captaincliff

As a Westerner, how do I begin to describe a Shanghai Xiaolongbao dumpling that one does not just gulp down (or drown in chili oil and shoyu) but instead allows to dance on ones palate before it explodes into distinct flavors of pork, chicken and rich savory broth? How can I explain the difference between a run-of-the-mill Hong Kong style noodle house or dim sum palace, whether in SF’s Chinatown or along Atlanta’s Buford Highway and the holy shrine to dumplings known as Din Tai Fung? This is a place where practically every dish arrives looking simple, even coy, but then when eaten proceeds to transform into the dim sum equivalent of a prima ballerina at the Bolshoi ?

There is a matter-of-factness about the smiling servers and seating hostesses that borders on almost cavalier, right up until the actual food arrives. The moment you bite into a mound of steaming fresh garlic green beans or shrimp topped pork shu mai there is a palpable culinary awakening. I nearly dropped my chopsticks on the floor and was tempted to bow down in reverence while facing the large glass enclosed prep kitchen. Inside, a dozen identically masked and aproned chefs work deftly to cut, roll, shape and stuff the sacred XLB dumplings. Like Santa’s helpers in December they can barely keep up with consumer demand. I kid you not. The juicy pork dumplings are that good. Also good is the chicken fried rice with fresh green onion and dry fried pork chop over rice. Multiple orders of everything is the norm here rather then the exception. A Zagat rating of 26 amid literal miles of competing Chinese, Vietnamese, and Korean restaurants in the celebrity-obsessed cultural wasteland known as metropolitan Los Angeles does not lie.  It’s also obvious by the wait for seating that diners are more then willing to drive, fly, surf and parasail to Din Tai Fung for the privilege of eating there. I would bet it’s the same deal in their other location in Seattle and the single outpost in Sydney Australia where I am told foodies brave jellyfish and shark infested waters to eat Shanghai dumplings. Again, it is the simplicity of the dishes which belie their ineffable richness and fullness of flavor. THAT is what made me surrender to Din Tai Fung’s charm, and now, alas, I am hooked like a forlorn suitor with a serious dumpling addiction. Only the peanut oil deep fried egg rolls from Chan’s Tea House in Highland Park, Illinois (a now distant culinary memory of my childhood) comes even close. As I fly home to Atlanta I can only close my misty eyes, savor the experience, and hope we shall meet….and eat again.

Now that Sandusky is in jail and Romney is “retroactively retired”, I’m not sure which HuffPost article to read first. I used to watch the Sunday Evening News with Walter Cronkite. Then, if time allowed …The Wonderful World of Disney. These two programs seemed to describe two very different worlds and views of reality. I suspected somebody was either lying or exaggerating the truth. All the main players I just mentioned are gone, except for Romney, who I kind of wish WAS gone because he is still talking made-up in the moment shit on every TV channel (not counting the reality TV shows).  Plus, nowadays everyone gets their news online. I dont know, what sounds more interesting, “10 Things Not To Say to Someone with Fibromyalgia” or “Woman Attacked By Raccoons”?  I also see that a White Buffalo was born on a farm in Connecticut which is a very sacred and life changing event to Native Americans, but maybe not as big a deal in Hartford. I just hope they keep the baby bison calf safe from poachers, thieves….and raccoons. Those suckers can be nasty. I learned that from watching “Turtle Man”. Live Action!!

While the tabloids continue to promote public speculation and outrage over Robert Kennedy Jr’s decision to exhume the dead body of his wife, Mary Kennedy and move her burial spot to a different and more remote section of the cemetery, other details fail to arouse suspicion, but they should. Her coroners report and toxicology results found no evidence of recent alcohol use, her reported primary “drug” of choice. However, the following info was noted:

The medical examiner’s autopsy report from last week also revealed that there was no alcohol found in Mary Kennedy’s body, but she had taken three antidepressants — trazadone, venlafaxine and desmethylvenlafaxine.

Trazadone, Effexor, and Pristiq, which is a synthetic form of Effexor the dual receptor SSRI anti-depressant. Anyone who knows anything about Effexor knows that it (and any of its close chemical cousins, like Pristiq) has a horrible side effect profile and discontinuation syndrome.  In other words, if you try to go even a DAY without taking the medication you feel absolutely awful and suffer from side effects almost as bad as the depression you were attempting to treat…and she was taking both…at the same time. Trazadone or Deseryl is a sedating antidepressant. It makes most people drowsy and is sometimes used as a sleep aid or to help treat anxiety and panic symptoms. Of course, if Mary Kennedy happened to have a mood disorder, bipolar illness or Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD), as reported, none of the medications in her would be advisable because they could individually or together trigger mania, insomnia, irritability, confusion and suicidal thinking. Kinda makes you wonder what genius psychiatrist she was seeing, or if she was seeing someone who specialized in these areas at all.

Unfortunately a lot of doctors, even good ones fall into the trap of over-prescribing and under-diagnosing. They dont take enough time and dont ask enough detailed questions. They have their prescription pads out before you even finish telling them what you feel is wrong or what is not quite right. The sad part is that the person who first found Mary Kennedy hanging from a rafter in her barn was not the housekeeper as first reported. It was her AA sponsor coming over to check up on her. The sponsor found her body with Mary’s hands on her neck, under the ropes……as if she had “second thoughts” about the whole thing. Maybe thats more common then we think when ones whole life, ones children, and everything we have to live for flashes before our eyes. Or maybe the medications were lousy choices that were not treating the main psychological or psychiatric problem and caused certain side-effects that just made things worse, like impulsive behavior and suicidal ideation. I feel bad for her, but not for her psychiatrist or private physician, whoever that might be. Maybe somebody should look into it.
http://newyork.newsday.com/news/nation/aa-sponsor-recalls-finding-mary-kennedy-s-body-1.3834474

The Owl

Posted on July 11, 2012 by Cliff Mazer, Ph.D. aka CaptCliff

I believe one of the first books I read as a small boy was Robinson Crusoe. It was about a guy who was shipwrecked on a tropical island for many years and went half mad in his isolation and attempt to survive alone. Sort of like Tom Hanks in Cast Away but without Wilson the volleyball or the Fed Ex boxes. I dont really know what the appeal of the book was for me so long ago and at such a young age (maybe 8 or 9 or 10 years old). Soon after (if not at the same time) I developed a related interest in Pirates and pirate ships which has remained with me until this very day. I’m sure Walt Disney movies like Swiss Family Robinson had something to do with it too. Anyway, in Robinson Crusoe there is a distinct sense of a person going through a “crucible” of self-reflection and growth. He didn’t just survive, he matured and changed as a person. The isolation and loneliness forced him to rethink his prior life, earlier beliefs, and core values. I suppose that the time of life I am in currently, what I politely call “semi-retirement” is somewhat similar. Since no longer having my work days cram packed with neurotic clients needing me to listen to their problems and pontificate back to them from my “high horse” of knowledge and advanced education, I’ve chosen (or possibly been forced) to look into the psychological mirror more often then ever before. I have the time to think about what I did right and what I did miserably wrong up until now. Some of the things I realize about myself have been shocking and hard to swallow. Insight and self-awareness, while necessary for growth, often carries with it a certain amount of regret and remorse as well.

While privileged in many many ways, my life has not gone easy and my trajectory of so-called “success”, as defined by societal standards, has not been all upward and linear. At a deeper level there has always been an ongoing “push-pull” within me about God, faith, and spiritual purpose. One part of me is atheistic, rational, along the lines of a secular humanist (dont ask me to define what that is, I’m not really sure) and another part notices unmistakable “coincidences” and unlikely moments that seem purely designed for my recognition and/or personal realization. Things that seem totally random at the time also can reveal themselves to be important symbols or metaphors pointing toward needed growth. I almost used the word “enlightenment” there but that would be way too grandiose, even for me the self-confessed narcissist. Fortunately or unfortunately, I’m not deluded enough to believe I am anywhere near to my Siddhartha moment. If anything there is a bittersweet Robinson Crusoe feeling of unfinished silent sadness but with simultaneous beauty. Like him I can see and hear the timeless beach and the surf sounding with its ever present ebb and flow. I can smell the driftwood of his campfire and the saltiness in the air as he waits and watches and experiences the “wonder” of it all. He wants to be rescued but, at the same time, he knows that you cant go back to what “was”. The same thing happened to Tom Hanks when he was eventually rescued in Cast Away. The world had changed, people had gone on with their lives. We are all “universes” unto ourselves and more often then not, we orbit around our own self-centered psyches and self-concepts, no matter how many churches, synagogues, civic organizations and college fraternities we belong to. I was never a big “joiner”. Like a pirate captain I dreamed of having great authority and garnering others loyalty, respect and allegiance, but I also would likely be the first person in the group or “platoon” to question rules and authority and consider other alternatives to blind loyalty or taking big risks, ie., “What the fuck am I doing here in Iraq or Vietnam??” or ” Wait, what exactly is the purpose and cost/benefit of throwing myself on that live grenade? Perhaps I’ll let some other schmuck do that?” Maybe all of the above is what makes up the difference between emotional maturity, intelligence (critical thinking) and wisdom. Or maybe I’m just a chickenshit at heart. I just know being a dead hero for a lousy or muddled cause is personally unappealing and not worth the shiny medal.

An example of these seemingly random occurrences and personal symbols in life? Last night was a hellish rainstorm. It poured and poured like a biblical flood. It even hailed and threatened to snap the surrounding trees with gusts of wind blowing against my house, the still unfinished, jam packed, too-often renovated personal Ark in the comfy suburbs of Atlanta, Georgia. I lost electrical power, cable tv, and of course my beloved internet connection. I had just yesterday blogged about how utterly dependent we all are on this digital-electronic connection that makes us all even crazier and lonelier (disconnected) people than when we started BC= (Before Computers). Of course at first it was “cool” that I lost power, kind of like being a kid in a massive snowstorm in Chicago, around 1967. Within a couple hours however I was already worrying about not only my cherished tropical flavored Popsicles in the freezer and my home-made chicken salad in the refrigerator, but to be honest….what the hell was I going to DO with myself all night??

When the storm cleared (at first) it was twilight. I kept hearing a distinctive bird call sound from my backyard. Not a regular “tweet tweet” bird but a “hoo-hoo-hoo” sound, sort of like a stereotypical owl from Winnie the Pooh or maybe a National Geographic special.  I walked out to my back deck…..wait, I “peered nervously” off my back deck and saw the largest and most beautiful OWL sitting in a nearby tree staring right at me. Honestly I was fascinated and terrified. He/she looked at me, did another “hoo-hoo or two and then flew right over my house to the other side. It was MASSIVE with its wings extended and it’s body arched in flight. If I hadn’t seen it and heard it “hoo” me, I would have mistaken it for a bald eagle or a California Condor. Anyway, by this time I’m totally entranced in my wimpy over-civilized, under nurtured by Mother Nature way, and followed the bird to the other side of the house that luckily also has a deck that I could carefully creep out onto…. and therefore escape from (meaning scamper away screaming like a little girl) if necessary.  Normally, in lesser situations I am already armed with a large can of Raid or a single rubber flip flop raised ominously above my head in what modern humans do to signal their ability to defend themselves against other large indoor predators, like a spider.  Obviously this bird of prey and gorgeous symbol of something (fill in the blank) was not going to give two shits about me or my flimsy flip flops. Then I watched as ANOTHER giant Owl flew over and joined his/her partner. They sat there together like a pair of well trained animal actors or animatronic Ewoks in the forest scene from Star Wars, but actually far more reminiscent of the large exotic animals from the comedy Evan Almighty. I apologize for the lame movie references but i dont know how else to describe the dramatic impact and surreal visual effect of this particular in the moment experience. After a final “hoo-hoo” they BOTH took off together and flew DIRECTLY in front of me and disappeared. I shit you not. I exaggerate nothing. It was magical, beautiful and I dont expect anybody to really believe me.  It took another two hours for my electrical power to come back on and if it wasn’t for my big flashlight from Home Depot and my book, Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell, I might have gone into chemical withdrawal from not being able to surf the internet for needless useless information and something to do with my itchy twitchy social media addicted fingers. Now I have to figure out what I want to do with this unusual magical mystical experience, whether you believe me or not. Or maybe more apropos to Robinson Crusoe and his well-worn diary circa 1704, that just might be the first official blog on record I have to decide what it all means even if nobody ever reads this. Either way, the real challenge is to disconnect from the known social world and consensual reality and listen carefully to the Wise Owl, both the ones right out there and the one in here (pointing to my heart).

One of my new Facebook friends, a gifted writer and successful blogger herself posted a link to an alarming article about internet addiction. Scary stuff. Apparently being online all the time not only is turning our brains into mush but also causing us to develop serious mental illnesses. As per my last rant, I thought it was only petty narcissism. However scientific studies are confirming a link between internet activity and psychosis, OCD, ADD, anxiety, depression, and multiple personality disorders. Of course I have all of those problems as well but I assumed it was all the coffee I’ve been drinking thanks to my Fathers Day gift from my kids (one of those fancy Keurig one shot of anything coffee machines). It’s hard to resist having Starbucks, Dunkin Donuts, Caribou Coffee and Peets dark roast/Red Bull blend…all in one day. By the time I get into bed at night I am ready not just for my Ambien, but for a shot of Haldol and Thorazine as well. Maybe I can get a k-cup canister of those powerful medications that also fits into the handy dandy caffeine machine.

Anyway, this article which was so well written that I seethed with internet induced jealousy and envy, something I am quite used to. It really hit home. Of course after reading it fully and digesting its implications I felt compelled to stay online and do further research, just to see if the guy was making shit up. Of course he wasn’t and I could literally feel my frontal lobes turning into Jello while I searched WebMD and Wikipedia for further proof. I was highly annoyed at one point by my need to use the bathroom, so of course I shlepped both my cell phone and my laptop with me…..Omg, what am I doing? I’m turning into Cartman from South Park when he gets addicted to playing World of Warcraft! He had his mother bring him a plastic urinal bowl so he could continue to stay connected and play video games uninterrupted. I’m only a tad behind him since I was wondering if Verizon has water resistant cell phone covers so that I can take my phone into the shower with me, just in case. Just in case of what? That’s the central question. Is this what the Matrix and that uber-confusing Inception movie were trying to say? Is my life just a virtual dream and I’m really a quadriplegic dwarf with a head sensor and a blow tube directing a cursor on a screen somewhere and living a second life as a neurotic Jewish Psychologist? So many possibilities and so few answers. I think maybe I’ll just take a walk outside instead.
   http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2012/07/08/is-the-internet-making-us-crazy-what-the-new-research-says.html?fb_ref=article&fb_source=home_multiline

They say that Facebook appeals to both narcissists and voyeurs at heart. There is some research to support the first assertion in that narcissistically inclined people are more likely to update their statuses frequently, tag themselves in photos more often and generally have more Facebook friends. Phew, what a relief. I was pretty convinced of my own narcissism until I saw the stuff about the number of friends and the tagging of photos. I’m not even sure how to do that and I hate how i look on camera. I carefully avoid posting and taking pictures of myself, especially is I look shitty, which is often. I threaten to sue any of my children or their friends if they even THINK to include a  picture that has me in it, especially when I was in my fatter phases or a member of the bad Hair Club. When I see old pictures of myself wearing a hairpiece and trying vainly (literally) to not appear old or bald, I cringe. I look like a bloated mafia member after a big Italian meal in South Phily. I could have played a supporting role in Goodfellas or even the Sopranos.  I dont know what I was thinking. Trying to have hair is alot of work and it never worked. Plus, I’m ADD so I never got it right and obsessed about all the wrong things, like making sure I had a perfectly symmetrical but completely unnatural and age inappropriate part. I should have noticed instead that I was wearing two completely different colored socks and leaving the house (again) without my wallet or house keys. Under stress my self-care and attention to detail got worse. I’m pretty sure at my ex-wife’s funeral in 1999 I was wearing my hairpiece upside down and backwards. I was a mess. Shaving my head in the last couple years has been a huge relief. Now when it’s 106 degrees outside I can find a swimming pool and attempt to stay underwater without losing my wig or scaring small children, …ie, “Omg Mommy there’s a big rat in the pool!” Also, trying to keep hair in place, either glued or transplanted is a losing proposition, especially in windy places like Honolulu, Boulder Colorado and well, just about every place I’ve ever lived. My wife used to call it “hair surfing” and we both were big aficionados of this now obsolete extreme sporting event. We both were willing to walk an extra city block, whether in Manhattan or the Windy City itself to avoid an obvious hair disturbance.

Let’s face it, narcissism is best left to the young, and according to scientific studies the younger generations are doing a bang up job at being self-absorbed. I beg anybody who reads this to NOT add up all my photo albums, self-serving blogs, so called witty rejoinders and obnoxious self promoting  profile descriptions. I feel like enough of an asshole already and I would hate to add “self-deluded” to my already over the weight limit leaning narcissistic personality inventory. What me grandiose?
http://www.cnn.com/2012/03/21/tech/social-media/facebook-narcissistic-behaviors/index.html

Dear Young People of Planet Earth,

You know who you are. In fact, unfortunately, if you are reading this, you are probably NOT who I am talking about. I mean the young people who are perpetually busy on their laptops, iPhones, gaming systems, and listening to dubstep remixes and mashups when they are not working on their remarkable abs or doing yoga/pilates. Do you and your cohort of technophiles with oversized texting thumbs have ANY idea how difficult it is for older people to stay current with the rapid pace of technological change and innovation? It’s exhausting and humiliating. Cant we just take a break for a year or two? Could I just call a short “time out” until I catch up with all the mobile apps, urban dictionary terms, and acronyms for everything you hipsters and tech nerds take for granted?

If it wasn’t for South Park and my sons I wouldn’t know anything. It’s irritating waking up and seeing a new term online or major change in how coffee is made and cars turn on that AGAIN leaves me and my generation in the dust. You know that South African guy, the double amputee running in the London Olympics? Everyone is happy for him and feels proud of his accomplishment. So do I. Now imagine him without his blade runner prosthetic legs and feet. That’s how I feel technologically….except minus hands (and thumb dexterity) too. Metaphorically speaking I feel stuck at the starting line while everyone else breaks out of the blocks with tremendous speed, agility and endurance. I’m sitting there at the starting line on my technological stumps, a technological torso and/or tortoise in a 400 meter race to the future….of everything.

Ok, I admit it. I put a lot of you down over the years for being stupid about history, current events, literature, and DIY knowledge such as how to fix a broken toilet, about which you dont have a frickin’ clue. I was just trying to make myself feel better because I have no idea what an “open source” is, what quantum computing is about, or what these information data “clouds” are going to do for everybody. I just hope it doesn’t rain all weekend so that I can rake my yard. I know, you dont know what a rake is either. It’s the weird device that came before the blower that you also dont use because you are too busy taking over the world and sharing your files instantly…with everybody (like in the Verizon commercial). I have a file cabinet. I guess that’s different. PS What the hell is a “mashup”?

Today I introduce you to a new and highly effective form of cognitive therapy. Yes, that’s right. You, my 12 Facebook friends are the lucky first recipients of this cosmic knowledge. I know your attention spans are short and my penchant for rambling quite long, so let’s get right to it. Most people suffer from some form of low self-esteem. Dont let my colleagues in Clinical Psych and Psychiatry fool you. They have nothing to do all day except make up new diagnoses and personality disorders. Alot of time they are high on caffeinated Expresso drinks and their own medicine when they get in these moods and decide to create another syndrome to describe someone who:  cant match up their socks after taking them out of the dryer (symptom one) and/or  feels irritated/irked to find the toilet paper roll put on backwards (symptom two). Finding the toilet paper roll completely empty after your adult children and extended family have visited for another free dinner is apparently the confirmatory diagnostic marker. Of course that’s 78% of the total population, but hey, now we can add two more new pages to the DSM manual and these guys can adjourn the panel discussion and still make that 7:00 PM reservation at Morton’s Steak House.

The point is that the real problem, psychologically speaking, is low self-worth otherwise known as thinking one is a piece of poop in a society of high achieving, Audi sportcar driving software engineers and Kardashian wannabes with fake boobs and dental implants. Of course your Facebook friends with their relentless and obsessive postings of positive news and life coach inspired slogans, ie. “Today Be All You Can Be!”, etc., just reaffirms what a douche-bag you are by comparison.

So what’s the magic cure you are by now wanting to know from CaptCliff, the rogue-ish alter-ego of the more boring and less effusive therapist known as Dr. Cliff, a man who dwells with one foot in the conventional world of Clinical Psychology and the other foot firmly planted in a pile of dog crap acquired in his son’s backyard (they mow it only on important Jewish holidays)? The cure, plain and simple, is to compare yourself to fools and idiots and become better at discerning just how many people meet THAT particular diagnostic criteria. Just now I saw a cable tv show about venomous snakes in Florida. By the way (by my count) Florida is comprised of 86% fools and idiots. If you dont believe me just watch any of those TruTV programs or YouTubes on “Dumbest Anything and Everything”. Florida has the Dumbest of the Dumb and they truly capture the look and feel of stupidity when they talk, when they fight (see my son’s viral video below), when they attempt to elude the police drunk and when they are finally apprehended and are asked to do difficult tasks like walk straight. I know many of these Florida residents are high on home-made meth, crack, glue, and synthetic marijuana and that the absence of teeth in their mouths may be related to poor nutrition, the absence of dental hygiene and the daily ingestion of Oxycodone.

Still, nobody does a better job or gives a more dramatic illustration of “dumb as a door knob” as somebody from Florida. OK, I did that thing again where I ramble and digress….I was telling you about the dummy in South Florida and venomous snakes, so that you could feel like Albert Einstein in comparison. So this lady and her family are barbecuing in the backyard and the kids find a small snake. Normally there is a right thing to do and a wrong thing to do. The right thing to do is to find something long and sturdy like a shovel or a shotgun and either mercilessly beat it (the snake) to death and not stop until it looks like a rainbow roll at the local sushi bar or blow its head off and then use the shovel to do the aforementioned “Benihana teppanyaki chef on coke” routine on the slimy intruder. The wrong and obviously stupid thing to do is to assume the snake is small and non-venomous even tho you have never taken a single college course in anything, let alone Herpetology and put it in a cardboard shoebox as a temporary pet. Long story short: the lady opened the box to touch the snake and was bitten on the hand by a baby water moccasin. Of course she had to go to the hospital and get the whole anti-venom treatment with the prolonged dialogue with the doctor about whether they would have to amputate her arm or not. I personally didn’t need to see the ending, because I felt better about myself immediately, wouldn’t you?

Do you see the principle involved here? We can liberate ourselves together by purposely having Days of Stupidity. We can request that news channels and radio programs, even the few smart, educational ones like NPR have dedicated programming that focuses on the unwise, the unhealthy and especially the ungodly ridiculously stupid. However, here’s the rub. The cognitive rewiring of our brains, due to the miracle of neuroplasticity (dont ask) will NOT work unless we consciously are focusing and feeling ourselves to be much better by comparison. This, by the way, is one of the secrets of narcissism and people with Narcissistic Personality Disorder, like Donald Trump. Guys like Trump are able to proceed with foolish and illogical endeavors, like believing that President Obama is really a Muslim cleric born in the Congo and raised by Osama bin Ladin, while still maintaining a supremely high self-esteem. Trump even can look in the mirror and say he likes his absurd comb over hair!  He has trained himself through this same cognitive method, now revealed by me to you. I include an oldie but goodie video (previously discussed on my blog) of some scum bag Florida residents arguing with each other with extreme stupidity to help get your self-esteem therapy started. More to follow. Good luck to you.  Captcliff   PS  If you really care, it turned out they didn’t have to cut off the idiot lady’s arm, even tho I was tempted to meet her at the hospital with the shovel and do it for her, thus saving the taxpayers alot of money. The narcissistic politicians with high self-esteem all agree that we need to find creative ways to cut back on our nation’s health care costs.

Submitted for Publication in the Anxiety section of the NYTimes:

Any similarities to actual Psychologists or known Insomniacs is purely coincidental

Subject: Anxiety, Insomnia and Me

Who could possibly be more neurotic then a Clinical Psychologist with a pre-existing condition of anxiety? What about an anxious Jewish Clinical Psychologist with chronic insomnia and ADHD? If there was such a thing as a board game called “Scrabble : The DSM-5 special addition”, that diagnostic concept alone would be worth a shit-ton of points, not to mention off-shoot words that mean “angst”. Dont get me wrong, I’m perfectly fine with my therapy clients. They even help me feel better about myself and whatever might possibly be wrong with me by comparison. Can you spell “schadenfreude”, which literally means the enjoyment obtained from the troubles of others? That’s a pretty good scrabble word too. Of course it also helps that I’m pretty good at what I do. I’m also pretty sure nobody is all that surprised to hear that psychologists and psychotherapist can sit there cool, calm and collected all day long while doing their business and then once the work day is over revert into Woody Allen-like creatures who roam the night and their medicine cabinets seeking relief from their own panoply of problems including panic disorders, anxiety and insomnia.

Luckily, in my case I dont have acute anxiety or panic attacks. That would be too easy. Instead over the last few years I have gradually developed a problem with sleeping. I know what you armchair doctors are thinking. I tried it all. I did the “comprehensive” sleep study along with all the other overweight middle aged males shlepping to the outpatient facility/ faux hotel room with their favorite pillows. I’m really shocked that I couldn’t get much sleep that night with 57 different electrodes taped to my body and two stone faced sleep lab technicians staring at me through a glass window. Of course a world class neurotic person with generalized anxiety such as myself spent most of my “Sleepless in the Sleep Lab” time thinking about the guy on You Tube viral video who keeled over and died in the sleep lab… while technicians watched through the glass window. I guess they didn’t notice him sitting up, clutching his chest and falling off the bed.

Beyond the sleep lab testing I also have tried many of the tried and true methods for dealing with night time anxiety and insomnia. I kept a sleep diary, ie. Monday- no sleep, Tuesday-no sleep, Wednesday- delirious and possibly psychotic and no sleep, etc.  I used relaxation tapes. I engaged in progressive muscle relaxation and cognitive therapy, ie. “I am a wonderful, tired human being and my left leg is getting heavy and going numb. Wait, do I have MS??”  The basic problem with neurotic anxiety is that certain people think too much. While other people accept many things just as they are, I often keep questioning both out of habit as a therapist and from a constitutional predisposition toward morbid curiosity. But WHY am I aging more toward the top of my body and less toward the bottom? How is it possible to grow hair on my back and shoulders and ears but not on my head? These are just a few of the questions that preoccupy me while the rest of the world is sleeping soundly.

It’s not easy for a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology to finally bite the bullet and call his colleague the M.D. psychiatrist and fess up to having anxiety and less sleep then my 15 year old male client with ADD who took his Ritalin at midnite thinking it was Ibuprofen. This is where I first learned about the wonders of prescription sleeping pills. By the way, have you ever taken Ambien (Zolpidem), the popular sleeping pill and gotten a relatively decent nights sleep only to wake up to garlic bread crumbs, a stop watch, an empty carton of orange sherbet and one of your neighbors you never met before in your bed?  Ok, I am exaggerating about the neighbor but the rest is the gods honest truth. The good news is that the magic little pill worked and worked fast. The bad news is that it may work too well for a while and then not enough after that..which sounds a little bit like heroin or cocaine. But I digress, let me explain more about this wonder drug.

Ambien (Zolpidem) is some good stuff for many of us who cant just do as Samuel L. Jackson eloquently puts it in his popular audio childrens book, “Go The Fuck To Sleep!” There are millions of reasons people cant fall asleep or stay asleep. As my friend the shrink explained it, the older you get the harder it seems to turn off the mental computer and go into “sleep mode”. I’m sure the 32 different electronic and digital devices in my room all simultaneously blinking and lighting up dont help either. Then there are the “bad sleep habits” including obsessional behavior, ie. “Wait, it’s 3:25 AM, I better check my Facebook status to see if anyone else liked my status update”or “hey, I wonder if anyone has linked to my web blog (otherwise known as my post-mortem memoirs) in the middle of the night unnoticed.”  Bottomline, the more you think, the less you sleep, and the less you sleep, the more anxious and neurotic you get.

Anyway, back to insomnia and Ambien. If you are one of the 23 million people who take it now (thats right, we are all in some kind of bizarre post- Prozac nation sleeping pill cult) it can have some unusual side effects for certain zombified individuals. Instead of eating peoples brains some of us just sleepwalk, often to the kitchen where we collect and consume an assortment of foodstuff and odd utensils. One morning I found a Ginsu knife and a plastic ice cream scoop in my room that I had no memory of. Maybe the scooper went with the orange sherbet left melting on the floor. I cant say. The point is that weird things happen once the Ambien Undead arise. Some people like my 25 year old son Eli have more obvious so-called “paradoxical” side effects like the absolute refusal to sleep and instead have long protracted conversations with select items in the refrigerator, including the fresh produce. I’m not kidding or exaggerating this. It really happened. Also, Eli happens to be a personal trainer with huge muscles. Abruptly intervening in his intimate exchange with the carrots and broccoli was not easy. He didnt get belligerent or anything. He just didn’t want to be rudely interrupted or awakened from whatever weird trip he was on. Apparently I dont either when I am under the biochemical effects of Ambien. The only funny part about it is my initial reaction of great surprise to the seemingly random things strewn around the next morning. I now have a predictable pre-set exclamation that I say aloud for full dramatic effect, “Hey, how did THAT get there??” Of course when “that” involves a neighbor’s cat hanging from a ceiling fan or three empty bags of Doritos (the big ones) on the floor next to the bed it’s a little hard to deny who was responsible. Later finding the car in the driveway with the motor still running takes the whole thing up a notch/nacho. If this gets any worse I’m either going to have to call my shrink back or at the very least start checking the car trunk each morning for groceries.

P.S.  Riiight, here’s what kept me up last nite writing this article. Is it more correct to say awoke, awaken, awoken, or ewok (out of frustration) in the fourth paragraph about Ambien? The online arguments on the subject are endless and wholly inconclusive. I gave up and said “wake up to”. Meanwhile, I then couldn’t go the fuck to sleep…..and wonder if this will ever get published…and if it does I wonder if that will be good, bad or indifferent for business…..Oy Vey.

Cliff Mazer Ph.D. is a Clinical Psychologist and humorist who lives and works in Sandy Springs, Georgia. He has a thing  for Pirates and other people with ADHD. He blogs fairly anonymously on Facebook and WordPress at https://captaincliff.wordpress.com/     Contact:  404-932-7193

I admit when I was a kid, the Fourth of July was cool. I associated the holiday with colorful fireworks, cold beer, sitting on the lawn with blankets, making out with girlfriends if I had one, or trying to hook-up with someone new and fairly cute if I didn’t. Growing up in a suburb of Chicago in the 1950’s and 60’s it was all about America, Uncle Sam, barbecues, swimming pools and warm but not too steamy summer nights. Somehow I also remember a lot of ice cream, popsicles, and, as a teenager, sneaking away to smoke a joint with friends to really see and “feel” the fireworks. Plain and simple I enjoyed it.

Now, as an adult, and particularly as a Baby Boomer with grown up kids I despise the whole idea and loath the very thought of shlepping to some crowded parking lot in traffic (welcome to Atlanta) in 100 degree heat (hey, it’s cooling down a bit, it’s 98) to watch the same stupid thing all over again. I dont want to seem crabby and overemotional. I’ve got reasons. Here are five good reasons to hate the Fourth of July. Listen up young people. I read all your lame hipster articles and techno nerd digital diatribes. In fact I would respond more often to your self-congratulatory “aren’t we young and hip/fly” acronym infested articles but I always have trouble typing in the CAPTCHA codes correctly. I’m not a fucking cryptographer.  Some of us have mild learning disorders and vision problems you age-ist pricks!   Now it’s my cantankerous turn:

1)  Most of the firework displays suck shit. If you live in Iowa or Idaho or Wyoming or anywhere except three or four big cities, the so called “colorful holiday festivities” are lame. It takes you longer to drive to the show then the shows themselves, which are usually held in large open spaces like state fairgrounds or minor league stadiums with crappy crowded urinals and concrete bunker restrooms that smell exactly how you would expect; like beer, barf and urine. If you are lucky enough to live in a big city that can afford a decent firework display like Chicago, Los Angeles, New York or Boston, the shows are respectable and there might even be good music that seems to accompany the light show (they really dont, it’s all in your head, stupid)  but by the time it’s over in less then an hour,  you still have to file out of some overcrowded place like shell-shocked cowboys caught in a cattle stampede. The chances of getting to your car with the same set of occupants you arrived with is low to nil. Losing a child in a crowd of potential child molesters and teenagers violently high on Spice and cheap gin can really strain a marriage.

2) The whole premise of the Fourth of July is a lie and some kind of government conspiracy. Stop worrying about 9/11, idiot. Those were real terrorists and real planes plowing into real buildings. It really happened. While you are poring over footage of the Apollo Moon Landing looking for “inconsistencies” and watching Oliver Stone’s paranoid fantasies about who really shot JFK (who really cares, he’s completely dead whether it was “down and to the right or not”) there is a yearly historical inaccuracy and blatant mythology called July 4th being sold to you, and you like a dumb shmuck are buying it wholesale like cheap Chinese fabrics for three times the price. Sure some rich white guys signed some Declaration of Independence document on July 4th, 1776, but it took them until 1783 to actually get the British to stop shooting them full of cannonballs and musket shells. More important, only the rich white guys ended up feeling  relatively free or “independent “.  Just go ask any 18th century or even 19th century woman, black person, Native American or anyone who didnt have a hundred slaves around to bake their sour dough bread or pour them a glass of cold beer. Plus, they didnt even have refrigerators to keep it all icy cold until around 1940. Kind of throws a little piss on the parade to think about warm ale and not so happy slaves on let’s say… July 4th, 1830, doesn’t it??

3) Once kids are taken out of the whole Norman Rockwell family picture, the 4th of July is a sensory nightmare and a ecological disgrace. Remember the recent stories about flocks of birds having their senses disrupted by airplanes and fireworks and subsequently flying into barns like a squadron of drunk Kamikazi pilots? Yeah, for some strange reason nature doesn’t exactly see the 4th of July and massive firework displays as “natural” or even something to celebrate. It messes them up like submarine sonar screws up the whales and dolphin’s built in GPS-like sonar. How would you like it if every time you began to turn left in your fancy little sports car your (obnoxious) voice activated video monitor and iphone GPS app kept repeating, “Recalculating…..turn left in 3456.7 miles??” Or, “In 3.2 miles crash directly into large red barn with blinking neon beer sign”…… Yeah, that’s right. You would hate it and especially hate the fact you have to call your dweeb insurance agent at midnight on July 5th when you know he’s doing 151 rum jello shots at his next door neighbors house party. Somehow they are never really like the sweet guys and gals that play them on the State Farm and Progressive Insurance TV commercials. Sorry, that’s not covered Family Guy……By the way, while we’re talking carbon foot print nightmares and eco-Armageddon, did you  ever notice how much paper and garbage and random debris is left after a night of 4th of July revelry?  The tidy subdivision looks more like Baghdad after our “shock and awe” campaign then the safe little suburban enclave you cashed out your 401K to barely afford. It’s not unusual to see a neighbors nice cedar shake roof covered with a tarp because little Tommy the 13 year old kid with ADHD thought it was a great idea to strap all the bottle rockets together and light it with a home-made flame thrower. Which brings me to #4.

4) Have you figured out that July 4th is dangerous?  How fun is it to take your 9 year old son or daughter, now missing half their thumb to the local hospital emergency room which doubles as a homeless shelter for the 365 days a year drunks and drug addicts that live around you? The chances of getting quality medical treatment in the middle of the night at the ER and leaving the next morning with money and WITHOUT  a newly acquired MERSA infection is, well, impossible to calculate. Plus, I’d like to see all you tech wizards out there text each other without a thumb!  Dont blame me if you think its fun to shoot off home=made fireworks you acquired on your last road trip to Alabama at a place called “Annies Arsenal”. If you see them in the back of the barn eating barbecue with one hand and stuffing gunpowder and fuses into spray painted cardboard toilet paper rolls with the other, I’d say it’s a bad sign. All in all, cant we agree that fire, explosions, drought, famine, napalm and rampant forest fires currently consuming half of the nation’s National Parks suggest we might want to curb the stunning light shows sponsored by Big Pharma? You want to see a light show right now? Fly to Colorado. Watch Colorado Springs burn down as we speak. Also, if the bears in Yellowstone are in fact learning to carry barbecue skewers and lighter fluid as recently reported, this suggests dangerous conditions for all species involved.

5) Of course I could give you 10 reasons but apparently the attention span of the average reader is now 3 nano seconds, so I’ll just do one more. Be honest. Be real. What we need in this world right now is NOT more noise, more air pollution, more screaming and yelling, but rather more calm and something you twits have completely forgotten, silence. The older I get, the more I just want everyone, including the TV announcers, politicians and every bipedal mammal on the planet  to shut the hell up. When Americans think to celebrate and show reverence, they just get louder, not quieter. Have you ever heard people talking during the Star Spangled Banner at the ballgame? Sure you have, at least a quarter of you morons wont ever turn off your iPhones, stop texting or shut the fuck up…ever.  Allow me to repeat. We dont need another loud, booming, ear splitting holiday. We dont need to be blinded by intense phosphorus shells with toxic colored plumes of acrid smoke and ash. Our kids dont need any more stimulation any more then you need to go order a triple expresso at Starbucks after chugging a jumbo sized Monster energy drink or two. Most of you young people walk around like Red Bull, crack-Adderall addicts with a 24/7 Jones for heavy metal and sensory motor stimulation.  Honestly, I want to blow up the cars with loud rap music playing at red lights. You all need to mellow the fuck out and teach the kids to do the same. Instead of July 4th, take a yoga class, listen to a relaxation tape, and stay away from low flying flocks of birds. Your kids will thank you someday and as for Uncle Sam, I really think he is way more into April 15th anyway.

Cliff Mazer Ph.D. is a Clinical Psychologist and humorist who lives and works in Sandy Springs, Georgia. He has a thing  for Pirates and other people with ADD. He blogs fairly anonymously on Facebook and WordPress at https://captaincliff.wordpress.com/     Contact:  404-932-7193