Like batshit manic insane? How do you cope?

Yep.

I punch clowns. Unfortunately, word has got around so I can only punch them in my imagination. It's fun there anyway, their heads explode and even more of them can fit into a Mini Minor that way.

I have from time to time, but it turned out that it was mostly external in the form of batshit insane, drug addict roommates. Life has been much more peaceful the last 15 or so years without them.

Were they clowns? Because I have a solution...

(03-18-2013, 06:10 PM)Leanne Wrote:  Were they clowns? Because I have a solution...

Where were you in my twenties? I would have loved your solution.

Seriously NC, everyone feels like every atom in their body is going in a different direction sometimes. I learned long ago that nothing is EVER as bad as it is in my imagination -- so I let myself think of worst case scenarios and then I'm pleasantly surprised when the grocer isn't an axe-wielding homicidal maniac after all. Just a bit of a weirdo with a banana knife. Not a knife made out of bananas, mind you, that would be too crazy even for me.

And sleep. Sleep fixes a lot.

Oh okay seriously then: yes, sleep is great, and looking back on the long list of things that I just got over.

But again, I definitely second the sleep thing.

My sleep schedule is all fucked up the ass. I have had a problem fixing it because I've never actually had a pattern.

---

I went to a therapist and a psychiatrist once.
They told me I was manic, I told them to fuck off.

My logic at the time wasn't sound.

Depending what city I got caught up in, different doctors have said I was manic-depressive, schizo-affective, obsessive compulsive, and a few things I can't remember. Once I went to see a doctor I'd never met before, and I told him I had A.D.D., and he wrote me a prescription for it. I was only in there seven minutes, and he didn't ask me more than three or four questions.

One time a doctor, after talking to me for a few minutes, started rubbing his hands together like a movie villain when he got to the subject of medication, and after going through a long list of possible combinations of drugs and the increasing of doses over time, he pulled a sample box of Lithium out of his desk drawer. I was reasonably certain that it was the only thing in that drawer, and that he'd been pulling that same box out since the late 1970s, and making a similar pitch.--What really got that doctor worked up was when he asked me if I believed other people could hear my thoughts. Well, I had just recently been investigating some of the classified, or maybe just lost and forgotten, files of Dr. Joseph Rhine and a few of his lesser known and uncredited colleagues concerning their famous studies of telepathy and telekinesis. I didn't tell the doctor that, I'm not a fool. And in answer to his question, I said that I'd like to think that it might be possible. And based hugely on that answer, my family was informed that I was psychotic, and needed to be normalized. He used the word "normalized" over and over. He wouldn't talk to me any more, he would only talk to me through another person that he spoke directly to when I was in the room. I guess that person was our translator that made his psycho-babble into my psychotic speech, and the other way around. Before any of this, we'd talked about my family's history of diabetes. That most of the male side of my family died of what people these days call "complications with diabetes" or something like that. When I got all my prescriptions filled, at the top of the side effects list, one of them said that the drug has been known to increase the risk of diabetes. I went back and got my translator to ask the doctor about that, and I was told that if I got diabetes, he'd put me on something else.

Now I write long letters and books and somewhat long Internet posts whenever I like. Because even if I didn't, people would still think of me as someone that did that type of thing. So I might as well.

I might as well.

today i am immobile, tomorrow i will circumnavigate the world.

Well if you get a car, pick me up on your way. If I'm still here, I'll go with you. I'm pretty sure I'll be here tomorrow though.

---

And go to sleep first. I know what it's like riding in the passenger seat with someone that's falling asleep behind the wheel. All the caffeine pills and blaring Sonic Youth albums are of no use. And real uppers typically led to violence.

Yes, I rather enjoy it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Fc67yQsPqQ

Don't forget Patsy Cline and Gnarls Barkley. They play the Gnarls Barkley sometimes when I somehow end up in Applebee's. And Z. Deschanel does a pretty "Crazy" for her girly girl organization. Oh and Willie Nelson.

And I know these aren't all the same song.

(03-19-2013, 02:45 AM)rowens Wrote:  Don't forget Patsy Cline and Gnarls Barkley. They play the Gnarls Barkley sometimes when I somehow end up in Applebee's. And Z. Deschanel does a pretty "Crazy" for her girly girl organization. Oh and Willie Nelson.

And I know these aren't all the same song.

Hi rowens, It is hard to beat Patsy Cline's "Crazy". Love it!

I've always liked Patsy Cline. I like her best on tape or record, but I have nothing to play them on right now.

................................


And with this topic of feeling crazy. Lots of people go to doctors and are told they have mental problems. Everyone has mental problems, but sanity is only relevant to functioning as a person in society. The homicidal axe-murderer might be sane in that sense, while the man that runs into a burning building to save other people might be delusional about his own abilities. I can't say that people aren't crazy, or that doctors have nothing to worry about.

I write on many topics, but whenever I write on this topic people usually assume that I'm ranting, and pounce on me rather than consider that I'm only presenting what I've seen. Not only in my personal experiences, but with others.

And the people with the typical everyday problems that are told by doctors that they're sick and need medication often aren't sick and don't need medication; and those people later feel that these so-called mental problems aren't as bad as others make them out to be. But there are people that really do have mental problems, problems with the way their brains function that might not interfere too much with their reasoning, but affects their nervous systems and the way they're able to move their limbs or the way they're able to perceive external things and react to them. And rather than go through life playing both sides of the handicap stigma, many people go to a doctor for some advice, and the doctor pounces right on to the shame and frustration and other mental symptoms of such conditions, telling a person they need drugs because that shame and frustration is a mental illness in itself. And these drugs screw around with the brain even more. And you're often worse off than when you started. Not to mention having had your shame justified and made concrete by an expert.

Doctors assume that if you have a mental problem it can obviously be fixed. But if the drugs don't work, and that's all they have to offer, why can't they just admit that you're screwed up, and it's a crude fact of reality? And suggest that it's all right to try to find other ways to deal with these issues? I know from experience that telling a doctor that you might feel better if you were able to travel to distant places and be among things that make you happy and feel motivated to keep living and do better work and have better relationships with others, many will tell you that's delusional thinking if you can't afford such a trip. Though having you take expensive medications that you can't afford makes all the sense in the world.

---

But all this is useless to talk about. I want the crazy people to run wild in the streets. Or at least admit that they already are.

Why do you suppose doctors make these assumptions?

(03-20-2013, 02:19 AM)rowens Wrote:  [...] Not to mention having had your shame justified and made concrete by an expert.
[...]
But all this is useless to talk about. I want the crazy people to run wild in the streets. Or at least admit that they already are.

Ah, thank you Rowens, thank you so much !

I study in the health / care field, where you can earnestly be labelled "dysfunctional" because you were too stressed out to ask a question, or forgot to send back a paper to school.

As for the patients... I remember a man who had had a stroke a few weeks before. He was in a wheelchair. When asked about his relation to his family -it was an item in a "communication" test- , tears came to his eyes and he started sobbing uncontrolably, saying he had a wonderful family and they helped him a lot. My teacher's comment when I mentioned it later ? "Oh, it's because of his brain injury. People with a right-hemisphere stroke can suddenly be oversensitive to certain things, and they're very self-centered anyway."

Same teacher later said I had to "question my fears" because I told her I didn't want to live in the countryside, to have kids or a driver's license.

_

[Secretly I want to get out of it all and become a baker.] [But doctors are right, rowens, that must be delusional thinking.]

Manic crazy? No. Desperate crazy? Depressed? All the time.

Honestly, I think most people could be crazy, if they tried a bit harder. Or look in the mirror long enough. Or whatever.

Usually I just do it in silence and hope things get better. But that wouldn't be possible if I were manic.

Mikey.

A long line of psychiatrists tried to nail THAT sticky note to my forehead.
He who laughs last, laughs insanely.

(03-20-2013, 04:44 PM)softlyfalling Wrote:  A long line of psychiatrists tried to nail THAT sticky note to my forehead.
He who laughs last, laughs insanely.

I never feel crazy. Does that sound crazy?
tectak