Recovery Week 184 In Review

Posted on June 9, 2010 by Gabriel...

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Salted Lithium Week One Hundred and Eighty-Four

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It has been a week since I pulled my Facebook account out of its car, threw it to the road and pumped three shots into its chest while it screamed “I swear to God we’re fixing all the privacy stuff… I swear to God!”.

And, as I pulled away in my 1967 Pontiac GTO, listening to Fleetwood Mac pound out “Oh Well” over my Hi-Fi Stereo, seeing the mess I left behind me, I had to smile and ask… what was that about?

I only updated my Facebook account a couple times a week, and on multiple occasions over a day maybe three times in almost… six months? But now that I’ve stopped I can see, and feel, the huge hole missing in my daily surfing routine, which normally consists of checking my five email accounts every thirty minutes, rechecking my blog stats for my three blogs every fifteen minutes, reading and rereading three or four newspapers, checking YouTube for cartoons, finding something about hockey I haven’t read yet.

Being on Facebook was a way to lose time when I didn’t feel like writing. Now that it’s gone I have to find other things to do when I don’t feel like writing. Like, maybe, writing.

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Posted in Bipolar, Bipolar Disease, Bipolar Disorder, crazy people with no pants, Health, Little Victor, Living With Depression, Living With Manic Depression, Manic Depression, Mental Health, Salted Week In Review | 3 Comments

The Empty Room At The End Of The Recovery Rainbow

Posted on June 5, 2010 by Gabriel...

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I’ve been lost for a long time. Sometimes it feels like I’m a casualty of my own narrative, sometimes like I’m a victim of circumstance.

Lately I’ve felt like I’m being attacked by my recovery.

It’s as though behind every door my recovery opens, there’s an empty room. Every time I try to reach out to someone who used to be a part of my life, there’s just an empty space. When there’s a warm body, I’m ignored or told my untreated behaviours make the relationship impossible.

I feel as though my recovery is putting me at risk of a relapse, or maybe dragging new causes for deep depressions into my life.

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Posted in Bipolar, Bipolar Disease, Bipolar Disorder, Clinical Depression, crazy people with no pants, Facebook, Health, Living With Depression, Living With Manic Depression, Manic Depression, Mental Health | 8 Comments

Facebook Suicide

Posted on June 3, 2010 by Gabriel...

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“Clickjacking is a technique by which hackers spread malware and redirect traffic to nefarious sites… .

“This latest scam [“Likejacking”]… lures people into clicking on links and messages such as, “This man takes pictures of himself EVERYDAY for 8 YEARS!!” and “The Prom Dress That Got This Girl Suspended From School.”

“…hundreds of thousands of users have already fallen prey to the scam, which routes them to malware-laden Web sites infected by… a variant of [a] worm that made its way around Facebook last month.”
“Facebook Contends With Latest ‘Likejacking’ Scam”,
Larry Barrett, senior editor, InternetNews.com; June 2, 2010

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Adware: Software that periodically pops up advertisements on a user’s computer. It displays ads targeted to the individual user based on key words entered in search engines and the types of Web sites the user visits.

Malware: Software designed to destroy, aggravate and otherwise make life unhappy.

Spyware: Software that sends information about your Web surfing habits to its Web site. Often quickly installed in your computer in combination with a free download you selected from the Web, spyware transmits information in the background as you move around the Web. Also known as “parasite software,” “scumware,” “junkware” and “thiefware,” spyware is occasionally installed just by visiting a Web site (aka: drive-by download).

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Awesome (adj.)
1. inspiring or displaying awe
2. Slang excellent or outstanding

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Late last night I killed my little corner of Facebook. I committed Facebook Suicide.

I did it for a lot of reasons. Computer security was near the top of the list, a realization I was spending long minutes repeatedly clicking “Hide” to rid my “home page” of new and improved gaming applications was another.

Seriously, how many variations on Farmville can there possibly be? At the upper curve I had 168 “Friends”, and at least three dozen of them spent most of their day playing stupid games on Facebook, designed entirely to steal your information and your time, and their statuses would be automatically updated and I’d have to play a whole new round of “Click The Hide Button”.

My own brother’s Facebook account was updated once or twice daily by the PlayStation Network, whenever he reached a milestone on another PS3 game.

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Posted in Bipolar, Bipolar Disease, Bipolar Disorder, crazy people with no pants, Facebook, Health, Living With Depression, Living With Manic Depression, Manic Depression, Mental Health | 9 Comments

Recovery Week 183 In Review

Posted on June 1, 2010 by Gabriel...

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Salted Lithium Week One Hundred and Eighty-Three

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Eventually, and I truly believe this is possible, I will reach a point where writing these “Week In Review” posts will happen seven days apart, and even regularly on a Sunday. At the very least I do not think these goals are entirely impossible.

I also believe it is quite probable that I shall manage to write posts between “Week In Review” posts.

It finally cooled off. The week long mini-heatwave broke towards the end of the week, or just in time for me to not have to buy an air conditioner. The “Lithium headaches” continued for a couple of days regardless of temperature — they’re not constant throughout the day, more like twenty minutes of brain throbbing.

But everything’s good now. I think I’ve finally been able to move past the horrible finale for Lost, or maybe that’s just the cool air. We did find an air conditioner for my girlfriend’s apartment, it was a hand-me-down from her aunt. So Victor and his older brother have a safe place for the next heatwave.

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Posted in Bipolar, Bipolar Disease, Bipolar Disorder, crazy people with no pants, Health, Living With Depression, Living With Manic Depression, Manic Depression, Mental Health, Salted Week In Review | 3 Comments

Salted Lithium Recovery Week 182 In Review

Posted on May 25, 2010 by Gabriel...

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Salted Lithium Recovery Week One Hundred and Eighty-Two

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This is the time of year I hate. It is officially Lithium Headache Season, and I’m barely surviving in between the time it takes me to empty a jug of cold water down my throat, and the time it takes the jug of new water to get cold while sitting in my freezer.

When I was a young dude I worked through the summer picking stones and baling hay, and I never brought a water bottle into the field. If I was lucky the farmer would bring a cooler. On a few occasions I used the steel bowls the cows drank out of. But I survived entire, hot days on a glass or two of tepid, sometimes filthy water.

Now I get almost as nervous as a crack addict when I pull the jug out of the fridge and there’s only an inch of water in it.

When people taking Lithium get hot, when we’re thirsty and dehydrated, we get headaches. Throbbing, deep headaches, that make remembering difficult and recall almost impossible. It’s because the Lithium concentrates in our blood when we don’t hydrate properly.

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Posted in Bipolar, Bipolar Disease, Bipolar Disorder, crazy people with no pants, Health, Living With Depression, Living With Manic Depression, Manic Depression, Mental Health, Salted Week In Review | 4 Comments

Too Much Stuff In My Apartment So I Had To Lose A Tooth To Make Room

Posted on May 17, 2010 by Gabriel...

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“I spent half my life thinking dying was the most important thing I could do… or — at least — that dying was my most likely accomplishment. What the fuck did I care about what shape my teeth were in? Who knew, ten years ago or fifteen years ago that I’d be here ten years later or fifteen years later needing to have a tooth pulled so my jaw doesn’t get infected which will require even more surgery?”
“When You Spend 6570 Consecutive Days Wanting To Kill Yourself The Little Things Get Neglected… Like Dental Hygiene”; Me, June 13, 2007

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Sometimes just the act of delaying a defeat can be a victory.

I had another tooth pulled last week. It wasn’t a surprise. This was the second time it had become infected, and even though the infection was again killed by penicillin, there was just too much damage done to the tooth. I couldn’t even close my mouth properly because the infection had pushed the tooth up just enough that chewing was difficult, and painful.

So the dentist pulled it out, and I have another giant hole in my face… and now I almost have enough holes they’ll soon be turning into ditches.

But it’s not as bad as it could have been. The tooth was originally supposed to be pulled way back in November of 2008, but once the penicillin killed the infection, and knowing I would have to lose it sooner rather than later, I decided I was going to keep it for as long as I could. Which was last week.

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Posted in Bipolar, Bipolar Disease, Bipolar Disorder, crazy people with no pants, Health, Living With Depression, Living With Manic Depression, Manic Depression, Mental Health | Tagged | 9 Comments