No Post Day: Your First Time

Posted on January 11, 2008 by Gabriel...


My File — photo by Me

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“Trouble Man”; Waylon Jennings
“…then he took out his pocket knife and cut off my horns.”
…let me know if the YouTube isn’t available.

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Yes, that is my File. I took the picture back in December, my doctor seemed a little surprised when I asked if I could take the shot… but after a second not so much. He does read this blog, which makes our Friday sessions a little weird because we end up talking about It and even about some of the people who read Salted.

I can’t remember when I told him… I think it was pretty soon after I started it, which would make sense. I was pretty much at my lowest point since starting my Recovery when I started Salted, and starting it was a pretty significant and positive step for me…

So we joke occasionally about how I really don’t need to show up, he can just use Salted to see where I am in my Recovery… also about how at some point he’ll need to start printing out my posts to put in my File.

I started seeing my doctor in 1988. It was… well, not too long after I had a disagreement with another doctor. When I was 15 or 16 a doctor had prescribed me medications without notifying my mother… so when I got in the car and said “here’s the prescription” she did what she usually did and tore his heart from his chest and, while it was still beating, she ate it. After that it was pretty much downhill… what with him being dead and all.

I had seen that doctor for a few months at least. I was usually pissed off at him for bringing shit up or asking questions I didn’t like… we had one session where I just sat and glared at him for 45 minutes. And even then I had a pretty fucking frightening glare. I wasn’t an easy Patient.

Before that there were a few counsellors and school therapists going back to when I was ten or twelve… there was one guy who promised me toy cars based on a point system for telling The Truth. Fucker still owes me two toy cars. Then there was one who asked if she could take Every Thing I Had Ever Written home overnight so she could photocopy them for her files… she brought back four photocopied pages and told me she had lost the rest.

…sigh. She was also the one who fucked up administering an IQ test… for a week I thought mine was 80.

Between 1988 and 2004(?) I saw a few different doctors before coming back to the one I have now… actually I do have a copy of a fairly decent assessment from one of those doctors I’ll post soon.

So… my questions for anyone willing to answer (your mother told me to say it’s good for you):

1. For whatever reason, when was the first time you found, needed or were given “help” from a counsellor, therapist or mental health worker?

2. If you’re still ‘in the system’ does your current counsellor, therapist or mental health worker know about your blog?

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...thanks.

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Posted in Bipolar, Bipolar Disease, Bipolar Disorder, Clinical Depression, crazy people with no pants, Depression, Health, Lithium, Living With Depression, Living With Manic Depression, Manic Depression, No Post Day, Psychiatry, Punk | 10 Comments

Sure I Lost Another Tooth And I’m Stuck Eating Mush For Another Week But Armed Only With A Camera Somehow I Won The Day

Posted on January 9, 2008 by Gabriel...


After the Ottawa Senators game in ScotiaBank Place; Dec. 29, 2007 – Photo by Me.


“A Drug Against War”; KMFDM
Let me know if the YouTube’s missing…

Caring for yourself, looking after your physical health, just isn’t a priority for someone who constantly wants to die. It wasn’t like I was in pain, my teeth were usually in pretty good shape, but I wasn’t flossing or rinsing or brushing three times a day either.
“…The Little Things Get Neglected”; Something I wrote last Spring

We need to be able to find small victories, little moments we can lose ourselves in so we can fight against the voice in our head telling us what a huge fucking failure we’ve become because we couldn’t stop failing over the years and decades which make up our lives.
“…There’s A Very Real Risk…”, Something I wrote January 08.

I actually feel like I scored a couple of small victories today… which is great because there was one fuck of a failure as well.

I’m back on mushy food again so I’m eating a banana… last night marked the median in what will be three weeks between recovering from the last tooth being taken out and this one, it was the one night between Recovery and recovery Again where I was able to eat solid food. So I ordered out for Chinese and carefully ate eight chicken wings and a container of beef and broccoli. Now, again, I can barely chew a ripe banana.

It’s not that the process has become easier, I just know what to expect now. Later on I’ll have some pasta with a little butter and cheese…

So the failure, of course, was losing another tooth to one of the various Periodontal diseases and the nearly two decades of smoking and the crappy hygiene and the genetics… my grandmother, who grew up in Alberta during the Great Depression, had lost all of her teeth before she was twenty. Mom’s having bone density problems as well…

But I’m actually kind of okay right now. I think I was expecting to feel like I was kicked in the face as I left the Dentist office… but I didn’t. I actually felt Better… not great, but a little better from when I went in, and filming the event was the difference. The Dentist and the Assistant were cool with me doing what I did, in fact the Dentist actually suggested the best angle for shooting.

I am going to write this, just to get it out of the way… my Dentist is Smoking hot. Like HAWah-T Hot. There. It’s out in the open. She’s funny and professional and fantastic at her job but damn… anyway. Yes, I am holding a camera while she digs a tooth out of my skull… I almost missed getting the tooth, I thought she took it away then when I realized it was on my chest she grabbed it… I need some kind of Production Assistant for these things.


The Extraction… a Salted Lithium Production

The other little victory was about photos… a friend of mine asked me around Christmas to take pictures of him and his girlfriend’s family. The mother/grandmother was in town from Alberta and it was the first time in years the whole family had been under one roof. I did it, but I’ve been nervous ever since.

It was the first time I’ve used the SLR in over a year, the lighting was shit, there was a room full of people I didn’t know and here I was with all of this Responsibility. I actually got sick the next night because I thought I had fucked the whole thing. So Dean brought the photos (144) over this afternoon and they turned out fantastic. It was like I almost knew what I was doing… then we cranked up the Judas Priest and played Twisted Metal Black on the PS2 for a couple of hours.

I lost a tooth, something I’ve had for thirty-seven years, but I think I won the day.

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...thanks.

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Posted in Bipolar, Bipolar Disease, Bipolar Disorder, Clinical Depression, crazy people with no pants, Dentist, Depression, Health, Humor, Humour, Lithium, Living With Depression, Living With Manic Depression, Manic Depression, Poverty, Punk, YouTube | 10 Comments

When Relying On Small Victories To Move Through Depression There’s A Very Real Risk The Small Defeats Will Carry Us Under

Posted on January 7, 2008 by Gabriel...

Caring for yourself, looking after your physical health, just isn’t a priority for someone who constantly wants to die. It wasn’t like I was in pain, my teeth were usually in pretty good shape, but I wasn’t flossing or rinsing or brushing three times a day either. In fact, it’s a little difficult to afford Fluoride Rinse and Mouthwash when you’ve only got $120 in available cash at the beginning of the month, and Food Banks don’t give out mouth-care products.
“…The Little Things Get Neglected”; Something I wrote last Spring

“Lithium mouth”, or Lithium as a cause of rotting teeth, is an Urban Legend… probably started by the Followers of X3nu. Lithium can have an effect on the amount of saliva generated in your mouth. Which, in layman’s terms, means “having a dry mouth.” This is probably due to its being a salt… but I’m not a scientist. So if you’re taking Lithium drink some water.
…Something that was explained to me by very smart people.

I started feeling down… bad, depressed, blah, grey, whatever, just after Christmas. Actually it was a month before Christmas, but the days before and after Christmas were pretty good. Wait… no, it was earlier, maybe August.

Yeah, there were a few days in September where I was doing okay but August and October sucked… then most of December. So I guess I started feeling… ‘grey’ back in August. No… wait a minute… there was last Spring and early Summer which sucked pretty bad leading up to a couple of not so bad days in July just before those goodish couple of days in September. There was a month in the early Spring, I think it was March, which went pretty well… I think it was March. I know January of 2007 I was recovering from some pretty traumatic shit from the Summer and Fall of 2006. How far back, exactly, do I have to reach into my memory to find… something?

We need to be able to find small victories, little moments we can lose ourselves in so we can fight against the voice in our head telling us what a huge fucking failure we’ve become because we couldn’t stop failing over the years and decades which make up our lives. Sometimes we stop seeing those victories… or the space between the last one and now just gets too long to remember. If I was an addict and in a program like AA or NA, this would be the time when I should call my sponsor.

I was sitting in my mom’s car, driving back from the Dentist about a month ago. And I was trying to find the right word to describe how I felt. But I couldn’t. The Dentist had just told me there was no hope for one of my teeth, and very little hope for another. And if I wanted to save the second tooth I’d have to work at it… brush multiple times per day, floss deep, use baking soda and hydrogen peroxide, gargle with salt water. If I wanted to save the tooth.

So I bought the baking soda and the hydrogen peroxide… if I wanted to save the tooth all I had to do was try. And I didn’t try. On Friday of last week I got an infection on the first tooth. On Saturday the second tooth came out. On Wednesday of next week the infected tooth will be extracted. On the way back, with gauze in my mouth soaking up the blood from the new hole in my face, I figured out the word I was looking for… defeated. I was feeling… I have been feeling defeated.

I’m not sure… maybe, maybe I’ve felt like this before. But my memory sucks large right now so it’s basically impossible to find any historical context. I think I’ve felt like this before but lacked the word. But it’s not the feeling which is bothering me… there’s something more. It’s giving up. I feel like I’ve given up on some things. By next week I may or may not have lost two teeth, but I didn’t even try to save them. I looked at the tools for a couple of months and I knew the risks and what was at stake…

And it wasn’t like I was doing Behaviour B knowing I was supposed to be doing Behaviour A, it was me not doing anything. It’s not the pills or the treatment, I’m not suggesting I’m in immediate danger of stopping either… and I still see a future but I think it may be the type or quality of that future which is pushing me deeper into Grey.

I have to eat cold mushy food for the next few days, then again for a week after the next tooth comes out. My mouth is in a lot of pain right now… no it’s not, only when I chew. Or drink. Or yawn. Then there are two more teeth the dentist says might have to come out… those two would make six since last Spring. It just feels like I can get through the depressing depression shit, but then people I care about are fucking off, or I’m damaging my foot, or my printer won’t work, or I erase two-years of edits for my book, or the leg on my chair is missing its rubber stopper so now I have to write while on a slant, or a bunch of photos come out blurred, or my teeth are falling out…

I don’t Know what’s going on… I have assumptions of course, and little theories why I feel like this. I think a lot of it has to do with the teeth, of course. But also because I’m still not sure about the whole Living Thing. I still Have a future, I’m pretty sure of that… but just because I’m not suicidal anymore doesn’t mean I think my future is worth living through. Considering the effects long term depression, tooth loss and inflammation through infections have on heart disease said future is getting a lot shorter. So maybe I’m not taking care of myself as a kind of slow, semi-methodical quasi-suicide. Or, maybe I’m not taking care of myself because I haven’t learnt how. But if it’s the latter the time to learn this shit is rapidly running out.

How the Fuck does a thirty-seven year old dude Not know how to take care of his teeth? How can I, knowing the consequences, not do everything I can to save what I’ve got left?

Holy fuck… as much as I feel Grey, like I’m fading, as much as I feel some clarity from the Disease, I also feel like I’m breaking down.

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...thanks.

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Posted in Bipolar, Bipolar Disease, Bipolar Disorder, Classic, Clinical Depression, crazy people with no pants, Dentist, Health, Living With Depression, Living With Manic Depression, Manic Depression, Poverty | 17 Comments

No Post Day: Back On Schedule

Posted on January 3, 2008 by Gabriel...


“Painted By Numbers”; The Sounds
let me know if the YouTube isn’t available.

I may have ended up sleep deprived and with a slightly smaller tooth… and my desk chair now leans a little to the back and right, but I did survive.

This was the first Christmas in a few years where all of the action took place in my parents home. Recently we’ve been renting a Bed & Breakfast and having Them cook dinner and opening up presents on Their floor. Which has been odd. Originally the idea was for my brother and I to take over Christmas responsibilities, but he lives in a basement in Toronto and between the dishes and the dust there’s really no room for a tree in my apartment.

So that wasn’t happening. Plus the B&B was booked this year. So my step-father divvied up the cooking responsibilities, and he did most of the Christmas shopping and driving around so mom wouldn’t get stressed out… and it ended up being really great. I think people were really grateful to be together in a Home rather than a Business, even if it is owned by mom’s friend. Mom’s mom actually commented on how tasty the food was… and it was.


Christmas Morning Fingers… from my family to yours.

The coolest present I received this year was a book my mom put together of her mom’s recipes… it’s 200 pages with some family memories of their/our favourite dishes (her relishes are fucking insane-good), and some photos of my grandmother growing up. The pages are photocopies of my grandmother’s original written notes. And, because mom registered it with an ISSN number, there are copies in the National Library of Canada.

If my grandmother had human feelings, or could replicate them as she can her other human features, I’m sure she would have cried. Or said thanks.

So… my question for anyone willing to answer (all the cool kids do it) is:

What was the most touching gift you’ve ever given? OR, what was the most touching gift you’ve ever Thought you’ve given but was almost immediately discarded by the bastard you gave it to?

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...thanks.

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Posted in BiPolar Christmas, crazy people with no pants, Depression And Christmas, Health, Humor, Humour, Lithium, No Post Day, Punk, YouTube | 10 Comments

Have You Ever Felt A Pain So Powerful So Heavy You Collapse I’ve Never Had To Knock On Wood But I Know Someone Who Has

Posted on December 29, 2007 by Gabriel...

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Have you ever been close to tragedy, Or been close to folks who have? Have you ever felt a pain so powerful, So heavy you collapse? I’ve never had to knock on wood, But I know someone who has… Which makes me wonder if I could.

Have you ever had the odds stacked up so high, You need a strength most don’t possess? Or has it ever come down to do or die, You’ve got to rise above the rest? I’ve never had to knock on wood, But I know someone who has… Which makes me wonder if I could, It makes me wonder if…

I’m not a coward, I’ve just never been tested. I’d like to think that if I was I would pass… Look at the tested and think there but for the grace go. I’m afraid of what I might find out, I’ve never had to knock on wood But I know someone who has, Which makes me wonder if I could.
“The Impression That I Get”; The Mighty Mighty Bosstones

What the fuck is it with us? Even when we have a support network, even when we’ve spent time and energy actually developing a support network, why is it at the first sign of trouble we just dump the whole fucking thing and head for the nearest closet where we can wallow in our misery?

At least four people in my blogroll have either, over the past six weeks, dealt with Tragedy by shutting themselves away from the people directly around them or abandoning their blogs, or both. One of them, right now, has decided stopping his medication is the best way to deal with the death of someone close to them. Which is the dumbest fucking response anyone could ever make.

There’s a tendency to start thinking these blogs are primarily meant for Others to read rather than as places for Us to write about the stuff we need to work out… so when Shit happens we end up breaking off important connections as well as giving up an important outlet which we can use to work the Shit out. If writing is how you work stuff out then don’t forget to write about the stuff you need to work out. Somewhere.*

Look… people don’t work through the Stages of Grief by writing on a blog. But the actions surrounding the blog can be therapeutic. When we’re in the suck fest that is Grief we need structure, we need a basic framework so our physical self can get out of the way of our mental stuff. You need to get out of bed, you need to wash, you need to get dressed, you need to sit with a coffee, you need a cigarette, you need to look out the window and see some movement, you need to see some proof of Life.

And if you post on a regular basis and it has become part of your regular routine then, yeah, you need to post and check stuff out online. Cutting yourself off from the people around you is not an answer. Cutting yourself off from something which has made you happy over the past months and even years makes no sense either. I’m not saying Interact with people who leave little messages, or even those who leave insightful responses, I’m suggesting — strongly — it’s the interaction of the blog Itself which is important.

You need to do the things you normally do, otherwise you begin to tell yourself you really don’t do anything. And in times of Grief we need people interacting with us in any way possible. We need a hand on our shoulder, but if it’s available sometimes we need an email in All Caps telling us to WAKE THE FUCK UP and get back into treatment so you can deal with this Shit from a position of strength… sometimes we just need a funny video from YouTube. But we’re not going to get those if we abandon the support network.

Besides… this is the new FaceSpace Blogger Social Paradigm people, we’re reaching across the planet looking for people and companionship we can’t find down the street because people like Us are hard to find… well This is it, This is who We are. You’re the alcoholic, depressed and occasionally suicidal neighbour I’ve chosen to get to know, and I’m yours, and you’re someone else’s and together we’re a support network for each other.

So do not, ever, hesitate to send an All Caps email and a funny YouTube to someone you think is in trouble. And don’t be afraid to look for them.

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...thanks.

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Posted in Bipolar, BiPolar Christmas, Bipolar Disease, Bipolar Disorder, Classic, Clinical Depression, crazy people with no pants, Depression And Christmas, Health, Intervention, Lithium, Living With Depression, Living With Manic Depression, Manic Depression, Punk, Salted Truths, YouTube | 18 Comments

In Defence Of Scrooge

Posted on December 25, 2007 by Gabriel...

“Despite a commonly held myth that the Christmas season has the highest suicide rate of all the seasons, studies have proven that across North America, suicide rates are actually lower at that time of year. Studies suggest that while the holidays can bring up some very difficult emotions, they also tend to evoke feelings of familial bonds and these feelings may act as a buffer against suicide.”
The Canadian Mental Health Association

So I’m watching the Greatest Christmas movie ever made, Die Hard, and flipping over to one which freaked me out just enough when I was a kid I haven’t watched it all the way through since — A Christmas Carol. It was the colourized Ted Turner Edition, so just to heighten the freakishness everyone’s wearing pastels and 1850’s coal-oil soaked London looks like 1985 Miami.

But I must have caught it at just the right — or wrong — commercial breaks because I didn’t see the movie as a condemnation of Scrooge, or even his Lifestyle… when the Ghosts started popping up, especially the Christmas Past Dude, the movie actually offers perfectly sound reasoning for Scrooge’s behaviour.

Scrooge’s mom died during childbirth, so his father resented him. When Scrooge was old enough — four or five — his old man sent Scrooge away to school in an attempt to get rid of the kid Forever and Ever. While he was a child the only friend Scrooge had was his Sister. His sister died giving birth to a son, who Scrooge resented forever and ever… the Nephew comes back later on in the story as a poor, but happy Dude.

Scrooge, still a Christmas Lover despite everything but moving closer to the Dark Side, moves to the Big City and gets a job as a clerk of some kind. At this point he meets and gets engaged to Alice, a chick who thinks it’s a virtue to be poor. She and Scrooge are very happy together for a few years. When Scrooge attains a certain level of success she breaks up with him… Scrooge says “[I’ve] struggled to be better than [I] was.” She says “you’ve changed, here’s the ring, fuck off.”

At this point Scrooge swears off personal relationships except the one with his business partner, Jacob Marley. Years later, after being told Marley is not long for this earth, Scrooge tells his clerk there’s no point rushing to Jacob’s bedside because “we’ve all got to die, Cratchit”.

It seems as though his entire early life was just one kick to the balls after another… in some Historical context I get how Scrooge is seen as the Really Bad Dude. The beginning of the Industrial Revolution was not a kind time for the Working Man. But even in that context Scrooge is a sympathetic character. I always thought, just from watching the Muppet Version and reading some of the book, Scrooge was meant to be a character without a soul and the Ghosts were trying to give him one.

But Scrooge was a decent Dude, Life had just taken everything from him… even though they’re basically the same character, Scrooge definitely is not Henry “scurvy little spider” Potter from “A Wonderful Life”. That’s a fucker who should die for sure.

One thing which I noticed which I’m not sure is Really there or not was towards the end, while he was hanging with the Ghost of Christmas Present, there were a few comments which could be interpreted as antisemitic… like when ghost says “you’ve chosen not to have Him in your heart”. If I’m getting the interpretation right the comments are to be expected, of course, given the time and the career Scrooge had taken.

Just as an aside, by far the biggest Christmas miracle of them all has to be when LAPD Sgt. Al Powell puts five shots into the torso of the ‘presumed to be dead’ Euro-trash Terrorist, thus saving John and Holly McClane at the end of Die Hard.

God bless us, every one.

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...thanks.

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Posted in Bipolar, BiPolar Christmas, Bipolar Disease, Bipolar Disorder, Clinical Depression, crazy people with no pants, Depression, Depression And Christmas, Health, Humor, Humour, Inappropriate Humour Day, Lithium, Living With Depression, Living With Manic Depression, Manic Depression, Old men in red suits, Punk | 8 Comments