When is it enough? People face breakdowns constantly. Doctors force Prozac down the throats of the emotionally unstable, but who’s to say what is emotionally incorrect and correct? Most people can control how they feel overall by just staying positive, but no one does. We’re in a society where we have large groups of individuals who practice in self-mutilation, and suicide has been escalating. Why?

In a world with internet, books, and a variety of new liberties as opposed to earlier dates we’re depressed as ever. Maybe it’s the very things that connect us with people we love that are destroying us. Whenever you’re on the bus, or in a room full of people you can tune out the entire world with an mp3 player. We block out almost every annoyance in our lives, Medicine, Internet, Portable Devices… We can avoid going to a market filled with others and have something delivered whether it be by phone, or computer. In fact we’ve blocked almost every irritation from our lives that when were finally faced with one, we don’t know how to handle it.

Whenever someone says something we don’t agree with, we can simply ignore them easily. Delete their comment, ignore their call, anything. This brings me to another point, who’s a lot of people who are constantly in our life? Our friends? Most people can’t find anyone they can truly trust. Try naming someone you could completely trust with a really deep secret? Most people can’t find one person according to recent studies a lot of people don’t even have 1 person they can confide in. We have all this unlimited communication, yet we still can’t accurately communicate.

Our sense to have an actual conversation with people is collapsing, Most people are facing depression and irritable moods because of something that can be easily fixed, and demonstrated by earlier generations. Our parents and grandparents who lived in times more miserable still were happier. What is our society amounting to?

“For decades, scores of doctors, government officials, journalists, and others have extolled the benefits of psychiatric medicines for children.

GENERATION RX presents “the rest of the story” and unveils how this era of unprecedented change in Western culture really occurred -

and what price has been paid by our society.” source: Generation Rx

It’s really a powerful movie – shocking and real, yet we let this abuse of medicine continue.

Maybe one day we’ll return to society’s roots of caring for our children.

Parents need to have second opinions and other options presented to them before giving the green light for

their children to become drug addicts.

Communities need to become better advocates for children in foster care, and those who live in underprivileged environments,

because they become easy targets for powerful drug companies.

With 6 million children in the U.S. on psychiatric medications, society will be on-edge.

And finally, the act of diagnosing a 2-year-old with bi-polar disorder is not only barbaric, but insane!

All see: Frontline: The Medicated Child

]]> http://bestworstthings.wordpress.com/2009/11/27/new-moon-rising/ Fri, 27 Nov 2009 14:42:10 +0000 Joe Lies http://bestworstthings.wordpress.com/2009/11/27/new-moon-rising/

This isn’t easy to admit. I can’t stress that enough. It’s embarrassing. I had no problem admitting that I liked Debbie Gibson and that new Miley Cyrus song. No problem at all. But this is a horse of a different color. On Monday, I did the unthinkable for a man my age. I went to see The Twilight Saga: New Moon.

It wasn’t an easy decision. I didn’t see the first one in the theater because I thought it looked goofy. But after it won all those MTV Movie awards, I rented it because I hate being out of the pop culture loop. To my surprise, I kind of liked it. I’ve always thought Kristen Stewart was a good actress, and Twilight didn’t do anything to change that. And it had Peter Facinelli in it, who played Mike Dexter in Can’t Hardly Wait. That guy kills me. But I didn’t think there would be any way for me to see the sequel in the theater. I don’t have a tween daughter to use as cover. I told two of my buddies that I might need to borrow their daughters to go see this. They laughed because they thought I was joking. When they realized I wasn’t, they cut off all contact with me. I’m not mad at them. I understand. Even my friends that are girls look at me differently. One of them told me she didn’t think we could be friends anymore if I went and saw New Moon. She was serious. McCarthy Culkin told me I should definitely go, only so she could make horrible fun of me later. Again, there is no ill will on my part. I understand. I even respect their decisions. In my defense, the main reason I wanted to see it is for material. I’m willing to suffer for this blog. At least that’s what I tell myself.

Right now you’re probably thinking I’m not much of a man. Here is where we disagree. On Sunday, I drank beer for 11 hours straight while watching football and eating pizza and fried food. I hit four different bars during that time span and drank six different kinds of beer.  I topped off the night by having a few last beers while watching Dexter and Curb Your Enthusiasm. It doesn’t get manlier than that. Sure I negated it all by seeing New Moon the next day, but the point is, the Twilight thing is the aberration, not the constant.

It’s a delicate situation when you go to a movie like this by yourself. You can’t go at night because there will be way too many people there to make fun of you. A grown man by himself seeing New Moon would draw an incredible amount of fire. No, I went on a Monday afternoon. I go to a lot of movies, and there is never anyone there on a Monday afternoon. My first question was…How am I going to buy my ticket without having the kid behind the glass laugh at me? That was easy. I bought it at the Kiosk computer outside the theater. Simple. Anonymous. Brilliant.

The next hurdle, there is no way around. The ticket taker. I just handed him my ticket without ever looking him in the eye. Sure it wasn’t very brave, but it was the only way I could get through it. The concession stand is a breeze. They don’t know what you’re seeing. I got my large Coke Zero and pack of Twizzlers and moved on without any fear.

Walking in to the theater can be tricky. I always move to the far side of the theater without ever looking at the people already seated. If you’re going to be caught, this is the time. Even though I’ve never been recognized by anyone on a Monday afternoon, it could happen. So I always arm myself with excuses, just in case. The reason I’m seeing this is that Kristen Stewart is my niece. I told her I would go. Or, I’m an online movie reviewer. I have to see it. Stuff like that. I’ve never needed it, but it’s nice knowing it’s there. It never hurts to prepare.

To my surprise, there were more people in there than I anticipated. I just sat away from them, lowered my baseball hat and waited for the lights to dim. Once that happens, you’re safe. And I was. The previews started and I was finally able to relax.

The movie itself, was not that great. There is a lot of angst going on in Forks, Washington. The town should put Prozac in the water system. It couldn’t hurt. Anyway, the first one was better. What troubled me about this film, is that a whole generation of girls are learning to not go after the nice guy their age, but to chase the old, pasty, broody Vampire type. And if he disappoints you, which he will, go after the younger werewolf type. But whatever you do, don’t go after anyone who doesn’t represent mortal danger. It’s better to fear for your life than be happy dancing to Sean Paul at your Prom. I feel sorry for my 12 and 15 year old nephews. Unless they are serial killers in wait, it’s going to be a long road. Those crazy tween girls are going to grow up in to crazy teenagers and adults. And it’s all because of Twilight. Good luck boys.

So there you have it. I’ve seen both Twilight movies. I’m not proud of it, but it’s part of my history now. I can’t take it back. I’ve learned some lessons. When the next one comes out this summer, hopefully my friends will be speaking to me. I won’t ask them to borrow their 12 year old daughters. I won’t tell anyone that I’m going. I’ll just go through this whole charade in silence. Until it’s time to write again. Hey, I need the material. I told you I suffer for this blog.

I started taking Prozac again.  Yep, I did that.

I used to be on Prozac in High School, back when it was cool.  Now I’m on it in real life and it sucks, I’ll tell you why.  When you’re young your body can handle pretty much anything.   Hangovers?  Yah, I had a few more than most back in my early 20’s, not that I remember them all that well, I usually just woke up from a night of drinking, ate a cheeseburger and carried on with my day — this was after consuming at least 5 shots of Bacardi 151.  Today, give me 2 glasses of wine before bed and I’m up in the middle of the night guzzling orange juice out of the carton to hydrate myself and wiping sweat off my brow (mainly just because I drank the oj too fast).  Anyway, back when I was a young punk I took Prozac like it was candy, and it was, pure, sweet, serotonin boosting, endorphin releasing, candy.  It didn’t bother me, I was fine, I was tired some of the time, but with my days filled with keeping myself out of detention, who wouldn’t be?  Fast forward in time 10 years and I feel like I’m about to die and not just because I want to, any more.

It isn’t just that three hours after I took my first dose I was feeling a full 95% better than the day before when I was at the bottom of a dark, brick well surrounded by spiders, moss and bad smells (mentally);  And that 3 days later, I felt like I was back in that same well, only this time there was a shoddy looking rope ladder that I could use to get out depending on how desperate I was feeling (although, by the looks of it, in my brain, it didn’t seem like a very safe option).  It’s the way I feel physically.  I mean, I took a pregnancy test because I thought I was having morning sickness!  Morning sickness that turned into all day sickness combined with dizziness, weakness and, my personal favorite, insomnia.  Seriously, insomnia?  This stuff is supposed to help that!

I went out with Lindsay last night.  Lindsay who is currently going to school to become a Physician’s Assistant and knows all about everything there is to know about medicine, Lindsay.  She asked me what’s new and I responded, “I’m back on the ‘Zac.”  She made an audible gasp and said, “You must be feeling like shit!”  Thank you, Lindsay!  Yes, I am feeling like shit, and until you said that, without any prompts or complaints from this end, I thought it was all in my head.  Then she said, casually, as if it were no big deal, “Well, you should start feeling better in about 8 weeks.”

EIGHT WEEKS?!  What am I, some upper-middle-class white person who tends to her garden for a living!?  No!  I have a job!  How the hell am I supposed to feel this way for EIGHT WEEKS and still be able to afford to pay my rent?!  Also, how is making someone who has crippling depression take a medicine that will not only continue to make them feel depressed, but sick, tired and unable to sleep, a good idea?  Can’t my doctor just write me a prescription for some pain killers so I can develop a chemical dependency on something that actually makes me feel good?  Oh, wait, I/she/we already did that.

I know Prozac works.  It worked so well the first time that I thought I could stop because I wasn’t actually depressed, just paying my $10 monthly co-pay to Eli-Lilly.  Wrong.  Sixteen months off and I’m worse than I ever was.  This stuff is so tricky, man.  I mean, the first time around it gives me no side effects, makes me feel great and later seduces me into thinking I am a strong enough person to live without its tasty nectar coursing through my veins.  The second time around, after finally convincing myself that being on drugs for the rest of my life is something I am just going to have to accept,  it gives me the cold shoulder, not to mention weakness, nausea or insomnia, and makes me wait.

“Look, Prozac, I’m sorry I doubted you, but you’re the one who made me feel like I wasn’t depressed anymore.  What did you want me to do, continue our love under false pretenses?  I had to find out, for myself, how truly miserable I was without you!  Take me back!  Take me back and I’ll do whatever you want!”

I have been having that conversation with my pill bottle on a nightly basis for the past 4 nights.*

Only 7 weeks and three days to go!

*Prozac also forces me to sound as if I’m in an abusive relationship when I’m talking to myself

And here I find myself again trying to recreate some kind of a natural response to the final two episodes of the first season of The Sopranos. The problem here is that there is so much going on, so much that has been building, and at the height of such exuberance in screenwriting, nearly every line is a verse of poetry, a carefully placed piece in the jigsaw puzzle which helps to create the larger picture of what Tony Soprano’s life is. And verily, just like real life, any real life that any person lives, Tony’s is not merely composed of the relationships he has or the actions he takes on a conscious level, but also the unconscious feelings and concerns he has, and yes even the medication or stress or what-have-you-induced hallucinations. It is all of these underlying, deeply personal mental incantations which have so much effect on a person’s life, decisions, and actions, but are nearly always taboo or inappropriate to discuss. But here David Chase is again, putting it all out there on the line. For a TV show assumed by many to be a “shoot-em-up,” “capicola-eating,” “boozin and screwin” depiction of Italian-American mafiosos (which it is,) The Sopranos certainly is not afraid to deal with the minutiae of personal and psychological life, without which it is nearly impossible to understand why anyone does anything they do that they haven’t been instructed to do through years of civlizing programming.

OK.

Tony is depressed as f*ck. He’s hopped up on Lithium and Prozac, his best friend Pussy is missing and likely dead, his mother will not stop laying the guilt I’m-a-poor-old-uncared-for-lady-you-bastard-son-and-my-husband-is-dead-and-you-sold-my-house-and-I-have-a-questionably-intimate-relationship-with-my-dead-husband’s-brother-who-is-also-a-mob-boss-with-no-credible-power-and-now-wants-to-murder-my-son-and-I’m-kind-of-complicit-in-this trip on him, he has federal indictments hanging over his head, he’s in love with his therapist, whose visits with are jeopardizing his whole organized crime career, his daughter is a somewhat obnoxious anorexic borderline feminist/activist who hooks up with skeezy Dominican guys and knows her father’s in the mafia, and he has hallucinations of eating lunch with a gorgeous imaginary Italian dental student where he then has a further hallucination of being breast-fed by her as a baby in a chalet in the Avolina countryside, and who really knows what the hell is going on?

So in response, he lies around all day in his bathrobe, half-conscious sprawled out on his king-size bed in his king-size master bedroom in his North Jersey McMansion and limps around the house waiting for the day that someone shows up to put a bullet in his skull if he doesn’t grab a gun out of his mother’s hatbox and do it first himself.

And the boys are starting to talk. Christopher (Michael Imperioli) thinks he may be depressed since he’s sleeping all day and not taking care of himself. “What the fuck do you know about depression?” retorts Silvio, with an apparent air of personal offense. All the top guys in history had black moods, and it’s somewhat fascinating and maybe even appropriate that he would compare Tony in his position of power to the likes of Winston Churchill and Napoleon. It might be a bit of a stretch, but that’s how seriously they take this life. So yeah, Churchill swilled a quart of brandy before breakfast every morning and Napoleon was a moody f*ck too, so don’t go worrying about Tony and making accusations of depression, the guy from the E-Street Band says. It’s just ridiculous. Later, when Christopher is talking with the bathrobe-clad Tony in his kitchen, and Tony turns to go down the stairs, Chris asks “What are you going to do?” with a look of concern on his face that says “If you’re going to hang yourself down there, I hope you have enough rope for me too.”

Over in Uncle June’s camp meanwhile, we see what big douchers Mikey and Jimmy, and especially Junior are. They’re at this poor old woman’s wake, kneeling in front of her casket talking about the hit on Tony (they’re getting “black guys to do it…no way to trace it back) while Junior gazes down at the chilly, wrinkled hands lying so limp and lifeless in the casket, reminiscing of how they were the first ones to yank his canoli when he was wee boy behind the local chicken market. “God, what am I saying at this poor woman’s wake,” he immediately catches himself. Junior’s a scummy man, plotting the mob assassination of his own nephew because of his own personal insecurities. Everyone knows he’s just “Joe Jerkoff,” as Silvio puts it–he’s got no real power, Tony is calling the shots behind his back, rendezvousing with his fellow capos at the old-folks home while Grannie Sopranie eats pastries and looks for her lost slipper and hate hate hates on everybody and everything with that loose-jowled scowl still conjuring up images of the Grandmother in Psycho. So June’s puking out of his car door when he finds out the hit on Tony didn’t go down and having Mikey give the hired thug a Moe Green Special of his own in his own car on an abandoned street in broad daylight for cracking  jokes about Tony’s own mother wanting to see him popped.

Sh*t, as they say, is f*cked.

• 1000s of dollars for Honus Wagner and jack sh*t for Jesus Christ, Junior laments, thinking back to the prayer cards of his youth and how they don’t get nearly the respect or admiration that the same cards with pictures of guys who hit little leather balls with sticks of ash-wood that come with dry, powdery old stick of gum get. Such is life. Can Jesus Christ hit 73 dingers in one season? Not likely!
• At the very least, when they pop Tony, they’re gonna shoot him below the neck, so he can have an open casket. That’s nice.
• No wonder Tony can’t lose weight…he’s running off to buy donuts! Which produced the epic line, “Let Soprano have his donuts, we gonna pop him when he gets out!” by one of the hired assassins.
• Tony’s Prozac gets bumped up to 60mg by Melfi. They’re just trying to find some way to jump start his system a little bit.
• Well later on he gets that jump start he needs. Walking back to his SUV after buying a Tropicana and a racing form from the news stand, one gunshot shatters his glass bottle. He freaks, hops in his car, and wrestles the gun out of the hand of the dude unfortunate enough to stick his head in the car window. The second assassin steps up, shouting, “You dead now, muthaf*cka!” or something epic to that effect, as he shoots his partner in the head, instead of Tony’s melon, sitting a couple inches away. Tony sheds the first body, grabs the gun in the second guys hand, and starts driving off, wresting the firearm away and leaving the dude bleeding on the pavement, and a jovial look reminiscent of Tony’s days as a young boy eating cherry-vanilla ice cream while his dad and a circus clown get shoved in the back of a paddywagon washes over Tony’s face—he showed those guys!–before he careens solidly into two park cards and busts his head up against the steering wheel.
• In the hospital, after the requisite mushy visit from his family, Tony is visited by an FBI agent, who gives him the old Henry Hill deal: Total immunity and relocation in exchange for his testimony. It’s just not safe for him on the streets or in prison anymore, and the government is Tony’s last hope. But fuck that, Tony says. While he was sitting in Melfi’s office earlier, lamenting that fact that he feels nothing, is empty and dead inside, isn’t a husband to his wife, a father to his kids, or a friend to his friends, Tony has a renewed sense of zeal. While Carmella pleads with Tony to consider the FBI offer because she wants her children to have a father, he pronounces, “They got one, right here, Tony Soprano, and everything that comes with it, mutherf*cka!” Ok, I added the muthaf*cka part, but you get the effect.
• Outside in the hallway, AJ doesn’t believe it was a carjacking that landed ol pops in the hospital. “It takes more than a couple Jamaican bobsledders with capguns to stop your old man” Paulie racistly remarks, as he and Silvio embrace Tony’s kids in front of a deliciously ironically placed sign which reads: Safe Families, Everybody Needs One! Arguably, these two kids are safer than any two who’s father isn’t a mob lord in Northern New Jersey. Verily, Tony will die and take 40 men with him before he lets anyone hurt his wife and kids, and God bless’em for that.
• There’s crazy wind outside, as the man at the news stand observes. The winds of change, anyone?
• Capicola (colloquially pronounced “gabagool“) and attributed every so satirically to this show, is mentioned for the first time in the entire season, with Meadow telling her grandmother not to eat it because it’s so full of cholesterol. Grannie Sopranie proceeds to ask, “Who is that girl?” “What the f*ck?” everyone else asks. Her memory is going, apparently, though Junior is sure to call her out about that later. Convenient, that right after she was complicit in the plot to murder her own son, which failed, that she all of a sudden has memory loss and doesn’t even recognize her own granddaughter. She loves to have her hand in everything, but will never, to the very end, admit what it is she is doing or what she knows. She’s just a poor old lady! An old shoe! What can you do about her though?
• AJ goes off in the end to the school dance with the “future Miss New Jersey,” as Tony, half pumping up his son’s ego and half planning the phonecalls and handshakes and extortion he’d need to put into place to actually make this girl win the Miss New Jersey contest one day. Paulie and Silvio accompany them in the limo, smoking cigarettes and straight-facing little AJ as he mischievously asks if they can have a little whiskey. Oh kids!
• Also Chris walks in wearing a ridiculous fisherman’s cap to complement his classic Nike jumpsuit. What!? He was just out on a boat down the shore in Tom’s River when he got the call of Tony’s failed hit. Whoever it was that ordered it will wish they were never born, says Silvio, looking with bold disdain right through the four-eyed face of old Curacao drinkin’ Uncle Junior.
• Tony’s grandfather was a stonemason.
• Tony describes himself to Melfi in maybe one of the best metaphors of the series: “I’m like King Midas in reverse, everything I touch turns to shit!”

Don’t be so hard on yourself, man. Just remember your good spirits and muster up the strength you need to take on the world, one last time.

My Rating

Great writing, great plot progression, excellent laying out the pieces for the foundation of the last episode of the season. Props to the actors and crew all around.

Tony describing Isabella to Cusamano as "beautiful."

As it turns out, I am apparently not ready to be happy. A couple weeks ago I was sitting in my doctor’s office having another crying jag, complaining I had lost my bounce, didn’t feel I had any resilience left. We had a 10 minute appointment, so in all fairness to him, it wasn’t like I could get into any great detail about the fact that my husband was made redundant 11 months ago, I am the “IT’ gal in every sense of the word, financial worries are pressing like a 10,000 pound weight on my throat, my work is stressful and I had too much on my plate, I was recently hospitalized with a heart scare and complications of my thyroid disease, and final kickers, my 16 year old daughter decided to turn a one month holiday into estrangement, and with the support of other family members, create what is sure to be, one more family ‘disaster’.

In absence of listening to that long litany of ‘factors’ – what my doctor did do was write me a prescription … for Celexa, an anti-depressant. Not sleeping? Not hungry? Can’t concentrate? Crying all the time? Here’s a pill. I was still crying when he handed the prescription to me, and even though I knew I wouldn’t ‘cash the cheque’ I took it anyway. When I got into the car with my husband, I told him about the prescription and we looked at each other for a few moments and went … nahhhhh.

Before I launch into a ditribe about the over prescribing of anti-depressants, especially to women – I preface this by saying, I have nothing against anti-depressants. They help many people, who truly need them and for whom, without them, quality of life would be significantly compromised. There are times when anti-depressants are the ‘right’ answer, but for me, this is not one of those times. I could not help but wonder, why my dr didn’t spend even one minute discussing proven anti-drug alternatives such as exercise, counseling, nutritional therapies, or meditation to support my obvious emotional distress, rather than scribbling a prescription for an antidepressant? A rightly cynical friend pointed out that dr’s do not recieve ‘kickbacks’ for counseling referrals but they do for issuing prescriptions. I don’t know if that was my dr’s motivation, but point well made.

So, I asked myself, if I were to pull 100 people off the street who were going through the same things I was, how many of them would be crying in their dr’s offices (or the super market, the car, the shower, and bedroom)? I am pretty sure the most of them would be faring about the same as I am. This means how I am feeling is not a result of some ‘biochemical imbalance’ in my brain. It means the problem is situational, and I need to find some ways to change the situations so I can feel better.

After some quick research on the internet about my prescription I realized, taking a pill whilst everything continues the same way isn’t going to make me happier, just numb-er, with the risk of a whole bunch of side effects I really don’t need at this point in time; abdominal pain, agitation, anxiety, diarrhea, drowsiness, dry mouth, fatigue, impotence, indigestion, insomnia, loss of appetite, nausea, painful menstruation, respiratory tract infection, sinus or nasal inflammation, sweating, tremor, vomiting etc.

Now I’m sorry, but I have enough going on, without risking any of those problems!

I feel for my dr, who is a pretty good guy. He did take some aggressive steps around my thyroid disease and heart scare and obviously he can’t write me a prescription for:

- job for husband
- money to get out of rising debt
- a personal life assistant to pick up some of my slack
- a cure for my thyroid disease
- a reduction of my work stress
- a fix for an estranged family
- or returning my 16 year old daughter, home, where she belongs

He did what he could do. He wrote a prescription for an antidepressant, advised me to take two weeks off work and let my upgraded thyroid medication kick in.

I have a supportive boss and a great team and I took those two weeks off. I also chose to sit in the sun a bit, listen to relaxing music, meditate a little, and breathe. I have followed his advice, other than the antidepressant part, and guess what? I am feeling a bit better. Nothing has changed significantly, but I feel more rested, and almost ready to tackle some more life changes which will support me to better manage what is undoubtedly, a really stressful time.

There is an added bonus for me, in my situation, that has come by not traveling down the antidepressant road. I feel stronger, more capable, more resilient and convinced that I can make choices that will support me to feel better. Choices that don’t involve medication and side effects.

Maybe I am ready to feel better after all.

[Re: Posted from my WrongSide Vox blog, Posting permission given to The Kathleen Show, Prevention Not Prescription]

Link here:

http://urlet.com/suggestion.face

http://highboldtage.wordpress.com/2009/11/20/ssri-antidepressants-the-biggest-corporate-scam-of-all-time/

In the 1970’s the pharma industry started research on a new class of drugs.  It seems like humans sometimes get depressed and Pfizer saw an opportunity to cash in on our misery.  They started experimenting with a class of drugs called serotonin reuptake inhibitors.  Basically the goal was to manipulate the level of serotonin in the brain with the underlying idea that people with more serotonin were happier and less depressed, and those who had lower serotonin levels tended towards depression.

The idea that serotonin is a hormone that controls your mood was the subject of one of the early studies that were the scientific basis for the later marketing bullshit after the introduction of Prozac, Paxil, et al.  Simply put, a group of monkeys were observed for a period of time and it was determined which of the males were alpha males (they got the best food and the most females to mate) and the rest of the males (losers in the game of life.)  Once that determination was made, the monkeys were killed and the level of serotonin was compared to the social ranking of each monkey.  The research suggested that high levels of serotonin correlated with “success” and lower levels with “failure.”  The alpha monkeys had higher serotonin levels.

The first thing that pops into  your head when you really think about it is of course there is no way to know what a monkey “feels” like.  There is a great big assumption here that monkeys that are “successful” or “alpha” are somehow less depressed or happier than the other less blessed members of the troop.  This is just scientific idiocy.  After all, don’t we all know some humans that are rich and successful but also depressed and suicidal?  Don’t we all know a few humans that are poor as a church mouse but as happy as a human can be?  Of course we do.

But then again, Big Pharma, and many therapists and doctors really don’t care how you “feel.”  They just want you to be able to get up in the morning and go to work.  If an antidepressant accomplishes that, then they call it good.  Add to that the fact that the average doctor in the US was gifted $15,000 a year from Big Pharma all through the 80’s and 90’s and you can see why doctors are so enthusiastic in prescribing them.

There is a deeper flaw in the original research though.  It is the assumption that the hormone serotonin regulates mood.  This is only an assumption with no evidence that it is true.  It is my personal opinion that serotonin regulates social standing in the group, that is high serotonin will make a person behave more alpha (dominant and aggressive), and low serotonin will tend to make a person  into one of the followers in the group.  That is the only correlation that is provable by the monkey study.  I am sure that big pharma was aware of this flaw, and that’s what makes SSRIs a scam.

Which leads to another problem with SSRIs that has manifested itself in human society:  SSRIs have been implicated in violence, mass murders and suicides.  The killers at Columbine were taking SSRIs, and there is a very long list of other killers who have been taking this crap when they went over the edge.

Well think about it!  Take a troop of monkeys with a few alpha males, some adult females, and some males who are peripheral followers.  We  may think that the alpha males are happy and the followers are miserable, but how would we know?  Now put all the “unhappy” peripheral males on an SSRI regimen to ease their “depression.”  If serotonin is as I believe a hormone regulator of social status and not mood, what you have done is create a troop of monkeys that are all alpha males!  This is a recipe for violence, aggression, and the breakdown of monkey society.

Don’t we see the same thing in human society?  The evidence is overwhelming that SSRIs produce violence and aggressive behavior in humans, at least some of them.  How can this be if an SSRI is nothing but a benign antidepressant, a mood elevator?  The answer is that people who take SSRIs start believing that they are the leader of the pack, to varying degrees.  This is also a recipe for disaster.  When everyone imagines himself to be a leader there will be no peace.

Chemically most SSRIs have a component phenylalkylamine that is the same chemical found in mescaline and amphetamine.  For this reason, and for the reasons above, I call the SSRI’s “designer speed.”  SSRI’s are basically a timed release version of methamphetamine.

SSRIs are addictive.  There are two obvious proofs of the addictive qualities of SSRIs.   The first is the fact that people often build up tolerances to the drugs, and the dosage must be increased.  Your doctor will look you in the eye and tell you that you must “titrate up” your dose.  On the street, drug addicts call this process something else.  The second proof is the heavy, serious withdrawal symptoms experienced by many who try to quit an SSRI.  These withdrawals are so serious that the Pharma companies themselves strongly urge people to taper down from the drug rather that quit cold turkey.  When your doctor hands you a free month supply of Paxil or Prozac he is hooking you on a drug, and it is an expensive drug.  Remember that.

There have been countless studies since the monkey study of course , mostly financed by Big Pharma, but there is overwhelming evidence that the studies publicized by Big Pharma have been cherry picked, it has been proven in court.  And there was a study just a few years ago, a meta analysis of hundreds of large studies, that proved there is really only one factor in improving the life of someone who is really depressed.   That is the “alliance effect” which refers to the situation where you have a therapist that you like and who you trust, and who you believe is working in your interest.  Nothing else really matters, not SSRIs or older antidepressants, not therapy technique like CBT, nothing.  So if you are seriously depressed find a therapist who will talk to you, and if you are lucky you will find one who really cares.

Most of the studies done in the last twenty years are of short duration 8-12 weeks or so, and most of the ones published by big pharma indicate that the pills helped people who were somewhat depressed, but did very little for people who were chronically or deeply depressed.  The reason for this is simple:  take 100 people who say they are depressed.  Maybe 75 to 80 % of them will get out of their funk with or with out the drug.  Swings in mood are normal, but they don’t usually last more than a few weeks.  You give someone your faux medication, full on in the knowledge that the patient will get better anyway whether he takes it or not.

This is fraud on a grand scale, Big Pharma is the perpetrator abetted by a greedy and gullible medical establishment.

My advice for you, if you are depressed, before you consider this big pharma crap, is go for a walk every day, talk to interesting people, and turn off your television.  Give it a try.

have a peaceful day,

Bill

The Food and Drug Administration warns that acid-reflux drugs Prilosec and Nexium should not be taken with blood-thinner Plavix.

Plavix’s label cautions against the use of the heartburn drugs, as Prilosec and Nexium make the blood-thinning medication half as effective, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Other drugs that should not be taken with Plavix include Tagamet, Intelence, Felbatol, Diflucan, Nizoral, Luvox, Ticlid and Prozac.

The Times reports on a study from Mount Sinai Medical Center in which Prilosec and Protonix were found to be dangerous following balloon angioplasty. In a five-year follow-up, patients taking Prilosec and Protonix were 72 percent and 54 percent more likely to die, respectively, than patients not on heartburn drugs.

A possible alternative to antacids and acid-reducing drugs are digestive enzyme supplements combined with herbal ingredients, including aloe, DGL and marshmallow, which might help soothe an irritated digestive tract.

Originally Written by: DeMarco, Carolyn, M.D.

Dr. Carolyn DeMarco is a consultant in holistic medicine from British Columbia who specializes in women’s health issues and alternative medicine. She is a well-known author and journalist, and her latest book, Doctor DeMarco Answers Your Questions and an innovative CD-ROM have recently been released.

I DEPRESSION AND ALTERNATIVES TO PROZAC

TYPES There are many different types of depression. Depression which is cyclical where there are manic and depressive episodes is called bipolar depression. In unipolar depression, the common type of depression, there is just depression without the manic state. It is just the down state, and it can be mild, moderate or severe. It is characterized by changes in appetite and weight, disturbed sleep, fatigue, loss of energy, difficulty concentrating, feelings of worthlessness and suicidal thoughts or attempts. Reactive depression may be brought on by an identifiable event like the death of a parent, or loss of a job, but this is not true depression. Dysthymia means “bad mood” and refers to mild to moderate depression. There is also seasonal affective disorder, which many people in Canada are subject to.

Many factors affect depression including diet, excess sugar, sugar substitutes, coffee, alcohol and junk food, which can all create mental state abnormalities.

Depression can be a very serious illness and drugs can be a godsend for people with severe depression, especially those who are suicidal and unable to function in any way. There is a place for psychiatric drugs. I would never deny that. However, they are very much subject to overuse. There is less necessity for tranquilizers because there are excellent effective natural remedies.

ST. JOHN’S WORT However, there is a great role, in depression, for St. John’s wort (Hypericum perforatum). I have endorsed one specific kind of St. John’s wort because I have had a very good experience with it, and that is Flora’s St. John’s wort which comes from Greece and it is completely wild. They pick it on the hills, put it in vats of extra-virgin olive oil, let it sit in the sun for 1,000 hours, then take that oil and put it into capsules. It is not a so-called standardized extract, but I have found that it always works well in doses of three or four capsules from two to four times a day, depending on the severity of the depression. All herbs are better taken without food, because they will have an increased effect. Don’t take it with food unless you are having a lot of nausea. Take it between meals if you can. So take one dose at bedtime, one first thing in the morning and then just place your other doses sometime during the day.

Michael Murray surveyed all the St. John’s wort in the U.S. and found out there was much more being sold than there was actually plant material available. So, there are a lot of very weak or ineffective St. John’s wort products. So we will have to investigate that. At the very least, if you don’t want to try the Flora, try a St. John’s wort that is standardized to contain .3% hypericin. There are many good ones out there. Natural Factors and many other companies make some good standardized extracts of St. John’s wort. So we still use that 0.3% hypericin as a marker for quality.

It grows everywhere in the countryside of Ontario and is also very common in B.C. It is actually considered a noxious weed because it grows so well. St. John’s wort has a balsam-like smell. It has yellow flowers and there are little dots on the leaves which contain hypericin, one of the active ingredients. Nobody knew exactly how St. John’s wort worked in the beginning; they thought the action was due to the hypericin. Now they have found that St. John’s wort affects almost every neurotransmitter in the brain. It affects serotonin, dopamine, GABA and norepine-phrine. Some of you may know about the drug Effexor (used for depression) which targets two receptors: norepinephrine and serotonin. The new trend in antidepressants is to target specific neuroreceptors in the brain. However, St. John’s wort actually acts on all the receptors. So it has a complex action, much more complex than they thought at the beginning. There are ten active ingredients of which hypericin is only one. And that is why I still feel there is a place for whole plant extracts. Otherwise the hypericin is a good marker of quality control. And usually St. John’s wort is standardized to contain .3% hypericin.

STUDIES St. John’s wort became accepted in the medical profession when a study was published in The British Medical Journal in August, 1996 which reviewed all the highest quality trials on St. John’s wort. The authors concluded that St. John’s wort was a very effective treatment for mild to moderate depression. They were careful to investigate all the trials and choose only the best-designed and highest quality. So they were very stringent. Of the 37 studies reviewed, only 23 were accepted. A total of 1,757 patients with mild to moderate depression were surveyed, and St. John’s wort was found to be significantly superior to a placebo or a dummy pill. It was also determined that St. John’s wort effects were equal to a series of standard antidepressant drugs such as imipramine and amitriptyline, but there were far less side effects. It really was very good news. The studies used products in which the hypericin was standardized to .3%. In three other studies, St. John’s wort was compared to standard antidepressants. Basically, they found that the reduction in depression was 63% for St. John’s wort and 58% for standard antidepressants.
The medical community is very cautious, and they suggest that longer-term studies of St. John’s wort are required. Recently, a widely published long-term study performed by the makers of Zoloft comparing St. John’s wort with standard antidepressants was inconclusive because the St. John’s wort used in the study was not properly standardized.

SAFETY You may have seen information in the news lately about the safety of St. John’s wort, because if you are an AIDS patient, St. John’s wort will actually increase the excretion of drugs through the liver, and you may have to change your dosage. So it is not considered appropriate to take with AIDS drugs. But basically, it has a very wide safety margin. In one study, they monitored over 3,000 patients (and by the way, most drug studies don’t monitor such a large number). Over 600 private general practitioners participated in this study, and they found that 80% of individuals with mild to moderate depression showed an improvement. Side effects were rare and mild. So the experience of general practitioners using St. John’s wort was that it was both safe and effective.

SIDE EFFECTS The documented side effects of St. John’s wort are very low, 2.43% overall. The main side effects are nausea, stomach upset, and occasional allergic reactions. The remaining side effects were almost negligible: .4% fatigue and a few incidents of anxiety. There has been some discussion about photosensitivity with St. John’s wort, but it is not a major problem. If you want to improve your tanning, it will help, but fair skinned, blue-eyed people should be somewhat cautious; they tend to occasionally experience an allergic reaction. If you know anything about drug profiles (e.g. Prozac), the side effects and contra-indications go on for about four to five pages, and this is true of almost every antidepressant. These are very powerful drugs. Prozac has a lot of side effects and one of them is complete sexual dysfunction. The average Prozac prescription is given after an interview of about three to five minutes, so a lot of Prozac is given out without an adequate history of the patient.

If you are taking Prozac for any of the milder problems such as mild to moderate depression, moderately severe PMS, menopause, or other ailments for which Prozac is now being prescribed, you shouldn’t go suddenly off your drugs. If you are on the SSRIs (Prozac, Paxil or Zoloft) or tricyclic antidepressants like Elavil (amitriptyline) or Tofranil (imipramine), you must gradually reduce them over four weeks until the St. John’s wort starts to kick in. Some antidepressants like Paxil have a serious rebound so that you will feel seriously worse when you go off them suddenly, and you can have a severe crash. Even missing a dose of Paxil can result in a severe emotional crash. Ideally, you should only go off your drugs under a doctor’s supervision. As you gradually decrease your anti-depressants, add one St. John’s wort the first week, two the second week, three the third, and then the fourth week you are off. The book by psychiatrist Hyla Cass called St. John’s Wort: A Common Sense Guide to Understanding and Using St. John’s Wort (Avery, 1998) provides a practical guide to using St. John’s wort including how to make the switch from drug treatments.

SEVERE DEPRESSION Study: Currently, the general consensus of the medical community is that you cannot use St. John’s wort for severe depression. However, in a study of severely depressed patients, high doses of St. John’s wort produced equivalent results to the standard antidepressants. This was a randomized controlled multi-center test, which means they had divided two groups into two parts: one group received a high dose (kind of a double dosage) of St. John’s wort, the other received a high dose antidepressant which was Elavil. This was only one study and it hasn’t been widely published, but it is very interesting because the results showed that both treatment regimens were equally effective, except that there were almost no side effects, of course, in the St. John’s wort group. There were more side effects with the exceptionally high doses, but compared to the antidepressant group in which 41% (four out of every ten patients) had dry mouth, stomach upset, sweating, constipation – only 23% of the St. John’s wort group had side effects and these were a lot milder.

SEASONAL AFFECTIVE DISORDER (SAD) You can also use St. John’s wort for seasonal affective disorder. Many people suffer from seasonal affective disorder in the winter when the light diminishes, and crave food, eat a lot, sleep a lot and become depressed. That is seasonal affective disorder in a nutshell. St. John’s wort works like a dream. Four capsules of St. John’s wort at night is very effective in preventing that decline in mood. There are studies showing that the results of St. John’s wort for seasonal affective disorder are comparable to Prozac. There is no problem with long-term usage. For SAD, of course, you don’t have to take it in the summer. It is very, very safe.

LABOUR AND CHILDBIRTH We also use a tincture of St. John’s wort during labour to lessen the pains of contraction, and for uterine contractions after labour, there is nothing like St. John’s wort tincture. Midwives have always used it. Historically, they didn’t use it for depression. Maybe they didn’t have the amount of depression we have now.

HERBAL TINTURES AND OILS You can also make your own St. John’s wort in an alcoholic tincture and it is very easy to make. You won’t know exactly how to adjust the dosage, but you can use it for mild depression. To extract the active ingredients you need alcohol. You just grind it up with vodka or brandy or some other alcohol, let it sit for about eight weeks and then strain and discard the herb. It is very simple. You are making a herbal tincture. St. John’s wort also makes a lovely oil. You put the flowers and the plants in olive oil, which will then turn red, and it is very good for joint aches and pains. In homeopathy, we use it for nerve injuries and head and spine trauma.

ATTENTION DEFICIT DISORDER St. John’s wort can also be very helpful for children with ADD and ADHD. It is very safe to use. It helps calm them down.

THYROID SUPPLEMENTS There are several natural products that can augment an antidepressant. The thyroid supplements T3 and T4 have been used for treatment-resistant depression.

TRYPTOPHAN Another thing that you can use is tryptophan, which is an amino acid, one of the building blocks of protein. I am a big fan of tryptophan. Tryptophan is very good for insomnia and you usually use 2000 mg. at night. It is a great sleep aid; it is totally natural and has no side effects. It is also good for the sleep disorders of chronic fatigue syndrome, grief and menopause. In Canada, it is only available by prescription because a batch of Japanese genetically-engineered tryptophan caused serious health problems and it was taken off the market in the US.

5-HTP (5-hydroxy-tryptophan) can be used instead of tryptophan. 5-HTP is available without a prescription in health food stores. But where you would use 1000 mg of tryptophan, you need only 100 mg of 5-HTP. and that is the ratio, ten to one.

COGNITIVE THERAPY This is an inexpensive therapy which has a very good track record. Studies have demonstrated that it not only relieves depression, but it has a much lower relapse rate than any drug, or even herb, because it deals with some of the root causes of depression. Over two dozen controlled studies have demonstrated that by the end of 12 to 20 weeks there is a 70% reduction in depression. So this is a really great therapy. It is hard to find a cognitive practitioner, but you can do it yourself. Some of the books that instruct you how to do it yourself are, Feeling Good Again, The New Mood Therapy, and Feeling Good Again Handbook by David Burns, psychiatrist. It is based on the premise that all thoughts are created by beliefs, attitudes and interpretations. Since your thought interpretations cause your emotional reaction, you can change your original thoughts. Depressed thoughts are dominated by pervasive negativity, thoughts like, “nothing ever goes right in my life; bad things always happen to me; life isn’t fair.” Other thought patterns that can lead to depression are: “I should be perfect; other people should be perfect; life should always be smooth,” things like that.

NEGATIVITY If you analyze the thoughts of a depressed person, it seems to be the interpretation that causes the problem. For instance, if a car runs over your foot, an appropriate response would be, “This is terrible, and I will be more careful in the future”. An inappropriate interpretation would be: “This type of thing always happens to me; nothing ever goes right.” In other words, generalizing from the specific to the general. When you look at your depressed thoughts, they are a repetitive cycle that go over and over in your head, and they can be summarized as Louise Hay says by three phrases: “My body doesn’t work; my life doesn’t work; my relationships don’t work.” I think that covers everything. “Something is not working and it never works for me.” You can’t be positive all the time; but you don’t want to dwell in this negativity and live there. When you catch yourself repeating the same negative thought to yourself over and over again in a repetitive manner, this causes depression. By the way, almost everybody’s tapes are similar, although you may think that you are the only one who has them. So these books teach you how to reprogram your thinking. They are based on excellent studies and they are teaching general practitioners how to do it. But you can do it yourself. That is the great thing. It is very cheap.

GINGKO BILOBA has a natural antidepressant effect, and is a great memory herb. It is very good for treatment-resistant depression. If you are not having good results with your antidepressant, you can add the gingko and it will augment the results. Over forty double-blind studies showed that it increases circulation to the brain. So it is very useful for stroke and for stabilization of Alzheimer’s disease. It doesn’t reverse Alzeimer’s, but it improves the circulation; it improves the memory. It is a fantastic herb and has a frequent antidepressant effect. You can increase the dose; even tripling or quadrupling the dosage has been done because there are no side effects. However, its full effect can take up to 12 weeks to develop. The gingko biloba leaf extract should be standardized to at least 24% gingko flavone glycosides. You have to look very carefully on the package and see if you can find this. Sisu, Genestra, Gaia, St. Francis Herb and Thorne are high quality brands. Genestra and Thorne are not always easy to find because they are professional brands (try Supplements Plus stores). Shawla Herbs are very good too. Gingko biloba is very well researched. In over 44 studies involving 9,772 patients, there were virtually no side effects. Twenty-one subjects had some stomach upset, seven had headache, and six had dizziness. You will never see a drug with a profile like that. Another study of elderly patients (aged 51 to 78) who had depression unresponsive to any drug found that when gingko biloba was added, they had a 50% decrease in their depression score, a dramatic response. The placebo group had a 10 % decrease.

AROMATHERAPY is wonderful for depression because it goes right to the limbic system. Lavender is a great antidepressant, but it has to be a high quality lavender. I do prefer the Young Living Oils because I know the quality has been certified. There are other high quality oils from France; they aren’t the only high quality oils, but you won’t pay anything less that $25 for a good bottle of lavender. It should be certified. Most of the lavender in the stores is low quality. If you paid $5 or $10 for a bottle of lavender you are getting something that is synthetic or has chemicals added to it, and it can actually burn your skin. You can apply good lavender to your skin; you can breathe it. We use a number of oils. Clary sage is another oil that has a hormonal balancing effect and it also is a natural euphoric. It is a very nice oil also. And there are blends in Young Living like Peace and Calming which are very good. They have a lovely combination called Joy which is very uplifting. Aromatherapy is actually very complex and there are a lot of studies which demonstrate its effectiveness.

II ANXIETY AND ALTERNATIVES TO VALIUM

KAVA KAVA Kava kava is a wonderful herb from the South Seas and is harvested when it grows to six to eight feet in height. It acts on various parts of the brain, and it may even have an anti-convulsive effect. It could be an anti-epileptic as well, though that hasn’t been proven. Again, these herbs don’t just act on one part of the brain; they have multiple actions. Kava kava has wonderful qualities. It induces tranquility, sociability and a deep restful sleep with no side effects. What could be more pleasant? This is the perfect baby boomer herb with all the great sociable effects, no side effects and no addiction. It is excellent. And although the studies haven’t been too extensive, it compares to Valium in its effect. The active ingredients are kava lactones. The label should specify that the kava lactones are between 30 and 70%.
One study, which compared kava kava to oxazepam (a cousin of Valium) found that they both reduced anxiety equivalently, but there were no side effects with the kava kava. And as you know, Valium (diazepam), oxazepam and that whole family of drugs are addictive, as well as having drowsiness as the main side effect. In another study a group of subjects taking kava kava was compared to a group who took a placebo (a dummy pill). After four weeks the kava kava had produced an improved sense of well being, a marked reduction in anxiety and no side effects. In one well-designed study, it is described as the perfect herb for menopause because it reduced menopausal symptoms like anxiety and depression, as well as reducing hot flashes and other menopausal symptoms.
Kava kava is an excellent herb, but it must be of good quality. Seventy percent kava lactones is ideal, but you will find that not many brands have that concentration. You take 100 mg. of the kava kava standardized to 70% kava lactones. Natural Factors and many other companies have standardized extracts, but some of them are only 30%. If the active ingredients are only 30%, then you would have to double the dosage. There are a number of excellent companies like Thorne and Seroyal, which have very high quality supplements. Gaia is very good. Genestra is excellent. But some companies’ products are totally useless. There is a lot of crappy kava kava which is not standardized and may only contain 10% kava lactones. You will not notice much effect with that, and people will think it is not effective.

VALERIAN You can try valerian. I don’t find valerian is strong enough for a lot of the anxiety that we are facing today, even in combination with other herbs.

MELATONIN There is no doubt that we are not getting enough rest and one of the things you can do to help your anxiety is to sleep in a room that is completely dark with no light coming in at all. That is very, very important for proper regeneration. So blacken out your windows and make sure there is no light coming in your room at night. That will increase your secretion of melatonin. By the way, melatonin is very helpful for sleep and for people who are working shift work. Melatonin is a very useful supplement in doses of one to three mg one hour before bedtime, and it is very, very safe.

Many tranquilizers are so addictive that you must decrease them very slowly over a one to two month period. You would never do it suddenly. If you don’t, you won’t go off the drugs successfully. And at the same time increase your herbs and increase your nutritional supplements.

III ATTENTION DEFICIT DISORDER AND ALTERNATIVES TO RITALIN

As you know, Ritalin is over-prescribed, and ADD is over diagnosed. The National Institutes of Health are actually conducting an investigation on the over-prescription of Ritalin. Sometimes it is prescribed to keep a child sedated and in line, and a very creative and bright child can be well sedated with Ritalin often without adequate testing. There was one area in B.C. where 10% of the children were being given Ritalin. That is a lot of kids, and there is no evidence that it actually improves long-term school performance.

If a teacher recommends it, and the parents don’t want to give it to the child, the child can be removed from school. Dr. Peter Breggin, a psychiatrist who wrote Talking Back to Ritalin states that the diagnostic criteria focus on behaviours which parents find frustrating and disruptive, and conflicts between children and adults are redefined as diseases or disorders within the children. He believes that Ritalin suppresses creative, spontaneous and autonomous activity in children making them more docile and obedient, and more willing to comply with boring tasks in the classroom.

There are children who have severe ADD who cannot survive in the school system, but so many more can easily be helped through natural alternatives. First of all the proper diagnosis must be secured. Secondly, natural alternatives must always be tried first and drugs only as a last resort, not the first approach to ADD.

ALLERGIES Frequently, diet is absolutely crucial. It is important to anyone with any kind of mental disorder. Children should go off all sugar immediately and should be examined for food allergies. Studies have found certain food allergies common to children with ADD. Sugar is number one. Common allergens are sugar, wheat, dairy, food additives, egg, corn and citrus. You can use the elimination diet to find out what your kids are allergic to. The first day, you must take them off all food except rice and chicken, then daily you add back foods one at a time and watch for the allergic reaction. Kids can also be allergic to dust, pollen, moulds, animal dander and chemicals.

Dr. Doris Rapp is a pediatrician who filmed children before and after ingesting sugar. Beforehand, children who had been behaving very well, after being given a dose of sugar, started attacking their mothers, actually hitting their mothers and their handwriting deteriorated completely. It is a very dramatic video. She wrote a book called, Is This Your Child? which describes common allergic reactions of children. They may have circles under their eyes, and I have seen young children about a year old with a severe reactions to certain foods just arch their head back and scream. These allergic reactions are sometimes almost immediate and sometimes delayed.

NUTRITIONAL DEFICIENCIES Children also have multiple nutritional deficiencies. It is shocking what kids are eating. They are eating a lot of fried food and sugar and very little real nutrition. Sugar is constantly being pushed on these kids. Of course, now we have MacDonalds in the schools and it is a nightmare. And often the parents are reluctant to get them off the junk food because you have to go through at least a week or two of terrible trauma as you wean them off all the junk food and sugar. But it is more than worth it.

NUTRITIONAL TESTING There is a wonderful pharmacy in Ottawa called Nutri-Chem Pharmacy who do detailed nutritional testing with children. They work with Down’s Syndrome children, but they can test any child for nutritional deficiencies. Then they will formulate vitamins in a liquid specific to that child’s deficiency. They are very good, and can be reached at 1-888-384-7855 or www.nutrichem.com.

NUTRITIONAL SUPPLEMENTS Hyperactive children are commonly deficient in zinc, iron and B-vitamins. Studies show that zinc supplementation improves memory, thinking and I.Q. Super green drinks like Greens Plus, Barley Plus, blue green algae or spirulina provide trace minerals that are very important for children. I highly recommend them for ADD. All the green drinks are very useful.

Children also need omega-3 fatty acids, flaxseed oil or fish oil for learning. They cannot learn without it. Gingko biloba can be used with ADD and calcium and magnesium are very important for ADD children because magnesium has a calming effect. I am using St. John’s wort with ADD kids and it is also very helpful.
We can also use herbs like valerian, passionflower and lemon balm. These are calming herbs; they are very, very mild and can be also used for sleeping.

TOXIC METALS Accumulation of lead, cadmium and other heavy metals can also cause ADD in some children.

AROMATHERAPY is wonderful for ADD. Dr. Freedman has been studying children and found that breathing in lavender, orange or citrus oils can actually change the brainwaves and calm the children down. Nick Begich mentioned that you can teach children to change their brainwaves by using biofeedback. This is a relatively new technology for ADD. They look at their waves on the screen and they change them to a calmer brainwave. Brain Gym is another thing, an extract which unites the right and the left brain.

A wonderful doctor in Vancouver, Gabor Mate, MD, feels that ADD is a symptom of our speeded up age and overstimulation (e.g. television images which change every few seconds). He has written a book called Scattered Minds: A New Look at the Origins and Healing of Attention Deficit Disorder (for more info see www.scatteredminds.com). He feels that ADD may result from early childhood parental and environmental issues that “morph into a biochemical one”. There is an excellent book called Ritalin Free Kids by Judith and Robert Ullman who treated 400 ADHD kids with homeopathy. The other book that I really like is called Natural Treatments for ADD and Hyperactivity by naturopathic doctor, Skye Weintraub.

“People who advocate medication as the first way to make children behave, without exploring their life situation and real needs might as well treat unhappiness with cocaine!” (Psychiatrist Dr. Felix Yarochevsky & psychotherapist David Schatzky in Globe & Mail editorial). A lot of these children have very complex family situations and we should at least consider that there are other factors going on before we just sedate them as fast as possible.

Also refer to Michael Lyon’s book, Healing the Hyperactive Brain and his website www.pureliving.com. Dr. Lyon advocates the gingko product AD-FX and Memory-FX by Herb Tech. Also see his article on ADD on the Consumer Health website www.consumerhealth.org.

* * *

Dr. DeMarco’s new book Dr. DeMarco Answers Your Questions contains special sections outlining alternative treatments for schizophrenia, depression, anxiety and A.D.D. Her book is available at Consumer Health for $19.95 plus GST. Her CD-ROM contains the contents of both her books. Dr. DeMarco’s website is www.demarcomd.com

In a recent article, Poetry and Project Runway, on the Poetry Foundation’s Website, Stephen Burt, some guy who attended Oxford and Harvard and now is trying to be the next Helen Vendler (see Scarriet’s piece on the Dr. Phil of Criticism)  defends his rosy view that a criticism is not a criticism—that critics should ignore the bad.   Scarriet recently pointed out that this is like telling a philosopher to ignore the bad.  Put this way, Burt’s rosy view appears silly, which is proper.

In this essay, Burt uses the TV show Project Runway as a platform for his pedantry.

“Project Runway,” Burt informs us, “holds lessons for poetry critics,” but first we must learn “how the TV show works.”

Contestants design clothes.

Judges judge.

Enter Stephen Burt with ill-fitting analogy.

“Ron Silliman has examined the show at length” and “a poetry blogger from New Zealand” has blogged on the idea of “Poetry Runway,”  so Burt is ready to launch. [click here]

Ruffles, buttons, ribbons, white T-shirt, striped button-down, jacket…ready.

“Poets, like clothes designers, love technical challenges.”

Design a dress made from newspaper.  Write a poem about a red wheel barrow.  OK.

I.A. Richards, Burt informs us, encouraged his students to make “snap judgments” on “unfamiliar poems” in an exercise of “Practical Criticism.”

Judging is Fun.   Alright.   So far, so good.

But now Burt wades into deeper waters.

And is quickly in over his head.

Happily reveling in the fact that TV overlapping poetry is pretty cool, Burt reaches for his drug of choice:

The happy drug, designed by the Lilly pharmaceutical company.

Prozac.

“Aspects of the TV show,” he tells us, make him “uneasy” in terms of “how we judge poems.”

The show, Burt warns, tends to highlight “contestants who flounder.”

Oh, no!

Criticism. Not good in the world of Stephen Burt.

Burt informs us what works on TV–and “rightly so” (Burt doesn’t want to appear as a scold)–are “flagrant failures” and “life stories.”

A TV show, Burt admits, “devoted wholly to winners’ techniques—how to sew this and pleat that, how to get collars right—might not even make sense to me.”

Now Burt gets down to the nitty-gritty:

“Those truths [popular appeal of negative focus and life stories] affect, not only the judging of hurriedly-assembled cocktail dresses on television, but the reading and reviewing of new poems. The broader the audience, or potential audience, the harder it is to talk about technique, and the more tempting it is to fall back on the poet’s life: Keats’s tuberculosis, or his failed romance with Fanny Brawne; Robert Browning’s successful romance with Elizabeth; Emily Dickinson‘s isolation (so often exaggerated); William Carlos Williams‘s medical practice, and so on.”

Burt’s reasoning is fatally flawed on two counts.

1. Does he really believe reviews of “new poems” are marred by reports of medical ills and romantic intrigues?  When is the last time a review of a new book of poems came down the pike with delicious details of the poet’s love life?  Is this really an issue, today?  Note that all of Burt’s examples are poets born in the 19th century.   Is it really true that poets born in 1980 are aesthetically challenged–because reviewers and critics keep focusing on their romances?

2. Any legitimate historical, philosophical, and cultural view of Keats that flies above mere New Criticism would obviously need to pay attention to a great deal more than Keats’ “turberculosis.”  (Though someone should tell Mr. Burt it was kind of a big deal—it killed him.)  Meet Mr. Burt’s straw man.  Mr. Burt evades the responsibility of the critic who whould investigate more than “getting collars right” by categorizing biography as “failed romance” or “TB.”  Burt, the New Critic, derides biography, and thus historical scholarship, by diminishing its scope—assuming the topic is little more than sordid gossip.

Burt is most troubled, however, by “the dangerous ease of a focus on failure.”  What does this mean?  Why isn’t he worried about a “dangerous ease of a focus on” glib praise?   The latter is far more prevalent than the former, and surely Burt’s prozac approach to poetry has a lot to do with this bland and sorry state of affairs in the first place.   Burt is like someone who complains of a bean bag’s hardness.

Mr. Burt now sheds the playful attitude he had towards the TV show completely, Silliman’s appreciation be damned:

“Project Runway gets most of its suspense by punishing failures.”

Shades of Blackwoods!   Say it ‘aint so, Professor!

Unable to face even the idea of failure, Burt, seeking out more serotonin, announces: “But it’s not good for readers and critics to treat poets this way.”

Burt demands nice—or else.

Critics must be nice to poets.

Great.  The prozac is kicking in.

Burt quotes Randall Jarrell, saying we should judge poets by good poems.  Well, sure.  Judge poets accomplished by their good poems.  Sort of obvious, isn’t it?  Pope warned against fastidiously finding fault if the poem triumphs as a whole, and this is more to the point: we should protect ourselves against the pedant—but Burt wants to protect us against the truth.

Because Wordsworth wrote dreck at times and was faulted for it, Burt proclaims, “Wordsworth would have never lasted on Project Runway.”   But he did.  He’s Wordsworth.

Now Burt brings out the heavy artillery:  “Reviewers and critics and readers of poetry should consult, first and last, ourselves.”

A noble sentiment, but what if “ourselves” is a prozac buzz?

Finally, the bow-tied New Critic steps from behind the Reality TV curtain:  What is important, Burt intones, is “whether and how poets can make it work.”

The very phrasing is right off the New Criticism rack: doctrinaire, tweedy, and square-jawed, with a whiff of the musty.

A little tip for Stephen Burt (and Helen Vendler):

1. A criticism is a criticism.

2. Criticism should consider everything–the poet’s mentors, associates, politics, in short, the life.

3. Use tact and taste (this goes without saying).

Ok I have left it a little longer since I wrote my last post in the hope that I would have more to write about.
Well last Monday, I went to see the Psychiatrist. Payed £200 for him to tell us nothing but stuff we already new.
All he did was change me back onto Prozac and put me on a 14 day course of  Zopiclone to try and get my sleeping pattern back to normal. Although, It has failed to do so yet.
I got this bracelet off Ebay called a ‘Thought Stopper’ which is just like 2 hair bobbles, tied together, which you wear around your wrist, and when you feel like hurting yourself, you pull it. Giving you a short sharp shock and returning your though pattern back to normal. Although, I can happily say I haven’t had to try it out yet.

Nothing else remotely intresting has happened in my world lately to be quite honest.
But I shall keep updating, on the off chance that people are reading this!

As I said before, I would appreciate any comments you have if people do read this. It would mean a lot to me.
Caitlin.

no

I’m so not good right now. It’s nearly 6 am. I’m still up. Getting kinda goofy now, but not really sleepy. haven’t been sleeping much for a week or so now. yes, I have pills that’ll knock me out. but all day I feel so tired, so depressed, so nothing…  then at night, I have energy, I want to do things, I cleaned the kitchen and made dinner and did some laundry. I cleaned some.  I almost organized all the movies. thought about adding books to my database. I’d like to have lists, on my computer y’know, of all my books, and movies. I always think I have stuff, like, “Oh, I have that movie” or “I don’t have that book yet, I’ll buy it.”  which is how I end up with 3 copies of Needful Things. which isn’t one of my faves.

So lets try to get it all out, right? nobody is reading this, I’m not bothering anyone. I’m all twitchy because I don’t want to wake anyone up, making noise. my cats have fleas. the little one was swarmed when I got him, and he’s being treated. Sprayed with Adam’s thoroughly and often. We see the fleas dropping off him afterwards. I was getting snuggles from Big Love earlier and saw several fleas in his fur. He doesn’t seem to mind them much, which is why I didn’t know he had them. Ferg has some skin thing going on, so he’s always scratching. I keep telling myself I’m going to start giving him regular baths with head & shoulders, see if it helps. But we’ve got to get rid of the damn fleas. I think maybe I’m just about fucking over this climate. You really don’t appreciate something until it’s gone. I always complained that I hated the desert, wanted to live somewhere green and alive. well, there’s lots of alive. and a lot of it is icky and crawly and evil. roaches in the kitchen, fleas on the cats, and I can’t walk down the street without being paranoid that a tick is going to paratroop down onto me and get frisky. I get rather twitchy just thinking about it. I don’t like bugs. admitting, even to myself, that my kitchen has roaches just kills me. I never say their name. I just say there’s ‘bugs’ in the kitchen. it makes me feel like such trash, ghetto disgusting things. Cat messes and kid messes I can deal with. just take away the insects.

in case you can’t tell, the reason I’m so upset about the bugs is because I can’t do anything about them. I do try to kill the ‘bugs’ in the kitchen, to keep it clean, put the traps and power around, all that jazz. but it does rather seem like they are impossible to get rid of. I fucking hate them. and I feel guilty about the cats. I should be able to take care of them and provide for them properly. but I can’t afford to frontline them all. I’m mad at myself.

I’m sorta kinda looking for work. sent out my resume, but I’m awful at cover letters. and I don’t customize my resume for each job. it’s so stressful, I want it to be perfect, the awesome resume and cover letter, different and unique but reassuring and confidence-inspiring. and I know they’re not, and I don’t know how to make them be. I google it every time, how to write an awesome resume & letter, it just all seems so cliche and manipulative. and I don’t really want to go back to work. I’ve gotten in a rut, lounge around, watch TV, munching & grazing. I bitch & moan every time I have to wear a bra and any pants other than pajamas. seriously, all my laundry is pajamas. I hated getting up early and always being late anyway, frustrations and stresses of work, the constant battle against the clock vs. the paycheck. like, yes I would love to leave early on fridays. but I’m also fond of having electricity and a phone. it just fucking blows. and I know that I could do things from home, could probably do fairly well at it. editing, proofreading, maybe even writing. I just don’t know where to go, how not to get scammed. I need to do something. the holidays are coming up and we just keep getting further behind.

a collections agent actually got ahold of me last week. someone switched to a new collections company, so the number was new, and I answered it. I talked to the woman honestly, said, yes I know I owe money. but being unemployed means I don’t have the means to do a damn thing about it. and she said something about me needing to be aware of the consequences. um, yeah. thanks. y’know, I’m already going to the free crazy clinic for my prozac and ambien. they don’t generally prescribe the heavy stuff. if I can’t have some valium, I need everyone to stay off my back.

boy 2 is giving me stress. trouble at school, trouble at scouts. lying and acting out, I know he’s snowing this counselor just like he did the last one. of course if he’s getting one-on-one attention he’s great. that’s what he wants out of life. but the rest of the time, when someone isn’t being paid (once again, at the guv’ment welfare clinic) to listen to him, he still wants at least that much attention. and he will manufacture anything and everything to get it. hence the problems. there is no attention to be gained by quietly learning or doing homework. and I feel so shitty every time I shoo him away or tell him to wait a minute when he starts talking. but I know he knows when I’m trying to do something, or pay attention to something else, or trying to defuse a bomb, and that’s when he is the most insistent that he needs to ask me if ferrets could live on the moon and he wants a roller coaster for christmas. valium? pls? ativan. lithium. thorazine? vodka. but that occasionally causes projectile vomiting of a truly impressive distance. and volume. which generates a lot of cleaning for me, hence the downside. and I don’t want my kids on the montel williams show talking about mom the drunk. I mean, it’s true, I just don’t want it to be obvious.

a couple of times now I have taken the ambien and stayed up on purpose. it’s rather groovy feeling, floaty-like. but I’m still feeling productive, want to get stuff done. get the crock pot going, including actual potatoes that I peeled and chopped me-self. send out a resume or two and make a couple of phone calls. actually, what I really really want is to go buy the fourth season of Bones. I think it’s getting sick. I NEED to look at all the bills, see what someone is about to shut off and pay it. pay the rest of the rent. hey, guess what we’re not gonna have on Dec. 1st! RENT MONEY! they’ve been very nice thus far, but they are hinting that they have other properties, like apartments, that we might be able to better afford. jesus humping christ on a silver crutch, I really hate apartments. I hate shit jobs, call centers, cashiers, ‘customer service associates.’ drones. sheep. shit on the bottom of one’s shoe. I feel like I’m better than that, worth more than that. but how do I convince a total stranger of that within a minute? getting a job isn’t exactly cake and pie right now. and looking for him too. I thought I was lazy and unmotivated. wow. maybe that’s one reason I let him stick around. makes me feel less lazy and awful. but at the same time, depressing and dragging my ass down with him. it’s the sort of thing I excell at. finding a guy who can ruin my life in as many ways as possible in the shortest amount of time, and hanging on to him like my life depended on it, rather than being rational and moving onward and upward. well, down with the ship then, captain! how else?

so why don’t I want to sleep? why have I been up all night? avoiding the pills that’ll knock me out for a while. time is going by too quickly. I keep telling myself I’m going to do things, make it better, suck it up, be an adult and fix it. and then I sleep all day and think about how shitty it all is and how it’s never going to get better.

depressed, adopt another cat, eat some chocolate, look at lolcats.

and another day is gone, and another day is gone.

I don’t want to get dressed and go to scouts,

I don’t want to get dressed and go to the grocery store,

I don’t want to see anyone. I don’t want to think about anything.

I’ll think about it tomorrow.

tomorrow is another day, can’t think about it today,

can’t do anything about it today,

they’re probably out to lunch or they’re closed by now

or I can’t do it right now, I need to find a paper first.

something anything a pill a drink a funny

to make it all stop.

for another day.

Several commonly prescribed drugs, such as Nexium and Prilosec, have been identified by the FDA as decreasing the effectiveness of the blood thinning drug, Plavix.  This drug is often given to heart patients or patients who have had heart catheterizations for cardiac disease.  It is considered critical for the effectiveness of heart procedures and important for maintaining patency of cardiac vessels.

Other drugs considered to have the same problem are as follows:

Tagamet: cimetidine

Prozac, Serafem and Symbyax: fluoxetine

Luvox: fluvoxamine

Ticlid: ticlopidine

Diflucan: fluconazole

Intelence: etravirine

Nizoral: ketoconazole

voriconazole

Intelence: etravirine

Felbatol: felbamate

One of the concerning things about this warning is that approximately half of the patients who take Plavix also take these medications to protect their stomach.

Don’t stop any medications without talking with your doctor first.  Call, make an appointment and discuss any risk with your doctor as soon as possible.



Prozac (Fluoxetin)

Brand names: Prozac, Prozac Weekly, Rapiflux, Sarafem.

Prozac is the knownest antidepressant in the world. It is used to treat major depressive disorder, bulimia nervosa, obsessive-compulsive disorder, premenstrual dysphoric disorder and panic disorder.

Prozac affects chemicals in the brain that may become unbalanced and cause depression, panic, anxiety, or obsessive-compulsive symptoms.

This medication takes by mouth. Carefully read the directions on the prescription label and follow them. Use a special spoon or container to take your medicine.

Before taking Prozac

Before taking Prozac make sure that you aren’t using any of these drugs: phenelzine (Nardil), thioridazine (Mellaril), or a monoamine oxidase inhibitor (MAOI) such as isocarboxazid (Marplan), pimozide (Orap), rasagiline (Azilect), selegiline (Eldepryl, Emsam), or tranylcypromine (Parnate).

When you first start taking an antidepressant, you may have thoughts about suicide. Your doctor will need to check you at regular visits for at least the first 12 weeks of treatment with Prozac.

Before taking Prozac tell your doctor if you have: cirrhosis of the liver; kidney disease; diabetes; seizures or epilepsy; bipolar disorder (manic depression); or a history of drug abuse or suicidal thoughts.

Do not give Prozac to anyone younger than 18 years old without a doctor’s advice.

Overdose

Overdose may cause nausea, vomiting, fever, sleepiness, rapid or uneven heartbeat, confusion, fainting, seizures, or coma.

Alcohol

While taking Prozac you will need to avoid drinking alcohol, which can increase some of the side effects of Prozac.

Prozac side effects

Call your doctor at once if you experience any of these serious side effects from using Prozac:

• severe blistering, peeling, and red skin rash;
• very stiff (rigid) muscles, high fever, sweating, fast or uneven heartbeats, tremors, overactive reflexes;
• nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, loss of appetite, feeling unsteady, loss of coordination; or
• headache, trouble concentrating, memory problems, weakness, confusion, hallucinations, fainting, seizure, shallow breathing or breathing that stops.

Less serious Prozac side effects may include:

• cold symptoms such as stuffy nose, sneezing, sore throat;
• drowsiness, dizziness, feeling nervous;
• mild nausea, upset stomach, constipation;
• increased appetite, weight changes;
• sleep problems (insomnia);
• decreased sex drive, impotence, or difficulty having an orgasm; or
• dry mouth.

Right and wrong are defined differently in different cultures and subcultures, including religions.  There are the famous Ten Commandments and Eight Noble Truths and Seven Deadly Sins and the lists go on and on and on until you get to the fucking DMV and they’re telling you that you have to signal before you back out of a parking space at the mall.  There are a lot of lists and a lot of rules.  Lists are big helpers and it’s nice to get them checked off.  However what happens when they come into conflict, like you don’t want to commit the sin of Gluttony but you don’t want to hurt your Grandma’s feelings?  What kind of decision making process should you use?

Here’s where yoga comes in.  Yoga, meaning simply “union” in Sanskrit, is about putting something in front of your mind’s eye and unifying with it.  Say your Yoga teacher has a perfect healthy body.  Put it in front of your mind’s eye and figure out what about that perfect healthy body that you want.  Then take a look at where you stand in relation to that six pack.  What’s keeping you from it?  What are the obstacles in the way of it?  Are the obstacles eating habits, work routines, thought patterns?  Even better, meet someone with a delicious beautiful mind or soul.  What would it take for you to be that deliciously gorgeously yummy in the spiritual aspect of yourself?

The next step is action.  Taking yourself there.  And as you can imagine, it ain’t without its trials.  Some people become “action people” and they burn up the tarmac getting ahead only to find when they arrive that something is missing.  Some people just drift, and you can imagine they often don’t end up really anywhere.  And a third group of people just denies that they even want anything at all out of their lives and spend a lot of time doing meaningless repetetive tasks.

Yoga is about choosing the appropriate strategy for your present moment.  That’s why they put so much emphasis on the “present” in all of this Eastern philosophy.  “I don’t have time for the present,” you might think, “I’m in such a goddamn hurry to get a superyacht before I’m 40!” (or get married, or whatever) .  Or how about this: “How can I concentrate on the present when my ex was such a jerk to me in the past” (or your mom and dad, or whoever).  Ok, great, but each moment presents its opportunities, and if you’re somewhere else you won’t be aware of them.

Ok, great.  Now you’re in the present.  You’re noticing everything around you; what colors people are wearing, are they smart or stupid, are they mean or nice.  Then you get to notice how you feel.  Yes!  In fact, noticing how you feel is essential to making a good decision.  Which is not easy when you feel really, really shitty.  These are the people who end up denying their own power in the end because they’re afraid to take stock and find out how horrible their lives actually are.  To those people I would like to point out that the way they got into this fix is by being totally unconscious, so they can’t expect to get out of it on autopilot either.

None of this is about condemnation or ordination.  If you’re more conscious, lucky you.  If not, it’s going to take a little more work to get where you’re going.  However it’s important to see this in a very rational way.  Should a scientist get pissed off or disappointed at his or her test tube because it didn’t react the way she or he wanted it to?  (Although I hear sometimes, they do.)  No.  So you tried a little experiment with your life and it didn’t work.  No reason to get mad, just keep trying!

The way you find out if you’ve been right or wrong is if you’re satisfied with the real consequences of your actions.  I say “real” because many people deny that they dislike the consequences of their actions.  Charles Manson acts like he’s whooping it up in prison having a ball when he’s on camera!  But you can tell he hates it about as much as he would hate having fire ants swarming all over his eyeballs.  So don’t fucking lie to yourself, because when it backfires it’s your own damn fault.

Sometimes you have to take the best outcome from the present that you can get.  Say you’re 65 and just started Yoga.  You might have to be proud of yourself for being able to touch your toes, and just forget about sticking your ankles behind your head.  But if you stop trying and practicing at all, say hello to your new best friends Stagnation and Degradation and Nursing Home.   The same can be said of right and wrong.  Say things are going really, really wrong.  You’re following your list (haven’t committed adultery, murdered anyone, I’m doing what my parents want me to do…) but you feel like shit.  Or you look like shit.  Or you’re on Prozac.  Whatever.  You might have to be satisfied with having things be just a little bit less shitty in the next moment.  The next day they might be rather better.

Change is best done cyclically.  Take some action.  Chill out and survey your handiwork with pride.  Then forge ahead once more.  Depending on how good you are at admitting you were wrong before and accepting your mistake, things could go very fast or they could take an eternity.  It’s up to you.  You have to get yourself there.  It’s no good blaming your list or people of another kind or “the system” if you’re the one choosing dissatisfaction over satisfaction!

Can you feel the despondency trickle down my cheek? It’s trail is reminiscent to the tails of fires that only breathe in existence to burn all that is living; A wildfire of nothing for nothing but itself.

Secretly sliding, path-winding at a pace so blinding down a street too peaceful and serene, I thought about slamming my tan, tone skin against the windshield of misery and incompetence. I thought about you, father. While muttering words in a mild manner, finger flipping the pages of time and memory, the index dragged itself across your name. Flash to myself inside you and possibly your final day.

A window. Giant. Yellow light, as if from suns comparable to the yolk of an egg. Now place the shades in a horizontal manner, allowing cracks of light to seep through each blocker of life. Now…a couch. Side view, as if you just walked into this room of which has a future of moroseness and monstrosity. Silhouette. Place the silhouette of a person hunched over, side view. Coffee table; side view. So from left to right at the angle of one side, window being like a square of light coming at you; Couch, man on it, crouched over, face on coffee table. You now have the image of what I have been seeing everyday since the beginning of my realization at the lack of a father.

Your turn because the first person perspective isn’t enough to grasp, so our hands begin to tremble and insides seem to quake. It’s as if you know what is about to happen.

Slam. Face first into the fist of a white, powdery mess not even a mother could clean. My muscles become the most numb they have ever been. I want to run but the rate of my heart seems to be moving twice the pace of my legs and my mind is losing itself at triple the speed. This is too complex for even I to conjure up the will to understand but will continue to do so maybe eight more times. “I want to escape this misery, ” we say in unison, as the possibility of that car you heard outside your window being related to your new found son searching for his father seems to wither and die. All things seem to slowly wither and die. Death is complex; this is too complex.

Flash back to me, eighty miles over the speed limit and heart rate nearly the level of yours on that fateful day. My foot releases and the speedometer begins to level out. Still living, still breathing with tears rolling down my face in memory of a man who didn’t care, one who didn’t try.

It is the satisfaction of knowing that completes this cypher’s encryption.

But it is the lack of possibility that kills me the most.

It is for the better

that you left her

But for the worse

because I never

truly was given the time and place near your heart to make my impact.

The even greater lack of my importance is disturbing

causing me to feel as if I am the blood-sucking parasite in this life of violence and abuse.

Do not sing to me, my muses, as I have no intention of abusing your uses. Instead scream and mop this artist dry so I can finally conjure up the will

to let myself keel over and die the most beautiful of deaths they have ever read of.

And before I do…please take note

to the sad, sorry statements in which this poor being spoke.

-Mike Detelj 09

Editor’s Note: Why do I do this? Because we are delivering a message to future generations about how the world works contrary to our constitution and contrary to American values and ideals. Conservatives conserve nothing except the wealth of the fantastic few while the liberals liberate nobody from the yoke of economic slavery. Maybe it’s all a game. I won’t play and if you care about this country and wish to avoid a societal collapse, you should stop playing too.

History has shown us with grim clarity what happens to any country or empire when the power and the wealth gets so concentrated in just a few people while the rest of the population can’t keep a roof over their head and can’t eat food and can’t get medical care, all hell breaks loose. Galbraith, IMF economists, World Bank economists, all know what is going to happen do to our failure to police our own, our failure to make it right and our failure to make amends to our allies or would-be allies.

Children are learning an important lesson: in their world, Mom and Dad are powerless to prevent the worst things from happening and there is nobody else they can depend upon. A whole generation is growing up with the notion that the American Dream is an unknown, unknowable fantasy. Every time the far right asserts personal responsibility in the face of a wretched fraud committed on most of the country, they close the gate a little more, waiting for the final slaughter. Every time the far left wimps out on their own paltform, the one the people elected them on for CHANGE NOW, they deceive and abandon our citizens.

And so we are a Prozac nation because everyone is depressed. We are a Xanax nation because everyone is so stressed out we can’t think straight. And those of us who are entering our twilight years see a future where our children and grandchildren and their children will lead bleak lives of quiet desperation in a country which proclaims free speech and assembly but has surrendered that basic right to about 100 institutions that control the lobbyists who control the flow of money in Washington and state houses.

In April, 2007 stocks were up, confidence was high and everyone had been convinced that all was well without questioning anything. Meanwhile in the inner recesses of the Federal Reserve and halls of power of the executive branch and the U.S. Department of Treasury in particular, they knew the collapse was coming and the only reason they did nothing was political — they didn’t want to admit that the free market was not working, that it wasn’t free, that it was controlled by monopoly and oligopoly, and that the government wasn’t working either because we the people had allowed people to get re-elected despite their sell-out of our countries and our lives.

In I did some very simple calculations and determined that the DJIA was not actually worth 14,000, it was worth 8,000. As it came down, more stumps revealed themselves as the high water receded. The equities market is overpriced by about 25%-30%. Housing is still inflated by 15%-20%. Nobody wants to hear this. The dollar is in a swan dive because everyone in the world knows the reality except the citizens of the United States of America where we have a “free press” that would rather entertain us than actually tell us the news.

I’m doing my part. What are you doing to end this catastrophe?

Job Woes Exacting a Toll on Family Life

THE WOODLANDS, Tex. — Paul Bachmuth’s 9-year-old daughter, Rebecca, began pulling out strands of her hair over the summer. His older child, Hannah, 12, has become noticeably angrier, more prone to throwing tantrums.

Initially, Mr. Bachmuth, 45, did not think his children were terribly affected when he lost his job nearly a year ago. But now he cannot ignore the mounting evidence.

“I’m starting to think it’s all my fault,” Mr. Bachmuth said.

As the months have worn on, his job search travails have consumed the family, even though the Bachmuths were outwardly holding up on unemployment benefits, their savings and the income from the part-time job held by Mr. Bachmuth’s wife, Amanda. But beneath the surface, they have been a family on the brink. They have watched their children struggle with behavioral issues and a stress-induced disorder. He finally got a job offer last week, but not before the couple began seeing a therapist to save their marriage.

For many families across the country, the greatest damage inflicted by this recession has not necessarily been financial, but emotional and psychological. Children, especially, have become hidden casualties, often absorbing more than their parents are fully aware of. Several academic studies have linked parental job loss — especially that of fathers — to adverse impacts in areas like school performance and self-esteem.

“I’ve heard a lot of people who are out of work say it’s kind of been a blessing, that you have more time to spend with your family,” Mr. Bachmuth said. “I love my family and my family comes first, and my family means more than anything to me, but it hasn’t been that way for me.”

A recent study at the University of California, Davis, found that children in families where the head of the household had lost a job were 15 percent more likely to repeat a grade. Ariel Kalil, a University of Chicago professor of public policy, and Kathleen M. Ziol-Guest, of the Institute for Children and Poverty in New York, found in an earlier study that adolescent children of low-income single mothers who endured unemployment had an increased chance of dropping out of school and showed declines in emotional well-being.

In the long term, children whose parents were laid off have been found to have lower annual earnings as adults than those whose parents remained employed, a phenomenon Peter R. Orszag, director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, mentioned in a speech last week at New York University.

A variety of studies have tied drops in family income to negative effects on children’s development. But Dr. Kalil, a developmental psychologist and director of the university’s Center for Human Potential and Public Policy, said the more important factor, especially in middle-class households, appeared to be changes in family dynamics from job loss.

“The extent that job losers are stressed and emotionally disengaged or withdrawn, this really matters for kids,” she said. “The other thing that matters is parental conflict. That has been shown repeatedly in psychological studies to be a bad family dynamic.”

Dr. Kalil said her research indicated that the repercussions were more pronounced in children when fathers experience unemployment, rather than mothers.

She theorized that the reasons have to do with the importance of working to the male self-image, or the extra time that unemployed female breadwinners seem to spend with their children, mitigating the impact on them.

Certainly, some of the more than a dozen families interviewed that were dealing with long-term unemployment said the period had been helpful in certain ways for their families.

Denise Stoll, 39, and her husband, Larry, 47, both lost their positions at a bank in San Antonio in October 2008 when it changed hands. Mrs. Stoll, a vice president who managed a technology group, earned significantly more than her husband, who worked as a district loan origination manager.

Nevertheless, Mr. Stoll took unemployment much harder than she did and struggled to keep his spirits up, before he landed a new job within several months in the Kansas City area, where the family had moved to be closer to relatives. He had to take a sizable pay cut but was grateful to be working again.

Mrs. Stoll is still looking but has also tried to make the most of the additional time with the couple’s 5-year-old triplets, seeking to instill new lessons on the importance of thrift.

“Being a corporate mom, you work a lot of hours, you feed them dinner — maybe,” she said. “This morning, we baked cookies together. I have time to help them with homework. I’m attending church. The house is managed by me. Just a lot more homemaker-type stuff, which I think is more nurturing to them.”

Other families, however, reported unmistakable ill effects.

Robert Syck, 42, of Fishers, Ind., lost his job as a call-center manager in March. He has been around his 11-year-old stepson, Kody, more than ever before. Lately, however, their relationship has become increasingly strained, Mr. Syck said, with even little incidents setting off blowups. His stepson’s grades have slipped and the boy has been talking back to his parents more.

“It’s only been particularly in the last few months that it’s gotten really bad, to where we’re verbally chewing each other out,” said Mr. Syck, who admitted he had been more irritable around the house. “A lot of that is due to the pressures of unemployment.”

When Mr. Bachmuth was first laid off in December from his $120,000 job at an energy consulting firm, he could not even bring himself to tell his family. For several days, he got dressed in the morning and left the house as usual at 6 a.m., but spent the day in coffee shops, the library or just walking around.

Mr. Bachmuth had started the job, working on finance and business development for electric utilities, eight months earlier, moving his family from Austin. They bought something of a dream home, complete with a backyard pool and spa.

Although she knew the economy was ultimately to blame, Mrs. Bachmuth could not help feeling angry at her husband, both said later in interviews.

“She kind of had something in the back of her mind that it was partly my fault I was laid off,” Mr. Bachmuth said. “Maybe you’re not a good enough worker.”

Counseling improved matters significantly, but Mrs. Bachmuth still occasionally dissolved into tears at home.

Besides quarrels over money, the reversal in the couple’s roles also produced friction. Mrs. Bachmuth took on a part-time job at a preschool to earn extra money. But she still did most, if not all, of the cooking, cleaning and laundry.

Dr. Kalil, of the University of Chicago, said a recent study of how people spend their time showed unemployed fathers devote significantly less time to household chores than even mothers who are employed full-time, and do not work as hard in caring for children.

Mr. Bachmuth’s time with his girls, however, did increase. He was the one dropping off Rebecca at school and usually the one who picked her up. He began helping her more with homework. He and Hannah played soccer and chatted more.

But the additional time brought more opportunities for squabbling. The rest of the family had to get used to Mr. Bachmuth being around, sometimes focused on his search for a job, but other times lounging around depressed, watching television or surfing soccer sites on the Internet.

“My dad’s around a lot more, so it’s a little strange because he gets frustrated he’s not at work, and he’s not being challenged,” Hannah said. “So I think me and my dad are a lot closer now because we can spend a lot more time together, but we fight a lot more maybe because he’s around 24-7.”

When Rebecca began pulling her hair out in late summer in what was diagnosed as a stress-induced disorder, she insisted it was because she was bored. But her parents and her therapist — the same one seeing her parents — believed it was clearly related to the job situation.

The hair pulling has since stopped, but she continues to fidget with her brown locks.

The other day, she suddenly asked her mother whether she thought she would be able to find a “good job” when she grew up.

Hannah said her father’s unemployment had made it harder for her to focus on schoolwork. She also conceded she had been more easily annoyed with her parents and her sister.

At night, she said, she has taken to stowing her worries away in an imaginary box.

“I take all the stress and bad things that happen over the day, and I lock them in a box,” she said.

Then, she tries to sleep.

Yes, these drugs not only inhibit erection, they also prevent orgasm and ejaculation and for the purposes of erection.

So taking E.D. medication like Viagra could counteract the anti-erection effect of Zoloft, but one should always consult a doctor before mixing medications.

“elefantul meu si-a incurcat trompa intr-o spirala fara sfarsit fara punct si fara virgula fereastra s-a desfacut din zid si a plecat in lume drum bun” citesc de dimineata in tramvaiul 36, prin spatele pietei Obor, langa tarabele cu vechituri, masini de cusut cu dintii tociti, aparate foto cu ochi crapati demult, suruburi ruginite fara piulita

ningea pe Colentina si erau stelute in genele mele, stelute moi de celuloza de la blocurile “reabilitate” in prag de alegeri

m-am visat pe o insula-castel, intr-o mare calda, o insula cu cinematograf si ziduri albe, apa curata si aer parfumat de caldura

iar fata asta canta foarte frumos

ATTENZIONE:
VOTA QUI IL SONDAGGIO PER GLI ARGOMENTI DA APPROFONDIRE

(Nota. la vignetta è un’elaborazione di un originale di Massimo Bucchi)

Secondo la norma attualmente in vigore, il medico deve rendere edotto il paziente di tutte informazioni e le controindicazioni inerenti un trattamento sanitario al quale il paziente stesso venga sottoposto. La vaccinazione, che ad ogni effetto è un trattamento sanitario, ha una particolarità: si effettua principalmente su individui sani; e come tutti i trattamenti sanitari, può avere delle controindicazioni.
Su quali siano queste indicazioni e controindicazioni, e del fatto che il medico debba informarne il paziente che si sottopone alla vaccinazione, nessuno sa nulla. E non si parla dei “sospetti” – per modo di dire, e dei quali si parlerà in un prossimo articolo – sulla tossicità degli adiuvanti e dei conservanti contenuti nel preparato, ma semplicemente delle indicazioni riportate sul “bugiardino” (foglietto illustrativo). Tipo quelle che seguono:

4.2 Posologia e modo di somministrazione
L’esperienza clinica con Focetria (H1N1) è al momento limitata in adulti sani, compresi gli anziani (vedere paragrafo 5.1), mentre non vi è alcuna esperienza clinica in bambini o adolescenti.
4.4 Gravidanza e allattamento
È possibile che una risposta protettiva non venga prodotta in tutti i vaccinandi
4.6 Gravidanza e allattamento
Non sono attualmente disponibili dati sull’uso di Focetria durante la gravidanza.
4.8 Effetti indesiderati
Sorveglianza post-marketing
Nell’ambito della sorveglianza post-marketing di vaccini trivalenti stagionali in tutte le fasce di età e di vaccini trivalenti stagionali adiuvati con MF59 e con composizione simile a quella di Focetria (antigene di superficie, inattivato, adiuvato con MF59C.1) autorizzati per la somministrazione in soggetti anziani di età superiore ai 65 anni sono stati osservati i seguenti eventi avversi:
Raro:
Nevralgia, parestesia, convulsioni, trombocitopenia transitoria.
Sono state osservate reazioni allergiche, in casi rari con shock.
Molto raro:
Vasculite con transitorio coinvolgimento renale ed eritema multiforme essudativo.
Disturbi neurologici, come encefalomielite, neurite e sindrome di Guillain Barré.
5.0 Proprietà farmacologiche
Categoria farmacoterapeutica: vaccino influenzale, codice ATC: J07BB02
Questo medicinale è stato autorizzato in “Circostanze eccezionali”.

In sintesi, sul vaccino che dovrebbe (il condizionale è d’obbligo) proteggere dall’influenza suina si apprende che:

• è stato autorizzato in circostanze eccezionali – ovvero pandemia dichiarata in atto dall’OMS (Organizzazione Mondiale della Sanità) -: quindi non deve sottostare a tutti i controlli previsti usualmente per i farmaci ed i vaccini;
• non se ne conosce l’effetto – non vi sono dati clinici al riguardo – sulle donne in gravidanza;
• non se ne conosce l’effetto – non vi sono dati clinici al riguardo – su bambini e addolescenti;
• potrebbe non funzionare (niente immunità dall’influenza suina)
• in casi molto rari potrebbe causare in soggetti al di sopra di 65 anni encefalomielite, neurite (detta anche Assone, NdA) e sindrome di Guillain-Barré.

Questi sono solo alcuni dei dati contenuti nel foglietto illustrativo del vaccino Focetria/Novartis (qui la richiesta dell’EMEA di autorizzazione alla messa in commercio); per i restanti, si può consultare l’allegato (qui). Nel sito dell’EMEA è anche disponibile il documento di sintesi al pubblico delle caratteristiche del vaccino Focetria/Novartis (qui).
Per quanto riguarda l’encefalomielite in una sua particolare forma (ADEM – Encefalomielite acuta disseminata) è noto nell’ambiente medico che detta malattia “…esordisce improvvisamente con un ampio spettro di segni e sintomi neurologici spesso a breve distanza da un episodio infettivo o da una vaccinazione.
Letto bene? A breve distanza da una vaccinazione: chissà se di questo vengono informati i genitori che portano i bambini a vaccinarsi contro l’inflenza suina.

Aggiornamento del 17 novembre 2009
Influenza suina, il Ministero della Salute inglese scrive a 600 neurologi mettendoli in guardia: “Dopo la vaccinazione contro l’influenza suina, impennata di casi di paralisi da sindrome di Guillain-Barré.

Swine flu jab link to killer nerve disease: Leaked letter reveals concern of neurologists over 25 deaths in America

A warning that the new swine flu jab is linked to a deadly nerve disease has been sent by the Government to senior neurologists in a confidential letter…(continua a leggere) – (Fonte qui)

© Luca Marcon – riproduzione riservata

The illustration below shows UK drug poisoning deaths versus popular press coverage:

David McCandless, who created the graph, writes:

There has never been a single documented case of fatal cannabis overdose. Also, the government’s own figures don’t tally. While drug figures from the Office Of National Statistics register 19 cannabis related deaths, the mortality stats from the same office log only 1 death.

Clearly the media disproportionally focuses on some drugs rather than others, thus distorting public opinion. The graphic below illustrates the death-rate per user of each drug:

So it appears that Marijuana is less toxic than aspirin.

HT: Andrew Sullivan