Been drinking, but here it goes, my last post

Debate Room
21

I concede that some nasty experiences have been character building. .I reject the notion that suffering ennobles as a principle.

Perhaps the hardest thing for me to unlearn has been my family’s mythology***. By that I mean a whole bunch of unfounded claims and assumptions about how life is and the way it’s meant to be’ . The personal superstitions which came with the Irish catholicism were only the tip of the iceberg

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***I once looked up ‘dysfunctional family’. Fair dinkum , it was like some one had been watching my family from inside the house and taking notes, for years.

22

It fits most family dynamics. Psychotherapists invent the disease and then offer the cure, pretty much like priests.

Fun story ( I think ) I used to see California Youth Authority Clients, 6 months prior to their release and 6 months after their release.)

They go in as teens and are released at age 25.

A lady is brought into my office in chains. Feet bracelets attached to cuffs on the hands and everything wrapped around the waist.

They release her from the cairns for the session.

At some point in one of the sessions the woman confesses. “I am a kleptomaniac. I can’t stop myself from stealing.” (This was a very heartfelt admission and something that deeply troubled the young lady.)

I immediately reached out an arm and pushed everything on my desk into a corner on the floor. Just one big ‘SWOOSH’ across the desk. Files, pencils, papers, stapler, curios, everything onto the floor. Then I just looked at her.

Why did you do that? she asked.

I don’t want you stealing any of my shit?

But I wasn’t going to steal any of it?

How do you know? You are a kleptomaniac and you can’t help yourself. Maybe you were.

No, I wasn’t.

Are you sure?

Yes.

Then you can’t be a kleptomaniac.

Huh?

Kleptomaniacs can’t help themselves. They have to steal. Who told you that you were a kleptomaniac?

The prison psychologist.

He’s an idiot. If you can stop yourself from stealing then you are not a kleptomaniac. Tell me about a time when you stole something.

Well, when I go shopping I take this big bag.

HA HA HA HA HA HA … You don’t go shopping. You go stealing.

Huh?

People who go shopping don’t take big bags like that. They take wallets and money.

Huh.

Your problem isn’t kleptomania, your problem is that you have never learned how to shop. You go stealing and simply call it shopping. Your problem is that you gave never learned the difference.

We had sessions upon her release where she discussed being proud of just taking a wallet into a store with her and leaving the bag at home.

There were other issues but this one really bothered her and appeared to no longer be a problem upon termination.

The problem was that she believed what the other therapist had told her. This is a really unfortunate thing about therapy and therapists. Most of the language used is invented so that therapists can talk to each other. It is not meant for the general population. And yet the general population gets hold of psychological ideas and pretends that they are something real and not just a story about the world in which we live that happens to be a convenient way for professionals to talk to each other.

Worse yet is when professionals begin believing their own stories. Like Christians they cling to mythologies without facts or evidence supporting them.

Too often in psychology, the “cure,” to any psychological ailment, is simply the story that works. We spend years at university learning about finding or discovering pathology, and almost no time at all looking into what makes a healthy mental state or how to get there. Interestingly enough, most people are completely healthy, even when they are doing the most bizarre shit you can imagine. This is because what they are doing makes perfect sense in the world they have constructed for themselves.

This not only true for the patients but for the psychotherapists as well. Nothing is as useless as a psychotherapist who thinks he has got it all figured out.

Disfunction in a family is often just the families way of functioning in a dysfunctional world.

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23

Indeed.

Have you seen the DSM- 5? Becomes thicker with each new version.

I’m aware that the combination of big pharm and elements in the medical/caring professions often seem in cahoots. I truly think that big pharm sometimes(often?) develop a drug and then a disease to cure it. I can’t tell the difference. A couple which come to mind are ADD/ADHD and Irritable Bowel Syndrome.

It was the way my dysfunctional parents coped with a dysfunctional world.

24

…I wish I had taken a pic, but there was a meme that had a pic of a Vietnam vet (during the war) over a pic of a 14 year old with a “cat” selfie (those face enhancements) and some bullshit of how weak the new generation is…

Fuck me! Vietnam was a life destroyer, a lie perpetrated by government for their own means in a country that did not want them there and who’s citizens suffered horribly. Those that went (through conscription and volunteered) came back to a population that did not “thank them for their service” and were tossed aside, left to their own mental tortures.

So a fourteen year old lives in a world that is relatively “peaceful”. Isn’t being pushed into killing others at a young age. Isn’t exposed to the suffering of previous generations - wasn’t that the “goal” of the previous generation? Wasn’t it to help create a world of (more) peace? A kid fooling around with a selfie doesn’t tell the whole story, as a pic of a Vietnam soldier doesn’t - BUT man, the “older” generation sure feeds itself on the idea of how “tough they were”.

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25

My niece (16) is on amphetamines for her ADHD, and as skeptical as I was, that shit works. On her medication, she is an honor roll student. Off her medication, she can barely manage to dress herself. The horror is, that with the war on drugs and the opiod crisis, I have a hard time securing her medication. Basically she is in a permentant catch 22: because of the potencial for abuse of this medication, they will only give her 30 day supply at a time. And they can’t begin the paperwork for the next 30 days until her current supply is consumed, and it takes about 5 days for all the paperwork to be in place, and they still only give 30 days worth, meaning that I can’t get her any medication for those 5 days. She has to go through amphetamines withdrawal every 30 days, for 5 days.

And I’ve been unable to figure out a way around it. The only options I can think of are:

  • Buying it illegally from the black market (off the street)
  • Robbing the pharmacy
  • Let her life go into the toilet every 30 days

I’ve taken to trolling Child Protective Services by calling them every month and reporting myself for the crime of child neglect because I failed to secure the medication prescribed to her by her doctor (which is a crime here).

26

What a horror story. Our system is broken.

27

Omg :flushed:. I feel for the horrible position you and your niece are in.

Is there anyway you could do a half dose for a few days in between full doses (to minimize the withdrawal effect) and “save” a 5 day supply? Do it for one month and you’ll have a cushion for the absent days.

28

This is the solution that most people come up with first (including myself, the doctor, the pharmacists). It won’t work and here is why:

Another way to rephrase the situation is: every 35 days, I’m allowed to buy 30 days of mediation for her. So if I somehow acquired an extra 5 days worth, it would only solve the problem for 1 month. We tried skipping her Saturday doses, but missing a day(s) puts her in a tailspin that takes an extra day to recover from. So ironically: having her reserve a pill once in a while, causes more damage than just having her skip 5 in a row. The difference is if she skips 5 in a row, she is basically useless for 6 days a month. When we resereve3d them on Saturday, she was useless 10 days a month.

But yes, we occasionally will manipulate her supply more or less like you suggested, to ensure her “dead week” doesn’t fall on important dates. Of course, the advantage of spreading them out is I would get to report myself 5 times a month to CPS, instead of once a month. Doesn’t really matter. After they sent investigator to the house the 2nd time, they started ignoring my reports.

It is incredibly frustrating to watch her life crash, over and over again, for want to medication that costs about $0.10 a day; that we can’t legally buy, at any price!

On a tangent topic: does that sound like capitalism/free markets to anyone?

29

That isn’t a terrible idea. It can’t be done with the current format the mediation is in; but I bet I could have the doctor change it to something that could be easily divided (as the doctor is sympathetic about the situation). A bonus is it means I would be guilty of medical neglect of a child 10 times a month (10 half doses); so I could troll/report myself 10 times as often. And I do love to troll bureaucracies.

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30

Yair.

I served as a medic in a combat battalion after they had returned from Vietnam. Met literally hundreds of Vets. Without exception, they were all a bit twitchy. The twitchiness ranged from a bit neurotic to psychotic.

WW2 Did the same. Imo, my father and all of his mates had PTSD. They all had a hard war. Dad’s mates served in Tobruk and, El Alamein in North Africa and one other on the Kokoda Track in New Guinea. Dad was in the air force flying in Lancasters on reconnaissance.

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Have always liked this song. “I was Only 19”

The writer/singer is a Vietnam vet and from Adelaide.