Nicholas W. Browning, a fifteen year old described as a good, polite, and nice kid has confessed to shooting dead his father, mother, and two younger brothers on Friday night.

News reports paint the picture of a perfect American family: white, upper middle class professionals and land owners, active in their community, church, and social organizations, living in a stately colonial home with a wrap-around porch, vacation home, yada yada yada…

Question: Was Nicholas taking any antidepressants or other psychotropic medications?

Baltimore Sun: 15 year-old charged in killings

Click it out… Mr. Niccce’s funny shit

Currently available on Google Video in its entire length (1 hr 48 mins 22 secs), Psychiatry - An Industry of Death is a documentary whose title is a clear introduction to the message.

Produced by the Citizens Commission of Human Rights (CCHR), psychiatry is presented as a field in which causes for illness are unknown, cures are merely hoped for, and billions upon billions of tax-payer dollars are being spent, while millions are made to suffer and die prematurely, are in essence tortured and often forced to receive treatment against their will.

Citing the lack of scientific evidence that mental illness is a result of chemical imbalances in the brain, the number of individuals reported as being treated for same through prescription medications is staggering.

At one-hour and twenty-two minutes into the film, the increases quoted as to the number of children diagnosed as having ADD - Attention Deficit Disorder, or ADHD - Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder is horrorifying–in 1988, 500,000 children were diagnosed as ADHD; in 1994, 4.4 million children were diagnosed with ADHD.

Perhaps needless for me to write, with each diagnosis there are medications being prescribed, so much so that the pharmaceutical companies derive the highest margins of profits, and have enjoyed vast increases in sales - 2002 Drug Industry Profits: Hefty Pharmaceutical Company Margins Dwarf Other Industries pdf

So to the many who have been diagnosed as mentally ill, or have family members so identified, what do you think?

These psychiatrists all seem focused on what they believe is mania or hypomania, and consistently fail to recognize and offer medications for the depression. Why are they not able to see that the depression is a constant, and the manic phases are merely an extension… merely a slightly different version of the same beast. As it is said in the rooms of AA and NA: Same church different pew.

And perhaps it is not so much whether the psychiatrists recognize the depression, but that I do. Recognize, acknowledge, accept, and take action for.

For the past twenty-five years of my life I’ve been prescribed psychotropic substances. Anti-depressants, tranquilizers, anti-psychotics, mood stabilizers… blah blah blah yada yada yada. For over twenty-five years there have been periods in which I have self-medicated with mind and mood altering substances.

Just as a team of dermatologists who have not had the benefit of examining professionally obtained skin samples determined my condition as delusory parasitosis, so have these psychiatrists deemed my brain chemistry to be out of whack without having obtained any samples with which to examine the levels of these chemicals.

How freaking responsible is that? How professional is that?

The manufacturers and prescribing psychiatrists, however, can not refer to any scientific facts as to why these substances are supposed to work… are supposed to help.

Is this a joke?

“Here, take two of these a day. We don’t know how they work, but they seem to… for a little while, anyway. When they longer seem to, we’ll just switch up and prescribe another substance we know little about, and when that no longer seems to be helping, we’ll switch you to something else that we haven’t a clue as to why it would or wouldn’t work. I want to see you in two weeks, and we’ll see how this medication is helping. We will probably need to adjust the dose a few times before we’ll know if this is the right medication for your condition or not.”

BTW, these medications are VERY EXPENSIVE. Like $10 or more for a single dose. Hello.

Perhaps the insanity I truly suffer from is my believing that psychiatrists and the mental health industry are helpful… are to be trusted and relied upon…

What a freaking insane society we live in! For those who seem aware of this, depression seems an apt response, no?

Ah, but who suffers? The depressed person… along with everyone else… so who benefits from that… and hence the teachings that positive energy and love are the only actions that can heal… or at least help… help perhaps no one other than the one practicing it… donning a pair of rose-colored glasses… always seeing the glass as half full as opposed to half empty. Living, as it were, in a state of selective denial. But perhaps that is the only way!

I remind myself that corpses have been found in peat bogs, determined to be thousands of years old… and how did they die? Tortured and hung or beheaded… stabbed, beaten, burned…

Mankind is a misnomer, no?

Oh dear… on and on she goes… ’round and ’round…

So, what else is going on… let’s see… today I go for an ultrasound of my rectum, to search out the invasive adenocarcinoma that was there in September, but hasn’t been found since.

What else… let’s see… still not working… still living in the red even on borrowed monies…

What else… let’s see… my best friend relapsed… and is now hurting…

What else… let’s see… I still believe my cats and I are infected with some kind of mite…

What else… let’s see… … … … It be time for me to put some gratitude in my attitude, or I shall know nothing but misery on this cold and snowy December day.

…and until it does, I must practice keeping an attitude of gratitude, and do well at acting as if, for focusing on the negative will accomplish what?

I want to try again at doing a video of me singing “Talking to Our Healing Inner Child” as the one I posted the other day is… well… isn’t very funny. Too depressing. Too angry. Too close to home. Sorry, but I will just have to leave the Wounded Child out of our productions for now, as she has no sense of humor.

Wish in one hand, shit in the other…

Would it be too awful horrible and terrible of a person to have a cat or a dog “put to sleep” while it is still healthy and not too old?

I mean… what is so humane about taking a pet to an animal shelter, where it will be forced to live under extremely stressful conditions… for how long? Until it is either put down, or a New Home is found… but what are the chances of that, really…

I mean… kittens and puppies, no problem… there is always the fantasy of what is yet to be that motivates folks to adopt or buy puppies and kittens… less common are those who wish to have a pet and are willing to take home a “used” one.

My two cats are nine years old, have been together that long… one has had urinary blockage trouble in the past, so must be monitored for early signs of trouble… they are, the two of them, spoiled as children of a dysfunctional codependent parent are apt to be… loved to excess in some things… resented in others… a source of joy and guilt… pride and shame… laughter and tears…

STOP stop this self-sustaining vicious cycle of self-hatred

I will get through this

I have experienced worse

This too shall pass… one day at a time

to the tune Winter Wonderland (this is the revised version)

Our Healing Inner Child

Follow the links posted at Ultra Swank’s Repost - Retro Christmas to download FREE the full album, but be sure to bookmark Ultra Swank’s link first!

Warning: “F” word used once, but with emphasis

A YouTube User contacted me via the message feature, stating that they were in a psychology class in college and was putting together a presentation on Dissociative Identity Disorder, wanted to know would I be willing to provide information… blah blah blah, ya.

I explained to this person that my experience with dissociation of self was never diagnosed as DID, that I did not have Sybil kind of multiple personalities running around, and recommended two websites to her that I thought might prove to be extremely helpful… the HealthyPlace.com and Dusty Miller’s site.

Despite my clarification, this YouTuber sent me a list of questions to answer, and which I shall now post here:

1. How does having DID effect your everyday life?

Not so terribly much anymore, as I have both an awareness and understanding of it; however, there was a time when it did have a powerful impact on my everyday life… in that emotions from my childhood experience became fragmented into these different parts of self.

There was a part of me that hated me… that part of self was filled with rage… she was dark, powerful and sexual. When I cut myself it was that part of me that was in the driver’s seat.

Then there was the part of me that presented and interacted with the world… with people… friends… teachers… family… etc. but always with an awareness that there were two other parts of self lurking in the shadows, that could rain on the parade at any given moment.

The third part of self was the wounded child. She was my pain, but she was also the part of me that sought out love and attention. She was starved for attention. She longed to be loved.

2. Do you have a job?

At the present, no; I am unemployed and receiving disability. I have worked, however, for most of my adult life… but mostly at jobs that I could abandon in a moment’s notice without severe consequences… jobs in which the employers are accustomed to a fast turnover and shifts having to be covered… such as waitressing, or housecleaning. I did work as an alcoholism counselor for about five and a half years, and did very well.

3. Are you married or have kids?

Was married… at the age of seventeen to a man eight years older… he was twenty-four. We stayed together seven years, separated but always remained friends (still are, in fact). No kids.

4. Is there ever something you wanted to do in life but felt you weren’t able to because of DID?

Yes yes yes… a thousand times yes! Now, the DID that I have, as I have explained, is not the same as the “classic multiple personalities” like Sybil…. but, yes, the DID most definitely prevented me from succeeding at any of the things I wanted to do… such as become a cartoonist, or a writer… then a standup comedienne… you name it, and I’ve sabotaged them all… eventually… sometimes quickly sometimes slowly… but I am now fifty-three years old, fairly intelligent and very talented… and I am barely surviving on not-enough monies to pay my rent.

5. What are your alters like…Name, age, personality..etc?

The three of us… well… they don’t have names… personalities… sort of… like I described up in question #1… there is the part of me that is powerful and filled with rage… then there is the part of me that wants to be loved… and then there’s me, in the middle, typing out these words to you.

6. Are you on any medication?

Yes… and have been on medications since a teenager, more or less… either those prescribed by a psychiatrist, or those I purchased off drug dealers in the streets.

7. Were you ever hospitalized or put through a treatment in order to “cure” your disorder?

Yes, I have been hospitalized several times… as a teenager, for cutting myself up… then in my thirties I was in and out of drug and alcohol treatment centers and clinics… then ended up back in a psychiatric hospital again a few years ago. I’ve been in treatment, in one form or another, for over twenty-five years.

8. Do your parents or any siblings have a history of DID or any other mental illness?

Not my parents, but my parents had relatives that had some psychiatric stuff going on… I don’t know about DID, though.

9. How long have you had DID?

As long as I can remember.

10. How have you coped with have DID, did you just learn to control it in any way or are there certain techniques you use?

Presently, the three of us get along pretty well… the healing was in my coming to recognize them and the roles they played out… and to understand why such roles had to be fragmented off the way they were… because of childhood sexual abuse… and my need to remain sane. The dissociation, although considered an illness, was actually my defense. It was what kept me sane… even though it made me crazy, if that makes any sense to you at all. BUT… and this is a big BUT… such revelations were made known to me… became available to me ONLY WHEN IT WAS ABSOLUTELY SAFE TO DO SO… i.e.: once both my parents were deceased.

We greet this day with love in our heart,
gratitude in our attitude,
and two Fleet enemas yet in the box.

Ya, we must start the day NPO (nothing taken by mouth) and two enemas as part of the prep for my second colonoscopy, in which the good Dr. Kessler will have another good look around, and to tattoo the spot where the cancerous polyps had been removed.

Yesterday I was allowed only “clear liquids”… Hmm, coffee isn’t clear, I hope I didn’t blow it… and it was tough. It was much easier to avoid eating when I was smoking cigarettes. Yeah, yesterday was a bit of a challenge. Twice I poured pure maple syrup into a mug of warm water and drank that down, as I was craving sugar like crazy.

The PET and CAT scans didn’t show any cancer.

The blood work didn’t show any indications of cancer.

The good Dr. Corman said, “Your cancer may have been cured when those polyps were removed.”

And should no cancer be found today… well, then I have been truly blessed.

It seems, however, that surgery is still on the table (no pun intended) as an option… which totally baffles me: Why on earth would anyone elect to have surgery to remove cancer that is no longer there?