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

#227 Baby Bangs and Treatment Stays

·37 min·2 clips

"It's always easy to romanticize the past" — the hosts challenge the idea that 2016 was a happy year when drinking was part of it.

1. Pickles and Vodka's Episode #227, "Baby Bangs and Treatment Stays," mixes mental health check-ins with a look at 2016 versus now. 2. Hosts Christina and Lauren record together, with a dog named Taco whining in the background and a new intern who has "a folder" created for them. 3. The central question is whether the 2016 nostalgia trend on social media holds up, given that Christina's 2016 was "bookended by treatment." 4. Housekeeping covers a listener voicemail about work to be played next week, a pointer to episode 95 ("A cool supervisor never leaves a scale at the snack table"), and a guest pitch asking listeners to volunteer. 5. Lauren recounts a therapy session where she realized her father now "idolizes somebody who thinks that it's cool and funny to just mock the handicapped," and says she limits political talk with her parents rather than cutting them off. 6. She describes her father becoming emotionally open in her mid-twenties after 25 years of telling her to have no emotional needs, and says he now sends memes she does not answer from 600 miles away. 7. Christina says she filled out four IOP contact forms that day, one call ended in a coughing fit, and she feels "jaded" about treatment after leaving the psych ward. 8. Looking back at 2016, Christina recalls being a Starbucks supervisor in Austin, Texas, with a Harley and a bicycle, then admits "I was just drinking all the time," and the hosts note the year included a first treatment stay and an insurance cutoff roughly six months after discharge. 9. They discuss before-and-after photos in eating disorder recovery, noting that a "before" picture and its caption can reveal a poster's mental state, and later talk about makeovers, a platinum pixie cut, and Christina's dog Pico, adopted in March 2016 and lost on March 29. 10. Suited to listeners in their 30s navigating treatment, family rifts, and nostalgia.

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