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FOLLOW BIPOLAR GUY ON TWITTER 24 Aug 2014 9:22 AM (10 years ago)

WOW! I havent been here for a looong time! According to my Feedburner stats there are still approx 200 of you subscribed to BiPolar Etcetera's RSS feed.

Despite all the intentions in the world I can't guarantee that I'll ever post to this blog again :(  If I do, it will be some kind of resurrection move which isn't on the radar yet. However I (BPG) am going strong on Twitter. I certainly dont over-tweet and when I do its not really stuff about bipolar. Mad stuff yes (as in tweeted by a BiPolar Guy) , but the PRODUCT OF rather than THE TOPIC OF BiPolar.

If you want ON TOPIC Bipolar Stuff I'd recommend you get my book BiPolar Blogged - which consists of selected posts from this blog and was published a few years ago. The book hasn't done too badly as far as self published books go - no fireworks but a few 100 sales which still trickle in steadily.

Its kind of sad to be "signing off" as it were (and in truth this blog will never officially close but always hang around in the online ether with the chance for me to fire it up again) - the days when this blog was peaking is nearly reaching its 10 year anniversary...

Hope all you guys are well and hope we meet one day again. And rememeber:


Cheers
BPG

I'm still here... 12 Feb 2013 10:39 PM (12 years ago)

Yes, I haven't posted in a while. I guess its a case of "no news is good news". I'm doing pretty well. Have slowly reduced my meds to about half of what they were 18 months ago. Did it very slowly and it has worked wonders. My next goal is to ditch the prozac altogether. Not gonna rush it tho, and I've gotta find a good sustainable positive patch to start the project in.

As a result I'm not identifying so much with the "bipolarness" of BiPolar Guy. Quite honestly right now "Photographer Guy" would probably be a better handle. But I'm actually getting tired of handles. I've got so many of the friggin things. Maybe one day I will just be me - "Proper Name", and all my handles can have a great reunion at my Propername.com place. It would be pretty cathartic.

But I'll always keep this blog going. There is a substantial body of musings, experiences and philosophisings in these pages and I'm not about to send them to the recycle bin.

One thing I must tell you about though is that for the past 12 months I have been inundated with spam comments. I used to wade through them diligently marking them off as spam and publishing the occasional comment from a reader. But I've kind of given up at the moment - there's just too many. So if you've commented in the past few months and it hasn't been published its not cos I don't like you. I will still get round to publishing it some time.

In the meantime why not follow me on Twitter. I'm still tweeting regularly as BiPolar Guy.

Hope you guys are all well.
Peace.

My Best Buddy 4 Nov 2012 7:55 PM (12 years ago)

I don't usually post pet pics, but in this instance I made an exception.

BiPolar Guy's global media reach :) 30 Oct 2012 11:19 PM (12 years ago)

Sorry about this, but I gotta blow my trumpet. See the chart below - it shows the world's biggest social publishing sites:

Well in the past month BPG has been contacted by two of them via this very blog! First a journalist from the Huffington post contacted me via Twitter to participate in a live discussion on BiPolar. Unfortunately I dont check my twitter everyday and so was too late.

A week later this blog was mentioned and linked to in site 6 in the above list - the Gaurdian UK. This 2nd mention was triggered by the blog post I wrote last year on Dr Aubrey Levine (aka Dr Shock). Dr Levine was the psychiatrist that headed the SADF's pyschiatric wards in the 80s and he was ultimately responsible for the involuntary shock treatment I underwent. After being accussed of Human's Rights abuses he fled for Canada and was practising as a psychiatrist there for many years. I say was because his license has been suspended and he is now in court facing sexual harrasment charges by numerous former male patients.

I've been following the case with interest. The man is squirming and watching his string of pathetic excuses unravel is a joke-a-minute. First he was too obese to stand trial (the doctor motivating this incidentally was a former student of his in South Africa). Then dementia came up. Then he tried to defend his genital fondling as Erectile Disfunction Treatment. This week the man seems to have cracked a little further and has fired both his attorneys and will be defending himself. Bad move! Can't wait to see him rot in jail!

Value in Depression 11 Oct 2012 1:21 AM (12 years ago)

Depression sucks, make no mistake. I know this from years of experience. When I'm depressed I can't work, I can't exercise, I don't want to socialise. Just about every single aspect of my life is worse. All I seem to be able to do is eat (way too much) and sleep (way too much).

But I am also learning more and more as the years go by that absolutes don't exist. There is nothing that is 100% bad, even depression. So here are a few potential "silver linings":

• WISDOM - I read somewhere recently that the wisest people are those that have "seen the same thing from many different perspectives". Being very depressed is its own right a unique perspective that is not accessible to everyone in the world.
  
• MEDITATION - I mentioned above that all I can do when I'm depressed is eat and sleep. Actually there's one more thing that seems to go better when I'm depressed - my meditation. Not that I can't meditate when I'm not depressed, but when I'm depressed I just seem that extra bit grounded when meditating.
  
• THRIFT - This one is probably limited to BiPolar Depressives. When I'm down I no longer crave stuff, my wishlist loses its appeal and my "money spent on extra stuff" definitely decreases. (Thank the godz for that, as when I'm manic it is literally the polar opposite)
  
• RELATIVITY - Ultimately our levels of happiness and our levels of unhappiness define each other. This is an inescapable law of the universe and applicable to non-biolars too. The lower you go, the happier the happiness feels when it comes back. This fact alone often gets me through the short term blips, because I know that when its over, I'm due for some really strong doses of feel-good.

No doubt there's loads of other possible values in depression out there and I'd be really glad to hear them.

My meditation Stats 1 Oct 2012 12:21 AM (12 years ago)

Above is a screenshot from my iPhone meditation App - Insight Timer - which I've been using for just under 2 years.

Although I've done over 300 sessions, when I tell people my average meditation time is 12 minutes, lots react in a sort of dismissive way that its not very long at all. The weird thing I've noticed is that the people that react like this are the ones that dont meditate, whereas the people that have actually meditated for a while are always very congratulatory...

Anyways, I've said it before and I'll say it again: In our increasingly distracted and disembodied world, meditation is more critical than ever. The usual excuse: "don't have enough time". SERIOUSLY?? You dont have 12 minutes a day? You can do it right away and right where you are. Quite honestly you dont even need a sitting cushion or to take your shoes off.  (With respect to the traditionalists, I often think the Buddha would look at all these modern people meditating and say "But why barefoot and on the floor? The only reason we did that 2000 years ago is that we had no shoes or chairs"  :)

Coming Up: The Greatest Show on Earth 22 Aug 2012 8:40 PM (12 years ago)

Saturday's iPhone screenshot 11 Aug 2012 2:06 AM (12 years ago)

Lots of ones

There is a "stuckness" in depression 24 Jul 2012 3:53 AM (12 years ago)

In case you wondering - it's "rut", not "vut"

The Question 2 Jul 2012 7:17 AM (12 years ago)

A Y knot

2nd Tatt 4 Jun 2012 1:50 AM (12 years ago)

The 1st Anniversary of my first tattoo is in 2 days time:

At the time I was convinced I'd only end up with one tattoo. But guess what: I'm about to get a second. This next one I'm gonna position on my right calf . Its going to be quite a bit bigger:

The first tattoo was 100% designed by me. And it is loaded with meaning. I could actually write a book about the meaning of that one. This second one I found on the web. Unlike the first one, this one has no significance and was chosen purely for aesthetics. But this fact in itself carries quite a bit of significance (if you've been following closely you will know why...)

Insomnia Buster 20 May 2012 2:03 AM (12 years ago)

As a BiPolar person I dont think it is possible not to experience bad insomnia at some point. Of all my "symptom correlations" to my mood disorder, insomnia is the one that correlates most accurately with my highs and lows. I dont think I've ever had insomnia when I'm particularly depressed. On the contrary - sleeping (and lots of it) is about all I can do when badly depressed.

On the other side of the scale -> every episode of full-blown mania I've ever had has been marked by critical insomnia.

So insomnia is something I've had a relationship with for a long time. Fortunately I've always had a cure that has worked for me: stuff my face with refined carbos. Peanut butter sandwiches on white bread are a staple. Pasta is good too. The trick is to gorge yourself so that the ensuing sluggishness washes the insomnia away. The problem with this cure (as with nearly all psycho-symptom cures) is that it has strong side effects: baggage around the middle regions.

So I'm pretty excited with a new Insomnia cure that I've been experimenting with. I'm not sure if everybody does, but I usually remember snippets from my previous night's dreams. Sometimes they're quite involved sometimes just a glimpse. What I have discovered recently is that when you are lying in bed and sleep is playing its elusive tricks, thinking about recent fragments of dreams that you have had often gets you to sleep. I'm not sure exactly what the mechanics of this process are, but suspect that just the act of thinking about your dreams puts you into more of a dream-type state of mind into which it is easier to drift.

Would be great to hear of anybody else's experiments in this regard.

Winter coming (and other stuff) 5 May 2012 9:08 PM (12 years ago)

Mid-winter is fast approaching in the Southern hemishpere. The Winter Solstice is just over a month away now - something I look forward to, as I prefer longer days, and after the Solstice days start getting longer again.

I would say that I do suffer from a form of SAD (Seasonal Adjustment Order). Moodwise my calendar year always follows a familiar cycle. March/April are usually the best months and September/October the worst. I definitely prefer summer to winter, but moodwise there seems to be a lag-effect with the joy of summer kicking in right at the end of the season, and visa verse for the downs of winter.

It has become so predictable now that I plan my years around it. In the first half of the year I've really got to push my business (which i did), as the energy usually runs out by July. This year I also used March to reduce my meds. I halved my Prozac intake from 40mg a day to 20mg a day. It has been so successful that I will never go back. Even if the Black Dog bites hard in September.

Next year when the good times arrive, I'm planning to ditch my Omega 3 supplements that I am taking. You can only ditch one thing at a time and if I'd done both Prozac and Omega and failed I would not know which was the culprit. The principle reason I'm keen to ditch the Omega 3 is that I'm on a major body-building and weight-loss mission at the mo, and I suddenly realised that the little daily Omega fats capsule must be packing a shit load of kilojoules. I'd rather eat fish (and at least satiate my appetite.)

My long term goal is to get off all meds. I've aleady cut my Lamictal by half (last year), from 220mg to 120mg. So hopefully in about 3 years time I'll be 100% med-free. It will be the first time in nearly 20 years...

The Shaman & the Anthropologist 4 Apr 2012 9:56 PM (13 years ago)

I recently read about a very perplexed Anthropologist who had been spending some time with the Shaman of a tribe that was mostly untouched by Western Civilization. The Shaman had an incredibly bizarre belief system by which he guided the tribe.

One day, having gained the Shaman's trust, the perplexed Anthropologist confronted the Shaman: "Do you honestly believe all the crap you tell your fellow tribesmen?"
To which the Shaman replied: "No, I don't really but it honestly seems to cure them."

This was the Anthropologist's AHA! moment, and he went home to write up many theses on his "breakthrough".

After thinking about these events for some time, I offer you Sequel 2 of the story:

Upon hearing about the Shaman's answer to the Anthropologist, one of  the tribe Elders confronted the Shaman: "Is it true that you don't believe in all the spiritual stuff you tell us?"
To which the Shaman replied: "No, it is not true, I do believe in all the spiritual stuff, but the Anthropolgist was tormented by his inability to understand, so what I said cured him".

...and everyone lived happily ever after.  

Meditation explained : Set Theory 8 Mar 2012 5:05 AM (13 years ago)

Note: Not to scale. In reality Set B much bigger part of Set A.

Old Mother Hubbard's Bare Cupboard - Blame the Diet Experts 21 Feb 2012 8:07 PM (13 years ago)

Old Mother Hubbard
Went to the cupboard
To get her doggie a bone,
When she got there
The cupboard was bare...

...that's because a 21st century diet expert had paid Mother Hubbard (who lived 100 years prior) a visit and tossed all the *unhealthy* stuff out of her pantry cupboard:

•  Salt
•  Butter
•  Sugar
•  Milk
•  Bread
•  Flour
•  Eggs
•  Meat
•  Coffee 

 All that was left, it seems, were a few apples, not enough, even at the rate of "an apple a day" to keep the doctor away.

Seriously: If you went by what the modern diet experts said, very little would be left in the pantries from yester-year. The list of *healthy* stuff is shrinking fast.

(It's a pity the starving people in Ethiopia didn't have access to Old Mother Hubbard's Cupboard. The dieticians there would have a different mantra, I'm sure. Something like "It's all good")

Best Advice I've ever Received 2 Feb 2012 11:33 PM (13 years ago)

the 2 choices 15 Jan 2012 9:44 PM (13 years ago)

Rosarch Test on Steroids (or acid...) 7 Jan 2012 11:50 PM (13 years ago)

2012 - A Blank Slate 1 Jan 2012 10:38 PM (13 years ago)

WAR, SLAVERY & IGNORANCE 22 Dec 2011 12:32 AM (13 years ago)

I've been reading Orwell's Classic- 1984 - a book which just seems to get more and more relevant.

In the book the Totalitarian State incessantly promotes 3 mantras to the enslaved populace:

• WAR IS PEACE
  
• SLAVERY IS FREEDOM
  
• IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

Current Parallels circa 2011: 


WAR IS PEACE
The Western World is at Peace at present. Actually it's not - thats just the way it seems. The only way we will have Peace is if we invade Iran, as they may have WMDs which means we are actually at War.*

SLAVERY IS FREEDOM
Wow, isn't it great to be alive and free in the Western World:

"You think you’re free? Trying going anywhere without fucking money." ~ Bill Hicks

...or, as David Graeber more eloquently puts it : "If Aristole were around today He’d probably conclude that most Americans were, for all intents and purposes, slaves."

...it's even got a name: WAGE SLAVERY

IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH
Remember WikiLeaks anyone? Remember how all the politicians jumped on Assange denouncing him as a serious threat to National Strength?
WikiLeaks response: "Which country is suffering from too much Freedom of Speech? Name it, is there one?" 



*Are our memories that short? Havent we been duped with this line before??

Once you are awakened, then what? 11 Dec 2011 4:37 AM (13 years ago)

The title of this blog post comes from WillBeFine's excellent comment on my recent post about awakening through meditation

I've gotta admit - WBF's question stumped me. So I spent lots of time thinking about it, and some even meditating about it and finally I've come up with a semblance of an answer:

Q: Once you are awakened, then what?

A: You become a clever fish.

Don't worry, this is not one of those infuriating Zen Koans. Here is how I reached my answer:

Many years ago I had the privilege of knowing a very accomplished artist. We were talking about where creative ideas came from and he said to me he sees it like this: "Imagine that your mind has a fishing rod and it can cast out into the universe and hook ideas and reel them back in. The people that can cast furthest, and in the right places, catch the most 'far-out' and creative ideas."

This analogy impressed me, and has always stuck with me. However, after meditating for a few years, I have become aware how thoughts can creep up into the mind and take you off in their own direction, without you even been aware that it is happening.

So my proposal is that, no, my artist friend actually got it totally wrong. There is not some crafty fisherman sitting in our minds casting his rod. No - we are actually the fish. And its the ideas and concepts out there that have the rods; they're the ones dressing up the bait on the hooks; they're the ones casting into our minds to see if we'll take the bait, get hooked and pulled in uncontrolled directions.

Can you ever be totally awake 24/7? No. But by meditating you can learn to be a bit more alert when it comes to tasty morsels floating around in the idea-sphere. And instead of just gobbling at first sight, to try and examine morsels a bit closer before engaging with them.

PS: I'm going away for about a week so may not be able to respond to new comments for a while.

And a Happy Full Moon to you 9 Dec 2011 11:13 PM (13 years ago)

This is a pic of the beach where I live. Tweaked with the iPhone Apps: 100cameras and Camerabag. 

WBF - I will get back to your excellent question on last post soon. It needs some thought - stumped-at-first-sight :)

The Awakening 4 Dec 2011 9:06 PM (13 years ago)

I've attended several Buddhist teachings lately, including a weekend retreat 2 weeks ago. And I've been thinking a lot about meditation.

"Buddha" is most usually translated as "The Awakened One". Most people have some understanding that Buddhist Enlightenment involves some type of awakening.

The popular perception is that this Awakening is a major paradigm-altering step involving some kind of Awakening into an Otherworldly realm. 

Maybe it is. But on another level one can experience Buddhist awakeness at a very practical level. A level that can even address the skeptics retort "I dont need to awaken - I was never asleep in the first place."

If you've ever meditated you will likely know that the crux of the practice is about being aware of what you are thinking about, whilst you are thinking about it. "Observing the observer" is how some people put it. And you will also probably have experienced first-hand how difficult it is to accomplish this, even for a few minutes, without your mind wandering off. Once you realise that your mind has wandered off, the task is to let the run-away thought go and bring your mind back to its self-aware state.

In my personal meditation experience I have never really had trouble letting the errant thought go, once it has been recognised. My problem has always been the "drifting off" part, the fact that one minute I am sitting concentrating on what I'm thinking about and then the next minute, unbeknownst to me, my mind is in a totally different place. All meditators will be familiar with this experience.

So lately i have been trying to pinpoint and articulate this elusive moment of wandering off. What actually happens? What is it like?

Answering this is not easy as at the point when it happens you are, by definition, not aware of it happening. The observer has been lost sight of. But recently I've been thinking that perhaps the closest experience to this "slipping away" happens to us every night when we fall asleep. Think about it: despite falling asleep every single night of our lives, we can never pinpoint the exact time that we transition from normal thoughts into dream thoughts. Because, if we could do this - we wouldn't be asleep. We would be awake.

So next time you hear about the great Buddhist "Awakening", do not be intimidated that it is some far-removed concept only attainable by cross-legged monks sitting in caves in the Himalayas for years and years. You can experience it every day, in ordinary meditation, right where you are.

Mastering it of course, is another issue altogether...

Take Cover 25 Nov 2011 1:31 AM (13 years ago)

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