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dear cyber-siblings i don't want to get tedious about this subject but... i'm going to anyway because it feels too important to me when my ex-brother-in-law, willie, was a child, he was part of a large, hard-working, loving family during his teen years willie witnessed a profound personality change in his father who became generally very angry and argumentative to the point of physically abusing willie's mom willie felt his love for his father turn to hatred a few years later willie's father was diagnosed with a brain tumour and died not too long after the diagnosis on a more personal and slightly less traumatic level during my twenties i shared an apartment with my then love maurice for about four years my temperament has always seemed pretty happy and easy-going both to me and to all my friends certainly i rarely got angry or raised my voice in spite of that maurice and i had horrific yelling arguments once in awhile and i can still feel the full-blown glorious rage surging around inside me from those fights finally maurice took note of the calendar he was the one to make the connection between our arguments and day 23 of my menstrual cycle it was like clockwork and i never made the connection for hmmmm 27 - 13 = 14 years x 12 = 168 months i virtually became another person i was angry at everything and anything no matter what maurice said or even if he said nothing it made no difference i just got angrier maurice could have propped up a cardboard replica of himself and gone out for a walk i doubt that i would have noticed am i going anywhere with these two sad tales? yep straight to my favourite subject brain chemisty we are all familiar with pd's physical symptoms and while some of us may be embarassed about showing them in public we are all used to and even probably expect some level of empathy, understanding, compassion and accommodation from the rest of the world for our physical plight however when it comes to symptoms which may be deemed 'psychological' or 'emotional' or 'cognitive' or whatever it seems to me that a lot of people may be tempted to rush in and make judgments and condemn such behaviours as 'nutcase' call me weird but if someone i know starts behaving in an extreme manner i find myself sitting back and saying 'hmmmm' to myself between 'hormone hell' and cd i have experienced a ton of 'emotions' that have been purely chemically induced and had nothing to do with my so-called 'mental state' i keep thinking over and over these brain chemicals are no joke medication induced psychosis is just that medication induced not a 'mental condition' and not even permanent we all 'play' with our brain chemistry on a daily, hourly, minutely basis fine-tuning and tweaking as well as we can the way i see it medication induced psychosis is as real a possibility for me and for any parkie as any other drug side effect it seems to me that constant vigilance and intimate knowledge about our disease are both critical to our well-being and to our safety i have to consciously work at the former i am grateful every day for this list for providing the latter your cyber-sis in chemistry janet [log in to unmask]