Monthly Archives: June 2016
Link….Teen held in jail, tortured three years
Here’s the link:
They have held him and he’s only accused, not even convicted. I believe Mary Meale makes a good point that Latino and black men are far more likely to be held like this. I don’t endorse her show in particular since she emphasizes “right to treatment” too much, but this one caught my eye. Personally I think “right to having someone to talk to” is essential. “Right to being labeled” is a road to hell. Therefore, anyone in prison has the right to visits by clergy and any kind and understanding person such as a visitor who CARES. If that includes a mental health professional then fine. I keep wondering if prisoners claim mental illness only so they’ll have a person to talk to. Does that make sense to anyone out there? Would you lie and say you might be depressed just to have an hour a week to talk to a nice kind person for a while? Or are they well aware that if you say you are depressed you are labeled for life and end up with obligatory appointments after you get out? I think this varies according to location.
The new RAPE mentality, Sasha Menu Courey story revisited
This is the new world, folks
Boy rapes girl. This is part of life. Now, one of many reactions can occur. We can wish the rape would not have happened but it did. Now ideally, the boy would own up to what he did, directly apologize and not only make restitution but work with the community to educate others to end rape and explain that forcing a person into sex is a very wrong and violent thing to do.
This rarely happens. How often do we see people own up to what they did and apologize? We are being brainwashed that apologizing will get us into legal trouble. Even some workplaces demand that we adopt a new policy that you cannot own up to what you did. You have to blame the victim, that’s the policy, it’s called good business practice even though it isn’t. It’s the new dishonest way of doing business, which is now praised in the new model.
Here’s what generally happens. Boy rapes girl. Boy gets off completely and everyone ignores what happened. No one gives a shit that he is continuing to rape and harm others. The girl doesn’t know what to do but she is advised (are you ready for this one?) to HEAL. Yep, heal.
Now, the new rape mentality demands that taking responsibility means you go to therapy if you are raped. BULLSHIT!!!!! Yet most people accept this as truth and call it “living in the moment” or “radical acceptance” and other trendy slogans used to protect the rapist. We don’t want to violate HIS human rights, after all. Society rushes to protect him since we cannot tolerate acknowledging we may have blown it and not noticed when the girl first cried out. “Help! I’m being raped!”
Turn the other cheek, let the perp off and give the mental health system the okay to drug you and turn you into a zombie and therapy addict for life. And if you do, you’re praised and told you did the right thing!
Where the hell did that thinking come from? Let’s forget it all happened and now let’s all heal. Such baloney as I have never heard before. Don’t give those mental health professionals one more penny because we’re only perpetuating a lie.
A while back I found this story and blogged on it:
http://espn.go.com/video/clip?id=10537064
I’ve read some of the other stories, the way the investigation was dropped, and the way it was all blamed on “mental illness” when clearly we’re blaming the wrong thing.
Can’t people see there was no illness? Is it an illness to be raped? NO! Is it an illness to be raped and then, to repeatedly not be heard? Is it an illness if when you are not heard, over and over, and rejected each and every time you try and try to get out of the voiceless rut you are in, repeatedly condemned and kicked out, you finally get pissed.
I don’t think so. By the way, don’t you love that reporter in the ESPN video? The one statement the voice-over made that I thought was grossly offensive was to state that Sasha “needed treatment” when clearly she needed to be heard! Moodiness in teens is NORMAL and so is erratic behavior. One would expect erratic behavior following a rape. Shouldn’t that have raised eyebrows instead of calling in the MH cops to “treat” her? The mental health department’s ignoring a college student who is raped, no matter whether she files a police report is a crime on the part of the department for failure to act as mandatory reporters, but apparently the college Title whatever laws obscure this and the MH department claims they had to protect her confidentiality. While that was true, they also suppressed the truth and suppressed any wrongdoing on their own part.
Clearly it was discriminatory and not protecting Sasha but protecting Mizzou to kick her off the team and then to kick her out of school. Yes that’s what was done. If you hand someone a form when they are in no position to refuse to sign it that means you are kicking out.
However, this rape mentality is pervasive in all of society. If you are harmed, go to therapy. BULLSHIT!!!!
I was abused in a hospital (actually two) and now it’s my fucking duty to go to therapy. NOPE!!! This is yet one more way to get off the hook, folks. This is one more way to REFUSE TO ACKNOWLEDGE the act was done and to give these folks a ticket to continue to do what they are doing to innocent patients.
Oh, there’s a cure. Therapy! If you are abused in a hospital it’s okay. We’re all supposed to ignore it, refuse to listen and now tell you you have a new illness called PISSED OFF. Your illness is so terrible (i.e. negative energy, bad aura, etc, all trendy words for mental illness) that we refuse to talk to you. We demand that you heal or don’t come back. It’s all the victim’s fault for refusing to heal, certainly not the society that continues to refuse to listen.
I don’t think Sasha had any choice left. Think on that one. Our rape mentality society needs to think good and hard next time it condemns one more victim.
My latest sound recording: “If psychiatrists were honest with their patients”
Here you go, easy-play on YouTube. Share!
Is Independence Day a scam?
“Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”
Abe Lincoln
But was he pulling the wool over our eyes?
Let’s look at this statement carefully. Four score and seven would be 87. So he was talking about the European invasion of the American continent that was already inhabited by a number of great Nations. Were these invaders only male? According to Abe, yes. I see a bit of a problem if that were the case since they would have had problems procreating without European women around. Of course we know they raped the locals. Isn’t that a given? Rape and pilfer.
Are all men created equal? Apparently the European white guys sure are all equal since they’re all dead now. According to the current and upcoming Bible, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (Version 5, blessed by Torrey and kissed by Big Pharm), All psychiatrists are created equal and we patients are numbered accordingly.
Was this nation conceived in liberty? Is that even possible? They had slaves, remember? They still do. Liberty and justice for the compliant. Take your pills and they might be nice but you’ll die.
Let’s all dress cool to honor psych survivors
If people think it’s cool to shave their heads and walk around bald because they think they’re doing something for cancer, how about honoring psych survivors by raising “awareness”:
Let’s all dress in oversized trousers (held up by suspenders) in honor of those who gained over 100 pounds on Zyprexa and similar meds.
Let’s all wear adult diapers to honor those who endured Clozaril.
How about huge ten-gallon hats in memory of those who had to take Thorazine and burned to a crisp.
To remember our ECT, let’s wear “goo” in our hair all day long. On one temple for unilateral, on both for those of us who got turned into double basket cases. Do baskets come in cases? I don’t think so. Only in psychiatry!
As for those who died and have left us, we should all carry brooms and march in the streets since the real stories of the dead were swept under the rug by the institutions that killed them.
Is bald beautiful? Probably prettier than the version with Tardive Dyskinesia.
Stop the labeling. Stop forced and coerced drugging. End incarceration.
Boston Globe article is offensive and full of scare tactics
Here it is:
https://apps.bostonglobe.com/spotlight/the-desperate-and-the-dead/series/families/
So we all need Big Pharma to save the day…..
No mention here of the culprit, the drugs and psychiatry itself!! Do we expect accurate reporting from these journalists or do we want more sensationalism and witch hunts?
No one is obliged to go to “therapy.” It should be a choice.
I don’t owe it to myself to go to therapy nor to anyone else. Even in spousal relationships, I don’t think anyone “owes it” to another to go to therapy to “save the relationship.” I must admit I didn’t always feel that way, though. Here’s an example…..
This happened ages ago so I have some hindsight on it. I met Joe when after he had sobered up. He was newly sober so he was gung-ho over AA at first. I was well-versed in the Steps so we used to talk about it. I attended a few meetings with him but not many since I figured that was his turf. He had his buddies there, after all.
I don’t know exactly when he started gambling. He was never a casino gambler. His “drug of choice” was lottery tickets and he told me that all that started one night at a convenience store. He said he went to buy one or two tickets and then went back and just couldn’t stop.
His total purchase for the night was alarming to him, he said, so he had phoned his psychiatrist right away, asking Dr. White, “Doc, am I manic?”
Joe and I were both assumed bipolar and neither of us were. Joe got labeled because he attempted suicide during alcohol withdrawal and it was mistaken for a manic episode. After that, for his own “safety” he was put on drugs. Oh, glorious wonderful hindsight! I know now, decades later, that undoubtedly the drugs themselves caused any further psychosis he had beyond that. He told me around 1990 that he was sure that delerium tremens accounted for everything that had happened years ago, but neither of us could do nor say anything as so much time had passed. We were so afraid to defy family expectations of us. We were pigeonholed into our roles and we stuck to them.
From what I recall, Dr. White had assured Joe he was not manic. Of course he wasn’t! Joe was not ever manic, for godsakes. Sadly, he and I had to play the game. Joe was afraid he would get impulsive with the lottery tickets again, though. That was his fear. He wasn’t an impulsive person so all this was way, way out of character.
He did. It was awkward and uncomfortable between us, and of course took a financial toll. He had plenty of money it seemed but I knew there would be problems eventually. I was starting to feel the drain on my bank account since I had already begun to compensate for the missing funds.
Then, oddly, Dr. White disappeared. No one ever found out what happened to him. There were no news stories, no explanation. Since White is a common name, I was never able to find out a thing. I never knew his first name. That I know of, he was Department Chair of Psychiatry at St. Elizabeth’s in Boston for a while, but I don’t think he was chair at the time he disappeared. Joe knew where his home was because White had a home office there. Joe had driven to his home to see if he could find out any information, but apparently no one was there. This was around Christmastime 1996.
Joe had been gambling around a year then, on and off. It was making me furious by then, but only to the extent that he imposed it on me. He’d ask me to purchase lottery tickets for him. I told him I wouldn’t do it, and he’d get mad. We didn’t fight but it got awkward. He told me he didn’t want to change. It was almost as if I were demanding that he quit smoking, he said.
I told him we were talking apples and oranges. I explained that his smoking wasn’t an imposition on me. His smoking wasn’t making me go broke. It wasn’t embarrassing me. He was disposing of the butts properly and not littering on my floor, I explained, nor blowing smoke in my face. I told him I didn’t even mind buying smokes for him if he paid for them, so long as I didn’t have to smoke them. It was a matter of convenience.
Lottery tickets were another story, I told him. Even if he paid for them I couldn’t comfortably buy them for him or for anyone without feeling incredibly self-conscious and uncomfortable. After going into the same store for him five or six times the clerk had made snide comments to me, I explained, about my “habit” and rolled his eyes when I said “they’re for my boyfriend.” I couldn’t imagine what children of alcoholics go through having to buy booze for their parents, or children who have to buy lottery tickets for compulsive gambler parents.
I made a call to Gam-Anon, but they weren’t too helpful. Their meetings were way over in East Boston. They said to come to a meeting but I couldn’t really get to East Boston and of course Joe wasn’t about to go to a GA meeting anytime soon.
You cannot force therapy nor “treatment” on anyone, nor force a person into a 12 step program and doing so will not save a marriage. You can tell yourself over and over, “I wish he would do something about his problem” and blame “his problem” on your life not being okay.
But is your life really falling apart due to HIS PROBLEM? Gimme a break.
Oh, hindsight is such a terrific thing. Yes, I did blame all my difficulties on HIS PROBLEM for a while. But not forever. I didn’t stay paralyzed in that mode for very long since ECT jolted me out of that so I had to deal with brain damage for the next year and a half.
Looking back, if you are stuck blaming your whole life on HIS PROBLEM you’re wrong. If you are hung up on “If only he’ll go to therapy and get it fixed” and of course he won’t and that’s holding back your whole life, you’re wrong.
I’m sure after ECT damaged my brain, poor Joe blamed his whole life on “Why can’t Jules get her brain fixed and why don’t those doctors do something?” since he took care of me after ECT turned me into a basket case. It was a lot of unexpected work for him and neither of us anticipated it nor were equipped to deal with it.
If you are in a relationship, you cannot continuously point the finger at the other person’s problem and make any claim that YOUR life is falling apart because your partner isn’t getting treatment. To me, that’s a formula for disaster.
My thinking is that your life is your life, and his life is his life. What I had to do was to realize that simple fact. We were two different people. We could still love each other, and love even more deeply if we weren’t so overly involved.
It was a lot of work since we were caregiving for each other by then. ECT made me dependent since my brain didn’t work right. I could no longer do things for myself and had to rely on him. But still, that didn’t mean I WAS him. It didn’t make our SELVES overlap.
We each had to take steps to save the relationship. He did not go to GA. The gambling resolved on its own. Meanwhile, I found other friendships by getting my first email account. This was on AOL. Remember “You’ve got mail?” So this way, I had a new world, my online world, and that was separate from Joe. He began to go back to AA where he had his friends who weren’t my friends. He also purchased a drum set, rented a practice room, and enjoyed many hours practicing. I took up running and I also began to write my first novel.
Now, we had our separate turfs once more. This was how we had to do our relationship, and that was how it always worked best. We spent many hours together each day and those hours were more calm and peaceful now.
In the year before he died we enjoyed attending minor league baseball games in Lowell, Massachusetts. Joe was thrilled that I could get such excellent seats for us. We loved the games, seeing up-and-coming players get started, and seeing children and their families at the games was exciting for us, too. We even drove to Upstate New York and toured the Baseball Hall of Fame. We spent several days there.
Much of what had happened before was something we didn’t revisit often. I didn’t think much about the ECT and how I ended up a basket case afterward. My life had gone on. His life had gone on, too, and he wasn’t gambling anymore.
I honestly don’t know if Joe died with a smile on his face or not. I suppose that’s between him and God, since he believed there was one. One day, maybe a month or two after his death, he came to me in a dream and told me Heaven was fantastic. “You should see this place! The food is great, and they have shows every night!” he said. Then, he was gone. I have had visions of him on and off over the years.
You are you, and I am I. Will our paths cross? If so, it’s beautiful. Leave it at that.
Why I am falsely assumed to be “alcoholic”
Twice now I have been given a demeaning look and assumed to be alcoholic. I am not. But now I realize why. I am an old hag. I am unemployed. I do not drive. I do not own a car. I am US citizen.
People in USA are assumed to be rich and spoiled to the extent that we all own cars. We are assumed to all drive. We are all assumed to want that Big American Dream car.
What if we don’t? Unheard of!
I gave up driving ages ago. By choice. I suppose people are so shallow they assume I had a DUI. Damn idiots.
Hypothyroidism? Should I take a natural or synthetic thyroid supplement?
This question pops up now and then and I thought I would throw in my two cents.
I am not a medical professional, that is, I am not an MD. I am a person who was diagnosed with hypothyroid ages ago and have gathered various opinions on the topic so I am summarizing my findings here.
First of all, how does a person know their thyroid is not working well? Chances are your thyroid is working just fine. Under ordinary circumstances, it will hold up okay. But if thyroid problems run in your family or if you have been exposed to certain toxins (such as certain drugs) or had your thyroid removed or partially removed, you will want to get checked for thyroid functioning.
Signs of low thyroid functioning include dry brittle hair, dry nails, dry skin, feeling cold, swelling in your neck (because your thyroid is trying to make up for the deficiency) and a host of other miscellaneous problems. You might also feel sluggish and gain weight. Difficulty losing weight alone is not usually caused by sluggish thyroid, even though many would love to blame their glands.
If you really have a thyroid problem it will show up in the blood level and will be quite apparent. I have known a few people who managed to get their hands on thyroid pills and took them thinking it would help them lose weight. This is a huge mistake and I cannot more highly recommend against it.
First of all, taking thyroid pills to lose weight when you don’t really have hypothyroidism won’t cause weight loss. What will happen is that you will fool your thyroid. Your thyroid will start working more sluggishly. I think that defeats the purpose, right? You’ll feel sick after a while, and you won’t lose any weight. Whatever you do lose will be the placebo effect. Or you will gain. Why not just take a placebo and tell yourself it’ll work?
If you have had your thyroid removed, then you really have to take the thyroid pill. The reason is that your body cannot make the hormones that your thyroid used to make. So you add them with a pill. It’s not the end of the world. Imagine what people go through if they have had an eye removed, or are living with artificial limbs.
If your thyroid is running very very low, a decision will have to be made. I’m sure if you had known you would have made every effort to preserve your thyroid. Unfortunately these things aren’t always caught in time. Some people are at a borderline stage and they can do things to restore their glands. Others are too far gone. Which is which?
Most of us do not have time nor even realize that we are right on a precipice and this ultimate decision rests on the hands of the endocrinologist. If you go on the thyroid pill your thyroid will “think” it no longer has to do a thing so it’ll shut down entirely. The endocrinologist usually decides if that’s the only option, or if there’s any chance left to restore it. Honestly, I don’t know if they tend to rush to the pill too soon overall. I know a few people who managed to avoid thyroid supplements because they caught the problem soon enough. From what I recall, these docs see thyroid glands all day long and they know what they are doing. I hope!
If the decision is “You need the pill,” then which one? Usually a doc will recommend Levothyroxine, and then, put you on it and adjust the level according to blood tests. It’s extremely cut and dry. The pill itself doesn’t have side effects unless you screw up and miss doses or take too much. Occasionally other drugs can cause the level to go haywire, or there can be problems metabolizing it, again due to whatever else you are ingesting.
They say to take it on an empty stomach. Most people take it first thing in the morning. However you choose to take it really doesn’t matter so long as you are getting the level in the right range. The blood level is more important than particulars of how you take the pill. The object is to be healthy and for your body to function well.
Some people claim that Thyroline is “better” because it’s “natural.” I have heard different sides of this story and as far as I’m concerned this is my conclusion: First of all, whichever version you are taking, if it’s working great, then that’s fantastic. Why switch to something else because it’s named another thing, or because of the color of the pill or the brand name or because it says “natural” on the box?
Levothyroxine is made by many companies all over the world. The patent expired ages ago, so no Big Pharma is profiting from your using it. There are so many brands that pharmacists have pretty much lost track and joke that Levothyroxine is the one pill people can’t get high off of. Not only that, but that I know of, the 100 mcg size is made is surplus and is distributed for free in poor areas of the world and given away like penny candy. This is not like Zyprexa or Abilify. It’s not a huge profitmaker nor scandalous.
If a thief breaks into a pharmacy, do you really think he’ll steal the Levothyroxine? Aw, c’mon, by the time you’re done reading this sentence he’s made off with all the Oxy and painkillers, grabbed some syringes, and wiped out the cash drawer. And if you read further, he’ll get caught on camera. I hope he’s smiling.
Thyroline is more expensive and from what I hear, the sources vary. This means it’s harder to get a consistent batch., and harder to get the level right in the body. Yes, you can, of course, but I am surprised that people waste time and energy struggling with this “natural” hormone which sounds overpriced and iffy, when really, Levothyroxine is not a poison and much easier to prescribe and obtain worldwide. We aren’t killing anyone by purchasing Levothyroxine nor making some tycoon rich. Doesn’t Thyroline come from animal sources? I’m honestly not sure.
If you are one of those people who cannot take Levothyroxine or it’s not working or you are allergic to the fillers, then by all means, try something else. However, the majority of us do not have these problems.
From what I know, after you are taking a thyroid supplement for a while and “stabilized,” you won’t have to be tested often. Some need the level adjusted more frequently than others. I don’t think they know all the reasons why.
Lastly, it’s not the end of the world. When that happens, we’ll probably know. Then, we can take that Ice-9 out and we’ll all freeze on the spot. I doubt at that point anyone will give a fuck about thyroid glands.
Till then, Julie and Puzzle
This Hunger Is Secret 