason to trust me on this, but please do: My wife has clinical depression, sounds like much more serious case than you have (she's been on every pill in the book), and keeping her flesh properly fueled, and keeping her exercised, makes all the difference in the world.

I hope that's helpful,