Saturday, October 13, 2007

Bipolar Disorder

Bipolar disorder is a psychiatric condition defined as recurrent episodes of significant disturbance in mood. These disturbances can occur on a spectrum that ranges from debilitating depression to unbridled mania. Individuals suffering from bipolar disorder typically experience fluid states of mania, hypo mania or what is referred to as a mixed state in conjunction with depressive episodes. These clinical states typically alternate with a normal range of mood. The disorder has been subdivided into bipolar I, bipolar II and cyclothymia, with both bipolar I and bipolar II potentially presenting with rapid cycling.

Also called bipolar affective disorder until recently, the current name is of fairly recent origin and refers to the cycling between high and low episodes; it has replaced the older term manic-depressive illness coined by Emil Kraepelin (1856-1926) in the late nineteenth century. The new term is designed to be neutral, to avoid the stigma in the non-mental health community that comes from conflating "manic" and "depression."

Back in 1981, my diagnosis was personality disorder. It's cure 400 milligrams of Mellaril per day which is a basically Thioridazine ( Mellaril ) which is a is an anti psychotic drug of low-potency. Used in the treatment of disorganized and psychotic thinking. Also used to help treat false perceptions.

The drug handcuffed the mind and your aggression. It took away the will to be a free thinker, even if your thinking was in a good frame of mind. It also causes dry orgasms and that in itself is very depressing. I walked through my daily routine like a low budget zombie, with only 2 urges, coffee and cigarettes. Being from Brooklyn, NY and being from the streets of Brooklyn, NY this was a handicap I couldn't afford. So, needless to say I stopped taking Mellaril and tried to get on with my life.

Things were not very easy in any sense of the word, but at least I had the control of my actions some of the times. But, not all, and you wonder to yourself, why does my mind work like this? I look at people who are blind, or in a wheelchair or with any other disability and wonder why they can function in society and I can't.

Over the years I indulged in other kinds of treatments, but, it all did the same thing, a state of mind that was willing but not able. Self medication has been with me since I was 12 years old, and at times it went way out of control. Life had lost it's value at points in which I hate to look back on. Love and family was lost forever. And, yet I was still there?

Waking up is like flipping a coin, and even with the coin with a favorable toss, a trigger was always out there to grip me and pull me back in.

As it is now, just writing about this illness, that none would know from looking at me, puts me at the bottom of the handicap zone.

Posted by Unknown at 3:34 AM

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Welcome To The News Maze

I opened this blog...
so I could get off my chest shit that racks my nerves in the news. Between the media, the politicians, local sports, and public servant bullshit issues.

We have been handed nothing but lies about the war, September 11th 2001, Katrina, the oil take over, the cell phone radiation, and the heroin deals this government has made over the past administration's takeover.

The body count has been astronomical, and the attention it gets is always in bits and pieces. Some focus on the war, some 9-11, some on the victims of Katrina and some on the edges of the reality that we are getting screwed big time.

Here we will focus on it all! No free rides and no hidden agendas. We want answers, we'll ask for them, we'll share them and we'll plead for them as well.

September 11th 2001 I think is a good place for me to start. So many people had died, and so many questions had risen from the flesh infested dust, yet we let it pass without as much as a legal commitment. Justice was blinded by headlines of anthrax, Eron, the Church and it's sex scandals and anything else the people were willing to let blind them.

Normally, here in New York, we take pride in how we approach a crime scene. We look at details and we piece together what could be the cause of the crime. But this crime, had no crime scene, no investigation, no evidence turned over to the DA's office. What we got was full line of bullshit, that people wanted to believe, for people to keep the faith, while all along, being lied to. Sometimes, a lie, can be swallowed and digested just so it will pass through us.

First with all crimes, we have to look at who had the means, the motive and the opportunity. Within that frame work most crime investigations are conducted. We never had that chance, that chance was taken away from us before September 11, 2001. Now, in 2007, the crime scene still sits with human ash and more people paying the price because of this ash. A crime that has been killing for over seven years, and yet we still have no investigation? What we have is a war, deflecting our deepest desire to ask a simple question. What really happened on September 11th 2001?