That's Just Crazy Talk
Since being diagnosed as bipolar, there are words
i don't use as easily or that no longer mean the same
thing to me as they once did.
neither am i as confident as i used to be that my understanding of them is the same as anyone else's.
one of those words is "reality".
i don't use as easily or that no longer mean the same
thing to me as they once did.
neither am i as confident as i used to be that my understanding of them is the same as anyone else's.
one of those words is "reality".
"I became insane with long intervals
of horrible sanity."
Edgar Allen Poe
I like nonsense, it wakes up the brain cells. Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living,
It's a way of looking at life through the
wrong end of a telescope.
Which is what I do, and that enables you
to laugh at life's realities.
Dr. Seuss
Sometimes the appropriate response
to reality is to go insane.
Philip K. Dick
"Insanity -- a perfectly rational adjustment
to an insane world."
RD Laing
*
Just Say No to Drugs
If a great slogan is one that finds its way
into the language, and takes on a life of it's own,
then Nancy Reagan's "Just Say No"
is a great slogan.
into the language, and takes on a life of it's own,
then Nancy Reagan's "Just Say No"
is a great slogan.
This does not preclude in any way the possibility
that it's a stupid slogan, or like so many things
that came out of those halcyon days,
of very dubious utility.
For a significant number of people, of course,
"just saying no" to drugs is not an option.
Cancer patients.
Diabetics.
The mentally ill.
And so on.
"just saying no" to drugs is not an option.
Cancer patients.
Diabetics.
The mentally ill.
And so on.
the kinds of minds behind these kinds of fatuous,
simplistic cliches about "drugs" are, naturally,
the same kind of people who think that a "war
on drugs" is not just a good idea,
it's a "can-do" situation.
it's a war that can be won!
simplistic cliches about "drugs" are, naturally,
the same kind of people who think that a "war
on drugs" is not just a good idea,
it's a "can-do" situation.
it's a war that can be won!
Thirty years and how many billion dollars later,
there aren't as many true believers.
People are still dying, by the thousands.
Lives are still being ruined, by the thousands.
And in a time when we are being told there's not
enough money for schools, or old people, or justice,
or freedom, there are still billions of dollars to piss
into the wind for a "war on drugs".
Because as it turns out, a significant part
of the population just says "yes".
there aren't as many true believers.
People are still dying, by the thousands.
Lives are still being ruined, by the thousands.
And in a time when we are being told there's not
enough money for schools, or old people, or justice,
or freedom, there are still billions of dollars to piss
into the wind for a "war on drugs".
Because as it turns out, a significant part
of the population just says "yes".
Like so many things on Planet Neo-Con, it's a rerun.
As so often happens when people who are willfully
ignorant and deity-challenged make policy and
execute it, the results span the spectrum-
from the ridiculous to good old fashioned evil.
And then there's the collateral damage.
The "unforeseen" consequences.
The things we of the pharamaceutically-engaged community know as "the side effects"
As so often happens when people who are willfully
ignorant and deity-challenged make policy and
execute it, the results span the spectrum-
from the ridiculous to good old fashioned evil.
And then there's the collateral damage.
The "unforeseen" consequences.
The things we of the pharamaceutically-engaged community know as "the side effects"
side effect #1
crack, meth & oxi
take pot out of the picture and these are the drug choices of a lot of people. or to look at it from another perspective, for a lot of people, this is the wine list.
if people don't have good choices, only an idiot would blame someone for making a bad choice. which not to say an idiot can't get elected, because they obviously can...
*
when i was young and experimental, there were options.
schooled by information widely and freely shared among other mental astronauts, one could plot a course embarking from the gentle and benign and going as far, as fast as one wanted to. or not.
there were maybe 20 kinds of marijuana, a dozen kinds
if hashish, hash oil, mescaline, mushrooms, peyote,
"pills", LSD, speed, heroin and oh, so many more...
crack, meth & oxi
take pot out of the picture and these are the drug choices of a lot of people. or to look at it from another perspective, for a lot of people, this is the wine list.
if people don't have good choices, only an idiot would blame someone for making a bad choice. which not to say an idiot can't get elected, because they obviously can...
*
when i was young and experimental, there were options.
schooled by information widely and freely shared among other mental astronauts, one could plot a course embarking from the gentle and benign and going as far, as fast as one wanted to. or not.
there were maybe 20 kinds of marijuana, a dozen kinds
if hashish, hash oil, mescaline, mushrooms, peyote,
"pills", LSD, speed, heroin and oh, so many more...
now, it's pot that got way strong because gangs in a rainbow of ethnicities make even more money that way...
it's the easy bust, so it works for the warriors on drugs,
but it's so economically important now that nobody
thinks it's going away, and they're all thankful.
from there, it's crack, meth or oxi.
a and b are all ganged up, and oxi's legal.
FDA, government approved smack.
who'd a thought that would ever catch on?.
they were barely on the menu when i was young
and given the other options, sales were not have
been brisk. everyone knew speed (aka meth) kills.
even the guys who sold it were skanky.
which differentiated them from the people
who sold heroin, who were scary.
in general, these was an awareness that certain drugs
would take over your life and they would do it faster
than you might imagined.
no one chose to do chemicals or needles out of naivety.
which is not to say they didn't need something.
which is not to say they didn't want to die.
and given the other options, sales were not have
been brisk. everyone knew speed (aka meth) kills.
even the guys who sold it were skanky.
which differentiated them from the people
who sold heroin, who were scary.
in general, these was an awareness that certain drugs
would take over your life and they would do it faster
than you might imagined.
no one chose to do chemicals or needles out of naivety.
which is not to say they didn't need something.
which is not to say they didn't want to die.
crack, meth & oxi.
excellent selection!
nice one, drug warriors.
side effect #2
among those of the "i'm saying yes to drugs because
my other option is death" crowd, i'm intimately familiar
with the mentally ill.
no matter how mental and proud one might be,
one will probably also be occasionally angry,
upset and/or confused by the cognitive dissonance
inherent in "you need to take these" and "users are losers".
excellent selection!
side effect #2
among those of the "i'm saying yes to drugs because
my other option is death" crowd, i'm intimately familiar
with the mentally ill.
no matter how mental and proud one might be,
one will probably also be occasionally angry,
upset and/or confused by the cognitive dissonance
inherent in "you need to take these" and "users are losers".
one of the side effects, for me anyway, of la vida medicado is a different perception of the role of drugs in life.
another is an understanding of "reality" that is nothing
if not flexible.
another is an understanding of "reality" that is nothing
if not flexible.
but hey, what do i know?
i'm on drugs.
***
Even More Side Effects?
yes, side effects go on and on...
fortunately, we the maladjusted often come
with a good sense of humour...
*
33 Things not to say to a Head Case
i created this graphic a few years ago. i forget what the incident was that made this little truth clear to me, but
i have never forgotten this thought. why? because it's
a fact of my life, and the lives of many people who
have been diagnosed as bipolar.
it's on my mind now because an interesting thread came up this weekend in a online mental health group i'm part of - someone asked what comments by others people were upset by/sick of hearing and/or angry about their health issues...
there were a lot of responses, including a few from me.
it was interesting how many of these remarks were familiar to most of the participants and reading them, it seemed to me that a few themes began to emerge.
i've compiled them here in the order they appeared...
*
"Everyone has highs and lows, that's normal"
"I know people who are bipolar,
you aren't bipolar"
"you have nothing to be depressed about"
"you need to pull yourself up
by the boot straps"
"There are a lot of people
worse off than you"
"You have so many things to be thankful for, how can you be depressed?"
"You’d feel better if you got off
all those pills"
"What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger"
"I know how you feel"
"We create our own reality"
"I've never really noticed
anything wrong with you"
"don't be so over-dramatic"
"Yeah, I get depressed like you"
"It's all in your head"
"You're ALWAYS sick."
"when are you going to grow up?"
"You just have to work harder to control it"
"you read too much"
"You just refuse to accept reality,
there's nothing wrong with you"
"just leave her, ignore her,
she'll get over it"
"I get depressed too - thinking positive
and being active helps me a lot"
naturally, there were comments people had heard
from those i call "god crazy" ...
"depression is lack of dedication to God"
"you need to go to church"
"you need prayer"
and then it was back to 'non-denominational'...
"Are you crazy?"
"get over yourself"
"Its not that bad, I get depressed too"
"You take way too many meds"
"Stop being so negative, think positively"
"Everyone goes through stressful mental times"
"You are not trying hard enough"
but by far, the gold medal, most-often-said comment people mentioned was the classic...
"Snap out of it"
The level of condescension implicit in most of these remarks
is incredible and - i would suggest - inevitable, given the awesome sense of superiority that the speakers have endowed themselves with...
It's difficult to imagine a similar list coming from a group
of diabetics, or people with MS. Would people say things
like this to someone with Crohn's disease or arthritis?
i think not...
Yet people feel completely justified saying all this and more (and worse) to anyone with a mental illness. Why?
There are a lot of reasons, and i wouldn't pretend to
know them all. There is a very strong tendency in this culture to blame the victim. It's virtually the default in many situations. A woman gets raped? She shouldn't have dressed so provocatively. Someone gets mugged? What were they doing in such a bad neighbourhood?
The list is endless. The habit is probably as old as time.
It's a primitive urge - the need to dissociate ones' self
from 'the unclean', the 'defective', the weak of the herd who will probably attract more predators.
- to be continued -
Bipolar and Creativity
It verges on cliche. Men and women with bipolar disorder have changed the ways in which we all - bp or not - see
and hear the world. Some are famous, and justly so.
Others are not...
Here are works by artists who were diagnosed as bipolar that are not so well known. Some created their work
while living in asylums. Others created theirs while struggling with the day out in the big bad world.
All of them are amazing....
*
What? More Drugs?
yes, more drugs...because another one of my dubious fascinations is old drug ads.
why? the graphics are always state of the art, whatever that might have been at the time they were run. the imagery and layouts speak to the way the illnesses/patients were perceived- or more accurately, perhaps, how the drug companies thought the doctors might perceive them.
so too the language that's used- reading them, one can almost hear the hushed erudite tones of a sensitive PBS special on a difficult topic...
*
More Meds! More Meds! More Meds!
i haven't been posting very much lately. i've been putting a lot of time into making more Check Your Meds comics. what started as a kind of personal challenge and exploration of another way of writing has become something of an obsession.
i know. i was surprised too.
*
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