I just properly noticed the bass line for the first time and my socks were summarily blown off.

You’re free to “not buy it”. You’re also free to be wrong.

Wonderful bass from Paul, too – and one you can can only properly properly appreciate with headphones.

That whole laying-around-all-day thing, day after day — some of it could be exhaustion but as someone who has struggled with episodic depression for my whole life, as well as ADD, that’s kind of exactly what it’s like.

And I have an amateur theory about that. They all did amphetamines in Hamburg — high-powered amphetamines called “prellies,” and John was the heaviest user and continued using at least up until “Please Please Me.”

“George Harrison and Sutcliffe were regular users of prellies, but John Lennon was the heaviest in the group. Two pills a night were more than enough for most,’ Lewisohn writes, ‘but John frequently took four or five, and in conjunction with hour after hour of booze he became wired, a high-speed gabbing blur of talent, torment and hilarity.’ ” (http://www.villagevoice.com/music/the-drug-that-helped-turn-the-beatles-into-the-worlds-greatest-band-6637405)

These were legalish and helped them do the all-nighters at the Cavern Club. But amphetamines exact a toll, in that they make your brain dump a lot of dopamine, which is what creates that happy, productive, focused, pleasurable high. This is why Adderall works for people with ADHD. But when amphetamines wear off, you have a brain with a lot less-than-normal dopamine, and it crashes.

When you stop taking amphetamines, even Adderall, it takes a while for your brain chemistry to begin pumping out normal amounts of dopamine again on its own. In the meanwhile, you can be very depressed, apathetic, unmotivated, and take little pleasure in life. Also highly irritable, bad tempered. All things that have been reported, even self-reported by John, for the 64-66ish time frame.

Why didn’t it affect the others? They didn’t take as much; and they were innately more optimistic and less prone to depression, perhaps. And John really didn’t want to be a married family man in his early 20s while everyone else was whooping it up in the clubs and such, so there were lifestyle stressors.

Given what I personally know about even milder amphetamines such as Adderall, I’d be very surprised if John Lennon *didn’t* suffer depressive after-effects from the prellies use. I’m not a psychiatrist and I might be wrong.