As the higher power concept was created to allow all faith experiences to exist collectively in one non-denominational meeting, as close to god as is possible then be advised that this book is for everybody. Protestant, Catholic, Jew, Buddhist, Hindu and even a few wayward Muslims too, are all welcome to use and reprint this text, free of charge.
Forensic Dual Recovery
FDR
By
William Strawn Douglas
AKA
Bill D
Edited by Sheryl M. Snitkin
This text is solely the product and beliefs of the author and not the opinion or beliefs of any other organization, or group. I wrote it and its shortcomings are all my fault.
This document is copyrighted but limited use is authorized in chemical dependency, mental health, prison, and education institutional settings. I grant all educational use to virtually anyone who wants to use these pages to teach or better somebody’s life somehow. This document is designed to be copied and reprinted in whole or in part to use as a lesson plan for any organization, group, person, or group of persons. This permission is granted free of charge.
Forensic Dual Recovery
FDR
Part One///Growing Up Mayo///
The two creators of the Dual Disorder Recovery book are a Medical Doctor and a similarly credentialed psychologist. Here at the Minnesota Security Hospital we have 400 inmates in a forensic forced treatment facility getting therapy for mental illness. 80 to 85 percent of those 400 guests of the state have used street drugs. The fine job of therapists in dual recovery settings has brought many a person with both mental illness and chemical dependency to recovery and the restoration of good health.
The concept of forced care is similar to the ways and means of cancer treatment. In chemo, the drugs are a disease that is designed to fight another disease. In chemo you are given a drug that stops all cells from dividing. This stops the cancer, but it also stops all those healthy cells from dividing too. It kills off the cancer cells at a faster rate than it does the healthy cells. The chemotherapy is a disease created to fight another disease, in that case it is the disease of cancer that is being targeted.
Mental health care, in the forensic arena, is a disease designed to fight the malady that is mental illness. You treat one disease with another disease.
Never before have I seen a good quick book I could write on jails, prisons and hospitals where psych care and CD treatment come together to create a beautiful phoenix bird or a ghastly hybrid designed to destroy souls. I have seen both. In laymen’s terms the word “forensic” means jail. I have been a prisoner since July 1993. I am grateful for the sobriety but I would like to move on soon. This book is on dual recovery in a forensic setting. When Bill W and Doctor Bob threw together Alcoholics Anonymous they spoke of ending up in institutions. We fit that description here at the Minnesota Security Hospital (MSH).
That is what makes this dual diagnosis book one of forensic type and variety. I wrote this text while I was a resident at the puzzle palace. MSH is an interesting prison. It is called “preventative imprisonment for crimes not yet committed.” Calling it medicine gives the state permission to imprison forever with no criminal defense rights given to the accused. Its not criminal court so why should you need rights of any kind ? My entire understanding of the whole mental health scene has come through the courts. The Hazelden book called Dual Disorder Recovery is mainly on people who actively seek out mental health care as a supplement to chemical dependency treatment. Our experience here at MSH is one where we avoid all punitive care that we can duck or dodge. The state is the assaulter and we are the assaultees. Our unique perspective is quite a noteworthy one.
You can use this book to educate the potential candidate for residency in a CD setting. Young people may be knuckleheads who think they are indestructible but even they will want to avoid two decades of imprisonment. Here is a text that compiles many myths about psychiatry and substance abuse that come together as a package deal. The myths of teen drug use are one easy way to illustrate this point. The young person almost always tries to intoxicate to extremes. That’s a comment on inexperience and not a form of escapism. The kids should learn in a “scared straight” manner just how serious these things can be.
The Holy Trinity in Minnesota Mental Health law is,,,,#1,,,Was there a serious crime?
#2 ,,,Was there a mental illness present? and last of all #3 Is there a likelihood that this crime might be repeated?,,,, When the answer to all three is YES then even if it is merely an accusation, the state can imprison until trial with none of those annoying civil rights getting in the way and after trial can imprison forever with even less civil rights. Less than nothing is given. This is a life imprisonment concept. For me it has been one of 18 years of life as a detainee. It is not merely MI/CD but MI&D as in Mentally Ill and Dangerous. The Dangerous label creates the life imprisonment. You can get a hearing every six months but you have to wait a year and a half if you want a hearing before a real judge in a real court. Every 18 months you can request a hearing before a judge.
Here is Forensic Dual Recovery for your viewing pleasure.
We start off at the Mayo Clinic:
My first claim to fame as a patient was that since I was born into the culture of the Mayo Clinic, where my father was a pulmonary specialist and doctor and, as a Mayo offspring, I was committed first by the former president of the World Psychiatry Association, Dr. Paul Rome. The arena of mental health is one of commitments for objectionable behaviors. I am no exception. Rochester is a rather top heavy community with many more times the ratio of doctors to citizens than is found anywhere else in the world.
The available literature on dual diagnosis materials was put together in a very academic model. The traditions of AA and NA are such that they come to us from the FUBU principal of “For Us, By Us.” As it is said in punk rock it is DIY or “Do It Yourself.”
There is a value to having amateurism and a homemade quality to some parts and aspects of our psychiatry and chemical dependency machine. For some points also it may be needful to speak with an expert on brain surgery and rocket science.
The duality of therapy in such circles requires a noteworthy contribution from professionals but there is a substantial part that needs to be FUBU. Keeping in contact with your doctor can be one of the best and most fruitful associations you have when dealing with mental illness and addiction. I point out that chemical dependency is classifiable as a mental illness all on its own. We need sobriety and not just symbolism.
Take that wreckage and debris and forge again the pieces of your former self into the tools for a dynamic new life. You will need doctors to help but the greatest person you can bring to the table is yourself.
When I was three years old there were doctors in abundance in my neighborhood. There were so many doctors, in fact, that we grew up with Dr. Gentling, and Dr Robertson, and Dr. Petrie, and Dr.Garbageman, Dr. Mailman, and Dr. Milkman. All the adult males in our world were doctors.
The hippies used to say: Don’t trust anyone over thirty, and Strategic Air Command used to pair up a photo of a B-52 with the words, “Someone Over Thirty You can Trust.” Both matter and have value. You are here now so I welcome you. You have made it this far. I hope you continue and garner great success. Don’t trust anybody just because they have credentials or pedigrees (including me). Work with them and if they work well you may want some of what they have. That is a set of choices you will have to develop on your own. You are the only one who can deliver yourself to that next meeting. Most AA and NA meetings are psychiatrically friendly and they will not scold people for taking psych medication. Not all are that way but most are aware of such needs.
The NA meetings are the best in my opinion. That just means I like them. Finding a Dual Disorder meeting at a treatment center in a city of greater than a million in population is the only reliable way to find dual recovery peers. I recommend you supplement such pursuits with AA and NA as an additional support system.
Doctors have limited value. They are the mind police in an era of mental hygiene. As such they are from the socio-economic caste of the low end rich or at least upper middle class (surgeons bring in multi millions yearly ). They are commonly white male Conservatives while the patient is usually Liberal and middle class to poor and in some extreme cases homeless. There is a tangible divide there.
Eighty percent of the hospitalized mentally ill report that they have used illegal drugs. For some the goal of AA will be quite adequate but I feel drawn to the NA side of the house.
The case I am going to put forward is that the mentally ill and mentally accused do have the right and responsibility to create a bona fide twelve step program for their drug and alcohol addictions. Having a psychiatrist there to help on medication issues may be a benefit and there are times when it is desirable. The workings of a system which has gone on quite functionally since the 1930s reports to us that we have a tremendous asset to protect and value. There is a benefit to be found in a FUBU system so again I point out that most AA and NA meetings are already appropriate venues for many of the mentally ill and mentally accused to get their needs met. Some people will also need psych medication and talk therapy with a doctor. I stress AA or NA meetings and psych meds simultaneously.
My addition to the debate is only one of many viewpoints. I expect this debate to go on for quite some time. If the status quo is to say that the mentally ill and mentally accused cannot have a twelve step program without a staff endorsed psychiatrist then I believe that status quo is inappropriate and not well grounded. Adding a supplement is desirable.
Twelve step programs do work. My assessment of the general situation is that there exists a need for a pro-choice option in mental health. I know agencies in mental health that say they are pro-choice on medication issues. If you value a medicine regimen then please do continue with what makes your life livable. Although I have a medicine that works for me I do acknowledge that for many people this is not the case. I can recommend you find a higher power but when it comes to medicine I do recommend a pro-choice platform. This is not a cut and dried law. This is only a recommendation.
I hope we will not need a doctors permission to go to an AA meeting
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Part Two
When you talk of dual diagnosis you have two goals that can be thought of as the duality of man. You need sobriety and medication for your mental illness. This can be daunting as medication is a major but not sole cure and even when you have sobriety and medication you can still have breakthrough symptoms. Even when you have stability the illness can mutate and adapt to whatever remedy you have found and present itself in new and innovative ways that can be difficult to spot. You need neurochemical stability. There is a need for sanity from two fronts and ultimately you end up being, in part, your own doctor for a lot of the time spent fighting for sobriety and fighting for sanity. That is what you can call neurochemical stability. Here we concern ourselves with clinical stability and the one term that encompasses both addiction and mental health is neurochemistry.
Going off your psych meds can lead to unresolved mania, depression, psychosis and guilt that can be as potent as a drug or alcohol relapse. I have had such a relapse so you can listen to me for a moment. I authored this document so I am an author-authority on at least some of it all.
This book is for you. Steven King goes to meetings and stays sober. He can write about characters that drink. My commercial writing is intentionally weird. The book you are now reading is not intended as a huge commercial money maker. It has a small market share but is a niche that I dearly love. Nuff Sedd….
I will enclose a small sample of my fiction work. You might as well know just how far my work is from having a commercially centered structure. I am not a treating physician and am in reality only a marginally published science fiction author. In the simplest traditions of contribution to a common cause I give you this work for your amusement and hopefully some benefit. Use my text as it was meant to be. It is a good starting place in a talk that is only threatened when people try to be too abstract. The greatest lesson I can find in AA or NA or Buddhism is to avoid getting distracted by the abstract or overly intellectual.
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Part Three///
Here are the final pieces of the Puzzle Palace questions.
Command Hallucinations are the ones where you hear voices telling you to do something. If that means the voices tell you to throw a hot cup of coffee at a policeman then it would not be wise to do what those voices tell you to do. You have three choices. You can obey the voices or you can ignore them or you can take medication that makes them go away.
There are many medications you can take to remedy this version of psychosis and finding the right one can be a thing of guesswork. I recommend you read up on all your choices and talk to your doctor about this. The internet is vast so I recommend you find a local counselor in the psychiatric field in your area of the country. Social Workers and case management professionals can be very helpful but you should also note that the folks from www.mindfreedom.org will point out that they have a Tee-shirt for sale that says “I am not a case and I don’t want to be managed.”
Don’t self medicate with alcohol or drugs. This is the quickest way to achieve relapse and the intensification of mental health symptoms. Recreational drugs will make your illness worse faster than they will make it better. It may not feel that way at first but time has shown that this is so for nearly all consumers of mental health services.
I cannot be just another collection of internet downloads for you. There are bushels of internet downloads out there and this is only one of them. Take a fearless moral inventory of yourself, make amends to the people you have harmed, unless they don’t want to hear from you, and go to a meeting so you don’t isolate and let your illness just fester. Get out of the house, take a walk, and visit with other addicts to see what works for them. Buy a copy of the blue book for AA or NA and sit down and read up on how to craft a program from nothing. The worst you could get is a blue book and some eyestrain that will go away after a good nights sleep. On the notion of admitting that you are powerless over drugs and alcohol one need only feel the pull toward a sober life and note that the other pull is strong enough that sobriety is more desirable. If you want to get out of the pool and avoid a bellyful of poolwater swill then the first step is just to get out of the pool. To do that you have to want to dry off. This does not require linguistic gymnastics. When you get there you will know what I am talking about. Go to a meeting or find the meeting that meets your needs.
One sure way of getting into pure hell is thinking that since you feel so much better after taking three or four months of medication that you don’t need those psych meds anymore. People tend to believe that when they feel the symptoms of recovery that all of a sudden they are cured and they don’t need anymore treatment or vigilance to monitor symptoms. Not a bright idea but one that happens often. Additionally I expect someday someone will say to you that psych meds are drugs and you should not eat them because you are not being sober from those same drugs. For instance, I take a thyroid pill because lithium destroyed my thyroid gland. I was prescribed the lithium. The doctor screwed up and destroyed my thyroid gland. Without my thyroid pill I will be fine for a few months but then I would become uncomfortable. When an AA or NA person says I should quit taking my meds then I think you can see where I am going with this. Don’t quit your meds but like my thyroid problem you should make informed decisions. Learn what is going on in the treatment of your mental illness and the treatment of your addiction. If you are so depressed that you want to die then talk to Dr. Feelgood and get some Xanax “happy pills.” I don’t know as much about depression as I do about psychosis. Getting killed can screw up your whole day. Don’t worry about hurting the feelings of Tom Cruise or any other Scientologist. The pills can do wonders. They have gotten a lot better in recent times.
My people are the folks at the Monday meeting of Dopeless Hope Fiends and it gets together in the evening at a church basement in Minnesota. Chances are that you will be able to find similar accommodations in your area too. Goodbye and good luck, although you have just entered a world where it is said of success that luck had nothing to do with it. Although I cannot ask you to be your own doctor I can ask you to make very informed decisions and do be your own advocate.
Dual Diagnosis
by
W. Strawn Douglas
CHAPTER ONE/GREETINGS
I am Strawn Douglas and I am writing this book for the community that includes AA and NA.
For those of you who are not professional drug addicts that means Alcoholics and Narcotics Anonymous.
I sit with the NA crowd but any meeting will do just fine.
I come to you all through the tag of “dual diagnosis,” which means I have both mental illness and chemical issues.
In 1983, while I was with the military in Japan I began to experience a form of schizophrenic hallucination. The exact type of break from normality was a feeling that all media was in a private conversation with me.
This meant that I saw a secret message in all TV, Radio, and print media.
I have written two science fiction pieces and one book on civil law which is a criticism on Mental Health Law.
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For five generations my family’s men have been doctors, curing illness. I broke from that path and practiced medicine without the license. I trafficked in drugs and was party to some dedicated use patterns amongst a small cadre of loyal consumers. The concept of an allergy in medicine is different than the model used in 12 step behaviors.
In AA they used to say that they had an allergy to alcohol.
Allergies are allergies. You don’t get allergies to alcohol. You can get dependency but that is not an allergy.
I am not here to lecture syntax or conjugation to people seeking sobriety. Allergies are when you face swells up and it gets difficult to breathe. My mother was allergic to caviar. If she ate it she would get an allergic reaction and she could have died.
To say alcohol is as bad as or worse than an allergy is true use of the English language.
Some of the Alcoholics will say, “I have an allergy to Alcohol.” For me to take away one of their linguistic toys would be a sin.
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Practicing medicine is important to me. I may seek something like a nursing degree but I don’t feel interested in doing the full Medical Doctor degree.
I have personally sampled some Marijuana and it does carry a stout effect. It affects, as it is an influence. It effects as it is an end product.
Believe it or not, even this mild depressant can still create dependency behaviors. You start to wish you were stoned, as the Marijuana intoxication experience is labeled, and stoned all the time. The older definition of dependency was you consume drugs to feel “normal.” Your time spent sober is not as desirable as is your time spent under the influence of drugs.
I know drug dependency counselors who could write volumes about this. They will also tell you that mental illness is intensified by such drugs as Marijuana. Also it should be noted that this green leaf and sticky bud will probably be legalized within the next 20 years. Already we have medical marijuana being used in some states. The reason I point this out is that when it is legalized we will need a national gestalt on this new drug being added to our accepted ways of doing business. Cops and robbers both will need something functional to replace decades of ill will going back both ways over nine decades.
Marijuana is either Cannabis Indica or Cannabis Sativa.
It can also be a hybrid mix of these two strains.
Marijuana is derived from the hemp plant, which has been used for several millennia as a source of fiber for making rope and cloth.
The sailcloth that once powered wooden ships with canvas sails is a linguistic hand-me-down from the word cannabis. Canvas is cannabis.
Hemp traveled with man from harbor and port to continent and new shores. Everywhere the sailor dropped a stone as anchor, he also tied his boat to the dock and anchor with hemp cord.
Let’s talk about celebrities for a moment.
Brad Pitt threatened to vote for the gay marriage and legal marijuana ticket should there ever be one.
Tom Cruise said that he was a Scientologist and opposed all forms of psychiatric medication. If marijuana pushed somebody’s sanity into the red zone our friend Tom would only advocate vitamins and exercise. Tom’s hero is one Lafayette Ronald Hubbard and after a bad reaction to being forcibly detained in an Oakland California Naval Hospital our friend Ron got so disgusted with psychiatry that he created Scientology. This new religion is opposed to psychiatry and offers thirty books, twenty videos and many speeches recorded or transcribed. These are to replace psychiatry.
One of these days we may actually get to see a real showdown between psychiatry and Scientology. I want a front row seat for that fight. Mr. Cruise supports Scientology
Drew Barrymore is an actress that achieved sobriety before she was legally old enough to drink. Ms. Barrymore seems to be the best representative of sobriety I know of.
She is a pretty girl but the sobriety gets a lot of professional respect.
Having it come in a beautiful package makes the message more palatable.
Robert Downey. This fellow managed to fall asleep on the couch of a house he not only did not own but he was also not invited into. The house was unlocked and Mr. Downey’s own residence was nearby but when tested for drug use in conjunction with the crime it became apparent that Robert’s blood contained a noteworthy amount of diacetylmorphine molecules. For the non-chemists among us I will point out that is a fancy term for heroin.
Brooke Shields experienced postpartum depression and sought psychiatric help for being subject to a deep and quite noteworthy depression. She had a baby and then was deeply depressed.
This happens all the time but one of the features of that event was that Mr. Cruise criticized her vocally in public for the supposed sin of using psych drugs.
Most of the nation’s celebrity watchers sided with Brooke. Tom’s view, that psych meds were evil, was not taken seriously.
Tom’s black eye was seen as having come into contact with something more resilient than itself. That more resilient thing was Brooke.
Heaven’s Gate Cult. There are other celebrities to choose from. There was a cult that believed nearly all of the world’s science fiction was a description of an ideal universe that they had access to. They committed suicide as a group and used a mix of alcohol and barbiturates (called downers) to achieve death as deliberately as if this end was the punching of a worker’s time card into a clockwork machine. They moved from one universe to another, that much is sure, but I don’t think they are living out the fantasy of being in outer space with the cast of Star Trek. They are dead and if you mix downer barbiturates and alcohol then you too will become dead, a bad cocktail in my opinion.
You don’t get to come back from that party.
Chapter Two
2A
There are some very special groups of people in this country that are recognized for having special rights.
First are the Quakers. Back when Vietnam was an issue we had a few people say they did not want to be drafted into the nation’s military service.
An odd bunch of peace activist anti-war protesters emerged and said, “You can try to enslave us and we will not go off to war for you or your employer or favorite politician.”
Those Quakers were tough in their own way. Brave too.
Since then you cannot draft a Quaker into that odd form of slavery we call our Department of Defense.
This caught my eye immediately after I became one of those US Marines.
The reason I bring this up is that the whole thing about prisons and mental hospitals was virtually the sole domain of puritans like those same Quakers. They reinvented rehabilitation from the stock base of strictly punishment based prisons and asylums.
Having listened to the whole drug scene all at once saying, “What are you gonna write about us Billy? Get my good side will ya, and get me a check for helping you write your book too.”
What I can say is don’t be like the Heaven’s Gate cult and avoid causing people grief like Tom Cruise did.
2B Xanax
I met this small compact pretty black girl, about 40 years old, and heard her tell her tale of mental illness. She said she was depressed and that the only cure for her distress was a small pill of something called XANAX.
That pill name is pronounced “zanaks.” It was a wonder drug that had so profound an effect on depressed people that it was called a “happy pill” and was deemed to be highly addictive, and especially so for the clinically depressed.
One day she was depressed and frustrated with an auto repair issue. She lost her temper and drove her car through a glass window 15 feet high and just as wide.
Don’t mess with that lady’s automotive repairs.
2C
Heroin uses three receptors in the human brain. All heroin really is can be seen as two morphine molecules attached together with an acetic acid molecule.
Pig Pen McKernan was the keyboard player for the rock band called The Grateful Dead and he died of cirrhosis of the liver, which was linked to Olympic grade alcohol consumption and heroin use. Not many people realize how much damage can be done to the liver from intravenous drug use. Putting needles into your veins can really rot out your liver fast.
Chapter Three
The theology of drug use was developed from communion to sacrament to the blood of the Christ. Jews have their Seder wine
Christianity is very key on issues related to wine and all forms of intoxication.
Catholics get very serious about wine drinking and blood.
The blood of the Christ is said to be the divine forgiveness of a gentle, caring God. Washed in the blood, all sins disappear into a form of forgiveness.
Belief in a holy wine of blood every time one looks at a crucifix makes the Christian experience very alcohol centric.
I cannot second guess anything that someone has as part of their religion, as part of a belief system that they accept as a holy ritual.
There are parallels to the body of Vladimir Illyich Lenin in Soviet Russia. His corpse was placed into an Oxygen-free chamber and his corpse was not allowed to rot into ribbons.
This meant a lot to the Russian people as the bodies of Saints were said to not decompose. Giving Lenin his extended shelf life, like a loaf of bread loaded with preservatives, gave Lenin the ability to appear to be saintly. He was godly in his image.
With that as a primer to think about one can see that the disciples of the Christ sought to deify their god-man, this son of the Jewish God.
The Christians in the mass of our population will wear their faith as if it were a medal or badge given to a brave warrior who has triumphed above great adversity.
All I can say to such people is perhaps the divine and the mundane roll by in the same event, the same moment.
Legalize Reality /// A Higher power.
Children will go to communion with white clothes and a sip of wine. The concept of sharing the blood chemistry and neurochemistry of the masses becomes an inevitability.
If these kids are going to go to the nightclub like a heifer going happily to the slaughter then we can at least give their consciences a rung up on the ladder when they want to be sober and away from the disco.
As far as I can tell that’s the main reason for having a religion in the first place and I have faith that it is a good thing (most of the time).
The reason I bring this up is that in my service to the world as a consulting atheist I once preached against blind faith in that I suspected all miracles were stretches of the truth. I had faith in Saint Peters “plausible denial.”
Now I have faith in the belief that most Christians behave well and that on a mass psychology level this rare bear of faith is better for the masses than just a Communist Manifesto. Call that one a faith in a higher power.
I don’t want to break your bubble but if you have god as part of your spirituality it is a thing called faith and is thus clearly tied to religion. There are dictionaries that support this idea. To have a higher power may not obligate one toward conformity in any organized faith like Christianity or Judaism or Buddhism or other brand name faith. You can call it an alternative spirituality but at the end of the day these things called ‘higher powers’ are religious enough that they are indeed an orthodoxy. It is definitively elemental. The only way you can break it down more elementally is to use sub atomic particles as your metaphor. You can call it spirituality and say there is no Jesus in it but if it has a god concept in it then it is in that category of things that are called faith based. All I can really say is that perhaps it is time to ask the folks in the holy of holies business to open up a new department of faith in god.
Islam has it as a major point that you are a ‘Muslim’ if you believe in god. They only get to the Mohamed part much later on.
Atheism is having faith there is no god. Theists are not agnostics. The agnostic has no faith either way. The theist is a believer in god. All forms of spirituality where there is a god are connected to those things we call religions. All, including alternative spirituality, are faith based.
I know of a cute place in Evanston Wyoming where for a fee you can get a Doctor of Divinity degree and for that very small fee you are thus be able to marry people legally. That is one form of 501.C3 tax exempt non profit corporation. Calling it a religion or a non profit grant you both spiritual and taxation leeway. It does not matter to me what is your own form of spiritual quest. You can call it Fred or a ’53 Dodge or the Brooklyn Dodgers. If there is a god in that sentence then it is a faith based concern.
If god exists in your world view and you believe in this god then you are a theist. Lets just call that a nice place to start.
My background is something called theistic existentialism. It is a faith in the viability of reality. God wants you to use your brain and that’s why you have a brain. Do try to avoid being too abstract. Have faith in the reality that you know really does exist.
Tell me how your alternative spirituality works. I’m all ears.
Enough Theology.
Chapter Four
I put to you the case for enhancement. We want more and not just the nothing and emptiness of cold sobriety. We want everything and we want to enhance and not just escape.
I do know some addicts who consume in an escapist fashion. The others I know want to add and not subtract. To avoid reality is to escape. To seek more experiences or different new spins on old experiences is to add and not subtract.
People can add experiences without the use of any drug. One can live a sober life with no bitterness or emotional emptiness.
Many C-D counselors say that there can be found the joy in sober networking.
For one, it is artistic connections that are important. Many times drugs can be found at the same places where rock and roll is at its loudest. That’s still good art.
I know of several sober people in the Rock & Roll industry. Eric Clapton, Steven Tyler, Bob Mould, Ryan Addams, to name just a few. (George W. Bush too.)
A lot of that drinking and drugging was there to enhance and not escape. You want more and not just less.
The dry drunk will avoid all sensation, starving an already damaged spirit.
Reintroducing yourself as a person to your community means rebuilding old connections. Some of these contacts will be so dedicated to using chemicals that they just can’t make the roster for future fun.
Eric Clapton still plays his user anthem called “Cocaine.” He cares enough about his community to give it all he has got.
He has also created the Crossroads Chemical Dependency Center in the Caribbean.
I guess that means the real estate brokers were right: location, location, location!
The Christian events predate AA by almost two thousand years. The rituals of wine and forgiveness seem to be connected.
Still I will leave the god business to the frocked and confirmed.-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
When we turn to organizations to help us along we inevitably find NAMI. They are the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill.
They put out brochures advising people to turn over furniture in their house when calling police to intervene on mentally ill family members.
NAMI has historically been more of an advocacy group for relatives of the mentally ill than for the mentally ill citizens themselves. Sometimes they are saints and once in a while they have shown limits to patiently waiting for things to happen naturally.
A less financially organized group is the website managers at mindfreedom.org in Eugene, Oregon.
When I spoke last with the mindfreedom folks I said I liked my medication and they replied, “We are pro-choice on medication issues.”
I found that sentence very refreshing in a world bound between NAMI and Scientology.
The Scientology kids created something noteworthy. They invented a group opposed to all medication. That group is called CCHR and those letters stand for the Citizens Commission on Human Rights.
This outfit, that we call CCHR is a scientology satellite determined to evade all psychiatric medication.
CCHR was cofounded in 1969 by Dr. Thomas Szasz. He is not a scientologist but he is a psychiatrist. He continually advocates for the rights of the mentally ill.
In all my days as a mentally ill person there are, perhaps, only ten or so people I could only say were advocates of my well-being. Dr. Szasz is one of those ten people.
Scientology even looks good when it stands in the shadow of Dr. Szasz. The good doctor put out a book in the early sixties called The Myth of Mental Illness. This text framed the ideas of ability rather than just dysfunction. Here were people who could recite Shakespeare while juggling and grill a steak to perfection all at the same time. It was a less punitive definition of mental health.
Ron Hubbard loved the spirit of that book.
Psychiatric medication has come a long way just in the 18 years I have been detained.
Older pre-caveman medications like Haldol and Thorazine are going away.
New drugs like Olanzapine and Risperadone are taking over.
The older drug called Trilafon creates Gyrated Ocular Crisis. You may be mentally healthy but you are blinded temporarily and in that you cannot drive. Ocular crisis means your eyeballs turn up into your eye sockets. You cannot see so you cannot drive a car.
This drug can make you mentally healthy but it also makes you legally blind.
Olanzapine makes you fat. It stimulates appetite and you eat your way to a round form that is not recognizable.
Nonetheless you can be mentally healthy and still drive a car. You just are fat and have that unsightly belly.
Chapter Five
One of the key ideas here to note is that psych meds will keep you sane and you must not put them in the same category as recreational drugs.
You are going to need your drugs because if you don’t have them you will be crazier than Salvador Dali on twenty hits of LSD.
Your illness will come back quite reliably. When you try to go back on these medications you often find you need more of that drug to get the previously discovered effect of mental stability. When 30 milligrams of Zyprexa/ Olanzapine is your stable dose and you quit your medicine it can take more of that medicine, such as a dose of 40 milligrams, to create a working effect.
That’s why folks in the dual diagnosis group find they need more psychiatric medication to get to that old place if they go off meds for a while.
Don’t go off your meds. I tried a drug called Clozaril and it did not work.
Going off meds is like using street drugs for an addict. When you take away the psych meds your end effect is a madness as profound as any drug can create.
You don’t need drugs to get high and irresponsible. You can achieve that end result by merely going quit from your psych meds.
Mental Health patients are in that rare state where abstinence from psych meds is as bad for that psych patient as a fifth of whiskey is to an alcoholic.
What the alcoholic calls an allergy, we call a vacation from psych meds. For us that form of drugless existence is very harmful.
As for the mentally ill, we don’t need drugs to achieve an irresponsible and impaired state.
The highway patrolman can pull your car over and give you a field sobriety test and you will pass it but it should be noted that your illness can make you drive very dangerously.
We don’t need drugs to get high and impaired. We do that merely by going quit from psych meds.
Sobriety gets us high.
It’s a thing called MANIA and it happens in many more cases than just manic depression.
I like beer but I don’t drink it. I love mania but I take psych meds to avoid it.
Don’t ever let AA or NA people tell you to go quit from psych meds.
They are wrong.
The last paragraph of Chapter Five is devoted to CCHR.
We love CCHR and cherish the thought of somebody being in our corner at the big boxing match in the sky.
They are good kids and truly they mean well. I feel, however, that they could be a little more pro-choice, on medication issues. The drugs have improved greatly.
I would like to see Hubbard’s “tech reports” from 1975 to his death in the eighties. There might be some acknowledgment of medication improving.
I feel that once CCHR moves to a more pro-choice attitude on medication, then the world will, in turn, be more “founder friendly.”
I think you get the idea.
L. Ron Hubbard was detained from September 5 till December 4 of 1945. He was at an Oakland, California Naval Hospital and he was detained for mental problems.
Ron Hubbard was a psychiatric survivor.
One can very easily point to Ronald’s disgust with psychiatry and say that he did not like psychiatry but when viewed from the Szasz perspective of ability and disability then our pal Ron shows up as a gifted ability that made a huge piece of art while psychiatry has been so modest that it does not even try to compete with Scientology.
Chapter Six
#A1 A history of CD treatment (1980’s)
#A2 A dissertation on love
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A1
In the late 1970’s and early ‘80’s the phenomena of drug treatment was a new entity that was often irresponsible and reckless in its ways and means.
Here in Minnesota our perennial rock star punk band called “The Replacements” put out a song called “Treatment Bound.”
That work of poetry and melody stands out as testament to the alcoholism that saturated the rock star community here in Minnesota in 1983.
What remains though is a sad commentary of mistakes that were made in the name of health.
Kids drink alcohol in a manner similar to alcoholism. This is not true alcoholism. It is the binge drinker’s way of life. Nearly all young people start off their drinking careers as irresponsible consumers. They also are worse drivers in automobiles than one finds in the elderly.
Junior is worse than Granny.
Our Minnesota treatment industry was truly experimental in the late 1970’s. We were drugged up to say the least but our local drug treatment centers were a step up in imprisonment and annoyance for many drug consuming teenagers. The ill will went both ways.
It was a hostile situation.
Drug treatment swept through America like a new religion. Not all of it was functional. In the 1970’s there were incidents of drug treatment centers using questionable treatment modalities.
They would request that patients wear diapers to reeducate patients from a return to childhood.
Hazelden did not do this but it was a real and tangible reality for some treatment facilities. Sad but true.
This brings up a new problem: With Hazelden and other treatment centers using a 12-step format these excesses and severities are less likely to occur.
So what can be said about treatment centers outside of the 12-step umbrella?
Passages in Malibu, California and Recovery Center in Minneapolis are two non-12-step programs. I know there are more out there but you go use your Google. I have no Google.
Do they work?
Is AA too religious?
AA seems to be a permutation of the Puritan attitude towards rehabilitation. Quakers could be hell to live with (especially if you were making gunpowder for Navy gunboats) but they were also great reformers in the field of rehabilitation for prisoners in primitive penitentiaries.
AA is clearly part of the Christian concept of bearing witness and confession.
AA goes one step beyond where Judeo-Christian doctrine is and teaches purest abstinence rather than just communion and forgiveness.
AA creates a new level of Judeo-Christian duty to self first and through that greater devotion creates a benefit, that all people who live near the AA devotee, can see. This is certainly so for the AA persons meeting co-attendees.
Ultimately it also begins to affect the relationship between the AA attendee and the community around him or her. The city and nation begin to take heed that this is a person in recovery and can thus be welcomed back into society as long as that society does not require the attendee to use alcohol.
No toasts or communion wine. No Passover wine either.
This is serious stuff so take it seriously.
A2
Any book or song or play or piece of art you create should be done with the mindset that one of the things you can write about is love. You can repetitively harp on themes of love and affection but getting work done or bettering yourself and your community is also a form of love.
You can write the book of love. At some point I recommend some behaviors of this ilk. It is healthy to take inventory of your life and note the positive aspects here and there.
When you can truly say you are a mature member of your community you test this idea by delivering a talk or dissertation. You field questions and give answers.
Don’t be misled about this. A 15-year-old still has love in his or hers spirit for the items in his or her community.
Us older folk just have more expected of us. We thusly have more hang-ups and inhibitions too. Sometimes it is the kids who know that the King has no clothes better than his or her older cousins.
Chapter Seven
Heroin is, technically, the most difficult drug to defend. It causes addiction and overdose. It kills fast in overdose and slowly from AIDS and HIV. Disease comes to heroin as it is a filthy drug that gives its users infections from hepatitis to AIDS.
80% of New York City’s heroin addict community tests positive for the AIDS virus which is called HIV or Human Immunodeficiency Virus.
Compared to that fate the problems attributed to crack cocaine seem to be a blessing. It comes to the user as a gas from vaporized cocaine. That means it is no longer a dermatological problem but a pulmonary or lung ailment.
When AIDS is a dermatological problem it is concerned with open sores and needles for intravenous injecting. There are skin issues, medically speaking.
Analgesic drugs get their definitions from the fact that they don’t cause a loss of consciousness. Heroin can cause you to lose consciousness in an act called “nodding off.” Nonetheless, science does not take overdose into consideration so we call it an analgesic. It is called Smack, or Horse, or Boy, or Chinese Rock, or Junk, or Dope, or Skag, or a number of other phrases.
There is another drug called Narcon that is used to immediately counteract all of a heroin-user’s precious investment into euphoria. Narcon will take a junkie’s use from bliss and overdose to the cold harsh shock of sobriety and withdrawal. A friend of mine observed the use of Narcon in Chicago in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s. He saw a junkie go from euphoria to withdrawal in several short heartbeats. The subject flailed arms in every direction and immediately voiced disapproval of the act that had nullified a syringe filled with junk. The name of Junk is given to heroin. The phrase junkie is given to users of the dope we call Junk.
Other addictive compounds are opioids including morphine and codeine and opium. Codeine is the mildest of that group of three. Howard Hughes was a codeine addict at the time of his death. Herman Goering was a morphine addict at the time of his capture by allied forces in World War Two. Famed actor Bella Lugosi was an opiate addict at the time of his death.
Note that sentence ending; at his death. They used right up to the last moment of life.
Crack cocaine is tame in comparison. Name your poison of choice. Choose your doom.
Chapter Eight
The problem here is that a limited legalization is very close to becoming reality. I have to write you a book that makes sense whether its kids on FDA approved Ecstasy or medical marijuana.
The drugs I see getting legalized are Cannabis and in its varied forms from marijuana to hashish, and perhaps a decriminalization of some more mild prescription medications like amphetamines and MDMA or Ecstasy as it is called on the street.
Relatively these drugs are mild in respect of the potential harm they can do.
Red Bull or other energy drinks do have a good effect but it is like comparing sparklers to bottle rockets. You long for that view of bottle rocket ascent and ka-pow rather than just a wire with gunpowder glued to it.
The dance crowd in nightclubs uses cocaine and Ecstasy commonly. I don’t think this book will change them much.
MDMA is a drug, Ecstasy. Methelenedioxymethamphetamine is a drug with a long name.
Ecstasy will make you feel like having a tea party with your dear friends Hitler and Stalin. One lump or two Adolf? You are so taken over by a sensation of bliss and euphoria that you treat your worst enemies as if they were your best friends.
Etcetera.
Nonetheless it will probably have some limited decriminalization.
Ecstasy releases Seratonin into the brain chemistry. LSD also acts on the brain’s levels of Seratonin.
Dopamine is released in the case of LSD users.
Ecstasy causes 30 to 40 deaths a year in the USA.
Antipsychotic drugs kill people through a disease called malignant neuroleptic syndrome. This affects one case in 1,000 per year. Not all incidents of malignant neuroleptic syndrome involve death.
Serotonin was first found in the brain and given its name of “Serotonin” while the chemical from the GI tract was given the name “enteramine.” Both were found to be the chemical 5-hydroxytriptamine (5-HT).
This drug was very similar to the drug LSD in that it could be shown to interact on smooth muscle preparations in vitro.
Lysergic Acid Diethylamide or LSD, as we all know, is a powerful hallucinogen. It causes massive amounts of Dopamine to be released into the bloodstream and neurochemistry.
LSD does not get anyone high. It creates a multi-stage cascade chemical reaction then goes from eating a pill to having a hallucinogenic effect after a series of chemical steps. The part that gets you high is thought to be the natural chemicals in the brain that get pharmaceutically “knocked loose” from their traditional locations and residences.
Ecstasy floods the brain with a high grade designer drug form of methamphetamine.
Methylenedioxymethamphetamine.
There are scans of the human brain that show dark recesses where there should be bright color, all accredited to Ecstasy use. I believe that is a PET scan.
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Chapter Nine
We have covered a lot of material very quickly. The issues of being a recovering addict in a mental health scenario have hopefully been dealt with.
I do believe that most consumers of this book will be the other way around. They will be mental health consumers in a chemical dependency scenario.
What that means in practical terms is you can have some tobacco and I cannot. I envy you. That and your program goes from twenty to ninety days. My program has gone on for eighteen years.
Having a mental illness is not the end of the world. It will take care to avoid flare-ups of the symptoms. I know this to be true. What we have just discussed is the foundation of our connection. I am an author that hopefully was able to connect with ya all.
In many ways it is a new beginning for us both.
I have always had a hot temper and drugs and mental illness did not help issues at all. We have to learn from each other. If we can do that then the learning curve will go up exponentially. We will get a whole that is more than the sum of its parts.
I do get something from you all as we examine the facts of the cases. I am not a professional outside of the simple claim to be a man in a similar scenario.
You have just as much potential of digging up facts with your computer as I have with mine
There are three major types of mental illness here at the Puzzle Palace.
We have schizophrenia and schizoaffective disorder and manic depression.
I have schizophrenia and that means my children have a one in six chance of developing a mental illness.
Grandmother died in a moment we strongly suspect to be a suicide. Her body was found in the local river. It was a big river, the Snake River in Idaho.
We will never know what affected Jane Douglas back there in the 1940’s. She is not here to ask.
My two sisters are dead. One was killed by a murderer she met at a mental institution and the other, her fraternal twin, was a suicide.
Both parents are now gone.
Chemical Dependency is found in mental health and poverty. For some people to spend time at a chemical dependency treatment facility is the moment that, for the first time in years, they have a roof over their heads, and a good meal to help them along.
Once your treatment experience is over and you are sober from drugs and alcohol then you need to begin to recruit people into a less dependent lifestyle. Not all of these contacts are going to be instantly productive. You will find instability in many of your new people.
Treatment brings together a diverse crowd. I have seen judges on the bench at AA meetings. I have seen paupers and the most destitute people ever deemed to be homeless.
Chemical dependency and mental illness cut across all boundaries.
My only expertise is on schizophrenia but I have some manic traits so I get all three major disease groups as part of my intellectual diet of things to think about.
The schizophrenic is said to have a break from reality. To call one schizophrenic is to say they have one large break from reality rather than to say they have multiple personalities. That is an older more popular and less clinical legend of mental illness. It is not grounded in fact. Some schizophrenics have multiple personality issues but that’s not how schizophrenia is defined.
In Manic Depression one cycles from a state of being energized with a form of ecstatic joy to one of depressive fatigue and no motivation.
These cycles can last mere minutes or go on for more months than a typical season. I have even heard of some people deemed to be depressed and who have said that the depressive cycle of their illness lasted for years.
In manic depression one cycles from mania today to depression tomorrow and back the other way again endlessly. My friend Heather said she could cycle in five minutes.
Schizoaffective Disorder is said to be a combination of both schizophrenia and Bi-Polar/ manic depression. An ecstatic high goes on nonstop with no connection to a miserable depressive downswing. That is one way the patient can experience symptoms.
Those are the three forms of mental illness that are the most common here at the Minnesota Security Hospital. As a chemically dependent schizophrenic I can say: Problems exist for the dually diagnosed of memory, attention span, abstract thinking, and planning ahead. The use of drugs and alcohol often worsens the symptoms of mental illness, resulting in relapses and hospitalizations.
There is a special celebrity we should talk about as he was very schizophrenic and is well known in some artistic circles.
His name is Syd Barrett. He self medicated his schizophrenia with LSD and other illegal drugs. He was the first lead guitar player and singer/songwriter for the overwhelmingly successful rock and roll band called “Pink Floyd.” He took copious amounts of LSD and other mind bending chemicals. The more drugs he took the crazier he became.
Syd experienced an onset of schizophrenia in the late sixties and propelled his case through society by becoming more and more erratic at performances for the Pink Floyd band. The more odd his behavior the more the band looked for a replacement which they found in David Gilmore. Roger Waters took over most of the songwriting and the die was cast with no room for Syd.
He spent the last 35 years of his life in a mental institution in England.
While the band was putting together the album called “Wish You Were Here” a fat, bald Syd Barrett visited the band in the studio. The connection was mostly gone.
The maddening thing about a dual diagnosis is you never fully know which illnesses are acting on you. You can go to a meeting for CD issues and with mental illness you can take a pill but in both cases there is no “one pill cure” to cure either facet of the problem.
It can become quite a juggling act. Problems came to us from two directions.
State care is thrifty and thus dry at the task of filling a cup and in state care there are usually just a few drops in each cup. Only on rare occasions of great error does one’s cup runneth over.
The most important lesson the state ever taught me was how to avoid dependence on the state.
It taught me to see the monastic qualities of the experience. Without that the experience here would have assuredly driven me mad.
Chapter Ten
AA Apologies!!!
The letter you cannot send is partly the difference between a book being written and a psych assignment being done. You are not just therapy to me.
There is something I cannot write. I cannot contact my harassment victim and even say “Oops, I am sorry we did not get along well. My mental illness caused you distress and I am sorry for that.”
You cannot even breathe wrong in the direction of such a person. In AA they say, “Make amends except when to do so would cause harm to someone.”
That’s essentially my dilemma. This is the real pivot point of fulcrum type for me and my case
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