{"id":14993,"date":"2018-07-16T18:44:00","date_gmt":"2018-07-16T22:44:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/hameblog\/2018\/07\/16\/neurochemical-hindsight\/"},"modified":"2025-09-12T07:50:32","modified_gmt":"2025-09-12T10:50:32","slug":"neurochemical-hindsight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/2018\/07\/16\/neurochemical-hindsight\/","title":{"rendered":"Neurochemical Hindsight"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I read a really good article by Robin Williams\u2019s wife today about why he died:<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/n.neurology.org\/content\/87\/13\/1308.full\"><strong>The Terrorist Inside My Husband\u2019s Brain<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p>A post-mortem showed that Williams had Lewy Body Dementia, which is sometimes associated with Parkinson\u2019s. (Williams had been diagnosed with Parkinson\u2019s.) He couldn\u2019t <em>not<\/em> be depressed, and he was losing his memory, his focus&#8230; everything, really.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p>This article gave me another context for thinking about what my dad experienced \u2014 like he wasn\u2019t just being a cranky old git, he was at the mercy of what was happening inside his brain. It\u2019s not that he just wasn\u2019t trying&#8230; he just <em>couldn\u2019t<\/em>.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p>So while this is a helpful meme:<br \/>\n<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/wp-content\/uploads\/posts\/1626\/20180716233752-0A857E0C-6FF3-4C67-8623-83EA3C87121E.jpeg.webp\" alt=\"enter image description here\"><\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;Williams\u2019s story is instructive on a more nuanced level: The effects of brain chemistry are indistinguishable from personality. If I\u2019d been more conscious of <em>why<\/em> Dad was the way he was the past few years, maybe I would have cut him more slack.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p>But then, maybe it\u2019s wrong to medicalize away who someone has become \u2014 particularly when there isn\u2019t some other <em>them<\/em> you\u2019re ever going to be able to access again. Who we demonstrate ourselves as \u2014 is that not who we really are, at least at that time?<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s all theoretical at this point.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p>In somewhat-related news, I felt compelled to scan and post my sketchbooks from the past five years. They\u2019re available from the <a href=\"http:\/\/hame.land\/comics.html\"><strong>Comics<\/strong><\/a> page.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s raw, unfiltered personal memory stuff, so I don\u2019t know how palatable it is for others. But I\u2019m happy to have all those memories trapped in ink.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I read a really good article by Robin Williams\u2019s wife today about why he died: The Terrorist Inside My Husband\u2019s Brain A post-mortem showed that Williams had Lewy Body Dementia, which is sometimes associated with Parkinson\u2019s. (Williams had been diagnosed with Parkinson\u2019s.) He couldn\u2019t not be depressed, and he was losing his memory, his focus&#8230; [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14993","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14993","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14993"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14993\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14993"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14993"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14993"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}