Phil Gramm, how you've cheered me. Here I was, feeling sad about my $4-per-gallon gas prices and $20 bunch of bananas and now I hear I have nothing to worry about. Because the recession is actually just "mental"!
You can't imagine what this does for me, as a mental health journalist and someone who suffers with bipolar disorder. If there's one thing I know, it's how to solve a "mental" crisis. (And thanks, Phil, for rehabilitating the un-P.C. term "mental." I always thought it was cute, too.)
My cure has been, typically, to invest all my pennies in Big Pharma -- specifically Seroquel, Ativan, Effexor and a whole buncha other drugs that the FDA now says might make me want to kill myself. (And yes, I do know those are drugs prescribed for epilepsy, but come on -- I've taken almost all of those drugs at one time or another, and I'm on two of them right now. Off-label is, as they say in my native Philadelphia, the jawn.)
Other options for a mental recession might be exercise, which has been scientifically proven to have enormous benefits mood-wise. Exercise you might want to think about now? Walking to work instead of driving your car, walking home from work instead of driving your car, walking to the junkyard to get rid of your car ... that sort of thing.
What else?
- Acupuncture can help people with mental recession issues -- I hear it's good preparation for sticker shock.
- Electroshock therapy helps you forget your troubles.
- Light therapy might work for those who can afford their electric bill, though that's primarily used for Seasonal Affective Disorder--though according to Phil Gramm this Season of Want is just a hallucination.
See? If you're Jewish and have the Catskills gene you can write this stuff in your sleep. Give it a try. It'll cheer you up while you pour corn oil into your gas tank.
We're a nation of whiners, all right. Psychotic ones at that.