The attacking objects signify unwanted change impending. If I allow myself to become irritated by these unruly occurrences of everyday life, I know I can be headed toward depression. I must be on the watch for my reaction, which if it leads to angry confrontation and unreasonable reaction depression is not far behind. Often it is too late to prevent. If I have an unreasonable response to an inanimate object, I have slipped off the precipice into the abyss of depression.  There in this valley of despair I will wallow, all because of some lifeless thing.

 Doors are my biggest foe. I have three doors in my house that are out to get me. The front door sticks, and the key won’t turn in the lock.  The door to the outside from the laundry area always impedes my way to the dog food can and the washing machine; and door to my studio in the basement is a second sticking barrier. With the front door I am often there working the key in the lock to no avail and shoving against the door with my shoulder to get the damn thing to open. When it doesn’t open, I am left furious on the outside, cursing this foe. I will attack it, kick it, pound it, and scream at it. The reasoning person would walk away, cool off, and return with sanity to approach the problem again. Sometimes I am that reasoning person. I walk away and return. The door decides to cooperate and opens with only a little resistance.

 Then there are times especially if it is wet and rain has swollen the wood, or it just decides to be very uncooperative when the door will not open. I refuse to give up. My frustration goes into the stratosphere. I am violently working the key and shoving with all my might to open the cursed portal. Once it released its stubborn hold, the door flew open; I stumbled over the threshold and was hurled into the interior, down three steps beyond the doorway and onto the floor in a seething heap. Powered by adrenalin, I jumped up and attacked the door, slamming it with so much force the whole house shook. I was then so worked up, I had to lie down to regain composure, and when I got up I felt terribly depressed.  Life I will say doesn’t work for me, and I will play all my hateful tapes, pushing myself into a further forecast of doom.

 I will describe a couple more implacable foes. One is particular toilet seat, which makes taking a pee a challenge. It is one of those new kind of seats made for ladies in which the seat slowly descend whenever the seat is put up.  You come into the bathroom, lift the seat for a relieving discharge, and the seat slowly descends interrupting preparations. You push the seat back up.  The hollow oval slowly descends again. Now you are trying to unzip your pants, and pull out your equipment one hand while pushing the seat up with the other. The seat will not stay up. You slam it back. It descends faster. You slam it back again. Now it is getting imperative to get the damn cover up. You try to control yourself in several ways. You try a determined gentle push. The seat still descends and you are in danger of peeing all over the place. So finally you hold up the seat with one hand and pee with the other all the while spewing foul language at this infernal object. Once done and you are lucky to have all the pee hit the mark of the bowl, you try to close the seat. The seat stays up. With clenched hand and a tightened jaw I walk out of the bathroom. My head is full of negative thoughts.

 Keys are the most infernal objects. There are times I can’t find them. I search the whole house to no avail. I reconstruct where last I was when I saw them, again to no avail. As the time passes I become more agitated. I search the house again. I go through all my clothes, pants, jackets, shirts, and even shoes. I accuse the dog of stealing them, but I know that is ridiculous. Keys aren’t editable and therefore are of no interest to the canine. I search my car. I look under my car. I follow the trail from my car to the house. Nothing! I am ready to explode. I search the house again. Papers and stuff are flying. My wife tells me to calm down. That only infuriates me more. More belongings get thrown about. The refrigerator innards get tossed about because once I found my keys there.  Cushions fly. Doors slam. The inanimate object conspiracy has struck again. If I am lucky, I by chance find the keys in the one place I haven’t looked. Because of my distress, I overlooked this one place. The keys are often by the telephone under the phone book, but I don’t remember that. I only remember that this frightful event makes me feel bad in the very bosom of my being.  All my negative energy has been released and I will tumble into a short – sometimes long- depression.

 Thus if I find myself becoming irritable with any inanimate object, I must try to put it in perspective. This can be not just a small occurrence, but a sign post of possible depression.  If I allow myself to continue the irritation, I will surely fall. I must fight again the tendency to become ruffled. I must think positive thoughts; try positive actions. Thus if I can be awake and aware, the likelihood of a depressed incident is lessened. There are the times however when I am not in control. I am not awake to my situation. I end up burning in the fire of mental hell. The inanimate objects have won their war with me.  

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                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       I have uploaded a segment of video from my talk “The bipolar coaster – riding the edge of madness with two minds” given February 17th, 2010 to the Temecula Valley California chapter of NAMI. The video snipet deals with the symptoms of bipolar disorder and the accompanying sense of otherness, or the second self.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2LTsFZCbR3k&layer_token=78dbbc7d2dd904bc

                                          The Strange Case of  Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson , who supposedly wrote this novella under the influence of cocaine, strikes me as a perfect metaphor for the states I became under the influence of my magic potion, crack cocaine; except that  my Hyde was not male, but female. Carlotta appeared when ever I smoked the substance, and she prowled the streets of San Francisco looking for evil and to quench her lust, just like Mr. Hyde.

 Loaded on crack I would dress up in drag in an outfit all black becoming Carlotta Hyde; her costume symbolizing her search for sex and violence. She loved a black leather corset worn outside a black silk blouse, a pleated black shirt, black nylons with the seam up the back, and black five inch heals. She was a big woman six foot six in the high heels. Her jewelry was cheap silver and leather, studded choker and cuffs, dangling silver discs for earrings, and a chain for a belt.  The accessories were gothic and like a dominatrix. Her hair was orange red like the fire that burned within her. The make-up matched the hair; red bleeding to white eye shadow below arched black brows and above eyes surrounded with black liner with long black lashes; cheeks red rouged, and lips painted bright red. All dolled up Carlotta visited the gay bars and roamed the streets of San Francisco and Los Angeles looking for action.

 She carried in her silvery sequined purse an eight inch steel ice pick. Carlotta would say the pick was for protection, but the reality of the weapon was that she wished to use on some interfering lout. On dark side streets, just like Mr. Hyde, this latter day Mrs. Hyde went looking for trouble. Occasionally she found it, and got to flash her pick, but never got the chance to actually use it. The mere fact of walking the streets in full costume armed was trill enough. The adrenaline was running full tilt. Each encounter, each dark corner a blast of energy.

  But what was Carlotta doing? Was she trying to kill Carl? Carl, who didn’t want to live, was sad, and without energy, was sometimes a willing victim, at others he fought against the plan. I, Carl, would try to stop taking my transformative potion. I would struggle to say no. I failed because I was depressed when not loaded. Getting loaded lifted me out of the deep whole of disalusion and gave me the energy I didn’t have in that lethargic state.  I had to take more and the more I took the more I wanted to be Mrs. Hyde, until I wanted to be Mrs. Hyde all the time. Just like Dr. Jekyll I could not control Hyde. I could not stop being my Hyde, or prevent the actions when Hyde.

  I would hide away in my private lodgings to be this person, who was a more dynamic personality. Like Jekyll said before his suicide I, Carl, felt like a charlatan, while Mrs. Hyde was, to partly quote Stevenson, “a genuine being years younger and far more energetic than his more sociable self.” This was my mental illness fully manifest. Two being were warring in one body, fighting with bipolar disorder. I have always felt like two beings: one male, left handed, given to fits of depression, and known to the outside world and one female, right handed, given to fits of mania, and unknown to the outside world. Without drugs, this was a private and silent duality.

 There was an arch to these circumstances. The more I became Mrs. Carlotta Hyde, the less it worked. At some point in the history of my addiction, the penalty in health I was paying to smoke crack got so bad, that it to triggered depression.  My joints would ache. I had terrible sweats all the time. I coughed up a gray black mucus. I could never sleep. I was racked with guilt. My body was becoming as worn out as my mind. Becoming Carlotta became a pain worse than the pain of being Carl. This was bad in that it lead me to a final suicide attempt to kill Carl, not Carlotta. Carlotta wanted to live. As bad a girl as she was, She loved life. It was her voice I listened too on the bridge when I was going to jump off. She convinced me to live that there was still something out there for me worth taking another day’s breath. She gave me hope.  Curious circumstance it was the self who lead the dangerous life, saved the self who hated life.

 After my aborted suicide attempt, I checked into the mental hospital. I got help. I ended my addiction to crack cocaine and my cross-dressing adventures. Carlotta Hyde no longer comes out. Carlotta is internalized again and has become my muse. She is a gentile lady, who likes to contemplate and talk to me when I drive my vehicle or ruminate on life’s meaning. I ask for her advice. She gives me wise counsel like one who has experimented in all things good and bad. Unlike Jekyll my Hyde is not evil incarnate, but an alternate feminine sensibility to my male reality. I no longer operate as it is said in Romans 7:20 “Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.”  I function as one. My sins are as one, but I have a counselor and friend as advisor, Carlotta, who I now think of as the vehicle to God.   I can rejoice in the insights she gives to me a happily married heterosexual man.

I received this ezine review which I thought was so right on the mark that I wanted to put it up on my wedsite.

Author, Carlton Davis has written a fascinating and revealing new book, bipolar bare: My Life’s Journey With Mental Disorder. Davis’ touching memoir comes from living for 40 years in the shadow of an illness called bipolar disorder – an illness that went undiagnosed for years and caused untold pain and trauma for Davis and those around him.

bipolar bare doesn’t merely touch on the mental disorder to define it – the book actually delves into the deepest, darkest areas of the mind and the secret parts of it that only someone like Davis, who has actually lived through it, can communicate with accuracy and sensitivity.

From thoughts of suicide to dealing with various personalities, including the unforgettable Carlotta, Davis’ alter-ego and muse, Davis confronts his fears and memories of the past. His relationship with Carlotta was so deep and vastly disturbing that Davis went so far as to cross-dress in order to be her.

Carlotta emerged to become Davis’ teacher and spirit – enlightening him about his childhood and helping him to understand it. Eventually, Davis became empowered by the knowledge that his relationship with Carlotta brought to his mind and was able to conquer the haunting memories and proceed with a productive and happy life.

Thirty-two intense, graphical displays (including Carlotta) sprinkled in Davis’ book, bipolar bare, are essential to understanding “the evil lurking in the minds of men.” Powerful images and the words accompanying them are ghoulish, but the message is potent. Carlton Davis came to understand the grip that the disease had on his mind and now others can benefit from his natural ability to write and explain his experience in a creative and amazing voice.

After five years of painstaking exploration into his past, Davis finally finished his memoir, bipolar bare. It’s a book that’s destined to help others who have gone through similar nightmares – and for those with bipolar loved ones who have driven them to the brink of despair and frustration.

Carlton Davis makes it clear to his readers that the road to recovery from bipolar disorder isn’t easy and must be approached with an open and creative mind. bipolar bare: My Life’s Journey With Mental Disorder is a compelling read that will leave you awestruck from beginning to end.

Whether you’re a person who seeks recovery from this devastating disorder, someone who wants to gain a better understanding of bipolar mental disorder or simply want to read a fascinating book, bipolar bare: My Life’s Journey With Mental Disorder will satisfy your needs and leave you enthralled.

 This is an old article I wrote, which I have been thinking about lately.

“For that person must not suppose that a double minded man

  unstable in all his ways will receive anything from the lord.”

I came upon this passage in the Letter of James in the Bible and found it deeply disturbing, for it describes me, a person with Bipolar Disorder. Bipolar Disorder, which is defined as an oscillation between poles of depression and mania, or two polar opposites, which could be taken as two alternate types of mind. One is high. One is low. One is super happy. One is extremely sad. Although this is much too simple an explanation for the mental conditions, I will use it for the purpose of its stated duality. Assume for the moment, bipolar could mean there are two minds.

 If this is true, I am truly double minded, and this double mind is more than just the dilemma spoken of in this passage, where on one hand a man or woman wants to believe in God, but on the other doubts of God’s existence. Although I can fit myself in this category, my double mind is a true two mindedness. There is one side that is left handed; one side that is right handed. One side that is female. One side that is male. One side is positive; one side, negative. One side goes one way; the other, another. It is a dual of opposites, a constant contradiction of self, tiring, and maddening.  Life is a ride between beings that can plummet the abyss of despair and shoot to the zenith of joy.

It is as if I am in passage between sequential beings. My two selves don’t exist simultaneously. I switch back and forth between the two. For example I wrote some time ago about two Carls: one who was competent, compassionate, and calm and the other who was conflicted, compulsive, and crazed. They were not the same being. Calm, competent, and compassionate Carl appears after crazed, conflicted, and compulsive Carl gets completely beaten up by a severe down. I believe that crazed Carl becomes so weakened by the attacks of what I call “the Black Brain,” where the right hemisphere of the brain actually hurts and all thoughts are negative, the body is stiff, and complete exhaustion is a steady state for days even weeks that crazy Carl is unable to exert his personality. It will be days, weeks, or even months before crazy Carl’s energy is restored and he can express his force. This is weird.

In the meantime calm Carl has free reign to display his character. The people I worked with at this time in my life use to say to me they would “wonder which Carl would show up on any given day, a mean demanding Carl, or an agreeable caring Carl.” In situations where crazed Carl would lose his temper in the stress of a situation, or at the error of an individual, calm Carl would react coolly, seeking with compassion a way of resolution. He would not try to bully. He did not pick up the papers and throw them across the room. He did not storm away shouting expletives. Calm Carl handles a situation with skill and got his team members to do what he needed without rancor. Calm Carl is a good manager. He gives a helping hand with a smile. He understands others, and can work with their weaknesses, accepts them, and gives others strength. Crazed Carl is a dictator. He says lead, follow, or get out of my way. He accepts no incompetence. Neither self will stick around for long. Gradually calm Carl is worn down, stress takes its toll, and crazed Carl reappears, until the next severe depression. It is a gradual cycle from one Carl to the other.  It is confusing to other people. It is confusing to him.

Could it not be that to be bipolar is more than just an extreme variation in mood, but an alteration in selves? The mind could be moving its locus of dominance from one hemisphere to another. Humans, I think, are naturally a dual-minded species. They have two hemispheres in their brains, which act in concert with one another, but generally one is dominant. A person, who is right-handed and right-eyed, operates mainly out of the left hemisphere of the brain. A person, who is left-handed and left-eyed, operates mainly out of the right hemisphere of the brain. Apparently there is this cross wiring in the brain. What if the cross wiring is messed up? That is a whole other question I am incapable of answering since I am no scientist. I am only a left-handed person, who is also capable of being right-handed. When tired I pick up a pencil and begin to draw or write with my other hand. All I know is I have always thought differently as if the wiring in my brain does not operate by the standard rules. This has to be why I suffer from Bipolar Disorder, why I have periods of super severe depression, “Attacks of the Black Brain” as I call them, where I have to go to bed for periods time in order to recover, why I have periods of supreme exhilaration when I will stay up for days writing painting, sculpting, and designing, and why I often feel like I am two different people.

Another way I am two people is that I carry on a dialogue in my head.  I think many people carry on dialogues with a secret opposite in their head. It was said the Lincoln did this. He too suffered periods to severe depression. Mine began as a child. I spoke with my Teddy Bear. The bear became an Indian, a cowboy, a sea captain, and finally a female. The female had many different names. In the end she became Carlotta.  I think of her as my muse. Carlotta has many opinions, and gives me her remarks as we travel along. Often she criticizes my driving. “That was a stupid move.” I hear her say when I cut off another driver on the freeway. She is usually right. “Yeah, you were right that time, I will reply.” I am not hearing voices. Ours is a silent dialogue, but I can imagine what it would sounds like, and what the look in her eyes would be.  I imagined her for my book “bipolar bare” and we carried on many dialogues about my disease.

Carlotta even became a dominant personality when I was addicted to drugs. At the nadir of my affliction with Bipolar Disorder, when I had given up hope of recovery from depression and drug addiction, I became Carlotta. I crossed dressed and went out on the town. I was my other self. I loved this descent into the most self destructive behavior I have ever done. I wanted to kill Carlton, and I used Carlotta as a way to do it. The only reason it did not succeed was because Carlotta, the female me, actually liked living too much and would not let me commit suicide. As much as I tried to kill myself through drug overdoses or sexual endangerment, Carlotta held me back. Each time at the brink of a deathly situation, she would say no. She wants to live, and would walk away, leaving negative Carlton to suffer failure once again. It sounds complicated. It was. Only because Carlotta was draped in the female mask and carried an ice pick in her purse for protection could she be strong. The Carlton self was weak and ready to give into a mugging or one last excessive toke of crack. The adventurer Carlotta laughed, “Didn’t we just have fun?” she would say. Carlton would cry, “Why did you let it happen? Why didn’t you let me die?” “I love life too much,” would be her reply.

Dr. Fredric Schiffer M.D wrote a book Of Two Minds that contends that each human has two minds. Based on the knowledge that the left hemisphere controls the right eye and the right hemisphere controls the left eye, he devised experiments using special glasses to evoke responses from one hemisphere alone. I made a pair of his special glasses and tried to redo his experiments. I wasn’t very successful, but I had fun trying. Schiffer’s theory is that many people’s difficulties in life, depression, anxiety, and the feeling of worthlessness are the manifestation of an immature traumatized brain hemisphere influencing a mature brain hemisphere. The traumatized hemisphere works in the background of the dominant mind frustrating that hemispheres ability to function as a complete whole, and integrated entity. The immature mind undermines the mature mind through its view. Thus the complete person is threatened by life’s circumstances.

I found Schiffer’s hypothesis challenging and that it dovetailed with my own sense of two selves, but I don’t know if I agree that one self is a mature self and the other self, immature.  However there may be something to his theory of trauma as causation for the division of selves. There being a dominant mind and a recessive mind also makes sense to me. I have several dominant Carls in opposition to several recessive selves. I think of the left-handed me as a dominant personality with a right-handed me as a recessive personality. The right-handed I appears quite often and quite unexpectedly. I will reach for something with my right hand then wonder why I didn’t use my left. There is crazy Carl who is a dominant personality. He is full of energy, strong willed, and dynamic. He gets attention. He is also prone to fits of anger, and tantrums. Maybe this is an immature self that has never grown up. Crazy Carl is opposed by calm Carl. Calm compassionate and competent Carl I have seen a lot more of lately since I have taken bipolar medication. My psychiatrist believes he is the grown up Carl. So maybe these dual selves are now under chemical control. Then there is Carlotta, the female self of Carlton. My muse always talks to me. She never goes away, but she is truly recessive now. I can call her up at a moment’s notice, and she will give me an opinion. Her physical presence is gone with the drug addiction. She’s OK with that.  She tells me she likes Florida where she now lives and can lie in the sun nearly bare.

And Carlton, he thinks his two minds are working pretty well together these days. He does however dispute James. Two minds are a common occurrence, especially among the mentally ill. Having two minds gives a special perspective to those given the gift of having it, and if you can use them without going mad, that is the difficult part, maybe you can make a special contribution to the world.  A loving God would not deny a double- minded man, for he to is two too human.

Guest Blog: http://www.fascinatingauthors.com/blog/guest-blog-carl-davis-bipolar-bare/

Favorite Chapter: http://www.fascinatingauthors.com/blog/favorite-chapter-carlton-davis-bipolar-bare/

Author Interview: http://www.fascinatingauthors.com/interviews/carl-davis-bipolar-bare/

Author profile: http://www.fascinatingauthors.com/blog/author-profile-carl-davis-bipolar-bare/

I was one of those who experienced Quetipine Fumarate – the actual pharmaceutical name of the brand name Seroquel – this way. Seroquel made me lethargic. I felt as if a giant hand were holding me down keeping me from who I was. It was as if an enormous psychic blanket had been placed over me muffling all my responses to the world around me. I was calm, but inwardly dead. The capacity for compassion, love, enthusiasm, or real joy diminished to the point of nothingness. Yet I wasn’t depressed anymore. I had become a zombie.

 The description of sedation as a prominent side effect of the drug is very apt, but also misleading. Recognized as the most sedating of all the antipsychotic drugs, Seroquel makes you more than merely sleepy, it produces a state of otherness. Seroquel produces a state of extreme calm, which verses on the comatose. A zombie replaced the real me.  It is this state on non-self that another prominent side effect of Seroquel manifests itself. Suicidal thoughts come to the user. Life lived in an insulated bubble of non-feeling and non-caring, seems hardly worthwhile. Therefore suicidal thought which arose during the mania and depression experienced before the drug, come into play on the drug. It is a nasty circular series of thoughts. Is this the kind of reaction that should be possible on a drug heavily advertised on Television? I think not.

This is the real question I have. Should advertising a drug as powerful, with as many side effects -some of them lethal- as Seroquel be done on TV? The media makes the drug appear as safe and acceptable as aspirin simply by its regular occurrence. AstraZeneca makes itself appear as a great benefactor even as the warning labels are announced on advertisement. The warnings are off-hand and dismissed as rare occurrences that should not discourage the use of the drug. AstraZeneca is even such a good corporate patron, that they will help you get this drug even if you can’t afford it.  We are not told about huge volume of sales of this drug, which was more than 3 billion dollars a year in 2006. We are not told how further usage will only increase the high profitability of this already highly profitable drug.

There exists opposition to Seroquel’s pervasive usage. Law firms are suing the pharmaceutical company over the prescription of the drug, which they say is more harmful to the user than even personality change and a possibility of suicidal thought. Howard L. Nations, Attorneys at law in Texas, are suing AstraZenca over the drug’s side effect of extreme weight gain – an all too common side effect, which I experienced also- that leads to diabetes. Perhaps if the Nations video showing how Seroquel usage leads from becoming fat to the disease of diabetes were shown on television subsequent to the AstraZenca ad, there would be some balance in the media between the promoters and the protesters.

My position is clear, I am cynical about and opposed to these advertisements. These big pharmaceutical companies are the biggest drug pushers in the country and they do it legally. Personally I think the local crack dealer is more reliable and trust worthy. We know it all about profit to local pusher. AstraZeneca wraps itself in the cloak of social responsibility and concern, when the bottom line is profit. How many people can you hook on this psycho-active drug? How many doctors can you fool with your claims of a miracle break through against depression? Yes, I would agree there is a need for these drugs, but they need to be handled very carefully and not just distributed like so much candy.  Here take this it will improve your depression. Little do you know what the experienced effect of Seroquel is until you have gained thirty pounds, felt like a wet blanket, and wondering if live is worthwhile. Or maybe you will get TD (tartive dyskinesa) which is the uncontrollable moment of the face, the tongue, or other body part. This is an effect which may not go away after use is stopped. AstraZeneca doesn’t tell this. It’s not good for Seroquel’s bottom line.

 “P” lives in another city. She and I became friends when I worked in this city on a project for two years and attended a bipolar support meeting every Thursday night. She was doing well then. A lively interesting intellectual whose academic career had come undone because of her bipolar disorder, “P” survived teaching foreign languages to many private clients. “P” showed me the insider aspects of the city I was living in. We had wonderful dinners together, walks around the city sights, and visits to its unknown delights. Our conversations were animated and creative. Her mind was broad, engaged many cultures, and was stimulated by the eight languages that she speaks. I valued her insights and perspective on life.

 When I left the city, “P” and I remained friends. On my infrequent returns to the city I would always look her up and find out how she was doing. We engaged in long distance telephone conversations. After not hearing from “P” for almost a year, “P” called me up and told me her circumstances had changed.  Never completely convinced that she was bipolar, and finding a new boyfriend who was against her taking the medications she took when I knew her in the city, “P” stopped her medication.  Her mood swings began anew. She ended up in the past year hospitalized five times. I was astounded, and scared for her, but “P” was confident that her troubles were behind her and she had reached a new plateau of balance and harmony. She was going to go to Brazil to become a doctor of alternative medicine. We talked at length about her plans, which seemed well formulated and advanced. She had even purchased a ticket to Rio de Janeiro.

 “P”called me again a week later and wanted to talk about her boyfriend.  What about her plans to go to Brazil I asked? “Oh that,” she replied, “will still happen, but first I must resolve my relationship with my boyfriend.”  “P” went on to ask my advice about this man whom she apparently loved but who had no real job.  He sometimes worked as a massage therapist. He mainly hung around smoking dope and borrowing money from her. I told her I thought the boyfriend was an evil influence. He got “P” high on a regular basis. He took money from “P’s” purse, she told me. He got her to stop taking her meds. She should get rid of him, I said. “I don’t know that I can do that,” she replied.

 I didn’t hear from “P” for several weeks. She called me again, this time hysterical. The boyfriend had raped her and stolen her car, she said. Everyone was out to get her. She kept repeating the accusation over and over again. I tried to calm her down and gradually, by telling her that she could go to the police and make her accusation formally if she could do it in a level frame of mind, she had a chance of making the rape charge stick. “P” calmed down. I said I would call her back the next day. I called the next day and reached “P’s” mother — “P” lives with her mother, a retired lawyer, the mother told me “P” had gone into the hospital again after an altercation with the police in front of their home, where she was yelling and screaming at the cops for not arresting her boyfriend for rape.

 I could not connect with “P” at the hospital, and she was released within two days. I don’t know the circumstances of her hold or her release, but she again called me and left a message on my phone. The message was very garbled and given in a very hoarse tone of voice. I could not determine what she was saying. My wife and I left for a mini-vacation over the Thanksgiving holiday and were gone for four days. In that time “P” left three messages on my cell phone. I could not get these messages, since we were out of cell phone range in the high Sierra Mountains. When I returned I listened to the messages. They were a sad indication of increasing disorder and mania

 In the first message “P” was grandly confident and full of racing thoughts. She referred to herself as the head of the Communist Party in the City and she was about to make a film about its politics. She was also busily working on her book on feminist culture in the third world, and about to take over the control of the AutoCAD drawings for the extension of the metro rail project in her city, if the conspirators against her did not stop her efforts.  She would soon flee the city for South America — Cuba perhaps or Rio — but mainly she wanted to stay home and be left alone, but the neighbors were all working against her. Her boyfriend was plotting to steal more things from her house and rape her so she wasn’t safe at home. My message service cut “P’s” diatribe off at this point.

 The second message from “P” was totally different. She was crying and she sounded horrible. She says the neighbors are all against her. She hadn’t sleep the previous night . She doesn’t want to go to Brazil. She just wants to stay home, but every one is ganging up on her. The voice becomes garbled, tearful, and sobbing. “P” keeps mentioning 21 loony bins, but I can’t figure out the sentences. I am unable to understand a word of what she is saying. It all trails off into tears then silence.

 “P” in the final message is angry. She refers to herself as Dr. P. Gandhi, whom they will assassinate. My mother will rape me she says and put me in the loony bin. “I am going to sue my old employer for civil harassment. No! I am going to take over their firm and fire all their employees. I will fire Lena, Sue, and Neal. I will force my mother out of the house. You and your wife and your daughter can come and live in my house. I will make it your home. You can take over with me the old firm where I used to work. Then I will go to Brazil and become a doctor of medicine. Everyone will respect me! The police won’t challenge me! No more loony bins!” “P’s” voice has become shrill and loud. She is screaming into the phone. I have to hold it away from my ear. She goes on and on repeating the same story again and again. Her mother will rape her. They will assassinate her. Finally my phone message time runs out and the mad message ends. I don’t return her calls that day. I waited until next to call.

 “P’s” mother answered the phone. “P” had been taken to the county mental hospital she said. As I put down the phone, I realized how lucky I am to be free from the demons of Bipolar Disorder, but how I have to be forever vigilant to against their return. I can not forget the pain for one moment that mania and depression will cause. I can not stop taking the medication that makes my recovery possible.

What has all this “prevention” done? It has built an infrastructure of penalty, starting with the police, the federal narcotics agencies, and the border patrol. This infrastructure continues through the court system with prosecutors and judges, to the prison system with its guards and administrators. A huge and expensive system depends on keeping drugs illegal, and in its grasp are hundreds of thousands prisoners. America has more people in jail than any other Western nation, and most of these people are incarcerated on drug offenses. There are men and women in prison for ten to twenty years for smoking a joint and having weed in their possession. The situation is surreal and ridiculous.

 It is time America wakes up and rethink a system that is un-winnable, dehumanizing, and ineffective. The war on drugs is un-winnable. The government is not going to stamp out supply as long as there is demand. This is a basic lesson of capitalism, which we, the great proponents of capitalism, forget. Demand is not going to go away. A fundamental aspect of human nature for some people is to seek an altered state of mind . Thus we have alcohol and alcoholism. In the 1920s we tried to stamp out alcohol use through prohibition, and what did we get? We got gangterism, mobs, and wild profit. What we have today is our modern-day version of prohibition is gangterism, mobs, and wild profit. Where there is a way to supply demand it will be found and has been found, as can be testified to in the USA, Mexico, South America, Europe, Russia, and Afghanistan.

 The present situation is dehumanizing. Imprisoning upwards  of half a million people on drug-related offenses is cruel and inhumane. Most  of these people are in jail for possession and use, not for sale and distribution. Our society has penalized the users more heavily than the perpetrators. Often these users are the mentally ill . We have simply swept under the table a problem with which we are uncomfortable. The problem is purposeless people either sidelined through lack of education, intelligence, upbringing, poverty, or mental condition. We let them languish in jail. We storehouse society’s problems in great barbed wire-enclosed gulags. Los Angeles’ county jail is the largest mental hospital in America.

 Most of all our approach to the problem of drug abuse is ineffective. The abuse of drugs has not slowed or lessened, but has grown and worsened. We may have changed to some limited degree the kind of drug abuse – crack addiction is down, while methamphetamine rises, straight cocaine use reappears, but heroin addiction declines. Marijuana smoking continues a steady rise and the plant continues a steady increase in potency. The criminal activity around drug sales persists. Gang violence in our cities has not gone away. The prisons remain the major training ground for recruits to the world of drug mobs. We have set up the perfect system to perpetuate the drug culture by making armies of persons with no hope of employment in anything other than a criminal activity. We have made that criminal activity so lucrative that a person would be foolish not to follow in the path for which he has been so well trained.

 The addict has choices but is limited by resources and is far less well funded than the penalty system. Money for police, prosecution, and imprisonment far outweighs money available for rehabilitation, treatment, and prevention. Rehabilitation centers are generally small and located in less than desirable neighborhoods because nice communities don’t want them close at hand. Treatment is underfunded and limited to programs like the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous, which are inexpensive to operate and only successful in one third of the cases handled. Prevention in terms of anti-drug promotion as a health issue is hardly done at all. This is not like the anti-smoking campaign which focuses on the cancer-causing effects of the habit. Drug abuse prevention focuses on absolute prohibition, which does little or no good in talking about the health issues.

 The problem of drug abuse has been attacked from the wrong end. Drug abuse is a health issue. It should be treated as such and funded as such.  Where should that funding come from? The drug industry itself. Legalizing and taxing drugs appropriately would do four major things. One: it would allow the market to operate on the supply and demand for these mind altering chemicals, just as it does for alcohol. Two: It would remove gangsterism from the equation of its distribution. Three: it would dismantle the infrastructure of penalization. Four: the money used from heavy taxation of drugs appropriate to the severity of their negative effects would fund the health system needed to combat its usage.

To allow the free market to operate on drugs within a system of taxation would take the United States out of the eradication business. We would stop trying to keep Afghanistan’s farmers from growing poppies. We would stop trying to rid Columbia of its coca leaf plantations.  Marijuana could be farmed in the United States legally.  What might happen with this scenario? There would be a glut of drugs at first. Prices would drop drastically.

Taxation would have to be set low initially and rise gradually over the years to encourage legitimate suppliers to bring cocaine into the country at recognized ports and sold at recognized quality. Illegal supply would still have be pursued by authorities for capture. Street drugs would be discouraged through publicity campaigns demeaning and demonstrating the low quality of the product. Domestic production of legal marijuana would be treated similarly with quality standards established just like for scotch whiskey and wine. Illegal distribution would be discouraged with fines, and other civil penalties, as in the case with moonshine.

Without the veil of illegality gangsterism should fade. Legitimate corporations, sensing that profit can be made in the sale and promotion of legal drug sales, will get into the business. That does not mean that some gangsters will not become legitimate businesses, they probably will, but the violence seen over the sale and distribution of the product should go away. Where would the drugs be distributed? The drug store, I believe. One would go to a Walgreen’s, a Sav-On, or a CVS. and purchase a pack of sensemilla #3 Red Dragon cigarettes for $50.00 a packet, or a loaded crack pipe for $10.00 with 5 refills at $5.00 each – we are assuming here that the glut of supply has vastly reduced price on this street commodity, or a clean and loaded heroin needle in a paper wrapping for $25.00.  Needles might have a $2 dollar return value.  Four lines of cocaine in small re-sealable plastic vial might cost you $100.00 for the very best stuff in the designer label. The house brand could save you 20 bucks.  All of these products would come with a black box label telling you the side effects of the drug: impaired judgment, blurred vision, heart palpitations, even death, etc, etc.

 The need for the great bureaucracy of penalty should wane. Fewer police will be needed to patrol against the sale and distribution of narcotics. Fewer prosecutors and judges will be needed to put the offenders in jail, since there will no longer be offenders. Most beneficial of all fewer prisons, prison guards, and prison administrators will be needed to incarcerate the guilty. This should thin out the prison population in America immensely, reducing the demand for more expensive prison facilities, and freeing money for other infrastructure. Infrastructure like roads and bridges which induce value in the society can be concentrated on, rather than human warehouse facilities which add no value to the society at large.

 The funds garnered from taxation of narcotics and saved from expenditure by not prosecuting drug offenses can now be spent were it ought to be spent — in treatment and prevention of the health problem. Major funding could be provided to research laboratories to understand the nature of chemical addiction and to find the chemical means to fight it. Major funding could be provided to treatment programs both traditional and experimental in fighting the drug problem. Understanding the nature of drug addiction and other health issues such as mental illness could be given proper priority. Campaigns, just like the anti-smoking campaigns, which focus on the dangers of cigarette smoke and the links to other diseases, can be created in a rational atmosphere, where the emphasis is not on jail and reputation destruction, but on the damage to brain, heart, lungs, liver, and other organs.

 The discussion about narcotic drugs needs to become rationalized and removed from hysteria. Narcotic drugs need not be seen as a criminal overrun of society. It is actually an ordinary problem we have allowed the media and the bureaucracy of penalty to spread a cloak of fear and insecurity, when level-headed thinking and calm assessment of what makes for  sense is required. A legal drug business could revitalize the tobacco industry. A legal drug business would provide a whole new profit center to American pharmaceutical companies.  Legalize narcotic drugs now.

I stumbled upon a Stumbleupon Stigma builder. Apparently there is in Toyko, Japan a themed restaurant called “Alcatraz.” The theme as recorded by photographer Rob Sheridon in his tourist set of photographs is a mental hospital. This mental hospital looks a lot like a prison, like Alcatraz so to speak. I guess to the Japanese mind a mental hospital and a prison are the same thing-bare light bulbs, prison bars, and hand prints of  the terrorized. The site can be seen with it labels at www.stumbleupon.com/s/#A03d6C/Rob-Sheridan.com/Tourist/Tokyo//

First of all the mentally disabled must dare to have higher expectations. They must dare to live on their own and have their own income. They need not be beaten down, and only be care receivers. With income and independence they are empowered.  A great stepping stone to this is asset building, which increases integration into the community, allows employment, benefit, and financial planning. None of this of course works alone. It is an investment in the long term, which is underpinned by three building blocks or goals: 1 education, 2 home ownership, 3 starting a business. Any one of these achievements is sufficient to empower a mentally ill person with the self-esteem necessary for full integration into the community. But one essential thing is required – Earnings above and beyond the disability benefit are necessary to put this plan into action.  In other words if you are totally disabled; can’t lift a finger to help yourself your sunk.

How many are that way? Not that many. Even if you can do some work, just a little, for a few hours a week, according to Tom Foley you can build wealth. Many people with disabilities worry that if they work at all, they will lose their benefits. According to WID this is not true. There are strategies that can prevent this. The first being the EARNED INCOME TAX CREDIT, which I gather assists folks with disabilities maintain their benefits while they make extra income on the side within limits. You should check this out with WID.

Then there is this thing called an IDA (Individual Development Account), which is a matched savings account set up for certain kinds of low income folks so they can do one of the three big goals: go to school; buy a house; or start a business. Different states have different IDA at different matching rates some match 1 to 1, some 2 to 1, some match higher. I tried to figure this out on the  WID site for the state of California and found most of the IDA where pretty limited in terms of who they served. Perhaps if you were a Pacific Asian with Mental Illness you could qualify for an IDA, in Southern California, but I didn’t see anything for a generic mentally ill person available. (This was under the publications portion of the site – Individual Development Account Questions and Answers- Question 7 which directed you to www.idanetwork.org )  As a quick comment on WID’s website, it has an overwhelming amount of information available, and like most such sites you need a lot of patience to dig out the information.

Using these two basic financial tools and several other items like a PAS (personal assistance support), which I won’t go into,  Mr. Foley was able to show how a person on disability with some earned income could build a nest egg for his/herself of over a quarter of a million dollars in under 30 years. This was impressive. I strongly suggest anyone interested in asset building that has a mental illness and is living on disability check the website www.wid.org  

I didn’t want to be tossed back.  I didn’t want to feel comfortable nestled in with my fellow round rocks.  I wanted my jagged edges back-the points and fragmented surfaces that made my rock interesting, that made my rock tumble in the currents of the stream. That action made me feel alive. I wanted my cracks, my crevices, my broken planes back.  I wanted to look as interesting dry as wet. I wanted my colored veins in my surface not to fade into a uniform grey with the rest of my granite. I wanted to be anything but ordinary. Medication made you ordinary- even less than ordinary. It made you round and flat.

I told my psychiatrist the situation was intolerable. I could not live this way, and she agreed. We worked with each other to find a solution. We tested different drugs and different dosages until we found a cocktail that worked – a cocktail that provides me the creativity I need to be me and yet the control over my manic-depression that keeps me safe. This prescription of many drugs we have to visit monthly to monitor if it is working properly. It generally is, but we have had to adjust the medication here and there to keep me steady.

Steady and creative is what I want. What I don’t want is what I had before — wild creativity (bouts of mania) that always ended in the deepest of depression, where I was in constant danger of suicide. What I have now is OK. It’s not perfect. I don’t get as high as I used to. I miss that, but I no longer get as depressed as I used to, either. I accept the trade-off. The top of the high is sliced off. The bottom of the low is cut-off. I will survive now. No more jumping or think about jumping off bridges. Fewer antics. Fewer confrontations. The jagged edges are a little less jagged. I still get to tumble in the stream, and I like that.

I shall not go gently into that good night, but like Dylan Thomas, I shall shriek against the dying of the light. It has been five months since I published the book I worked on for five years, designed, and self –published. It has sold a whopping 140 copies. I am now ranked over 1,000,000 an Amazon’s book list. They team my book with Terri Cheney’s Manic, a best-seller, which is ranked 15,000 on Amazon. You know the hype that says:  FREQUENTLY BOUGHT TOGETHER – customers buy this book with Manic: a Memoir by Terri Cheney and they show Terri Cheney’s Manic. This is a good deal for me, but not the deal I originally paid for.

I paid to be teamed with Amazon’s big best sellers in my category – memoirs/mental illness: The Unquiet Mind by Kay Redfield Jamison and Darkness Visible by William Styron. My contract was returned to me as un-fulfillable. Something about I had to select the books I wanted in the first 60 days of my contract with Book Surge, the self-publishing arm of Amazon. This “Buy X get Y” program was supposed to leverage the unknown author sales position by association with these famous books. I readily went for the program, which wasn’t cheap, and it was one of the reasons I selected Book Surge as my publishing company to begin with — because of its connection with Amazon. They say now I didn’t select within the allotted time period, but I can’t find that on my contract. Now I conclude going with Book Surge was not worth much as an investment.

Going the self-publishing route is pretty much like masturbating in public. Most people don’t pay any attention. A few do and may give you a good review. I have received good reviews. I have even won an award. I was a finalist in the National Indie Excellence Awards. But the big press, the big TV is such a long shot as to be almost impossible. That is why even mediocre authors with a publishing house behind them can sell a thousand books, and ones with a publishing house really pushing them can become best sellers.

Terri Cheney’s book, Manic, is in a second edition, and written over the front of it says “New York Times Best Seller.” This is a good book. It is well written and done in an interesting and engaging fashion, which doesn’t follow a timeline. Rather the chapters are episodic and meant to grab the reader following Terri, first from her suicide rape[U1] , through a decline to arrest and gradual recovery. We don’t know if the timeline follows the story line, but it doesn’t matter. The quality of the narrative takes over and briskly leads from place to place; swift sentence to swift telling sentence.

This is not a great book. It not lyric like Styron’s, nor analytic like the best of Jamison, but it is a good book. It deserved representation by Harpers. What I question is why I could not find the same kind of help. I tried to the point of hopeless[U2]  rejection, to conclusion if I wanted to see the work in print I had to self-publish. I said I would be satisfied if I sold one copy. I was wrong. I wanted more than that. I wanted my story to get out into the world. I thought it well spoken. Four reviews have said so.

 I honestly think my own work is not less than Terri Cheney’s. Has Amazon not compared it? What then is the difference?  Could it be Terri contacts? She[U3]  was after all an entertainment lawyer in the town of entertainment law. I sense an unfair advantage. The publishing house can get you a review in the Boston Globe, the Providence Journal, and the New York Times. Harpers can get you on TV. I can’t get the attention of any local media — not the LA Times – I tried to interest Steve Lopez to no avail — not even the Pasadena Star News or the Pasadena Weekly, my local papers. It is mean-spirited of me to think such thoughts, but unfortunately I do, as would anyone envious of the success of the represented author.

I am not ready to give up yet, but I am not hopeful. I shall soldier forward. The mountain of marketing for the lone self-published work — especially one that is a memoir about mental illness, is not an easy one to climb. I pick my way forward, mindful that I lose ground[U4]  everyday that I do not sell a book on the great Amazon list of books. My perspective has changed.  No longer do I think in terms of thousands, I think in terms of ones and twos. If I can just sell one, one more person might see and recommend a great story to someone else.

Book Review by Simon Barrett of Blogger News Network.  http://www.bloggernews.net/120728

A digg comment on the Simon Barrett review. http://digg.com/arts_culture/Book_Review_Bipolar_Bare_by_Carlton_Davis

Book Review by Vianna Renaud of TCM Reviews. http://tcm-ca.com/reviews/3115.html

Blogger News Review posted on GO articles. http://www.goarticles.com/cgi-bin/showa.cgi?C=1584868

Blogger News Network Radio Interview by Simon Barrett of Carl Davis. http://www.blogtalkradio.com/Simon-Barrett/2009/05/08/Carl-Davis

1. Connect with others
2. Stay Positive
3. Get Active Physically
4. Help Others
5. Get Enough Sleep
6. Create Joy and Satisfaction
7. Eat Well
8. Take Care of Your Spirit
9. Deal Better with Hard Times
10. Get Professional Help if You Need it

This whole program can be viewed in more depth at www.LiveYourLifeWell.org and a link to this site is located on the right hand side of my website.

Bill Babbitt stood at the podium and said the police told him he did the right thing when he turned in his brother Manny for the possible crime against a 78-year-old woman who died of a heart attack during an invasion of her home. The police officer said to Manny, a paranoid schizophrenic, “You are not going to go to the gas chamber or anything like that.” Bill Babbitt, a tall African-American, then began to cry in front of the standing room only audience in the San Francisco Hyatt Hotel, “that was before the prosecuting attorney,” he said through his tears, “got the case, and I became an impediment to his goal of getting the death penalty for my brother.”

The jury never got much information about Manny’s mental illness. They never heard about his head injury when he was a child, after which his behavior changed. They never heard about his trauma in the Vietnam War, where he fought in five major battles including the siege of Khe Sanh, was wounded and medevaced out on a helicopter on top of a pile of dead soldiers. Bill Babbitt’s voice rose in anger. “They didn’t hear about his later diagnosis after arrest for an armed robbery of two gas stations, where he was sent to Bridgewater State Hospital in Massachusetts, the mental hospital within the prison system, and he was diagnosed with PTSD and paranoid schizophrenia. The jurors didn’t get to hear from me, his brother Bill, talk about Manny when he came to California to stay with me, where his temper kept escalating, he always talked about the war, and he heard voices.” Bill grew quiet now and tears started to flow again. “Because his mental condition never became an issue in the trial Manny was convicted of murder and received the death penalty. California executed him at San Quentin in 1999.”

Bill Babbitt was helped away from the podium to his seat at the head table where he collapsed with his head in his arms. The hall was dead quiet. The moderator introduced a tall thin faced man in glasses, Joe Bruce, whose calm demeanor was a striking contrast with Bill Babbitt’s emotion but his story was equally  hair-raising. His son Willie murdered his mother, Amy, while psychotic, he said stoically.  

 At age 15, Willie, started to show disturbing behavior. A psychiatrist diagnosed Willie as bipolar. The doctor gave him anti-psychotic drugs and these had a positive effect, but by the time Willie was 21 something was seriously wrong. Willie was talking about how the CIA had planted stuff under his skin and people were following him. He had moved into the beginnings of a severe persistent mental illness, but his family could not convince him to go for help. After an incident described carefully by Mr. Bruce, where Willie pointed a firearm at friends, Willie was sent to the state hospital for evaluation. His father described him “as if a demon entered his body, like he was possessed.”

At the state hospital the medication calmed him down and he was released from the hospital because he was no longer a threat to anyone. Joe Bruce could not believe what he was hearing. He told the doctors and the judge that his son would go off the meds as soon as he was released and would again be a threat to himself or someone else. He was told there was nothing that could be done. Willie grew worse again, attacked his father, and was committed to another mental hospital, where he stayed three months. The same thing happened all over again. It was chilling to hear Mr. Bruce tell his tale.

“I told the doctor, ‘he is going to hurt or kill someone, and in all likelihood it is going to be her,’ and I pointed to my wife Amy”. Unmedicated, many months later, Willie murdered his mother by axing her to death. Maine does not have a death penalty. Willie was found guilty by reason of insanity and sent to a psychiatric hospital. “Now he gets the treatment he should have gotten years ago that would have prevented this tragedy in the first place. Willie realizes what he did, and he struggles with it daily. I told him that his mother and I forgive him.”

These two people along with Carla Jacob, whose sister-in-law murdered her mother, and Amanda and Nick Wilcox, whose 19-year-old daughter Laura was cut down at a mental health clinic by a paranoid schizophrenic, and whose advocacy created Laura’s Law in California gave testimony at special session entitled “Prevention, Not Execution: Eliminating the Death Penalty for People with Severe Mental Illness” at the NAMI Convention in San Francisco, Monday July 6, 2009. This was part of a program by NAMI in collaboration with MVFHR (Murder Victims Families for Human Rights) to promote legislation to eliminate the death penalty as an option in cases involving individuals with severe mental illness and to advocate for better mental health treatment and services before criminal justice involvement occurs.

At this symposium, a report entitled “Double Tragedies, Victims Speak Out Against the Death Penalty for People with Severe Mental Illness” was distributed. This is an important report. It includes all the voices identified above and many more. While nothing can capture the desperate emotion of Bill Babbitt or the stoic dignity of Joe Bruce the words in this report go a long way in creating a fuller picture of the horrible pain faced by the families of victims of murder by the severely mentally ill and the terrible guilt and suffering faced by the families of the ill killers, who for years tried to get help for their loved one and found a society unwilling to help because the mentally ill person had not yet committed a violent crime.

The Twin Towers LA

As the Wilcoxes say in this report “Our prisons are now filled with the mentally ill and in many instances the only way a person can receive proper mental health care is by committing a crime.”  The largest mental hospital in America is now reputed to be the Los Angeles County Jail. It is full of people who were untreated before they became violent, but whose families were crying out for help long before the crimes happened. I know personally of one case where a young delusional man murdered his girl friend. He is locked up in the Twin Towers (the local name for the LA County Jail) awaiting trial. His family tried for years to get him help, but was unsuccessful.

 What about the victims’ families?  The death of a loved one is stated as an earth-shattering event and an emotionally devastating experience, which can release uncontrollable anger.  I myself experienced something similar when my close friend Henry Millman was attacked from behind by two teenagers in a park and had his brain mashed in. A brilliant graduate student in French and Philosophy at Yale, Henry was turned into a vegetable. I wanted to kill the young perpetrators. I went to the police station with baseball bat intent on beating the two fourteen-year-olds to a pulp. I had to be restrained. I wanted to do something to mitigate the pain and anger I felt for my friend. There was nothing I could do. The Wilcoxes dealt with their pain and anguish by filing a wrongful death suit against county, which ultimately resulted in Laura’s Law in California. They wanted the county (in this case Nevada County) to acknowledge the harm done and apologize to them, and deliver a victim impact statement. They won the case and the county complied, but reluctantly.

 The genius of this MVFHR/NAMI program was to put the two sides together, and they could hear each other’s pain and emotional trauma. They jointly came to the conclusion that it serves no one to impose the death penalty on the severely mentally ill. This conversation of the two sides is well documented in the report Double Tragedies. I recommend everyone interested in this issue read this report which is available from:

                                                MVFHR

                                    2161 Massachusetts Ave.

                                  Cambridge, MA 02140 USA

                                                          www.mvfhr.org

                                             617-491-9600 

or you can connect to the report on line at http://www.nami.org/doubletragedies

The store was empty except for the young attendant, who apologized for being out of the bipolar doughnut. They were very popular she said. I wondered given the emptiness of the joint. She offered that I try their next most popular item, the “Massive Head Trauma Doughnut”. My plan for mayhem against the shop was fast fading in this young woman’s courteousness. I looked at the 13 doughnuts remaining in the tray between the lower layer of glazed apple fritters and the upper layer of banana cream pie doughnuts. They were big heavily glazed affairs oozing yellow filling at the side with a face made of two brown x’s for eyes, and a brown angle for the nose, and a brown squiggle for the mouth. Above one eye a glop of red filling burst through the surface of the doughnut. This was the massive head trauma. I said to the nurse I would have one of these doughnuts.

The other doughnuts weren’t so interestingly named. There was a butter nut, a cookie monster, a Mellow Drama, and several others whose names escape me. I ordered one mellow drama, a concoction of a French doughnut with rice crispies, glazing, and chocolate drizzle on top. The two doughnuts cost me over three dollars. I was glad I hadn’t ordered a dozen.

I looked around the shop. Indeed it was as the man in San Francisco at the NAMI conference had described the place to me. Everything in the shop made light of the seriousness of mental illness. On the wall behind the counter where the doughnuts are displayed a straight jacket is mounted. A group of plastic chairs is arranged in a circle near the entry door with a sign on wall that says “group therapy”. Small bad paintings on the walls depict all manners of psycho mayhem. One is named “cute killer”, a young woman with a knife dripping blood. In another is a smiling wide eyed woman in a strait jacket. The piece is called “All I need is a padded cell.” Next to the entry is a trash bin with a sign over it that says “Bates Motel.” Most demeaning of all is a little cubicle of three padded walls surrounding a chair with a chain across the front. This is called the padded cell.

With my purchased doughnuts I retreated out the door of this undistinguished storefront. All the place had from the outside was a small hand painted sign at the roof saying “Psycho Doughnuts” and a placard stuck to the door, which said “Open for Insanity.” There was no neon or anything grand. As a matter of fact the whole place was a rather cheap put on. I stood outside and watched the young attendant in her nurse’s outfit scurry about the interior. I wondered if I should throw my doughnuts at the door. I decided the act wasn’t worthy of my effort and headed south toward Los Angeles

After a while I became hungry. I bit into the Massive head trauma doughnut. What a sugar rush. This doughnut shouldn’t be called a psycho doughnut, but a cardiac arrest doughnut. I have never tasted such a sugar bomb in my life. The shop should be named Cardiac Arrest Doughnuts, but heart surgeons would put a stop to that. The name would be closer the reality of the product. I tried the other doughnut, the Mellow Drama. This doughnut was damn near uneatable, a weird tasting concoction I could recommend to no one. As bad as psycho doughnuts is for it puerile stigmatizing of mental illness, I think the place will not survive. Its product is so inferior and it’s interior so juvenile that it is not long for survival. May we all wish its failure soon and the nice young attendant get a real job as a real nurse?

Bipolar disorder is an enigma to those who don’t have it. Author Carlton Davis brings readers into his world with “Bipolar Bare”, a memoir telling his long and storied history that ranges from a confused “troublemaker” child, to finding religion, to becoming a drug addict willing to do anything for his fix. With an uplifting finish of some resemblance of normalcy, “Bipolar Bare” is an intriguing read sure to entertain and enlighten.

How big is the mental health issue? The statistics iterated at the conference tell the tale. In the workplace, the number three issue affecting workers after allergies and back pain are mental disorders, particularly depression. Depression alone is more damaging to everyday life than are many chronic physical conditions such as diabetes, angina, and asthma. One would have to be very unaware not to see how much depression medication is pushed on national television for the treatment of this epidemic. Depression intensifies the severity of other conditions such as heart disease, for which there is far more funding. Someone at the conference jocularly remarked that funding for heart disease research was far in excess of what was available to depression research because so many members of Congress were of an age at which heart attacks are a common occurrence. We all who heard this remark laughed cautiously. Washington has sensitive ears.

The statistics are astounding. Mental illness is the leading cause of disability and premature death in the United States. Persons with serious mental illness die, on average, 25 years earlier than the general population. More than 67% of adults and 80% of youth do not receive needed mental health services. An amazing 80% of children entering the juvenile justice system have mental disorders. Of the more than 30,000 suicides in America every year, 90% are associated with mental illness. 130,000 people are hospitalized each year after a failed suicide attempt. Statistically, the under-populated state of Wyoming leads the country in suicides per capita. The western states generally lead the country in suicides per capita. What is it about the wide out spaces of our glorious west that makes people want to die? And what is it about American culture that makes us lead the world in mental illness? It was cited that Mexico has a rate of mental illness comparable to the rest of the world, but when Mexicans have lived in the USA for twelve years their rate to mental illness leaps 30% to American levels. There must be great stress living in the world’s greatest superpower.

The day the conference began, a Jew- and black-hating white supremacist shot his way into the Holocaust Museum in Washington, killing a black security guard. The news reports all focused on his racist beliefs, but his actions were really those of a mad man. The politically correct viewpoint would not allow us to humanize this poor demented fellow and call his actions what they really were: the acts of a mentally ill person. When this event was brought up in an opening session for newcomers at the conference, it was quickly glossed over. The subject is too explosive to handle, yet it is fundamental to the whole issue of the treatment of the mentally ill. The stigma of mental illness is still enormous, and if the tent is made too large to encompass all who have the disease, both the maniacal violent criminal and even racist ill together with depressed passive broken and suicidal ill, the risk of losing support from a skittish public is apparently too great for even the mental health community to contemplate. Better to exclude some portion of the sick than to lose the possibility of help for the many who would benefit. Therein lie a conundrum and fault line too great to cross.

2009 is seen as the year of health care reform. Parity for mental illness with other medical illness was finally passed by act of congress; now the issue is to see that this parity is incorporated into the new health care reform bill being proposed before Congress. The trouble, as usual, is money. When push comes to shove, certain things get funded and others don’t. Mental health programs have always been the ones to get short shrift. Mental Health America is working hard to lobby that mental health and substance abuse treatment are core components of any health care benefits package and have parity in coverage with medical and surgical benefits. The sell is a hard one, especially if there is a hint of socialized medicine in the mix, or if there is emphasis on the criminally or socially unacceptable mentally ill. Better to focus on an issue on which both conservatives and liberals could be guaranteed to support: mental health care for veterans.

The conference placed special emphasis on addressing the mental health needs of America’s veterans, with three of its sessions dedicated to this particular issue. Not that this is an issue without merit; it is. Male veterans are twice as likely to commit suicide as non-veterans. 20% of veterans returning from deployment report both symptoms of post traumatic stress or depression. 19% of veterans returning from deployment have experienced possible traumatic brain injury. 25% of veterans seen by the VA have a mental health diagnosis. Recent health reporting shows reservists with 60% mental health claims and retired military with an enormous 76% mental health claims. 25% of single homeless persons have served in the armed forces. Last, the families of service men and women suffer from the stress of long and repeated deployments, resulting in marital discord and domestic violence. The “mentally wounded warrior” issue is epidemic.

To place special attention on this issue, MHA is making a strategic political move. It is trying to enlarge the tent of the mentally ill by drawing in the conservative right with an apple pie and American flag issue. War veterans with mental illness can easily be identified as a group deserving of help since they are serving our country. If funding for their programs is tied into programs of funding for other programs helping low income families cope with marital discord and domestic violence, and depressed and suicidal men and women find help mental health programs in general will be well served.

As was pointed out again and again at this conference, gaining a reasonable system of national health insurance in the United States will be a difficult task. Having adequate mental health coverage in this national health insurance will be an even more difficult task. But now is the time to fight for both. The stakes have never been greater and the possibility of passage never more promising. The mental health community, the providers and the consumers, especially the consumers, must make their voices heard. No longer can we who have the diseases of mental illness stand passively by and let the professionals, or the drug companies, or the few advocates, who speak on our behalf, carry the burden. We must rise and demand that our voices be heard. We maybe wounded, but we are not inarticulate. WE KNOW WHAT WE NEED. We need a health care system in which we can get treatment. Too many of our number are going without treatment, either because we cannot afford to pay, or none is available. When we can pay, we need a system that we can pay for that meets our needs, that does not stupefy us with drugs, incarcerate us against our wills, stigmatize us, and talk down to us. I want a health care system that is affordable, and treats us with respect in the name of Clifford Beers, founder of MHA.