"Leviathan Monster or Leviathan Mother?"

I have found a really good lecture on youtube about various political/economic philosophies. I was just writing about how Leviathan governments are not so bad because they protect me, a former mental patient, from angry, prejudiced mobs waiving pitch forks. This video looks at several philosophers, including Hobbes, Rawls, and one other philosopher whose name eludes me at the moment.

I found it to be both entertaining and intellectually stimulating. It is easy to follow for a non-political scientist and it even has little animations alongside the lecturer (which is good because I  have no attention span).

The link is at the bottom of this blog entry.

As a former mental patient, I feel a strong connection to the "Mother ship," the entity that protects me from the wrath of ignorant cretins that like to post their prejudices all over the yahoo comment section. This "Mother ship" is the government. Ironic, is it not? I, a paranoid schizo-affective, who once believed that I was going to be framed, tortured, and revived only to be tortured more, now surrender myself to said government. Why? Because, between the State and well, you maybe, I pick the State to decide my fate. This is not to say that I have total faith in the State, that is far from the truth. The reality is that I have even less faith in the general population, especially those who leave comments on Yahoo news articles. The general population would love to get their hands on my womb and sterilize me so that I cannot breed (because mental patients are hated and scorned by society and they are deemed as Untouchables, the lowest caste of people, worse even then felons). Furthermore, they would like to dismember me and perhaps perform a bizarre exorcism on me to rid myself of whatever imaginary demons religious people believe causes mental illness. FYI, it is just a genetic propensity towards neuro-chemical imbalance, but that takes all the fun out of hating an otherwise innocent population.


But I digress, I surrender myself happily to the State and the great Mothership named mother Leviathan for the following reasons:

1) The government decreed it would pay for my undergraduate education and continues to pay for my education during my current stint in the Master's program. In case you think that no, you the taxpayer paid for it, then you are wrong. You did not volunteer your taxes, the State mandated that you pay taxes because otherwise people would not pay taxes and we would have no freeways, no public education, and no hope for future generations.

2) The government pays for me to get treatment through the county. Again, if you think it is the taxpayers, it is the State that mandates said taxpayers to fork over the cash, and will enforce this mandate if you decide to abstain from your duties.

3) This blog is likely being monitored (wink wink) and being the paranoid I am, I chose to play the little Teacher's pet rather than start ranting about class warfare and how I cannot afford simple dental care and how it's not fair and is totally a violation of the bill of rights concerning class, race, and disability equality. So, instead of saying those things, I say "I chose you, Uncle Sam."

Thanks for reading!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mm8asJxdcds

Comment on Alleged "Mentally Ill" Shooter

I have to do this every time some sociopath gets mistaken for a schizophrenic. Every damn time.

Here is a check list for schizophrenia:

Hears voices/auditory hallucinations for a period of time
Sees visions/visual hallucinations for a period of time
May have beliefs of one of the following: aliens, UFO's, persecution by the federal government
May believe him/herself to be a prophet
Likely to be disorganized in thought and speech. Will speak in neologisms (made up words), clanging (nonsense rhymes), or word salads (random strings of words).
May not bathe, eat, sleep, drink, speak for a period of time
Extremely likely to feel paranoia mixed with fear, may believe him/herself to be politically oppressed.
If manic, patient will likely not sleep for days on end.
May speak out loud to imaginary voices.

So. There. The claims of this anonymous police source said "history of mental illness and hospitalization"---> due to THREATS TO HURT OTHERS. THAT is NOT mental illness, that is hatred, anger management, sociopathic behavior, and manipulation. Why the hell was he put in a mental hospital and not in jail?! It is a felony to yell 'fire' in a crowded theater, but to threaten to kill people is not a criminal offense but a "mental health issue"?!

Here is his check list:

Threatened to hurt others
Obsessed with spree killers and guns
Hatred
Anger

Where, I ask, does it say voices, visions, paranoia, aliens, talking to imaginary voices, and insomnia??
It does not. This is bullshit propaganda trying to blame all mental patients for the acts of an angry, degenerate scumbag who never had the prototypical experiences of severe schizophrenia.

I really wonder if I am paranoid about my persecution beliefs, because it seems like this general public and the media love to handle all angry people as "the mentally ill." No, I hate to break it to you, but the worst men in all of history have been psychologically normal (i.e. Hitler, Pol Pot, Stalin, Dr. Goebbels, Dr. Mengele, Bin Laden, and so on). If you never accept a normal person as capable of evil acts you will never be able to stop them. Keep rounding up mental patients as scape-goats and you'll just have a bunch of lawsuits on your hands and future killers roaming around free and clear. Accept it. Normal people murder other every day. 

Secret Shame

I go to class and I'm the good student. I turn my work in on time, orderly papers that do not reveal the hidden shame I am burdened with; mental illness. My thoughts are linear and clear in my term papers, in real life they unravel like so much yarn in a kitten's paws.

I was reading that the nra wants to create a database that lists (for the public) the names of people with a mental illness. PTSD, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, depression, anxiety, autism, seasonal affective disorder, borderline personality disorder, and the gamut of eating disorders----all of these people will be branded, labeled, posted for the public to see, and stigmatized worse than ever before.

As I said in a previous post, the last time I was floridly psychotic I believed that society was going to round up everyone with "defective DNA" and put them in camps. I am starting to realize that paranoia is just an extreme extension of ideas within the realm of possibility.

Backing anybody into a corner is obviously never a good solution. Turning into lynch mobs and threatening the Constitutional rights and freedoms of law-abiding citizens is worse than this---it is traitorous.

Respectfully,
an A-student with a clean record who takes Pride in the US Constitution
~Antigone

http://www.nami.org/Template.cfm?Section=Home&template=/ContentManagement/ContentDisplay.cfm&ContentID=148650

Unspeakable Tragedy in our nation this week. I haven't blogged at all lately because of what happened. I think everyone across the country is in a state of shock.

*******************************************************************************

When my cousin committed suicide last July I did all my homework as a means to cope. Rather than dwell on the pain, I read British literature and wrote expository essays. The pain never went away, but I managed to cope. I think that is what I am doing right now by blogging: coping with something horrible that never should have happened.



Just to put something in perspective---  Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, and every other person responsible for atrocities and genocides, were not afflicted with genetic mental illness; they were sociopaths.

I read on a yahoo comment board that "all it takes is one psycho so we should.....to all the crazy...." (he was referring to mental patients and the mentally ill). I am afraid that is your train of thought as well, reader. I once told my psychiatrist that people were conspiring to put me in a death camp because of my defective DNA. Allegedly, I was floridly psychotic at the time.

After 9/11 there was a lot of pain too. There was a lot of blame aimed at people of Middle Eastern origin, regardless of innocence. In these volatile times it is easy to punish 1.5 million innocent people than 1 dead, guilty person, but it doesn't make it right.

I obey the constitution and I hope you will as well.
~Antigone

Notes on my Personal Life

I am up late, thinking about how unjust the world can be. But why gripe? I have more than many other people do. I have my college degree, I am doing well in the master's program, I am not mentally ill at the moment. I have no criminal record. I don't even have any speeding tickets to my name.

I  have a boyfriend. He is an international student. He cooks for me. I am very lucky.


I got an A on a tough midterm. I now have to write excellent term papers. Then, I can celebrate Christmas.

I need. I need money. I need love. I need hugs and kisses and hundred dollar bills. When I am in my boyfriend's arms it is as though he can never hold me tightly enough. I need too much. Even with my major illness gone, I am still a bit neurotic.

Look at me, typing my private details onto the cyberspace. What is the matter with me? I am ashamed, yet my fingers keep typing. I must need attention. I must need your attention. Thank you, by the way, for your attention. Without it, my life would be a solitary existence, living alone with the secret of my damaged mind, hiding behind a wall of fun-house mirrors, unsure as to which reflection is mine.

Here, I know who I am. Yes, I omit certain details of my life from you, reader. Important things? Not really. Trivial things I do not really bother to type into cyberspace. You know my bare soul. You know the secrets that I can not share, not even with the man whom I share a bed with. He doesn't know the secret of my mental illness.

He doesn't know that I learned how to sleep under bright lights in the psychiatric holding cells. What it was like---the horrible sting of light, the sporadic moments of sleep, the ever-present security guards with attitude problems and billy clubs as extensions of their manhood. He doesn't know what it's like to wake up shattered, literally bruised, with no memory.  I curl up with him and pretend like I have no past. Like nothing existed before him. The silence between our conversations like tiny rain drops that threaten to become a rainstorm. I can never tell anyone the horrible existence that American society puts mental patients through. The physical restraints, the invasive psycho-therapy, the guinea-pig drug regimens, the stigma.....it is all so middle ages.

But enough remembering about my ugly past. I must think about a future where I am not tied to a gurney, not misunderstood, not perceived as contagiously mentally ill or dangerous. I will apply to doctorate programs this semester. If I am accepted, I will request a deferment of my admission in order to complete the Master's degree. I will complete my Master's degree in two years, possibly earlier. I will take my medicine as prescribed. I will exercise and lose weight. I will apply to PhD programs in my field. I will not break the law. I will not give up the hope of a normal existence, or of a productive career. Maybe I will even have a child. But that would be after I am gainfully employed. I want my child to have a nice house in a nice neighborhood. Moot point, though, I need to earn my degrees first. Wish me luck. I wish you luck.

Adjusting to Grad School

If you had asked me at age 18 where would I be in 4 years I would have answered: I will be a college graduate and I will be securely employed.

Well, I am 29 years old and that little bubble of hope kind of popped around the time I had my first schizo-affective episode at the age of 19. Since that time, I have ridden the turbulent waves of mental illness. I have succeeded and failed at community college, barely managing to transfer with an Associate's degree, almost a decade later. Now, I have a Bachelor's degree. It's officially on my transcripts: Bachelor's degree conferred August, 2012. Some might call me a total failure. A dreg, a former pothead, socially unproductive. Some might call me a tough cookie for managing a severe mental illness while working, going to college, and attending to my family. I call myself a masochist, in a way, for putting up with the tightening deadlines, the boss with the anger management issues, professors with attitude problems, eating myself into a size 16 pant size, dieting myself down to a size 14 (I am still considered overweight by the BMI chart but nowhere near where I used to be), making friends with sleazy womanizers, and juggling all this with the incessant stream of homework, papers, family obligations, financial strains, and (of course) periodic flare-ups of my mental illness. Yes, that little masochist in me wants to feel the pain of juggling life roles, of near epic failures, and deepening despairs concerning my future.

Yet, if it were not for the masochist I would have chosen a fairly easier route: graduate, go to a career placement service, get a job, work below my full capabilities, buy an Ipad. End of life. Despite the urge to be stable financially and professionally, I couldn't let go of the field I am studying. It intrigues me. The promised future paycheck also calls out to me like a siren in a Greek tragedy. So I applied to the same Cal State campus as a graduate student, got accepted, and now I am on a kayak heading down rapids. I do not know how I well fare in graduate school. It is something I want to do, something I am driven to do. I want to be educated. I want to be specialized. I want to feel intelligent.

This last decade I have felt dumb. I heard things that nobody else did while schizo-affective. I saw things. I believed wild delusions that anyone with normal brain chemistry could clearly see was not real. I have struggled with not trusting my mind at all and now my mind is the only thing I have to keep me afloat for the next two years while I complete my Master's degree.

I just know I want to be like Elyn R. Saks in "The Center Cannot Hold." Psychotic? Yes. Smart? Yes. Educated? Yes. Successful? Yes. She is my role model. Thank you, Elyn R. Saks, for writing your story. A year after I found out about your story I am still inspired to persevere in my life, to prove you right!

So....here I go. I am going to work on a presentation I have to prepare for a class.

Thanks for reading! 

At Times Obtuse At Times Hypersensitive

Like the title says, I am at times obtuse and at other times hypersensitive. Being schizophrenic is a cognitive disorder and it affects my social awareness. It is one of the embarrassing aspects of the disease, this social clumsiness I experience. There is fear, constant fear. There is panic on occasion. There is confusion a lot of the times, but often one part of my disease is inconsistant. My social awareness is skewed in one direction or the other, sometimes shifting in a single day.

At times I miss cues from other people signaling discomfort, annoyance, or even affection. At other times, I perceive emotions, be it hatred or attraction, that are not really there. I have learned to bite down on my instincts thanks to instances where I've had my first impression proved wrong. For example, I once thought my art professor hated me deeply. I avoided eye contact and any social interaction as I felt an imaginary loathing emanating from her. Instead, I poured my anxiety into my artwork. I desperately wanted my art professor's approval but I felt that she wanted me to drop her class and disappear from the face of the planet. One night, she passed my drawing of a flower and put a hand to her heart. I thought she was going to say it looked like a very evil flower. Instead she said, "That is incredible! Absolutely beautiful. It touches me." Stunned, I realized that she felt the exact opposite of what I thought she felt. The entire semester I thought she felt my artwork was an extension of myself---thus, she would naturally hate it. After that, I questioned my perceptions entirely. Shortly thereafter, I began to spiral downwards, believing that people thought I was an evil person, that they were going to frame me for horrible crimes, and I was brought to the ER psych unit by my worried mother. I was then diagnosed with schizo-affective disorder and the series of faulty perceptions made sense; my perceptions were skewed.

Rather than slip into a deep haze of self-hatred as some schizophrenics do (as society can abhor a schizophrenic), I began to study the disease by reading everything from the library. I learned to see it not in terms of bad luck but an unfortunate triggering of certain genetically inherited properties. It was not a curse from some cruel God, but a disease of science that is still in the process of being understood by scientists.

I learned about the dopamine hypothesis that states schizophrenia is a disease that results from an excess of the neurotransmitter dopamine. What causes this excess may be genetic, or a combination of genetics and environment, but whatever it is, it is not the result of a wicked heart. Often, schizophrenics are misunderstood.

Just today I got an email from an ex-lover who said that he moved out because his roommate (who happened to be schizophrenic) got drunk, high, and threatened him with a knife. My ex-lover blamed this violent threat on the person's schizophrenia. I think this is ridiculous, as drunk and high people who are not schizophrenic often act out violently. Should I therefore assume that every alcoholic is on the verge of murdering me in cold blood because of his state of intoxication? Despite the fact that drunken rages of violence are super common, I would not. Why, then, would my ex-lover believe that violence is common among schizophrenics? It is this ignorance that is detrimental to all of us in the States. Ignorance means that there is a reluctance to admit to mental illness and this can leave a person incapacitated due to their untreated mental illness.

On one last note, all people are equal with equal rights and opportunities. Remember that next time you encounter somebody who admits to (or exhibits) a mental illness. It is an unfortunate truth that the majority of people who have been through treatment for mental illness have faced blatant discrimination, fear, hatred, blame, and the cruelty that can come from the very people who are employed to look after their well being; mental health practitioners.

I took a psychology of criminal behavior class at my University and the professor said something that resonated deeply with me: "There are two work places that attract highly controlling and domineering personality types seeking employment: prisons and mental hospitals." This was coming from a man who used to work in an asylum for the criminally insane!

In conclusion, please be kind and don't pour salt onto the psychic wounds of the mentally ill. We are all fighting our internal hell in order to smile or say hello. At some point, your life will hit an obstacle, perhaps due to a death in the family, and you will feel the same struggle we can feel on a daily basis.

Weight Woes

This April I was 181 pounds---and this was after I'd gone on a vegetarian diet to eliminate all the greasy, saturated meats in my diet. I was probably closer to 190 or 195 at my highest weight. At 5'1 or 5'2, this is not morbidly obese, but it is obese. In case you don't know, there's underweight, normal weight, overweight, obese, and morbidly obese. I knew something had to be done. I was having respiratory problems which made me short of breath while stationary. Walking I was fine but while sitting down I felt I couldn't breathe. This might have been my anxiety condition or it my weight problem, either way, I decided I would deal with the weight.

By July I was 171 pounds. No crash dieting (though I flirted with the idea at my lowest point), just large amounts of vegetables sauteed in olive oil and hot spices, no meat, and a cut back on sugar, pasta, and breads.

At my lowest weight I was 158 this November, down another 13 pounds. I managed this by purchasing a rowing machine with various levels of resistance with my financial aid money and using it as long as I could as often as I could....usually only 20 minutes 4 times a week...plus judo class for 50 minutes 2 times a week since the end of August.

I eat 3 meals a day, no skipping. It was simply that my portion size shrunk while the food I ate became healthier. I have my bad days, but usually I  have a routine where I prepare my vegetables in cumin, coriander, cayenne pepper, and turmeric spices with a regularity that is relaxing for me. As indulgence I will sprinkle some shredded cheese over a cup of vegetables and let it slowly melt into delicious cheesiness. Maybe I'll have a piece of Mexican sweet bread (pan dulce) as a late-night dessert, but for the most part I avoided desserts like some people avoid black widow spiders.

I have to make sure I eat 3 meals a day because I had a period where I did not eat 3 meals a day, I was on a starvation diet and I ate no breakfasts, a salad for lunch, and a measly dinner, drank my weight in sugary soda and sugary coffee to keep me alert at work, and then passed out at night, malnourished and steadily going insane. I lost almost all the weight I'd gained being on medications for schizophrenia, but in my stupid zeal I quit taking the medications and stopped eating the bare minimum requirement for health. When I was inevitably hospitalized for psychosis by my exhausted mother (this time it was secret assassins on television's Sesame Street threatening to kill my entire family), I was 131 pounds, not anywhere near the 112 pounds I was at age 21, but still, I was so damn close! Was it worth it? Hell no! I spent days in the psychiatric facility debating whether I should be thin and psychotic, locked up in psych wards with nobody around to admire my weight loss, or fat and sane, possibly even productive. Hence, why I now have to lose weight!

On the plus side, it was wonderful to give myself permission to eat and enjoy food, despite becoming obese in the process. Where once I had envied my boss's young wife for being rail thin (she worked all day as a waitress in her husband's restaurant and the only thing I ever saw her eat was a salad with cottage cheese on top---a bizarre concoction that I never could get the hang of), I now envy women who are successful in their jobs and happy about their contributions to society. This is an achievement I'm proud of, and though I have to continue to work my way into the normal weight range, I'm on medication, attending University with one semester left until I graduate with my B.A., managing my mental illness, living a life with friends and family, and being productive to society. I never could have accomplished this being unmedicated or starving.

I have a long way to go before I reach my ideal weight---these holidays set me back 5 pounds, back to 164, but I'm determined to accomplish my New Year's goals  of losing weight, exercising 5 times a week, graduating with a decent cumulative GPA in May, budgeting my grant money so I don't wind up penniless by summer time, and raising my self-confidence in my body and my mind. :)

Hopefully, with some patience and ambition, I can accomplish these goals this year.
2011 was a year of painful loss (my cousin by suicide and my grandfather by heart attack), one of scholastic achievement (Dean's List Spring semester), one of unemployment, but a year that I'll be proud of one day in the future as a period of transition from mental patient/pot head to University student.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!

Mental Health Budget Cuts

I'm not a politician. I'm not an accountant. I am, however, a paranoid schizophrenic with a long history of hospitalizations.

To a politician, mental health budget cuts means less taxes on the 99%. To an accountant, mental health budget cuts means more money in the piggy bank. To a person with depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, anxiety, ADHD, autism, or any other mental health diagnosis, the mental health budget cuts means a bleak future, no medicine, no treatment, possibly no work, and general misery.

In a way I am lucky to have been forcibly hospitalized so often because the county realized it is much cheaper just to put me in a treatment program and put me on pharmaceutical assistance programs than it  costs to warehouse me like a piece of veal in a psych ward for a month every year. So I am one of the lucky ones that gets medication from a long-term care provider, and only because I've been deemed "institutionalized." Institutionalized means that I have been in the hospital so often that I've become almost dependent on the process of being 5150'd and locked up in order to recover.

The topic of recovery is a touchy issue for some. While there is no cure for paranoid schizo-affective disorder (schizo-affective=a combination of bipolar disorder and schizophrenia), there are medications that take away the positive symptoms such as delusions, paranoia, auditory hallucinations, visual hallucinations, and anxiety that results from experiencing these cognitive malfunctions. There is also behavioral modification therapy that focuses on re-integrating mental patients into society. These therapies, such as cognitive behavioral therapy, are sessions where a therapist asks about the persons life and tries to make the patient's outlook on his/her life to be more positive and productive.

For example, one of my goals in therapy was to become more social. My time in the hospitals made me feel like a freak, somebody nobody would want to associate with. My therapist reframed this idea for me by saying that I had a disability no different from a learning disability, and that a person's adverse reaction to my diagnosis did not reflect on myself. She also said that if I didn't feel comfortable telling people I am mentally disabled, I was not obliged to do so. Over time, I learned to manage my negative symptoms (negative symptoms=asocial tendencies, flat affect, indifference, lack of motivation). I smiled more, asked people about their days, made an effort to reach out with compliments, and pretty soon I had friends! Of course, none of them know I am schizophrenic, but that's because I am leery of telling the uninitiated about a disease barely anybody even understands. My point is that therapy provided a base to relay my fears about talking to people and through therapy, I was able to befriend graduate students and undergrads at my University without making a total ass out of myself. :)

Without the funding for outpatient services none of this would have been possible. I would be miserable, jobless, penniless, friendless, a drain on the welfare system, and hiding in my room all day, afraid of invisible assassins. The cost on taxpayers would be greater than it is now, and I'm not on government cash assistance! And if your answer is to say, just let them roam the streets and remove the burden off taxpayers---you're not thinking of what that entails. First, you probably know somebody who is mentally ill and you would probably prefer to pay 25 cents per paycheck rather than watch a loved one suffer. Second, think about the possibility of unmedicated psychotics wandering the streets wondering why you hate them so much---are YOU the assassin they're afraid of? Most of us aren't dangerous, but I'd be lying if I said NONE of us are dangerous unmedicated. There's bound to be some psychotics, depressives, manics, or whatever, out there who are unpredictable without the mind controlling effects of psychotropic medications. My point is, 25 cents isn't that much and it is worth it if it gets thousands of mentally ill people out of hospital beds and into jobs where they can be productive to society.

Thanks for reading!