"That's the goal now," he says, "to spread into the ghettos and inner cities."
Deepak Chopra has ventured to Harlem, N.Y., and Reno, Nev., talking to blacks, Latinos and Asians about people being rivers of energy. He tells them their mind is wired into every cell of their body, that nasal breathing techniques can effect brain activity, that ayurvedic herbs can pack as much punch as any drug.
How does Chopra think it's going so far? What do city folk make of his New Age wisdom?
"They say, 'Deep stuff!'"
This is the challenge for rehabilitation centres for addictions: to convince drug addicts and especially alcoholics that the inner energy of meditation is a high higher than any known drug that they got their hands on.
Yet addicts are well known for their ability to detect BS if and only if they have been totally honest with themselves that their addictions are not due to "bad parenting", but their rebellion against the basic social rules that govern our very lives.
While they may do so because of the unwillingness to live by the rules society imposes on us all, addicts pay a price for their so-called freedom, a freedom that is an illusion behind which a licentious lifestyle crumbles into the abyss of darkness that so many addicts face due to abuse of their freedom to choose.
However, meditation will work for anyone who meditates due to their willingness to cut through their own BS, of which the main one concerns their so-called ability to detect BS in people wiser than they are.
In short, they have to also cut through the white lies that society imposes on us all to create working communities, and accept that they are completely different in their use from lies, both blatant and subtle, that actually destroy communities.
For example, if a friend I just met asked me what I did on last Friday, then if I wanted to remain discreet, I could merely say "I went on an errand", and changing the topic, rather than being candid about paying my bills since my Fridays are my paydays.
In contrast, I am usually candid with my roommates and my best friend because they are in my inner circle of friends, and not someone I met off the street.
Although I admitted to how I spend my Fridays in the course of my argument, I will not reveal details because they are personal facts that are private and are known only to me, my employer, my bank and the government through their tax department.
Regarding bills I pay, I will only be candid about debt collectors due to the fact that they consistently tell white lies in order to obtain a lot of money right now (preferably over $100 a month but far less than what I owe Fido and Rogers Mobility) in a short period of time (usually within 48 hours but that could be negotiated).
I am mentioning this because of my addiction to technology - and it is evidenced by the late hour spent writing this article.
By being this candid, I hope to share the word that meditation works. If I didn't put positive effort into meditating on my debt, then I would still be in denial and the debt would not get paid.
Therefore, in my mind, I am a recovering addict with an addiction that no one else takes seriously except myself.
I think in Japan, they call people like that "otaku", though in the West, otaku are great for information content but lousy on emotional affect.
However, there is some overlap between addiction and the collections of knowledge and experience of otaku, even though otaku are likely to chew me out for "labeling" their intense love for technology or even works of art as "addiction."
Overall though, we otaku could be so gung-ho about anime and manga, why not meditation too? For the most gentle of meditation is combined in many therapeutic settings, and is borrowed from Asian sources more so than Western sources.
Though I will say that even me blogging online is therapy. It is also a form of vipassana meditation when I focus on cutting through the initial negativity toward the positive outcome.
If anything that I have written confuses you, then you are not ready to truly free yourself of your addiction and become a true otaku who is essentially free of whatever he obsesses over.
How dos you tell when that happens? When you can go to a convention, a group therapy session, or even a family reunion to help friends and family get to know you well, that is a start.
Another sign that you are otaku is that you vacillate in your writing between first-person (I and me among similar pronouns), second-person (you and the names of people), and third-person (they, them, and often one or it).
Returning to the quote from an anti-cult website, I can certainly support the use of meditation techniques. However, that quote is not a product endorsement of Chopra since it has been taken out of context for me to promote meditation on my terms, which I am free to do.
I am merely selling the idea that otaku are harmless when they become more socialized with fellow otaku. As well, any obsession that leads to social isolation on the long run really is worth the effort of abstaining.
As for addiction, that is only when your lifestyle is negative affected by your obsessions e.g. you spend more time watching anime than socializing with friends, using excuses to avoid brushing up on your social skills.
Anyway, I am not proud to be otaku, nor am I ashamed to be otaku. Otaku is a neutral word in the West, yet is misused by lazy Japanese journalists who turned it into a badge of shame.
Yet even journalists are closet otakus as pararazzi when they obsess about celebrities such as Morning Musume and stalk them.
Finally, the ultimate freedom is to use less technology in the public sphere, and to occasionally use technology. First, one day dedicated to using your smartphones less and your senses more, including using the mind to ask questions about matters other than technology.
Originally written on May 10, 2005 at 2310H PDT
Reference:
http://www.rickross.com/reference/deepakchopra/deepakchopra20.html
Showing posts with label mental health. Show all posts
Showing posts with label mental health. Show all posts
20141026
20141002
Stress Relief Without Medication (satire)
Within the past week, I had this dream when it became clear to me that refined sugar is the probable cause of my nicotine addiction. As a result of that dream, I decided to research lysine and arginine over the past two days.
Here is what I have learned:
Both amino acids help reduce inflammation, improves the immune system, promotes healing of wounds, and treats anxiety without the side effects of medications that treat those four conditions.
Indeed, the stress relief found by daily supplementation of both arginine and lysine is noted in the trial involving 108 Japanese test subjects. This trial validates the fourth condition listed (relief of anxiety).
Lysine also is important to bone health and calcium metabolism, working synergistically with Vitamins D and K, calcium, magnesium and boron. In contrast, arginine is also helpful in maintenance of cardiovascular health through its effect on nitrogen oxide.
Consequently, both amino acids should help reduce the subjective impression of stress in a person's life without resorting to more powerful neuropsychiatric medications such as tranquilizers (benzodiazepines), SSRIs (antidepressants) and related medications.
In another medical trial, 29 subjects were dosed with 3 grams each of arginine and lysine for ten days. Then they were exposed to stress similar to that experienced in public speaking.
The trial results support the notion that the daily use of L-lysine combined with L-arginine may relieve anxiety and modify hormonal responses during psychosocial stress in people.
This is why I am confident that daily use of both arginine and lysine supplements will help reduce anxiety from stress. In doing so, my cold turkey remedy for nicotine addiction would benefit from the addition of both amino acids to my daily supplement regimen.
In due time, my adaptability to stress will increase and all anxiety will be too brief to be noticeable. Already am I feeling the change due to moderation of anxiety caused by taking arginine and lysine.
One side effect that I have noticed after having consumed 2 grams of both amino acids is relaxation to the point of sleepiness. This is supposed to be due to lysine acting on serotonin (5HTP4) receptors. Though I cannot discount normal fatigue, it has only been 10 hours since I rose from sleep.
Even after 4 hours sitting in front of the computer does not stress me out. So it is definitely worth the money spent on arginine and lysine supplementation.
As well, lysine can reverse the progression of autoimmune disease while arginine can actually improve a heart attack survivor's chance of recovery. Autoimmune disease may be due to herpes virus.
Additionally, a 5+ grams of lysine can help get over the "24-hour influenza" caused by overwork and stress-induced consumption of tobacco.
Disclaimer: this is not a product endorsement of arginine and lysine supplementation since the regular consumption of chicken and fish along with nuts (almonds, cashews, and other nuts) will supplement your daily needs of both amino acids. Note: you will have to eat a lot more nuts and soya protein to maintain high levels of both lysine and arginine on a vegan diet. This means that you must exercise vigorously at least three times a week for at least two hours, enough to break a healthy sweat. Otherwise, the nitrogen load of that much protein will harm your kidneys and liver.
YMMV
Originally written on Jan 28, 2014 at 4:53 AM
References:
Oral treatment with L-lysine and L-arginine reduces anxiety and basal cortisol levels in healthy humans. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17510493
Subchronic treatment with amino acid mixture of L-lysine and L-arginine modifies neuroendocrine activation during psychosocial stress in subjects with high trait anxiety.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16117182
Arginine: http://altmedicine.about.com/cs/herbsvitaminsad/a/Arginine.htm
Lysine: http://umm.edu/health/medical/altmed/supplement/lysine
How to Get a Lysine-Rich Diet: http://healthyeating.sfgate.com/lysinerich-diet-5532.html#page1
Foods containing lysine and arginine: http://www.traditionaloven.com/tutorials/l-lysine_amino_acid.html
Videos about arginine:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPd2NB9mjaM&feature=youtube_gdata_player
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKWlKWge59Y&feature=youtube_gdata_player
Video about lysine:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1RSQAeMr2o&feature=youtube_gdata_player
Autoimmunity's proposed cause: http://krysalishealthnotes.blogspot.ca/2009/04/autoimmunity-proposed-common-cause-and.html
Here is what I have learned:
Both amino acids help reduce inflammation, improves the immune system, promotes healing of wounds, and treats anxiety without the side effects of medications that treat those four conditions.
Indeed, the stress relief found by daily supplementation of both arginine and lysine is noted in the trial involving 108 Japanese test subjects. This trial validates the fourth condition listed (relief of anxiety).
Lysine also is important to bone health and calcium metabolism, working synergistically with Vitamins D and K, calcium, magnesium and boron. In contrast, arginine is also helpful in maintenance of cardiovascular health through its effect on nitrogen oxide.
Consequently, both amino acids should help reduce the subjective impression of stress in a person's life without resorting to more powerful neuropsychiatric medications such as tranquilizers (benzodiazepines), SSRIs (antidepressants) and related medications.
In another medical trial, 29 subjects were dosed with 3 grams each of arginine and lysine for ten days. Then they were exposed to stress similar to that experienced in public speaking.
The trial results support the notion that the daily use of L-lysine combined with L-arginine may relieve anxiety and modify hormonal responses during psychosocial stress in people.
This is why I am confident that daily use of both arginine and lysine supplements will help reduce anxiety from stress. In doing so, my cold turkey remedy for nicotine addiction would benefit from the addition of both amino acids to my daily supplement regimen.
In due time, my adaptability to stress will increase and all anxiety will be too brief to be noticeable. Already am I feeling the change due to moderation of anxiety caused by taking arginine and lysine.
One side effect that I have noticed after having consumed 2 grams of both amino acids is relaxation to the point of sleepiness. This is supposed to be due to lysine acting on serotonin (5HTP4) receptors. Though I cannot discount normal fatigue, it has only been 10 hours since I rose from sleep.
Even after 4 hours sitting in front of the computer does not stress me out. So it is definitely worth the money spent on arginine and lysine supplementation.
As well, lysine can reverse the progression of autoimmune disease while arginine can actually improve a heart attack survivor's chance of recovery. Autoimmune disease may be due to herpes virus.
Additionally, a 5+ grams of lysine can help get over the "24-hour influenza" caused by overwork and stress-induced consumption of tobacco.
Disclaimer: this is not a product endorsement of arginine and lysine supplementation since the regular consumption of chicken and fish along with nuts (almonds, cashews, and other nuts) will supplement your daily needs of both amino acids. Note: you will have to eat a lot more nuts and soya protein to maintain high levels of both lysine and arginine on a vegan diet. This means that you must exercise vigorously at least three times a week for at least two hours, enough to break a healthy sweat. Otherwise, the nitrogen load of that much protein will harm your kidneys and liver.
YMMV
Originally written on Jan 28, 2014 at 4:53 AM
References:
Oral treatment with L-lysine and L-arginine reduces anxiety and basal cortisol levels in healthy humans. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17510493
Subchronic treatment with amino acid mixture of L-lysine and L-arginine modifies neuroendocrine activation during psychosocial stress in subjects with high trait anxiety.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16117182
Arginine: http://altmedicine.about.com/cs/herbsvitaminsad/a/Arginine.htm
Lysine: http://umm.edu/health/medical/altmed/supplement/lysine
How to Get a Lysine-Rich Diet: http://healthyeating.sfgate.com/lysinerich-diet-5532.html#page1
Foods containing lysine and arginine: http://www.traditionaloven.com/tutorials/l-lysine_amino_acid.html
Videos about arginine:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPd2NB9mjaM&feature=youtube_gdata_player
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKWlKWge59Y&feature=youtube_gdata_player
Video about lysine:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1RSQAeMr2o&feature=youtube_gdata_player
Autoimmunity's proposed cause: http://krysalishealthnotes.blogspot.ca/2009/04/autoimmunity-proposed-common-cause-and.html
20140816
A Short Word on Breath Meditation (satire)
From meditation, I learned how to control my breathing. After meditating for many years — almost 25 years now mdash; it dawned on me that controlling my breathing works for recovery from a cold over two years ago.
One day, the tickle in my throat preceding a cough almost overcame me, which was overcome by controlling my breathing until the cough went away.
Today I have practice these breathing exercises consistently. To the average person, breathing is overlooked as unimportant and hardly necessary.
For myself, I find that on days when I do not practice my breathing exercises, I am not as calm as I am when I do practice these exercises.
So rather than simply breathing, I instead count out my breaths while feeling thankful to the Buddha and to God. However, it is important for me to point out that being thankful to a person you admire (a mother or suitable substitute) is also equally useful during breath meditation.
Furthermore, my years of meditation must have paid off because my heart rate ranges from 50-96 beats per minute. which I attribute to meditation and also regular exercise.
It is due to regular exercise and positive thinking that the benefits of breath meditation become amplified.
People sometimes wonder why meditate. My answer is, meditation will help you control your mind and your body, so that you may better serve other people as a friend, a lover or a worker. Indeed, meditation truly is the only mind control tool to help your master your mind and body for your benefit and to benefit society.
Breathe deeply and master body and mind!
One day, the tickle in my throat preceding a cough almost overcame me, which was overcome by controlling my breathing until the cough went away.
Today I have practice these breathing exercises consistently. To the average person, breathing is overlooked as unimportant and hardly necessary.
For myself, I find that on days when I do not practice my breathing exercises, I am not as calm as I am when I do practice these exercises.
So rather than simply breathing, I instead count out my breaths while feeling thankful to the Buddha and to God. However, it is important for me to point out that being thankful to a person you admire (a mother or suitable substitute) is also equally useful during breath meditation.
Furthermore, my years of meditation must have paid off because my heart rate ranges from 50-96 beats per minute. which I attribute to meditation and also regular exercise.
It is due to regular exercise and positive thinking that the benefits of breath meditation become amplified.
People sometimes wonder why meditate. My answer is, meditation will help you control your mind and your body, so that you may better serve other people as a friend, a lover or a worker. Indeed, meditation truly is the only mind control tool to help your master your mind and body for your benefit and to benefit society.
Breathe deeply and master body and mind!
20140706
Neuroses: When the Protection is Effective (satire)
From what I've been able to figure out, the Buddha's job was not to save the earth but the human mind.
After all, meditation is less costly than a pill, and cannot be patented. For Buddhism does not work well if treated like a religion.
Though it relieves neuroses when meditation is regularly practiced with sincerity.
Neuroses are what the doctors have omitted when they updated their mental health "bible" to the Fourth version. This is because a neurosis is actually based on protective defense mechanisms.
Meditation helps the meditator to examine these defense mechanisms in detail.
Originally posted April 22, 2013 at 2:37 AM
After all, meditation is less costly than a pill, and cannot be patented. For Buddhism does not work well if treated like a religion.
Though it relieves neuroses when meditation is regularly practiced with sincerity.
Neuroses are what the doctors have omitted when they updated their mental health "bible" to the Fourth version. This is because a neurosis is actually based on protective defense mechanisms.
Meditation helps the meditator to examine these defense mechanisms in detail.
Originally posted April 22, 2013 at 2:37 AM
Unconditional Love is the Root of Mental Health (satire)
In reality, fewer than 50 percent of people are truly normal. The rest of society might be sociopathic, empaths, narcissists , depressives, bipolar, borderline or merely neurotic.
However, it is by socially isolating the mentally ill, whether by their hand or by society that they are rendered abnormal, that their illness becomes worse, due to the stressful nature of that isolation.
Even though mental illness is not always the consequences of bad choices, it is also not a moral failure. Rather, it may be due to maladaptation to stress.
For all people are human, equal under the law, and all people are social animals. As human beings, it is also normal to care for other people.
Therefore we need to do more to help maintain the social welfare of all people including the mentally ill. This includes seeing them as human beings, rather than as broken people.
All people are deserving of love, for unconditional love is what defines mental health.
However, it is by socially isolating the mentally ill, whether by their hand or by society that they are rendered abnormal, that their illness becomes worse, due to the stressful nature of that isolation.
Even though mental illness is not always the consequences of bad choices, it is also not a moral failure. Rather, it may be due to maladaptation to stress.
For all people are human, equal under the law, and all people are social animals. As human beings, it is also normal to care for other people.
Therefore we need to do more to help maintain the social welfare of all people including the mentally ill. This includes seeing them as human beings, rather than as broken people.
All people are deserving of love, for unconditional love is what defines mental health.
20140206
Britney Pisses Off Catholics (satire)
In Britney's aptly named album Blackout, she disrespects the Catholic faith by posing in suggestive ways in confessional with a model dressed as a Catholic priest.
[rant mode on]
Instead of being naughty, she should take childcare class at her local college. She also needs to avoid the party scene like Lindsay Lohan is doing since coming back from rehab in Utah.
Though, it'd be nice to have her come do a public service announcement-themed video for the bipolar and schizoid community.
[rant mod off]
If Catholics and the mental health community are offended by my article, then I have no idea. Nobody has complained to me.
That's because I'm a nobody.
Ah, the joy of being anonymous!
Originally posted: November 1, 2007 11:03 PM
[rant mode on]
Instead of being naughty, she should take childcare class at her local college. She also needs to avoid the party scene like Lindsay Lohan is doing since coming back from rehab in Utah.
Though, it'd be nice to have her come do a public service announcement-themed video for the bipolar and schizoid community.
[rant mod off]
If Catholics and the mental health community are offended by my article, then I have no idea. Nobody has complained to me.
That's because I'm a nobody.
Ah, the joy of being anonymous!
Originally posted: November 1, 2007 11:03 PM
20140201
Insomnia and Its Effect on Borderline Personality (satire)
This article is related to what I read about borderline personality disorder e.g. the ability to idealize or fantasize about another person without even have to interact with them.
However, I am also writing this article because I don't like imagining how life would be without Googleplus. It'd be fit as a Hollywood script but most of the plots I have seen on TV or on the big screen are unrealistic, except maybe for Criminal Minds.
Sometimes borderline people would have a fantasized relationship where it all exists in her imagination.
I think our grandparents used to call it daydreaming.
Mundanes seem to ignore their fantasies unless they are in the same room with each other.
Perhaps a few of the emo kids fit the typical borderline personality disorder, which can mimic all the other mental disorders, though not the mood disorders.
A borderline person would have to have a real mood disorder, though the hysterical suicide attempts usually are not fatal, unless they cut too deeply and other morbid stuff like that.
I am pretty lucky to have been born Asian and Buddhist. When diagnosed in 1991 with borderline, my doctor and I agreed the medication route would not be in my best interest, in light of the fact that SSRIs do not work on a personality disorder.
Most doctors often mistake the side effect of akathisia for anxiety and wrong-mindedly choose to up the SSRI dosage, which causes more akathisia.
If such restlessness is present, then it might feel like anxiety but anxiety has one hidden feature to it: it is due to anger that is so suppressed it comes out as a panic attack rather than rage.
Akathisia may lead to thoughts of suicide and morbid ideation about suicide choices. Usually that happens when a dose is missed or doubled.
Thus the additional SSRI dosage could cause a crisis.
However, there is a solution: 15-30 mg of Remeron, which is a antihistamine based sedative. However the mental health consumer can encounter sleep-eating experiences on the higher dose (30mg).
Personally, I think an orgasm could solve more of the mental health issues since a few severely mentally ill American women on the self help web forums are so jaded from past failed relationships, they don't want to handle a relationship anymore. Possibly they got fed up with men. I do not doubt a lot of them become lesbians, but don't have a healthy sex life because they are too ill to enjoy it anymore.
Mainly because the pleasure feels more like pain, though I am certain Lexapro and Celexa have mild painkiller effect.
Guys are not built like that. If the little head anticipate a sexual encounter, the libido will kick in and rule their lives. E.g. the 40 yr old man who gets 25 yr old mistress and lies to his wife about the lipstick on his collar.
Though I have heard of a marriage that led to divorce because the wife was a homophobe who didn't understand her husband's bisexual urges. Scary.
Yet us guys do not think girl-girl sex is inherently gay unless they are both lesbians. Often though, one of the so-called lesbian is a bisexual in the closet.
I can see a lesbian blow up if her bisexual lady lover get a little dick on the sly and accidentally gets pregnant. She would be hurt her lover didn't at least introduce him.
As a rule, misogynist males and androphobic women are extremes. Yes, men haters and women haters are extremes and thus rare. For most people, hate does not ferment into bigotry because it's just unthinkable.
However, we tend to have neurotic tendencies, while the narcissistic person could be our worst nightmare.
Indeed, neuroses are NORMAL. Depression is a normal reaction to negativity in a person's life. Anxiety is a normal reaction to repressed anger that morphs into a panic attack or "the inability to leave the house to the point of coming up with excuses never to leave the house" aka agoraphobia, which too is a neurosis of the worst kind.
As long as a person isn't self harming, be it drug addictions or worse, cutting, neuroses will rarely kill you, with the rare exception of being scared to death.
I like all people in my circles on Googleplus. Your humor might outrage my mom so I like you even more.
Personally though I find horror movies to be hilarious. I know what real blood looks like. Most of the fake blood in horror does not get close to the real thing. However, I am grateful for that because then horror would stop being funny.
It might be my personality to laugh under stress like embarrassment or fear.
If you look over my earlier post on Blogspot about my mental health, then you'd learn that I got diagnosed in 1991.
Today I am certain that psychiatrist just wanted to convince me into thinking I was schizo-something. Schizoaffective which is comorbid with a mood disorder appears with schizophrenic symptoms of paranoia and hallucinations. Schizotypal indicates probable schizophrenic symptoms when under stress. Since schizotypy refers to eccentricities of personality, it is stress that causes the initial effects of schizotypal disorder before adulthood.
After adulthood, all it takes is a drug addiction to hide anxiety and depression. Since alcohol and tobacco is legal, these drugs are often used to self-medicate by people who eventually become mentally ill. Though both of them need careful moderation to reduce side-effects.
According to the anti-marijuana propaganda, smoking lots of marijuana before adulthood leads to anxiety, which presents as temporary paranoia in full-blown anxiety attacks. Indeed, in a certain portion of users, marijuana is known to induce feelings of paranoia and can cause hallucinations which will make an anxious person freak out.
An example is the 911 call by that cop who share a doob with his wife. He complained of experiencing time slowing down and wondered if he was going to die. It makes me wonder if he checked out what the side effects of THC are. Erowid is your friend for that.
So I got diagnosed with borderline personality. Since I have chosen to treat the insomnia rather than the borderline symptoms, the disorder is less of a problem and more of a blessing.
Since borderline is associated with the myth of a flawed personality, perhaps in my case it is a bogus diagnosis. The European description of the same disorder is called Emotionally Unstable Disorder. Both descriptions are stigmatizing. It's still in the DSM-V because shrinks plan to make a lot of money diagnosing hysterical people, once they filter out the funny kind of hysterics.
Emo kids would fit the borderline diagnosis, even the ones that learn to cut from their mentally ill peers who probably suffer depression and anxiety. I'm certain depression could result psychotic thoughts about suicide if a kid's anxiety keeps her homebound.
Me, I'm on two absolutely safe drugs I can get by script, Neurontin (gabapentin; low dose of 200 mg daily for neurasthenia-related pain) and Flexeril (cyclobenzaprine; 10 mg daily for pain from osteoarthrosis of left shoulder). Additionally, I also take two amino acids, lysine for anxiety and arginine for the cardiovascular system. Then there is n-acetyl cysteine (NAC) for liver detoxification (500 mg daily), Vitamins B-50 for stress, C (500+ mg) and D (1000+ IU daily) for the immune system, Calcium (350 mg daily; works in synergy with Vitamin C and lysine for bones and collagen formation), and Ocuvite (to preserve eyesight).
As well, I have recently confirmed the diagnosis of borderline personality because one of my friends in my circles has blocked me due to taking an earlier edition of this rant too seriously. Since this is good material for a blog post, I have edited the private rant to target a great audience.
Most of this article was written earlier in January while suffering insomnia. The reason why it jumps all over the place because it is a rant — not an essay — about living with my borderline personality.
I am glad to have found friends within most of my circles on GooglePlus and appreciate the silent yet sometimes vocal support from my circles on GooglePlus. Currently, I have just woken up an hour ago to post this article after editing it into what you are reading now. Since using the lysine and arginine (1000 mg each) for the past week, I have been getting enough sleep at night.
My motive for writing this rant in its current form is to document what living with my borderline personality is like on my worst days. Sleep hygiene is important in reducing stress, which keeps the dark side of the personality at bay. YMMV.
For your entertainment, I present the following video playlists to show you how I make light with my borderline personality.
First I dance...
And dance some more...
And dance yet again...
Though I've been too busy to dance with work and all.
Sometimes I make music...
Most of the time, I blog and have been on Blogspot for eleven years. Blogging serves as a creative outlet for me. Sometimes an article is popular, but often it is not. I am clueless to what actually works, but realize that none of these article I write are cast in stone.
That means when I find an article needs references, it'll get references and more rhetoric added based on those references. In the case of this article, the tags and the videos above are all that is needed.
Reference:
My Mental Health So Far: http://gandhara.blogspot.com/2014/01/my-mental-health-so-far-satire.html
However, I am also writing this article because I don't like imagining how life would be without Googleplus. It'd be fit as a Hollywood script but most of the plots I have seen on TV or on the big screen are unrealistic, except maybe for Criminal Minds.
Sometimes borderline people would have a fantasized relationship where it all exists in her imagination.
I think our grandparents used to call it daydreaming.
Mundanes seem to ignore their fantasies unless they are in the same room with each other.
Perhaps a few of the emo kids fit the typical borderline personality disorder, which can mimic all the other mental disorders, though not the mood disorders.
A borderline person would have to have a real mood disorder, though the hysterical suicide attempts usually are not fatal, unless they cut too deeply and other morbid stuff like that.
I am pretty lucky to have been born Asian and Buddhist. When diagnosed in 1991 with borderline, my doctor and I agreed the medication route would not be in my best interest, in light of the fact that SSRIs do not work on a personality disorder.
Most doctors often mistake the side effect of akathisia for anxiety and wrong-mindedly choose to up the SSRI dosage, which causes more akathisia.
If such restlessness is present, then it might feel like anxiety but anxiety has one hidden feature to it: it is due to anger that is so suppressed it comes out as a panic attack rather than rage.
Akathisia may lead to thoughts of suicide and morbid ideation about suicide choices. Usually that happens when a dose is missed or doubled.
Thus the additional SSRI dosage could cause a crisis.
However, there is a solution: 15-30 mg of Remeron, which is a antihistamine based sedative. However the mental health consumer can encounter sleep-eating experiences on the higher dose (30mg).
Personally, I think an orgasm could solve more of the mental health issues since a few severely mentally ill American women on the self help web forums are so jaded from past failed relationships, they don't want to handle a relationship anymore. Possibly they got fed up with men. I do not doubt a lot of them become lesbians, but don't have a healthy sex life because they are too ill to enjoy it anymore.
Mainly because the pleasure feels more like pain, though I am certain Lexapro and Celexa have mild painkiller effect.
Guys are not built like that. If the little head anticipate a sexual encounter, the libido will kick in and rule their lives. E.g. the 40 yr old man who gets 25 yr old mistress and lies to his wife about the lipstick on his collar.
Though I have heard of a marriage that led to divorce because the wife was a homophobe who didn't understand her husband's bisexual urges. Scary.
Yet us guys do not think girl-girl sex is inherently gay unless they are both lesbians. Often though, one of the so-called lesbian is a bisexual in the closet.
I can see a lesbian blow up if her bisexual lady lover get a little dick on the sly and accidentally gets pregnant. She would be hurt her lover didn't at least introduce him.
As a rule, misogynist males and androphobic women are extremes. Yes, men haters and women haters are extremes and thus rare. For most people, hate does not ferment into bigotry because it's just unthinkable.
However, we tend to have neurotic tendencies, while the narcissistic person could be our worst nightmare.
Indeed, neuroses are NORMAL. Depression is a normal reaction to negativity in a person's life. Anxiety is a normal reaction to repressed anger that morphs into a panic attack or "the inability to leave the house to the point of coming up with excuses never to leave the house" aka agoraphobia, which too is a neurosis of the worst kind.
As long as a person isn't self harming, be it drug addictions or worse, cutting, neuroses will rarely kill you, with the rare exception of being scared to death.
I like all people in my circles on Googleplus. Your humor might outrage my mom so I like you even more.
Personally though I find horror movies to be hilarious. I know what real blood looks like. Most of the fake blood in horror does not get close to the real thing. However, I am grateful for that because then horror would stop being funny.
It might be my personality to laugh under stress like embarrassment or fear.
If you look over my earlier post on Blogspot about my mental health, then you'd learn that I got diagnosed in 1991.
Today I am certain that psychiatrist just wanted to convince me into thinking I was schizo-something. Schizoaffective which is comorbid with a mood disorder appears with schizophrenic symptoms of paranoia and hallucinations. Schizotypal indicates probable schizophrenic symptoms when under stress. Since schizotypy refers to eccentricities of personality, it is stress that causes the initial effects of schizotypal disorder before adulthood.
After adulthood, all it takes is a drug addiction to hide anxiety and depression. Since alcohol and tobacco is legal, these drugs are often used to self-medicate by people who eventually become mentally ill. Though both of them need careful moderation to reduce side-effects.
According to the anti-marijuana propaganda, smoking lots of marijuana before adulthood leads to anxiety, which presents as temporary paranoia in full-blown anxiety attacks. Indeed, in a certain portion of users, marijuana is known to induce feelings of paranoia and can cause hallucinations which will make an anxious person freak out.
An example is the 911 call by that cop who share a doob with his wife. He complained of experiencing time slowing down and wondered if he was going to die. It makes me wonder if he checked out what the side effects of THC are. Erowid is your friend for that.
So I got diagnosed with borderline personality. Since I have chosen to treat the insomnia rather than the borderline symptoms, the disorder is less of a problem and more of a blessing.
Since borderline is associated with the myth of a flawed personality, perhaps in my case it is a bogus diagnosis. The European description of the same disorder is called Emotionally Unstable Disorder. Both descriptions are stigmatizing. It's still in the DSM-V because shrinks plan to make a lot of money diagnosing hysterical people, once they filter out the funny kind of hysterics.
Emo kids would fit the borderline diagnosis, even the ones that learn to cut from their mentally ill peers who probably suffer depression and anxiety. I'm certain depression could result psychotic thoughts about suicide if a kid's anxiety keeps her homebound.
Me, I'm on two absolutely safe drugs I can get by script, Neurontin (gabapentin; low dose of 200 mg daily for neurasthenia-related pain) and Flexeril (cyclobenzaprine; 10 mg daily for pain from osteoarthrosis of left shoulder). Additionally, I also take two amino acids, lysine for anxiety and arginine for the cardiovascular system. Then there is n-acetyl cysteine (NAC) for liver detoxification (500 mg daily), Vitamins B-50 for stress, C (500+ mg) and D (1000+ IU daily) for the immune system, Calcium (350 mg daily; works in synergy with Vitamin C and lysine for bones and collagen formation), and Ocuvite (to preserve eyesight).
As well, I have recently confirmed the diagnosis of borderline personality because one of my friends in my circles has blocked me due to taking an earlier edition of this rant too seriously. Since this is good material for a blog post, I have edited the private rant to target a great audience.
Most of this article was written earlier in January while suffering insomnia. The reason why it jumps all over the place because it is a rant — not an essay — about living with my borderline personality.
I am glad to have found friends within most of my circles on GooglePlus and appreciate the silent yet sometimes vocal support from my circles on GooglePlus. Currently, I have just woken up an hour ago to post this article after editing it into what you are reading now. Since using the lysine and arginine (1000 mg each) for the past week, I have been getting enough sleep at night.
My motive for writing this rant in its current form is to document what living with my borderline personality is like on my worst days. Sleep hygiene is important in reducing stress, which keeps the dark side of the personality at bay. YMMV.
For your entertainment, I present the following video playlists to show you how I make light with my borderline personality.
First I dance...
And dance some more...
And dance yet again...
Though I've been too busy to dance with work and all.
Sometimes I make music...
Most of the time, I blog and have been on Blogspot for eleven years. Blogging serves as a creative outlet for me. Sometimes an article is popular, but often it is not. I am clueless to what actually works, but realize that none of these article I write are cast in stone.
That means when I find an article needs references, it'll get references and more rhetoric added based on those references. In the case of this article, the tags and the videos above are all that is needed.
Reference:
My Mental Health So Far: http://gandhara.blogspot.com/2014/01/my-mental-health-so-far-satire.html
20140128
R.D. Laing and Psychosis (satire)
Laing's view on psychosis:
"Laing argued that the strange behavior and seemingly confused speech of people undergoing a psychotic episode were ultimately understandable as an attempt to communicate worries and concerns, often in situations where this was not possible or not permitted. Laing stressed the role of society, and particularly the family, in the development of madness. He argued that individuals can often be put in impossible situations, where they are unable to conform to the conflicting expectations of their peers, leading to a 'lose-lose situation' and immense mental distress for the individuals concerned. Madness was therefore an expression of this distress, and should be valued as a cathartic and transformative experience."
Fear arises and evolves into anxiety regarding a threat against the psychotic. Often psychosis begins with fears, leading to anxiety which then leads to insomnia that morphs into hypomania. When insomnia leads to mania, that often occurs due to inadequate rest, both of the body and of the mind.
Indeed, it is anxiety and possible repressed anger that precipitates insomnia which might escalate into hypomania and evolve further into psychosis. However, this is not always the case since the experienced mental health consumer learns the importance of sleep hygiene.
My counter argument to Laing is that psychosis is a resolution of the classic double-bind in a manner that is sometimes incomprehensible to society, due to conflicting desires and expectations on each of us.
In most cases, psychosis is non-violent and harmless.
Rather, it is the ignorance and fear of all involved parties including the mental health consumers and her concerned family members, friends and lovers which contributes to any co-morbidity of violence, be it harm to others or self-harm.
When psychotics do habituate towards violence due to what is dismissed as abnormal fear, that violence has been learned either from within the family environment originally or due to social interactions with the public and privately with care workers. Once learned, violence may become a co-morbid behavior associated with the psychiatric disorder of which psychosis is a symptom.
Thus it is imperative that an anxiolytic agent or physical action occurs to relive the anxiety so that any remaining fear motivates the mental health consumer in a positive and non-violent manner. This may consist of a tranquilizer or a non-violent action that relieves the anxiety.
Then the "best cure" for the psychotic is self-talk that counteracts negative self-talk, i.e. positive affirmations which calm her down, and thus removing the fear and the anxiety that it sometimes causes.
If a concerned family member or friend truly wishes to help a psychotic, then it is best to either believe in her even when her confused state of mind gives reason to fear for her grasp on reality, and to graciously remove oneself from the situation when one feels threatened.
In order to have rapport with the psychotic it is best to calmly facilitate positive non-violent confrontation, even to the point of supporting their belief in their limited world-view as delusion, with the intent of gaining compliance.
Direct confrontation with the psychotic is not often recommended since the subsequent anxiety due to negative adaptation during the resolution of the double-bind will only lead to reinforcement of the very delusion the care-giver is trying to "cure." Indeed, it is not helpful to cure the delusion of the mental health consumer while maintaining her psychosis.
Indeed, the wise care-giver should never patronize or belittle the psychotic lest it threaten their limited worldview. Instead, it is best to wait out the psychosis after treating it with a sedative when calm, non-threatening discussion with the mental health consumer fail to resolve the crisis.
Time is a better medication for most acute displays of psychosis which have little or no violent aspects.
In the case of serious (chronic) psychosis, it may be necessary to commit the psychotic to a psychiatric ward and for the use of the appropriate medication (usually atypical anti-psychotics such as seroquel or Abilify.
However, sedation resulting from anti-psychotic use may result in weight gain and its associated effect on the cardiovascular system.
Consequently, a weight-maintenance program may be useful as directed by a medical professional.
When the mental health consumer has stabilized mentally, it is necessary to provide mental health education including the use of coping strategies which relieve anxiety due to stress. Mental health professionals who omit such education by psychologists and psychotherapists merely set the stage for possible future relapse.
Indeed, psychiatric professionals and their support staff are still required to provide the minimum of self-care training of patients in their care. While sedatives might reduce symptoms of the mental health consumer, medication itself is not therapy.
In my opinion, on-line self therapy usually consists of a careful research and practice of coping strategies to reduce the impact that stress has upon the consumer.
Regarding the discussion of medication by my fellow mental health consumers, only the experienced consumer supplies correct information regarding psychotropic drugs. When a consumer's reaction to a drug appears to be clouded by their feelings about it, I usually consider it anecdotal and a possible emotional reaction rather than a physiological one.
Due to the density of emotional reaction to a particular medication, it is impossible to determine the physiological response to the drug. Therefore I tend not to value anecdotes on how the drug makes the consumer feel. Rather, it becomes more interesting to sift through the consumer anecdotes to find the rare anecdote that displays the physiological response.
I suppose this is why I would rather read the abstract about a medical trial than read discussion of medications on a mental health consumers forum. My impression of such candid on-line discussions is that most psychotropic drugs make people with a mental illness feel like crap because their mental health is compromised by seeing the glass half-empty.
Since they expect medication to dull their senses and otherwise impair their positive appreciation of life, it is no wonder that their impression of medication paints a negative picture of psychotropic medication.
Even so, I am touched by the emotional responses to medication because most mental health consumers would rather be treated as human beings. That is why the medications make them feel like crap: not one medication offers psychotherapy.
In the case of the psychotic mental health consumer, their mental health crisis requires treatment lest their psychoses threaten their safety or the safety of other people, both patients and care-givers.
I merely question the over-prescription of medication and especially the idea that a mental illness requires the long-term use of medications.
Thus it makes better sense to accept the psychotic's delusion as real until the psychotic explains her reason for creating it to not deal with the world realistically. Until then, it makes no sense to sedate the psychotic since most psychoses are harmless and resolve themselves on their own over time.
While I am not suggesting that Seroquel and Abilify are useless, I am adamant that the rights of mental health consumers be protected by informed consent when not psychotic, while obligations by mental health professionals be honored by providing psychotics with fast-acting sedatives which are not habit-forming.
Even if such a drug protocol meant the use of sedatives such as mirtazapine, then the doctor should not reject them because they are reserved for depression. Instead, the drugs used should be based on the criteria of least harm to the consumer.
As for therapy, the risk of burnout from stress has put off most psychology students from deciding to become psychotherapists. I am sure that a part of the reasoning behind this aversion to become a psychotherapist might have to do with the fear of people with mental illness and associate stigma associated with mental illness. It is rare that a psychology graduate is able to empathize with a psychiatric patient because he is apparently more mentally healthy than the patient.
However, on the average, there is actually no difference between a psychology graduate and the patient, except in degree of mental health. A dedicated psychotherapist is in service of the client seeking therapy. Any professional relationship between the client and the therapist is threatened by any overt superiority by either of them.
Thus there is need to emphasize that throughout the post-secondary education of a psychotherapist, the therapist is not the master of the client. Rather, the professional relationship between them implies equality. Without such humility, neither the patient not the therapist will benefit greatly from their relationship.
With regard to R.D. Laing and psychosis, it is important to emphasize that professional service by therapists and psychiatrists to all their patients requires that their clients understand the importance of the professional relationship that underlies therapy. This in no way is a personal relationship.
While the client may think she is under no obligation to behave professionally with her therapist or psychiatrist, it might be useful to consider this: would she think it is appropriate to expect her butcher to be at her beck and call?
Thus, it is important for mental health consumers to understand that the client is obliged to treat the therapist or psychiatrist with the respect she reserved for her favorite teacher in school, be it public or post-secondary.
I myself am thankful to my psychotherapist who provided me with welcome advice when he told me that I would never report to the Emergency ward of the local hospital if I was undergoing a psychosis. I take this to be advice that my mental health is determined by appropriate sleep hygiene and its positive effect of reducing insomnia.
To conclude this blog post I present a quote from psychiatrist Adolf Meyer to temper our reliance on medication to treat mental illness:
"Those who imagine that all psychiatry and psychopathology and therapy have to resolve themselves into a smattering of claims and hypotheses of psychoanalysis and that they stand or fall with one's feelings about psychoanalysis, are equally misguided".
Originally posted: May 5, 2005 6:03 PM PDT
References:
Adolf Meyer, psychiatrist - legacy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Meyer_%28psychiatrist%29#Legacy
"Laing argued that the strange behavior and seemingly confused speech of people undergoing a psychotic episode were ultimately understandable as an attempt to communicate worries and concerns, often in situations where this was not possible or not permitted. Laing stressed the role of society, and particularly the family, in the development of madness. He argued that individuals can often be put in impossible situations, where they are unable to conform to the conflicting expectations of their peers, leading to a 'lose-lose situation' and immense mental distress for the individuals concerned. Madness was therefore an expression of this distress, and should be valued as a cathartic and transformative experience."
Fear arises and evolves into anxiety regarding a threat against the psychotic. Often psychosis begins with fears, leading to anxiety which then leads to insomnia that morphs into hypomania. When insomnia leads to mania, that often occurs due to inadequate rest, both of the body and of the mind.
Indeed, it is anxiety and possible repressed anger that precipitates insomnia which might escalate into hypomania and evolve further into psychosis. However, this is not always the case since the experienced mental health consumer learns the importance of sleep hygiene.
My counter argument to Laing is that psychosis is a resolution of the classic double-bind in a manner that is sometimes incomprehensible to society, due to conflicting desires and expectations on each of us.
In most cases, psychosis is non-violent and harmless.
Rather, it is the ignorance and fear of all involved parties including the mental health consumers and her concerned family members, friends and lovers which contributes to any co-morbidity of violence, be it harm to others or self-harm.
When psychotics do habituate towards violence due to what is dismissed as abnormal fear, that violence has been learned either from within the family environment originally or due to social interactions with the public and privately with care workers. Once learned, violence may become a co-morbid behavior associated with the psychiatric disorder of which psychosis is a symptom.
Thus it is imperative that an anxiolytic agent or physical action occurs to relive the anxiety so that any remaining fear motivates the mental health consumer in a positive and non-violent manner. This may consist of a tranquilizer or a non-violent action that relieves the anxiety.
Then the "best cure" for the psychotic is self-talk that counteracts negative self-talk, i.e. positive affirmations which calm her down, and thus removing the fear and the anxiety that it sometimes causes.
If a concerned family member or friend truly wishes to help a psychotic, then it is best to either believe in her even when her confused state of mind gives reason to fear for her grasp on reality, and to graciously remove oneself from the situation when one feels threatened.
In order to have rapport with the psychotic it is best to calmly facilitate positive non-violent confrontation, even to the point of supporting their belief in their limited world-view as delusion, with the intent of gaining compliance.
Direct confrontation with the psychotic is not often recommended since the subsequent anxiety due to negative adaptation during the resolution of the double-bind will only lead to reinforcement of the very delusion the care-giver is trying to "cure." Indeed, it is not helpful to cure the delusion of the mental health consumer while maintaining her psychosis.
Indeed, the wise care-giver should never patronize or belittle the psychotic lest it threaten their limited worldview. Instead, it is best to wait out the psychosis after treating it with a sedative when calm, non-threatening discussion with the mental health consumer fail to resolve the crisis.
Time is a better medication for most acute displays of psychosis which have little or no violent aspects.
In the case of serious (chronic) psychosis, it may be necessary to commit the psychotic to a psychiatric ward and for the use of the appropriate medication (usually atypical anti-psychotics such as seroquel or Abilify.
However, sedation resulting from anti-psychotic use may result in weight gain and its associated effect on the cardiovascular system.
Consequently, a weight-maintenance program may be useful as directed by a medical professional.
When the mental health consumer has stabilized mentally, it is necessary to provide mental health education including the use of coping strategies which relieve anxiety due to stress. Mental health professionals who omit such education by psychologists and psychotherapists merely set the stage for possible future relapse.
Indeed, psychiatric professionals and their support staff are still required to provide the minimum of self-care training of patients in their care. While sedatives might reduce symptoms of the mental health consumer, medication itself is not therapy.
In my opinion, on-line self therapy usually consists of a careful research and practice of coping strategies to reduce the impact that stress has upon the consumer.
Regarding the discussion of medication by my fellow mental health consumers, only the experienced consumer supplies correct information regarding psychotropic drugs. When a consumer's reaction to a drug appears to be clouded by their feelings about it, I usually consider it anecdotal and a possible emotional reaction rather than a physiological one.
Due to the density of emotional reaction to a particular medication, it is impossible to determine the physiological response to the drug. Therefore I tend not to value anecdotes on how the drug makes the consumer feel. Rather, it becomes more interesting to sift through the consumer anecdotes to find the rare anecdote that displays the physiological response.
I suppose this is why I would rather read the abstract about a medical trial than read discussion of medications on a mental health consumers forum. My impression of such candid on-line discussions is that most psychotropic drugs make people with a mental illness feel like crap because their mental health is compromised by seeing the glass half-empty.
Since they expect medication to dull their senses and otherwise impair their positive appreciation of life, it is no wonder that their impression of medication paints a negative picture of psychotropic medication.
Even so, I am touched by the emotional responses to medication because most mental health consumers would rather be treated as human beings. That is why the medications make them feel like crap: not one medication offers psychotherapy.
In the case of the psychotic mental health consumer, their mental health crisis requires treatment lest their psychoses threaten their safety or the safety of other people, both patients and care-givers.
I merely question the over-prescription of medication and especially the idea that a mental illness requires the long-term use of medications.
Thus it makes better sense to accept the psychotic's delusion as real until the psychotic explains her reason for creating it to not deal with the world realistically. Until then, it makes no sense to sedate the psychotic since most psychoses are harmless and resolve themselves on their own over time.
While I am not suggesting that Seroquel and Abilify are useless, I am adamant that the rights of mental health consumers be protected by informed consent when not psychotic, while obligations by mental health professionals be honored by providing psychotics with fast-acting sedatives which are not habit-forming.
Even if such a drug protocol meant the use of sedatives such as mirtazapine, then the doctor should not reject them because they are reserved for depression. Instead, the drugs used should be based on the criteria of least harm to the consumer.
As for therapy, the risk of burnout from stress has put off most psychology students from deciding to become psychotherapists. I am sure that a part of the reasoning behind this aversion to become a psychotherapist might have to do with the fear of people with mental illness and associate stigma associated with mental illness. It is rare that a psychology graduate is able to empathize with a psychiatric patient because he is apparently more mentally healthy than the patient.
However, on the average, there is actually no difference between a psychology graduate and the patient, except in degree of mental health. A dedicated psychotherapist is in service of the client seeking therapy. Any professional relationship between the client and the therapist is threatened by any overt superiority by either of them.
Thus there is need to emphasize that throughout the post-secondary education of a psychotherapist, the therapist is not the master of the client. Rather, the professional relationship between them implies equality. Without such humility, neither the patient not the therapist will benefit greatly from their relationship.
With regard to R.D. Laing and psychosis, it is important to emphasize that professional service by therapists and psychiatrists to all their patients requires that their clients understand the importance of the professional relationship that underlies therapy. This in no way is a personal relationship.
While the client may think she is under no obligation to behave professionally with her therapist or psychiatrist, it might be useful to consider this: would she think it is appropriate to expect her butcher to be at her beck and call?
Thus, it is important for mental health consumers to understand that the client is obliged to treat the therapist or psychiatrist with the respect she reserved for her favorite teacher in school, be it public or post-secondary.
I myself am thankful to my psychotherapist who provided me with welcome advice when he told me that I would never report to the Emergency ward of the local hospital if I was undergoing a psychosis. I take this to be advice that my mental health is determined by appropriate sleep hygiene and its positive effect of reducing insomnia.
To conclude this blog post I present a quote from psychiatrist Adolf Meyer to temper our reliance on medication to treat mental illness:
"Those who imagine that all psychiatry and psychopathology and therapy have to resolve themselves into a smattering of claims and hypotheses of psychoanalysis and that they stand or fall with one's feelings about psychoanalysis, are equally misguided".
Originally posted: May 5, 2005 6:03 PM PDT
References:
Adolf Meyer, psychiatrist - legacy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Meyer_%28psychiatrist%29#Legacy
20140116
Stress Causes Autoimmune Diseases Including Cancer (satire)
We need Vitamin K & D, magnesium, calcium, boron, and essential fatty acids to maintain good bone health. Regular Vitamin D & Calcium pills don't cut it. These nutrient also help with immune health.
Most of our autoimmune diseases are due to lack of these nutrients. YMMV
They also help keep us sane along with the B-vitamins, Vitamin E, iron, zinc, copper, manganese, vanadium and molybdenum.
Therefore guy bacteria will keep us sane IF we don't go on a diet or on drugs.
But most of our mental problems have to do with subclinical malnutrition.
That creates all kinds of behavioral disorders that lead to mental illness, mainly due to auto immune diseases.
I even believe hereditary schizophrenia is an autoimmune disease since stress does cause high levels of cortisol which impairs the immune system. yet schizophrenic rarely get cancer because of the antipsychotics they take.
So it might be possible that antihistamine effects of seroquel might have anti-cancer effects by preventing histamines from occupying histamine receptors, leading to programmed cell death. That is, preventing histamines from occupying those receptors leads to normal death of cells.
This implies that survivors of a bad case of flu who don't medicate with cetirizine and NAC might develop schizophrenia OR cancer depending on their genetics.
That is because stress doesn't cause cancer or mental illness. Rather cortisol impairs the immune system AND the endocrine system.
Except for the boron, I'm covered. All I need is to each 100 grams of raisins to get more than 4.5 mg of boron a day. Well, that most definitely beats snorting borax.
Boron helps bone health: http://www.algaecal.com/algaecal-ingredients/boron/boron-benefits/
Most of our autoimmune diseases are due to lack of these nutrients. YMMV
They also help keep us sane along with the B-vitamins, Vitamin E, iron, zinc, copper, manganese, vanadium and molybdenum.
Therefore guy bacteria will keep us sane IF we don't go on a diet or on drugs.
But most of our mental problems have to do with subclinical malnutrition.
That creates all kinds of behavioral disorders that lead to mental illness, mainly due to auto immune diseases.
I even believe hereditary schizophrenia is an autoimmune disease since stress does cause high levels of cortisol which impairs the immune system. yet schizophrenic rarely get cancer because of the antipsychotics they take.
So it might be possible that antihistamine effects of seroquel might have anti-cancer effects by preventing histamines from occupying histamine receptors, leading to programmed cell death. That is, preventing histamines from occupying those receptors leads to normal death of cells.
This implies that survivors of a bad case of flu who don't medicate with cetirizine and NAC might develop schizophrenia OR cancer depending on their genetics.
That is because stress doesn't cause cancer or mental illness. Rather cortisol impairs the immune system AND the endocrine system.
Except for the boron, I'm covered. All I need is to each 100 grams of raisins to get more than 4.5 mg of boron a day. Well, that most definitely beats snorting borax.
Boron helps bone health: http://www.algaecal.com/algaecal-ingredients/boron/boron-benefits/
20140111
My Mental Health So Far (satire)
When I reflect on the borderline personality disorder diagnosis I was given over 20 years ago, perhaps it was only accurate in 1991.
After discussing the diagnosis with my doctor, we decided to preserve my mental health by not opting for medication. At age 33, I was still young and immature for my age.
Overall though, my delayed maturity was due mainly to my limited social experience before moving out of my parents' home.
At age 39 I left home to live on my own. It's been over 15 years now that I've lived independently of my parents, but only five years since I have developed a mature understanding of the roles my siblings (one older brother, one younger sister) and my parents played in my emotional and psychological development.
During that time, I lost a friend in 2006 to pancreatic cancer and my father in 2007 to old age. As well, I met and fell in love with four different women in 1994, 2000, 2001 and 2007.
Today I'm sure the borderline personality disorder is in remission.
By the end of 2012, I have been in remission from depression that lasted from 2009 to 2011. From 2010 to 2012, I chose psychotherapy combined with medication of my choosing to see if it would help me.
From my perspective, I am sure that psychotherapy was helpful in the beginning. Yet it was becoming less useful over time due to my unwillingness to fully commit to total disclosure. At some point near its end, I developed a fear that continued therapy would undo the improvement in my life.
Even so, I learned a lot from my psychotherapist and my choice in medication. All that can be confirmed about medication is that mirtazapine is a strong sedative and did what it was meant to do (relieve depression).
After discontinuing mirtazapine in 2012, I have relied on gabapentin two 100 mg capsules daily and one 10 mg tablet of flexeril to aid in relief of insomnia.
Gabapentin (Neurontin) is used for neuralgic pain in low doses. Flexeril (cyclobenzaprine) is a muscle relaxant with sedative effects is used to reduce pain for the osteoarthrosis in my left shoulder. Together, both drugs reduce the subtle effects of pain in my body to help me to sleep at night.
After doing a thorough research on borderline personality disorder, I know that I have outgrown a lot of its symptoms over time. That include no recent incidents of self harm and only rare occurrences of impulsivity.
As for idealization and devaluation of others, alternating between high positive regard and great disappointment, it rarely occurs. Instead I maintain a high positive regard for most of my friends and as much positive regard for my GooglePlus followers.
Additionally, I know that the diagnosis of borderline personality disorder implies the personality of a person is flawed. In response, I feel that perhaps the psychiatrists who voted on keeping borderline personality disorder in DSM-V would rather have the ignorant believe in the myth of a flawed personality associated with this debilitating personality disorder than actually overcome the stigma associated with it.
Indeed, I do not believe that my personality is flawed since it is based on myth rather than fact. Rather, a diagnosis of borderline personality disorder may be based on a lack of information about the person being diagnosed including cultural heritage.
Had I been exposed to medication earlier, I am uncertain that it could have helped me at all. For my research on various medications led me to conclude that very little of the medical trials on antidepressants, anti-psychotics, and sedatives included enough Asian volunteers to validate their safety.
I feel that whenever flaws in my personality appear, it is when I am stressed. A person truly cannot isolate himself from the world for long. Even being at home for two days would lead me to develop insomnia. In order to remedy such a situation, I will spend more time away from my computer in the future.
As for now, I would rate my mental health as good with room for improvement.
However, regarding bipolar disorder and other mood disorders, medication and psychotherapy may be warranted when coping strategies do not work.
In my case; I rely on exercise and meditation as coping strategies to relieve stress.
For exercise, I get outside to walk up to five days of the week. Meditation only takes up about 15 minutes of my day.
My hobbies are listening and making music, reading, and writing on my blog.
As for computers, I enjoy both my time on-line and especially off-line. Indeed, being away from the computer is a relief. As well, not using my phone is a bigger relief than using it used to be.
For the moment, because of insomnia, I will consider sleep the best coping strategy of all.
After discussing the diagnosis with my doctor, we decided to preserve my mental health by not opting for medication. At age 33, I was still young and immature for my age.
Overall though, my delayed maturity was due mainly to my limited social experience before moving out of my parents' home.
At age 39 I left home to live on my own. It's been over 15 years now that I've lived independently of my parents, but only five years since I have developed a mature understanding of the roles my siblings (one older brother, one younger sister) and my parents played in my emotional and psychological development.
During that time, I lost a friend in 2006 to pancreatic cancer and my father in 2007 to old age. As well, I met and fell in love with four different women in 1994, 2000, 2001 and 2007.
Today I'm sure the borderline personality disorder is in remission.
By the end of 2012, I have been in remission from depression that lasted from 2009 to 2011. From 2010 to 2012, I chose psychotherapy combined with medication of my choosing to see if it would help me.
From my perspective, I am sure that psychotherapy was helpful in the beginning. Yet it was becoming less useful over time due to my unwillingness to fully commit to total disclosure. At some point near its end, I developed a fear that continued therapy would undo the improvement in my life.
Even so, I learned a lot from my psychotherapist and my choice in medication. All that can be confirmed about medication is that mirtazapine is a strong sedative and did what it was meant to do (relieve depression).
After discontinuing mirtazapine in 2012, I have relied on gabapentin two 100 mg capsules daily and one 10 mg tablet of flexeril to aid in relief of insomnia.
Gabapentin (Neurontin) is used for neuralgic pain in low doses. Flexeril (cyclobenzaprine) is a muscle relaxant with sedative effects is used to reduce pain for the osteoarthrosis in my left shoulder. Together, both drugs reduce the subtle effects of pain in my body to help me to sleep at night.
After doing a thorough research on borderline personality disorder, I know that I have outgrown a lot of its symptoms over time. That include no recent incidents of self harm and only rare occurrences of impulsivity.
As for idealization and devaluation of others, alternating between high positive regard and great disappointment, it rarely occurs. Instead I maintain a high positive regard for most of my friends and as much positive regard for my GooglePlus followers.
Additionally, I know that the diagnosis of borderline personality disorder implies the personality of a person is flawed. In response, I feel that perhaps the psychiatrists who voted on keeping borderline personality disorder in DSM-V would rather have the ignorant believe in the myth of a flawed personality associated with this debilitating personality disorder than actually overcome the stigma associated with it.
Indeed, I do not believe that my personality is flawed since it is based on myth rather than fact. Rather, a diagnosis of borderline personality disorder may be based on a lack of information about the person being diagnosed including cultural heritage.
Had I been exposed to medication earlier, I am uncertain that it could have helped me at all. For my research on various medications led me to conclude that very little of the medical trials on antidepressants, anti-psychotics, and sedatives included enough Asian volunteers to validate their safety.
I feel that whenever flaws in my personality appear, it is when I am stressed. A person truly cannot isolate himself from the world for long. Even being at home for two days would lead me to develop insomnia. In order to remedy such a situation, I will spend more time away from my computer in the future.
As for now, I would rate my mental health as good with room for improvement.
However, regarding bipolar disorder and other mood disorders, medication and psychotherapy may be warranted when coping strategies do not work.
In my case; I rely on exercise and meditation as coping strategies to relieve stress.
For exercise, I get outside to walk up to five days of the week. Meditation only takes up about 15 minutes of my day.
My hobbies are listening and making music, reading, and writing on my blog.
As for computers, I enjoy both my time on-line and especially off-line. Indeed, being away from the computer is a relief. As well, not using my phone is a bigger relief than using it used to be.
For the moment, because of insomnia, I will consider sleep the best coping strategy of all.
20140107
What If the Mad are Actually the Sane Ones? (satire)
What if madness is when common sense calls to us but we forgot how to listen to ourselves because our fragile connection to reality is broken temporarily?
Then medical intervention comes to the moment of psychic healing when we either remain in fear, unable to rise above madness, or we boldly go on to heal, and to become whole, using humility to reconnect to reality.
Mere mortals would confuse the mad for those people who have risen above madness, due to their fear and ignorance about madness.
What if the State assumes that madness should be controlled by medication because of that same fear?
Then these same medications are administered not only to relieve the mad of their affliction but also to relieve the fear which "normal" people feel when faced with the mad.
How absurd that we subject the mad to medication to relieve our own fears about madness itself!
Is this not the height of madness itself, that we subject others to medication to control them so that we ourselves may feel less fear towards them?
Even so, we do not take medication to relieve our own fears about madness because of the delusion that we ourselves consider ourselves sane while assuming that the mad are insane.
In doing so, we prove how insane society truly is! Perhaps then the truly mad are kept safe from society in psychiatric wards so as to be protected from society.
Then the purpose of medication is to calm extremely nervous people so that they may function in a society that has yet to overcome the stigma of mental illness.
Sometimes I ask these questions with the insight that the majority of people with mental illness are mostly non-violent people. Anyone who is violent and legally insane are excluded from this definition of sanity as madness. This is because their behavior forms part of the etiology of the psychopath.
Rather this so-called argument is satire designed to de-stigmatize mental illness.
Originally posted: May 20, 2005 08:18 PM
Then medical intervention comes to the moment of psychic healing when we either remain in fear, unable to rise above madness, or we boldly go on to heal, and to become whole, using humility to reconnect to reality.
Mere mortals would confuse the mad for those people who have risen above madness, due to their fear and ignorance about madness.
What if the State assumes that madness should be controlled by medication because of that same fear?
Then these same medications are administered not only to relieve the mad of their affliction but also to relieve the fear which "normal" people feel when faced with the mad.
How absurd that we subject the mad to medication to relieve our own fears about madness itself!
Is this not the height of madness itself, that we subject others to medication to control them so that we ourselves may feel less fear towards them?
Even so, we do not take medication to relieve our own fears about madness because of the delusion that we ourselves consider ourselves sane while assuming that the mad are insane.
In doing so, we prove how insane society truly is! Perhaps then the truly mad are kept safe from society in psychiatric wards so as to be protected from society.
Then the purpose of medication is to calm extremely nervous people so that they may function in a society that has yet to overcome the stigma of mental illness.
Sometimes I ask these questions with the insight that the majority of people with mental illness are mostly non-violent people. Anyone who is violent and legally insane are excluded from this definition of sanity as madness. This is because their behavior forms part of the etiology of the psychopath.
Rather this so-called argument is satire designed to de-stigmatize mental illness.
Originally posted: May 20, 2005 08:18 PM
20131231
ADHD: Social Control Through Diagnosis and Medication (satire)
Within context of this article, the ADHD social construct consists of diagnosis by a trained professional after being referenced by a school psychologist. It also may include the use of ADHD medication and associated therapy in which both the child and his or her parents actively participate with an approved therapist. Overall, the actual intention of the ADHD diagnosis is to manage the behavior of children who are not compliant to the controlled school environment.
According to prevailing ADHD information, it is cheaper to medicate children diagnosed with ADHD than to provide therapy for them, considering that $200 of ADHD medication is cheaper than $1000 of therapy per year to the health insurance industry.
When methamphetamine is being used to treat ADHD along with the methamphetamine substitute Ritalin and the amphetamine Dexedrine and other ADHD drugs, what doctors who prescribe ADHD medication is actually doing is in effect manufacturing tomorrow's methamphetamine addict.
This is especially true of Desoxyn and Vyvanse users.
With the risk of addiction along with other side effects such as psychosis, I question the prescription of methamphetamine , amphetamine, and related ADHD drugs such as Adderall (a mixture of amphetamine and methamphetamine) Ritalin (a methamphetamine substitute), and Strattera (an ADHD medication purported to lack the side effects of amphetamine-like drugs but known to have behavioral side effects).
Often these ADHD medications are prescribed with the recommendation that they are "safe when used as directed". Yet the unrelated selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitor (SSRI) Paxil was prescribed with the same warning but has been exposed as addictive, given the inability of some patients prescribed it to withdraw from Paxil completely.
For the addictive potential for amphetamines has been known since being prescribed for ADHD in 1937. However, such medication have reduced or no risk on rates of substance abuse among people with ADHD. This is because long use of medication may lead to bipolar disorder and schizophrenia arising as the child with ADHD matures into adulthood. This may be a psycho-social side effect of the ADHD social construct rather than a result of an actual disease.
Indeed, the mental health industry may be motivated by the strong desire of the elites to control the masses through diagnosis and medication so that they may profit from the middle class being rendered compliant to social control through affordable medication that bring quicker profits than costly therapeutic approaches.
Reference:
Inventor of ADHD said: ADHD is a Fictitious Disease: http://www.worldpublicunion.org/2013-03-27-NEWS-inventor-of-adhd-says-adhd-is-a-fictitious-disease.html
ADHD and medication: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attention-deficit_hyperactivity_disorder#Medication
ADHD Controversy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adhd_controversy
Paxil: Controversy - Paroxetine: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paroxetine#Controversy
Desoxyn - Methamphetamine: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methamphetamine
Dexedrine - Amphetamine: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amphetamine
Vyvanse - Methamphetamine prodrug: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisdexamfetamine
Adderall: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adderall
Ritalin - Methylphenidate: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methylphenidate
Strattera - Atomoxetine: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomoxetine
According to prevailing ADHD information, it is cheaper to medicate children diagnosed with ADHD than to provide therapy for them, considering that $200 of ADHD medication is cheaper than $1000 of therapy per year to the health insurance industry.
When methamphetamine is being used to treat ADHD along with the methamphetamine substitute Ritalin and the amphetamine Dexedrine and other ADHD drugs, what doctors who prescribe ADHD medication is actually doing is in effect manufacturing tomorrow's methamphetamine addict.
This is especially true of Desoxyn and Vyvanse users.
With the risk of addiction along with other side effects such as psychosis, I question the prescription of methamphetamine , amphetamine, and related ADHD drugs such as Adderall (a mixture of amphetamine and methamphetamine) Ritalin (a methamphetamine substitute), and Strattera (an ADHD medication purported to lack the side effects of amphetamine-like drugs but known to have behavioral side effects).
Often these ADHD medications are prescribed with the recommendation that they are "safe when used as directed". Yet the unrelated selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitor (SSRI) Paxil was prescribed with the same warning but has been exposed as addictive, given the inability of some patients prescribed it to withdraw from Paxil completely.
For the addictive potential for amphetamines has been known since being prescribed for ADHD in 1937. However, such medication have reduced or no risk on rates of substance abuse among people with ADHD. This is because long use of medication may lead to bipolar disorder and schizophrenia arising as the child with ADHD matures into adulthood. This may be a psycho-social side effect of the ADHD social construct rather than a result of an actual disease.
Indeed, the mental health industry may be motivated by the strong desire of the elites to control the masses through diagnosis and medication so that they may profit from the middle class being rendered compliant to social control through affordable medication that bring quicker profits than costly therapeutic approaches.
Reference:
Inventor of ADHD said: ADHD is a Fictitious Disease: http://www.worldpublicunion.org/2013-03-27-NEWS-inventor-of-adhd-says-adhd-is-a-fictitious-disease.html
ADHD and medication: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attention-deficit_hyperactivity_disorder#Medication
ADHD Controversy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adhd_controversy
Paxil: Controversy - Paroxetine: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paroxetine#Controversy
Desoxyn - Methamphetamine: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methamphetamine
Dexedrine - Amphetamine: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amphetamine
Vyvanse - Methamphetamine prodrug: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisdexamfetamine
Adderall: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adderall
Ritalin - Methylphenidate: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methylphenidate
Strattera - Atomoxetine: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomoxetine
20131204
Ah shit: Feminists Don't Get It Right
Before you get into the meat of this entry, please read about Marc Lepine: http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/features/rapidfire/story.html?id=bd7367a7-1f49-4c5d-949d-7e5a85941b40 and http://www.fortunecity.com/roswell/hammer/73/lepine.html
All these stories miss the girlfriend mentioned in a few other reports. However, let a man tell of the aftermath of Lepine's murder spree:
My problem with the White Ribbon Campaign is not that it is trying to help female victims of violence, or that it is working towards gun-control.
My problem with the White Ribbon Campaign is that it offers up a cartoon in place of a schematic.
Most men don't rape, don't beat, and don't murder their partners. Most men don't get into drunken brawls and murder whoever dissed them at the bar.
My problem with the White Ribbon Campaign is that it uses the image of Marc Lepine to stand in for a very complex social problem. It is a way of making us feel good about ourselves without addressing the real (and much more difficult) problem of domestic violence itself.
The problem isn't just that some individual men kill women. The problem is that some individual men and a much smaller number of women kill other men.
Leaving aside the minority of those murderers who are clinically insane - who murder because a leprechaun on their shoulder tells them to - what we are dealing with is a problem of violence.
-- http://ed-rex.com/fact/dec6.html
Statistically, more men are killed by other men every year than women are. In fact, it's about 75 percent of murders. Yes, one in four of murder victims are women. However, 90 percent of murderers are men.
To use Marc Lepine's murder spree as a memorial is to distort the truth: violent men do violence to men, women and sometimes children without discretion.
As well, the media painted Marc as a quiet loner. Yet they rarely fully explain why.
In fact, child abuse and domestic abuse, let alone family violence, is never mentioned by feminists outside of context with violence against women and the endemic violence perpetrated within the context of patriarchy.
Ironically, the start of the US's entry into WW2 was also on December 7, 1941 - war is proof that men are sometimes called upon to do violence against other men, women and children for the greater good. Even so, it helps to reconcile with the innocent victims of war.
Let us not forget that most violence against women is the result of domestic and family violence, including Lepine's murder spree.
More violence has been done against men by men.
Let's stop pretending violence against women is an epidemic, for the real epidemic is that more and more men (and women and children) are victims of violence!
Let's stop violence, now.
Originally written before April 8, 2007 at 3:59 AM
Previously edited on: November 19, 2011 at 1:00 AM
Previously edited on: November 9, 2012 at 12:44 PM
All these stories miss the girlfriend mentioned in a few other reports. However, let a man tell of the aftermath of Lepine's murder spree:
My problem with the White Ribbon Campaign is not that it is trying to help female victims of violence, or that it is working towards gun-control.
My problem with the White Ribbon Campaign is that it offers up a cartoon in place of a schematic.
Most men don't rape, don't beat, and don't murder their partners. Most men don't get into drunken brawls and murder whoever dissed them at the bar.
My problem with the White Ribbon Campaign is that it uses the image of Marc Lepine to stand in for a very complex social problem. It is a way of making us feel good about ourselves without addressing the real (and much more difficult) problem of domestic violence itself.
The problem isn't just that some individual men kill women. The problem is that some individual men and a much smaller number of women kill other men.
Leaving aside the minority of those murderers who are clinically insane - who murder because a leprechaun on their shoulder tells them to - what we are dealing with is a problem of violence.
-- http://ed-rex.com/fact/dec6.html
Statistically, more men are killed by other men every year than women are. In fact, it's about 75 percent of murders. Yes, one in four of murder victims are women. However, 90 percent of murderers are men.
To use Marc Lepine's murder spree as a memorial is to distort the truth: violent men do violence to men, women and sometimes children without discretion.
As well, the media painted Marc as a quiet loner. Yet they rarely fully explain why.
In fact, child abuse and domestic abuse, let alone family violence, is never mentioned by feminists outside of context with violence against women and the endemic violence perpetrated within the context of patriarchy.
Ironically, the start of the US's entry into WW2 was also on December 7, 1941 - war is proof that men are sometimes called upon to do violence against other men, women and children for the greater good. Even so, it helps to reconcile with the innocent victims of war.
Let us not forget that most violence against women is the result of domestic and family violence, including Lepine's murder spree.
More violence has been done against men by men.
Let's stop pretending violence against women is an epidemic, for the real epidemic is that more and more men (and women and children) are victims of violence!
Let's stop violence, now.
Originally written before April 8, 2007 at 3:59 AM
Previously edited on: November 19, 2011 at 1:00 AM
Previously edited on: November 9, 2012 at 12:44 PM
The Craziness of Culture (satire)
One common misconception is that all mentally ill people are unpredictable and violent. Our society has an insatiable appetite for real-life horror stories about rapists, serial killers, and pedophiles, and the media is happy to provide us with them. As a result, we tend to put everyone with psychiatric problems under one label: crazy.
However, different cultures have different concepts of what constitutes a mental illness. Take suicide, for example. In Japan, suicide is, in most cases, not considered problematic, rather it can be an honorable act committed to save face or for a noble cause. Similarly, while the Koran prohibits suicide, "suicide bombers" are not generally considered "suicides" by their zealous supporters – they are martyrs for their cause. But in North America, someone who attempts suicide will likely be diagnosed with some form of psychological problem.
Some cultures are more susceptible to certain types of illness than others. Anorexia and bulimia are largely afflictions of the western world, while Japan has a whole separate set of disorders, many of which stem from their cultural expectation of hard work. One commonly documented Japanese condition called hikikomori (similar to agoraphobia) is characterized by a withdrawal from society due to stress and is said to affect large numbers of teenaged boys.
What about addictions? In North America, we believe in possession of a different kind: drugs, gambling, alcohol, or food are thought of as diseases that take over the victim and are difficult to expel. Again, we remove blame, but is it accurate to put a gambling addiction on par with, say, schizophrenia?
— Samantha Shepard, They're Possessed?, Medhunters dot com
Then again, is it accurate to use a manual of disorders decided by committee to diagnose what might be cultural eccentricities?
The social stigma of mental illness reflect a phobia of the mentally ill, a fear of psychosis which, instead of being relieved by education, is usually left to fester and sometime harm people who are themselves more harmless than the people who fear them.
Even people who are emotionally disturbed are loathe to admit that they might be going off the deep end, sometimes until it's too late. They minimize their suicide attempts and grow fearful that any outside inquiry might expose their suffering to the world.
Some of them even grow to fear strangers who often are concerned for their well-being, mainly due to the stigmatizing of their life.
Even though my own labelling of culture and society as the hotbed of mental illness is reactive, I also admit that both culture and society can be the source of mental health.
For eccentricity is merely an abnormal focus on behaviours that were once fulfilling but may have now become obsessions, like one has become possessed by some demon.
The ironic thing is, in ancient Greek society, it was once believed that each of us was born with a guardian angel which were called "daimons" - yes, the same modern-day demons that ignorant religious people pretend exist.
Sometimes, in respecting the expert's advice, we take it too far and reify his opinion, making it like a talisman. We do this with the advice of doctors when we interpret the directions on the label of medication — "take 1 capsule twice daily" — as meaning once in the morning and once at night when it could also mean taking two capsules at bedtime.
Likewise, it seems like psychiatry is turned into religion when psychiatrist rely too much on the DSM rather than on gut instinct.
From my perspective, the DSM is like a "Bible", the disorders being "deities" similar to "daimons." I feel they originate in behaviours used by people "diagnosed" with a "disorder" which soon stopped working to "protect" them from the suffering caused by "facing reality."
In short, the DSM descriptions interpret "daimons" which "possess" people as symptoms which involve fear, anxiety, insomnia, hypomania, mania, and sometimes psychoses.
This makes psychiatrists "exorcists".
Think about it: your doctor or psychiatrist replaces the priest. Your medications are the means to "exorcise" demons with names like influenza, chronic fatigue syndrome, cardiovascular disease and so on, as well as mental disorders such as schizo-affective, bipolar and so on.
For all the medications are for are to control and manage disease or behaviour so it doesn't annoy the neighbours.
Cultures which have a place for mental illness are the shamanic ones. If you have depression and aren't out harvesting the grain by hand like everyone else, then you could trade your produce for a special ritual that helps get rid of the "evil spirits". After a few hours, you are cured and ready to get up and help harvest the crops.
Today, civilized society waits until simple depression morphs into a mental illness sometimes needing a trip to the hospital and 48 hours in the psychiatric ward.
A person could cling all they want to the false belief that their childhood experiences are more important than making new ones that help us get over the trauma and transform the negativity into positive benefit.
If he were to tell any psychiatric doctor or nurse of that trauma, they will react out of fear to hospitalize him. This is because the telling of the long-lost trauma results in traumatizing the caregiver.
So, the mental health consumer learns quickly to deny the symptoms that are manageable, and tries hard not to perpetuate that trauma in her daily life. She does so by complying with medication and therapy.
In due time, mental health is maintained when the consumer is able to be crisis-free for more than six months.
Originally written: April 19, 2007 at 4:15 PM
Updated: February 1 at 9:50 PM
However, different cultures have different concepts of what constitutes a mental illness. Take suicide, for example. In Japan, suicide is, in most cases, not considered problematic, rather it can be an honorable act committed to save face or for a noble cause. Similarly, while the Koran prohibits suicide, "suicide bombers" are not generally considered "suicides" by their zealous supporters – they are martyrs for their cause. But in North America, someone who attempts suicide will likely be diagnosed with some form of psychological problem.
Some cultures are more susceptible to certain types of illness than others. Anorexia and bulimia are largely afflictions of the western world, while Japan has a whole separate set of disorders, many of which stem from their cultural expectation of hard work. One commonly documented Japanese condition called hikikomori (similar to agoraphobia) is characterized by a withdrawal from society due to stress and is said to affect large numbers of teenaged boys.
What about addictions? In North America, we believe in possession of a different kind: drugs, gambling, alcohol, or food are thought of as diseases that take over the victim and are difficult to expel. Again, we remove blame, but is it accurate to put a gambling addiction on par with, say, schizophrenia?
— Samantha Shepard, They're Possessed?, Medhunters dot com
Then again, is it accurate to use a manual of disorders decided by committee to diagnose what might be cultural eccentricities?
The social stigma of mental illness reflect a phobia of the mentally ill, a fear of psychosis which, instead of being relieved by education, is usually left to fester and sometime harm people who are themselves more harmless than the people who fear them.
Even people who are emotionally disturbed are loathe to admit that they might be going off the deep end, sometimes until it's too late. They minimize their suicide attempts and grow fearful that any outside inquiry might expose their suffering to the world.
Some of them even grow to fear strangers who often are concerned for their well-being, mainly due to the stigmatizing of their life.
Even though my own labelling of culture and society as the hotbed of mental illness is reactive, I also admit that both culture and society can be the source of mental health.
For eccentricity is merely an abnormal focus on behaviours that were once fulfilling but may have now become obsessions, like one has become possessed by some demon.
The ironic thing is, in ancient Greek society, it was once believed that each of us was born with a guardian angel which were called "daimons" - yes, the same modern-day demons that ignorant religious people pretend exist.
Sometimes, in respecting the expert's advice, we take it too far and reify his opinion, making it like a talisman. We do this with the advice of doctors when we interpret the directions on the label of medication — "take 1 capsule twice daily" — as meaning once in the morning and once at night when it could also mean taking two capsules at bedtime.
Likewise, it seems like psychiatry is turned into religion when psychiatrist rely too much on the DSM rather than on gut instinct.
From my perspective, the DSM is like a "Bible", the disorders being "deities" similar to "daimons." I feel they originate in behaviours used by people "diagnosed" with a "disorder" which soon stopped working to "protect" them from the suffering caused by "facing reality."
In short, the DSM descriptions interpret "daimons" which "possess" people as symptoms which involve fear, anxiety, insomnia, hypomania, mania, and sometimes psychoses.
This makes psychiatrists "exorcists".
Think about it: your doctor or psychiatrist replaces the priest. Your medications are the means to "exorcise" demons with names like influenza, chronic fatigue syndrome, cardiovascular disease and so on, as well as mental disorders such as schizo-affective, bipolar and so on.
For all the medications are for are to control and manage disease or behaviour so it doesn't annoy the neighbours.
Cultures which have a place for mental illness are the shamanic ones. If you have depression and aren't out harvesting the grain by hand like everyone else, then you could trade your produce for a special ritual that helps get rid of the "evil spirits". After a few hours, you are cured and ready to get up and help harvest the crops.
Today, civilized society waits until simple depression morphs into a mental illness sometimes needing a trip to the hospital and 48 hours in the psychiatric ward.
A person could cling all they want to the false belief that their childhood experiences are more important than making new ones that help us get over the trauma and transform the negativity into positive benefit.
If he were to tell any psychiatric doctor or nurse of that trauma, they will react out of fear to hospitalize him. This is because the telling of the long-lost trauma results in traumatizing the caregiver.
So, the mental health consumer learns quickly to deny the symptoms that are manageable, and tries hard not to perpetuate that trauma in her daily life. She does so by complying with medication and therapy.
In due time, mental health is maintained when the consumer is able to be crisis-free for more than six months.
Originally written: April 19, 2007 at 4:15 PM
Updated: February 1 at 9:50 PM
20130512
Review on PBS' New Asylums 2
The use of prisons as the asylums of the 21st century for the mentally ill came about after the State decided freeing the mentally ill from state hospitals and treating them in the community is cheaper than the costs of hospital maintenance, due to union wages rising since 1972.
That's when the first releases were done. From there, the State rented halfway houses from property owners to house mental health clients in an appropriate community setting.
However, a mentally ill person is treated like a possible criminal when his behavior is associated with a crime. Unfortunately, prison is bedlam when it comes to the mentally ill.
This video lacks that information, and appears to start from the second-half of the documentary itself.
Overall, I did not learn if any of the mental health clients improved as the filming progressed. IN the cases of patients who get imprisoned, the likelihood of that is rare since they have been in and out of prison for several years on petty crime charges.
My impression of prison is its use in maintaining stabilization of clients is negligable. The overall impression from this video I got was that criminally charging clients for petty crimes is not conducive to maintaining a stable environment for them.
20130501
I'm not mad enough for the loony bin (poem)
No, no, I'm not mad enough
for the loony bin!
Though I have tried therapy,
Once I was caught being
selective about the truths
I'd tell my ex-therapist,
My case was closed
and now I can't get back in.
No, no, I'm not mad enough
for the loony bin!
The therapist, he says to me,
"I don't think you'll ever
end up in the emergency ward."
Now my case is close,
and I can't ever get back in.
So, so, I know I'm sane,
even though from time to time,
I'll lose sleep from insomnia,
pseudo-hallucinate auras,
"smoke" floating to the sky,
and other freaky stuff like that.
Then I'll check in to sleepy time.
for the loony bin!
Though I have tried therapy,
Once I was caught being
selective about the truths
I'd tell my ex-therapist,
My case was closed
and now I can't get back in.
No, no, I'm not mad enough
for the loony bin!
The therapist, he says to me,
"I don't think you'll ever
end up in the emergency ward."
Now my case is close,
and I can't ever get back in.
So, so, I know I'm sane,
even though from time to time,
I'll lose sleep from insomnia,
pseudo-hallucinate auras,
"smoke" floating to the sky,
and other freaky stuff like that.
Then I'll check in to sleepy time.
20130315
Sane Computing
If computers are controlling your life, here's a tip:
If a person spent most of his time away from computers during the day, then that leaves just enough time to play games, and answer email.
If you work using your computer, then apply the seventy-five minutes of work with fifteen minutes of break guideline to computer use, not three hours or more a day!
This time management guideline is useful in post-secondary education. A few instructors even allow for a five minute smoke break at the forty-five minute mark, and use the final thirty minutes of class time for reviews, tests or Q & A.
It is unhealthy to be on the computer for more than ninety minutes without any break. One might develop irrational agoraphobia and other anxieties the longer one sits in front of a computer. Additionally, there have been Emergency Ward anecdotes where children have suffered a rare seizure from playing video games for over three hours.
So, treasure your time away from your computer at home.
If you use computers at work, then your work place should have a time management plan in place. Your Human Resources department should also be asking the IT guy in your company to filter out Internet Messaging and porn sites, in an effort to reduce computer misuse at work, which are a waste of business time and productivity.
The above statements have not been written to profit any time management company, nor was it motivated with anything other than to advocate for sane computing both at home and at the workplace.
YMMV
Original post: May 24, 2010 1357H
Update posted: March 15, 2013 2339H
If a person spent most of his time away from computers during the day, then that leaves just enough time to play games, and answer email.
If you work using your computer, then apply the seventy-five minutes of work with fifteen minutes of break guideline to computer use, not three hours or more a day!
This time management guideline is useful in post-secondary education. A few instructors even allow for a five minute smoke break at the forty-five minute mark, and use the final thirty minutes of class time for reviews, tests or Q & A.
It is unhealthy to be on the computer for more than ninety minutes without any break. One might develop irrational agoraphobia and other anxieties the longer one sits in front of a computer. Additionally, there have been Emergency Ward anecdotes where children have suffered a rare seizure from playing video games for over three hours.
So, treasure your time away from your computer at home.
If you use computers at work, then your work place should have a time management plan in place. Your Human Resources department should also be asking the IT guy in your company to filter out Internet Messaging and porn sites, in an effort to reduce computer misuse at work, which are a waste of business time and productivity.
The above statements have not been written to profit any time management company, nor was it motivated with anything other than to advocate for sane computing both at home and at the workplace.
YMMV
Original post: May 24, 2010 1357H
Update posted: March 15, 2013 2339H
20130311
Lost for 10 years!
Noah's life was transformed from one of happiness and good health before his drugging, to one of severe depression, anxiety, diabetes, high blood pressure, severe migraines, severe hostility, homicidal tendencies, aggression, suicidality, etc., etc., etc. His history now includes involuntary commitment to 7 mental hospitals, placement in 12 foster homes, and literally dozens of so-called mental health “professionals” pulling and tearing at his life & his psyche. At each turn, at each institution, while in the hands and/or care of these 'professionals' Noah was taken deeper and deeper into the world of a severely mentally ill youngster, for he was being legally drug abused to the full extent of 1000 mgs per day (!) of psychotropic/antidepressant/SSRI drugs. He was only 14 years old!
Could it be that "psychotropic/antidepressant/SSRI drugs" are the gateway to mental illness? Yes, if you value your intellect, your self-respect and your sanity, then such drugs are almost as dangerous as recreational drugs to your health and happiness.
While a few people may remain stable on a strict regiment of psychiatric meditation, I find it hard to conclude that drug therapy for behavior disorders is useful for children under 16.
To drug a child for supposed ADHD is almost child abuse.
Update: March 11, 2013
I wonder how Noah is doing now. The more I read about this case, the more I feel vindicated in the use of my medication (gabapentin and cyclobenzaprine), precisely because adequate rest is important in the control of anxiety and relieve from depression..
So I have added more webpage links in the reference section of this article.
Original post: February 20, 2007 0052H
Update posted: March 11, 2013 0300H
Able Child - Gloria Wright: http://web.archive.org/web/20070605162725/http://www.ablechild.org/gloria%20wright.htm
Could it be that "psychotropic/antidepressant/SSRI drugs" are the gateway to mental illness? Yes, if you value your intellect, your self-respect and your sanity, then such drugs are almost as dangerous as recreational drugs to your health and happiness.
While a few people may remain stable on a strict regiment of psychiatric meditation, I find it hard to conclude that drug therapy for behavior disorders is useful for children under 16.
To drug a child for supposed ADHD is almost child abuse.
Update: March 11, 2013
I wonder how Noah is doing now. The more I read about this case, the more I feel vindicated in the use of my medication (gabapentin and cyclobenzaprine), precisely because adequate rest is important in the control of anxiety and relieve from depression..
So I have added more webpage links in the reference section of this article.
Original post: February 20, 2007 0052H
Update posted: March 11, 2013 0300H
Able Child - Gloria Wright: http://web.archive.org/web/20070605162725/http://www.ablechild.org/gloria%20wright.htm
20130310
Coconut Oil and Ketones May Improve Mental Health
How Coconut Oil Helps
In the January 4, 2012 issue of Neurobiology of Aging, a research study of a ketone ester in an Alzheimer's mouse model by Yoshira Kashiwaya, M.D. and others in the laboratory of Dr. Richard L. Veech at the NIH in Rockville, Maryland found that "compared to animals fed a normal control diet, the Alzheimer's model mice who were fed the ketone ester (D-beta-hydroxybutyrate-(R)-1,3-butanediol) had significantly less amyloid and tau protein that form the plaques and tangles in the Alzheimer's brain, and the animals showed reduced anxiety, and improved learning and memory compared to the mice fed the control diet."
According to the website, Coconut Oil, Ketones and Alzheimer's, "ketones mimic some of the effects of insulin and are also anti-inflammatory. Inflammation is another key feature affecting the Alzheimer's brain."
Coconut oil is a source of ketones. Its use may help reduce anxiety and improve learning and memory.
Commentary:
In my opinion, Alzheimer's Disorder may be affected by Varicella Zoster Virus which hides in the neurons. This may explain mental and behavioral issues people with AD face daily.
It may also explain mental illness i.e. because the brain cannot feel pain, other somatic changes may manifest itself as cognitive distortions, which are consist of mental and behavioral negativities such as confusion, delusions, etc.
Therefore chicken pox and shingles caused by reactivated VZV is a causal factor in depression and bipolar disorder. VZV causes depression due to pain and the suffering resulting from that pain.
Also, herpes may be a causal factor affecting persons with the schizophrenic mental condition.
Original post: June 2, 2010 0327H
Update posted: March 9, 2013 2004H
References:
Coconut oil and ketones: http://coconutketones.blogspot.com/
Cognitive distortions: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_distortion#List_of_distortions
US National Shingles Foundation: http://www.vzvfoundation.org/
Herpes complicates schizophrenia: http://www.medpagetoday.com/Psychiatry/Schizophrenia/20451
In the January 4, 2012 issue of Neurobiology of Aging, a research study of a ketone ester in an Alzheimer's mouse model by Yoshira Kashiwaya, M.D. and others in the laboratory of Dr. Richard L. Veech at the NIH in Rockville, Maryland found that "compared to animals fed a normal control diet, the Alzheimer's model mice who were fed the ketone ester (D-beta-hydroxybutyrate-(R)-1,3-butanediol) had significantly less amyloid and tau protein that form the plaques and tangles in the Alzheimer's brain, and the animals showed reduced anxiety, and improved learning and memory compared to the mice fed the control diet."
According to the website, Coconut Oil, Ketones and Alzheimer's, "ketones mimic some of the effects of insulin and are also anti-inflammatory. Inflammation is another key feature affecting the Alzheimer's brain."
Coconut oil is a source of ketones. Its use may help reduce anxiety and improve learning and memory.
Commentary:
In my opinion, Alzheimer's Disorder may be affected by Varicella Zoster Virus which hides in the neurons. This may explain mental and behavioral issues people with AD face daily.
It may also explain mental illness i.e. because the brain cannot feel pain, other somatic changes may manifest itself as cognitive distortions, which are consist of mental and behavioral negativities such as confusion, delusions, etc.
Therefore chicken pox and shingles caused by reactivated VZV is a causal factor in depression and bipolar disorder. VZV causes depression due to pain and the suffering resulting from that pain.
Also, herpes may be a causal factor affecting persons with the schizophrenic mental condition.
Original post: June 2, 2010 0327H
Update posted: March 9, 2013 2004H
References:
Coconut oil and ketones: http://coconutketones.blogspot.com/
Cognitive distortions: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_distortion#List_of_distortions
US National Shingles Foundation: http://www.vzvfoundation.org/
Herpes complicates schizophrenia: http://www.medpagetoday.com/Psychiatry/Schizophrenia/20451
20130228
Lack of Game Makes Me Blue
I feel that much of my behavior is related to major depressive disorder.
The consistent symptoms are weight gain, insomnia, and long periods of sleep.
Associated with it, but not a definite causal factor, is lack of a life partner.
At times I also tend to express my inner voice in a manner which leads to alienation by peers.
Yet none of my behavior symptoms indicate any obvious signs of delusion, dementia, mania or psychosis.
Most importantly I have no violent ideation (including rages).
However, the lack of a life partner shows a potential alienation of romantic feelings.
From what little I've been able to get out of women who've rejected me, I am "not their type", which means they wouldn't make love with me, even if I was the last man on Earth.
A probable cause of this alienation of affection is strongly related to persistence on my part, combined with lack of an established outer voice which is amenable to the mutual romantic interests of both the woman and myself.
In short, while I do walk the walk, I don't talk the talk in a manner which satisfies the woman's criteria of "her type."
However, deep down I know that anxiety and fear tends to serve as the unconscious motivation for the mate selection process amongst heterosexual females.
It's quite obvious that some women are anxious around me due to miscommunication, but an underlying fear of intimacy is raised because I am "not their type."
Sometimes I feel that most women have already made up their mind that they are not going to fuck me within 5 seconds of meeting me. :o
So obviously the solution is to meet more women, and learn and observe the cues which show that I am making the right, or wrong, impression on "that girl."
OK, maybe I am thinking too much about women and how to impress them.
While I cannot blame them for any health risks arising on my part from not being with a woman, or any deliberate attempt to put me at risk on their part, from an objective view, rejection is causing a depressive reaction.
My novel way of dealing with rejection and its reaction, depression, is to masturbate often. It appears to work better than anti-depressants, and reduces my anxiety better than benzodiazepines.
Still, it'd be nice to share an orgasm. :D
Thus I need game, not right away but sometime soon.
***And no, I am not whining or crying about lack of game. However, the dates with Mary Hand are getting monotonous.
The consistent symptoms are weight gain, insomnia, and long periods of sleep.
Associated with it, but not a definite causal factor, is lack of a life partner.
At times I also tend to express my inner voice in a manner which leads to alienation by peers.
Yet none of my behavior symptoms indicate any obvious signs of delusion, dementia, mania or psychosis.
Most importantly I have no violent ideation (including rages).
However, the lack of a life partner shows a potential alienation of romantic feelings.
From what little I've been able to get out of women who've rejected me, I am "not their type", which means they wouldn't make love with me, even if I was the last man on Earth.
A probable cause of this alienation of affection is strongly related to persistence on my part, combined with lack of an established outer voice which is amenable to the mutual romantic interests of both the woman and myself.
In short, while I do walk the walk, I don't talk the talk in a manner which satisfies the woman's criteria of "her type."
However, deep down I know that anxiety and fear tends to serve as the unconscious motivation for the mate selection process amongst heterosexual females.
It's quite obvious that some women are anxious around me due to miscommunication, but an underlying fear of intimacy is raised because I am "not their type."
Sometimes I feel that most women have already made up their mind that they are not going to fuck me within 5 seconds of meeting me. :o
So obviously the solution is to meet more women, and learn and observe the cues which show that I am making the right, or wrong, impression on "that girl."
OK, maybe I am thinking too much about women and how to impress them.
While I cannot blame them for any health risks arising on my part from not being with a woman, or any deliberate attempt to put me at risk on their part, from an objective view, rejection is causing a depressive reaction.
My novel way of dealing with rejection and its reaction, depression, is to masturbate often. It appears to work better than anti-depressants, and reduces my anxiety better than benzodiazepines.
Still, it'd be nice to share an orgasm. :D
Thus I need game, not right away but sometime soon.
***And no, I am not whining or crying about lack of game. However, the dates with Mary Hand are getting monotonous.
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