Amygdala Retraining

So, I've started the Gupta program and I thought I could use the blog to keep track of it.

I find it all very emotional. Basically I had given up. I thought the rest of my life would just be pain, upset, disability, or at best severely limited by these. Never working again, always dependent on benefits, stranded in the UK for lack of money and an inability to handle the stress of moving after 8 years living here. There is so much of value that I've lost. I was understandably despondent about this. To hear someone give a rational explanation for the condition, and then a rational approach to treating it is like a dam giving way. I've wept more than once watching the DVD. But it is very early days.

Modern Maladies

The medical profession has scored some astonishing successes in the last 150 years with the eradication of many deadly diseases, and advances in treatments which save lives everyday - one of the main things, of course, was hygiene and especially hand washing, but I don't want to be too cynical about that because I'd be dead without it.

However alongside this amazing success in treating pathogenic or physically-traumatic problems they have been abject failures to treat the so-called modern maladies: depression, anxiety, psychosis, chronic fatigue/ME, and my own malady fibromyalgia. Many more 'syndromes' which are simply poorly understood vaguely defined collections of apparently unrelated symptoms have been named. About the medical profession's ability to deal with these I think we should be profoundly sceptical and even cynical. They are floundering. Part of the problem is that doctors have become enmeshed in the net of big pharma and often seem unable to think beyond the possibilities of offering some drug or other. Not only are the drugs for modern maladies frequently entirely ineffective at treating the malady, they cause side-effects which themselves can be debilitating and must often be treated with more drugs. At best we get some little relief from our symptoms that outweighs the short-term side-effects, but often the long-term side-effects are more serious (like kidney damage for me)

If you suffer from chronic fatigue, from fibromyalgia or even chronic anxiety or depression then I would recommend taking a look at the website of Ashok Gupta - a medical researcher, not a new-age snake oil seller. He has some very interesting insights into our problems, having suffered and recovered chronic-fatigue himself. I'd recommend signing up for his free introductory video series and taking an hour to watch the first series. If you don't think it's useful after that then you haven't lost anything.

Personally he had me weeping copiously to hear my difficulties described in such accurate detail, but for the first time accompanied by a rational explanation based on solid research. He offers a non-drug program of treatment which is not free, but it is something you can do yourself at home if you buy the DVD. I haven't started it yet, but his insight into the problem has given me more hope than years of doctors, drugs and psychotherapy and I'm excited about getting started on it.

Perhaps there is hope of a normal life after all. I'd given up.

Mephedrone and the number 25

This is how the saga played out in the news.

• 17 March BBC: How has mephedrone affected users?
• 17 March BBC: Review of mephedrone drug pledged.
• 29 March Guardian: Mephedrone to be banned and made class B drug after link to 25 deaths.
• 2 April Guardian: Mephedrone ban prompts latest drugs council resignation.
• 7 April BBC: Mephedrone ban backed by Commons.
• 16 April BBC: Drugs: The facts.
• 16 April BBC: Mephedrone ban comes into effect

Then this today from the BBC:

Teenagers' deaths 'not caused by mephedrone'

Back in March hue and cry over the possibility that 25 people might have died as a result of taking mephedrone, and another of the Govt drug advisers resigned in disgust at their advice being ignored by a Govt keen to curry favour with a disaffected public. Now it turns out that at least two of them had not taken the drug, but the law has still been changed.

• 23 July (Guardian) Mephedrone not to blame for death of teenager, say Cumbria police.

Let's compare with other mortality stats in the UK. The Office for national statistics tells us:

The number of alcohol-related deaths in the United Kingdom has consistently increased since the early 1990s, rising from the lowest figure of 4,023 (6.7 per 100,000) in 1992 to the highest of 9,031 (13.6 per 100,000) in 2008. http://www.statistics.gov.uk/cci/nugget.asp?id=1091

That's 9,000 in 2008. That's actually 25 deaths definitely from alcohol per day, every day. And rising, having doubled in the last 16 years.

By contrast there were 2075 drug related deaths in 2008: some details include 897 deaths from heroin, 378 from methadone, 242 from paracetamol. On the face of it paracetamol is far more likely to kill you than mephedrone, but you need to take into account the vast quantities of it that are consumed each year. (Still it can kill you).

Deaths from road accidents:

The total number of deaths in road accidents fell by 7 per cent to 2,946 in 2007 from 3,172 in 2006. However, the number of fatalities has remained fairly constant over the last ten years.

That's almost 250 per month, or about 25 every 3 days.

The Office for National Statistics doesn't publish tobacco death rates on it's website but the NHS 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.

So to summarise, in the UK, according to official statistics:

• Tobacco kills 25 people every 135 minutes.
• Alcohol kills 25 people a day.
• Road accidents kill 25 people every 3 days.
• Heroin kills 25 people every 10 days.
• Paracetamol kills about 25 people a month.

Maybe we need to reassess our priorities? The question for the new government is given the policy on drugs which do much less harm to the population: why are tobacco, alcohol still legal? (Indeed given how many deaths are caused by cars, why are they still legal?) Why is there such a fuss about these small time party drugs which we have yet to prove harmful, when 11 people an hour, almost 1 every 5 minutes are dying from tobacco.

BTW I do not endorse drug use. I think taking drugs is stupid unless you have to for medical reasons, and even then they are problematic. But I also think it is stupid for taking drugs to be a criminal offence. Two stupids don't make a smart.

Welfare Review

I feared that a conservative government would institute a welfare reform aimed at taking benefits away from people, and this seems to be the drift of the Queen's speech as it relates to welfare.

It's hard not to start feeling anxious before any details are announced. All I can think is "Oh God, they're going to take away my benefit and make me get a job." Who would employ me, and for what? How long could it possibly last when I could seldom work 2 days in a row (at present capacity)? If I do work part-time then that adds a layer of complexity to my dealings with other agencies like the Council (who pay my rent via Housing Benefit).

I hate being so vulnerable to the machinations of politicians and bureaucrats. I can't tell them to fuck off because I'm so dependent on the handouts they give. I had just started getting used to my situation and was beginning to cope a bit better, but it seems like I'm never allowed to get too comfortable.

Well who knows, perhaps simplifying the benefits system will be an improvement. But here is my prediction:

When it all shakes down a lot of us will be worse off, and we will be jumping though a lot more hoops to get our daily bread.

Election - bit of a non-entity from a health/benefits pov

BTW... I found the election compelling and exercised my right to vote. Being used to PR back in the old country I had no qualms about a hung parliament. As much as I hate the conservatives, a change was very much needed. Who knows what the current government will actually do? The election gave me no fodder at all for this blog as no one mentioned benefits, or mental health, or chronic illness. The NHS was mentioned but only in terms of targets and finances.

I'm hoping that the rhetoric of "choice" with regard to the NHS will be dropped. I don't give a fuck about choice. I want treatment. I want access to a specialist or two. I don't much care who it is, as long as they're competent, I mostly care WHEN it is.

Re benefits: I guess I'm not the only person wholly dependent on state handouts who feels anxiety at the broad rhetoric of public spending cuts and the complete lack of detail. We wait to hear whether it's the poor and the beneficiaries who will pay for the excesses of the financial markets with a sinking feeling. Let's hope we don't see anything like the California solution! (i.e. having run the 8th largest economy into the ground Greek style, refuse to raise taxes, and slash welfare - Arnie surely won't be back after this mess).

On the up side Fentimans now make their ginger beer in quart (750ml) bottles, and is stocked in the local supermarket; and I finally found somewhere that sells Rochester Ginger.

Men and Depression

I was very pleased to see this article in the Observer a couple of weeks back: Depressed men missing out on treatment. The problem is that the descriptions of depression and the diagnostic criteria are heavily skewed towards women's experience of depression. Men often do not experience depression in the same way. In particular while women tend to turn in on them selves, men by contrast "can become animated, aggressive and angry". This sums up my own experience of depression. The negativity gets played out! And no one seems to understand, least of all me.

The article came from a press release by Paul Farmer of the charity Mind, who have a campaign to try to improve access to mental health help for men.

Relationships

Finding I have less to say than when I started - the way of most blogs I suppose. I'm not interacting with officialdom so much this year and so my quality of life is better and I'm less stressed. My landlord isn't due for the annual fucking-up of my rent and housing benefit for another few months. However I've also had a bad flare up and even had to stop my 3 hours a week of volunteering for a couple of months - which doesn't encourage writing. I'm trying to get into using Voice Recognition, but it's a bit frustrating.

Been thinking about the effects of being chronically ill on relationships. Not all of my friendships survived my descent into the the hell of chronic pain and tiredness. Last year I had a girl-friend for the first time in ages, but I'm difficult to be around at times: I'm in pain all the time and get tired quickly and the combination makes me less than gracious at times. I'd like to say I'm one of those noble souls who is stoical in the face of suffering, that never complains. I do my best, but actually pain sucks and I struggle to be upbeat about it. So it didn't last despite being quite delightful to start with.

Anyway I wondered if there was a dating site for people with chronic illnesses and struck this blog post: Chronic Illness and Relationships. So it's not just me. It's one of the things about chronic illness - it's isolating to the point where I often think I'm the only one living like this. But no.

I'd love to have a bit more companionship but I'm not exactly an attractive proposition for a women. And that doesn't help my confidence or self-esteem. Actually now I look into it there is quite a lot written on the subject - e.g. A Different Kind of Date. Not sure I want to self-identify as 'disabled' but I suppose there is some truth in that I am not as able as I once was - especially when it comes to repetitive motions with my hands and applying any kind of pressure or supporting my weight on my arms. Here's another take by Dancing with Pain.

Being old, or ill, or whatever doesn't make us any less human - we still have needs. But it gets gradually more difficult to meet. I sometimes go for weeks at a time without any physical contact with another human being. I try to keep myself busy with stuff so I don't end up feeling miserable about it, but at times the grief is overwhelming - not only have I lost my job, my ability to earn my livelihood, as well as all my hobbies (making music and art), but I'm increasingly isolated and lonely.