The entire article is pretty spot on, experience wise at least (can't comment on the chemistry of it) However > Inside the body is going through a massive str

The entire article is pretty spot on, experience wise at least (can't comment on the chemistry of it) However > Inside the body is going through a massive stress response that is similar to what your body would be doing if you were fleeing an armed assailant. All the time. This right here... is important, and something I don't think most are aware of. It's also something I don't think one can fully understand without having experienced it. I have been mugged at gunpoint/knifepoint and also had bullets fired in my direction in an attempted carjacking (thank you downtown St. Louis) at an earlier time in my life. The fight or flight reflex was definitely about as strong as you might imagine it would/should be in that situation, perhaps slighty dampened by a hobby that required a lot of situational awareness/vigilance. Cue coming down with a pretty severe chronic physical illness a couple years later and no financial means nor support to fully deal with it (fuck Vascular Ehlers Danlos and Thoracic Outlet Syndrome) - obviously, some severe depression comes with the hopelessness of things like this. The fight or flight reflex... just, came on as symptoms became severe. It was quite noticable and fluctuated in severity the first month or so, but soon became an all encompassing baseline normal... now going on for years. Simply put, figuratively, I could walk straight up to somebody shooting at me and touch them on the face without any fear/monkey brain instinct to save my life. Literally, I would likely be quickly dead because bullets do that to you and it's not hard to hit somebody walking straight up to you. I really do not mean this in a suicidal sense whatsoever, just the fact that there is absolutely no further stress response from any situation I may find myself in, no matter how dangerous (well, I haven't been plastered in easily visible US military gear in the middle of Afghanistan with people shooting at me, so perhaps I may be slightly too full of myself). But, the stress response one would normally get that invokes the fear and adrenaline to run away from imminent dangers, it essentially no longer suddenly happens, as it's just been a part of daily life for so long. I can't walk down a busy street without the instant mental registration of where every sound I'm able to hear is coming from. Basically, extreme hypervigilance. It is outright extremely exhausting, and once in a blue moon slightly convenient (like when not having realized the bar you're coming out of at 2am is less than a block from Skid Row and you've got quite a walk to get where you're headed). I wish more people were aware of this aspect of this mental illness, and I very much hope that there's not a point of no return from it. Something makes me think that there has to be though - whether that's years, or decades of the non-stop fight or flight stressor, and perhaps dependent on what portion of your development you experience it in.