I know this is a joke but like, yeah. It is. I promise you.
See, I had graduated early from highschool and then got my associates in Zoology. But then, from ages 18-23, I was medicated with antipsychotics and (for those last two years) a deadly combo of sedatives due to misdiagnosis after misdiagnosis, and then a psychiatrist who was legitimately on drugs and just writing random shit that almost killed me.
Anyway, needless to say, my brain turned to mush and stopped working, and it took me 6 years to get some sort of bachelors degree (in fashion??) and I graduated at the bottom of my class.
And then I got properly diagnosed (the “psychosis” was just narcolepsy) and got off all those meds. And I was so afraid my brain was permanently fucked. And it is, cause of the narcolepsy part, but the narcolepsy doesn’t kill the parts of your brain where your smarts are.
But I went back to school. Got another bachelors studying sustainable tourism. Turns out my smarts hadn’t gone anywhere when my brain turned to mush. I graduated with a 3.98 GPA.
Now I’m getting my masters in biology studying the intersection of tourism and the conservation of the critically endangered Cozumel raccoon. And doing well. 🤷🏻♀️
Your brain is not a muscle in the literal sense, but it is a muscle in the sense that the more you use it, the better developed it becomes. Not using it might make its usefulness dip for a bit, but that doesn’t mean it’s gone forever. You might have to work your way back up, start with easier exercises (puzzles, creative exercises, critical thinking questions) before jumping back into the stuff you used to do, but like a couch to 5k slowly ramp up the difficulty and you’ll get there in the end. No one’s brains are useless, you just gotta meet ‘em where they’re at.
