Marsha Linehan

Expert on Mental Illness Reveals Her Own Fight - New York Times.

Long interview with some video of the pioneer of Dialectical Behavioural Therapy - which I know from experience is very helpful. She reveals her own struggles with mental illness, her hospitalisation and treatment (including drugs and ECT):

Any real treatment would have to be based not on some theory, she later concluded, but on facts: which precise emotion led to which thought led to the latest gruesome act. It would have to break that chain — and teach a new behavior.

"I was in hell," she said. "And I made a vow: when I get out, I'm going to come back and get others out of here."

Tobacco pushers to sue government

Philip Morris to sue if Australia puts all cigarettes in plain green wrappers

Tobacco firm claims Canberra's ban on logos and other packaging restrictions will lose it billions

Guardian.

Note that the UK govt is talking about doing this as well! As I said earlier.

"The Office for National Statistics doesn't publish tobacco death rates on it's website but theNHS reckons the deaths attributable to tobacco in England in 2008 was 84,000. That's about 236 a day, or 10 per hour! So 25 in 2.5 hours. Assuming the same smoking patterns in the rest of the UK that's about 98,000 for the UK, giving 268 per day, 11 per hour, and 25 in 136 minutes."

Tobacco is a killer. Just ban it. Just make it illegal and fuck the greedy bastards who supply it. Drug pushers.

Fibromyalgia Drugs

Drug Class Review: Drugs for Fibromyalgia: Final Original Report [Internet].

Smith B, Peterson K, Fu R, McDonagh M, Thakurta S.

Portland (OR): Oregon Health & Science University; 2011 Apr.
Drug Class Reviews.

"We compared the effectiveness and harms of tricyclic antidepressants, serotonin norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, selective serotonin and norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors, noradrenergic and specific serotonergic reuptake inhibitor, norepinephrine and dopamine reuptake inhibitor, serotonin receptor antagonist, antiepileptic drugs, and skeletal muscle relaxants in adults with fibromyalgia."

Abstract and conclusions online via PubMed.

Good article on so-called Chemical Imbalances

The Brain Is Not Made Of Soup - Neuroskeptic

"Neither – in relation to the fastest rising [mental health] diagnoses – is there any evidence of chemical imbalances in the brains of patients. In other words, the problem the [psychiatric] drugs are supposed to solve is an illusion."

"No-one has ever measured the chemical composition of a living human brain."

Neuroskeptic compares the Brain to soup, and treating mental illness as tweaking the ingredients. He doesn't do this to belittle or trivialise, he does it to show what a blunt instrument psychiatry is, and how dosing people with chemicals that affect brain chemistry can be a very doubtful way to get results.

Cameron is a Fucking HYPOCRITE

David Cameron intervenes over BBC plan to axe his local news service

Guardian.

There is NO BENEFIT to Being Debilitated!

Glancing at the disabilities and welfare blogs I read I can see that the situation is dire in the UK. We're doomed basically. All kinds of other policy initiatives introduced by the manic phase new government are being reversed or rethought because they are incredibly unpopular. Welfare reform is not unpopular. And one has to ask whether this is because from day one, aided by a parasitic news media culture, the DWP waged a propaganda war against the benefit system, often stretching the truth to make their point, and making the most extreme abuses seem like the norm for all benefit claimants? Or is the popularity of welfare reform really what people want? I would argue that it is a clear case of manufacturing consent.

The very language here is fucked. The welfare payment is not a benefit, it's a fucking consolation for losing your job (so often because of economic forces outside your control) and/or becoming so ill that one cannot work. It's a minimal payment - and they reinforce the minimal in their communication with the applicant: "this is just enough to stop you dying, but don't get cocky".

There is no benefit to becoming so ill you have to stop working. Even Pollyanna would struggle to look on the bright side of debilitating illness - oh yes it's great not having to work, and the charity shops have the most intriguing range of hand-me-downs; if only I were not in constant pain and able to walk I would feel I was the luckiest person in the world. NOT. And welfare is not claimed, it is applied for certainly, but it is granted by the powers that be whose mercy we are at, and we are never allowed to forget it! Rather than a benefit claimant I would prefer to be known as a Consolation Grant Applicant, and the payment to be called a grant rather than a benefit.

The trouble is no one is listening to people who rely on welfare payments. All they see is someone getting something for nothing. So, even more than bankers, the system targets those who receive welfare, and the general population either supports the measure or quietly turns away and let's it happen. Pray you never get ill - all you able bodied people out there. Pray. Because once you do become ill, you become "outcast".

NHS Reform

From Bananas in Pyjamas: Some free advice on achieving 'world class NHS productivity' McKinsey style.

No Sex is OK.

So... it's been ten days since I stopped masturbating every day with the aid of fantasies and porn. I was only an occasional porn user, but I used both porn and pornographic fantasies to create desire in order to get to orgasm. You might not think this is a bad thing, but I got to reading about the effects of hyper-stimulation and the dulling of the pleasure response in relation to my long history of anxiety, depression, fibromyalgia and (these days) chronic fatigue.

And the result? Almost no spontaneous sexual desire. No daytime erections. Almost no thinking about sex. The urge to masturbate is not presently linked to physical desire. It is linked to habit, and neurotic pleasure seeking. Whether or not it is related I don't know but I am experiencing quite severe insomnia at present. I've cut down a little on chocolate as well (one 100g bar of 70% a day is limit!) and that may be it. I do notice that being in the presence of an attractive women - and I live in a University/tourist town so it's heaving with them - makes me feel uncomfortable or restless. But it's not a groin sensation at all. So I'm just looking away and trying not to think about it. And actually it's fine. When I'm not artificially stimulating my sexual desire, it's very low indeed - and well it may be as I'm in pain & tired most of the time. Actually I think I feel less lonely in the last week or so.

So this is something worth blogging about. There's a lot of political shit going on in the UK. A lot of stuff that I can't really keep up with - a constant barrage of propaganda from the DWP which is clearly designed to reduce sympathy for the beneficiaries of the nation. And it seems to be working as there are massive protests against heath and education plans, and policy U-turns, bu there is no organised response to benefit cuts. Of course those of us on benefits are not really in as good a position as educators and doctors to defend ourselves. But I find it all too much and too depressing. Others are doing a good job of commenting in blogs.

Still waiting for the Work Capacity Assessment axe to fall, and constantly anxious about that.

The Pleasure Response and Me

After reading this article: "Day 64: Successful, great, normal sex" I started to think about my sex life, such as it is, in a new way. I use porn occasionally, but fantasize a lot. I've also been reading Keith Richards about Heroin addiction and why you suffer so much getting off it - it floods the endorphin receptors in the brain which then stops making it's own. So when you stop taking heroin it takes 72 hours to reboot the brain to make it's own endorphins. Something similar happens with orgasm and the pleasure processing circuits in the brain. I dabbled in the Gupta Amygdala Retraining program last year which is about treating an overloaded fight/flight response (as I understand it). So all of these are related to over-stimulation of various brain modules or circuits which interrupts natural functioning.

What occurred to me is that I cannot remember the last time I had a natural erection. I can give myself one, and I don't having too much problem reaching orgasm, but from day to day I don't get them spontaneously. From what I've read each orgasm has quite long lasting effects on the brain and especially the pleasure response. Even once a day orgasm with fantasy or porn to artificially stimulate sexual response dulls the pleasure response. The man in the article suffered from erectile dysfunction - and I gather this is quite common.

So at the moment I'm refraining from fantasy and masturbation. I'm not making a decision to be celibate, though I'm seriously thinking about it for the first time in my life. But I'm trying to avoid fantasising and artificial stimulation. Let's see what happens. After three nights of no fantasies and no masturbation, I still have not had a spontaneous erection during the day.

I'm also feeling more concerned about my addiction to chocolate now. If I cut down I get headaches and feel lousy and miserable. I got up to a bar and a half of dark chocolate (150g) for a while - and I'm paying for this out of my benefit. It's crazy. So I'm cutting down to one bar for a start. I can't tackle everything at once. I'll see how it goes, but I'd like to be free not to eat chocolate. Any reduction in my intake takes about 2 weeks to adjust to - it's much worse than coffee! (and coffee is no substitute)!

I want also to look at my food more generally. I've been having bad stomach problems including one ambulance call out because of extreme pain! I'm getting it all looked at, and being pretty careful about what I eat. But my diet succumbed some time ago (I never recovered from Christmas basically). High glycemic index foods cause a major impact on the body. I'm putting on weight again, because I'm over eating and not sticking the guidelines for healthy eating.

The trouble is getting through the stress caused by the change. So one thing at a time, and baby steps! But I'm concerned that this phenomenon of over stimulation might be having a major impact on me. Basically I'm easily stimulated. There's not a great deal of difference between the various kinds of arousal - difficult to physiologically tell fear from anger for instance as they involve the same hormones, and other autonomic responses. Perhaps if I can reduce the over stimulation from various sources I might find it has a overall beneficial effect on my Fibromyalgia too.