Bipolar - what's wrong with this picture?

When you do an image search for "bipolar",

you get a lot of pictures like these...

i know that a broader dialogue and awareness
about bipolar and other such topics is better
than silence and shame and blah, blah...

... and i'm willing to believe that the people
who created these images - and the thousands
of others quite like them - mean well, and are trying
to get people to feel the pain a little, and it's hard
to express something so inexpressible...

... but as somebody ten years down the road
of the diagnosed... with some experience
in the creation of images and communicating
about challenging topics...

i really don't like them.

on a bad day, i frikin' hate them.

why?

for starters, because they are wrong.

they are all about the extremes.

the 'crazy high' and the deepest darkest of the lows.

and that's not how it is. most of la vida bipolar,
in my experience, is lived between these edges.

by portraying the extremes, they misrepresent
the reality of bipolar living.

by going for the drama, they misrepresent that reality
to those who do not know any better.

there is no line running down the middle of my life
or the lives of the bipolar people i know.

it's not on or off.

it's not digital.

it's not that simple.

it's a continuum.

and scary pictures don't help anybody.






<<>

Mental Health - Facts & Numbers

Vive la difference!

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Medication for the Youth of the Nation!

If the "War on Drugs" was the bad cop confronting
what most Conservatives agreed was the biggest
social evil facing America in 80s, then "Drug Education"
was meant to be the softer, more feminine good cop
that would help eliminate this nemesis once and for all.

Nancy Reagan would personify the campaign - a new way to keep kids off drugs, and billions
of dollars would be spent imprinting this catchy
slogan into young minds and the minds of so many
frightened parents everywhere...

Naturally, there would be t-shirts, bumper stickers
and a host of other merch. This simple solution to
the whole darn problem would be shouted from the
mountain tops, echo down the valleys and reverberate
down the corridors of power.

Like so many of the solutions of the Reagan era-
the Star Wars defense system, trickle-down economics,
etc - "Just Say No" was simple, clear and effectively
useless. Here too, billions would be spent to no great
effect beyond scratching the itch of the aging Puritans
who would back Ronnie come hell or high water.

To this day, no one knows how many kids just said
no, but apparently not enough because in spite of
all the best branding money could buy, more people
were buying more - and better - drugs all the time.

As time went on, and it turned out hugs weren't
making the crucial difference, drug education
took on a nastier edge...

In the tradition of Reefer Madness,
the gloves started coming off....

Yeah. Right.

One of the challenges of addressing young people
about drugs is that kids aren't stupid. The best
one could hope that a campaign of simplistic
slogans might do is start a conversation - ie -
when a parent or other authority figure says
"Just Say No", the child might respond with
"Why Should I?".

At that point, the authority figure needs to have
an intelligent reply. Ideally, it will include scientific
facts and some reasonable qualifications.

The facts should not fly in the face of the kids'
lived experience (marijuana leads to heroin, etc).

The reasonable qualifications need to address
the latent stupidity and/or intrinsic hypocrisy 
of "Just Say No"- like why so many adults don't,
whether it's cocaine or bourbon or gin.

One might also need to explain why, if Drugs
are for Losers, that anyway they should Just Say
Yes to the Thorazine/Nembutal/Ritalin/etc that
have been prescribed for their depression/anxiety/
other newly diagnosed condition...

There is a growing concern about the incidence
with which kids are being prescribed pharmaceuticals
for a growing number of mental conditions.


Some think that many normal childhood behaviours
are included in ever-expanding medical definitions
of "illness". If I was a parent, I would be concerned.

That said, as these vintage ads show, the idea of
drugs for kids is nothing new...

Is this for the child or the adult?

It's certainly possible that kids are developing
more mental issues these days. They live with
stresses I can't imagine, from metal detectors
at school to social media bullies to the growing
sense that the future is really going to suck.

There won't be enough jobs, and most of them
will be of the "do you want fries with that?" variety.
Just going to a club or even a mall might get you
shot by some wanna-be gangster and then there's
the climate... changing.

It would be more surprising if they didn't have
an issue or two.

The last thing I would think they need is somebody
busting their chops, or even their ass, for smoking
a joint with a friend once in a while. Or dressing
"weird" or listening to "awful" music.

Maybe it's the adults who really have the problems.
Maybe they are giving kids issues.

Maybe instead of talking down,
we should listen up.

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How Stupid is the War on Drugs?

The chances are pretty good that you are...

They may have been prescribed for you by
a physician. You may have bought them over
the counter at a pharmacy... perhaps for a
cold, or a headache, or back pain...

You may have bought them from someone
you know, for a good time or to self-medicate
for a condition where there's nothing else
that seems to work.


You may have bought them because you no longer
have any choice- your body demands it now,
whether you feel like it or not.

Maybe you just need that double-shot to go
from the coffee bar on the way to work.

Welcome to the War on Drugs.


It began in the 1960s- another brain child
of Richard Nixon. It was mostly a cynical
undertaking designed to bump his standings
in the polls, and it worked.

After he was re-elected, one by one states
began to pass tough drug laws and sent cops
out to enforce them.

It is now the longest running war in American history.


It is also the most expensive. By far.

Over the last 49 years it has grown and grown
and grown. It is now an American institution.

And by any standard of measurement,
it is also a complete, a total, an utter failure.

The War on Drugs is now an American institution.
Like any other bureaucracy, it's primary mission
now is its' own survival... and growth.

In most of America, it's an easy sell. It smells of
Law and Order. It's central to Tough on Crime. And yet, despite the billions of dollars being spent
every year, drugs are now more powerful and more
available in more places than ever.

*

Depression - the dark, dirty secret

Is curiosity an inherent part of living bipolar?

One person is not much of a statistical sample, but it's
certainly part of my bipolar experience, Ever since I was
diagnosed, I have read a lot about "my condition".

Sometimes I learn useful things. Sometimes it makes
me laugh. Sometimes all it does is make it clear how
much of my bipolar life is not studied/discussed/etc...

Case in point: depression.

It's not that depression is not studied/discussed/etc-
if anything, it seems to be the primary focus of most
studies and discussions but from my perspective, there's
one key element of depression that never seems
to come out.

How fucking boring it is...

Being depressed is central to the bipolar experience,
to the point where unfortunately it virtually defines it.
By comparison, "mania" or as I call it "the fear of mania"
is a very distant second place.

Depending on whether you are BP1 or BP2, and just how
BP1 or BP2 you are, you may well spend over 60% of your
life being depressed. When one factors in the time spent
transiting into or out of depression, the odds are you will
spend most of your life being slightly to seriously depressed.

Often, this is a fact of life that is largely out of one's
personal control. Medication and/or various "lifestyle"
choices (nutrition, exercise, etc) can mitigate or even
minimize the impact of one's personal dark tide, but it
will always be a part of life.

And anyone who doesn't think that that this gets really
boring after a while (a) has never been there, (b) is living
in a very active state of denial or (c) is suffering from an
almost total failure of the imagination.

The darkest of the dark sides of depression is called "suicide
ideation". That's jargon-speak for "suicidal thoughts". Again,
depending on whether you are BP1 or BP2, and just how BP1
or 2 you are, this is probably a significant part of your
bipolar experience.

When these thoughts first start coming on, they can be very
frightening. Then, as time goes on they may even become
(and here's another dirty little secret of depression for you)strangely comforting.

That may sound very strange to some, but when most of
one's waking hours are spent in varying states of depression,
when all one can think about is what a worthless sack of
shit one really is, it is not really as strange as all that to
know that to find some slight comfort in the fact that
there is a way to never feel like that anymore.

But again, in my limited experience, once one was actually
explored the possibility of taking that step, and done some
research, and perhaps even decided on which way one
would do the deed, it gets really old, really fast.

To have the same thought recur, over and over, against
one's will is a great big goddamn bore. At some point, it can
even become as big a problem as the original feeling of
depression that brought one to thinking about suicide in the
first- ie- it is so, so, so boring to continually find ones' self
thinking about it (again, against one's will) that one can
start to crave release from how boring it is...














It's not a bad thing to confront life's most fundamental
question - to be or not be - once in a while. It's not a bad
thing to pause on occasion and look at one's life to see
if one has or has not been the kind of person one aspires
to be.

In fact, I don't think it's something that "normal" people
seem to do enough, frankly.

But as a full-time thing?

It's worse than useless. It's destructive. It takes the time
and energy one would like to like to put into doing useful
things in the universe, liken trying to change the
government or doing the laundry.

And when it is a state of mind that one has little or no
control over, it is almost a meta-state of depression
wherein one gets depressed about being depressed
all the time.

And when it goes on for days, and then weeks,
and then sometimes for months, 24/7?

It gets boring. Really, really, really boring.






.

Vincent van Gogh

... another person with "mental health issues"
     who decided death would be better...

!

Hunter S. Thompson - bipolar, maybe?

Was Hunter S. Thompson bipolar?


Maybe.

It could be i'm just projecting. Ever since Fear and Loathing
in Las Vegas blew the top of my head off as an impressionable adolescent, i've admired his spirit, curiousity, courage and ability to articulate the distemper of the times we were living in,
or trying to live thru...

Long before i was diagnosed, his manic spells and the darkness
of depression as well as his abiding interest in self-medicating
were more than clear- they were splattered across the pages
of everything he wrote, as though it was all written in blood,
cut with tears of rage and sorrow.

Whenever i'd find myself among people trashing America,
he would be something i'd throw back at them, as in
   "What? You don't like barbeque? You don't like jazz?
    You don't like Hunter S.?" 


As time went on, there was more and more darkness in
what he saw, and his decision to end his life could also
be one more sign that there were more bad chemicals
than good ones in his synapses, in that bipolar way.


In the end, a diagnosis one way or the other of the good
doctor doesn't much matter nearly as much as the passion
and insight he brought to his life and his work.

Forty years later, he still inspires me to keep going
and as Bruce Cockburn sang,
       "to kick at the darkness til it bleeds daylight".








in his own words...



"We are turning into a nation of whimpering slaves to Fear—
fear of war, fear of poverty, fear of random terrorism, fear of getting down-sized or fired because of the plunging economy,
fear of getting evicted for bad debts or suddenly getting
locked up in a military detention camp on vague charges
of being a Terrorist sympathizer."

       —"Extreme Behavior in Aspen," February 3, 2003






       "What is the desired effect?"


             *


"We are all wired into a survival trip now. No more of the speed that fueled the 60's. That was the fatal flaw in Tim Leary's trip.
He crashed around America selling "consciousness expansion"
without ever giving a thought to the grim meat-hook
realities that were lying in wait for all the people
who took him seriously...









“I’ve always considered writing the most hateful kind of work.
I suspect it’s a bit like fucking, which is only fun for amateurs.
Old whores don’t do much giggling.”


             *

"There are times, however, and this is one of them, when even being right feels wrong. What do you say, for instance, about
a generation that has been taught that rain is poison
and sex is death?

If making love might be fatal and if a cool spring breeze
on any summer afternoon can turn a crystal blue lake into
a puddle of black poison right in front of your eyes, there
is not much left except TV and relentless masturbation.

It's a strange world. Some people get rich and others
eat shit and die."

       —Gonzo Papers, Vol. 2: Generation of Swine: Tales of Shame
          and Degradation in the '80s







     "Just sick enough to be totally confident"



             *


"In a closed society where everybody's guilty,
the only crime is getting caught. In a world of thieves,
the only final sin is stupidity."










“I have in recent months come to have a certain feeling
for Joe Hill and the Wobbly* crowd who, if nothing else,
had the right idea. But not the rights mechanics.
I believe the IWW was probably the last human concept
in American politics”.

* the International Workers of the World








 "It would be easy to say that we owe it all to the Bush family
from Texas, but that would be too simplistic. They are only
errand boys for the vengeful, bloodthirsty cartel of raving
Jesus-freaks and super-rich money mongers who have ruled
for at least the last 20 years, and arguably the last 200 years.
They take orders well, and they don't ask too many questions.

The real power in America is held by a fast-emerging new Oligarchy
of pimps and preachers who see no need for Democracy or fairness
or even trees, except maybe the ones in their own yards,
and they don't mind admitting it.

They worship money and power and death. Their ideal solution
to all the nation's problems would be another 100 Year War.

Coming of age in a fascist police state will not be a barrel
of fun for anybody, much less for people like me, who are
not inclined to suffer Nazis gladly and feel only contempt
for the cowardly flag-suckers who would gladly give up
their outdated freedom to live for the mess of pottage
they have been conned into believing will be freedom
from fear. Ho ho ho.

Let's not get carried away here. Freedom was yesterday
in this country. Its value has been discontinued. The only
freedom we truly crave today is freedom from Dumbness.
Nothing else matters."









         "buy the ticket...take the ride"





and his final words...

 "No More Games. No More Bombs. No More Walking.
No More Fun. No More Swimming. 67. That is 17 years past 50.
17 more than I needed or wanted. Boring.
I am always bitchy. No Fun -- for anybody. 67.
You are getting Greedy. Act your old age.
Relax -- This won't hurt."







   Hunter Stockton Thompson
            July 18, 1937 – February 20, 2005
             American journalist and author



learn more about his life at this exceptional site:
Hunter S. Thompson


what did this champion have for breakfast?
Hunter S. Thompson's Very Gonzo Breakfast Habits





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