Category: realpolitik

Out of the foggy night: Overmedication and abandonment issues

Isy / / brainiac, CRPS knock-on effects, neurotransmitters, realpolitik, tasty words

I was overmedicated on mixed psychoactives (in plain English, my doctors had me on too many pills for CRPS) and, at the beginning of February, I ditched most of them. The following weeks were pretty hideous in an interesting way, as my brain’s natural chemistry struggled with the messy extrication and departure of the pharmaceuticals.

It feels like washing my dirty laundry to say this, but I suspect I’m being too finicky: LOTS of people get overmedicated by well-meaning medicos who don’t talk to each other.

The pills I stopped were SSRIs and SNRIs. (I can’t remember which was which.) The upside to this class of medication is that it specifically relieves nerve pain, in addition to helping lift depression. (I wrote an article, buried in my archives, about the tiny handful of neurotransmitters, and how each one has many jobs. Serotonin, for instance, helps digest protein in the gut; dopamine mediates decisions. I’ll dig it out and post it on the Biowizardry blog.)

When you have CRPS and you’re overmedicated on neurotransmitter Reuptake Inhibitors (of whatever flavor), your brain is in the toilet and there’s no way to tell which mental blurch is due to drugs and which one is CRPS. I couldn’t always tell how well I was thinking, though I kept trying anyway. Perceiving how I felt underneath it all was like trying to determine the shape of a bomb while it’s still in the box. I was usually clear about what I remembered and what I wasn’t sure about… but just try getting anyone to believe you when they already know that your brain is not firing on all four cylinders.

There’s a lot of grey area in the grey matter, when you’re overmedicated and have CRPS.

I’m not sure how much more crap there is to clear out, but I know I’m a lot clearer about what’s going on right now. I look back on the past two years with some dismay, as I try to rebuild the relationships I dented, and (most painfully) try to understand why those who should have known better had simply abandoned me to that foggy night.

[photo credit http://www.flickr.com/photos/jfraissi/2165047274/]

But anyway.

I am remarkably clear, now, about what I remember and what is nothing but a sudden hole in my mind. I’m clear about whether I can think right now or not. I’m able to feel the brain crank up and crank down, so I can communicate to others, “I can do this!” or “Gotta stop now!” And, for the first time in years, I can get something done on some sort of schedule. Not a consistent or reliable schedule, not to any sort of clock, but just to know that I CAN do something is quite a step. I’ll take it and be thankful!

I still have CRPS. My medication is still problematic. I still have sudden, random, Swiss-cheese-like holes in my memory and cognition. BUT — and it’s a big but! — there is no grey area in my grey matter any more. I know if I know, and I know if I don’t know.

And that’s information I intend to use.

Query: where have all the good studies gone?

Isy / / brainiac, realpolitik, science, studies

I wonder why so much money gets thrown at the same basic studies over and over again. My personal hair-puller is the ones that call for subjects “with chronic CRPS, with only one affected limb.” They must be testing the same dozen people over and over and over again. Wait, they can’t, because if the subjects have chronic CRPS with only one limb affected, they’re either about to get better or much worse.

It’s all very well to keep re-proving a treatment until a level of acceptance is reached, but there are more effective and cheaper avenues — and much richer ones — that are passed by, in favor of flogging a handful of horses who are, at best, unconscious.

It has been too long since significant effort has gone into much more basic research: by and large, we’re still working with the scientific equivalent of the horse collar, when it comes to pain management — not the Ferrari. In fact, it’s unclear to me why we’re still fixated on management, when we need to think in terms of cure. Most chronic pain is needless.

If we knew more about the relevant neurochemistry and cellular metabolism, we’d be in a MUCH better position to figure out when NSAIDS, lido, shock, acupuncture, spinal cord stim, or ketamine comas will work, and when they’ll just be another doorway into hell.

Can you imagine how much money — and misery, and time — it would save to have a short list of things to try, based not on each doctor’s semi-religious leanings or equipment contracts, but based on each body’s signal framework and chemical signature?

Dreaming is free. Studies require funding. Follow the money, and unfortunately the reasons behind all this brutal silliness become clear.

No choice but integrity

Isy / / humor, opinion, perspective, realpolitik

I’m a walking, talking, babbling, ceaseless argument for the fact that sexuality is not a choice. Integrity is — though that’s not my point here.

As a sometime lesbian and appalled heterosexual, I’m well aware that the combination of qualities I adore are hopelessly rare in either sex:

Men are disgusting… Women are unbearable… And sadly, as friend Lori remarked, “There is no third sex… And goats are too chatty.”

But that’s not the point either, though there’s plenty of material there — and some of it’s even original. This is about nonconsensual sexuality: the understanding that most of us don’t choose our orientation.

To what do I attribute my own unforeseen, profound internal shift?

Brain damage. Obviously.

The answers that sound less flippant are somewhat less convincing to me. However, CRPS’s extensive disruption of the endocrine system (that is, system of hormone-secreting organs) is already amply demonstrated. I think that’s it.

When I was more lesbian, and other people were being silly about that, I used to ask, “Why would I ‘choose’ to be something that has led several companies not to hire me, my own government to refuse to let me marry despite my being such a good citizen, and at least one individual to try to kill me in cold blood?”

Now, nobody gets silly about my orientation, but I ask myself the complementary questions. They are a lot more trivial, but also much more intransigent: “Why would I ‘choose’ to be relentlessly attracted to a sex as ill-mannered as chimps, as emotionally corrupt as usurers, and as stable as malaria?”

But hey, nobody’s tried to kill me for being straight; same-sex marriage is heading towards legality; and I’m unhireable for reasons that have nothing to do with my orientation. If I were less lonely and more selfless, I would take these changes as major victories. (As it is, it’s more like a no-score win.)

But, at New Year’s, I’ll toast those victories nonetheless, in the names of all my spiritual kindred who can be a bit safer, a bit freer, a bit better recognized for being good people, good spouses, and good citizens.

Hope to hear your voices, and see your glasses, raised with mine! Who knows, I might even run into my own better half in 2011. Whatever that person turns out to be.

Julian Assange and Swedish herrings (red)

Isy / / brainiac, critical thinking, realpolitik

The Interpol-ation of Julian Assange, the most widely-known of the Wikileaks founders, is a thoroughgoing exercise in logical fallacies and predatory smoke-screening.

First, the fallacies…

Straw man: The sex was consensual, though it may have gotten out of hand in one case. Charges weren’t brought until the two girlfriends found out about each other. They backed and forthed about whether they wanted to press charges or not. (Whether large men in dark suits paid them furtive visits is open to debate.)

Selective memory: Sweden has a shamefully high rate of unexamined, unpursued, unprosecuted cases of true rape — that is, forced sex, nonconsensual sex, sex with minors. Why pursue this sexual “irregularity” over condom use and infidelity?

Entrapment: Why give him direct permission to leave the country, at his explicit request, then send the Rottweilers after him?

These charges are not designed to bring someone down. They’re designed to tie him up. How else were they going to keep tabs on someone who can afford to dress like that without having a fixed address?

The real harm was not done by Assange. That imputes too much leverage to a self-infatuated ho with mad hash skillz.

The U.S. was hoist by its own sloppy petard. The State Department and the Military decided to share records, without sharing precautions. Let’s look at that, shall we?

The U.S. State Department, whose core purpose is the pursuit and use of social and political information, has an educational requirement involving alphabet soup behind your name; a staggering array of tests; and a final examination for *entry-level positions* that takes days to complete. The computers are subject to high levels of security, including an inability to even accept removable media.

The U.S. Military has three things it wants to know: What’s your name? Got a pulse? All your parts attached? And some people scrape by on the third try.

The military develops some of the fiercest computer security in the world, but guess what? Removable media! Oh, and all that State Department data … accessible by anybody with technical skills. Guess what the Army and Air Force specifically teach? Technical skills, maybe?

Well done.

So here’s the setup:

Tons, masses, heaps of socio-political data …
– collected on the basis of strict secrecy
– sometimes at terrible personal risk
– on people and issues who remain viable and valuable;

Gets passed by the State Dept. …
– from graduate-prepared, carefully-selected, highly-socialized personnel
– in an environment with lojack and hijack protections in place
– with no meaningful guarantees of its continued protection;

To the U.S. Military,
– an organization with minimal entry requirements
– and a post-adolescent social environment
– staffed by technically competent personnel.

Doesn’t that seem kind of silly to you? I realize most of us are not masters-prepared, much less possessed of a law degree, but pure common sense would make that unthinkable. Wouldn’t it?

Now, as for the leaky boy …

While being accused of being gay is a common put-down these days, in the U.S. Military this accusation could lead to someone losing his job, his housing situation, his social network, and his entire career path. Feel powerless, much?

They’re isolating, freezing, and tormenting an idiot kid over the staggering, monumental idiocy of the Military implementation of secrecy AND the State Department’s lack of due diligence.

They’re hunting down and marginalizing a tired, aging hack who misjudged the value of his own charms, over his willingness to advertise that kind of collective stupidity.

There were a whole lot of much brighter, much better-educated, far better-informed people who fucked up on a simply staggering scale before Assange or that kid ever got into this.

Where are the courts martial? Where are the heads that should be rolling out the state dept. doors and down the steps — bouncing on the way?

The real damage, sadly, is to the wider world. The US has lost credibitlity and leverage on the world stage to a degree unmatched by anything since the initial invasion of Iraq. That, folks, is the real tragedy: we have demonstrated that we are poisonous even to our most important friends.

How many more will die for _this_ mistake, eh?

B. C. E. takes on new meaning

Isy / / critical thinking, humor, loved ones, perspective, realpolitik, tasty words

Les was a chef before he was born. He helped with a BAADS Thanksgiving some years ago as a gesture of kindness, and found that — as he remarked to a friend helping out yesterday — “boy, these disabled people sure can cook!”

I laughed out loud, losing several points for coolness — but I regained them later with my Drunken Sweet Potatoes.

A weighty label like “disabled” sweeps everything before it. Literally, everything… before it. Most of us had full lives before we got a crippling illness or injury; we all have full lives now, even when much of that fullness has to do with how much harder simple things are.

But everything we did, or were, _before_ or _besides_ being [whatever] is still with us. Abled-bodied people rarely seem to think of that themselves: the term “disabled” makes our able-ness seem surprising.

Back in the late 1980’s, the socially-preferred term was moving from “disabled” to “handicapped”. This explanation from a kindly woman explained why: “It’s not correct to say I’m dis-abled, because I’m _able_ to do many different things. But I have to deal with added burdens to get the same things done that a normal person does, so I’m _handicapped_.”

Horses carry extra weight in a race, golfers get extra points on their score, and racers get penalties added to their times to handicap them. Though life isn’t a sport I entered with any thought of competition (and that’s where the analogy falls down), it’s true that I do carry a burden which makes it harder to complete the same tasks that anyone does.

But I can still cook one heck of a pan of Drunken Sweet Potatoes. Not everyone is, ahem, able to do that.

I’m definitely handicapped. I’m not sure I’m disabled. I can still write, and often remain coherent through a whole paragraph. That’s an ability!

B. C. E. — in my case, that means Before Crippling Event — I could play the flute pretty well, too. I can’t even hold the darn thing for more than a few seconds, now; the handicap there is too great to overcome.

Sadly, it’s still true that — whatever we call it — this is a nasty, harsh reality which everyone handles poorly sooner or later; the terms will continue to revolve as we try to keep from getting too stuck in our collective thinking.

As the next decade turns, I expect the terminology to change again. And then again a decade after that. And again and again, as people age and grow and try to loosen up their thinking. Rock on, I say! — We could all use a little more change.

Housing crisis? Really?

Isy / / opinion, perspective, realpolitik

More and more in the news about the feculent mess our mortgage system
is in. Housing is too costly & too scarce. Empty houses are hanging
very heavy on bankers’ hands. Office buildings stand vacant for years.
Oh dear.

Hmm.. How about making those vacant spaces available to the homeless?
In return for a little maintenance & hygeine, plus paying for whatever
water & electricity they use, you could have a huge impact on the most
vulnerable poor. Think of all the women, kids, even men who could get
enough peace, safety and stability to get back on their feet & back
into the economic life.

You could also keep empty homes from turning into eyesores. I know
quite a few squatters in organized squats, some of them there with the
owners’ knowledge, and they have had a significant effect on one or
two rotting neighborhoods because they simply won’t let their squat
rot, and they won’t let the real trash take over. It definitely keeps
the tone from getting worse & it keeps the drugs & violence down. I
guess squatters can be kinda scary — they are sure protective of
their squats.

When the place becomes rented or sold, they have to move, but should
get 30 days’ notice. Seems fair in return for how much money & trouble
they’ve saved!

A landowning friend of mine said squatters moved in, crapped on the
new carpet, tore up the repainted walls, and so forth. In my ideal
world, those squatters would be blacklisted & left to homeless
shelters. Squatters who decide to use your space should have basic
standards, and if they have some living-security in exchange,
should be ready & willing to take basic care of the place. Not that
you won’t want to bring in cleaners afterwards, but that costs
much less than re-refitting the whole interior!

In Egypt, they had boabs (two syllables: bo-ab) who lived in building
sites or abandoned residences to keep things from falling apart & keep
thieves and scavengers away. They weren’t paid much but they got free
rent. (Had some living across the street in a half-demolished house
that was tied up in litigation; nice neighbors, helped me with my
Arabic.) Since they were one step away from being on the streets, they
knew the underground and would let the neighbors know if there were
thieves in the neighborhood, if rabies had shown up in the area, or if
the Army was going to come around shooting loose dogs (their idea of
rabies control.)

Makes a lot of sense to me. So the rich neighborhood had a blue-collar
family in their midst — they made us all a little more comfortable,
overall. I’d love to have a “boab community” here!

My contribution to the statistics

Isy / / critical thinking, realpolitik

Here’s an anecdote to chill the blood.

On my 21st birthday (1987, so imagine the hair, shoulderpads & pegged
jeans), I went out with a mixed group of women friends — girly-girls,
tomboys, jocks; up & down the Kinsey scale.

After closing down the bar, we were talking over where to go to
continue the party. A drunk guy got thrown out of a car that pulled
over nearby. He eyeballed us — kissy noises, “mm-mmh!”, etc.; saw the
“oh f*ck off, you pathetic turd” implied by the way we closed him out;
then suddenly noticed we had no men with us.

That was a problem. Didn’t matter what we were, a bunch of women out
alone had to be evil bitches, or worse — lesbians. Verbal ugliness
ensued. It was disgusting.

One girl thought 2 years of karate lessons made it ok to give him the
fight he was looking for. She put up her dukes, moved him out into the
street, and they started in.

He was a shitty fighter, and drunk. But then something happened. He
went at her with an upraised fist, and another woman grabbed her from
behind and pulled her back — by the arms. WTF?

Somehow, in the midst of a sudden stillness, I got between parked
cars, moved into the street, and stationed myself between him and my
helpless cohort, in the time it took him to take 1.5 steps. I felt his
arm touch my upraised forearm, saw his face melt in shock… And
suddenly the sound came back on.

Behind me, the arm-grabber was screaming, “He’s got a knife! He’s got
a knife!”

Shyt-head and I took a careful step back from each other. Then
another. Then I took one more, turned and ran back to the bar,
screaming about a man with a knife — not realizing that my face was
pouring blood, flying behind me in drops and strings, drenching my
clothes, squishing in my shoe.

Drama, blanched faces, people frozen by shock — but behind my back,
two cute chubby poofters pulled themselves together, ran that crazy
sumbitch down and, unarmed but relentless, kept him penned up in a
dead end until the cops came by. (I’m told it takes balls to be a
queen. I agree.)

My testimony put him away. He was about to go free, even though this
was at least his 3rd such attack, until the judge asked if I had
anything to say. Once I finished, there was a long silence. The judge
sent him down.

He was out by my next birthday.

Let me reiterate: it didn’t matter who we were. He truly believed anti-
gay speech was a justification for murder.

It doesn’t matter who you are. It’s your issue, too. Nobody is immune
to the effects of hatred. Nobody is unkillable.

*The only way to make your world safer is to make hatred less
interesting, less acceptable, and less valid.* That’s it.

It’s astounding how much creative thought and social energy gets freed
up when that happens. Everyone blossoms — regardless of their own
bent. The most “normal” people remark on how good it is to feel so
free. Weird, unexpected, but true. I’ll dig up the studies about that.

Living lean: mulling cost and value

Isy / / critical thinking, perspective, realpolitik, what works

I’ve gotten pretty good at the
fine art of stretching a dollar so tight that if I let go, the
rebound could snap my nose off.

It dawned on me that I’ve gotten good at living cheap, though it’s
hard to tell because I’m so often out of money. It’s not because I
don’t know how to handle it, it’s that I really am that poor. Poor in
money, anyway.

Apothegm for today: EVERYTHING HAS VALUE. ALMOST EVERYTHING HAS COST.

You’d be amazed at how little you can spend per ounce of enjoyment
when you separate the ideas of “value” and “cost.”

This is probably the first most important thing I’ve done: notice what
I enjoy. Fortunately, I don’t enjoy the act of spending money.

The first question pops up: “Why am I starting with noticing
pleasant experiences? Isn’t this about saving money? Isn’t saving
money hard? Like ‘ow ow ow stop it it hurts’ kind of hard?”

Answer: because it works. Unless I win the lottery tomorrow, I’m
living lean for the long haul. That means 2 things:

1. I need a strong foundation. Most of us formed basic ideas about
money early on, and if it hasn’t worked out for me by now, it’s time
to build different foundations.
2. I need good habits. Spreadsheets, check registers, calculators,
even banking software have been around a long time. None of those
tools are rocket science. If they aren’t being used effectively by
now, no amount of “you shoulds” is going to make them work for me.

My Dad, a real genius about money, gave me two pieces of advice that
rocked my world:
1. Make time and money for entertainment. You have to have that. No
budget, however austere, should be without it for more than a couple
weeks.
2. Include a fudge-factor because, for one thing, costs always change
and for another, you’re not always right.

We’re concentrating on #1 right now. I want to figure out both how to
cost, and how to value, that supremely important item: entertainment.

This has taken time to evolve. My awareness shifts as I get
used to noticing what you enjoy. I find my tastes shifting,
since some “pleasures” are really a matter of programming or habit,
and don’t stack up well to things I naturally find pleasing.

No pressure, no expectation, no agenda — just freeing up my mental
habits so I can take a fresh look at seemingly ordinary things.

There’s a serendipitous realization that has been happening as I get better at
noticing happiness, beauty, flavor, pleasure and contentment: I get
better at feeling it, too. Don’t think about that too much right now,
though. I’m working on distinguishing between value and cost.

“No optional pain!” is my guiding
philosophy.

Keeping in mind that this is an intellectual exercise, and exercise
should happen now & then but not constantly.

Remembering to figure out associated costs, like transport, drinks, and
surcharges. I vary between being exact and giving a
ballpark figure — both approaches have their benefits.

With this, as with any skill, it’s all a matter of time — weeks,
months, maybe years. But that time will pass anyway; wouldn’t I
rather be better-prepared at the end of it?

Standards

Isy / / opinion, realpolitik, satire

Driving requires licensure, even though you can only knock off a few people at a time & do maybe half a million dollars worth of damage.
Carrying a gun requires licensure, even though you can shoot only a handful of your work or school’s population before getting taken down.
But what about things that allow you to screw things up for generations? I wonder about how recklessly we leap into things like abusive relationships and electing con artists. (Almost a tautology.)
Without changing existing syllabi (or syllabuses), and with only minor logistical adjustments, it seems promising to institute the following requirements:
* Before voting, passing a 9th-grade civics exam and a course in basic logic & critical thinking. Refreshers required every 4 years, increasing to 6 years after age 35.
* On entering your first sexual relationship, passing an 8th-grade course in effective communication… regardless of how old — or young — both partners are at the time. (Because of the strange nature of some pederasts, this should bring some child-abuse cases to light; a desirable side-effect.)
* Before moving in together, passing high-school level home economics (including hygeine) AND a basic financial management course. Everyone does both. Divide the tasks afterwards if you like.
* Before getting married, passing a course in negotiation & mediation. Also adult versions of safety, hygeine, and personal financial management.
* Before breeding, a 6-month intensive course in parenting (including models from Dr. Spock to Attachment Parenting) and developmental psychology. Also, screening for psychoses and serious personality disorders — not to exclude them (there’s no eliminating these from the gene pool) but to provide pertinent training and prepare appropriate backup and support for nutcase, partner, and child.
Wackos raise some very gifted & capable kids, so excluding them from the parenting pool doesn’t make sense as a social strategy.
But don’t worry, I’m not going to have kids.

Campaign cash: Who’s spending where in 2010

Isy / / realpolitik, useful links

Information is a beautiful thing.
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Campaign cash: Who’s spending where in 2010
:08 AM EDT Tuesday, August 24, 2010
The Post offers an interactive table to track campaign spending by interest groups and political parties in the 2010 midterm elections.
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http://link.email.washingtonpost.com/r/E5QODK/JIITMS/2V5ICZ/SALAPD/VAIOB/ID/t
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——————–
br> I hope the link works.