Pickles and Vodka: a Mental Health Podcast · Christina & Lauren

#220 Put a Pin in That!

·40 min·2 clips

I was eating dark chocolate in bed, waiting for my sister to go to bed, because she'd think I was binging and purging.

1. Pickles and Vodka episode #220, "Put a Pin in That!," is an unstructured check-in where hosts Lauren and Christina update each other and park tangents with the phrase "put a pin in that." 2. Christina, who recently moved to Richmond three months ago, and Lauren, who has a history of treatment stays and now returns to an earlier therapist, both draw on lived experience with eating disorders. 3. The central thread is how scarcity, whether of food, emotion or affection, shapes eating disorder behavior, with Lauren noting "I often forget that eating disorders can be symptoms of other things." 4. Christina describes joining a queer motorcycle group of 10 to 12 people after hearing about it at her sister's Halloween gathering, and compares it to supportive aerial and musician communities. 5. Christina submitted a food-insecurity essay to a contest, tying her bulimia to a childhood scarcity mindset and the SNAP delays, and admits she has "bought binge food with my EBT card before." 6. Lauren held her last dietitian appointment after about four years, since her last treatment stay in May 2023, and plans to read a three-page assignment about what she wishes her partner knew to her therapist. 7. Both hosts discuss feeling watched: Christina hides cold medicine and dark chocolate to avoid suspicion of relapse, and Lauren describes arguing with doctors that she wants "no more than like 10 Xanax" without being treated as a drug seeker. 8. The pair examine discomfort with physical affection, with Lauren saying it may come from being "afraid of wanting it too much," and recall a treatment friend whose closeness and shared bed-watching of videos she liked. 9. They also discuss people who cycle through treatment as "lifers" because it feels safe, comparing it to staying in college, and Christina describes losing money to a fake tattoo apprentice who requested a Zelle "setup fee." 10. Suited to listeners who like candid, rambling mental health conversations between friends.

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