Showing posts with label Carrie Fisher. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Carrie Fisher. Show all posts
Monday, July 17, 2017
Going crazy isn't all it's cracked up to be
Kind of a repeat, but these are thoughts I revisit practically every day. As a culture, we're where we were with gay issues in about 1970. We haven't even had our Stonewall yet.
Monday, May 22, 2017
Mental health warriors: a different kind of sane
Why did it take me this long to post something about the death of Carrie Fisher? Actually, it took me half a bloody century, and I'm still not sure about it. But I have come to the conclusion after blogging for a while that people either read your stuff, or they don't. They watch your videos, or they don't. It's a capricious thing, so you might as well follow your heart and do what you feel like doing, what your conscience tells you to do at any given moment. And it is here that I find my satisfaction. Is there a "message" in all this? There probably is. It's something that each person will hear in a different way, according to their own prejudices.
Friday, December 30, 2016
"I'm mentally ill, guys!" Why Carrie Fisher kicked ass
Neither of the videos I did on this subject were wholly satisfying to me, as I kept leaving out important stuff. I have no capacity to edit, and it's unscripted, so it goes down the way it goes down.
A lot of the stuff Carrie Fisher talked about was my stuff, too. I found aspects of her life history alarming, but she got through it all and would have kept on going, if she could. And she would have done a lot more good with her honesty and no-holds-barred approach. The thing is - and I have even said this to a psychiatrist - as far as mental health issues are concerned, we have not even had our Stonewall yet. We're in about 1970 now and have a lot of catching up to do. There are signs of it just starting, but I still get irritated at the way it is unfolding. No one has any imagination about this at all. Everyone still thinks in straight lines and stereotypes.
I try to hope. I saw a PBS documentary on Stonewall. An archival interview with the head of the Mattachine Society was most revealing. He defended gay rights, but insisted he wasn't gay himself: "no, I tried it once, but it's not my cup of tea." He also said, "society shouldn't feel threatened. Homosexuals will never want to marry or attempt to adopt children." He said it as if the very idea was preposterous. Which, I guess, it was.
I've written of all this before, and now I am tired of it because of the energy it takes to write, and the way it has to be "good", damn it, I mean not a mess. So now I make videos, and those aren't perfect either, but I know they come closer to expressing how I really feel. It's important that I do that, because Carrie Fisher proved to us all that life is a lot shorter than we think.
Thursday, December 29, 2016
Why I felt like I knew Carrie Fisher
I started off to make a video of personal reflections triggered by Carrie Fisher's death. Ended up making two. Neither one of them really said it, so I am probably going to post both of them eventually. I don't script these things at all, so sometimes I leave out the most important thing. But I don't treat Carrie Fisher's idea as a joke.
People tend to cringe when they think of "crazy" people, casually writing them off as whack jobs, nutbars, etc. (Sorry, but this is what I hear every day of my life.) This conveniently makes them less than human, which reminds me of another human practice that used to be OK and even "good business": back when one human being could own another, and force their will upon their property.
A great many people were incredulous that anything could be wrong with that. It was simply an aspect of mainstream society. If you were kind to your slaves, after all. . . But even after their chattel were set free, they were vilified by nasty, denigrating names and physical segregation.
That doesn't happen any more. Does it? Can you think of another (large) group of people being referred to as things, such as "jobs", with no one objecting because the injustice is so invisible?
What? You mean there's a problem? Aren't those people sort of oblivious to what goes on anyway, so does it really matter what we say?
We all need a good cleansing, perhaps an enema, and then we need to begin again. The thought of "pride" in a crazy person seems pretty much unthinkable, but pride in a gay person used to be an aberration, and perhaps a sign of mental illness. We have come a long way, and yet, not far enough.
P. S. I use some language here, one word in particular, that might shock people. It's not used lightly. In fact, it is meant to demonstrate just how devastating it is for a human being to be casually vilified, verbally punished and denigrated. It's not meant to hurt anyone, that's not why I'm doing it. It's a parallel, an example. This is what it feels like. I want to shake people up with it. Wake them up. Because as it stands, it's not OK to call gay people by nasty names - it never should have been - but "whack job" slips casually out of people's mouths, and no one turns a hair.
Sunday, April 7, 2013
"Just a nut case with a gun": the tragedy of Matthew Warren
Something has been rumbling underground - you can't say it's in the air, because it doesn't live there, but down under, in the murky land of social stigma.
Every so often it dives to the surface. When that happens, society is ill-equipped to deal with it or even talk about it at all.
I came across this tidbit of news on Facebook (which I almost never look at):
LAKE FOREST, Calif. - Popular evangelical Pastor Rick Warren asked members of his Southern California church for prayers as he and his family coped with the apparent suicide of his 27-year-old son.
The church said on Saturday that Matthew Warren took his own life at his Mission Viejo home.
Matthew Warren struggled with mental illness, deep depression and suicidal thoughts throughout his life, Saddleback Valley Community Church said in a statement, after his body was found Friday night.
"Despite the best health care available, this was an illness that was never fully controlled and the emotional pain resulted in his decision to take his life," the church said.
Allison O'Neal, a supervising deputy coroner for Orange County, declined to release the cause and manner of death pending an autopsy of the young man.
Rick Warren, the author of the multimillion-selling book "The Purpose Driven Life," said in an email to church staff that he and his wife had enjoyed a fun Friday evening with their son. But their son then returned home to take his life in "a momentary wave of despair."
Over the years, Matthew Warren had been treated by America's best doctors, had received counselling and medication and been the recipient of numerous prayers from others, his father said.
"I'll never forget how, many years ago, after another approach had failed to give relief, Matthew said 'Dad, I know I'm going to heaven. Why can't I just die and end this pain?'" Warren recalled.
Despite that, he said, his son lived for another decade, during which he often reached out to help others.
"You who watched Matthew grow up knew he was an incredibly kind, gentle, and compassionate man," Warren wrote. "He had a brilliant intellect and a gift for sensing who was most in pain or most uncomfortable in a room. He'd then make a bee-line to that person to engage and encourage them."
This article brings up so much stuff for me, so many "issues" (as those chunks of living gore are so euphemistically called) that I don't know where to start. What jumps into my head first is the irony: this pastor who wrote a wildfire bestseller on how to live a meaningful life had a son so driven by despair that he simply could not go on with his own life and had to end it.
Another thing is the rather elaborate, detailed explanation of Matthew Warren's exhaustive (and no doubt exhausting) medical treatments over the years, how he had tried everything,and how in the end "even prayer" (the panacea for fundamentalists) didn't work.
Why does this cause that squirmy twinge in the pit of my stomach?
Compounding the shock and horror of this unimagineable tragedy is a sad public pressure to "explain". If he had died of a heart attack or an accident, I don't think there would have been any need for all these elaborate verbal back-flips. He was sick, yes - but he couldn't help it! He tried everything, even prayer! So it could not have been his "fault", it could not have been personal weakness or a spiritual taint.
I see "mental illness" (a term I loathe - I'll explain that later) as an issue that's slowly coming out of the closet, but unfortunately it only seems to show itself when someone commits a horrendous and very public suicide or shoots up a shopping mall or a primary school.
"Suffering from mental illness" - that's the tag. So it really isn't ALL his fault - well, maybe not - or maybe he went off his medication (a very bad decision on his part). In spite of all this faux compassion, the taint of judgement hangs around like a faint but noxious odor.
Never are we presented with an example of someone "living with", not "suffering from". Our society is big on suffering, but it was only recently we changed our vocabulary from "cancer victim" (almost universal 20 years ago) to "cancer survivor". And it took a lot of effort on the part of activists to wake people up.
Public attitudes towards mental illness are much more distorted and resistant to change. People's perceptions are tainted by a combination of pity and fear. Or terror. Only recently, Mark Kelly, the astronaut husband of Congresswoman Gabby Gifford, declared that before anyone was sold a gun in the U. S., they should have a thorough background check (so far, so good). Two groups should be eliminated immediately without question: convicted criminals and "the mentally ill".
I love that "the" part, a little three-letter wedge driven between those with this illness and the rest of humanity. But what scares the shit out of me is - no, several things do, actually. To automatically lump in the "mentally ill" with criminals makes me want to chew tinfoil because it hurts me less. They're all corralled in the same pen, it seems: wild-eyed, inherently violent, unable to control themselves, and deserving of a sort of wary contempt.
When something sticks out like a sore thumb, like a rusty nail, that's all we see. If I were bipolar and had not had an episode of any kind for 20 years, I could not (theoretically) buy a rifle for duck-hunting because I am "mentally ill" and therefore a bad risk for handling firearms, presumably for the rest of my life.
OK, I hate firearms on principle and would never think of buying one for any reasons, but is it fair that a person with a treatable medical condition should have the same kind of "background check" as a convicted criminal? How exactly do they DO this background check? What sort of private medical records would need to be invaded? Does anyone even think of the sense of personal violation this could create?
Oh, but if it saves even ONE child it's worth it, people say, using the kind of cockeyed logic that seems to rule this twisted culture.
Why not apply that rule to all the Charlton Heston-esque yahoos who keep a gun in every room of the house? Why not take THEIR guns away, in case somebody gets totally hammered one night and "loses control" (maybe deciding his ex-wife or her boy friend have inhabited the earth for long enough)? Isn't it worth it to confiscate all these potentially-deadly weapons, even if it only saves ONE child?
We might do background checks on criminals and perceived nut cases, but what about assholes, sons-of-bitches and nasty little men with a grudge? If we took even one step in that direction, they'd be waving signs claiming someone was violating their civil rights.
I once talked to a psychiatrist at a cocktail party who shocked me by saying, "The vast majority of my patients lead stable, productive lives if they are willing to participate in their own treatment."
The vast majority.
This is a silent, buried majority, obviously. I guess they're too busy going about their lives to jump up and down and scream about these things. When the sons of bestselling preachers who seem to have all the answers to life's dilemmas shoot themselves in the head, we notice. When a congresswoman is mowed down and permanently disabled, we mutter, "Mental illness".
Better maybe than cracked or whacked or all the other lovely synonyms we've come up with. But what does it mean to be "mentally ill"?
How can one be "ill" and "well" at the same time?
You can't. You're stuck in "ill". You're sick for life. You "suffer from", you don't "live with".
In other words, you're a victim.
As for the "mentally" part: I don't need to tell you that in a culture that worships the idea that we have total control over our lives (see Pastor Warren), being "mentally" out of the groove in any way at all is a sign of weakness, of passivity, of giving up. "Mentally" means "of the mind", and if it's "of the mind", it is voluntary, under our control, like bad habits or unwise decisions.
When the stigma is so buried in the nomenclature that no one even notices it, we have a problem. I see it as something more like diabetes. It can vary in severity, perhaps waxing and waning throughout life, but the one constant is that it needs to be monitored. But if it IS monitored, the person no longer "suffers from diabetes", but has learned to live with it, can live a long life, a productive life, with diabetes existing in the person's peripheral vision, not constantly staring them in the face.
Why isn't the culture even aware that an alternate vision of this disequilibrium (as I like to call it) exists? Because we like drama. We don't like shootings, but when there IS a shooting, we must quickly point a finger of blame at a subject that will make us all say, "Ohhhhhhhhhh." (One of "those".) There is even a degree of comfort in telling each other, "He suffered from mental illness." "Ohhhhhhhhhh." That explains it, doesn't it? Isn't that the way "those people" are? The solution, the thing that will "fix" it: let's get that legislation in place as quickly as possible so that NOBODY with "mental illness" can ever buy a gun.
If it violates their privacy and their civil rights, if it marginalizes them and makes them feel like gum on the bottom of somebody's shoe, hey, isn't it worth it if it saves just ONE child?
POST-POST: Since writing this piece, I've had a ton of other thoughts, but it's a mistake to try to fit them all into one piece.The church said on Saturday that Matthew Warren took his own life at his Mission Viejo home.
Matthew Warren struggled with mental illness, deep depression and suicidal thoughts throughout his life, Saddleback Valley Community Church said in a statement, after his body was found Friday night.
"Despite the best health care available, this was an illness that was never fully controlled and the emotional pain resulted in his decision to take his life," the church said.
Allison O'Neal, a supervising deputy coroner for Orange County, declined to release the cause and manner of death pending an autopsy of the young man.
Rick Warren, the author of the multimillion-selling book "The Purpose Driven Life," said in an email to church staff that he and his wife had enjoyed a fun Friday evening with their son. But their son then returned home to take his life in "a momentary wave of despair."
Over the years, Matthew Warren had been treated by America's best doctors, had received counselling and medication and been the recipient of numerous prayers from others, his father said.
"I'll never forget how, many years ago, after another approach had failed to give relief, Matthew said 'Dad, I know I'm going to heaven. Why can't I just die and end this pain?'" Warren recalled.
Despite that, he said, his son lived for another decade, during which he often reached out to help others.
"You who watched Matthew grow up knew he was an incredibly kind, gentle, and compassionate man," Warren wrote. "He had a brilliant intellect and a gift for sensing who was most in pain or most uncomfortable in a room. He'd then make a bee-line to that person to engage and encourage them."
This article brings up so much stuff for me, so many "issues" (as those chunks of living gore are so euphemistically called) that I don't know where to start. What jumps into my head first is the irony: this pastor who wrote a wildfire bestseller on how to live a meaningful life had a son so driven by despair that he simply could not go on with his own life and had to end it.
Another thing is the rather elaborate, detailed explanation of Matthew Warren's exhaustive (and no doubt exhausting) medical treatments over the years, how he had tried everything,and how in the end "even prayer" (the panacea for fundamentalists) didn't work.
Why does this cause that squirmy twinge in the pit of my stomach?
Compounding the shock and horror of this unimagineable tragedy is a sad public pressure to "explain". If he had died of a heart attack or an accident, I don't think there would have been any need for all these elaborate verbal back-flips. He was sick, yes - but he couldn't help it! He tried everything, even prayer! So it could not have been his "fault", it could not have been personal weakness or a spiritual taint.
I see "mental illness" (a term I loathe - I'll explain that later) as an issue that's slowly coming out of the closet, but unfortunately it only seems to show itself when someone commits a horrendous and very public suicide or shoots up a shopping mall or a primary school.
"Suffering from mental illness" - that's the tag. So it really isn't ALL his fault - well, maybe not - or maybe he went off his medication (a very bad decision on his part). In spite of all this faux compassion, the taint of judgement hangs around like a faint but noxious odor.
Never are we presented with an example of someone "living with", not "suffering from". Our society is big on suffering, but it was only recently we changed our vocabulary from "cancer victim" (almost universal 20 years ago) to "cancer survivor". And it took a lot of effort on the part of activists to wake people up.
Public attitudes towards mental illness are much more distorted and resistant to change. People's perceptions are tainted by a combination of pity and fear. Or terror. Only recently, Mark Kelly, the astronaut husband of Congresswoman Gabby Gifford, declared that before anyone was sold a gun in the U. S., they should have a thorough background check (so far, so good). Two groups should be eliminated immediately without question: convicted criminals and "the mentally ill".
I love that "the" part, a little three-letter wedge driven between those with this illness and the rest of humanity. But what scares the shit out of me is - no, several things do, actually. To automatically lump in the "mentally ill" with criminals makes me want to chew tinfoil because it hurts me less. They're all corralled in the same pen, it seems: wild-eyed, inherently violent, unable to control themselves, and deserving of a sort of wary contempt.
When something sticks out like a sore thumb, like a rusty nail, that's all we see. If I were bipolar and had not had an episode of any kind for 20 years, I could not (theoretically) buy a rifle for duck-hunting because I am "mentally ill" and therefore a bad risk for handling firearms, presumably for the rest of my life.
OK, I hate firearms on principle and would never think of buying one for any reasons, but is it fair that a person with a treatable medical condition should have the same kind of "background check" as a convicted criminal? How exactly do they DO this background check? What sort of private medical records would need to be invaded? Does anyone even think of the sense of personal violation this could create?
Oh, but if it saves even ONE child it's worth it, people say, using the kind of cockeyed logic that seems to rule this twisted culture.
Why not apply that rule to all the Charlton Heston-esque yahoos who keep a gun in every room of the house? Why not take THEIR guns away, in case somebody gets totally hammered one night and "loses control" (maybe deciding his ex-wife or her boy friend have inhabited the earth for long enough)? Isn't it worth it to confiscate all these potentially-deadly weapons, even if it only saves ONE child?
We might do background checks on criminals and perceived nut cases, but what about assholes, sons-of-bitches and nasty little men with a grudge? If we took even one step in that direction, they'd be waving signs claiming someone was violating their civil rights.
I once talked to a psychiatrist at a cocktail party who shocked me by saying, "The vast majority of my patients lead stable, productive lives if they are willing to participate in their own treatment."
The vast majority.
This is a silent, buried majority, obviously. I guess they're too busy going about their lives to jump up and down and scream about these things. When the sons of bestselling preachers who seem to have all the answers to life's dilemmas shoot themselves in the head, we notice. When a congresswoman is mowed down and permanently disabled, we mutter, "Mental illness".
Better maybe than cracked or whacked or all the other lovely synonyms we've come up with. But what does it mean to be "mentally ill"?
How can one be "ill" and "well" at the same time?
You can't. You're stuck in "ill". You're sick for life. You "suffer from", you don't "live with".
In other words, you're a victim.
As for the "mentally" part: I don't need to tell you that in a culture that worships the idea that we have total control over our lives (see Pastor Warren), being "mentally" out of the groove in any way at all is a sign of weakness, of passivity, of giving up. "Mentally" means "of the mind", and if it's "of the mind", it is voluntary, under our control, like bad habits or unwise decisions.
When the stigma is so buried in the nomenclature that no one even notices it, we have a problem. I see it as something more like diabetes. It can vary in severity, perhaps waxing and waning throughout life, but the one constant is that it needs to be monitored. But if it IS monitored, the person no longer "suffers from diabetes", but has learned to live with it, can live a long life, a productive life, with diabetes existing in the person's peripheral vision, not constantly staring them in the face.
Why isn't the culture even aware that an alternate vision of this disequilibrium (as I like to call it) exists? Because we like drama. We don't like shootings, but when there IS a shooting, we must quickly point a finger of blame at a subject that will make us all say, "Ohhhhhhhhhh." (One of "those".) There is even a degree of comfort in telling each other, "He suffered from mental illness." "Ohhhhhhhhhh." That explains it, doesn't it? Isn't that the way "those people" are? The solution, the thing that will "fix" it: let's get that legislation in place as quickly as possible so that NOBODY with "mental illness" can ever buy a gun.
If it violates their privacy and their civil rights, if it marginalizes them and makes them feel like gum on the bottom of somebody's shoe, hey, isn't it worth it if it saves just ONE child?
What hit me just now - while tacking away at my antique keyboard - is WHY the stigma is so damaging. When you're stigmatized, that is, if you have a stigmatizing condition, you may be driven to pretend you don't have it, or to deny it even to yourself. This leaves you much more vulnerable to your illness (if in fact you're feeling ill: I DO believe in the mentally well, and will insist on believing it for the rest of my life!). If you feel stigmatized, you might not want to take "those pills" that you're invariably supposed to take. The pills remind you of the stigma. That leads to another stigma, of course: "Oh, she went off her medication." The most insidious form of stigma, or denial perhaps, is feeling so well that you are sure the illness has gone away forever. Society LOVES this attitude because it implies "triumphing", "vanquishing" and all those bullshit terms that mean absolutely nothing ("victory" being the worst, with its warlike/Christian fundamentalist taint). Living with something that lasts a lifetime makes a great many people profoundly uncomfortable.
GALLERY. Maybe this is yet another form of stigma, or one of those clunky, heavy-handed attempts to "banish" it that only serve to underline it. But when I was compiling images for this post (all of them taken by me in my back yard with my 1923 Brownie box camera), I kept coming across celebrities grinning away. Then I realized: oops, this is the category of "celebrities with mental illness"! This is either supposed to make sufferers feel better (if, in fact, they are suffering), or to make us all less uncomfortable about nut cases, since SOME nut cases seem to become famous! Famous is the ultimate goal in our society, better even than being rich, so if you're famous AND mentally ill, whoo boy, it must be OK to be mentally ill, or at least not horrible!
I liked this shot of Dick Cavett grinning away. He has been open about his bouts of depression and (I think) bipolar, though I think he was only manic once (which is, believe it or not, relatively common). I like it because he's 70-something, still has good cheekbones and that Nebraskan resonant voice, and looks happy.
I couldn't really find a good shot of Carrie Fisher, because she seems to have erased herself with plastic surgery and no longer looks like herself. But she has surely had her innings with bipolar (I refuse to tack "disorder" on it - why do I need to?), and come out the other side more than once. She's a veteran, and besides I like this hair style.
I did a whole post on Stephen Fry ages ago, a poem actually. He is monumental: it's that Easter Island face of his. Like some of his confreres, he has been open about his experiences with depression. The only thing that bothers me about all this is: when a celebrity comes out like this, they are forever "branded". "Oh, didn't he have shock treatments a couple of years ago?" If you don't give a fuck, however, I heartily approve.
Patty Duke had a hard go of it from the start, but has come through it all. I like the warmth in her face and the LACK of self-erasure (rare in Hollywood and making her a target of unkind remarks). I purposely featured only older people here because they have the stuff, obviously. Brittney Spears: come back in 20 years.
http://margaretgunnng.blogspot.ca/2013/04/the-glass-character-synopsis.html
Tuesday, August 16, 2011
Why Carrie Fisher scares me
"I had ECT yesterday, & the main thing that I remember about it is (other than hardly anything at all) that when they dragged me on my little gurney to its resting place beside Dr. Kramer and his machine that will electrocute me to adorable wellness………
Dr. Kramer gazed down at me and said, “Let’s see how much glitter you have on today!” But after studying me briefly, he noticed that I was virtually glitter free. “Am I to assume that this is a sign that you’re depressed? Should we shorten the time between treatments?”
The bottom line is that to ascertain whether or not I’m depressed these days, you no longer have to scrutinize my bummed out or beatific expression———just check and see how much glitter I’m sporting on my eye lids and such…………
I still haven’t un packed my bags and bags of glitter……….the glitter I used or didn’t use in New York———because I can’t imagine where I can keep it. So there it is, in bags and boxes, in my bathroom, waiting for me to make up my newly electrocuted mind."
It scares me.
I have to backtrack here. . . It was even more years ago that I saw her on 20/20 doing an interview about her "breakdown" (a term I hate more than washing machines, which it should only be applied to) and subsequent recovery. Carrie, a sort of latent bipolar who had flown under the radar, probably suppressing her symptoms with masses of drugs and alcohol, had exploded out of the container in a supernova of mania that was rather dreadful to behold.
But Carrie seemed to be having a great time talking about it. Her gestures were extravagant, her voice plummy, her eyes like pinwheels. In other words. . . she was still manic. On nine drugs or something, but still. I think people should at least wait to be well before doing these things.
A few years after that, she took the worst of her life's turmoil, funnied it up and put on a one-woman show based on her apparently-harrowing memoir (which I can't bring myself to read yet), Wishful Drinking. On the cover is a passed-out Princess Leia, braided buns perched on each side of her head like Kaiser rolls.
I have a problem here.
I have a problem when human pain is turned inside-out and transformed into a gut-busting ha-ha. Mental illness is NOT a ha-ha, and can't be treated as such without perspective (and perspective equals time plus distance). It can't be treated as a ha-ha until you get some sustained relief, get yourself back, find a true path of recovery and (the most important part) STAY ON IT.
Who am I to say that ECT every six weeks isn't the path? I'm not here to judge or play psychiatric expert. But the statistics I've seen on ECT and permanent brain damage are alarming.
Peter Breggin, a psychiatrist who wrote Talking Back to Prozac in the early '90s when Prozac was the sexy, new, revolutionary drug that would make everyone better (even people who weren't depressed), is dead-set against ECT in any situation. He speaks of subtle but cumulative neurological damage, particularly to short-term memory. Fisher laughs this off, which is an admission that she is indeed suffering from it. She says she can see old movies all over again and they seem like new.
He speaks of the denial of damage as a symptom of damage, which made my hair stand on end. If I was really brain-damaged, would I know it?
I don't know what got me on to all this: I guess it was the Stephen Fry documentary where he travels to Germany to explore his love of Wagner. That got me on to his program about bipolar (which I have only seen in bits on YouTube, because I find it hard and heavy going). He speaks to Carrie Fisher, of course, who in her usual flamboyant, even histrionic way makes her agonizing struggles into a kind of heroic comedy.
At the end of the interview when Fry speaks to the camera, he seems disturbed, his voice tinged with what sounds like pity. The camera did funny things during the interview, zooming in on tight closeups of her hands (I think she was wearing 37 rings or something) and bizarre little gee-gaws all over her house. The music had that disordered, slightly strange quality. It was obvious either Fry or the filmmakers had made up their minds in advance that she was cuckoo.
Carrie Fisher scares me. Whatever hobgoblins are pursuing her, she's running from them, with all sorts of things that seem OK, with humour, with one-woman shows, with books, and with controversial psychiatric treatments that shoot electricity through your brain so you don't remember anything (and don't remember that you don't remember anything). What bothers me most is that there is no way in the world some people WON'T consider (or reconsider) ECT because of what Carrie Fisher has said about it. She is beginning to reduce the fear around it. But should she?
There is a cost to everything, but our culture doesn't want to hear about it. It's hooked on quick fixes. Nobody seems to remember the huge fuss about Prozac in the early '90s: it has all been forgotten. Prozac was the future, and it was going to revolutionize society. No one would be passive any more. We'd all be aggressively confident, extroverted firebrands. None of the pathetic introspection that makes people paint or write poetry.
The guy who wrote the Bible on Prozac was named Peter Kramer, which just makes me wonder about the name of Carrie's doctor. Just a coincidence? Anyway, when the first few awful side-effects trickled in, they were vehemently denied as atypical or even psychosomatic. According to the trials, only .01% of people had sexual dysfunction from Prozac, something called "delayed orgasm". But eventually, the numbers settled out at something like 40%. (The other 60% were too embarrassed to report it.) And as for that "delayed" thing, it was delayed until sometime next Friday.
Then came, oops, more problems. It seems a lot of people couldn't sleep on Prozac because they were constantly hyped-up and wired, necessitating adding another drug which kind of rendered the Prozac ineffectual. Eventually a new phenomenon was born called Prozac Poop-out, and it had nothing to do with your bowels.
Meantime, other new drugs were flooding the market, so Prozac was more-or-less swept away in the flood. It's not used at all any more, considered ineffective and far too bothersome in its side effect profile (the very thing that was used to sell it in the '90s).
OK then, what's this near-diatribe really all about? Unfortunately, someone who is in the grip of a psychiatric crisis is generally unable to make wise decisions for themselves about treatment. They are extremely vulnerable and will grasp at anything that seems to make sense, up to and including the advice of a famous, charismatic but very damaged middle-aged actress. So: let the sufferer beware. Most especially, be aware that Carrie Fisher may not be the best role model for mental health. To be honest, I think she's a burnout trying to stay afloat, and it's not funny. I'm scared for her.
And she scares me, too.
Dear Sir or Madam, will you read my book
It took me years to write, will you take a look
Order The Glass Character from:
http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001K7NGDA
Barnes & Noble
Thistledown Press
Friday, October 22, 2010
Tastes like chicken
STRANGER THAN TRUTH!
World's largest rodent considered a delicacy by Venezuelans
MANTECAL, Venezuela (AP) When Venezuelans' appetite for capybara clashed with the church's ban on eating meat during Lent, a local priest asked the Vatican to give the world's biggest rodent the status of fish. People rejoiced when the Vatican agreed, declaring that capybara isn't meat. More than two centuries later, they still consider the 130-pound capybara a delicacy and pay big bucks to put it on their dinner tables.
"It's the most scrumptious dish that exists," says Freddy Colina, 17, who lives on the southern Great Plains of Venezuela, where a Lent without capybara is like Thanksgiving without turkey in the United States.
Venezuelans think the rest of the world doesn't know what it's missing. Some even want to export capybara, which they call a red-meat lover's dream-come-true: Tender and tasty yet low in fat. They envision people in New York and London eating capybara steaks and capybara hotdogs.
"This is a great solution" for meat-eaters worried about their cholesterol levels, says biologist Saul Gutierrez, who helps raise the animals on Venezuela's most prolific capybara ranch, El Cedral.
Capybara, which looks something like a pig with reddish-brown fur, tastes like pork, too, although with a hint of fishiness. Usually it's heavily salted and served as a shredded meat alongside rice, plantains or spaghetti.
Among its fans is President Hugo Chavez, whose mother says the former paratrooper couldn't get enough of it when he was growing up.
Many Venezuelans are grateful the Roman Catholic Church gave the animal the status of fish allowing its consumption during Lent. But more than a few think the classification is laughable.
"It doesn't even look like a fish. A capybara has hair and four legs," says biologist Emilio Herrera, although he acknowledges the creature does swim.
Capybara meat costs up to $4.50 a pound, a hefty price for Venezuelan workers, many of whom make the minimum wage of $200 a month.
The animal is found from Panama to Argentina and is eaten in several countries. But no one craves it like Venezuelans, mainly those in the southern and central parts of the nation where the animal thrives in grasslands and swamps. They contend that eating capybara, which is a cousin of the guinea pig, shouldn't make people squeamish.
Capybaras are surprisingly clean despite an unsavory habit or two.Wallowing in mud much of the day helps kill off ticks and fleas, and then the capybaras wash off in clean pond water. Yellow-headed caracara birds spend hours each day picking the bugs off the capybaras' fur and skin, too.
True, capybaras eat their own feces, but so do other animals such as wild rabbits, says Rexford Lord, a capybara expert at Pennsylvania's Indiana University.
Unlike rats, capybaras are picky about what they eat, mainly grass. They have just 1.5 percent fat content in their meat, compared with up to 20 percent for cows. Capybaras used to be one of the most common animals in the Great Plains. But many were killed by the Spanish conquistadors, who introduced cows which compete with capybaras for land.
Then a government conservation program that started in the 1960s backfired when corrupt wildlife officials took bribes and allowed overhunting, says Gutierrez, the biologist at the El Cedral ranch. Today barely 100,000 capybaras are left in Venezuela, though the animal is not considered endangered.
Private ranches such as El Cedral in Apure state are trying to boost the population by keeping poachers off their lands. They're succeeding and are even thinking about exporting the animal, though few concrete steps have been taken. They say capybaras are much more profitable to raise than cattle since they produce more offspring, use less grazing pasture and don't need expensive medicines like cows, which are not native to Latin America and often get sick.
Gutierrez acknowledges there will be huge image problem in trying to sell foreigners on the world's largest rodent as a meat source, but is confident it can be done.
"It's only a matter of marketing," he says.
Amazon
http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001K7NGDA
Thistledown Press
MANTECAL, Venezuela (AP) When Venezuelans' appetite for capybara clashed with the church's ban on eating meat during Lent, a local priest asked the Vatican to give the world's biggest rodent the status of fish. People rejoiced when the Vatican agreed, declaring that capybara isn't meat. More than two centuries later, they still consider the 130-pound capybara a delicacy and pay big bucks to put it on their dinner tables.
"It's the most scrumptious dish that exists," says Freddy Colina, 17, who lives on the southern Great Plains of Venezuela, where a Lent without capybara is like Thanksgiving without turkey in the United States.
Venezuelans think the rest of the world doesn't know what it's missing. Some even want to export capybara, which they call a red-meat lover's dream-come-true: Tender and tasty yet low in fat. They envision people in New York and London eating capybara steaks and capybara hotdogs.
"This is a great solution" for meat-eaters worried about their cholesterol levels, says biologist Saul Gutierrez, who helps raise the animals on Venezuela's most prolific capybara ranch, El Cedral.
Capybara, which looks something like a pig with reddish-brown fur, tastes like pork, too, although with a hint of fishiness. Usually it's heavily salted and served as a shredded meat alongside rice, plantains or spaghetti.
Among its fans is President Hugo Chavez, whose mother says the former paratrooper couldn't get enough of it when he was growing up.
Many Venezuelans are grateful the Roman Catholic Church gave the animal the status of fish allowing its consumption during Lent. But more than a few think the classification is laughable.
"It doesn't even look like a fish. A capybara has hair and four legs," says biologist Emilio Herrera, although he acknowledges the creature does swim.
Capybara meat costs up to $4.50 a pound, a hefty price for Venezuelan workers, many of whom make the minimum wage of $200 a month.
The animal is found from Panama to Argentina and is eaten in several countries. But no one craves it like Venezuelans, mainly those in the southern and central parts of the nation where the animal thrives in grasslands and swamps. They contend that eating capybara, which is a cousin of the guinea pig, shouldn't make people squeamish.
Capybaras are surprisingly clean despite an unsavory habit or two.Wallowing in mud much of the day helps kill off ticks and fleas, and then the capybaras wash off in clean pond water. Yellow-headed caracara birds spend hours each day picking the bugs off the capybaras' fur and skin, too.
True, capybaras eat their own feces, but so do other animals such as wild rabbits, says Rexford Lord, a capybara expert at Pennsylvania's Indiana University.
Unlike rats, capybaras are picky about what they eat, mainly grass. They have just 1.5 percent fat content in their meat, compared with up to 20 percent for cows. Capybaras used to be one of the most common animals in the Great Plains. But many were killed by the Spanish conquistadors, who introduced cows which compete with capybaras for land.
Then a government conservation program that started in the 1960s backfired when corrupt wildlife officials took bribes and allowed overhunting, says Gutierrez, the biologist at the El Cedral ranch. Today barely 100,000 capybaras are left in Venezuela, though the animal is not considered endangered.
Private ranches such as El Cedral in Apure state are trying to boost the population by keeping poachers off their lands. They're succeeding and are even thinking about exporting the animal, though few concrete steps have been taken. They say capybaras are much more profitable to raise than cattle since they produce more offspring, use less grazing pasture and don't need expensive medicines like cows, which are not native to Latin America and often get sick.
Gutierrez acknowledges there will be huge image problem in trying to sell foreigners on the world's largest rodent as a meat source, but is confident it can be done.
"It's only a matter of marketing," he says.
Dear Sir or Madam, will you read my book
It took me years to write, will you take a look
Order The Glass Character from:
http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001K7NGDA
Barnes & Noble
Thistledown Press
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
Shock and awe
I don't know, I just keep stumbling across things, and they're so interesting. So long as that keeps happening, I guess my brain will be alive, or relatively so.
Bopping around channels trying to find something remotely watchable last night, I fell into a Biography profile of Carrie Fisher. I watched it half-wincing and half-gawking: she has made of her life a sort of public freak show, a dramatic "look at me, world, I'm a courageous survivor," running parallel with a train wreck that is not always in slow motion.
Think of Carrie Fisher and you immediately think of her "iconic" (wince! wince!) role as Princess Leia (or however you spell it) in Star Wars. She was sweet and innocent then, but there was a wild look in her eyes: at times they were glazed, other times spinning like pinwheels.
She was more than an actress, which was probably a good thing during the long dry periods between roles. Her numerous novels, thinly-disguised memoirs with titles like Postcards from the Edge, The Best Awful, and Wishful Drinking, allowed her to write about her distorted life without really committing to the facts. "Oh, that's not really me, so it doesn't bother me," her Mom Debbie Reynolds breezily comments on the Biography show. Meaning, the devastating Shirley MacLaine portrait of her as a shrieking out-of-control drunk in the movie version just bounced right off her.
Oh, and the drugs. This is too complicated to take blow by blow (and I do mean blow). Early in her career she hooked up with Paul Simon, and they did a lot of drugs. Married a man who turned out to be gay. And did a lot of drugs.
And did drugs. And did drugs.
There were blurry allusions to something more murky going on, even between drug binges. I was jolted to see her interviewed on 20-20 some years ago, talking with great gusto and manic, glittering eyes about a massive psychotic episode she'd recently had, requiring hospitalization. She mentioned being on nine kinds of medication.
I have never seen anyone talk about a "breakdown" (a term I despise almost as much as "iconic") with such verve and even excitement. The drama obviously appealed to her. She talked about announcing to her friends that they were all going to have "a race to the end of my personality". It was grandiosity in the farthest extreme. Her eyes were glassy and her gestures almost violent. "I'm mentally ill!" she announced, like someone telling us she'd won the lottery.
But hey, she was well now, it was all OK (because these shows/articles always strain for the happy ending that the public demands). Eventually she popped up again doing a one-woman show which was also a (real, this time?) memoir.
Then, oops. It all got strange again.
In the present-day interviews on Biography, Carrie just looked weird, like a bag lady. She had gained maybe a hundred pounds and was wearing mismatched clothing, florals with garish plaids, and thick glitter on her eyelids. She looked like a drag queen with extremely poor taste.
She talked about having ECT (sometimes called "shock treatments") for an intractible depression, and raved about how well they had worked. I also dug up an article about how she had experienced profound memory loss and hated the way she looked, as if getting back your sanity was a tradeoff in which you lost great chunks of your identity.
Not a happy story, and it ain't over yet. There is still a raging debate over ECT, and those who are against it call it barbaric, a form of brain damage that should have been done away with decades ago along with insulin shock and ice baths.
The other day I posted about Janet Gotkin, a young writer who was ground into hamburger by the state hospital system in the '70s. Janet was subjected to numerous ECT treatments, and at one point personally requested them (which means they must have done some good). The story ends very strangely, with Janet taking a massive overdose of Mellaril which does not quite kill her. Somehow it reboots the computer of her brain and she is "cured", at which point she realizes she has been "fucked over" by the doctors, treated like a cipher and tortured by ineffective therapies. So she devotes the rest of her life to raging against the system.
I couldn't find anything more recent than 20 years ago, but by then Janet was raging again, this time about being an incest survivor, the diagnosis du jour of the early '90s.
I don't know if there's a point to all this. The vibrant but obnoxious and egocentric Carrie Fisher claims she has been "cured" by shock treatment, while at the same time looking and sounding like a badly-distorted version of herself. This isn't just ageing, it's something else.
Her speech is slowed down, and her eyes don't look normal (not that they ever have). Could it be that all the past drug abuse has caught up with her, and her brain has begun to fall in on itself? Why shock treatments, when there are gazillions of drugs out there to treat depression? Was it really depression, or an even more extreme episode of mania (which is always less socially-acceptable, especially for women)?
Carrie seems convinced that this worked for her and gave her her life back. Meanwhile we have the "anti" faction, no less convinced that ECT is a killer. The truth is that nobody really knows how it works. It's supposed to be less violent and intrusive in its present form, but you still wake up with a wet nightie and don't know where you are.
What part of you is humbled or subdued by this process, then: the nuts element, the raging craziness, the wild delusions? To put those down "once and for all", you have to be pretty forceful. One part of you has to be killed so that the rest of you might live. Or so the naysayers think.
Dick Cavett has also gone on the record to say that ECT saved his life. He was diagnosed with severe depression, but at a certain point in mid-life, that changed to bipolar disorder (as if it can take years, even decades, for the ravaging shark to really get hold of you). I don't know how many shock treatments he has had, or if he will need more. The brilliant writer William Styron described depression perhaps better than anyone in his memoir, Darkness Visible. But depression became his career, and he had to revisit the shock wards again and again before he died.
Don't tell me there's no cost to this.
Don't tell me there "might" be "temporary" memory loss.
This treatment has a price, potentially a very steep one. Worth it? I don't know.
Another thing occurs to me. (Oh, what a ragbag my brain is!) I saw an episode of House in which a man's memories had to be erased for some medical reason. So. . . they gave him ECT. Before doing so, there was a sad discussion in which the reluctant staff talked about the "cost" of the lifesaving process. "But his memories will be completely gone. How will that affect his identity?"
Finally they decided, fuck identity, we need to wind up this bummer of a show. They went ahead with the ECT, meanwhile putting out there in the culture yet another myth: that this treatment leaves you an emotional vegetable, your memory slate wiped completely clean.
Shades of Jack Nicholson.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)