One new chapter this past week, and a medical emergency

I am both proud of myself and a little let down.  I only wrote one new chapter for my book this past week.  

Maybe I should forgive myself?

For my own account of things, my life is still being impacted by Hurricane Helene, an hour or so south of the true devastation.  A few days ago on Friday I saw my psychiatrist and got refill prescriptions for my medication.  I assumed the scripts were sent over to the pharmacy as usual.  When I went to pick up the refills early that evening however, the pharmacy was closed and there was a note on the door saying that their Internet was down and they couldn't fill prescriptions at all.  I had gotten an automated text from the pharmacy several days earlier, saying the hurricane had knocked out their computers.  I just assumed they would have been back in business already.

That was a wrong assumption on my part.

There was one med in particular that I was all out of.  I was counting on getting the refill.  And I needed that med.

It might have been a long shot but I drove to the emergency room of the nearby hospital and explained my situation to them.  It was a very good idea, because a little less than an hour later they gave me an Rx for a "bridge" of the med I needed to get me through the next week.  A quick visit to the CVS practically next door to the hospital later and I had my medication.

That emergency averted, I went home and plopped down and tried to write something, anything.  Before I knew it I was working on a new chapter.  It's the final one of part two, which covers a nine-years span of my life.  I completed it last night.  And there are going to be some edits and revisions but the basic endoskeleton is in place at least.  I'm happy with it.

I'm going to try to write some more today, before my week begins in earnest and the opportunity to write before Saturday becomes diminished.  I'm supplementing my typical work with a part-time job, it lets me engage with more personal projects on weeknights and long weekends.  Maybe I'll get to knock something else out before returning to that job tomorrow.

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I have a LinkedIn page?!?

Actually I've had it for a very long time now (I think 2006).  I just haven't done anything with it until this week...

Some friends suggested that I "increase marketability".  So I'm putting myself out there in a way I might have not done before.  In assembling this I've become a bit astounded at all the experiences that have been racked up over the past decade or two.  In spite of having manic depression - or maybe because of it - I've wound up with a pretty impressive skills-set and collaborative history.  I also uploaded and included a portfolio of some of my video work, bits of which have never been seen by a wide audience until now (I'm particularly fond of the "Wacky Dead" clip).

Anyway, if you want to see the professional side of me, here's my LinkedIn page.

 

 

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No, I do not "hate" anyone LGBT

Sigh...

I shouldn't have to make this post.  But as it seems how EVERYTHING today is supposed to be qualified, quantified, factionalized and most especially sexualized...

Contrary to what some have claimed, I do not now nor have I ever harbored any kind of hatred toward those who have chosen the homosexual lifestyle.  Or who are bisexual.  Or transsexual.  Or whatever.

As a Christian, I am called to not hate anybody.  I am in fact commanded to hate my own sin and my own fallen carnal nature, before I dare levy hatred toward another.  It is part and parcel to the "dying unto self" that those who follow Christ are told that they must do on a daily basis.

That does not mean however that I can or must acquiesce to any activity that is self-destructive.

And that, is what LGBT behavior is.

I've seen the damage and disease and ultimately death that is wrought by homosexuality.  Have looked at the photos of lacerated anal tissue.  Viewed images of penises wracked with things that no healthy male should have.  I have read the journal articles, about gay men and lesbians being far more prone to cancer than those who are not.  Human papillomavirus is a really nasty thing to subject one's genitalia to.  I have looked into the faces of people who have contracted full-blown AIDS, and those are eyes that I pray I never have to look into ever again.

Homosexuals have, on average, a lifespan twenty years shorter than that of heterosexuals.

Let that sink in.  A gay or lesbian person is likely to have two full decades shaven off their life expectancy, because of the all too physical consequences of homosexual behavior.

These are not things that can be "wished away" for sake of sexual license.  These are stone cold hard facts.  This is reality, that can NOT be escaped from because of one's "feelings" about the matter.

LGBTwhatever is incompatible with human design.  Its myriad of associated diseases and disorders attest to this.

How do I, as a person called by God Himself to love others, reconcile that love with the expectation that I am to celebrate a "lifestyle" that leads so very often to death?

I can not.  I can no more endorse the LGBT community than I can endorse cigarette smoking, or abusing crystal meth.  Because those are self-destructive behaviors also.

I can love homosexuals.  I can love lesbians. I can love bisexual individuals.  I can love transsexuals, though what they do to themselves is especially haunting.

But as a Christian (who fails and falls more often than not), as an objectivist who understands the concreteness of reality, as merely a human being trying to be decent... for those reasons and more, I can not love their kind of behavior.  Because when you scrape away everything else that's Chris Knight, you're left with someone who simply does not want to see anyone die.

No, "love is love" is not true.  There are many kinds of love.  There is philios: love of brothers and sisters.  There is the love of parents to children.  There is logos: the love of God.  And, yes, there is eros: love expressed sexually between man and woman.

What the LGBT community and its supporters demand we accept is not love at all.  It is lust.  And they want said lust to be without the burden of personal responsibility.  And THAT again is a denial of reality.

If you love a person... and I mean really love someone, you will NOT selfishly lead that person to demean themselves for your own desires, at risk of their health and even very life.

I love my friends.  There are men who are as close and dear to me as real brothers.  I love them and I would die for any of them.  But not for an instant have I been tempted to take it to an entirely different and inappropriate level.

Once upon a time, not very long ago, most men and women were capable of accepting that.  That love is a many dimension-ed notion and that each kind had its own unique place in the scheme of things.

We were a better people, then.  Not a perfect people.  But we were at least striving against the baser instincts of carnal nature.  And we accomplished great things because of it.

As a historian, I know also where unrestrained sexual pleasure leads a society to.  And that as much as anything else persuades me about the truly insidious nature of the LGBT lifestyle.

I could easily sit here all night, and rattle off a dozen reasons and more why I can not celebrate homosexuality and transgenderism.  Just as easily as I could tick off all the reasons why I must condemn it.

And I hope that my many friends who are LGBT will at last understand where I'm coming from.

Finally, know this: sex is a sacred, holy thing.  It is something that I believe should be celebrated within the boundaries of husband and wife.  In my sincere philosophy ALL sexual sin is equally abhorrent.  I can not disapprove of LGBT behavior any more than I can of sex outside of marriage.  That makes me come across as a prude, I know.  But there it is.  I have plenty of friends who do not agree with this.  And that is fine.  But so far as I know none of them have called me "hate-filled" or "polygamaphobe" because of it.

Sex is not a toy.  It's not something to be engaged in frivolously.  It is meant to be a sanctified act.  "The marriage bed is to be honored by all," scripture tells us.  If that was done more often, maybe we wouldn't have things like children without fathers, venereal disease and shortened lifespans.

That is all.

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Lenten Blogging 2022: Day 37

Today's blog post sort of suggested itself, in the wake of events during the past three days.  Maybe what I'm about to say will help others who are finding themselves in the grip of depression, or some other mental health situation.

You see, this week my path has crossed those of two people who I care about: one in my personal life and another who I know from my work as a professional peer support specialist.  Each of them is having an emotional crisis.  Much like the ones I have had at various times over the course of the last twenty-some years.

In each case, I have suggested that inpatient care at a behavioral health facility should be considered.  Checking one's self into a specialized hospital for a few days or a week or so.  Letting trained doctors and staff work with a patient toward reigning in their depressive or schizophrenic episode.  Sometimes - as happened with me several months ago - it's because medication needs balancing out and I had to be monitored for any side effects.  The reasons vary.

One thing that it is NOT, is an "insane asylum".  I have never been inside a real asylum (apart from a haunted one I visited when I was younger).  People are not caged like animals in a behavioral health center.  It is not like The Snake Pit or One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest.  It is almost like a vacation away from it all.  The food tends to be quite good.  I would recommend bringing along a book to read (my most recent stay in inpatient found me reading Bitter Blood, a book that has sucked me in at least half a dozen times over the years).

If you or someone you know is in a mental crisis situation, there is NO shame whatsoever in asking for help.  Including checking yourself in to a behavioral health center.  Sometimes a little help is needed to get back on even keel, and that’s okay.  That’s more than fine. I’ve been in such places no less than five or six times and I’ve always come back out on top.

It’s NOT like it used to be on TV and movies.  Those days of mental health medicine in the western world are gone.  Apart from one place waking me up at 5 every morning to ask if I’d had a bowel movement (I blame the nurse), the care was always with dignity and compassion.

It can be nervous-inducing to think about checking yourself into inpatient care.  But I’d rather “nip it in the bud” (to quote Barney Fife) than let something run amok and out of control.  I know the darkness of which I speak, and I would rather no one else have to go through anything as I have had to endure.

 

 

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Medication mementos

So, it's been a few months since I last shared anything with all two of this blog's regular readers (actually it's more than two, and I am thankful for every visitor, including our friends in County Meath, Ireland).  Lots has happened since then... and relatively little of it much good.

Let me go back a bit to earlier this year.  I had been having some issues with the medications I take to manage my bipolar disorder.  It was so bad that I took two weeks off from work to address them, at a daytime outpatient facility.  It did enormous good in some aspects.  The involuntarily shaking of my body when certain memories arose, that has been remedied with the addition of one new med.  When I got back to work, things were pretty good... for awhile.

But then it seemed that other problems arose to take the trembling's place.  Serious lethargy, chronic headaches (especially in the morning), some weight gain, an increase in racing thoughts, elevated depressive episodes... these and more became the bane of my existence.  What did I do to counter them?

Yup.  More meds.  So many during these past ten months that I can't remember all of them by name.

In August I was prescribed another medication.  One I had taken already, mostly in the early years involving my diagnosis of bipolar disorder.  This was going to make me less lethargic, it was thought.

I wish that I could tell you what happened after that, because I have no solid memory at all.

My neighbors have told me that they found me outside in the rain, dancing about barely clothed.  At one point I was trying to open other people's car doors.  There was other bizarre behavior also.  Some of it I only discovered later.  Like, how I found an oven mitt in the washing machine.  The mitt was filled with my dog Tammy's dry food.  The bottle of pink salt in a closet.  My toothbrush on the coffee table.  I have not one whit of memory about any of this but I trust my neighbors.  One of them said that he had seen this before in other people: a medication reaction.

Then came the next day, when I was found face-down and unconscious on the asphalt on the side of the road next to my house.

I don't remember the ride in the ambulance.  I remember my face hurting like hell though.  I also vaguely remember thinking that I had been attacked by someone.  Now, I'm not sure at all about it.  My face was beaten to a pulp.  It could have been somebody hitting me. It could also have been simply me falling forward face-first onto the side of the road.

At the hospital I had to have stitches in my left knee, and was given a CT scan.  I barely remember a sheriff's deputy taking me home that night.

My supervisor later showed me some of the texts I had sent her.  Something about a Dr. Pepper can "pulsing" and one about Perseus and Medusa.

It had all been a reaction to the new medication.  Thank God I didn't do anything else, or did something that would have harmed my dog.  It's an enormously disturbing thought, that I could have gotten behind the wheel and tried to drive off.

Well, I'm blessed to have some very good people in my life.  One of my best friends and her mother came to my house the next day and we agreed that I needed some time in an inpatient environment.  I called the same place where I had been earlier in the year as an outpatient, and arranged to voluntarily check myself in.

I was a patient for a little over a week.  That's the second time I've been voluntarily admitted to a psychiatric facility.  Involuntary?  Four or five.  Which is almost certainly what would have happened had I not gotten off the med.  That med was the only one of my regimen that I was not given during my stay.

And now?  After missing almost an entire month I'm back at work, as a peer support specialist for the local mental health center.  I'm trying to regain confidence in me, because this ordeal has caused me to no longer fully trust myself.  If I don't remember most of one month, what else don't I remember?  Were there times in the past where I was an entirely different person, but I have no memory of it?

I really could have ended my own life during that month, and not even know that I was doing it.  There have been times when I've had suicidal ideations.  Some of them, quite recently.  But there was always something stopping me from going too far.  I think that letting down my friends, and not being there for my dog, are what keep me from straying past the line.  But what if I lost my faculties completely, and did something to harm myself without my conscious mind knowing it was happening?

Suddenly, my world is a very different place.  One that I can no longer take for granted or believe that I can have complete control over.

And that's what's been happening these past few months, my friends.  Nothing more or less than trying to hold onto some shred of sanity.

Will have more to write again soon.

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EMDR, Part 2

A little over a month ago I wrote about beginning Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing, or EMDR for short.  It's a therapy technique that, with the aid of a trained and experienced facilitator, I am employing to address the matter of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD and I promise that's the last acronym) that I was diagnosed with two years ago.

We are now well into the treatment, and it has begun to bloom forth some enormously positive results.  That, despite the unusual circumstances that have sent this procedure onto a wildly parallel tangent.  This past week was the third session that we had to conduct via video conferencing as a result of the coronavirus outbreak.  COVID-19 has affected pretty much every aspect of health care in our area.  The building I work in  - a mental health facility - has five entrances.  Right now passage is only allowed through one, and you have to answer a series of questions ("Have you been out of state in the past fourteen days?") and have your temperature taken before entry.  Even then the place is eerie quiet, absent the usual presence of our patients and most of the staff: all appointments are being conducted via telephone.  And then this past week the order came down that cloth masks were to be worn at ALL times apart from individual offices.

The location of my treatment is something of a "sister site" to ours.  It's having the same lockdown.  Hence, having to use tele-therapy, with the facilitator and I in our respective homes and working over the Internet.

How has that been working?  Surprisingly well, believe it or not.  Fortunately we were able to lay down most of the basic groundwork for everything that has come since, but we are still not at the real heart of EMDR: the use of light and motion to "rewire" the brain to steer away from traumatic memories.  I don't know how or when it's going to work when that part of the process sis entered into.

But still, a number of tools have come about that are already helping me to aggressively counter the trauma.  For example, there are two places that I can "retreat" to when things become almost overwhelming.   They needed to be places that have some kind of special significance.

For my second place, I chose this:

The desert of New Mexico near Socorro,
home of the Very Large Array

I spent over a month in Albuquerque around the end of summer in 2016.  Had things gone the way I had hoped, I would have been able to settle down there.  New Mexico is one of the most beautiful places I have ever discovered, and it was beckoning my heart the closer we got (my dog Tammy and I).  The scenery, the people, the opportunities there... well, the timing didn't quite work so well on that last one.  Maybe someday I will get to return there to stay.  It would definitely be a sweet place to have a family.

A few days after we arrived I went looking for something I had always wanted to see with my own eyes: the Very Large Array radio telescope near Socorro.  I knew what it looked like - it's been featured in many movies, particularly Contact - but to gaze upon it just from afar... that thing covers almost as much area as most counties in the United States!

It was the desert in all its wild natural beauty, magnificently married to that system of modern science.  Perhaps the largest research facility of any discipline on the surface of the Earth.  It was all one painting, and I was walking through it.  In those moments, I felt more alive than the vast majority of times throughout the span of my lifetime.

When asked for a place of peaceful retreat within my mind, during our third session, that is what I thought of immediately: the New Mexico desert.

And other tools have come about also, including the knowledge of certain people in my life who are something like "avatars" of aspects of character: the nurturer, the spiritual side, a few others.  There are more tools than I could convey about in a blog post, but you get the idea.

As I said, we still haven't gotten into the part of EMDR that many people consider to be the "real" course of treatment.  But this is all still of tremendous importance.  This is the foundation upon which all of that work will be built upon.  And so far we've been building a strong foundation indeed, according to the facilitator.

That's how things stand now.  What happens next will be impacted in one way or another by the coronavirus situation, and it's conceivable that we may have to delay the "lights-on" part of the protocol until the lockdown is alleviated.  But even so, I'm feeling very upbeat by what has come so far.  They are tools that can be used in the meantime and who knows, it might even strengthen the effects of the next phase of treatment.

Will write again soon.

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JOKER! THE RISE OF SKYWALKER trailer! First post in four months (but I'm getting better...)!

So let's get the obvious out of the way first:

YOWZA!!!!  Maybe the greatest Star Wars trailer in all of history.  But ahhhh... will the movie deliver the goods come next month?  No other way to be honest about it: some days I find myself loving The Last Jedi and others, I find it sorely lacking.  There's just more that could have been done with the sense of pacing and time.  And spending that much time looking for one guy in a casino on the other side of the galaxy (which makes NO sense given the Resistance fleet's situation) should have been excised completely from the script.  But, it is what it is.  And this far along in the game I've gotta be loyal to the end.  The tickets for opening night of The Rise Of Skywalker were already in virtual hand two hours before the trailer premiered.  Bought 'em sight unseen.  Because, well... Star Wars.

That trailer marks a personal first for me.  Never before have I done a reaction video.  This may be the only time it happens.  So here's what occurred as I watched The Rise Of Skywalker trailer:

Now let's talk about that other film the buzz has been about...

Since catching it the first night I have seen Joker three times.  And if there is any better film so far this year it has thus far evaded my gray matter.  Do the Oscars even matter anymore?  If they do then Joaquin Phoenix should have a lock on Best Actor with his portrayal of Arthur Fleck.  And the film itself deserves the top prize for dang near every known quantity of modern cinematography.  But I need to talk about the mental illness aspect...

Some of you already know that my profession is in the mental health field.  Mainly, my role is that of peer support advocate.  I do my best to assist people with diagnosed mental disorders in leading more productive and meaningful lives.  And I do it from the perspective of one who has long had a diagnosed mental disorder: myself.  Since last time this blog was posted on I've become a trained and certified specialist in the field.  And in the lead-up to Joker it was wondered aloud by colleagues whether this was a film that I should be seeing.  I can see their point.  Indeed, I see now more than ever that their concerns were not only warranted but prescient.  There were some scenes in Joker that were like watching a biopic of my own life (but that's all that I'll divulge on that).  It wasn't so much the manic-depression that stood to be triggered as it was the complex PTSD.

It astonishes me that the triggers were there but they weren't pulled.  But as recently as a year ago, they would have been.  And I like to think that it says a lot about how far I've come as a person.  Maybe that indicates something about how much more the bipolar disorder and PTSD have come to be managed.  'Course, I can't take all the credit.  God put many people into my life who have encouraged me along the way.  Maybe my faith in Him is getting to come back, too (again, not something I'll go into for now).

The second time seeing Joker was to better digest it as a film for its own sake.  Within a few more days the movie had been seen by several others around our offices of the mental health department.  Joker has evoked more discussion in our field than a film is apt to do for any industry (well, except for how I heard that the techs at NASA were having a giggle-fit while seeing Armageddon).  And I decided that maybe with all of the conversation about mental illness as it's portrayed in this movie, that maybe I should catch it again.  And I did.  And some thoughts have been percolating about it.

So here it is: Joker is not a movie about mental illness.  At least not mental illness as is medically understood.

Let's look at Arthur Fleck with an objective eye.  He's a traumatized individual, and more than he understands at first.  But the one and only true psychiatric condition he's been diagnosed with is his uncontrollable laughter.  Including laughing at the most inappropriate times.  It makes a wreck of his life and is ruining his dream of being a stand-up comedian.  However, strip away those issues... and Arthur Fleck is basically a nice guy with no mental illness of his own.

So what does he have?  Psuedobulbar effect is a behavioral disorder.  Not a mental illness.  There is a difference between the two.  In general, mental illness can be treated.  Not so much a behavioral disorder and in that regard Arthur Fleck's situation could be much worse.  He could be a full-blown psychopath.  That he cares for his mother and for others apparently should be thorough disqualification of his having psychopathy.  Neither does he seem to demonstrate narcissistic personality problems.  The delusions he has?  Most certainly mental illness... but those only began to come about after his circumstances began to deteriorate.  Left on his own, Arthur Fleck would likely have had a shot at a fairly normal and productive life.

Except that he was born and raised in Gotham City.  By someone who wasn't the best of mothers.  And he has a behavioral issue that brands stigma upon him by a town without pity.  And then one night he takes a ride on a train...

No, Arthur Fleck has no mental illness.  He makes some mistakes, but none that would really ruin anyone else for life.  His is a behavioral disorder that otherwise has no bearing on his personality.  Which, could be argued that he's a guy with a basically good heart.  And then one bad night pulls all the triggers and he's set down the path to true madness.  Again, not really his own doing.

What is Joker about, then?  I see its moral as being much the one of Frank Capra's Lost Horizon: "Be kind to one another."

It's not mental illness per se that gives birth to the Joker in Todd Phillips' film.  It's just one bad day followed by a slew of other bad days, and it might be enough to destroy almost anyone (as Alan Moore explored in the classic Batman graphic novel The Killing Joke).  It's the toxic buildup of man's inhumanity to man, dropped upon one man who otherwise has no skin in that game.  And he utterly cracks.

With enough pressure, it might happen to almost anyone.  So no, this iteration of the Joker (one of many, since the Joker loves his past being multiple choice) isn't the spawn of mental illness.  He's not even the creation of society at large.  But he is the product of the worst of that society when good people choose to be indifferent and unwilling to be intolerant of true cruelty.

As I said earlier, Joker has led to a lot of conversation throughout the professional mental health field.  No doubt it will for quite awhile to come.  I can easily see Joker being shown and discussed in high school and college classrooms for the next twenty years, at least.  So many spheres of thought that this film encompasses: psychology, sociology, law, ethics...

Joker is a masterpiece in every sense.  And I look forward to adding it to my Blu-ray collection (which may be coming as early as next month, if rumors about those profit-savvy Warner Brothers rushing it out before Christmas hold water).

Anyhoo, all two of this blog's faithful readers might be wondering: "Chris, where you been dude?"

Mainly it's been the job I've had for seven months now.  The past few especially have been loaded with training and certification exams.  There is also the matter of how it's a new program we've been getting off the ground.  It's been an adjustment, especially mentally: juggling professional obligations with maintaining my own mind.  The past number of weeks have borne some radically positive fruit in that regard.  But across the board, results are being seen.  And there is a lot of personal satisfaction to be drawn from that... and also an honor and a privilege to be working alongside such amazing people.

So, go see Joker if you haven't already.  Brace yourself for a whole new era when Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise Of Skywalker bows and we have saga rumors never more.  Watch this space for more posts soon!

And, be kind to one another.

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