The disease articulated: marijuana, "Stopping," and the anhedonic feeling (Kate Gompert)

timeline_event

pivotal · ? YDAU

When: ? YDAU (psych-ward interview, days after a serious meds overdose)
What: The most articulate first-person account of the disease in the early range. Clinically-depressed Kate Gompert, hospitalized after a near-fatal Parnate/Lithonate/Zoloft overdose, distinguishes wanting to kill herself from wanting to hurt herself ("I just wanted out. I didn't want to play anymore is all") and names the unbearable all-over anhedonic "feeling" she wants only to stop. Pressed on cause, she locates it not in "drugs" but in "Stopping": every time she quits marijuana ("Bob Hope"), the feeling creeps back in — the withdrawal-depression loop that the clinical literature the doctor has read denies exists. Her formulation "It's not wanting to hurt myself it's wanting to not hurt" is the thread's clearest statement of the disease as an anesthetic against a prior pain. She later Comes In to Ennet House for marijuana (See the Ennet thread; event 13, the NA grass meeting).