Visiting my shrink

Yesterday I visited my psychiatrist at his office near Lawrence station. (I could have talked about it yesterday but I wanted to talk about the art walk while it was fresh in my mind.)

Dr. Hassan is a Palestinian-Canadian, and one of what I imagine must be very few psychiatrists in the Toronto region who can speak Arabic.  He must fill a big need.  I think he sometimes treats children, because there are some toys around his office.

I started seeing him about ten years ago and that was when it got diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome.  These days I visit him every couple of months.  I sometimes have trouble thinking of things to say. (In particular, when he asks me questions involving sex I tend to clam up.)

This time I had more to talk about than usual.  I had my September trip to London to tell him about.  And I also talked about my blog. He says he's impressed by my efforts to be socially active through groups like Meetup.

He prescribes me anti-depressant pills like Cipralex.  I used to take one every day, but I worry about getting dependent on them. (My mother fears that even more.) These days I take one every couple of days, though in wintertime I go back to taking them daily.  I ran out of pills when I was in London and had one unpleasant nightmare--I was really angry at some woman--but I survived it pretty well.