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

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.

For When Your Therapist Goes on Vacation

I have two therapists and they were both on vacation the week I got home from my mother's funeral and all those issues and all the family and all those issues.  And still on vacation the week after that!  My brother-in-law subbed - thank you, Darryl - with the following email.  I offer it as a resource for when your therapist picks a lousy time to go on vacation.

For extra entertainment value (my entertainment, anyway), I have identified which one I hear Michael telling me with >>, and which ones I hear Liz telling me with **.  One of them regularly irritates me.  I'll let you guess which one.  I have to keep both, because the double-teaming seems to help.

Wisdom Learned From the Seat of a Tractor

Your fences need to be horse-high, pig tight, and bull-strong.

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

Bar Tales of Costa Rica

I need a break from upset.  Maybe my readers do, too.

Once when I was in Costa Rica, working on another unpublished book, Deep Calling -- that's my depressing book about being depressed, as opposed to Prozac Monologues, my funny book about depressed -- I needed a break from being depressed.  I took my breaks at the bar at the Pato Loco in Playas del Coco, Costa Rica.

My sister, the Voodoo Princess and proprietor of the Pato Loco also needed a break from my being depressed.  So she was delighted to learn that the Pato Loco inspired and regularly supplied material for my third book that is not published, Bar Tales of Costa Rica.  Bar Tales is not about depression.

This week we all take a break together, with the first of the Bar Tales of Costa Rica.

Shut Up, Lenny!

How are you today, Rosie?

Oh, I could use some de-stressing.  You can’t tell by looking at this big black beautiful woman in shorts, sleeveless and flip flops, but she’s running a several employee travel agency back in the States while she sits in front of her laptop in the dining room of the Pato Loco.

Rosie set up the wireless for the hotel, when she was living here while her condo in Hermosa was under construction.  That took so long, she became a member of the family, another sister.  Mama had a colorful past, we say when somebody raises an eyebrow at the introduction.  As a matter of fact, she did. 

De-stressing you need?  Let me see what I can do.  Here’s a story for you.  You know our neighbor, Lenny, the Hot Dog man?”

Yeah, I’ve been trying to buy one of those hot dogs.  Every time I go downtown, he’s never open.

No, he‘s out of business for the time being.  I guess the Pizza Hut truck had a prior lease on that lot where he had his hot dog stand.  They moved back in, what with high season coming.  So he doesn’t have a place to put his cart. 

It was a great spot, right there across from Zouk Santana and the Lizard Lounge.  Lenny said he was selling 70 hot dogs an hour between 2 and 3 AM, when the bars closed.  He said one night, he ran out of chili.  They kept buying the dogs.  He was selling them faster than he could cook them.  They bought them raw.  Four bucks a pop, chili or no, 300% profit. 

It is a triumph, that hot dog stand.

Costa Rican Developers

I don’t really care about Lenny’s success.  He’s a newbie from Texas.  And he isn’t a hot dog salesman anyway, at least, not in his head.  He says he’s a developer.  Everybody claims to be a developer.  Except me.  I claim to be a writer.  I guess it comes down to the same thing, a lot of dreams, not so much cash.  Except I really do write.  I don’t publish, but I write.  Developers seem to talk mostly, over beers at the Pato Loco, since the Bohio has been torn down for being too close to the beach, now that the tides have shifted.

The tide comes in, the tide goes out.  The beach is never the same.  They’re putting in a marina where the Bohio and a lot of other nicer bars and restaurants used to be.  I don’t cheer for developers.

What Lenny really does, or talks about doing, while the luxury condo deal is still in development, is sell vacation packages.  Ninety-five bucks buys you four vacation packages in Maui, Orlando, Las Vegas or Puerto Something.  Ninety-five bucks and a couple hours of your time while people try to sell you a time-share in Maui, Orlando, Las Vegas or Puerto Something.

The hot dog stand is the hook.  You’re cooking the dog to order, piling on the chili, the onions, peppers, cheese, and all the time talking about vacation packages, four per year, ninety-five bucks.  Except when the bars let out and you’re selling the dogs seventy per hour at 2 AM.  Not so much time to talk then.  Just, You want ketchup?  Mustard?  Mayo?

We didn’t meet over hot dogs, but on my front porch, Lenny and me, when I returned to Costa Rica this winter and said hello to my new neighbor.  He was telling me about the hot dogs when, out of the blue, You want to make a couple thousand a week?

Couple thousand what, colones?  (That’s four bucks.)

I’ll pay you twenty bucks for every vacation package you sell.

No, thank you, Lenny.  I do not want to sell vacation packages.  I do not want to make a couple thousand dollars a week.  I don’t make that much money in the States, and I didn’t move to Costa Rica to make that much money here.  I moved so I could live on what I make in the States, so I could write.  I am not a salesman.  I am a writer.

As far as I can tell, it’s a pyramid scheme.  Lenny sells this job to apparently (and in this case mistakenly so) aimless people who want to stay in Costa Rica on dreams of a couple thousand a week.  The job is to sell brochures that will lure drunks, who actually intended to buy a hot dog after they were evicted from the bars, to go to some other vacation spot, where somebody else will try to sell them time-shares, so they can come back to where some other hot dog vender, or maybe Lenny himself next year in a different location, will try to sell them some condo that he has developed, thereby justifying his self-identity as a developer.

But to pull this off, he needs the person willing to serve the hot dogs in the hopes of selling the brochures.  Since I do not want to make a couple thousand dollars a week, I do not qualify for this job.  Ironically, with a different pitch, I might be willing to help him out with his dogs.

That’s what I think Lenny really does, sell hot dogs.

Costa Rican Hot Dog Stand

And it is a triumph, not for Lenny the developer, but for our other next door neighbor, David, who bought the hot dog stand online from Canada, had it delivered to his home in Atlanta, and then shipped it through Miami to Costa Rica.

David isn’t a hot dog salesman.  He’s a pool man.  He’s also a very nice guy who made some sudden and poor financial decisions last fall.  It was a bad time in his life.  He decided that Dennis, the maintenance man at our condo, could use some extra bucks.  So David decided to set Dennis up in business as a hot dog salesman.

Except Dennis isn’t a hot dog salesman, either.  He’s a construction guy, who can do a million different things with his hands, all of them very well, but is not into handling hot dogs.  Dennis is Costa Rican and proud, and Costa Ricans are not into hot dogs, neither buying nor selling, which is why it’s hard to find a good hot dog in this country.

But both of them, David and Dennis are very nice guys, and their friendship survived this awkward spell, when the hot dog stand was taking up space outside the bodega (storage shed) next to the pool for several months, until Lenny moved to town and discovered it there while he wasn’t developing anything but his story.

I will say this for Lenny, he makes a very good chili.  And he did manage to find a vender, a German who lives in San Jose, who sells him a decent quality dog.  Not Chicago quality.  There’s no snap, none at all.  But it’s got a bit of smoke, and for Costa Rica, it’s pretty darn good.  And lots of the ex-pats (the North American ex-pats) get frustrated, looking for the hot dog stand, which often is not in operation for one reason or another.

I will also say this for Lenny – he operates on Costa Rican time.  Which is to say, he gets it open when he gets it open.  If he says 5 o’clock, don’t bother showing up until 7.  The frustrated ex-pats don’t get his business plan.  He is not into food service.  He is into money.  And he can make a whole lot of it, more than enough to live in Playas del Coco, between 2 and 3 in the morning, seventy dogs an hour, $3 profit on each one, even when he is selling them so fast he doesn’t have time to cook them.  He does not have to open when he promises or sell hot dogs during the lunch hour.

But right now he’s not selling hot dogs at all, since the Pizza Hut truck came back to town with the same business plan as far as volume and drunks go and, more importantly, the lease on his location.

We think maybe he went on a bender.  We didn’t see him for three days, but his car’s been there.  And with his muffler, we know when he moves it.  He starts it up, backs the car the hundred feet to the gate, turns off the engine, gets out and opens the gate.  I guess he only has one key chain.  Then he starts the car, pulls through the gate, turns the car off again, gets out, closes the gate, gets back into the car, starts it the third time, and leaves.  Our house is right by the gate.  So we know when he goes anywhere, since he doesn’t even walk the hundred feet to the gate.  Lenny doesn’t walk.

The Voodoo Princess, owner of the Pato Loco, interrupted, You could buy him another key chain.  She likes Lenny, and he eats at the Pato Loco a lot, since you can eat only so many hot dogs, if you want to keep selling them.

I’m telling a story here, little sister.  Work with me.  The Voodoo Princess is my little sister.  We have a diverse family.  Mama had a colorful past.

Costa Rican Neighbors

Anyway, this morning we heard from him again.  It was about 9 o’clock when he shouted, Shut up!  A couple minutes later, we heard it again, Shut up!  It took about three or four times, Shut up! before I figured this out.  Luis, the neighbor on the other side of the wall, has a mynah bird that says, “Buenas!”  The bird says it all day long, “Buenas.”

It used to bother me, David interjects from the bar where he is nursing a club soda, But I have become one with the mynah.

Yeah, now it’s just part of the sound track of Costa Rica.  But this morning it was:

Buenas – Shut up!

Buenas – Shut up!

Rosie is laughing now.  It’s good to hear Rosie laugh.  He knew he was talking to a bird?

Well, I don’t know.  Because then it became – 

Buenas – Shut the f*** up!

Buenas – Shut the f*** up!

Rosie is doubling over, He said, f***?

No, actually, he filled in the vowel and the final consonants.  Things were definitely escalating.  I wondered if he was going to go next door and throttle a mynah bird.  And then I hear it.  Our whole condo association hears it –

David knew what was coming.  He verified it, Yes, we did.

Buenas – Shut the f*** up!  Comprende?  Shut up!

She’s screaming now.  Comprende?

Comprende.  One more time, I was just about to go over there, if he said it one more time.  – Lenny, it’s a bird!  I know it’s irritating, ‘Buenas.’  [I flattened those vowels as flat as a tortilla.]  But me, I’m listening to ‘Buenas’ – ‘Shut the f*** up!’  I don’t think I’ll have much success with the bird.  So I’m going to try with the drunk.  Lenny, shut the f*** up!

So, how did that work out?

Well, I never got the chance.  Maybe the bird did comprende.  Because they both got quiet.  So, how are you feeling now, Rosie?

Thanks, I needed that.  I’m feeling a lot better.

Pato Loco logo used by permission

photo of family table at Pato Loco by Mary Cox and used by permission

photo of chili dog by LG2, in public domain

drawing of condo by tomwild, in public domain
photo of bird of paradise and front porch by author

photo of mynah bird by Dhabyany, used under the Creative CommonsAttribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

OMGThat'sWhatTheySaid: 2010 in Review

Best Of... Worst Of...  The turning of the year is time for evaluation and new direction.  So here is a long ago promised review and ***competition*** for 2010's Readers' Choice Best/Worst/Whatever OMG Award.

The OMGThat'sWhatTheySaid Award was invented when I began reading what scientists say about those of us who have a mental illness.  It expanded to include media contributions to idiocy, offensiveness and outrage exhibited in language about mental illnesses and the people who have them.  The OMG Award allows me to reframe idiocy, offensiveness and outrage into irony -- granting an award for what ought to receive lashes across the backside.

I intended this to be a monthly award.  But, whatever.  I keep going on a tear with some series and lose track. -- I think this blog is charting my major hypomanic cycles?  Many months go by awardless.  So here are not twelve, but just four contenders.  The titles are links to the entire original posts.

September 12, 2010: OMGThat'sWhatTheySaid -- Noncompliance

The doctor tells you to weigh your costs and benefits before you take a medication, because it is your body, your decision.  The prescribing sheet says the doctor already weighed them for you.  If you decide differently than the doctor, then you are noncompliant, you uncooperative mental case, you.

July 23, 2010: OMG!!!That'sWhatTheySaid -- Failed Method/Successful Attempt

If we hang ourselves, or take pills, or jump off a bridge and yet we survive, then we have failed.  If we die, then we were successful.  Feel the love.



March 13, 2010: OMGThat'sWhatTheySaid! -- They

This one is more global.  I gave it to myself, and to any of us who are closeted mental cases, who think, quite accurately as a matter of fact, that if we acknowledge our mental illness, we will lose authority to talk about it.


December 26, 2009: OMGThat'sWhatTheySaid! -- Stigma

I know, this one reaches back to the previous year.  But it is still tragically timely and I am still flummoxed by the good doctor, Paul Steinberg, who thinks that the President should not send letters of condolence to the families of soldiers who commit suicide in a war zone.  (Staff Sgt. David Senft is the most recently reported example.)  Steinberg's reasoning? -- It might take away the stigma of suicide.  And with less stigma, more soldiers with mental illnesses might kill themselves.

So those are the contenders for the 2010 OMG Award.  Vote in the comments.  Feel free to lobby your friends to pad the count.

If you are curious about earlier monthly awards, they include:

November 15, 2009: OMGThat'sWhatTheySaid! -- Language

What they call us and what they call themselves determines the relationship.  The fact that they name the relationship means they have the power, regardless of the words they choose.  Provider/consumer is the new PC relationship, supposedly being more mutual than doctor/patient.  But I disagree.  It does not level the playing field.  It makes one active and the other passive.  What if we called ourselves customers?

September 4, 2009: OMG!!! That's What They Said! Significant

In common usage people think significant difference means a big difference.  Researchers think significant difference means large enough that the difference was not by chance.  (If it was a big difference, they would call it robust.)  Pharmaceutical companies sell a lot of drugs because you don't know the difference.

July 23, 2009: OMG!!! That's What They Said! Relapse

This one was about a research study designed to find out if they could cause relapse in women whose depressive symptoms were in remission.  Again, feel the love.


June 13, 2009: OMG!!! That's What They Said!

Here is the post that inspired the OMG feature, in which I discover a textbook that describes suicide as one of the unfortunate complications of major depressive disorder.

And In Conclusion...

I am always delighted to receive suggestions for new awards.  Let's say it together:

Thanks for reading Prozac Monologues.  Here's hoping I can keep it up in 2011.  You, too.

photo of trophy by Sebcaen and used under the GNU Free Documentation License.

image of whipping girl from La Grande Amie, in  public domain

flair from Facebook

Prozac Monologues at the Movies

Oh, boy!  Butter up the popcorn, slip in a dvd, relax.  This is one very safe and friendly way to spend time with people during the holiday season, and my final installment of this year's Prozac Monologues holiday survival series.  I want my doc and everybody else to notice the implication, that I will survive to do another series next year.

Well chosen movies can fill time, avoid awkward conversation, provide common ground and keep you in the present, always a good thing for the mentally interesting.  Here are my selection criteria for holiday diversion movie viewing:

Movies For Fun