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

#225 The Disaster Continues

·33 min·2 clips

"I'm putting all of my energy into convincing people that I'm not putting any energy into anything."

1. Episode #225 of Pickles and Vodka, "The Disaster Continues," is the first episode of 2026 and covers depression, money anxiety, and the hosts' rejection of New Year's resolutions. 2. Co-hosts Lauren and Christina, longtime friends who now live in the same city after Christina's 2025 move to Richmond, check in on each other for roughly 33 minutes. 3. The central idea is that January 1st is an arbitrary date, summed up in the line "you're always the same you, and second, you're always changing." 4. Lauren says she is "depressed and high functioning," that only her therapist knows the extent of it, and that she is considering a psychiatrist and medication again, as she also said in her 2024 New Year's Eve episode. 5. Christina describes a billing emergency discovered on a Friday afternoon, with about $40 in her account, that caused a panic attack and made her feel "I'm not normal." 6. Both hosts discuss how others minimize their distress, such as "it's just numbers," and Christina links her relationship with numbers to past calorie counting. 7. Christina says she is "terrified" for 2026 and fears slipping into crisis mode, while noting the outside world now mirrors her inner state, and she revisits episode 183, "New Year's Shit." 8. Lauren says she stopped making New Year's resolutions because the date felt forced, so the world now feels like "no, the disaster continues" rather than a sudden decline. 9. Housekeeping includes handmade ornaments from listener Orion (a Taco-attacking-a-pickle design), a prospective intern for social media, and the second anniversary of Dawn's passing, followed by Christina reading the synopsis of the 2009 novel "Purge" found in a Goodwill bin. 10. Suited to listeners who want candid, humorous mental health conversation without advice or toxic positivity.

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