Summertime and the living ain't easy... 2012.

It's a hot day in Melbourne: 28 degrees; thats about 82 Fahrenheit   Not totally stultifying but warm enough to feel a bit hazy.  I did some gardening this morning before it warmed up and filled my green waste bin with prunings and weeds.  I was going to go to church again but felt ambivalent; last week when I went an AA guy who i know who goes to church started ranting AA-speak to me, ie: You don't have to like the meetings, you just have to go to them; You need a sponsor etc etc.  Then when he told me I was gossiping when I made mention of a man who is awaiting a court case for rape, a man who is quite mad and vile.  This is why I don't attend meetings in the outer east.  Hillbilly country.  So I wasn't in the mood for another dose of my churchgoing AA 'buddy', hence I skipped church and gardened instead.

The 3 AA meetings I have attended have been quite good; it's just not the recommended dose over a two week period.  The commonly held view by "older sober members" (ie: people with several years sobriety who are inclined to be revered and listened to as if they are some soothsayer or modern-day Yoda) is that the "newcomer" must attend at Least a meeting a day; get a home group; get a sponsor; do some service work; start doing the 12 steps.  Well fuck that.

I've done these things (also known as the suggested things) in the past and it didn't keep me sober, much less sane.  I find if I go to an 8pm meeting and get a lot out of it then I can come home on a high and not sleep for several hours afterwards.  Sometimes members go out for a coffee after a meeting: at 10pm !!!!  My mania needs little encouragement to rise up and regular boring early bedtime routines are important.  Thus i've decided I'll only do 2 night meetings a week, and either one or two day ones (the day ones aren't as plentiful and often Mums bring their kids with them, which is fine, except most of the kids have ADHD or are ratbags and ruin the meeting.  Then again I was bought up in a Von Trapp family type of discipline, so I acknowledge I have a fucked up view of kids.  But anyway...).

I haven't imbibed and have felt less like doing so than when last I wrote.  One interesting thing: I have more energy and my depression has improved since I quit drinking.  I know alcohol is a depressant, but the effect has been notable.  I can now watch a DVD without getting disinterested after ten minutes, whereupon I used to fast forward to the end.  Now I happily watch them as they come.

I haven't yet improved many other aspects of my life, like exercise and diet.  I still drink too much caffeine.  My smoking has worsened.  It's as if I'm trying to compensate for the alcohol in some ways.  I spent $80 on lotto tickets last week.  Ridiculous!!  There's a $100 million jackpot on the Tuesday Oz Lotto and I have spent way too much time daydreaming about how I would spend it.  So I guess thats the next to go: the lotto tickets.  That's not too hard, less hard than smoking and diet.  I can manage a good diet in bits and pieces.  Just can't sustain it.

I'm awaiting getting a home-based outreach worker assigned to me; ie: a professional like a social worker who visits once a week to help me get my life in order.  Like a substitute carer.  Usually I'm deemed too "high-functioning" to be eligible, but being long term unemployed along with the alcohol making things a bit of a train wreck I qualified.  I decided to stop drinking 2 weeks ago because I simply couldn't wait any longer for the worker to be assigned to me.  They'd probably recommend counselling which might help but I know for me AA is the most effective solution, even if there are nutters amongst its members.  I mean I'm a self-confessed nutter but some people I've met have been beyond the pale, not in a psychiatric sense, more a personality thing.  Of course there's a fair few who, like me, have a dual diagnosis.  Anyhow.

It's 10 to 5pm on a languid Sunday afternoon.  Lots of people are taking tomorrow off work seeing as Tuesday is a public holiday for the running of the Melbourne Cup.  It's a bit bizarre to have a holiday for a horse race but there you go.

Exiting Speedy Gonzales mode

Slowing down after a heady couple of weeks of mini mania; my Doc adjusted my meds and thankfully gave me a PRN non-addictive drug for when I get stressed to the max, instead of drinking to calm down.  Its a newer version of Largactil (chloropromozine) but has the same Hit You Like A Truck effect; ie- makes you settled and woozy but not really in a nice way like the benzo family does.  At least I didn't have to go to hospital; I hate hospital.

Last Monday I had the inglorious combination of mania and PMS (sorry to those who find mention of this distasteful, but some female readers mights be able to relate, hence I mention it).  It's like irritability and anxiety on steroids when it happens.  I was very verbally aggressive to two people on the phone; its like my shoulders sprouted one of the Gorgon Sister's heads.  So the Medusa bitch with snakes for hair was spitting venom.  I've apologised to my friend for being feral; the other person was a Psych Triage phone worker who  was winding me up and should have known better, so no apology there.  Anyway it's passed now.

I spent a lot the past week; around $250 on plants and pots etc for the garden (that's a lot for a disability pensioner) along with a few bits and pieces.  I'm getting into gardening atm which I find a calming activity.  Even weeding is good!

My Psychiatrist wanted me to try and socialise more and get out of my hermit-like ways.  I like being a hermit most of the time.  I have become a very solitary beast.

I miss company regularly; don't misunderstand me.  I guess I have had some bad experiences with people I've befriended in AA over the past decade or so (which was my only real social outlet at that time as well).  I'm still in touch with Diana, who does AA; she's ok.  She readily agrees that there's a lot of "sick" people in 12 step fellowships.  I know I can be odd a lot of the time, that's another reason I'm tentative about getting to know people.  Everyone has their quirks I suppose.

Smoke and Mirrors: Millionaire Hotseat

I attended a day's taping of Channel 9's "Millionaire Hotseat" show recently.  It's a spinoff show based on the original "Who wants to be a Millionaire" quiz show.  Over 5-6 hours there were 5 episodes shot.  Not one soul won any more than $1000, the consolation prize for when even the mere $10,000 question falls through, let alone the glorious Million.

I felt excited entering the set at first (having gone through a long and boring process of signing a disclaimer form stating I won't divulge the contents of the show...hmmm...wonder if I'm in breach saying this?  Ah well Farkit..).  The warehouse holding the set was dark and shrouded in a bit of artificial fog.  The set itself was tiny, with around 100 spectator seats crammed together above the floor where the contestants and host sit.  The chairs were crappy plastic bucket seats; even the ones they give contestants are crappy barstools, making them swing their legs in an undignified way; this could be an unnerving tactic, who knows. The overall feeling was that of a "tinny" feeling; the scaffolding holding the audience creaked and swayed a bit.  To top off the cheapness of the show they "treated" us all to a lukewarm sausage roll with sauce half way through filming.  It was stodgey and indigestible.  Ugh.

The warm-up guy Andrew Pope is very good at his job.  In quick time he was able to manipulate the audience to clap quietly, louder and then at ballistic levels, all based on his hand movements in front of the stage.  There were no Applause signs; this guy acts like a conductor.  Having said this his "witty" repartee in between takes was arrogant, sexist and belittling.  He loved making fun of people from other countries who were in the audience.  He also made two young girls go against each other in a mock quiz competition, asking them to yell "bong" and "bang" for their buzzer. The embarrassed "bang" girl went red when he sleazed: "so...you ever had a bang?".  He was vile.

On the plus side was the host Eddie Maguire.  Eddie polarises people being president of the Collingwood Football Club, along with comments he makes in the media.  Whatever you think of Eddie the man, Eddie the professional is just that: consumate.  He does not miss a beat.  When it comes time to take a break for 3 minutes when the show has an ad-break written in, he grabs a microphone and answers questions from the audience.  He is a quick thinker and gives as good as he gets.  I came away from that taping with admiration for him being such a good performer.  

So yeah: a plus for Eddie, a big minus for the warm up guy and overall disenchantment for a show which looks so tight and polished when you see it on the telly.  It gave me new insight into what people mean when they say "the magic of television": having a way to make something which looks crappy in real life come out looking respectable on the small screen.

Federal Budget cuts and Ambulance Call-Out Rates: it doesn't add up

Wayne Swan, the Federal Treasurer, announced Australia's budget today.

Just as I hear from my Drug and alcohol counsellor today that her position has been cut due to Federal Budgetary cuts to the sector, I read statistics from "The Age" newspaper online today (Melbourne, Victoria, Australia) that ambulance callouts for Alcohol and Drug-related incidents are on the rise.

I read with interest that a fair portion also comes from people on prescription medication, and was surprised to see anti-psychotics up there, being one who takes them for schizoaffective disorder.

My counsellor works for an Eastern Suburbs community-based organisation which is entirely dependant on state and federal funding.  There is massive demand on their services.  They have had to cut  their Family services and Youth services due to these Federal Budget cuts.

So what will this mean?  Probably more domestic violence.  More youth suicides.  More suicides in general.  More accidental overdoses.  More kids dropping out of school.  More job losses due to chronic addiction.  More car crashes.  More car licenses lost due to being over the legal limit.  More carnage.

What does the Gillard Labor Government hope to achieve in their latest Federal Budget announcement?  A government in surplus.  An economy in the black.  That wins votes.  Doesn't matter that an economy in the red can still operate ok and not go into recession: ask any economist.  But the Gillard government is unpopular and needs every vote it can get.  And the perception that a Labor government can manage taxpayers money as well as the Right-Wing Liberal government could.

Forget about the failed Housing Insulation scheme which saw rogue operators taking advantage of unskilled workers putting bodgey insulation into homes who sought the rebate; forget about the botched "Building the Education Revolution" which saw unwanted halls being erected in schools nationwide.  

No, no, no: Labor knows how to divvy out your hard-earned money.  Just look at the wunderkind scheme of the National Broadband Network....just a shame only a small percentage of the nation will be able to afford to use it.  Or would want to.

And don't think I'm some Liberal Brown-Noser: they are a worse pack of jokers than Labor are.  They make life good for the rich and thats it.

I hate politics.  I used to vote with a degree and hope and earnestness.  Ha!!!  I reckon if you looked Insincerity up in any decent dictionary it would read REF: Politician.

Not even the Greens get my vote.  It's Hee-Haws all the way with me.

The misunderstood tag of schizoaffective

When I give talks to schools and the like about having schizoaffective disorder, I describe it as being like a cross between Bipolar and Schizophrenia, which can be misleading.  It may seem as though I deal with depression, mania and psychosis together on a concurrent or revolving basis.  That is not, and has never been the case with me.

To divvy it up, I am depressed (to varying degrees) around 92% of the time; manic (to varying degrees) around 7.5% of the time, leaving a paltry 0.5% of my days and nights in a psychotic or paranoid way.  These stats can fluctuate dramatically when I get significantly unwell (eg: borderline hospital to being in hospital).  I should add that I've only been hospitalised 3 times in my life, and been significantly unwell maybe a dozen times.

The mix between mania, depression and psychosis for me might be more evenly spread if I didn't comply with medication, or if the meds I were on weren't working for me.  I've been on the following meds for over 18 months and have been stable;

Morning: 200mg Epilim (Sodium Valproate; a mood stabiliser);
               375mg Lithium (mood stabiliser)
                30mg Cymbalta (anti-depressant)
                Vitamin D capsules x2
         
Evening:  1000mg Epilim
               375mg Lithium
       
Pre-Bed:  12.5mg Zyprexa (primarily an anti-psychotic, but also with anti-depressant qualities).

My doctor has me on low levels of Lithium and Epilim in tandem as they can cause damage to the kidneys and liver respectively; hence a smaller dose of each to minimise harm.  He's mentioned there's a new antipsychotic from Europe which is weight neutral that he's interested in trying on me in the future.  We tried Zeldox (another antipsychotic) and it made my leg "ping" up involutarily so we stopped it.  Basically I've got to seek alternatives to Zyprexa as it makes me ferociously hungry and sees me ballooned out at around 86kgs; most of it in my torso.  Heart risk, diabetes 2 risk etc etc.

Getting back to my initial point: the spread of mood and thoughts, which, by the way, is an accurate way of describing schizoaffective disorder: it is a mood (bipolar) and thought (schizoid) disorder.  For me the mood side of it has been socially alienating: unbearable when severely depressed or manic.

The one which has hit me in the guts harder has been when I become severely paranoid and lose logic in my thought patterns.  It's not a Beautiful Mind at all: it's horrific, distorted, sinister and terrifying.  There's nothing like losing logic, even if it is for only a few days or so.  I lost it for months back in 2003.  I see it lost in a colleague of mine at Lifeworks where I'm doing a quit smoking course.  This woman gets a monthly injection for her schizophrenia, and I sense her fragility and the way she seems so raw to all her surroundings.  I feel for her.

Alone and ruminating;

Very flat today.  It's like someone has put a needle in my artery and extracted all the positivity and energy from my system.  Heavy arms & legs.  So so sad.  It's been building for a couple of weeks now.  Erupted in tears while trying to sleep last night.  Not sobs, just silent salt water down the cheeks as I looked upward.   Had it not been for Flossy bundled in my left arm like a teddy bear I think I would have cried harder.  She nestled into me tight last night.

I don't feel sorry for myself for feeling depressed; it's a shitty thing, for sure, but I know it won't go on forever.  I'm lucky that way, having only episodic bouts of blackness.  Truth be told I'm usually in some state of greyness unless I am exercising a lot and have things to do without being overwhelmed by the pace of life.  Right now there's little pace to my existence.  I need a job so I can spend money more freely.  Spending money helps me tick the satisfaction boxes in my life.  I wish I could tick the boxes in better ways, such as through socialising or helping others.  In the absence of friends I gain solace from "things".  I think my father is the same.

The volunteering has propped me up a bit the past month, although that will drop off to once a fortnight this month; they have enough volunteers to do this.  The public speaking to students has resumed; I'm to address 400 1st year Psychology students at LaTrobe Uni in a week or so about my lived experience of mental illness.  That should be good, although parking will be a bitch and it's a fair distance away from where I live.  I might have to re-jig the talk a bit but feel comfortable enough to do so without major rehearsals needed.  That's the odd thing: for someone who is such a numbnut with other people in a social context I can hold my own when giving a talk.  Weird.

Otherwise have been doing a Quit Smoking Course at Lifeworks; started off ok, but the past week's worth of flatness has seen me smoke indoors again and hence smoke more.  My plan was to cut down with a view to quitting on Sept 1st.  It still could be that way; will be hard but I can try.

The only other events written in my diary are the various appointments with doctors, therapists etc.  Also my friend Diana has come here a couple of times the past month and has offered to come here next Friday to help me cut back some large tree branches out the back.  I really appreciate Diana.  She turned 40 last Sunday.  I invited her to my house a few days prior and made her pancakes for lunch and an indian tandoori veggie curry for dinner with meruigues  for dessert.  I gave her a salt crystal lamp as a present, which she liked.  I'm glad she is my friend.  She's my only close friend at the moment.  Tina had problems with her back and spent some time in hospital last month; she emailed me to say she's home again and that she will contact me.  I know Tina: she means for me to hold off until she's ready to talk; she can be quite ferocious when grumpy and being in severe pain would make her grumpy.  So I sent her an email back wishing her well.

I have another, more distant friend with a birthday this Tuesday.  I've known Carol for all my life but we tend only to catch up once a year and ring each other on our birthdays.  Last year she texted me instead of ringing.  Ouch.

Then my family; well they're always busy.  My sister and her hubby and kids live in a furious vortex of activity; it's hard to edge into their busy lives even on a bi-monthly basis.  Mum and Jeff I have more chance with, but even they are pretty busy for octogenarians.  I'm trying to phone Mum earlier in the day for our catch-up phonecalls as I am finding that by 5.30pm she's starting to be fatigued, vague and a bit scatty.  I would ring her 20 times for every one time she rings me.  Other than to ring Mum I hardly ever use my phone.  I'm a very solitary person.  Very.  At times like feeling flat, this hurts a bit.  But when I'm more buoyant it doesn't get to me.  That's just the way I am.

I don't tend to share about being flat to friends and family (except Diana who understands because she has chronic depression); I figure thats what the counsellors are for.  And the odd blog like this.  It really is therapeutic to write it out; it mightn't make for great reading but it stops me balling it inside.  Or sitting and drinking and listening to Radiohead.  Or Portished.  Or Tom Waits.  Good music, but dark and broody; allowing me waaaaaay too much rumination time.

Rumination can be ok if done positively; it tends to get a bad rap.  I guess positive rumination tends to be labelled "being philosophical".  At the end of the day it's still sitting on your arse and thinking about stuff whilst alone.  Whether that's a good or bad way to spend your time depends on the individual.

But yeah, negative rumination.....getting upset about the status quo or events of the past...if you don't have some sort of drug to quell the mood it can be like barbed wire across the heart.

 AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHH

Battling depression

Been feeling flat the past few days.  Normally I keep it to myself; don't want to be a killjoy or burden.  My friend noticed it yesterday: "you really are down aren't you?" she noted.  She didn't try to problem-solve, just hung out with me at my place while I cooked for her and we watched some DVD's.  She gets depression too, so we didn't need to really talk about it.  I was just grateful she was there.

A counsellor from the mental health group I attended commented on my flat mood today too.  I was attending a quit smoking course being run for free there.  I wasn't trying to be glum, just couldn't inject enthusiasm into my verbal or facial expression.

I'm dreading the  nightly "how has your day been?" call from my Mum.  She doesn't handle me being flat very well; tends to wring her hands in despair or just get exasperated with me.  I can fake enthusiasm for a ten minute phonecall though; sometimes it's easier than trying to 'justify' being depressed.

That's just it: the need to justify, to reassure that it will pass, which it will.  I'm fortunate; my flat moods do tend to pass relatively quickly.  I've only felt like this since Tuesday, unlike other times when the mood has persisted for weeks or even months.  If it happened more frequently I'd be more proactive about trying to assist myself to   rise out of it, eg: walking, avoiding excess caffeine and smokes, trying not to isolate.....all that palava.
                                                                                                                                                                         On the plus side I have kept up with basic housework.
I haven't drank since Monday when I got obliterated on red wine (cask red....paint stripper).

I get out of bed in the morning by 8am most days.  I shower etc.  So things haven't really hit the skids yet.

Am seeing the clinical psychologist tomorrow.  Hope to get some things sorted.  This mood fucking sucks.  Out foul stench out!!!!!

Volunteering

I've been volunteering one or two mornings a week at a local charity which gives out free food to needy people who live in our district.  It operates out of a small office owned by a church, and has a trusty brigade of volunteers, mostly women in their 70's.  Needy locals get a referral from the citizens advice bureau and can turn up once a month.  There is a constant demand: today we were flat out.  I work out the back in the storeroom, filling orders and restocking the shelves.  We get our fresh food from the local Aldi supermarket who give us fruit and veg which is wilting but usable.  The rest comes from a charitable warehouse called Foodbank which operates in Dandenong; I'm not sure if what we get is free or is paid for by the church.  In any case, we are rarely without customers; today was no exception.

One client really struck me; she would have been about 25 and was nursing a young baby.  She had 6 kids to feed.  When I filled in her order I chucked in lots of extras that weren't on her 'shopping list'.  As people arrive they wait their turn then go into the office and have their needs assessed by another volunteer, who asks them which items they would like from a staple list that we generally have, although there's always anomalies due to variations in the stock provided from Foodbank.  I have to keep the office person abreast of what we have out the back and when we run out of an item.  It's fun, physical and rewarding; as I give the bags of goods to people in the waiting room they say thankyou and smile.  I love giving food away to people.  Our last customer today was a lady who hadn't been able to afford easter eggs for her kids; she spied some on the shelf behind me and asked if she could please have 2 chocolate bunnies; I gave her the biggest 2 I could find.  Even if she was scamming I didn't mind.

We get a few scammers coming in; people with multiple names and ID's who try and rort the system; or who lie about having kids when they don't have any. There's not much you can do about that.  I figure the majority are genuine, and there's probably an element of desperation in the scammers themselves.

My psychologist suggested I try out for a job at a supermarket doing shelf stacking or some mindless stress less activity: I know there'd be an element of stress in a supermarket, I've been there before.  But it's not a bad suggestion; I will try and pursue it with my employment counsellor, a new one whom I've yet to meet.  I had hoped she'd contact me this week but as yet no luck.  If I don't hear by Monday I'll email my old consultant (who got a promotion in the same organisation) to see what's up. In the meantime the volunteering is filling a void in my life and helping me feel like I'm being useful for a change.

Ever wondered what an appointment with a Psychiatrist is like????

Ok; for starters - it depends what country you reside in.

Secondly, a lot depends upon how rich you are, even if you are in an affluent country, and whether you have health insurance.

Thirdly, there are different sorts of psychiatrists: many are mostly medication tweakers; some engage in talking therapies such as CBT (cognitive behavioural therapy), DBT (dialectic behavioural therapy); others ask how your life has been since last you saw them.

Then there are the Psychotherapists: they can engage in hypnosis to uncover your subconscious or root feelings which govern many of your ongoing reactions to life, or they can get you to lie on a couch and ramble for an hour then they unemotionally reflect back what is at the core of your issues (eg: desire to return to the womb, to be taken care of, to refuse to grow up).

Finally......as I said first up: it depends what country you reside in.  These examples above are from my personal experiences with psychiatrists and the like from Melbourne Australia from 1995 to the present.  By no means is it a full (or even accurate) picture of what exists in Melbourne, let alone Australia or America (where to my perception a lot of people see a 'therapist' who seem to have relatively mild symptoms; not a good or bad thing, just an observation) or other countries around the world.  I can only tell you what I've experienced, so here 'tis.

The most common session with a psychiatrist goes like;

(1) Turn up on time, check in at reception, wait in the crowded waiting room between 15-45mins to be seen;

(2)  You greet him or her as "Dr. xyz"...they prefer that generally than to to be called by their first name; in turn they tend to call you by your full christian name, 

(3)  He searches for your file then sits in his chair with you opposite; he studies his notes from the previous couple of sessions and nods and says:  "Hmmhmm...ok.  So....how have you been?".  It is up to me to have salient points from the past few weeks since I last saw him; I generally think these through when I am in the waiting room.

The topics which get visited time and again are: sleep patterns (good/poor); diet and weight loss (required due to me stacking on weight since I hit 30 whilst on certain medications as do a lot of people due to the medications drastically increasing your appetite); exercise efforts (assists general and especially mental health, especially for people with mood disorders like bipolar, schizoaffective disorder and depression); alcohol usage/abuse (dual diagnosis/co-morbidity); whether I have isolated too much or made an effort to socialise; self-care (showering, dressing, cooking, cleaning); job issues (ability to cope when employed; efforts to jobseek when unemployed); family issues; distressing incidents; any achievements etc.

(4) Medication usually gets discussed; moreso when just starting a new one and it's side-effects; also when altering the level of dosage.  I had a previous psychiatrist describe his role as "having me on the least amount of medication possible whilst having me be mentally and physically as well as I can be".  That's a pretty decent aim in my book; the therapy or practical assistance side tends not to ever come from the doctor; that is what social workers, psychologists, outreach workers, drug and alcohol counsellor etc. are there for.  I'm lucky that my current psychologist (a clinical psychologist, although she doesn't administer mendication) writes a 6 month summary of our hourly sessions and sends them to my psychiatrist.  We joke that he never reads them, but I can't assume that.  I see my psychologist every 3-4 weeks, and we go into much the same as point (3), but also include past feelings and more depth.

(5) While my appointment says its for half an hour on the receipt I get when I pay at reception, I generally spend around 15-20mins with my current doctor.  The longest I've spent with a Psychiatrist is an hour-long session, and those were with the psychotherapists (which were short-lived).  A lot of Australian psychiatrists will see you only for half an hour, often less.  I pay $130 for my 15-20min glimpses, then get back $112 cash from Medicare; so my doctor isn't that unreasonable.

One thing about my doctor: he always seems rushed; he works at the adjoining private psychiatric hospital, and often dashes across the road to see a client .  He works six days a week, and is always available on-call.  With his European manner and accent he can seem very abrupt, cold, brusque and rude.  Yet I stick with him for his ability to manage my medication, and in spite of his manner I believe him to be a very ethical man.  He has my brain chemistry in his hands; I've trusted 2 other doctors before and they have got the medication part terribly, terribly wrong; so much so that I ended up in hospital twice because of their medication miscalculations.  I took what they said me to take and ended up very unwell.  Not so my current doctor, who has made some changes but always in the aim of helping me be as physically and mentally as well as I can be.  That in my eyes is a good Psychiatrist: I'm a type 2 diabetes risk, so losing weight just has to happen, no question.  I've been on the same anti-psychotic (olanzapine) for 3 years now.  There are newer antipsychotics around which are, as my Psych says "weight-neutral", but can have worse side-effects than the olanzapine, which I've thus far tolerated well, aside from getting the midnight munchies from time to time.  So hopefully we can make a medication breakthrough in terms of the hunger-pangs sometime in the near future.

So......yeah...sorry, I reverted to my current doctor instead of a "typical" session with a psychiatrist.   I guess all I can say is there is no typical session, other than the points I highlighted in bold in subsection (3) above.  I hasten to add that this has only been in my experience, although I have compared notes with some people I've met along the way who have seen psychiatrists and have found some similarities between their sessions and mine (not that we went into details).

One thing which inevitably irks me is when you've been to your session with the shrink, and someone (usually a well-meaning family member) says:  "So what did the Doctor have to say?".  I have tried educating them that it is mostly the doctor asking me questions, not the other way around.  I guess it highlights the lack of understanding of psych issues generally; that people assume its like a general medical condition where you describe your symptoms and get told a course of action of what to do (eg: fill this prescription; see this specialist; get some rest etc).

Unlike a general physician, I've never had a psychiatrist tell me what I should do, not in black and white, not as an absolute.  They might recommend things, but aside from taking my meds on time there's precious little orders.  The exception is if my drinking gets out of control or if I am in hospital; then he treats me like I'm a child.


But that's another story.

Would you Believe.........

I wasn't sure how many of you out there picked up on the ode to the 1960's comedy series "Get Smart" that I've made in the title of this blog.  I'm guessing there would have been a few, but didn't want to assume.  Maxwell Smart, agent 86 as brilliantly played by Don Adams, along with agent 99 (the wonderful Barbara Feldon) acted as my surrogate babysitter for much of my childhood.  In the 1970's my sister and I were latch-key kids; Dad had left Mum who was now out in the workforce.  There was no such thing as after-school programs for young kids then.  So we skipped our way home, found the housekey from where it was hidden on a nail behind the fencepost down the end of the driveway, and set about amusing ourselves.

This meant making the biggest glass of Milo and milk, along with a decent handful of sweet bisciuts (usually teddy bears as Mum wouldn't allow chocolate ones which were too expensive and were Bad For You) and plomping oneself in front of the teev for a solid diet of american re-runs of sit-coms from the 60's.  Staple diet of amusement included;

I Dream of Jeannie (sexist but worth watching for Dr Bellows' indignation)

The Brady Bunch (cheesy but always watchable; loved the Hawaiian episodes with the cursed 'tiki')

Bewitched (Endora was a goddess; an early gay icon, she looked like a Mardi Gras float entrant)

and of course...

Get Smart (Max was infuriating but the sight gags were great; Siegfried also used to make me chuckle).

While I have a degree of fondness for these shows I don't feel rose-eyed enough to purchase them on DVD, much less watch them on the new extra free-to-air digital channels.  I have perused them briefly on the digital channels and find them so very dated, sexist and not even funny.  Times change, huh?  Mind you I see some of what's on offer on our screen and just shake my head in disbelief; are we really in the 21st century when dross like "2 Broke Girls" still slimes its way across our screens?  

Anyway look I'm not about to holler the feminist howl and cry foul; it's more the moronic witless banter I dislike.  Even the newest episodes of Big Bang Theory seem to have lost their lustre over the past few months.  No wonder I listen to radio these days more than watching the box.

I watched a zombie DVD this afternoon: "Land of the Dead" by George A. Romero, the man responsible for the zombie classic "Dawn of the Dead".  It was an ok 2005 outing with Simon Baker as a passable hero; Dennis Hopper being strangely miscast as a corporate villain; but the real stars were the zombies, they were a hoot.  There's such an art to doing a real zombie-shuffle, I think.  The stiff legged style is one approach, although I noted one talented zombie doing a buckled-knee action which was suitably awkward too.  Anyway lots of brain and flesh-eating; good fodder for a rainy Tuesday afternoon whilst slowly sipping a glass of cask shiraz with the dog on my lap.

I have to limit my red wine consumption: have found out the hard way it is a bucket full of histamines, which doesn't block my nose; rather it makes my throat puff up and a bit hard to breathe.  I find if I have more than 3 small glasses I have to sleep with 3 chunky pillows in order not to choke.  Weird reaction.  Anyhow I shouldn't be drinking at all; have been battling this for the past month or so; a never-ending story.  Moderation is soooooooo hard.  I can manage it with most things, but not with cigarettes or alcohol.  Bummer.

Anyway this has weaved and ducked all around the joint, this post.  I'm tired.  It's time to feed the dog and watch the news.  Bye.