Showing posts with label Prozac Monologues. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Prozac Monologues. Show all posts

World Bipolar Day: What the Heck Happened to my Brain?

Prozac Monologues is a book within a book. Its original form was a series of monologues written in an unrecognized hypomanic state. The rest of the story is what I learned about bipolar disorder after I learned that I have it.

In Balancing Act -- The Science Chapter, I answer the question, How did I get into this mess anyway? I compare it to another question, Why did the roof collapse? Both answers are to be found in a process that begins with something a little wonky and develops into a systemic mess.


The following excerpt skips the charming roof collapse explanation (inspired by true events during one Central Oregon snowmaggedon in 2017). Buy the book for that story! It goes straight to the science part. Let me know in the comments what you think.

Why Writing Bar Tales of Costa Rica is Good for my Mental Health

Mindfulness


Mayo Clinic describes mindfulness as a type of meditation in which you focus on being intensely aware of what you are sensing and feeling in the moment, without interpretation or judgment. Practicing mindfulness involves breathing methods, guided imagery, and other practices to relax the body and mind and help reduce stress.

For some of us, these meditation exercises, "close your eyes, focus on your breath..." are difficult, frustrating, and stress inducing. Particularly for people with a trauma history or ADHD, mindfulness can be a land mine.

For others, the whole enterprise sounds like woo-woo mental health. Add some essential oils and affirmations - who needs therapy or, God forbid, medication?

But there's more to mindfulness than nonsense.

The same Mayo Clinic article identifies several mindfulness practices. Three could be taken as basic concepts:

  • Pay attention
  • Live in the moment
  • Accept yourself

How does that work out irl - in real life?

Let me tell you about my recent five week stay in Costa Rica. First, the back story:


Prozac Monologues

My first book, Prozac Monologues, began with a hypomanic episode during an earlier trip to Costa Rica. I wrote a series of comedic monologues in an effort to not be mindful. The monologues danced around the memory of a recent Prozac-induced traumatic experience. It began with a bizarre thought, and moved on to some other weird stuff: dissociation, thought broadcasting, paranoia, and the like. 

Years later, once I was correctly diagnosed with bipolar disorder, I added edgy essays about that experience and everything I learned about bipolar disorder while trying to figure out what the hell happened to my brain. Like many memoirs, Prozac Monologues is a hybrid of my story and my issue. Sheila Hamilton's podcast, Beyond Well, captures it. Here's the linkIt's also a great read and now available on audio.

Bar Tales of Costa Rica

So what about Bar Tales of Costa Rica? My second book is exactly what the title promises: the stories I heard while sitting in bars in Costa Rica. That sounds like a very different book. Am I a genre hopper?

Yes and no.

via GIPHY


Bar Tales is about a milieu, a place and the people in it. It is not about mental illness. There are passing references to my own. But that's not the point. No references to research. No descriptions of recovery strategies. Stories heard in bars - it's a very different book.

Still, it is a sequel. It picks up where the monologues left off. In the first book, my wife Helen and I thought about moving to Costa Rica. Several months later, we did buy a little house in Playas del Coco. Didn't quite move there, but we spend several weeks there every year.


That's where I continued to work on Prozac Monologues. It's also where I gathered my bar tales, most of them at my sister's hotel and restaurant, the Pato Loco, which means "crazy duck." Other sites included El Bohío (referenced in the first book), Pacifico Beach Club, Coco Palms, and Soda Navidad.

You could call the second book a segue to the first. I turn a corner. That would be a right turn that leads me out of my neighborhood Los Canales, on to the Boulevard de Iguanas, and over to a whole new cast of characters: Patricia, Bruce, Andy, Sydney, Monique and André. Bar Tales is about their stories.



So why is this book good for my mental health?

As I am polishing these tales for publication in the spring of 2024, I spent several weeks in Coco for research. Research.

I wasn't sitting in bars, gathering tales - though inevitably a couple got added to the collection. This time I was gathering sensations. Physical sensations.

Trauma and Sensations

Sensations - these are at the heart of my mindfulness technique.

  • The person who has experienced trauma sometimes gets stuck in the past, reliving a loop of troublesome sensations. And let me tell you - being suicidal, as I was, is traumatic.
  • Or, in the face of current strife and stress, that person might dissociate - disconnect from present anxiety by going numb.
  • Or, based on deeply rooted thought patterns about bad things that happened in the past, the person faces the future with dread, anticipating - and pre-experiencing - a repeat of negative experiences.

Each of these are ways that we lose or escape the here and now. I think of here and now as my worst subject.

The thing is - here and now is where joy lives.

Let me repeat that.

Here and now is where joy lives.

So my research, gathering sensations, experiences in the present, kept me anchored in here and now.

And it filled me with joy.

What color are the rooster's feathers? - bronze head and breast, black legs, wings of teal and red.

What sound do the geckos make? - chk, chk, chk. How about the howler monkey? muffler dragging on concrete!

What do mangoes smell like when they are sitting in the field near my house in the hot sun? - like a fortified sweet wine.

What does carne en salsa taste like? Beef stewed in a rich vegetable sauce with hints of smoke when Juan cooks it all day in an iron pot over a wood fire under the mango tree.

What does it feel like to walk in the surf? Caressing waves, then grit in my sandals.

I walked around town with my phone in my hand, making voice memos, describing these sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and sensations. My mind fixed on the present, there was no room there for regrets about the past or anxiety about the future.

Health Benefits of Mindfulness

Mindful meditation has been demonstrated to reduce anxiety, depression, stress, pain, insomnia, and high blood pressure.

There are many ways to do mindfulness. A review of literature published in Clinical Psychology Review, Effects of Mindfulness on Psychological Health, summarizes the context of mindfulness practice in its Eastern and Western versions and its application in a variety of psychological treatments.

What I offer here is one simplified self-help practice for addressing panic and anxiety, a disciplined version of what I called my research:

Focus on your environment.

  • Name five things that you see right now
  • Name four sounds that you hear
  • Name three things that you feel
  • Name two things that you smell
  • Name one thing that you taste
Yeah, don't get hung up on remembering whether it's three feelings or three smells. I don't remember the order of the sensations and made it up.

The point is to redirect the catastrophizing brain, to pull it into the here and now. Remember - here and now is where joy lives.

This practice isn't the cure all to my mental health issues. And I doubt it will cure yours. But it gives our poor brains, exhausted by the three alarm fires that usually occupy them, a break. It turns down the temperature and lets a different input in.

And that's a good thing.

One Exciting Thing and One Ironic Thing About Prozac Monologues and Psychology Today

Last week Psychology Today posted Bipolar Disorder: How to Get Correctly Diagnosed, my interview with Monica Starkman, M.D. about Prozac Monologues: A Voice from the Edge. Its tag says, The average of seven years to receive accurate diagnosis is unacceptably high.

Damn straight it is! The article is about how to improve that rate, or at least to improve the odds for the people who follow its suggestions.

This popular journal chose to place the article in its Essential Reads section on its bipolar resource page. The article's key points include:

  • Bipolar disorder, particularly Type II, is often misdiagnosed.
  • People tend to spend much more time in a depressive state and often do not recognize mild or hypomanic symptoms.
  • The chance of getting properly diagnosed is increased by using online screening tools and bringing family/friends to doctor visits.

I spent a mere (!) five years misdiagnosed with major depression, two of them taking the antidepressants that threw me into mixed episodes and made me suicidal. A random conversation on an airplane led me to the Mood Disorder Questionnaire referenced in the Psychology Today article. Taking the MDQ was the first step to discovering my bipolar and, more importantly, getting on the road to recovery.

So the exciting thing is that this information will be accessible to a larger audience than those of us who go poking around medical journals. That is my mission. Contact me on my website if I can speak to your book club, church group, or fraternal organization about mental illness and recovery.

The ironic thing? -- The photo the magazine chose to accompany the article.

Gratitude - The Prozac Monologues Publication Edition

Fifteen years! From the hypomanic first draft of Prozac Monologues on a yellow legal notepad to a published book, and the nail file that inspired it all.

The book was officially released into the wild this week and will be celebrated in two launches, one sponsored by Paulina Springs Books in Sisters, OR, and the other sponsored by Prairie Lights in Iowa City, IA.

It's a good time to talk about gratitude. Forgive my self-indulgence. It is a day to reflect.

First, people have asked whether it was hard to write about such dark times in my life, if it retriggered some of those emotions. Occasionally, it did. Occasionally I would have a sleepless night remembering, in particular, difficult encounters in treatment. One can forgive sincerely. One can forgive over and over. Still, the brain remembers. I don't harbor resentments, but I can't always hop off the time travel machine that is my brain, how it repeats the tracks laid down by past traumas.

Misconceptions about Suicidal Thoughts

My publicist seems to think people have a lot of misconceptions about mental illness (she's right), because many of her questions go there. You are very open about discussing your own struggles with suicidal thoughts. What do you think are the biggest misconceptions about people going through similar experiences? So today's post will focus on suicidal thoughts or suicidality.

Suicide is not a choice


The way people talk, you'd think we sit down and make a list, pros and cons of suicide. Then based on our calculations, we make some kind of decision. She chose to end her life. Or, How could he have been so selfish.

This is called the volitional theory of suicide, suicide as an act of will. The suicide prevention approach that addresses it is to weigh in on that list of pros and cons, like Jennifer Michael Hecht's book, Stay.

You know -- Suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem. Or, Think of what you'll miss out on. Or, whatever. In other words, how dumb or short-sighted or irresponsible or selfish you must be to decide to kill yourself.

Misconceptions about Antidepressants

What do you think are the most common misconceptions about antidepressants?


Prozac Monologues: A Voice from the Edge is at the press kit stage with Q&A in development. My publicist wants me to answer questions that interviewers might ask. My responses should be in the three to seven sentence range, she says.

Three to seven sentences are not my forte. I am doing my best and taking comfort that in an interview format, there might be a follow-up when I can say more.

They are good questions and worth a blog series, I think, where I can expand to three to seven paragraphs. Mostly seven. Maybe more. Plus, you know, pictures. So that's what you get for a few weeks.

No, antidepressants are not happy pills

Frazzled Cafe and Ruby Wax - Yes, I am a Fan


Ruby Wax is the founder of Frazzled Cafe, a peer support group for anyone who is overwhelmed by the stresses of modern life. As Ruby says, our brains just don't have the bandwidth. If that describes you, check it out. But bring your own coffee. The meetings moved online, a Zoom meeting on account of... you know.

Ruby is an American-born long time television personality in Britain and comedienne whose career pivoted when mental illness caught up with her. She went back to school to study the brain and got a masters from Oxford on mindfulness based therapy. Since then she has written books, toured, lectured, using her prodigious brain and her comic chops to entertain and educate about brain health.

Major Depression and World Bipolar Day

Your diagnosis is major depression. So what does World Bipolar Day have to do with you?

I mean, what a relief to just have major depression, right? Isn't bipolar another level of crazy? Well. . .

First, a reality check. Whatever level of crazy you are now, you can call it whatever you want, your mental health struggles will not get worse if your diagnosis changes. Actually, you might get better. I'll get back to that.

Normal/Not Normal at Prozac Monologues

How are you all doing?

Me, I am trying to imagine that at least some things will be sorted by the end of summer in time for publication of Prozac Monologues: A Voice from the Edge. So here I am, working in my New Normal Coffee Shop to meet my next deadline, a deadline that COVID-19 has not erased.

This stage is called "first pages." In the photo I have in front of me a printout of the design people's first version of the book pages, the interior of the book. I am working at the dining room table, my current coffee shop in the new normal, because my office doesn't have a table.

Prozac Monologues - Happy Anniversary!

Ten years ago I retired on a mental illness disability. It was a relief. It was dreadful. It was a heartbreak. And I was pretty sick.

Being a priest is a public job, and mine had been more public than most. So between retirement and the mental illness that led to it, I felt isolated and had a serious case of Who the hell am I, anyway?

But I sat down, signed up for a blog, wrote my first post, and there it was, my new life, Prozac Monologues: Reflections and Research on the Mind, the Brain, Mental Illness, and Society.

This is the place where I have recorded my learning about what happened to me: genetic variation, childhood trauma, wonky wiring, unhappy mitochondria, that broken internal clock... followed by misdiagnosis of Major Depressive Disorder, inappropriate antidepressant medication, a bit of psychiatric manipulation, a new diagnosis of Bipolar 2. And then recovery. Not cure, but recovery, as in the way I live the rest of my life.

It is where I have puzzled through philosophical issues about mental illness and its treatment, political issues about society's response, stigma/prejudice, the use of language, how art can soothe the savage brain, how mental illness comedy can give voice to what cannot otherwise be said.

It is where I have discovered psychiatrists and others whose work I admire: Ronald Pies, David Conroy, Hagop Akiskal, Jill Bolte Taylor, John McManamy, Nancy Andreasen, Nasser Ghaemi, and some others... not so much.

My readers have read my rants, my musings, and even my sermons. And some of you have made comments that told me I needed to keep going.

Which I did.

Thank you for that.

To mark the occasion, Prozac Monologues, the blog has been given a facelift. There may be a few more tweaks in the days to come. Actually, I'll invite you to make suggestions. Broken links have been removed from the Mental Health Break list on the right. I could use some new ones. What are your favorite videos and sites that would fit the category? Click the link for comments at the bottom of the post.

One more thing: Prozac Monologues: Are You Sure It's Just Depression -- promised so long ago in that first post will be coming to your local bookstore in September 2020! Published by She Writes Press, distributed by Ingram Publication Services, you can follow its progress on my author page. And Twitter, that thing into which authors are dragged kicking and screaming by their publicists (mine is JKS Communications), yes, I am on Twitter, too @WillaGoodfellow.

Again, thank you for reading. That will be my dedication in the book: I wrote this for you.


Doctors as Priests -- The Look

Several years ago I took Prozac for what was then thought to be Major Depression.  The hypomanic episode it precipitated gave me a book.  But before that, it gave me the runs.  Since my first doctor thought the runs would go away on their own, but I was about to leave for Costa Rica and wanted them to go away faster, I sought a second opinion.  The new patient form asked for my full history, and I told the truth about my depression, as well as the runs.

What follows is an excerpt from Prozac Monologues, the book to be published next year.  It describes that appointment.  I offer it as an example of a doctor functioning as priest.  [See last week's commentary on Ron Pies' article, Priests, Providers, and Protectors: The Three Faces of the Physician.]  Not the Father kind of priest, but the more ancient healer/witch/shaman kind.  It's tricky to handle the power of the priesthood.  But I want doctors to manage that power responsibly, not give it up on account of its ambiguity.  It is the power of relationship.  We need doctors to use every power at their disposal to heal.  Priesthood is one of those powers.

The Look

...When the doctor looked at the piece of paper with all those words circled on it, she didn't smile at my weak attempt at humor.  Oh well.  What she was most concerned about for my trip to Costa Rica was how I would manage my depression as the Prozac was leaving my system -- which I could tell it was, because the dark suffocating cloud was coming back.

Andrew Solomon on Depression

I want to be Andrew Solomon when I grow up.  Only briefer.  And funny.

In the absence of blood tests, people with depression have words.  And Solomon has a lot of them.

Solomon's book The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression sits by my bedside. I'll get through it someday soon, because I want to tell potential publishers that Prozac Monologues is Noonday Demon, only briefer.  And funny.

Solomon went around the world to report how the world experiences depression.  Yes, he found it everywhere.

Last week when I told my doctor I was going to Costa Rica, he asked if I would feel better there.  You know what? People in Costa Rica get depression, too.  Hard to imagine, I know.  But it's true. They have psych wards and therapists and ECT and everything in Costa Rica.  I have a card for a psychiatrist in San Jose, just in case.

In the Beginning -- Four Years Out

Four years ago I had lost my voice.  Literally.


How does a psych patient get help without a voice?  Too many times shamed into silence, when I quit my therapist I went to a Chinese Practitioner who did energy work, so I wouldn't have to speak.  When I had no choice but to find a new psychiatrist, I had to whisper.

How does a preacher preach without a voice?  Too long in the dark night, I had nothing to say.  When the pension fund required I not work at all for a year as a condition of disability, it was a relief.


How does a writer write when the words disappear?  Again I had no choice but to return to the Chemistry Experiment, this time with Lamictal. -- They tell you all about this exceedingly rare rash.  Sure it could kill you.  But you just stop taking the med, the rash goes away.  Meanwhile, they forget to mention the very common side effect -- your words disappear.  I didn't complete a sentence for months, forgetting in the middle what I intended to say.  Four books languished on my laptop.

Prozac Monologues

But I am a psych patient.  I am a preacher.  I am a writer.  I need my voice.  Enter http://prozacmonologues.blogspot.com/.

Anniversary - Prozac Monologues

Do you take antidepressants for depression and you are not getting better?  Do they make you agitated, anxious, insomniac?  Have you heard it often takes a while to find the right med, so you keep trying, you brave little soldier, you?

My friend, today you tapped your ruby slippers together, and Google brought you here.  Maybe not to your home, but to mine.  What follows is the back story to Prozac Monologues.  But first things first:

Stop.  Stop trying.  Go no further until you have taken the MDQ, Mood Disorder Questionnaire, right here at this link, and have asked a friend or housemate who knows you really well and loves you enough to tell the truth to fill it out for you, as well.

Sabbatical -- Summer Reading

Well, dang.  Regular readers know that every once in a while my brain goes on strike.  I can't imagine how I used to preach week after week after week.  Usually, I do a re-run or fill with some video.  But after posting something every week since April 2009, the time has come to take an intentional break, a sabbatical.

I hate to do this in the middle of a series.  I have one more post in me on apology.  But I need more than a week's recovery time this time.  So that series will have to wait until October or so.  I'll still stick up an occasional youtube.  I've got one in the file featuring Mister Rogers...

Meanwhile, I have some suggestions to broaden your blog-reading horizons.  Most are not about mental health issues.  They are the random reading that feed my mind and soul, a selection from my blog role.  Consider this my annual Summer Reading post.

First up, of course, Knowledge is Necessity.  John McManamy gave me a leg up in the blogging business, when he introduced me to his readers, as the only other blogger he knows who writes about the anterior cingulate cortex.  I think of us as blogmates.

Knowledge is Necessity is as close as you will get to your weekly Prozac Monologues fix.  The way John puts it, from God to neurons.  Not that you could mistake one of us for the other in a crowd.  For one, he's a lousy dancer.  Kinda scary, actually.  But his writing -- you'll snort milk out of your nose.  Here is my review of his new book Raccoons Respect My Piss, as well.  I am reading it a second time right now.

Second, Untangled by Dr. Kelly Flanagan.  Notwithstanding the fact that I write a mental health blog, I don't actually read many, especially not the inspirational ones.  I don't respond well to people who give me advice, even good advice.  Especially good advice.  Just ask my therapist.  But Flanagan can tell a story.  He respects the knots we tie ourselves into in a way that helps us untangle them and find a bit of freedom.

Flanagan is relatively new to the blogging biz, and rather brave, I think, a psychotherapist who blogs about psychotherapy, exposing himself to his readers' triggers.  He has managed it well when he trips mine.  Responsive, but non-reactive -- I think that's what they call it in that language of theirs.  Me, I have to choose between reactive or silent.  So I admire how Flanagan can pull off that responsive but not-reactive thing and still tell a good story.

So that's it for the mental health blogs.


Cake Wrecks.  When I need a dose of something nuts to keep from going nuts, I look at the weird things that people do with cake and frosting.  The subtitle is When Professional Cakes Go Horribly, Hilariously Wrong.  This blog is a whole franchise by now, with books, tours and contests.  The photo above is of my own cake which I did not submit for consideration, because I am not a professional.  At the cake-biz, that is.  But it gives you an idea of what you might find at Cake Wrecks.  I made this one for a guerrilla party held in the lobby of a hospital where I would commit suicide rather than be hospitalized, to celebrate suicide prevention.

My arts and crafts piece here was handicapped by a dearth of materials.  In a  fit of good sense, I had turned over to my shrink my stash of old, ineffective or intolerable and dangerous meds.  (I had quite a collection.)  So I couldn't decorate the cake with pills, which had been my intent.  I had to substitute Mike and Ike's and Smarties.  Cake Wreck cakes go way beyond this effort.

Which leads me to Suicide Food.  Only this blog is not about suicide.  Well, not that kind of suicide.  It collects advertising images that depict animals acting as though they wish to be consumed.  You know, like instead of the Chick-Fil-A cows, encouraging you to eat more chicken, these are the little piggies inviting you to the barbecue.  There seem to be an inexhaustible supply of these scenes to which you may be completely oblivious (I was) until you read Suicide Food, where they are rated on a scale of one to five nooses for just how sick they really are.  The folks who bring you Suicide Food are also on sabbatical.  But they have five years' worth of shrimp lounging and waving to you from the cocktail glass for you to peruse.

Finally, you can tell Shell Shock - Nell's Big Walk is not a mental health blog, because it has a beginning, a middle and an end.  An end, what a concept.  Here's the deal.  Helen and I have been thinking about the Camino, a 500 mile walk across northern Spain, from the Pyrenees to Santiago de Compostela, a pilgrim route over 1000 years old, to the place where are buried the bones purported to be of Saint James, the brother of Jesus, washed up on the shore of northwestern Spain in a boat made of stone.  My kind of pilgrimage.


In our consideration of this enterprise, we had been reading others' accounts, which are, for the most part, filled with angst and/or stupidity, slathered with pain and misery.  I mean, I thought Paulo Coehlo's quest for his sword to be the most self-absorbed little boy obsession I have ever read.

But we kept reading.  Helen was researching boots when she came upon Nell Spillane, an Irish trainer and business coach.  Nell and Frances, childhood friends, celebrated their 50th birthdays by fulfilling a vow to do the pilgrimage when they got old, which they took to mean 50.  Nell's blog is a day by day account.  Helen and I spent Lent this year, reading one post a day.  Neither of us has had the heart to finish the last few days and be done with it.  Obviously, we could use a business coach.  I am stuck 20k short of Santiago.

Frances and Nell had fun!  There are spiritual moments.  All the piety that means something to us means something to them, going to the pilgrim masses, putting beads on the wayside statues of Mary.  But it's the comfortable sort, the Celtic thing/Teresa of Avila/feel free to cuss God out/don't take yourself and your precious insights so seriously sort.  Go ahead, eat that ham sandwich (after you dust it off).  Just wash it down with some more wine.

One thing has become clear.  We will not begin our Camino at the most typical starting point, St. Jean Pied de Port on the French side of the Pyrenees.  No, we will honor our Irish ancestors and begin where they would have, outside the Guinness Brewery St. James Gate, Dublin.

Thanks, Nell.


And thanks to all my readers.  Drop in now and then this summer.  You might find something new.  But for anything that requires the frontal cortex, see you next fall.

flair by Facebook.com
book jacket from amazon.com
photo of cake by Willa Goodfellow
photo of tomb of St. James by Le Galician, in public domain
photo of Guinness Brewery, St. James Gate, Dublin by Dubh Eire, in public domain

Hypomania Goes To A Blog Party


The American Psychological Association is throwing a blog party.  Today!!  Why didn't anybody tell me about it until today?!  Maybe because they have heard about me and parties?

I didn't know about me and parties.  I didn't figure it out until I discovered I have bipolar II.  -- Not bipolar I.  Everybody knows about that kind of crazy.  Bipolar II is -- well, you never know what you're going to get.  Sometimes what you get makes you the life of the party.  Sometimes in a good way.  Sometimes it makes you crazy productive and successful at work.  That is why it years and years to get a bipolar II diagnosis.  Nobody goes to the doctor because they feel great, are having fun, and are the apple of the boss's eye.

Sometimes the family member knows about the evil twin.  But chances are, the doctor doesn't ask the family member.


Raccoons Respect My Piss

I don't know that for a fact.  Actually, the piss in question is John McManamy's piss.  And he has the experience to back his claim.


Nor do I have any recollection of how I discovered McManamy's blog, Knowledge is Necessity, and from there, his enormous set of resources at McMan's Depression and Bipolar Web.  But as it happens, my entry into McMan World was Skunk -- the blog piece from August, 2009 that inspired his new book's title, Raccoons Respect My Piss, available in kindle format and now in paperback.


Since I asked John's permission to steal Skunk, which I guess means I didn't steal it, we have become what I call blogmates.  He most graciously gave me a leg up in this business, plugging Prozac Monologues in its infancy on his own blog.  Since then, we often find we are captured by the same curiosities at the same time -- as he puts it, God, neurons and everything between.

NAMI Camino - BDNF Meets 5K

Exercise and learning new things -- two of the most powerful tools in the Recovery Toolbox.  They came together in my NAMI Camino, April 28, 2012.

NAMI Walk/NAMI Camino gave you the set up.  NAMI Johnson County held its annual walk/fund-raiser last week, when I was in Costa Rica.  It would be my fourth and last time participating.  But I would be in Costa Rica!  Inspired by the San Diego Walk in 2010, when a battalion in Iraq ran while San Diego walked, I decided to do Johnson County's Walk long distance -- though I would not be running in full battle armor and in the heat of the day.  My extra effort was confined to carrying a laptop to record the event.

With the following results:


So what follows is a series of installments, stopping at each kilometer marker.  This series shows you what you can do with Photo Booth, Youtube, not much skill, and a willingness to experiment.  Everything is reversed, left and right, which won't confuse you unless you are trying to read t-shirts or street signs.

Getting Shrunk

I'm off this week to get my head examined, so am taking a break from using it.  This would be your opportunity to examine the many features of Prozac Monologues.  Here is a brief tour of the site and some tips for cyber-dinosaurs.

The basic breakdown: on the left are mental health and medication resources.  To your right are helps to navigate around the site, plus some fun stuff.

Text that appears in tan is a link to somewhere else.  The links on the left are to sites outside Prozac Monologues.  Most on the right go somewhere on the blog itself.  Notice in particular the feature called Labels.  If you click on a word in that list, several past posts on the same subject will appear.  The bigger the word, the more often I have written on it.  The right side also includes videos that change occasionally and sometimes coordinate with the current post, and sometimes not.  Ditto the Word of the Week.

The text in the middle is the new stuff I try to write once a week, weather and brain waves permitting.  Again, the tan text links to something else.  It could be a research article, an Amazon.com review, another blog, or an earlier Prozac Monologues post.

Below each post are some icons.  Click on comments to read other peoples' comments or add one of your own.  Click on the envelope to email the post to somebody else.  Click on one of the letters to share the post with whatever social media you use.  Click on the number to bring the post to the attention of the cyber world.  I don't actually know how that feature works.  Can somebody tell me?  Then there are more labels, links to other posts that deal with similar matters.  At least, I think they are similar matters.

That's enough to keep you busy while I spend the week filling out bubbles on instruments of torture devised by psychologists, and telling my tale of woe to psychiatrists who have heard worse, even if I can't imagine it, and who think they can come up with a new idea that my own doctor hasn't come up with, though I can't imagine that either.

Catch you later...

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Prozac Monologues - How It Began

First conceived as a stand up comedy routine, birthed as a book, morphed into a blog, on August 29, 2011 Prozac Monologues came full circle at Happy Hour at the Pato Loco, Playas del Coco, Costa Rica.  This was the very spot where in January 2005, the book was originally written over the course of eight heavenly (my wife wouldn't use that word), hypomanic days.  Micah pulled out his laptop.  Patricia set it up on top of a bar stool.  And I held forth.


You can hear a bit of our little beach town's rush hour in the background.  So here is the text:

Prozac Monologues - How It Began

2004 was not a good year for me.  My doctor tried to make it better by prescribing Prozac for major depression.  Only Prozac didn't make it better.  So she prescribed more Prozac.  And that made it so much more not better that I concluded the only way I could describe how much more not better would be a stand-up comedy routine.  And thus was planted the seed for what has become Prozac Monologues.

So I went off Prozac, and on January 25, 2005, I boarded an airplane for Costa Rica, armed with a yellow legal pad and a ball point pen. 

Hypomania In Action

For eight days in beautiful, tropical Costa Rica, my wife went to the beach, explored neighborhoods, visited with family, tried new foods, while I wrote.  And wrote.  And wrote.  When I filled up one side of the yellow legal pad, I wrote on the back.  When I filled up the back, I wrote in the margins.  When I filled up the margins, I wrote between the lines.

I came home with seven chapters.  Two weeks later, the book was done.

I told my doctor about my book and maniacally writing it.  That word maniacally raised a red flag.  So she screened for bipolar.  She said, Are you manic?

I said what anybody who thought she was Jesus Christ come back as Jessica Christ might have said, I'm not manic.  I'm excited!

Oh.  Okay.  So she prescribed the second antidepressant, and began what will have to become a new book, but I haven't recovered enough to write it yet.

Was I manic?  No, I was hypomanic.  But I didn't know that word.  And maybe you don't know it either.  So I submit for definition and for evidence the first four pages of

Prozac Monologues

by
Willa Goodfellow

Chapter One
Bizarre: In which I decide to write a book

Okay, let's start with the basic Prozac dilemma.  Just who is the crazy one around here?  If, after you read the morning paper, you are happy, content, secure, at peace, able to get up, go out and carry on your activities of daily living, full of confidence and a sense of purpose, then tell me -- are you pathologically delusional?

Or are you on Prozac?

Citizens of the United States of America (called Americans and thereby hijacking the identities of thirty-eight other nations in the Western Hemisphere -- Remember Canada?  Every heard of Paraguay?) make up 5% of the population of the planet and consume 24% of its energy resources.  We spend more on trash bags than the gross national product of 90 of the world's 130 nations.

What was that?


We spend more on trash bags than the whole gross national product of 90 nations.

So who is the crazy one around here? 


The Crazy Delusion 

We get such a sliver of time to enjoy this wildly extravagant planet, and we spend precious moments of it, watching couples on TV compete for cash prizes on the basis of how many maggots they can eat. 

Until the maggot-eating is interrupted by somebody who wants to sell you an air freshener that uses an electronically operated fan to circulate chemical compounds around your living room to make you think you are out of doors. 

The fan is the latest advance in civilization which will enable you to stop feeding your Shiatsu little treats, which you previously had to do to get it to wag its tail to disperse the chemical compounds around your living room. 

So now you have to take Prozac, so you can get yourself up off the sofa where you have been sitting in a semi-catatonic state, watching the maggot-eating and dog-treating, out of your pajamas and into your four-wheel drive SUV, which you were compelled to purchase after viewing those commercials of SUV’s climbing over mountainous terrain beside raging rivers,

But which you happen to use to commute an hour and forty-five minutes on some freeway to work in a cubicle with a picture of mountainous terrain and raging rivers and some motivational caption underneath, so you can buy the air freshener with its self-contained and electrically-operated fan that disperses the chemicals that make you think you are out of doors, because you wouldn’t want actually to go out of doors – the air is so nasty from the fumes of your SUV.  Who is the crazy one around here? 

And don’t even get me started on the taxes you will pay from your job in your cubicle to fund somebody’s research into that missile that can shoot another missile out of the sky, to protect us from the bad guys who can bring down two 100-story buildings armed with the equivalent of a Swiss Army knife.  If it’s your job to figure out how to shoot that missile out of the sky, stop taking Prozac and go do something else to do with your life.  Or just go back to your sofa.  Please. 

Okay, now I sound like Michael Moore.  Let’s just call this the Crazy Delusion, a concept not original to me, and of which you can think of your own examples, so I don’t need to continue this rant which is not really the point of this book, but only the context of our consideration of the title of its first chapter.

In short –

It’s hard to know whether depression is a problem of distorted thinking or the result of clarity. 

In either case, sitting on the sofa in your pajamas does not turn the economic engine of this great nation, no matter what you’re watching.

Except for the pharmaceutical industry’s economic engine.  They keep making money, as long as they are able to sell you images of people who are happy and confident, popping their Prozac, (nowadays it’s Abilify), which you really start to believe when you’re still sitting on that sofa, watching those images over and over and over again. 

Ads For Antidepressants

Have you noticed how all the ads for antidepressants run during the afternoon soaps?  (If you are not depressed, you haven’t noticed, because you’re off at work, turning that economic engine.)  No, those pharmaceutical guys know where to find their audience, and when, on the sofa, in our pajamas, in the middle of the afternoon. 

Now I’m talking to you, the one in the pajamas.  You thought you might get up and go for a walk, like you promised your sweetie (who has gone to work) that you would.  But here it is, two o’clock in the afternoon.  The recap of yesterday’s episode comes on, and before you can find the remote to turn it off after the last soap, that theme song begins.  It sounds inspirational, but for some reason, you start to cry. 

After the theme song, and before the start of today’s episode, it’s time for that gentle, compassionate voice, who lists all your symptoms, including another one you have, now that the voice mentions it, but up until now you didn’t realize that it also is on the list, so you must be even sicker than you thought.  Who is that voice that understands you so well, better than your doctor, it seems, and so must know exactly what you need to ask your doctor to prescribe.

Symptoms Of Depression

Here is that list, by the way: sadness (no duh!), sleep disturbance (too much, too little ) weight gain (or loss), lack of energy, loss of interest in the things you used to like to do, loss of motivation (hence, all that time on the sofa), slowed pace, poor memory, poor concentration (they don’t want you at work anyway – you might break something), loss of self-confidence (like, they really don’t want you at work – you might break something), guilt, feelings of worthlessness, suicidal thoughts or attempts.

If you have been sad or lost interest in things for at least two weeks, plus four of the others, I’m talking about you.  You and 12% of the population who will experience an episode of depression sometime in their life (that’s major depression), plus another 6% who just feel lousy all the time (that’s dysthemia), and another 6.4 who sometimes are way up and sometimes way down (that’s bipolar), or …

One in twenty people in any given month.

When you have so much company, how is it you feel so alone?

You are not alone. 

Prozac Monologues 

photo of Playas del Coco by Helen Keefe, used by permission
photo of trash bags by Yuyudevil, in public domain
photo of Cubicle Land by Larsinio, in public domain
photo of prozac by Tom Varco, used by permission
photo "Loneliness" by graur razvan ionut

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