Sandy Ernest Allen
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sandyernestallen.bsky.social
Sandy Ernest Allen
@sandyernestallen.bsky.social
3.7K followers 890 following 20K posts
author & journalist, covering mental health/gender. trans guy. tired.
📝: Believer, Eater, Esquire, The Cut, TAL, 99PI ...
📖: akomp.info (Scribner)
https://whats-helping-today.beehiiv.com/
https://www.sandyernestallen.com
https://linktr.ee/hellosandyallen
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sandyernestallen.bsky.social
went great ...
my old piano, many cacti on top, some candles and incense too
November 15, 2025 at 3:33 PM
sandyernestallen.bsky.social
My look today is sorta Jedi in mourning ...

(had already dressed thus before learning this latest news ...)
Sandy, a white blonde trans man with a beard, donning an all-black look including: a sweatshirt that says 'gender is a social construct' ... some plants behind. morning light in the kitchen. Sandy, now showing said Jedi in mourning look in the mirror, mostly for robe length purposes ...
November 15, 2025 at 1:02 PM
sandyernestallen.bsky.social
I've grown extremely tired of sending this message, one by one ... oh, every day ... doesn't matter how much I label my substack itself as a ghost ship ... somebody new is always following over there, which irritates me endlessly ...
Hi! Just to note, this newsletter is no longer on Substack. Please subscribe here instead:
November 14, 2025 at 1:04 PM
sandyernestallen.bsky.social
every day i unsubscribe from a few more ... just feels good
You're unsubscribed. You're unsubscribed. You're unsubscribed. three substack logos
November 13, 2025 at 4:54 PM
sandyernestallen.bsky.social
Anyway in light of *gestures at everything* this ... search result for his book, sure made me LOL ...
those three photos, my own sweet, naive excitement about seeing my book for sale in an airport ... and Wolff's trash on sale ...
November 13, 2025 at 12:12 PM
sandyernestallen.bsky.social
pre-T but ... sharing anyway. how fucking genuine is *that* enthusiasm ...
my cute face ... so stoked and thrilled
November 13, 2025 at 11:47 AM
sandyernestallen.bsky.social
other photo of that book in my phone are like, here was me seeing my own book at a bookstore airport (SFO in particular) ... two years prior ... feb 1, 2018 ...
me, in all black, so fuckin stoked ...
November 13, 2025 at 11:46 AM
sandyernestallen.bsky.social
took this photo in feb 2020, two years later lol
fire and fury copies in a stack, "sale", marked down from $6 to $4
November 13, 2025 at 11:44 AM
sandyernestallen.bsky.social
my favorite online community are probably nuts.com reviewers
this is folks excited about dried bananas
November 11, 2025 at 2:31 PM
sandyernestallen.bsky.social
just saw this and genuinely laughed

substack's such a joke as THIS encapsulates oh so well ...
1. Andy Borowitz
November 10, 2025 at 4:42 PM
sandyernestallen.bsky.social
Who Taught You Capitalization Senator
Contact Thank You For Your Email
November 10, 2025 at 11:00 AM
sandyernestallen.bsky.social
genuinely forgot how magic the end of this one was, until covering it just now. it's no shock the one i'm best at ...
end of the tab of apple blossom little pile and i will sort them out for you i'll fall in love with you i think i'll marry you
November 9, 2025 at 6:26 PM
sandyernestallen.bsky.social
goddamn poetry
tab for dead leaves and the dirty ground when i know you're not around shiny tops and soda pops when i hear your lips make a sound
November 9, 2025 at 6:23 PM
sandyernestallen.bsky.social
Again, I shared my own story some towards the end of my magnum opus here ... Suicide is relevant to a discussion of ECT because ECT presently gets sold to patients and their families (and providers) as a treatment of last resort for, e.g. suicidal patients ... www.thebeliever.net/a-brilliant-...
I’ve wanted to die, badly. I’ve had days when dying was my main thought, when not dying was my main effort. As in, I was actively battling an interior self that wanted me to jump off the balcony, now, now, or drive into that median or off that cliff, now, now. I have known such depths of depression, just to be real about that; I’ve known them since my childhood, which included a lot of severe trauma. Nowadays, I’m also someone who’s known what we’d call “psychosis.” So, for a long time and with great interest, I’ve wondered what can be done for a head like mine. I say this not to freak you out but just to be honest about the fact that long before Uncle Bob first got me curious about this, I was somebody caught here. Caught between this life and something. Somebody who desired, deep down, a way out. Even my own death sounded better sometimes than surviving another night in my reality. Ultimately, I have survived, the whole story of which I won’t go into here. But point being, I do know that I personally would never consent to having ECT, knowing all I do about it. I also respect if other adults would make other decisions for themselves, especially people who feel their desperation so extremely. I will say that it does scare me that we do not let these be personal decisions, which psychiatric treatments we receive. That instead we leave these matters, this tremendous power, up to regulators, which ultimately means to individuals who are probably unaware of much that they do not feel the need to question, because the psychiatric authorities have deemed it true.
November 8, 2025 at 12:11 PM
sandyernestallen.bsky.social
As those who've read my piece will already know, this is really a piece about these dynamics — between the public and those labeled with severe psychiatric disorders and others seeking mental health care ... and the medical regulators who've absolutely neglected to do their jobs for decades ...
Ever since, the FDA had ostensibly been waiting on the two ECT machine manufacturers to supply research showing that their products worked and were safe. These companies do not appear to conduct research themselves (though the manufacturer who did respond to me wrote that it does donate its own machines to be used in research and that “a vast amount of research and clinical studies have been done on ECT for the past forty years”). In any case, for decades, the regulation of electroshock never seemed to get anywhere, despite the periodic convening of FDA panels, which would then release some sort of report. And yet now in late 2018, in the wake of “brain damage” being conceded as a side effect by one of the manufacturers, the FDA was finally issuing this ruling, reclassifying ECT as the less-risky Class II for patients diagnosed with catatonia and major depression, and saying it awaited evidence as to its safety and efficacy for other applications. One psychiatrist, a longtime shock opponent, blogged that it was now “open season” for shock patients. As Bonnie Burstow wrote me soon after: “Using terms like ‘reasonably safe and effective medical devices’ in the same breath as talking about ECT machines is double-talk at best.”
November 8, 2025 at 10:19 AM
sandyernestallen.bsky.social
I reported about ECT / electroshock for ~7 years not because it was fun or pleasant but because it's but one *stark example* of how broken this all is — and the impact this has upon people who do seek and I'd argue deserve much better "mental health care" ...

www.thebeliever.net/a-brilliant-...
Though there have been a number of lawsuits attempted against the manufacturers through the years, back in 2017, I was following along when a particularly promising-seeming suit was filed by a law group in California. Among the folks who pay close attention to this issue who I was communicating with at the time, there was a feeling that legal progress was being made. The case was, in fact, inspired by the nurse I’d interviewed out West, by her efforts to get some lawyers interested in ECT. That anybody in the anti-shock camp felt hopeful about anything seemed to me rare indeed. That case—which was against the company that didn’t respond for comment on this story—was settled right before it was due to go to trial, and the results were in favor of the plaintiffs (though there was no admission of wrongdoing on the part of the company). Following this ruling, however, that ECT manufacturer added a very small but very significant phrase to its machine’s long list of potential side effects: “brain damage.” This wording was quickly softened to “brain injury.” Soon after, right around Christmas 2018, the FDA issued a press release: there had been a ruling about ECT. Prior to this, for decades the FDA had declined to weigh in on whether ECT was safe and effective in treating any psychiatric disorder. Now it was finally doing so, to an extent. It had changed the classification of ECT machines to Class II devices, which indicates “moderate risk.” Since the 1970s, when our first applicable consumer protection laws were passed, the treatment had been classified as Class III, which indicated the highest risk. ECT machines received this classification and were permitted to go on not because treatments were considered safe and effective, but because they were already in use.
November 8, 2025 at 10:17 AM
sandyernestallen.bsky.social
just to say this ... those newsletters who haven't bothered yet ... everyday I personally unsubscribe from a few more ... and each time substack does its annoying "one more email to tell you you're gone" LOL ... anyway.

if you haven't yet moved your newsletter off of substack ... 🤔
You're unsubscribed. (four times) four substack notification emails in a row
November 6, 2025 at 3:16 PM
sandyernestallen.bsky.social
periodic reminder if you're annoying in my replies, i'll block you immediately. just too tired to deal.
I guess that's how conversation works! November 6, 2025 at 7:58 AM
November 6, 2025 at 1:09 PM
sandyernestallen.bsky.social
Also I bought a mug, because the mug demanded it ...
smiling sun says this bullshit again in blue and yellow on white, cute and retro
November 5, 2025 at 5:54 PM
sandyernestallen.bsky.social
What's Helping Today: My friend fixing my broken drawer yesterday — this was truly big for me. Also I got a haircut and a beard trim ...
My human face, freshly shorn in various respects ...
November 5, 2025 at 5:53 PM
sandyernestallen.bsky.social
this is what I'm TALKING ABOUT ... just love to see him, doing the good work as ever. i knocked on doors with / for him in chicago during his first campaign. and he lost first time around, narrowly, came back and won. he's since been a committed progressive fighting for his community. is my hero etc
Will Guzzardi's the main reason i took the screenshot
November 5, 2025 at 2:09 PM
sandyernestallen.bsky.social
friend of mine said this the other day ... his lips to gods ears ...
I wish you had some wealthy patrons.
November 4, 2025 at 1:41 PM
sandyernestallen.bsky.social
this is embarrassing for pitchfork imo
West End Girl Lily Allen some bro 7.3
November 3, 2025 at 1:47 PM
sandyernestallen.bsky.social
Me, LOL ...
pic of me back when from that piece
November 3, 2025 at 11:39 AM
sandyernestallen.bsky.social
look at it, it's just so gorgeous

(truly they don't make songs like this anymore, literally; it's structured like an old fashioned pop song pre 60s or whatever, chorus first)
screenshot from tab of Sleepwalking by Lily Allen
November 2, 2025 at 12:55 PM