When Depression Accidentally Saved Me
Skipping self-care and gum disease all at once
The headline caught his attention: “LEAD FOUND IN 90% OF TOOTHPASTE BRANDS.”
Lead. Arsenic. Mercury. The toothpaste had them all. Even brands with the recycled paper labels and herbaceous ingredients that reminded him of plant nomenclature flashcards from school.
He found the article by accident, wedged between a feel-good piece on the American coal economy boom and an op-ed that pitched deforestation as a fix for the housing crisis.
He stared at his own crusty tube in the cabinet. Expired. Still half-full.
He hadn’t brushed regularly since… Thanksgiving, maybe? Hard to say. Depression had sanded time smooth.
There had been guilt, of course. Hygienists gave him that quiet, practiced, nonjudgmental smile — the kind that says they’d seen worse — but not by much. And a passive-aggressive dentist who’d assure him “everything is fine with your teeth,” then suggest scattering floss samples and travel-size toothpaste like landmines across every surface — home office desk, nightstand, kitchen counter — just to eliminate excuses for his poor dental hygiene.
He chugged minty mouthwash like penance, a desperate hope to erase any loose bits of food and years of neglect and bad decisions.
But now?
Now he laughed. A sharp involuntary cackle. His cat, asleep on the windowsill, leapt like the world had ended. The cat blinked at him like she’d forgotten he still made noise.
Maybe neglect has been shielding his smile. His enamel hadn’t been sanded by cow bone dust, his gums hadn’t been scoured with arsenic-laced bentonite clay, and his bloodstream had stayed mercifully free of lead-laced foam.
“Everything is fine with your teeth,” he remembered the dentist saying, now recalling it with a faint, almost wistful tone of someone realizing there would be no billable cavities that day.
He thought he’d given up. But while everyone else was polishing their teeth with carcinogens, he'd been quietly opting out. Too tired to self-care. Too numb to swallow poison disguised as peppermint.
This wasn’t some grand return to form. Just a weird, lucky dodge by someone who let go of keeping up with life.
Still — he chalked it up as a win.
He dunked a toothbrush in baking soda and called it a comeback. It fizzed against his gums like applause in an empty room.
And for the first time in a while, he tasted something like victory.
It was salty.
And just a little bitter.
Real headlines that vaguely resemble today’s fiction:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/apr/17/toothpaste-lead-heavy-metals
https://tamararubin.com/2025/01/toothpaste-chart/
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