My Gabor-rant: when Dr. Mate stole my stuff

I found this letter (written in 2008) deep in the files, and I doubt that I ever sent it to Gabor, but I needed to write it  at the time, and I do think there are some good insights in it. But it's a cautionary tale about guru-ism in general, and the fundamental dishonesty of these lofty figures in particular. I don't remember the specific quote he stole from me, but it's the theft that counts. And his disrespect of those people who are trying to recover frankly revolted me in someone who is supposed to be an addictions specialist (read: guru) and is often described as "world-famous". No thanks, Gabor - I'd rather be happy. 

Though you have made a joke out of stealing my “white gloves” phrase, it has turned out to be quite pivotal (has it not?) in differentiating your addictive behaviour from that of your patients. Seeing it in an unfinished manuscript was one thing, but seeing it in print in your book (i.e., on public display) gave me the unpleasant feeling that I had been ripped off.

This wasn’t just a couple of neutral words but a metaphor, and worlds have turned on metaphor. It gave me the feeling you thought you could harvest my remarks and incorporate them, that it was all fair game. If you were going to use it, you should have asked me directly or at least quoted me anonymously, and not taken credit for it yourself.  No writer should steal from another writer, ever, nor make light of it anywhere, especially not in such a public venue as the media.

 Hearing you talk about it on CBC didn’t fix the problem, nor did it make me any less uncomfortable as you announced, “this is who I shamelessly stole it from” (then giving my real name).  It’s as if you think it’s OK, as long as you’re contrite about it on national radio. But CBC isn’t the place for this sort of  admission.

 You could have avoided all this unpleasantness if you had written or phoned me and said, “Margaret, I’m sorry I ripped off your line” (that is, if you really were sorry).  The bizarre public way you went about it (which could be interpreted as “look who I made a fool of”, or as a public demonstration of your conscience) makes me wonder if you have any sense of boundaries, or any respect for me at all. 

 In the AA chapter of your book (and it also offended me, a 12-step veteran, that you felt entitled to paraphrase and interpret the 12 steps after only one meeting), you offered a description of me. At least, I think it was me, through some sort of distorting lens: “A manic-depressive with a long history of alcoholism, she’s been attending for fifteen years.”

 Nowhere in this rather depressing description do I see the words “sober” or “recovering”. In seventeen years, I have never had a relapse. I drank for twenty years, so my recovery will soon catch up: as of now, I have been sober nearly 1/3 of my life.  Yes, I do have a long history, but of what? Can you guess?

 But you wouldn’t know that from your description of me. You can “attend” meetings for decades and not experience a day of sobriety, but from the beginning I have worked extremely hard, both to maintain my sobriety and to understand and change the self-defeating thinking and behaviour that triggered my drinking. I don’t think I would have stayed sober this long if it hadn’t worked.

 But that’s not what it says in your book.

 Since the general public doesn’t have a clue about AA, they tend to think it’s attended only by practicing alcoholics (perhaps even the skid row type – believe me, I’ve heard a lot of comments) who are too weak to do it on their own.  If by some chance they do succeed, they are “former alcoholics”, as if the addiction has been “conquered” or overcome by sheer force of will.  Then they stop attending, because they are “cured”.

 Until I joined, I think I felt something like that myself.  Fifteen years of “attending” may look admirable to an AA member, but a civilian might think,  “She has attended meetings for fifteen years, and she’s still an alcoholic?”  If you look at your description carefully, it’s possible to conclude that I’ve been drinking for all that time, which is, to say the least, inaccurate.

 But there is so much more to it than that: attending meetings is just the surface level of a very deep process of revelation and profound personal change. The fourth and fifth steps take the recovering person to a new level of self-knowledge which is necessary for awareness of triggers, not just of drinking but of the behavioural “isms” that go with it. AA step meetings, usually held in a member’s home, go far deeper than open meetings in this sort of exploration, and can create profound bonds of connection and friendship that can last for years.

 And then there are the AA roundups (conferences with speakers from all over the world) and the retreats, such as the yearly Westminster Abbey retreat in Mission which I have “attended” (opened my soul to) for ten years.  These are intensive spiritual gatherings for those who are ready to do some serious work with an open heart. I cannot begin to describe the epiphanies I have experienced there.

 Did you know about all this stuff (or any of it) when you wrote about AA? At very least, I think attending more than one meeting was necessary and would have demonstrated a modicum of respect.  NO ONE, not even someone as brilliant as you seem to think you are, “gets” AA or any other soul-changing recovery group after only one meeting. I hated my first meeting, in fact I was completely closed until about my twelfth meeting. And not all meetings are created equal.  The mix is different wherever you go.  Too bad you aren’t an alcoholic, as there is a Doctors in AA group which is apparently very powerful, and no doubt better dressed.

 In other words, I think this was a pretty shallow and even disrespectful take on a profound process, but most people likely won’t realize it because they have nothing to compare it to. They will assume AA is just a bunch of lower-middle-class people getting together to slap each other on the back, smoke too much and hear someone say amusing things about the hell they went through.  You say you like these people, that you wish you were one of them, but I think you clearly differentiate yourself from them, as you quietly withdraw into your study to listen to classical CDs. Of all the addictions I’ve ever heard of, this one is pretty genteel, and about as far from the street as you can get. (White gloves, indeed.)

 The other issue (a big one) is this:  must I be identified by my psychiatric condition?  Don’t you think I am (much) more than “a manic-depressive with a long history of alcoholism”? Would you say, “a Parkinsonian with a long history of playing too much bingo. . .”, or “an ADD (note, he’s no longer a person but a disease) with a long history of buying too many CDs” (or, for a more exact comparison, “a schizophrenic with a long history of heroin addiction”? How would this person be perceived by the ignorant public? Would they assume he was clean; would they assume he was well?)

 I don’t give a shit how I am perceived, as I tossed that kind of judgement in the wastebasket a long time ago. But that’s not the point. It hurts me that my fellow sufferers (who often can’t defend themselves) must be cruelly misjudged and damaged by ignorance, insensitivity and stigma.  It galls me that mental illness is still such a defining trait. Just the term is problematic for me. We don’t say “diabetic illness” or “arthritic illness,” do we? And if you’re “ill”, as in “mentally ill”, how can you be well? Defeat is built right into the terminology. 

 And don’t get me started on being identified as “a manic-depressive” (or more accurately, “a bipolar”: don’t you realize the term was changed over 15 years ago?), instead of a person with a bipolar condition. Even “a manic-depressive woman” is a shade better, as it’s at least  a descriptive term, not an identity badge.  AIDS activists broke ground on this many years ago: and even at that, AIDS was labelled a “syndrome” rather than a “disorder”, a less stigmatizing term.  

 There are people (maybe you?) who would say this is just so much hairsplitting, quibbling over terminology that means the same thing. It is not. We don’t have accurate terms to describe the raging forest fire that rips through people’s brains, leaving blackened ruins. We don’t have the language to describe the nausea at having to tolerate other people’s ignorance, pity and disgust. Or the powerlessness and sense of being marginalized, shunted to the fringes of society.  We don’t have terms for the courage it takes (yes, the courage it takes!) to get up on your feet again, and start to take a few shaky, tentative steps.

 Years ago I used to say, “if you had to live inside my head for one day, you’d run screaming.” That may be true, but we can’t get inside each other’s heads. However, we can practice some empathy, choose our words with care instead of falling back on medical jargon, and be aware that a person’s individuality and humanity always comes ahead of their disease condition. 

 Most medical practitioners don’t know this difference, but what about you?  Your book is flying off the shelves due to your insight, compassion and medical knowledge (so they say).  But a great many people, not knowing anything about addiction, will believe pretty much everything that is in it. Yet you describe your “friend” (me) as a sort of case study, a chronically disabled person who drags the long chains of alcoholism behind her, still attached to meetings like a life support system after fifteen years.

 In the past few years I have learned so much I can’t even begin to paraphrase it here, but one thing I know for sure is that people like me must insist on dignity and stand up to prejudice and misinformation wherever we find it. This isn’t just for me, but for the countless others who are too powerless to do it. How we express ideas around addiction and mental illness matters because it affects people’s (especially readers’) thinking and behaviour towards sufferers. Whether it’s a metaphor or a description of a human being, every word counts, because it directly affects the self-esteem and thus the emotional and mental health of every person who has walked through the hell of addiction.

 To sum up, I believe your little jokes about stealing my phrase (a pivotal one that has been quoted several times by journalists) miss the mark. Are you admitting that you did wrong, or placating me so I won’t call you on it? Assuming you could incorporate my original metaphor was both arrogant and dishonest. Your little drama of confessing it on the air rather than apologizing to me was extremely rude, not to mention twisted. In addition, your inaccurate description of me painted me as a sad case, a mentally ill alcoholic who still needs propping up after 15 years.  Calling this disrespectful is an understatement.

 And how is this for a rewrite:

 “A woman I know, sober seventeen years and a faithful member of the program, has been able to ride out the violent rollercoaster of a bipolar condition that could have ended her sobriety and her life.  It didn’t, due to the power and grace she still finds in her regular AA meetings. It is more than fellowship: it’s powerful medicine.”

 For the sake of accuracy, I ask you to revise your description of me in subsequent printings.

 Margaret

 (Needless to say, that didn't happen. Since then, criticism of Mate's unsavory connections with various political factions have done damage to his reputation, which wasn't so hot to begin with.)

 

How NOT to have a manic episode

(The following are some Facebook posts from a friend - though not a face-to-face one - who had a very public mental health crisis a few years ago.)

Friends: I am so sorry to leave you wondering. Today is the first day I’ve felt normal and rested. I had a six day long manic episode just like the one that got me thrown out of rehab two months ago. Sober both times. This whole episode was frankly terrifying, and I’m trying to do what I can to monitor it until I can get people diagnosed and medicated. It’s good to know I’m capable of going off the reserve when perfectly sober. Soon as I feel fully settled I’ll be in touch. Love, G.

To all I may have disturbed over the weekend, my sincere apologies. I experienced a full blown manic episode, three to five days of unfettered weirdness — and I need to go to Joe Brant hospital to apologize to all female psychiatric staff, whom I flirted with like a dirty old wanker — my second in two months. I can now add bipolar disorder to to my mental illness repertoire. Seeking treatment, needless to say.

But I am otherwise good, and love you all for your kind and understandably perplexed responses. As you all well know I NEVER flirt.

Crazy about y’all, 

If anyone knows anybody in the Burlington police or psychiatric biz, please share.

The care and patience I received during my long night of gonzo batshit free fall was AMAZING. I regaled the cops who delivered me to psychiatric emergency — named, God love them, Scott and Geoff — with the dirtiest movie true life trivia I could — and boy did I. I was like the Groucho Marx of psychiatric emerg.

As I was escorting them out — until the psychiatric staff pulled me back inside — I tried to hug them, which they warmly refused. I offered a handshake, and Scott said “How about a fist bump, Geoff?”

And as for Jenn, the gorgeous and deeply empathetic psych muse, whom I fell deeply and obviously in love with inside of three seconds: thanks for the only memory of this whole shitshow that I cherish. That and Scott and Geoff’s fistbump.

Love y’all

Friends:

On the eve of my 62nd birthday, something of a re-birth announcement...

The mania I've been experiencing for the past few weeks continues. I am making every effort to recognize and do what I can to manage it, and with some success provided I stick to certain things. Among these: my online presence. It's become baldly obvious to me that I must reduce my internet activity considerably, and that's why I write to you all: if you're wondering how I'm doing, where I am, if I am, etc., it may take a day or two before you hear from me.

I'll spare you the thinking behind this -- god only knows, but makes sense to me -- but I also wanted to let everyone know that this is a struggle that I absolutely refuse to go through alone. And by that I mean going public. Once I am finally able to trust my thoughts again -- or even to corral them better -- I've got a plan.

I want to put this before everything. I want to re-emerge from this as a public activist. I've already got a semi-public profile, and it seems obvious and necessary that I try to harness this to my own recovery and public function. I know there's a book in this, but also a specialized website (under construction already), but possibly a documentary, podcast and as many public speaking opportunities as I can book.

I mean, who wouldn't want this: the world's first Bipolar standup addict terminally unfiltered movie critic?

See? This mania is K-razee.

Much love to y'all and more to come.

These Facebook posts are in the public domain, so I can repeat them here without the person's name attached, but MANY more posts were later deleted. These are some of the more settled comments.

Really, the only thing I object to is going so wildly public that no one knows how to react. This is a man who for years was a respected film critic in Toronto, with a rather ironic specialty: interpreting the subject of mental illness as it appears in popular culture, especially movies.

I have nothing whatsoever against going public, advocating, speaking publicly, etc. but as someone who has had multiple manic episodes myself, I can say for sure that your judgement is just a TEENSY bit off in the middle of this kind of mental hurricane. Huge upgusts of energy, talking a mile a minute (and constantly interrupting), being unable to eat or sleep, grandiosity, incredibly expensive shopping sprees, sexual acting-out which can later be quite embarrassing. . . it's pretty wild, folks, and to see it play out in public like this is kind of painful.

Since these posts back in 2019, I've seen very little from him except stills that appear to be screenshots of movies, most of them prior to 1970. Googling didn't turn up much except some articles written ten years ago. The thing about all this is, if you wanted to raise awareness about - say - heart disease, you wouldn't  try to do it in the midst of a heart attack. This is no less dangerous. But no one told him to just sit down for a bit until things had stabilized.

What shocked me the most is that, after being kept overnight in the hospital, he was discharged the next day without referrals to a doctor or psychiatrist, and apparently just one bottle of medication. When he got to the last pill, he took it with a flourish and a grand announcement, to much applause from his followers. Yes, this WAS a performance of sorts, and he seemed giddy in the middle of it. But I also know from bitter experience that the very worst thing someone with bipolar mania can do is to suddenly go off their meds. 

Why wasn't anyone there to help him - I mean, really HELP him, instead of doing what his Facebook "friends" did: cheer his mania on, tell him "you've got this" (he didn't), give him  bizarre advice on what meds or (worse) quackish herbal remedies he should be taking? The man was desperately ill, and the only followup I could find was a Twitter post about an event he was going to speak at called "But That's Another Story". The title of his talk was How I Became a Sex Addict. 

Hey, people can share all they like, but sooner or later the dust will settle and the sufferer will want to put together some semblance of normalcy. I hope he's OK, but the fact I don't see anything from  him on Facebook now except the odd photo (and even these stopped in October) does make me wonder.

Going public is fine, but you  can't take it back. This is especially true in the age of the internet, in which there is no such thing as "delete". You risk becoming a poster child, and the illness can become your entire identity and subsume whatever dreams you ever had for yourself. And I really think you have to do your advocacy from the perspective of real mental health and recovery. You can't stand up to give a speech if you don't have both feet on the ground.

Oscar Levant: a spill of brilliance

 

Oscar Levant, Oscar Levant! I am too exhausted now from a truly gruesome sick-week  to go into a long prologue about who he was, and what he has meant to me over the years.  So I will just use a canned intro:

Oscar Levant (December 27, 1906 – August 14, 1972) was an American concert pianist, composer, music conductor, bestselling author, radio game show panelist and personality, television talk show host, comedian and actor. He was as famous for his mordant character and witticisms, on the radio and in movies and television, as for his music.

I just finished reading, or re-reading, a superb biography of Levant, A Talent for Genius: The Life and Times of Oscar Levant by Sam Kashner and Nancy Schoenberger. It's one of those "old friend" books that  I re-read again and again for a certain kind of comfort. Through a lot of deep research and vibrant writing, the authors capture the Byzantine complexity of a figure so contradictory and fraught with paradox that it's hard to know how they ever pulled it off. Second only to the Marion Meade bio of Dorothy Parker, What Fresh Hell is This? (which I usually re-read back-to-back with the Oscar one), it's the best biography I've encountered among the at-least-a-hundred-or-so I have read and reviewed.

Oscar was almost hopelessly fxx'ed up, to say it politely, with a host of psychiatric ills that included  bipolar disorder, OCD, runaway anxiety, intermittent paranoia, prescription drug addiction, and even a splash of benevolent narcissism. But there was so much more to him than that. Over the many years, his vast assortment of friends noticed and celebrated the little boy inside the man, the one who played hide-and-seek behind the great wall of his cynicism.  A lifelong friend eulogized him thus: "For behind the facade of the world's oldest enfant terrible  lurked the sweetest, warmest, most vulnerable man I've ever known. . . I loved him." Words such as "innocent" and "pure" crop up, confounding those who so completely bought his sardonic public persona. One doctor described him as an “extremely worthwhile human being”, a rather strange description which he set down in a formal medical report just as Levant was about to be thrown to the wolves of the psychiatric hospital system - again. He didn’t want his patient to be written off, forgotten about,  or completely devoured. 

Levant is mostly remembered as a razor wit, which I think was the very least of his almost frightening mass of talents. I refuse to quote even one of his "isms" here, because I am tired of them and no longer like to see them. He was, as writer and friend Christopher Isherwood described him, "completely unmasked at all times," and this unusually bare-faced quality startled, surprised, and (paradoxically) delighted people. He threw them completely off-guard and off-balance, but instead of being anxious or offended by it, they actually anticipated and enjoyed it. I can't think of another performer who did that, knew how, or could get away with it. 

Turner Classics coincidentally happened to show 5 or 6 of his movies recently, with an embalmed-looking Michael Feinstein introducing them. His introductions mostly consisted of long chains of Oscar-isms which we've all heard dozens of times before. Feinstein is the perennial "Gershwin source" because he early on managed to cultivate George's sister-in-law Lee, and was thus handed a career as fetch-and-carry boy to Gershwin's memory. He also ingratiated himself with Oscar's glamorous actress-wife June, a more complex figure in Oscar's life than anyone else seems to recognize.  It's never spelled out, but I can see the degree to which she acted as an enabler for Oscar's miasma of physical and mental miseries. As a child performer with a drunken Irish father, caretaking was  second nature to her, the kind of support which is a  knitting up and an unravelling at the same time.

 

After not seeing these movies for a few years, watching him perform, sometimes in a pianistic "blob" right in the middle of a third-rate movie, was absolutely hair-raising and almost unbelievable to see and hear. Those abnormally long, slender, piano-machine fingers flew so fast that most of the time they were a blur. His glittering precision inspired a critic to comment that the notes spilled "like brilliants from a broken necklace".  His close friend Vladimir Horowitz (a true buddy - they hit it off immediately, both melancholy Russian Jews  burdened with the gift of being musical prodigies) claimed that Levant was the superior pianist, even the “best”, meaning best in the world. 

When Oscar played, his face was usually masked, a “poker face”,  which is odd given his otherwise “unmasked” quality. Sometimes he tipped his head back, but that's about all. Only rarely did you see any pleasure on his face when he played. He gave it, but couldn't feel it.
But here I  want to insert a sentence that jumped out at me just this minute, when I randomly opened his bio: "While the Swopes' guests were gossiping or playing card games or croquet, someone would invariably be at the piano - George Gershwin, Deems Taylor, or Irving Berlin. Levant would take his place there as well, but only when no one asked. He would play only when he felt like it (see Dorothy Parker's perfectly accurate description of this, below), never on demand - but when he did he would play beautifully." This incredible Last Supper-like  gathering of musical giants makes me want to say, "Pass the salt, Jesus".

I wonder why this sudden return to Levant, except I don’t. I'm pretty sick right now, need surgery, am in almost perpetual  pain, and though I don't usually share it on this blog, I feel a certain desolation that I have hardly any readership left (though, to be sure, I cherish those few that I have), and pursue it now mainly as a sort of therapeutic journal to keep me busy and distracted.  It seems like synchronicity that those movies  came on TCM, all of which I've seen multiple times, just as I came back around to the Levant bio again. Maybe I need to see an example of suffering that is FAR worse than mine, both in frustrated potential in so many areas (despite his considerable fame), and utter, flat-out wretchedness, with both major mental illness (misdiagnosed, mismanaged, and blatantly mistreated) and studio-driven addiction that nearly killed him. All this with a jaw-droppingly neglected, serious and chronically painful heart condition: he was pumped full of Demerol, then pushed back out there so he could keep on performing.

His most energetic performance in The Band Wagon (a movie I just hate, though it's been called the best movie musical ever made) came just six weeks after he nearly died of a serious heart attack and refused to go to the hospital, because he was terrified the insurance companies would dump  him and he’d never work again. So he hunkered down at home with a hired nurse, barely recovering before he dove back into work under an unbreakable contract.

The appalling thing is, he was right - they WOULD have dumped him, maybe forever. He was the breadwinner in the family, so needed to work to raise his three musically-gifted daughters and send them to Julliard.  As with Garland, this was an engineered addiction that ran him into the ground and even cut his life short. He did not play a version of himself in The Band Wagon, that musical dog's breakfast – it was really the only time he didn’t.  In yet another strange Levantine twist, he based his character on his good friend Adolph Green, the man who wrote the script.

It was a heroic effort, and for those who didn't know the circumstances, he covered his pain as well as any broken man could. But he wasn't up to it and was quite literally risking his life. Though his wife June was loyal and no doubt loved him, she didn't stand in the way of any of this nonsense, and too  often even seemed to  encourage it. Indoctrinated as a child performer, her sense of "the show must go on" was amplified to the point of near-ruthlessness. Ironically, he told everyone on set that he had been in a mental hospital because it was "safer" than revealing his heart attack.  I am not making this up!

But his mental illness was his thing, his “shtick”, and though everyone knew he was telling the truth, they found it hilariously funny. I still don't understand this and wonder if he appealed to the worst qualities of schadenfreude and sadism in his audience. He brought this on himself, of course, jacking open his chest to display his broken heart for shockingly comic effect - but what can you do when you’re down and nearly dead from mental illness? You “sell” it, which is what he felt he had to do. 

He lived to be my age, and I love the way he died, taking a little nap upstairs while waiting for Candice Bergen to come over and interview him. It is the strangest but most beautiful death I ever heard of. But I have always felt that, one way or another, you die the way you live. I have a mental image of Oscar borne up on airy wings to Eternity, pianistic diamonds  in a glittering spill behind him. 

I can't say much more about all this, though I certainly could. Originally, I was going to do a comparison of Levant with Dorothy Parker. It's not the comparison that would be hard, but doing all the backstory on Parker, whom a lot of  people probably won't even know about. The parallels between them are surprisingly many. They sometimes crossed paths, had friends in common,  liked each other, and even wrote about each other with great admiration and affection. Oscar eulogized Dorothy:

". . . a tiny woman, fragile and helpless, with a wispy will of iron. She loved dogs, little children, President Kennedy, and lots and lots of liquor. Even her enemies were kind to her; she brought out the maternal in everyone. At her cruelest, her voice was most caressive - the inconstant nymph. She was one of my favorite people."

And Dorothy on Oscar, no less a perfect encapsulation of the man's dizzying complexity:

"Over the years, Oscar Levant's image - that horrible word - was of a cocky young Jew who made a luxurious living by saying mean things about his best friends and occasionally playing the piano for a minute if he happened to feel like it. . . They also spread the word around that he was sorry for himself. He isn't and he never was; he never went about with a begging bowl extended for the greasy coins of pity. He is, thank heaven, not humble. He has no need to be.

He has no meanness; and it is doubtful if he ever for a moment considered murder. . .

Well. This was a losing fight before it started, this striving to say things about Oscar Levant. He long ago said everything about everything - and what Oscar Levant has said, stays said."

CODA. OK, there had to be one! I was fascinated to read that in his very first picture, John Garfield would play a character very closely based on his good friend Oscar Levant. This was in a movie called Four Daughters, and this clip might give you an idea of how well he pulled it off.  

Amen.

"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.

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.

Riverview: you mean it's for mental health?

Riverview Lands revisioning to include new mental health buildings

Three programs will be relocated to two new buildings under a revisioning plan for the lands

CBC News Posted: Dec 17, 2015 2:26 PM PT Last Updated: Dec 17, 2015 2:26 PM PT

Fraser Health currently operates three mental health facilities on the Riverview Lands. (CBC)

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The B.C. government says it plans to build two new buildings on the Riverview Lands in Coquitlam and relocate three mental health programs to the site, as part of its redevelopment.

The new facilities are part of a master plan released Thursday morning by B.C. Housing that will eventually include new market and social housing on the site.

Entitled A Vision for Renewing Riverview Lands, the report is the first step in developing a master development plan that will include a healthcare district as well as market and supportive housing.

The overall aim of the project is to redevelop the site on a break-even model, meaning that the construction or renovation of new healthcare facilities would be funded by commercial development of the land, mostly for housing.

The commitment includes spending approximately $175 million to build a 105-bed mental health facility to replace the Burnaby Centre for Mental Health and Addiction, and a second new building to house the 28-bed Maples Adolescent Treatment Centre and the 10-bed Provincial Assessment Centre.

The Kwikwetlen First Nation has maintained its aboriginal right and title to the land. In a statement, the band said it expects to see significant market development of the land, including for market housing and it objected to any continued use or expansion of healthcare facilities without its prior consent.
100 years of mental health care

The Riverview Lands have been the site of B.C.'s primary mental health facilities for about 100 years when the Colony Farm was established.

But in the 1980s, the Social Credit government came up with a plan to close Riverview and attempt to integrate mental health patients back into communities.





Riverview Hospital was downsized over the course of a decade in favour of locating mental health services in the community, a strategy that met with mixed success. (coqutlam.ca)

While that plan met with mixed success, over the next few decades the hospital wards were shutdown and now the site has been sitting mostly empty — except for three small mental health facilitiesoperated by Fraser Health.

About 75 buildings remain on the site, but many are not longer in use and would require extensive renovations to put back into use.
Riverview Hospital: a brief history

Riverview is listed in the top ten of Canada's most endangered heritage sites by the Heritage Canada Foundation.

As a result in 2013 the government, in order to involve the stakeholders in developing a long-term plan, launched the revisioning process for the 100-hectare site, which includes extensive forests and 1,800 mature trees.

BLOGGER'S LAMENT. This is just the most bizarre thing. Riverview originally began as an old-fashioned mental hospital, the type with shackles and shock and cold water, then when psychiatry became more "enlightened" it basically dumped everyone out on the street and said, "Go!" These patients were supposed to be sustained by "resources in the community" which turned out to be non-existent. The result was an epidemic of homelessness and drug dependency.

On the plus side, the Riverview grounds became a lucrative site for the filming of horror movies and made quite a name for itself, no doubt reinforcing a few stereotypes along the way. These plans to turn Riverview BACK into a mental health facility make me either want to laugh, or cry, or both. Nor is there any admission of wrongdoing - in fact, the tone of this article is quite self-congratulatory. The most they will admit to is "mixed success" with their patient-dumping scheme, when everyone in the health care field (who has the guts to be honest) calls it an unmitigated disaster. But no: the article has the tone of "look at this wonderful thing we're doing for the mental health care community!" But I'm afraid the new buildings won't be quite creepy enough to film another Stephen King movie.

I do remember the sign that was posted outside the gloomy old grounds, Riverview's "Mission Statement": "Transforming mental illness into mental wellness." Crap. I say crap because this is the kind of assumption that actually hurts psychiatric patients. It's an assumption that everyone can be "normalized", that everyone is fully employable and capable of a productive, happy life on society's restrictive, narrow, judgemental terms. Not many schizophrenics ever reach that goal, and for a person with  bipolar disorder it's hit-or-miss.

So is this a step forward? Step in the right direction? It was not long ago there was talk that the historic Riverview grounds which everyone babbles so proudly about was going to be sold to developers for yet another mass of condos. But it didn't happen, maybe because of all those Stephen King movies, or the thought that (shudder) "mental patients" had once walked these grounds in the dead of the night.

In case you doubt me, I've written more than once about mental patient Halloween costumes complete with straitjackets, giant syringes and Hannibal Lector-style face masks. "Danger! Escaped mental patient!" is a common front-yard sign to celebrate this festive occasion. Pretty funny stuff, so long as people only have to play at it.

I watched my brother disappear into a twilight world in the 1970s, and we never really saw him again, or saw him whole. Bouts in the Clarke Institute in Toronto seemed to do more harm than good. Finally, my brilliant, charming, charismatic brother died in a fire, the result of having to squat  in an old building because he wasn't able to support himself, though he was a very gifted musician who played in professional orchestras when he was well enough.

But he wasn't well enough, most of the time. He wasn't fully employable, and he lived hand-to-mouth, sheltered in Buddhist and Sikh temples by the only people who ever showed him any compassion. He wasn't well enough because schizophrenia is a chronic illness that can be managed but not cured, and he had little or no resources to manage it.

I lost him in  1980, the year John Lennon died. I now see that the psychiatric "community", as it is euphemistically known, did him far more harm than good. They labelled him "a schizophrenic", and because identity was a difficult thing for him, he took the label on and lived within it while we all helplessly watched.

So for this, and countless other reasons, I continue to write about this subject. If you think mental illness isn't stigmatized, try having it for ONE day.  You'll either feel it from the outside, or the inside. You'll wince at straitjacket costumes and horror movies filmed on grounds that once tried to do some good, with actors in mental patient costumes running around with bloody axes.

I wonder, sometimes, if it's ever going to be any different. If I hear about this subject at all, four words are always blasted at me: REACH OUT FOR HELP.  What help - where? Do people think you can just walk into the hospital and say, "Help me"? You can't check yourself in, folks. Even your doctor can't check you in. No one can, because there are never any beds. After a four or five-hour wait, they'll likely send you home with a prescription. Kind of a waste of energy, don't you think?

The "reach out for help" mantra dumps responsibility for illness and recovery back in the patient's lap at a time when he or she can barely function. Friends and family members get burned out and often don't want yet another (complaining?) phone call in the middle of the night. Nobody thinks about that, do they? So where IS the help, if there is any?

But never mind, there is a certain agency that takes care of the overflow. I don't think I need to tell you what that is.

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An almost normal life (short fiction)

A young woman sits in the waiting room of a psychiatrist’s office. She flips through old magazines full of celebrity diets and recipes for lavish desserts, uninterested.

“OK, Sandra, you can go in now.”

Into the throne room. The palace of no return. Or something like that. Since her bipolar diagnosis (and why is everyone suddenly bipolar? Wasn’t it multiple personality disorder a few years ago?), everything has been turned upside-down.

She is on five different medications, two of them to deal with side effects from the other three. These are (supposedly) working in tandem at relatively low levels which are (supposedly) easier on body and brain. Or at least that’s the theory, until the next one comes along.

“Sandra.”

“Dr. Turnstile.” (She has never quite gotten used to that name, which made her guffaw the first time she heard it.)

“So how are we doing these days.”

Not a question, but a statement, always in the plural.

“Oh, we’re. .  . just fine. But to tell you the truth, doctor, it could be better.”

“Feeling a touch of depression lately?” (He picks up his clipboard and begins to make notes.

“A touch. It’s been. . .I don’t know. Remember I told you about my brother?”

”The one who got married last year.”

“No, the other one. I mean. . .”

“Refresh my memory.”

“The one I’ve been talking about for the past five sessions.”

“I detect a note of irritability.” He makes another note.

“Yes, a note. He’s in jail now. Embezzlement. The guy is just too clever for his own good. He’s appealing, of course. I don’t mean that kind of appealing.”

“Explain.”

“Never mind, it’s just a lame joke.”

“So apart from your brother going to jail. . . “

“Oh, everything’s just hunky-dory.”

“I detect a note of sarcasm.”

“That’s because I’m lying. Everything isn’t hunky-dory. You remember my boy friend, Robert –“

“The accountant."

“Lawyer. We broke up. It was. . . I don’t know, pretty bad.”

“Are you taking your medication?

She blinks. “I wouldn’t dream of going off it.”

“Would you like me to raise the doseage on the Seroquel?”

"No.”

“The Lamotrigine?”

“No.”

“The lithium?”

“No.”

“Then let’s discuss non-medication-oriented strategies for managing the mild depression you seem to be experiencing right now.”

“Strategies.”

“Yes. You remember what I told you in our previous sessions. The principles of cognitive therapy indicate that feelings arise from thoughts. If thoughts are excessively negative, emotions will soon follow suit.”

“I always had a problem with that one.”

“Yes, I realize there has been some resistance to treatment. This must be overcome if you are to become truly well.”

“Can I be truly well if I’m bipolar?”

“Not in the usual sense. But in a relative sense, as opposed to experiencing severe episodes, then it’s possible for someone with bipolar disorder to live an almost normal life."

“Almost normal. I see. So nut cases can only get so much better before they hit a wall.”

"Sandra, that is a completely irresponsible statement.”

“But I’m just sayin’. There’s only so far a bipolar can go. The chain is pretty short.”

“That’s why it is so imperative for you to adhere strictly to the principles of cognitive therapy.”

“You see, there’s where I can’t follow you. I find it hard to believe that every emotion is just an offshoot of a thought, and that every thought can be controlled.”

“Maybe not every thought. But people have more control than they think.”

“Do they now. Then I wonder why we even need medication.”

“Sandra, you know why. You have inherited a chemical imbalance of the brain which tends to trigger extreme mood swings, which in turn skews your thoughts toward the negative.”

“But the thoughts lead to the mood swings, don't they? I'm confused."

“There is no need to twist my words around."

“OK then, cognitive therapy. That means I’m supposed to reframe negative events – “

"Now you’re on the right track.”

“. . . Reframe negative events so that they become positive. Let’s see. So breaking up with Robert was really a good thing.”

“Yes, yes – continue – “

“No matter how much I loved him, I – I don’t know. I can’t think of anything.”

“How about this for an alternate hypothesis. There is a possibility that this breakup will free you to explore other possibilities. You’re young. There are other fish in the sea.”

“Other fish.”

“Maybe even better fish. Have you thought of that? And how about your brother? Can we shed a more positive light on his situation, which is, after all, self-created?"

“Oh, maybe he’ll turn his life around in jail. Have a religious conversion, write a book, marry some woman on the outside who’s willing to wait fifteen years until he gets out.”

“Again, the note of sarcasm.”

“Yeah, but I just can’t do this. This cognitive therapy, it implies we can control just about every thought, and thus every feeling that we have. We can just decide.”

“Yes, more than most people realize.”

“Isn’t this creating your own reality? Isn’t that what crazy people do?”

“Sandra, you are deliberately poking holes in the therapeutic process.”

“Poking holes. Doctor, I wish it were as simple as deciding how to feel.”

“But to a large extent, Sandra, it is. Cognitive therapy is, after all, the primary mode of treatment in modern therapeutic practice.”

"Then why have they stopped saying that about being gay?”

He looks disconcerted, puts down his clipboard.

“You know. They used to say being gay was something you could change if you just decided to. You know, made up your mind.”

“That was many years ago.” He shifts in his chair.

“In other words: yes, you might be attracted to men, but that’s a choice. You can choose something else, a girl in other words, any time you want to.”

“That’s very simplistic.” He is turning a shade of pink.

“But according to the principles of cognitive therapy, it should work. You should be able to change your feelings of attraction to men just by changing your thoughts. Am I right?”

”The DSM specifically states – “

“Forget the DSM. Say you’re gay. You want to be straight, or your mother wants you to be straight. Hell, let’s face it, even with the progress we’ve made, it’s still easier to be straight than gay. You don’t have to explain yourself all the time.  So, just change your thoughts about the subject and you won’t have those feelings any more! Think about girls instead. Finito. Problem solved.”

“We aren’t discussing sexual orientation now, Sandra.”

“Yes we are. Haven’t you been listening?”

Dr. Turnstile has the look of a fish sliding down a chute and landing helplessly in the ocean. It is imperative that they change the subject before he loses any more ground.

Sandra fixes him with her incandescent blue eyes.

“It just comes down to a decision. Am I right? But the thing is, doctor – you haven’t made that decision yet. Have you?”

A young woman sits in the waiting room of a psychiatrist’s office. She flips through an old magazine with screaming headlines about Lindsay Lohan’s latest arrest on the cover, bored.

“OK, Sandra, you can go in now.”

She tosses the magazine on the table, gets up from her chair and walks into Dr. Turnstile’s office.

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