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bipolar or waking up?

Last post 12-01-2007, 1:48 AM by desrice. 50 replies.
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  •  10-29-2007, 6:03 PM 30896 in reply to 30825

    Re: bipolar or waking up?

    I just read your post, egg. So cool! ambo

    Ambo Suno
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  •  10-29-2007, 7:30 PM 30900 in reply to 30896

    Re: bipolar or waking up?

    This note is to all of you.  I broke my neck a couple of months ago and am stuck in a "halo" which is a ten pound weight on my head to hold my head still so the C2 can heal.    I would not even respond if this did not matter so much.   I am fairly appalled at the attempt to "nail" down spiritual experiences vs. mental illness.   I am in the Mental Health Profession and so proud of it.   I would just like to  ask anyone to consider looking at all perspectives, starting with a qualified therapist, from Psychiatry, Pschology etc.  There are some pretty wonderful people out there and it does take patience sometimes to find the right medication you need if you need it.

    I liken this to the "spiritual experience" in one way only.  Just because it happened to you does not make it true and give anyone to get on a soap box and start preaching that mental health sucks and "purity" without the "white man's medicine is the only way.    Or that medication without much education and thoughful consideration and time to figure it all out  is the only way.  Meds are miracles in themselves.  And we have a whole new group that are changing lives daily and also still using the old anti depressants for mental and some other reasons.   Do not forget that mental is the body also.  "Oh our precious bodies".  Why would anyone discount the many people who have contributed to discovery, medications, new thinking as we evolve.  Just because one person has an experience does not mean everyone must do exactly what that person did or does.  And the story is not over.  This is in progress and I pick up that these are solutions that are done with, over.  In some of the Posts.

    I have not read of contempletives who have had experiences  like some of the ones touched on in these Posts.  Until that is totally sorted out, I believe we are just beginning.  And how about the serial killer who they are finding has a missing colored spot on the brain that the rest of us have?    Again, just because it happened to you, does not make you an expert and to say it with that tone is very similar to the" people of the lie" who used old truths "stories" to try and keep people oppressed, fearful,

    and unable to evolve to their potential.   There is not a quick fix whether it is with medication or with being a "purist" unless and untill it is proven either way.  I believe that it will always be both/and  or as we have seen very  very Integral and more Integral like was  explored in the talk with Michael Murphy and Ken on other issues. There is so much more to come and always so much to include and to explore and contemplate personally.  That in itself will most likely lead one to the answer that they need- a practice that includes wanting answers to our biggest confusions.  Get quiet and embrace that precious body and want the best and the most you can find in prayer and study.   And look for someone with the right Spirit for help.   If you are stuck for some reason, do not get discouraged.  Keep up with the Practice.  There is so much help out there today.    This argument is so old and it bores me to death. It is not either/or, it is usually both/and.   We must be open to the Spirit of Truth for ourselves and be especially in touch for those truths that have worked and comforted us and been given to us with the changes that must evolve by people like Integral and Ken Wilber and Michael Murphy and so many more.   And all the people whose shoulders we stand on.   So many miracles have occurred because of "will" as M. Murphy brought to the table so beautifully and was complemented by Ken's response.   It simply does not have the same tone as this and other disagreements that come around.    And please know that many points that are made about our gift of the Spiritual Experience are valid in my mind also in ways that Carolyn Myess and

    the work that the so many are doing and adding to our medical professions. Lots of research going on.   I just got out of re-hab and hope to write about how different things are now- like a "freight train" coming thru as B. Alan Wallace said in " Choosing Reality"  or maybe on a tape I heard by him.  And KW has also said that the most progress Integrally, has been in Medicine.   I hope I have that right.  And two other books that I feel are worthwhile and very good reads, are  A Users Guide to the Brain and Shadow Syndrones by John J. Ratey.

    In case you did not get it,   I was so happy to hear the Murphy-Wilber talk. There was a sweetness there between two friends that touched me.

    I did "The Life We Are Given" for several years and still combine some of that with ILP with thanks to Murphy and Leonard.  
    Many loose ends beginnning to clear up it seems to me with what I got out of that talk.   Want to show gratitude and joy for all I have yet to catch up with.

    Love to all,  Pattye Gilligan       PS  No corrections  -lack of energy.

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  •  10-29-2007, 10:02 PM 30906 in reply to 30900

    Re: bipolar or waking up?

    Hey, Pattye. Wow. You broke your neck and are stuck in a halo arrangement. I'd say that's a bummer, but you might point out that in some ways it's not. I want to say something acknowledging of the pain, disruption to life, and maybe moments of fear. But from how you are speaking, loose ends seem to be clearing up; so, however it is, it's good to see your feisty self re-enter the fray. But don't think we'll mistake that halo for a halo. Best wishes to you and yours, ambo

    Ambo Suno
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  •  10-30-2007, 6:18 PM 30954 in reply to 30896

    Re: bipolar or waking up?

    Dear Ambo:  I have missed you and appreciate your sincere way of accepting me/us with all our colors.   I would have liked to have written in a more informational way and glad Mark had already done that.   However, I do worry about our young people who need to get help for things like bi-polar disorders, getting caught up in a tangle of doing something that may make them worse or cause dangerous problems in their lives when thoughtful and educated decisions must be made.   And I see no use in arguing about two  of the best sources of answers that will help bring solutions to people in need of help.   That would be the Mental Health  System   AND sincere spiritual caring  and the will to approach both, knowing that these problems will take stamina, prayer, medical help and time to bring strength and healing and of course exericse and proper nutrition.  In other words Integral.  Surprisingly,  I see that is happening in the Medical Field in pretty wonderful ways, even if not perfect. This is a perfect example of needing the Integral Approach and cannot be shaded with a leaning toward one side or the other.   It is that leaning and/or wafflling or a word or two that starts a little chaos or energy that is the kind that  can  send out flares and initiate confusion and is definitely  not Divine chaos. I woud love to give examples and information about what I feel should be backed up.   I do not have what it takes to do that and there is plenty of places to search for answers.  When it comes to our health, and most things, the first rule is to gather information. If the patient cannot do that then someone who is close must.   And as we all know those who have no one close or who care are living on our streets or mixing in with the many young people that may be lost in this generation.   It is such a serious problem and once again, I appreciate those who have written seriously and show care, deep care for those who are asking questions.   May we all be Blessed with Deep Concern and Caring.

    Pattye 

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  •  10-31-2007, 6:42 AM 30984 in reply to 30954

    Re: bipolar or waking up?

    Hey pattye, Thanks for the concern and I actually am doing both things. I'm taking medications for mood stabilization and then just found an integrally informed transpersonal psychologist that I will see tomarrow for the first time. And she does believe in medicine too so I think she will present me with the best approach. - chris
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  •  10-31-2007, 7:41 PM 31017 in reply to 30984

    Re: bipolar or waking up?

    Dear chris:    May you have many Blessings and Loving Kindness on this part of your path.   I was inspired to write because of your courage to inquire.  Namaste Pattye
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  •  11-10-2007, 8:09 AM 31656 in reply to 30954

    Re: bipolar or waking up?

    Hi, Pattye - I hope and trust that you are healing and that the burdensome halo arrangement will be removed soon. Quick or more gradual, I'm guessing you will feel great as increments of ordinary normalcy and physical freedom return.

    Pattye, Chris and all, this question of the prescribed use of psychoactive drugs stays with me as a big one. Aside from you Chris, who I respect as the captain of your own ship to make the decisions to consciously step into the arena that Pattye well acknowledges as "two of the best sources" of help available, to accept the diagnoses ascribed, and to take the prescribed drugs, I want to comment a little more on this.

    "And I see no use in arguing about two of the best sources of answers that will help bring solutions to people in need of help.   That would be the Mental Health  System   AND sincere spiritual caring . . ."

    I agree with Pattye that it may be of no help to you to argue about this, or to argue at all.

    I do think that our mental health system is extraordinarily limited and questionable/dubious in various ways, and it may be even seen as primitively ignorant in many. Books could be written and probably have been written on this subject that touches the cores of who we are and apparently who we might be, beyond the sources that have been already mentioned in this thread and that video that you posted. Chris, from the way you introduced this post, I think that you will probably eventually come to have a broad, deep understanding of plenty of this territory and industrial strength mental health arena - you and we all will come to our own versions-in-progress of how this all works.

    I'm far from being a fully literate AQAL scholar or representative, but it's clear from our US's and maybe some other countries' best favored expression of the moment, that "mental health system" is partial. As the 'knee-bone is connected to the thigh-bone', the mental is connected to the physical is connected to the socio-cultural is connected to the enormous web of horizontal considerations and vast encompassing apparently nested contexts.

    Yes, there is "caring"; and that caring is contextual. Again the contexts are enormous and the socio-cultural, like the medical/scientific and other inherited, perhaps stage-of-development-related world views, are not just limited, but sometimes antithetical, primitive, ignorant, and cruel to what "care" might be, to what love might be. One way to put it is that we do the best can, as did the blood-letters of the past.

    And I don't think it is just a general stage developmental phenomenon that determines how "caring" is. For some mental health conditions there may be some "primitive" cultures that have some perspective of wholeness, which comes from a potent aspect of the cultures' integrity in this area of caring for its families and peoples, that accidentally understand better the medical dictum, "First, do no harm" better than do we. They may also accidentally happen to lack the degree of stacked upon stacked layers of industrial strength business models, financial considerations, culturally sanctioned avarice, and the related mind-boggling, double-speaking, illusions and delusions that some of us modern, mental health people accidentally from the culture have.

    We try and we probably live under some local bell-shaped curve of healing wisdom and clean caring intention. And the bell-shaped curve of "normalcy" is broad, and as we all know that it includes significant complicating pieces of inadvertent perhaps self-interest, self-aggrandizement, self-delusion - well as we call them, "shadow elements". They are shadow elements because they are in the shadows so hard to see. We individuals, we pharmaceutical companies, we advertising agents, we drug reps spreading research and encroaching cultural healing wisdom, we practicioners, we patients/clients/customers are often up to our knee bones in shadow. We can't help it. Fish swim in water. We swim in information and the kaleidoscopic mélange of our economic and psycho-spiritual culture that isn't all that developed.

    But we are learning, since we are exposed to integral outlooks that highlight these limited views, ubiquitous-seeming influences, conscious to us and unconscious to us historically accreted and not fully shed biases. We don't have many fresh models that we modern and post-modern people can look to, do we? We have the momentum of the past with a few incremental changes, modifications, some even ongoing financially motivated sleight of hand "improvements" in medicine and health care.  Is this too dark a view of the waters in which we swim that we call mental health and caring?

    I think on an older forum I might have mentioned Patch Adams, MD who I spent a day with at a preconference workshop a couple or few years ago. The movie with Robin Williams gave a flavor of his gifted intellectual brilliance and passion for "care" of the whole person and family. It showed some of his rebellion from the 'healing' norm, and the actual small under-funded hospital that he and others created, while still in medical school. It did not capture the size of the man, the full force of his intention, his passion, his activism.

    Last Friday I got to see him again for a couple of hours presentation at a private school, and he reminded me of the fresh (and yet basic, old, humanly fundamental) model that he has been traveling around the world for about 35 years communicating about through clowning, through interactive with people vision creating, and through the intensity of his active intention.

    His wife works with him too in their mission to provide truly compassionate health, including but not separating out 'mental' care. She has a school of hospital design that doctors and administrators attend from around the world. He says he has not been in one country for more than a month since he started traveling. He has gone into the middle of war torn countries with volunteer clowns. He's been to Russia numerous times before the "iron curtain" dropped. I could probably remember story after story, description after description of his commitment, perseverance of creating vision, of the quirks of his amazing life. I hope I don't misrepresent anything here by my faulty memory or understanding. But, for sure, he is a palpable and marvelous force.

    When he spoke of the hospital that he created and the thousands of people who came through it, I think each month, regardless of financial resources of the patient, he said they ran the hospital for a tenth of what US bell-shaped curve, state-of-the-art hospitals do.

    They don't accept insurance or governmental subsidy. They are not willing to be a part of the political/economic behemoth of unhealthy vision creation (These are my characterizations of what he said - I can't remember his exact words.) Doctors and other professionals and workers come there to work for $300 a month - some have been there for over seven years. The vegetable gardener and the doctor get the same amount of money. When someone
    comes in for care, they try to give what the patient and family needs. He is open to all sorts of health practicioners.

    In regard to 'mental health', he says that in his experience there is one root cause - "loneliness". I'll say he doesn't try to overly qualify this - he's interested in real help and real caring where it's felt. He joked about the DSM. "Bipolar? What? You only have two poles? What, you're not multi-polar?" "Schizophrenic? What? You're only split in two?" and such.

    Though that's a radical statement about loneliness being a primary cause, and though he is not looking to make it carefully, analytically inclusive, I wouldn't be surprised that if we look at loneliness/alienation/separation-from through an AQAL lens that we would discover that indeed that is a potent way of looking at the roots of "mental illness". He says that he will hold a person in his arms through crying or fear for as long as is needed - he mentioned "12 hours" before someone was ready to be released. He has been fed by someone else when he and the patient needed him to stay.

    Remember that this person, this healer through clowning, through laughter, through caring, through the medical arts and science is not just naive. He's bright, with a huge personal library, and far more literate than most of us. He can recite more poems by heart than I have read. He has been invited to advise some governments.

    I think where I'll end is with one comment that he made, as often done, with his humor of face, gesture, and voice, and it's accompanying activist bite. It's something like, "I have never hated anyone enough to give them psychotropic medication."

    By the way, Robin Williams is a short guy. Patch is about 6 feet 3 or 4 inches of bright coloration and high energy.

    http://www.patchadams.org/campaign/

    http://www.patchadams.com/

    Ambo Suno
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  •  11-10-2007, 7:08 PM 31681 in reply to 31656

    • groundswell is not online. Last active: 11-11-2007, 5:01 PM groundswell
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    Re: bipolar or waking up?

    Hi to everyone posting on this bipolar topic. It's been intriguing and enlightening to read this thread. I too was diagnosed bipolar a year ago. I'm fifty years old and have been able to get away with the 'charismatic, unusually energetic - sometimes anomalously catatonic - articulate, passionate, excitable etc etc' disguise for forty-nine of those years. I've got a twenty-seven-year relationship with my wife, Kari, and five kids, eight to eighteen years of age. Important factors for me in seeking a diagnosis and, after careful research, accepting meds, include the fact that my family was being made to suffer as the intensity of both manic and depressive episodes increased. I found that it wasn't a simple sinusoidal wave: the frequency stayed fairly steady but the amplitude increased each time. In my last manic blast I lost us £500,000 (around $1m US) trying to launch an organism of twenty interdepenedent eco-enterprises simultaneously and alone (where's the interdependence in that 'alone' bit?).

    In mania, I also become intensely impatient, verbally abusive or dismissive of my family members and others: 'If you can't think and create at warp speed, get out of my face - I need this second to transform the way business is done and save the world...'

    Upside issues, though, include things like: I made us about £500,000 in a deal to create an eco-hotel about four years ago, during my previous manic explosion. Of course I then imploded and Kari was left holding the baby (the hotel, I mean - though she frequently holds the five human babies too).

    Another upside, though: my last implosion into depression took me to a completely new place. I have tended to plummet to my 'pet dread' at such times and it invariably has manifested in the form of fear of financial insecurity. This time around, I underwent a profound shift. Something in me seemed grasp the need for/inevitability of surrender. Suddenly I had good reason to fear financial ruin - we came very close to bankruptcy - and the pain it would bring for my family and me. I didn't fear at all. I thought I was just indescribably numb but no, I could feel stuff OK, just not fear. It doesn't appear to have come back since either - wey heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeey!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

    Anyhow, I am on Lithium; I am slowly growing some of the acorns that rolled away from my felled career oak tree: several of the businesses are now beginning to take off (including one where supplier/creditors bought into a saner version of my grandiose plan, added further finance and cancelled my debts for a share of the intellectual property!). My relationship with my children and their mother is perhaps better than it's ever been. I feel happy yet calm. My contemplative life has changed up a gear - I didn't know this gearbox could go to this ratio...

    I have worked, often very intensely, over nearly twenty years, with numerous shamans (shamans with PhDs in psychology, comparative religion, international medical, classical music, literary and art careers and such), medicine men and women and other powerful elders. I have spent a lifetime loathing the medical and pharmaceutical industries. I have done, all told, about a decade of work in psychoanalysis and other psychotherapeutic disciplines (as a client, I mean). I have degrees in philosophy and responsibility and business practice (a kind of values-focused MBA :). I am deeply into nutritional and other upper-right quadrant approaches to mental health. This, without mental health professionals and meds, has not been enough. Bipolar is a life-threatening disorder; it can have extremely serious, painful impacts on many others around the 'sufferer'. Appropriate medication can help to alleviate some of these problems.

    I believe it is about 'both/and', as has been suggested.  

    Much love to you all from gorgous Bath, England xxxxxxxxxxxxx

     

     

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  •  11-11-2007, 8:56 PM 31740 in reply to 31681

    • kincaid is not online. Last active: 11-18-2007, 5:08 AM kincaid
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    Re: bipolar or waking up?

    I was diagnosed Bipolar I five years ago while in college, RISD-an art school.  Ever since I’ve been studying the beast itself as well as the medication-675mg of lithium daily for me.  Bipolar runs in my family and I was diagnosed by a great team of doctors, so I haven’t had to wrestle with the question of weather or not I am, by today’s cultural and medical standards, Bipolar. 

    I was worried that either the condition or the medication would end my creative life and spiritual unfolding, but have found the opposite to be true.  I have had to become very sensitive to the nuances of my energy.  What is the relationship between spiritual, creative, and bodily energy?  At what point is there too much energy?  Why do I make that judgment?  How does low energy manifest?  How much lithium makes me feel dull?  How do sleep, sex, and diet change my energy?  How long does a manic episode take to integrate?

    Right now, I’m interested in the energy.  When I meditate, do pranayama, or do yoga, I often shake or at least vibrate.  Various teachers have told me these are Kryias and that I should just watch them—not cling to them or push them away, not feel successful or like a failure.  Sometimes while sleeping, I will wake to feel my body’s energy moving or pulsing—often in ways that make sense in terms of kundalini and the charkas.  This energy often frightens me.  I don’t know if I am afraid of evolving or if I am afraid that I am not yet string enough to evolve, that this energy will cause a ‘manic episode.’  Sever manic episodes cause physical brain damage; is brain damage part of my path to waking up?  Does it have to be? 

    For now, I try to manage my energy, not letting it get too extreme.  I tend to get manic more than depressed, and when I feel my energy mounting I:
    -eat more and eat dairy or meat if I really need to slow down
    -sleep more, using benadryl if needed
    -ground myself—by taking a walk barefoot, massaging my feet
    -spend energy sexually

    When my energy is low I:
    -eat more lightly, only vegan
    -sleep less, wake with the sun
    -run
    -conserve sexual energy

    Also, along with my lithium, I take omega-3 fish oil daily.  I really like omegabrite.com.  There are the only omega-3’s that have actually been clinically shown to help Bipolar. 


    Bipolar has given me many wonderful gifts, it has also given me some fear.  I love that there is this place to discuss the relationship between waking up and Bipolar.

    metta,
    K
     


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  •  11-12-2007, 8:53 AM 31765 in reply to 31740

    Re: bipolar or waking up?

    Dear k and groundswell:   I hope to respond sometime to your Posts.  It says that you like all the others on this subject are educating yourself as much as possible are on a Path that is not easy.  And yet it does have gifts.   Hopefully we can continue.

    Thanks for your comments and also to "egg" who is working to be the best he can be.  At least that is what I pick up and it gives me support.   Someday I will go into my own history.   It seems so long .    Warmly,   Pattye

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  •  11-13-2007, 11:58 AM 31838 in reply to 31765

    Re: bipolar or waking up?

    Very well said, to my ears, groundswell and k. It's good for me to hear. And Pattye it will be interesting to hear your story when you get to it - all our stories must be long and it takes awhile to write them.

    Hi All. I want to say some more about this huge question about the pros and cons of general use of psychotropic medication, me trying to keep in mind that this thread’s title is about bipolar and something about waking up.

    Heredity has been mentioned. First of all, I'll speak out what each person of us who has posted on this thread probably already knows. Yes, we have genes and even though many have been identified, the complexity of their functioning is still far beyond any precision of understanding. Not only is there an amazingly complex interaction among genes that may be responsible for a simple behavioral pattern or a simple interior psychoneurobiological plus pattern, but also there is an amazingly complex connection between the genes and the environment.

    It is useful in everyday parlance to speak of heredity - like, "I inherited my depression and my mood swings from my father's side." Scientists who study this stuff carefully frequently now use the term "genetic expression", instead of heredity, acknowledging that both genes and inner and outer environmental factors yield the patterns - that it is no longer "nature vs. nurture", but nature in interaction with nurture. When we casually use the term "inherited", I know that we often do mean plus environment, since some of the nurture stuff, the psycho-familio-cultural stuff feels transmitted so directly and of such high correspondence with our senses of self that it might as well be called "inheritance".

    As we have all heard, to complicate matters more, there are critical and sensitive moments in individual developmental unfolding, windows of opportunity and sometimes of developmental necessity where certain functions get switched on or off. For one of many examples, and an example that highlights the social environment more than the bio-chemical, I mention a piece of infancy. Seemingly, co-incidentally, when a toddler gets up off all fours and can roam, more quickly and with better visibility and reach about the territory in that ebullient, exploratory, relatively uncensored way, some "neural circuitry" changes have been studied. Some of the neuroendocrine functionings of babyhood are "pruned back" - some related to the visible expression of joy. Mom is usually a big part of this type of early pattern setting. How this and the myriad other developmental occurrences of childhood unfolds is often very much moderated/co-created through the medium of the intimate relationships with nurturing others - well, with others, fully nurturing or not - and via the patterns of behavior, energy and atmosphere that are present in intimate dyads, family, community and culture. How our variable patterns of affect, mood, thinking, and energy are forming as we age evidently depend on genetic expression within the past and present environmental contexts.

    In this early morning riff, I want to jump to our larger culture and society, a modern/post-modern culture and society that so far appears to me to not be fully, carefully, rationally planned by wise men and women, nor by the gods, nor by intelligent design. It appears to be a culture of so much run-away complexity and messiness, I'll say.

    In this culture of complicated humans, of almost incomprehensible complexity of structures, function, and social forces, we have trouble thinking at least momentarily independently rationally. In vision-limiting ways we are often mostly part of the flow, as the fish may feel to be partly indistinguishable from the water. We are imbued with culture. We get our information from the culture that we have "inherited".

    We in the “West” do have a capitalistic system (as an influential aspect of the whole set-up) that, in spite of its benefits, in many ways daily runs us amok, rolls right over the top of people. Our socio-economic system inundates the populace through advertising with sculpted mental images of what we should want and need, channeling dreams of what the good life is, what success is, what being healthy and happy is. I wonder, “Can we really, to what extent do we discern ourselves from these virtual realities?”

    Everyday magazines and medical and psychological journals print out enormous quantities of beautiful or troubling graphic images that put expert teams of doctors and the somewhat captive audience listening public on the same page. I don't want to go onto an Orwellian rant here about double speak and crazy thinking. Yet, I do think these social structures, functions, patterns are actually part of our inherited culture. Many of us swim in them. And, many of us are learning to be more circumspect and exploratory. Groundswell obviously has been learning about the territory, and K, also, for years has been putting together a plan to work with the complexity - I really like the "when my energy is high" and low explorations. And I'm learning to navigate the caprices of my own gnarly complexity in a world of complex energetics and illusion potential.

    I want to jump to another current through this confusion, the current of the proliferation of legally marketed psychoactive drugs. And I want to acknowledge and appreciate that I do hear the satisfied relief in these posted voices that say that their conditions have been bettered, maybe saved by modern pharmaceuticals. My life and health, of course, have been saved and improved by modern medicine and the health care system as it is. Nonetheless, some important questions have been raised by critics of the free market system and of institutionalized avarice. So I am going beyond your particular apparent benefits mentioned in this thread, to further the question whether possibly, statistically in a sense, more social harm is done than good. I am wondering aloud whether the deep existential/spiritual health and sanity that is implicitly promoted by this medical/pharmaceutical industry through some of these diagnostic and treatment solutions, for individuals like you and me, and for the health of a world and the health of the mind and consciousness.

    A single pharmaceutical company, within its vast industry, could be looked at. Here’s some of the backstory, as I understand it. I'm going to presume that a significant motive for a pharmaceutical company to be formed as a business is primarily to make money. There certainly have been other personal motivations of the founders, researchers and manufacturers. There may have been some actual sense of philanthropy. There may have been some understandable rationalizations in the weighing of profit motive, corporate and industry momentum, and shareholder interests against the either congruent with or contradictory values of caring for people and the world.

    It is expensive in $$ and time apparently to research and develop a drug and then to get it approved, here in the US by the FDA. There are risks and unknowns as to future efficacy, to legally actionable dangers to health, and to financial profitability that relate to demand and competition. To assure the profit that is needed to survive, to assure the much larger profit that corporate officers need in order to be rewarded and to feel good, to assure profit that invites shareholder interest and thereby market price that thereby relates to profit and wealth creation for everyone concerned, a sizeable corporate commitment must be made.

    Marketing is one of the biggest determinants of success. There is existing need and demand, there is looking for new uses and markets for the products, and there is creating new markets for the products. Doesn’t it sound rational and like an OK thing, so far?

    The bigger the market, the more pills that can be sold, the more likely that the company will take the risk. "Big risks require big returns."

    I think, however, that some things that are insidious happen in here where there are particular un-sane mindsets that are created by the apparent arithmetic of numbers, the flow of logical seeming explanations and justifications, and the traditional capitalistic momentum, and such. What if the actual market need is quite small? If a drug proves "therapeutically successful", with little likelihood of legal action because of adverse affects, it could be seen to be a good thing. But if there were not sufficient market to justify the risk and expense, then new markets would have to be created. Do companies and the pharmaceutical industry know how to do that? Apparently, they do, perhaps masterfully, since they are among if not the most profitable industry in the world's economy.

    Advertising involves not just the marvelously beautiful glossy graphics, and poetically rendered TV presentations. Apparently they also involve the psychology of how to bring medical physicians on-board to prescribe and not just the specific drug, but the increasing use of drugs as solutions to human problems generally - and thereby increasing marketshare and profits. The industry ends up promoting the whole almost incomprehensibly complex system of health and sanity that we have today. In addition to importantly helping some people, a statistically indeterminate number of people who actually need their drugs, I think that the psychopharmaceutical industry, perhaps inadvertently, co-creates a fabric of reality concerning how to live in this contemporary stressful world. On the whole it may contribute to encouraging, over coming generations, a debilitated version of life problem solving and of mind and consciousness that we are not sufficiently questioning and challenging.

    Though, I think they run amok with the human vision, it is of course not just the psychopharmaceutical companies and skewed marketing. The problem of understanding what is the fabric of our reality, what is the nature of truth, beauty and goodness, and the problem of living better is affected by so many psychosocial tendencies and institutions that seduce and distort our capacities for clear sight.

    I want to jump to personal motivation and ethics. How many of us, though perhaps creative too, have succumbed to the mainstream of our work environments? How many of us as individuals and for our organizations have cut corners in moments in order to get more money or benefits, get approval of those who affect our incomes, not lose our jobs or an important deal? How many of us have compromised our own view of reality and rationality, our values, our integrity for apparent self-interest, or to go with the flow, or to peacefully swim in the subculture of work, to not rock the boat too much, to not be considered oppositional or a crank or some such? How many of us have swum along with "the standards of the industry" or profession, or the business or ethical conventions of the field we are in, in order to take the short cut to peace of mind and to put our ethical consciences out of sight, even when we see incorrectness in those self-serving standards?

    Are any of us a little afraid that something practical could happen where we lose what we have come to value and become attached to, whether they be rational and healthy for us and the world or not? To get our basic needs, as Maslow speaks about? Are we afraid of death, and the ending of things as we know them and so do things that serve the immediate, but not the longer term, that serve to preserve the image of health and well-being, but don't really take us there? How much of this can we see and acknowledge? How much do we keep in the shadow of our visual fields?

    So we live in cultures and a world that is complex and still does manage to function, but at GREAT cost and human stress and distress. I think we need to learn to think more clearly, be more challenging of the illusory. Since contexts that we often take for granted and that often are somewhat invisible to us co-create what we feel, maybe we need to be more bold in experimenting with what is possible to actually change in the powerful contexts of our personal lives.

    Maybe if we didn’t feel that we actually had to keep a certain job, a project, a wife, and a family in the narrow way that we imagine it, we could drop certain unhealthy inner and outer contexts that are making us sick. Maybe if we question and release our addiction to certain overt feelings and energies in functioning at work and relationships, feelings and energies that we have gotten habituated to, the kaleidoscope could shift, and we wouldn’t need to make ourselves into so much of a problem to be fixed in order to fit in with an unhealthy situation or context. Maybe as general population we wouldn’t need to take the solution presented on the narrow menu or take the mind and chemistry altering additive so much or for so long.

    This is radical and often I’m wondering about it for myself.

    I’m also thinking of Patch Adams’ radical views and his radical questioning of the very fabric of our “caring” systems, their primary motivations, and their assumptions that have been largely inherited from various stages of human development along the way. At the moment I’m wondering if I can care more, though I’m not sure what that would look like, and whether I can think more clearly and creatively. I’m wondering about daring to allow identity to shift in exploratory ways.

    As I run out of material and energy, of the manic &/or depressed sort, I see that this has been a bit of a ramble. I hope it’s not unintelligible word salad. I think it’s about understanding the deep and multiple contexts in which we find our habit patterns enmeshed that affect our affect, about psychopharmacology, about the possibilities of change, about reality. Yikes – I’m really going to launch this, ambo


    Ambo Suno
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  •  11-13-2007, 1:12 PM 31840 in reply to 31838

    Re: bipolar or waking up?

    well don't have much to say...... will chime in that my dad has bipolar, and so i interpret some of my states of mind as "bipolar".   the diagnosis should help him it doesn't do anything for me, being the dozenth half ass diagnosis "they"ve given me i simply don't have the energy to really give a shit what "they" say anymore.   last diagnosis he named my condition after me the "vulgan"x disease because there are too many elements.

    ehm.......medication wise my observation is that they pass out too freelyeasily for an easy solution.   that's all tho.... some people it works and some people it doesn't.  for me the medication they gave me several years ago for minor problems caused a "psychotic break" and 7 years bad luck...... the other thing they should in an ideal world have done beside more thorough diagnosis and check system before handing it out in the first place, is to stay on the patients case while they use the medication, day by day, but i realize the difficultycost of this level of care.

    it's the brain ..... the application of medication should be surgical (i mean in spirit), but the psychological system is totally stupid... and in america even commercial i heard.  i'd certainly have prefered a missing limb and at time even death than the consequences of bad medication.   "THAT shouldn't have happened." they said, very clever people they were.not ---it isnt their fault because it appears to be the way the system is meant to work everywhere.   it's "THEIR" fault ;)

    until the anatomy and function of the mindbrain is as clear and verified as the body the methods will always be "primitive".   they are monkeys and we are their guinnea pigs.


    x23.zaadz.com
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  •  11-13-2007, 2:44 PM 31844 in reply to 31840

    Re: bipolar or waking up?

    Attachment: PHD.JPG

    Smile [:)]



    x23.zaadz.com
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  •  11-14-2007, 1:39 AM 31871 in reply to 31844

    Re: bipolar or waking up?

    I've never been diagnosed with anything like being bipolar, so I'm not an authority on the medical aspect of it.  But I can relate to feelings of madness and lack of control, I know what it's like to feel like something's off--namely, me, off my rocker :)  But we develop a kind of intimate connection to our strangeness, and it begins to impose it's own kind of comfort.  We don't always suffer from insanity :)

    But I really don't want that to come off as a judgment of the diagnosing and medicating psychiatric community or anyone under its care.  It's just my own perspective on having internal psycho/spiritual 'troubles.'

    That said, I saw a great movie tonight that addresses some of the questions coming up here.  It's called 'Reign Over Me."  Adam Sandler and Don Cheadle.  It's a serious role for Adam Sandler, and I find that I feel the same about him as I do Jim Carrey: he's somewhat funny as a novelty, but far far better as a serious actor. 

    Anyway, I can't tell you all that went on in the film without spoiling it, but I will say it's a really insightful and thoughtful and touching story about being 'fucked up' and about how it's not always as simple as we might think it is, nor as amenable to 'treatment' as we might like.  But, the point is also subtly made that it isn't necessarily anything complex, either.  We're all the same kind of human, and we all have similar needs--we're all made of the same 'stuff.'  Still, what it takes to get one person through personal trauma might drive another person deeper into it.  It takes perceptiveness and care and caution and daring and love to find the way through.

    We all know it, we've most of us even said it... useful as it is, the map is not the territory.  Sooner or later, you gotta put on your walkin' shoes.

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  •  11-14-2007, 7:06 AM 31883 in reply to 31840

    Re: bipolar or waking up?

    I follow what your saying, vulgan.

    You put a smile on my face when you said, "caused a 'psychotic break' and 7 years bad luck......"

    Ambo Suno
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