Monday, February 27, 2012

It's all fun and games and then you're dead

From the wikileaks dump on Stratfor, The Stratfor Glossary of Useful, Baffling and Strange Intelligence Terms (pdf). This is almost as fun as The Devil's Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce.

One of my favorite Stratfor definitions:

empathy-- Thinking about the world the way the other guy thinks about the world. Essential to both operators and analysts. Both have to put themselves into the other guy’s shoes to figure out what he will do next. Definitely not about warm fuzzies.

Tuesday, February 7, 2012

I just love Frank. He writes so well and does it so prolifically. I have neither the patience nor the inclination.

I particularly liked this post about general health and diet and exercise.

I didn't get started on the diet and exercise thing until ten years ago. It's made a world of difference in how I think of myself and how I feel. Weight training is just as hypnotic and entrancing as the drugs I used to do. It's also made me look a lot better and it's kept off the 110 pounds that I lost. I would recommend it to anyone.

I left a comment on Frank's post that was wildly off-topic, so I'll repost it here. After all if a person's going to make OT comments of novella length, maybe he needs to get his own blog. lol:

I’m very confused as to what constitutes the difference between schizophrenia and a psychotic episode. I’ve personally had four psychotic episodes.

With the first one, I was examined by the college psychiatrist, who then drove me in his car to be examined by a psychiatrist at a local hospital. I didn’t stay at the hospital. The college shrink took me back to campus. He said I needed to flush the speed down the toilet, stop the drinking, beg forgiveness of the people I’d pissed off and take some Xanax, which as far as I could tell didn’t do shit.

With the second one, my parents took me to the hospital, but the hospital sent me home after three days with a script for Haldol, which I liked much better than the Xanax. I took it as long as it worked and got me high. After it stopped doing anything at all, I quit.

The third time I ended up in the hospital again. They sent me home after three days because I seemed to enjoy the Thorazine which they gave me along with the prolixin decanoate injections. I got buzzed on that stuff for several months and then it stopped doing anything, so I quit.

If you’ve not noticed a common thread to these three episodes, I was never committed for any of them.

The fourth time was entirely different. They committed me to two separate 90-day outpatient commitments and forced me to take Risperdal and Depakote, which as far as I could tell did absolutely nothing in the mental functioning department. I’ve refused to have a thing to do with mental health after that. And that was 17 years ago.

Like I say, I was always really confused as to what constituted the difference between psychosis and schizophrenia and what it means to “recover”. I guess it’s whatever the shrink says it is.