captaincliff

It struck me recently that just about everyone I know has been diagnosed with bipolar.  No, I’m not kidding. It seems that with increasing frequency, rivaled only by the period of time around 10 years ago when everyone was being diagnosed as ADD (including everyone in my immediate family including myself) nearly every person I know and love is bipolar or somewhere on the “spectrum” of what we in the business call affective disorders. These are the mental diseases and diagnostic categories that refer to problems managing ones moods and emotions and often accompanied by a certain tendency to become manic or hypomanic, which is characterized by recklessness, racing thoughts, substance use and abuse, insomnia, and/or hyper-irritability. Wait, now that I say that……that really sounds like me too. Seriously. Plus, I’ve got the family history. Trust me. I come from a long line of people who start out pretty normal and end up either killing themselves or swinging from trees completely naked after not sleeping for two weeks in Belize or Costa Rica. They really discourage behavior like that in foreign countries and it can be quite grueling attempting to retrieve someone from the rain forest canopy who believes they are God or the pack leader of a family of Bonobo chimps.

To be fair there is another side to my family. They are the ones who worked on the Manhattan Project, became successful (and primarily sane) engineers, businessmen, scientists and college professors. For some reason they werent diagnosed with autism, ADD, or bipolar and managed to lead productive lives without taking mouthfuls of stimulants, SSRIs, atypical anti-psychotics, Lithium, or hidden flasks of whisky conveniently stashed in bottom desk drawers. As with the ADD epidemic, one becomes suspicious when they see too many soccer moms filling prescriptions for Adderall because their 10 year old, “focuses more and scores more goals when medicated”.  Still, as a helping professional and someone from a family with both a lot of brains and a lot of raving lunatics (myself included) I know these diseases are real and often devastating.  Somehow, somewhere we have to find a better balance between over-diagnosing, over-prescribing, over pathologizing on the one hand and excessive denial on the other. How bout this? If you think you’re crazy, you’re probably not as crazy as you think, but if you believe you’re completely sane and even the family dog cocks his head to the side when you say that at 3AM while watching Law and Order reruns and binging on Doritos, Tequila, and someone elses Vicodin….you might want to call a shrink for a second opinion. Dont be surprised if he/she (the good doctor) admits to being bipolar or ADD themselves.

In the spirit and memory of Eugene Polley, the inventor of the TV remote control who passed away today, I dedicate this blog.

Did you ever have a tv remote, ceiling fan, or other battery operated appliance type device that started to behave quirky and unreliably, no matter how much you shook it, pointed it, prayed to it or cursed the Gods? Am I the only one who for some reason prefers to frustrate myself for days, weeks, and even months, even tho deep down I really know I just need to go downstairs to the kitchen and get a new battery? What is with us, we ego driven, maniacal yet totally lazy humans that we would rather scream at a ceiling fan for ruining our day and quite possibly our dysregulated body temperature all night then accept that our main source of energy has run its course and is in need of replacement?

Ok, can you see I am using a metaphor here? I am talking about double AAs and triple AAAs and the funny square ones that never plug in easily or correctly, but Im also talking about our health… physical, emotional and psychological. It takes a long time for alot of people, including myself to admit they have gotten worn down from lifes many stress and strains, and might need more then a good vacation (altho never ever say no to a good vacation). Some of us need therapy. Some need a blood test or physical exam, including the kind that involves a doctor, a rubber glove, and a sarcastic comment like, “Now that wasn’t too bad, was it?” We might even need to see a shrink or accept the fact that certain medications are necessary. Worse yet, we might have to exercise and lose weight. The point is we have to, I have to, get better at admitting when I need help and my “internal remote control” is on the blink. In my TV room at home is one of my many self created “Ironic Art” exhibits. It’s really just a large bowl with all the many remote controls I have had over the years that span the many generations of new technology and new fangled ways to avoid getting off my lazy ass. I used to even have one that had a super long wire connected to it and was like a skinny jump rope…which I suppose defeats the purpose of  both being lazy or getting exercise. Anyway, the art exhibit is pretty self-explanatory. Even when we feel like we have control, we really dont. We must accept the duality of both the absence of complete control as well as being more responsible and self-correcting. Life is just like that, but as guys, we often just like to pretend anyway. Thank you Mr. Polley. May you rest in peace and merrily keep on clicking the “clicker”…..for all eternity.

http://www.seattlepi.com/news/article/Eugene-Polley-inventor-of-TV-remote-dies-at-96-3576803.php

The premise is that every individual, no matter how serious their problems could benefit greatly from one highly individualized positive thought, well-timed idea or concept. Everyone is unique and every single life has a different invisible treasure “map” comprised of right and wrong turns, dead-ends and life changing (transformative) personal insights. Sometimes these moments of extreme “clarity” or “truth” can impact us in very powerful ways.

The problem is that most doctors, therapists, and people in general are unable to look at another person’s life as it presents itself in a given moment and in all its complexity and  ask, “What single notion would most benefit this person today and especially right now?” Cookie cutter treatments, a physician’s PDR and psychologist’s DSM manual fail to pinpoint the transformative possibilities of the exact right idea at the very best time. Tomorrow it might be different and yesterday is gone. I believe this is more then possible with the right combination of therapeutic skills, intuition and open-mindedness. Nobody is saying that once you get the right idea that everything is automatically perfect or even better. Practice makes perfect. Actually nothing humans do is perfect, but it can be pretty close to a beautiful sunrise on a brand new day with a great cup of good coffee…or a Chai tea, if one so desires. Personally I don’t like that Chai stuff and that’s exactly my point. Either way, if you help others, you begin to help yourself……and visa versa.

Coen Brothers Mental Exercise:  What is the rabbi trying to say? From the movie: The Serious Man  https://youtu.be/uoetGnTIjWY

In Defense of Hoarders…Up To a Point

As a personal hoarder and professional therapist, I am in a unique position to say something about the phenomena that, thanks to cable TV, we all love to hate. Well, maybe not hate as much as  recoil in disgust and disbelief. Someone really saves used cat litter and soiled baby diapers?? Ewww.

Hear me out all Ye Who Judgeth. Most of us who “over collect” and tend toward “clutter” aren’t quite that bad or suffering that degree of abject denial. We dont merrily open our refrigerators in the morning to the sight of gobs of black mold, dead squirrels and missing relatives squeezed into the produce drawer. Ok, we might lag a bit behind in our vigilance about expiration dates, ie. “Dad, are you kidding me? Today is May 20th. This yogurt says sell by January 12th and your 2% milk looks suspiciously like cottage cheese.” Fine. Mea Culpa on that one.

The thing I dont like is how these “reality” shows and even my own profession tend to lump every deranged hoarder into the same fly and rat dung infested category, usually an older middle aged lady or guy who has to crawl over boxes to get to his/her urine soaked mattress and half eaten box of Triscuits.  Ok, Mea Culpa on the Triscuits and Sesame Melba Toast by the side of the bed too………..I like some “comfort food” with me while I write.  Plus I dont want to trip over my stuffed animal collection at nite when I shuffle down to the kitchen in my limited edition Star Trek slippers.

I dont know where Ramsey, Minnesota is but based on recent news reports, it can get pretty kinky out there. Apparently a man named Alan Petrusson, now known to billions on the Internet as “the guy who tied himself naked to a tree for sex”, did exactly that in a city park. Of course he first blindfolded himself so that the sex could be more “anonymous” and therefore, theoretically more exciting. Wouldn’t you? Many people reading this, such as myself, tend to pause and consider the “what ifs”. What if he did that in Yellowstone Park during Grizzly bear season after first smearing himself with peanut butter and hollandaise sauce? What if he did that in Compton California while proudly flying gang colors at “full mast” in the midst of someone elses turf? There are endless scenarios in which to imagine how Mr. Petrusson could have heightened his own perverse sexual arousal right before having his limbs torn off and/or found himself mated for life with a highly possessive and close-knit family of brown bears, chimpanzees, gorillas, Crips, Bloods, or Central American street gangs. Unfortunately in Ramsey none of the above materialized and he was merely reported to the police and promptly arrested. I dont know what the penalty is for such behavior in a public place, but I doubt his eco-friendly, tree-hugger defense is going to work, especially given his erect state. I know if I was the tree I wouldn’t appreciate it.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/18/alan-petrusson-tied-to-tree-genitals-exposed-anonymous-sex_n_1527366.html

When you need information about medicine and your body, who do you turn to? I said WHO, not WHAT. Yes, people use their computers and go to medicine and medical related websites. But when it comes to a person, people often dont go see a doctor first. They ask their pharmacist. Why is this? It’s because pharmacists are knowledgeable, up to date, convenient and approachable. We trust them. They remember us. They look us straight in the eyes, and very often they seem to honestly sympathize with us and with our understandable frustrations. Also doctors are expensive and like cab drivers with the meter running, their time is money. Pharmacists dont charge for what they know.

When it comes to mental disorders like depression, eating disorders, bipolar and anxiety/panic and OCD, who do we trust and who do we turn to for help and understanding? Suddenly the equation is more complicated. While one is tempted to say Psychiatrists, Psychologists and Licensed Psychotherapists…the truth is there is a “split” in  peoples thinking and actual experience.

Many (but not all) of these professionals are reasonably knowledgeable. Most are up to date, especially in their areas of expertise. Often they are not convenient, not easily accessible and (more then one likes to admit) not necessarily understanding or sympathetic. The nature of their training and the “busy-ness” of their business sometimes makes them seem either aloof or distant. One sometimes gets the uncomfortable feeling that they are perceiving the world as distinct disorders and psychological classifications or psychiatric diagnoses and not as individual human beings with unique lives and circumstances. Their professional “practices” are so busy and so “procedure” or treatment based that they often dont appear to have the time to look up from their clipboard and/or computers. They are trying to cure complex problems in 45-50 minute intervals.  Obviously there are exceptions involving some very rare insightful, even loving therapists. Thank Goodness for that.

My doctoral dissertation on recovery from anorexia nervosa at Stanford Childrens Hospital (quite a few years ago) among other things looked at who the PATIENTS felt were most supportive and helpful in their eventual recovery from this serious and often remittent illness. Much to our chagrin, as clinicians, researchers and therapists, the answer was often NOT the trained helping professionals, but other hospital employees including the custodians, the cafeteria staff and other patients or close friends. I could go into greater detail, but the point is that love, care, faith and sincerity really matters and those are not aspects that are always taught in graduate or medical school. Real social support and personal authenticity as well as enthusiastic positive approaches (with alot of hugs) actually helps people make it through tough times and eventually heal. We need to provide nice places and even nicer people like that for those who struggle with emotional problems. Why nice places? Because hospitals and doctors offices, including many buildings where therapists work are not very inviting or “therapeutic” feeling. Most people including myself dont exactly have positive associations to hospitals. We naturally associate such places with illness, disease and infirmity, and not with health, wellness and vitality. The last time I was in a hospital I spent half the time going from wall mounted liquid sanitation/germicide dispenser to dispenser. Such environments can turn a normal neurotic into a obsessive compulsive germaphobe in a single visit! My conclusion is this:  We need health professionals and we need hospitals, but we also need creative, fun and therapeutic alternatives where people with real problems can talk, laugh, eat, relate and release their pent up frustrations, feelings and maybe, just maybe, give each other love and lots of free hugs. I also suspect it would be very cost-effective.

I stayed at the Comfort Inn during my son’s recent graduation from Pomona College in Claremont, California. All the local hotels including the posh Casa 425 in the haughty Claremont “village” were fully booked.  Baby Boomer parents and attending alumni along with their highly intelligent sons and daughters clogged the many fine dining establishments near campus and talked foodie talk and global economics while waiting for their Belgian microbrews and perfectly rare Back Abbey burgers. The suburban swank of Claremont is a sharp contrast to the ethnic/ Hispanic buzz of Pomona, sort of like the aged gouda cheese on my burger. As I drove to my hotel on South Garey Avenue in Pomona, it was a little like crossing the border into Tijuana. Dont get me wrong, I liked the more authentic environs and  lower middle class neighborhoods mixed with Mexican restaurants, bakeries, hair parlors and tire shops.  The Comfort Inn Pomona is a bastion of safety, security and working air conditioning. They say they took a 100 year old winery and converted it to the present well kept property. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find any barrels or left over bottles of wine. The rooms are very decent, even spacious. The staff is kind. The complimentary breakfast forgettable. Who really need a sausage patty and a stale bagel when you have authentic taquerias and panaderias all around you? To be fair, it gets a little spicier at nite and on weekends, and I did see two guys wearing bandanas spray painting traffic signs with what appeared to be gang symbols on my way to the CVS right next door.  I dont think they were Pitzer College students doing an art project or working on their final thesis but I could be wrong. I also dont think they were interested in my large bag of Cheetos and Flaming Doritos, but I would have been willing to share. Regardless, the price was right at the Comfort Inn and I would stay there again. It took me only 10-15 minutes to get to Claremont where the bandanas were conveniently replaced by mortar boards and sad/happy just graduating college kids.

It is the day after my youngest son’s graduation from college in Claremont California. He is on his flight home to Atlanta and I am staying one more day to sell his car and shlep home whatever he couldn’t pack into a couple of suitcases and a duffel bag. I thought about driving his piece of shit car back and having some “quality time” to myself. Luckily, the rational part of my brain eventually kicked in, realizing that his shitty car and my shitty back would make for a good cheap horror film involving a car breaking down in a small town inhabited by mutants and/or psychopaths ala Husk, Vacancy or The Human Centipede. I really dont want to start driving from California and wake up one morning with my mouth stitched to someone else’s anus. With my luck it would be John Travolta’s butt and he would like it. I have to learn that my fantasies about saving money and visiting all the amazing places on Diners and Drive-Ins would quickly turn into a one way ticket to Hell and Irritable Bowel Disease with some sodomy thrown in for bad luck…. and bad taste. Instead, I look around before me today and see the remnants of Ben’s excellent adventure.

The absolutely stunningly beautiful campus of Pomona is strewn with furniture, broken TV stands, half drunken bottles of liquor, and the detritus of 4 years of collected junk, now only memories of a once in a lifetime experience called college. While the excitement, happiness and pride in accomplishment was palpable all weekend, so was the sadness and nostalgia. These young men and women really bonded and cared about each other. Beneath the hard drinking and silly making I saw many red eyes rimmed with tears and feelings of loss, perhaps even anticipated grief. They have been so busy studying and partying, achieving and goofing off, that it’s possible many of them (the graduating seniors) never considered what it would REALLY feel like to say goodbye. I know some people are tough and hard-nosed and go from early developmental milestone to lifetime achievement award and dont miss a beat. I’m not that way and in fact, I am someone who is constantly awash in memories from younger days.

I remember my graduation day from U.C. Boulder in 1975, which alternatively seems like yesterday and a galaxy away in space-time. Some friends I never saw again and others like orbiting satellites and planets came back into my life either for awhile or for forever ( I hope). I wonder if these guys, these ardent and highly opinionated Pomona graduates, all talking fast (with one another) in a lexicon constructed from their shared experiences as well as their many inside jokes and collective intelligence can see that far ahead or even want to……..I figure when they finally get some sleep and sober up it will probably hit them, and then it will be our job as parents to be there for them, as always.

For the old-timers:   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yBv6ou7mywI&feature=related

Headline News: Painter of Light, Thomas Kinkade Dies, Goes Out Like a Bloated Valley of the Dolls Housefrau.

Kinkade, whose prolific works of art grace every large suburban shopping mall, Red Roof Inn, church gala and art fair in North America keeled over and died on April 6th of an acute overdose of alcohol and Valium.  Jesus Christ, AA, his not yet ex-wife and his embattled business manager/accountant were nowhere to be seen as coroners wheeled his gin and tonic annointed holy vessel to the Santa Clara County morgue. The painter known for his bucolic landscapes and evangelical christian imagery was equally famous for getting drunk and urinating on a Winnie the Pooh Statue at the Disneyland Hotel in Anaheim and a well publicized DUI in 2010. Booze and brushes seemed to mix easily for the popular painter who at the time of his death was separated from his wife and living with a gf in Northern California. Personally, I never ever liked his stuff and would have preferred the company of Bob Ross or Ron Popiel of RONCO Info-mercial fame. You cant just paint about the light and forget all about the dark side of the Moon. Trust me, everybody has a shadow persona and if you dont own it and express it in a way that is therapeutic and/or authentically creative, it’s gonna creep up on you like a dark fog on a night “starless and fatherless, a dark water”, as Sylvia Plath once wrote. She at least saw both sides of the duality, but like Kinkade, suffered just the same. They say his paintings are selling better now, so maybe there is some hope of a final redemption, or at least corporate solvency.

http://www.mercurynews.com/crime-courts/ci_20569911/report-thomas-kinkade-died-accidental-booze-valium-overdose?source=most_viewed

How I learned to Hate HIMYM

Is it possible to hate something everybody else loves? If I think Publix’s supermarket bagels in Atlanta are a pale imitation of a fresh New York City bagel, could I possibly be mistaken? There’s a certain cable TV show that everyone thinks is fresh, hilarious and “clever”. I find it stupid, boring and unoriginal. I’m afraid this might be a generation thing because my 20 something kids and their girlfriends love it, or at least think it’s “mad funny”. I can’t even get myself to laugh along with the laugh track. I’m talking about How I Met Your Mother. I really really dont get it and it makes me question which one of us is crazy, or at least who has the severe humor disorder. Here’s my beef: 1) It’s concept is trite and derivative. It’s an obvious “Friends” knock-off but Friends was funny and the characters were likeable in their quirkiness 2) The show is hackneyed and overdependent on its laugh track to cue the audience when to laugh and guffaw over its cute but oh so predictable dialogue. Without it, one would merely hear the characters taking repetitious turns overplaying their stereotype roles 3) Some of the characters are completely unlikeable and lack authenticity. They are playing “forced” dramatic roles that dont even fit their personalities. Neil Patrick Harris is flaming gay, not that there is anything wrong with that, but in HIMYM he is a womanizing braggart sexist metrosexual. It’s not believable, just as nobody would ever cast me as a Fundamentalist preacher from Des Moines who used to play professional basketball. I thought Friends was funny. I thought Seinfeld was funny. I thought Sex and the City was stupid but believable in its elitist shoe fetish Manhattan Ortgeist and Zeitgeist circa 2000 AD. What world and subculture is embodied in How I Met Your Mother? Many of the television shows young people watch today and follow religiously, like Big Bang Theory, for example, start out relatively funny but devolve into predictable one liners that are only a nano step above a fart joke. Not that fart jokes arent funny. Not as funny as actual farts of course….but just as stale…as a bad bagel.

Anyway, am I truly all alone in this? Do I need an infusion or transfusion of Generation Y and Z yuks and an instruction manual? Am I suffering from early Alzheimers characterized by a marked deficit in ones sense of smell as well as sense of humor? Somebody help me, I cant get up….for this stupid TV show.