The Dry Heaving Horror Show Back In Row Thirty

Posted on February 11, 2009 by Gabriel...

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People will tell you when we travel getting to where we’re going is supposed to be half the fun. On my way to visit my little brother in Toronto I spent close to five hours in the public bathroom of a moving bus dry heaving into a tiny hole filled with all the chemicals they couldn’t find in Iraq.

Everything that happened after that was kind of mixed.

I’ll write about my brother’s wedding and the week leading up to it later, this post is about the lessons I learned in transit.

The plan was to sleep the trip away on the bus. It’s generally a five-hour ride, and thanks to everyone in the world (except me) owning an MP3 player I don’t feel guilty about snoring in public as much as I used to, so I stayed up around the clock the night before leaving. I put together a post, packed and put together phone numbers I’d need while in Toronto.

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Posted in Bipolar, Bipolar Disease, Bipolar Disorder, Brother, crazy people with no pants, Diabetes, Health, Living With Depression, Living With Manic Depression, Manic Depression | 10 Comments

Back Home But Too Tired To Write About It

Posted on February 8, 2009 by Gabriel...


There’s a YouTube here of The Forgotten Rebels. If you can’t see it please
reload, then contact Google and tell them to stop being evil.

I’m home. I survived ten days in the Big City of Toronto… barely, and my brother is officially a married dude… barely.

I spent five days being sick, my brother got food poisoning, his fiancée was in a constant state of panic and hate until she got sick the day before the wedding.

But the wedding itself was fun and very chaotic, and hardly anyone got sick at all… and I’ll write all about it once I recover my equilibrium.

I’ll also write a lot about meeting two of my favourite bloggers.

…and it was my birthday this past Wednesday. But that’s okay, because apparently thirty-nine is the new fourteen.

Jesus. I’m thirty-nine.

.

.

Posted in Bipolar Disease, Bipolar Disorder, Brother, crazy people with no pants, Health, Humor, Humour, Living With Manic Depression, Manic Depression, Toronto, White Russians | 12 Comments

Old Post Day | Breaking Up With Manic Depression

Posted on January 30, 2009 by Gabriel...

The basic problem with blogs is the more you write, the more gets left behind in the archives. So a few times a month I’m going to leave excerpts from my original posts which I think can really help people who are just starting out on their recovery, then link them to the original so maybe someone can also find something useful in the original discussions.

For this Old Post Day I’ve selected a post which basically represents my manifesto on fighting manic depression. When I first started Salted Lithium I was writing to myself, so when the word “you” appeared in my posts it was mostly me talking directly to me, not ‘a reader’. So in this piece, when I wrote “Manic depression didn’t force your girlfriend to miscarry”, I was talking about my girlfriend and the miscarriage of our child.

This post is about separating myself from the mythology of manic depression, and proving to myself that I was more than the sum of the disease.

Excerpts From:

Manic Depression Did Not Rape You
And It Certainly Didn’t Kill Your Dog
May 20, 2007

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Posted in Bipolar, Bipolar Disease, Bipolar Disorder, Clinical Depression, crazy people with no pants, Health, Lithium, Old Post Day | 5 Comments

Going Back To Toronto To Meet Some Bloggers And Maybe See The Guy I Used To Be

Posted on January 28, 2009 by Gabriel...

Ten years ago I didn’t so much move to Toronto as fall out of Ottawa. Moving to Toronto wasn’t even on my to-do list two months before I moved there.

I’m pretty sure I can even remember telling several people a move to Toronto — Canada’s largest city… and the fifth largest city in North America — would be the last thing I’d ever do. But being out of work for five months will do strange thing to a persons mind.

I only lived in Toronto for a few years… I think it was three. But, Jesus. H. Christ.

I’ve only been back once, and that was two years ago… and, technically, I was only in Toronto for a few hours. I spent the next week locked away in my brother’s basement apartment in a suburb of Toronto which, technically, could also double as a suburb of Ottawa.

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Posted in Bipolar, Bipolar Disease, Bipolar Disorder, Clinical Depression, crazy people with no pants, General Tao's Chicken, Health, Living With Manic Depression, Manic Depression, Ottawa, Toronto | 13 Comments

Friday Conversations With My Psychiatrist | January 9, 2009

Posted on January 23, 2009 by Gabriel...

There’s a certain rhythm to our appointments which gets broken after we’ve had a break. Even missing one appointment throws our timing off and we end up spending the first forty-five minutes catching up and talking about stuff we’re both interested in, then for the last fifteen I end up rushing through all the things I can remember wanting to talk about.

The break this time, of course, was Christmas and New Year’s. We talked a little bit about how 2008 ended up being a pretty successful year for me, but only at the end. Getting the diabetes under control, for example.

We didn’t discuss this, but in terms of relationships last year was not a good year. I actually became more isolated as the year went on… which, I think, was partially me reacting to all the bad medical news I was getting during the first half of the year.

Something we did discuss was cult behaviour, specifically the behaviour of the cult I grew up in compared to other media savvy cults operating today.

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Posted in Appointment Day, Bipolar, Bipolar Disease, Bipolar Disorder, Clinical Depression, crazy people with no pants, Health, Manic Depression, Psychiatry | 7 Comments

How To Protect Yourself From The People Who Want To Find You

Posted on January 20, 2009 by Gabriel...

“Most people who have come recently to the web, say within the last two or three years, have no clue what the Internet is and what it’s capabilities are. Especially if they stay in their little chosen boxes. Four easy steps and they have a blog and a Twitter account and a MySpace page and maybe a Facebook profile… well two easy steps and someone with $10 and access to the [online] Yellow Pages can find out how much you paid for your house.”
Part of a comment I left on my post… “Tweet Tweet I Want To Kill Your Children LOL”; Jan. 7, 2009.

Since I was thirteen I’ve been a stone picker, farm hand, hunting guide, street punk, daycare manager, bouncer, large-installation landscaper, photographer, award-winning newspaper columnist and reporter — mostly I covered Internet Privacy Issues.
From my About Page.

Welcome to the Internet. The kindergarten without supervisors.
Comment someone left in a forum.

There’s an assumption of privacy people have when using the Internet which has no foundation in reality. That who we are is kept secret from others by virtue of an invisible shield of civility and fair play.

But the Internet, despite the hype, is not some Neverland where the rules of nature don’t apply.

Ask Thordora, who recently had the police knock on her door because someone in another country misinterpreted the twenty words Thor wrote on her own Twitter account.

Very real people can get really pissed off and motivated by what you have to say… or, more likely, at how they interpret what you say. And, if you don’t know what you’re doing, they can find you.

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Posted in Bipolar, Bipolar Disease, Bipolar Disorder, crazy people with no pants, Health, Manic Depression, Privacy Issues, Punk, Technology | 22 Comments