Wow,
Thank you Sarah Lou. I was actually about to re-visit this thread with a suspicion that my former boss is now suffering from PTSD. I saw him yesterday for the first time in over 3 months; he recently lost his wonderful wife to cancer after fighting it for a span of nearly 20 years and 3 full courses of chemo and 2 surgeries. He's on a pretty harsh antidepressant now and says that he's been unable to sleep, lost a ton of weight, can't stop pacing and blaming himself for not doing enough (the guy's a saint; this is illogical) to the point where he has lost the ability to function at work and says he's having a hard time reading and can't write coherently. This is a guy with a doctorate, too. I think the catastrophic loss of mental acuity is making him even more miserable.
I don't know much about PTSD, but watching him yesterday unable to even decide where to have lunch without having to pace for a few minutes, then coming up looking distraught and having reached no decision, and apologizing for it, I'm wondering if the diagnosis of simple depression was accurate, and feeling CERTAIN that if anything, an anti-anxiety med would have been more appropriate as a start.
I talked to him a while about smoking herb and offered him my emergency joint that I keep on me at all times to deal with panic attacks, and he said he'd already promised himself that he'd never 'smoke dope' again. I told him that I understood his desire to stay away from recreational pot smoking, but that it was the difference between someone taking oxycontin after a surgery, and someone crushing it and shoving it up their nose for 'fun', and that I found that cannabis was effective for me at least against panic attacks at doses that still left me functional and that I would consider sub-recreational.
He looked like he was chewing it over but didn't take it. I put it in an envelope and stapled it shut, and thumbtacked it to my bulletin board in case he changes his mind. I hope he does. He's a brilliant man and I hate to see him like this.
I gotta get my hands on AI or some closely-related strain.