Death
Inevitable, avoided, yearned for. Other people’s can make us fear / crave our own. I don’t know what lies on the other side, though I peeked my head round when sliding into madness for the first time. In place of certainty, I’ve had to develop a theoretical stance on the question of what death might involve – going back to where I was before I was born leaves the fewest gaps and is also least scary (as well as appealling to the Buddhist leanings in me). Now I’ve got kids I’m terrified of leaving them and I spend lots of my time trying to work out how to cope with my parents’ deaths. Oddly though, trying to prepare for their demise so I feel less guilty generates a shedload of guilt.
Diagnosis
The label your suffering, in all its complex, nuanced, context-dependent technicolor glory is approximated to using a kind of tally system. You may start off doubting it can be a label as its actually real and not in your head, find a label is forced onto you whilst you are forced into treatment. Both label and treatment you may reject outright, which rejection then in a kind of catch-22 scenario can lead to knowing nods of I-told-you-she-was-mad. Or you can desperately seek validation and understanding from a name for your illness then find that the name / service configuration changes so frequently that the help never gets close enough to make any lasting impression, other than that its your fault nothing stays the same. Diagnosis can group people together or split people away from their experiences, so that what you think you know and experience becomes a token of a symptom that people give you whilst taking away your inner reality. But like buses, don’t worry there’ll be another one along in a minute.
Drugs
The ‘recreational’ rather than prescribed kind (though the boundaries are somewhat permeable on these). I have limited direct experience (cannabis, LSD, amphetamines), though my observations of those who’ve experienced more expensive concoctions (heroin, crack) suggest that these are less recreational and more of a full time job with crappy hours, a high level of attentiveness required and rapidly diminishing rewards. Though the chemicals I experimented with certainly were fun at times, I can’t help but thinking that they’re still not quite out of my system some 20 years later. I have a suspicion that the wind changed when I was on acid at some point and something unhelpful was set into my brain. Though I flirted with the grunge look (my teens coincided with the rise and demise of Nirvana), I have never really wanted ‘drug taker’ to be part of my personal identity. Though the drugs I took may well have stretched my psyche through the doors of perception, it never regaining its initial elasticity wasn’t a helpful outcome for said psyche. Now if I want to feel somewhat trippy I just have to realise three days in advance and have a ‘drug holiday’ (again, much less fun than it sounds – merely referring to a break in the usual medication regime), though as it tends to lead to a resurgence in paranoia and self-hatred its a less than desirable option. I know lots of people who take drugs and enjoy them, some people who take drugs and enjoy them despite the reaches of their world and cognitive function diminishing worryingly and more people who take drugs and don’t enjoy the experience along with significant others around them. Not that I want to judge, but as one comedian (whose name I’ve forgotten – bloody cannabis) once said, any hobby that could end up with me having to suck off a sweaty, hairy middle manager in a drugs import ring is not for betting the farm on.
PsychCoblog 