In the endocrine system, time isn’t measured in standard earth units like minutes and hours and days, but in halves.
Accidentally perceive a coiled garden rope as a snake? Adrenaline!
For how long?
Long enough!
To jump, scramble to the porch light switch squealing, your shoulders in your ears and your heart in your throat. And then over. Not as quickly as it started, but soon.
The half-life of a hormone is how long it takes half of the dose to vanish - by reabsorption or breakdown by some other infuriating cellular mechanism. For adrenaline, it’s a minute, which means that two minutes after you saw the snake, the level is 1/4 what it was, and you’re on your way to a destination that exists only in theory.
Because while it may be true that it diminishes by half every minute, I recall vividly that when you approach a target by cutting the distance in half again and again, the infuriating truth is that you never reach your destination.
Once it’s in, is it ever out?
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