Amygdala in Overdrive

Posted on April 11, 2011 in Anxiety Frustration Paranoids Propaganda

square707My [[amygdala]] has been in overdrive. Every morning between 7 and 7:30, I wake up with my breastbone trying to break out of my chest. My thoughts immediately turn to politics and the Tea Party. I don’t think this is paranoia because I don’t look out my window to see if [[John Boehner]] and [[Eric Cantor]] have dispatched minions to watch my condo. The future is my topic. What will become of [[Medicare]]? What about the [[Social Security]] trust fund that my wife and I have paid into all these years? Will the Republicans find a way to steal the next election? Will progressives be stupid and sit this one out because they have not received a perfect package for their pains? Wave the bloody shirt and I am on Twitter screaming about it, trembling.

Recent studies suggest that our fears never go away: they are merely masked:

Fear is commonly investigated in mice by exposing them simultaneously to a neutral stimulus — a certain sound, for example — and an unpleasant one. This leads to the animals being frightened of the sound as well. Context plays an important role in this case: If the scaring sound is played repeatedly in a new context without anything bad happening, the mice shed their fear again. It returns immediately, however, if the sound is presented in the original, or even a completely novel context.

Deep in the amygdala, there are two groups of cells — one that generates the fear response and another that suppresses them. It’s a classic example of evolution’s shoddy engineering. When the suppression mechanism goes to work, it does not operate by stopping the fear response: it merely prevents it from being transmitted to other parts of the body. The fear is still there, waiting for the cells dedicated to suppressing it to drop their guard — as what happens when the sound is played in a novel context in the example above. Then the same old dreads run the show all over again.

I cannot help but tie this finding to another article I read recently about the amygdala. Scientists have discovered differences in the brains of liberals and conservatives. Your typical liberal has a larger [[anterior cingulate cortex]] which lets her pull concepts together and not be distracted by conflicting information. Conservatives have larger amygdalas, which researchers say makes them better able to “recognize a threat”.

My experience suggests that this is a politically correct way of saying that conservatives are often panic at the slightest implication that they are being threatened. Witness how they can be made to vote against their interests by campaigns based in racism or other types of hatred. Witness how some hoard guns beyond what they actually need to defend their homes ((I don’t own a gun nor have I ever needed one, even in some of the rough neighborhoods where I lived as a young man.)) . Witness how they allow military spending to overwhelm the federal budget even when specific programs prove to be unmanageable, unworkable, or a boondoggle ((If it is for “defense”, they’ll buy it. The amygdala doesn’t do well at discerning frauds.)) . Witness how they will stream to the polls if an appropriate [[robocall]] or commercial tells them that they are being threatened — even if this goes against all reason. Conservatives are eminently controllable by their fears. This has proven true in election after election.

The trick relies on a simple tactic: move conservatives out of the safe zone of discipline that they have surrounded themselves in to prevent their emotions from running wild. Conservatives are often better behaved in environments where they are taught to do as they are told — such as the military. Control of the emotions is vital. But change the context and the conservative is once more his old, fearful self. He might be a nice guy to everyone around him because he has been conditioned to be so, but remove that environment through bright flashing lights and loud voices preaching doom if the… ((Fill in the blank.)) are allowed to get the upper hand.

So liberals need to develop tricks to fight these tricks that turn good people into reckless fools. Sometimes we will need to use the fear. Sometimes we will need to train conservatives to ignore the lights and sounds, to become the true masters of their anxieties, their souls, and their political and economic destinies. The best society is one where the problem-solving power of the liberals and the threat detection power of the conservatives coexist to serve the whole.

This post is in response to Day 10 of the Health Activist Writers Challenge: “Post Secret”

Bipolar Acrostic

Posted on April 10, 2011 in Bipolar Disorder

Brazenness
Impulsiveness
Paranoia
Overspending
Lust
Aggression
Racing thoughts

Depression
Insight
Swinging moods
Obsession
Relapse
Denial
Emotions
Recovery

This post is in response to Day 1 of the Health Activist Writers Challenge: “Acrostic” (I’m skipping back because I missed days 1 to 3 and because I hate today’s challenge.)

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Insert a Trite Metaphor for a Corral #92

Posted on April 10, 2011 in Roundup

“Freedom is when the people can speak, democracy is when the government listens.” ~ Alastair Farrugia

square706It has been a tough week with the news from Wisconsin (another Republican voting scandal? Predictable.) and the struggle over the Budget. I managed to find some pieces that had nothing to do with politics that you might like. One piece of advice: stay off Twitter on a Saturday night because people with no life from both ends of the political spectrum come to preach Apocalypse of one kind or another.

You can tell me if you like the new masthead photo as a comment here.

Precipice 4/3/2011

Precipice. (Platinum finish)

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Arguing with the God Within

Posted on April 9, 2011 in Agnosticism Depression Mania Myths & Mysticism

square705Near the end of Ingmar Bergman’s classic [[Winter Light]], the troubled minister who is the film’s main character, can’t decide whether to hold the 3 o’clock service or not. His day has been especially depressing because he gave counseling to a parishioner who subsequently committed suicide that very afternoon, he fought with his mistress, and he has the flu. The church sexton, a disabled survivor of a railroad accident, talks to him about the part of the Gospels which he has been reading, the Passion.

Jesus, the sexton reasons, didn’t suffer all that much on the cross. Why, the janitor goes on, he personally suffered more pain in his life than the four hours that afflicted Jesus and his pain was probably much worse. No, the [[crucifixion]] is not the most important segment of the Passion. Think of the [[Garden of Gethsemane]], he says. The [[Last Supper]] is done. The disciples who have accompanied him have no clue about what is about to happen, so they go to sleep. Jesus is all alone, so he kneels down to pray. And what does God the Father say to him? Nothing. God is silent. And that, the sexton reasons, is the most terrible ordeal that Jesus endures.

Agnostic that I am, I still value the Gospels as a guide for understanding the suffering that is happening in my life. But what I would give for a silent God at times! In the void, my depressions fill the emptiness with the voice that is the worst of the Old Testament combined with Catholic guilt. I call this my inner god — a false god to be certain — because its primary purpose is to torment me. My illness exists, according to this voice, for the purpose of punishing me. But therapist after therapist has asked me What have I done that is so terrible that I deserve this constant hammering at my self-esteem? I can throw out a number of things, but they are all trivial compared to the actions of some of my peers who feel no shame for what they wreak against others ((Do you hear me, [[Newt Gingrich]]?)) Surely there should come a place where my penance is over? But no matter what amends I make, the god inside me continues to berate me and declare me worthless.

One reason why I value my manias is that they shut down this voice entirely. Only my own ideations occupy me — obsessively. My thoughts race from project to project, propounding desperate philosophies that enthrall me more than [[methamphetamine]]. The evil god, the blasphemer against my happiness is put to death and does not rise again until I crash. Then for more than forty days at a stretch, the god assaults me with shame.

For the depressed and the anxious, the silence of God is a scream.

This post is in response to Day 9 of the Health Activist Writers Challenge: “Health Activist Choice”

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Poem of Questions about Bipolar Disorder

Posted on April 8, 2011 in Bipolar Disorder Poems

When is it going to feel like I am Emperor of the World again?
Why do they call it Depabloat?
He’s not smiling. Is he mad at me?

What can I do to STOP my racing thoughts?
Why are my hands shaking?
Why isn’t my Xanax working anymore?

I don’t feel depressed, I feel like nothing. Is that something else?
Where can I hide?
Should I answer the door when I am like this?

Has God cursed me?

This post is in response to Day 8 of the Health Activist Writers Challenge: “Poem”

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A Quick Text Message for My Bipolar Disorder

Posted on April 7, 2011 in Anxiety Bipolar Disorder 

  Got the message u sent
     by killing my sleep
Is this ur depression talking?  
       Or r u hypomanic, 
playing secret agent games?
            Rembr:
    News mks u anxious

This post is in response to Day 7 of the Health Activist Writers Challenge: “Leave your condition a text or voice mail.”

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I write about my health because….

Posted on April 7, 2011 in Bipolar Disorder Dentition Reflections

square704I write about my health because information is power. And I have the information. But information is worthless if it is not known. So I put what I know out to the world for others so that they might have the power I have obtained by observing my illness closely.

I have several conditions. Most recently, I had a section of my gum and bone around one of my rear molars trimmed. This procedure, called crown-lengthening is meant to give my dentist more purchase when he fashions a new covering for the tooth recently emptied of its pulp by a root canal. My periodontist, Dr. Marlene Miller, buzzed, scraped, and stitched a quarter-inch long segment. The ordeal was over in less than half an hour. When I look in to see what was mauled, I see two neat black loops along the bottom of the tooth. These will melt away in a few days. In the meantime, to keep the pain down, I am consuming [[Tylenol]] and [[Indomethacin]] (to reduce the inflammation).

My teeth have been the source of the greatest physical pain if one discounts as spiritual the depression and anxiety engendered by the [[bipolar disorder]]. The latter precipitated the former because I was consumed by the crazy idea that my teeth were ugly. When I was a baby, I was given [[tetracycline]] before it was known that it would stain my permanent teeth. Among the names kids called me was “Yellow Teeth”. I didn’t brush them, at first, because I thought it was hopeless. At sixteen years of age, I had my first [[root canal]]. The second followed three years later. (Both teeth are now gone, their places occupied by [[dental implants]].)

A new idea consumed me after a visit with a dentist who called for a dramatic overhaul of my mouth through a combination of breaking my jaw and grinding down my teeth. He called it a “dental disaster” and that phrase stuck in my mind. I felt hopeless, unable to move on because it would cost me tens of thousands of dollars to fix. I cried a lot after this. I let my teeth disintegrate until a descent into severe depression. As a condition of my recovery, I had to face what was wrong with my mouth. This meant first dealing with the multitude of root canals that afflicted me. As soon as we fixed one, then another would “go rogue” as I liked to describe it. ((I have had somewhere between sixteen and twenty root canals in the course of my life. )) Then a periodontist subjected me to “deep cleaning” which meant that he sliced my gums open and cleaned off the plaque that had collected on the roots. ((I have only met one survivor of this procedure who went through it twice. Most of us get the message the first time.)) a prosthodonist finished the procedure by capping my 28 remaining teeth. Eventually, my oldest two root canals went bad and I needed the implants.

So imagine where I was for many years. Constant pain in my mouth that I tried to ignore. Who knows what this did to my mood, what effect it had on my diet? I know that I gained weight once my teeth were fixed. ((And I am still working on losing it.)) In the end, I had beautiful teeth, but my brain was ruined by the bipolar disorder. Three years of work resulted in “movie star teeth” which have been largely wasted due to [[paranoia]].

I write in part to make connections — here, between my teeth and my bipolar disorder. Elsewhere between my heart and my [[diabetes]], my [[asthma]] and my anxiety. ((My father once told me that my asthma was [[psychosomatic]]. This was the thinking of the time. Some still believe it.)) I have yet to develop a comprehensive account of my body and it is towards this ending my writing endeavors — or maybe toward the truth that there are many cycles affecting my body, ropes that just happen to knot together in the place of pain but otherwise have nothing to do with each other. But maybe you will see yourself here. I do this for me, but I have no qualms if you find something for yourself here, too. I am not selfish. Accept my sharing if it helps.

This post is in response to Day 6 of the Health Activist Writers Challenge: “I write about my health because…”

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The Trap of Chelation Therapy for Bipolar

Posted on April 4, 2011 in Bipolar Disorder Paranoids Psycho-bunk Psychotropics Scoundrels

square703A woman came into a support group meeting with her husband. He immediately walked to the center our circle and began trying to set up a place for himself and his wife there. We persuaded them to take a seat with the rest of us, but throughout the meeting he was extremely agitated. The buzz of mania shook his entire body. Even the hairs on his balding head vibrated.

His wife knew, too, but after the meeting we learned that she had a paranoia all her own. You see, she’d heard that lithium was “a heavy metal” from a practioner of chelation therapy. Not having the wit to check the periodic table of the elements ((Lithium is the third lightest element after hydrogen and helium.)) she had signed her man into a dubious treatment engineered by a practitioner who sold people the line that the psychiatric profession was a big fraud out to milk people dry through prescriptions. This “therapist” was going to “cleanse” the man’s blood.

Now we never saw this woman again, but I have my well-informed doubts about chelation therapy. It flies a huge red flag, namely that it can cure everything: Not just bipolar disorder, but also heart disease, [[hypertension]], heavy metal poisoning, prostrate trouble, [[autism]], and just about anything you are willing to pay the chelator ((Yes, it does sound like “cheater”. I bet that is why they don’t call themselves that!)) to remove. It amounts to a pricey piece of witch doctoring whose only proponents appear to be the practitioners themselves.

Dr. Stephen Barrett, a notable anti-quackery activisit, has set up Chelation Watch as a clearinghouse for information. Among other things you can learn from this site are that chelation therapy has long been on the U.S. Public Health Service’s list of suspect treatments, that it is toxic to the kidneys, and of dubious value in the treatment of [[atherosclerosis]] — the one condition for which there is any legitimate literature. It is prescribed usually based on fraudulent tests that indicate lead or mercury poisoning. The most respectful of advocates for it recommend it only as a last resort.

Chelation for bipolar sufferers feeds into the stigma against those of us living with mental illness. The suggestion is that we have been poisoned by our environment and that — not chemicals in our brain or gut, not the pressures that families and workplaces can put us under, not our decisions to self-medicate as opposed to seek proper treatment by a trained professional psychiatrist — everything can be reduced to heavy metal concentrations that usually aren’t there. Science has shown again and again that concentrations of the light metal lithium are most efficacious in preventing bipolar mania. If this proves wrong for our bodies, there are other things that can be substituted. The man I described was far from the point of last resort. Rather his wife had panicked and run to the first quack who could promise her a miracle cure.

You’d think if they’d found that their money was worth it, they’d have told us. But they didn’t.

This post is in response to Day 4 of the Health Activist Writers Challenge: Ludicrous Headline or Cure. Do a news search and choose a ridiculous headline or proposed cure about your condition and write what you think about it. Can’t find one? Write your own.

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Walking the Flat Track

Posted on April 3, 2011 in Mania Morals & Ethics Stigma

square702Guilt is the mainstay of some of us who struggle with bipolar disorder. I saw my mind disintegrate during the nineties. At the same time, I was mocked for my ferocity and klutziness in writing, an irony because I scored a 5 on the AP English examination. Where others hitchhiked nude down the freeway, I had the Internet. And there is a record out there of all my episodes for the world to see.

From time to time, I get reminded of this. Once someone sent me an email by accident. He meant to warn his friends that “it” — meaning me — was back. I wrote him a pointed note about his insensitivity, but that didn’t help. The affair shuttled me into this shell that I made to avoid negativity. This is not the only incident, just one of the most painful. I have stopped mentioning them to my wife. She only knows that my spirit is mostly broken, that I live mostly just to keep myself walking the flat track that loops endlessly around my being. I dare not run.

In more recent times, I sensed that some people use the fact of my bipolar to shove me away from participating in anything interesting. I don’t feel that I can attend my wife’s Quaker meeting, for example, because I am the husband who suffers from mental illness. There’s a forced kindliness that I feel there when they get me to talk (I mostly listen) and a rush to the assumption that I will lose control if I am not stopped now.

To cite an example of this (and it happens elsewhere, too) I ran into some members of the meeting while we were taking a trip to the Mojave Desert. They were on their way back from Death Valley, so I mentioned that we had just been to the national preserve just across the highway. One of these “Friends” told me “We don’t have time to go there.” I just blinked at him. Where had this come from? Had I insisted that we do this? We spoke a little more. I mentioned the volcanoes just down the road. Again the insistence that they didn’t have time.

There was a third person, not a Quaker, who picked up the conversation. We discussed the many things that remained to be explored in the preserve, how we loved the place. This person made no assumptions about my intentions and we had a good talk. It made a difference in how I felt about him and about myself. This man made me human again.

Other incidents have troubled me. One woman told me of her awful childhood living with a bipolar sufferer. I did not dispute this — we can have a painful effect on those around us when we do not take our medications. But at the same time I felt a devaluation of all of us who struggle with this illness. The implication I received from this woman was that we should be abandoned. And I, who am nearly alone except for my wife, dread that possibility.

Quakers believe in the leadings of the Holy Spirit. In 1992, I felt led to go to former Yugoslavia to help the peace movement. It was a crazy time in my life and I made a reputation for myself that isn’t sound. At least I think so because people aren’t seeking me out to see what I think on matters 20 years later. I have spoken of this in Quaker groups. When I do, the Friends suddenly become uneasy with me because of my present distrust in myself of these feelings.

Do not think for a moment that the Friends are alone in this. There are plenty of people who put down the mentally ill, often in strange places like Alcoholics Anonymous whose Big Book describes manic-depression as one of the causes of their illness. Here, like in the Friends, they just don’t want to hear about that — perhaps because many “dry-drunks” are undiagnosed or because of the obsession of some AA members that you do not take any chemical aids to help with so much as a headache. Witness, too, the predators who offer prayer as an antidote to the panics, the mood swings, and the hallucinations. Some go so far as to offer faith healing that will “erase” the condition altogether. These, too, bear stigma: if you still feel the symptoms then you must not be praying hard enough.

From all of these, I withdraw. I hear it said by members of the Quaker Meeting that I should not judge it by a few people, but I feel that an organization is known by what they tolerate. And when they say this, I feel that my feelings are merely written off as more deliriums. So this is why I stay close to home on Sundays, showing only now and then for a luncheon or a talk. If I were a better Quaker, I would take it as a leading of the spirit to address these prejudices. But too much do I dread the clash with the uneducated and the prejudiced. Too much do I fear the rejection of my claims. What is clear to me is subtle to others who do not have my illness. If I tell my wife, she just sighs.

It is better to just prevent a relapse, to stay out of the world. And that sucks.

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Insert as Trite Metaphor for a Corral #91

Posted on April 3, 2011 in Roundup

Guard against the impostures of pretended patriotism. ~George Washington

square701Therapists love to tell their patients who suffer from mood disorders not to follow the news or engage in politics. I find that this perspective leads me to a place that I don’t want to go. Stay out of politics at a time when the lives of my friends with mood disorders are at stake? This Tea Party Congress has no clue about anything other than the making of money — they look to the Right Wing Dictatorships of Latin America for their inspiration. I just read a fascinating article in the New Yorker about their possible efforts to unseat the first left wing president of Guatemala since the CIA manipulated Arbeniz out of power. The American people cannot afford the dictatorship of the plutocracy and they can’t afford the dismantling of those parts of the government that protect the people. It is time to get the Tea Party and the Republicans off our backs. But first, let me be sure to take some time to rest my soul.

Chaparral Yucca 3/25/2011 #1A (platinum finish)

Chaparral Yucca 3/25/2011 (platinum finish)

You can find me on Twitter and Dailybooth as “EmperorNorton”. Ask nicely and I might invite you to follow me on Facebook.

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Insert a Trite Metaphor for a Corral #90

Posted on March 27, 2011 in Roundup

All wars are follies, very expensive and very mischievous ones.– Benjamin Franklin

square700Though Libya and Japan remained concerns for me, I paid especial attention to the constitutional crisis now afflicting the country made possible by the takeover of the Supreme Court, the Congress, and various legislatures by the Tea Party. Top among my concerns for the 2012 election is the widening rift between rich and poor. I do not think the Founding Fathers would have approved of our current economic state and the idea that corporations have become powers beyond the reach of states. I voted to stop this and will again in 2012. Will you?

You can find me on Twitter and Dailybooth as “EmperorNorton”. Ask nicely and I might invite you to follow me on Facebook.

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Vitamin D and the Cold Blue Funks

Posted on March 26, 2011 in Depression Glands Mania Medications

square699My endocrinologist tapped a few keys and brought up my latest bloodwork. She pursed her lips as she scanned the numbers. My [[triglycerides]] were too high, so she upped my [[Lipofen]]. Everything else was within proper balances. Except at the bottom of her study: my [[Vitamin D]] levels were excruciatingly low.

I asked her what that meant.

“We don’t know a lot about how it works,” she admitted. “We do know that when it is low you can feel tired and depressed.” I had just confessed to these symptoms a few minutes before, so the result explained the torment of my winter.

Some people, she explained, had trouble producing enough Vitamin D from sunlight. The amount that they use to fortify milk didn’t suffice. I spent the winter taking walk after walk in the bright sunlight, but I wasn’t producing.

So the cure was a megadose of the food supplement. It came in an emerald softgel about the size of my little fingernail that I have to ingest once a week.

The role of Vitamin D in depression is not confirmed at this time, but a recent study out of Great Britain suggests that low vitamin D levels are associated with melancholy, “independent of age, sex, social class, physical health status, and season.” This finding remains controversial because other symptoms of Vitamin D deficiency such as heart problems might in themselves lead to depression.

What I can say about this is that since taking Vitamin D, I have begun to smile again — genuine smiles rather than the forced grins that civility demands. The glow of my exercise sessions last beyond an hour or two and it is far less hard to get them started. Other depression sufferers report similar results.

The one thought that troubles me is whether the symptoms of depression that I have felt all these years is nothing more than a symptom of this deficiency. But then there is the question of the mania: This can happen when there is too much Vitamin D in the system. Are my mood stabilizers the wrong treatment? I do not remember changing my habits in advance of the surges of energy. So I shall work with my psychiatrist, remembering that for the bipolar the body is an explosion and a fire that rages and ebbs.

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