Godammit, I’m Mad!

All my life I have thought of myself as an Irritable Organism, like an amoeba under a microscope, being poked. Now, finally, there’s a treatment for this!  Read the product description:

“This profoundly calming perfume has a fresh, soothing fragrance with powerful undertones. It lessens irritability and helps you become centered, easy going and relaxed. Smelling of apples, bitter herbs and fresh grass, Roman Chamomile is soothing and comforting, calming, balancing and deeply relaxing, with a gentle, restorative effect which banishes irritability. The sunny Bergamot smells fresh with floral, lemon notes. It is reviving, soothing and balancing, cheering and heart warming and gently relieves irritation and anger. Rose is passionate and deeply rose fragranced, it banishes the blues and warms the heart. Patchouli is soothing, helping stabilize the mind; it has an earthy sensual nature that grounds those who get lost in too many circular thoughts, and gently helps irritation float away.”   (my italics)

OH MY GOD! At $65, can I afford not to get it? I feel soothed just thinking about it, but also kind of anxious. What if it’s sold out?  Do I need expedited delivery? Will I go crazy before I can get my hands on it?

I’m going to order it. I’ll keep you posted. You’ll probably know if it works or not. In fact, if it works, you won’t be hearing from me. Once I feel stable and centered, I won’t need to write.

I like the sound of this product much better than Doxepin, the drug my GP suggested when she noticed my war-torn legs. Doxepin is an old fashioned tricyclic antidepressant with the usual array of side effects.  I’m reluctant to take more meds, but I was intrigued by the following revelation:

“[Doxepin] is particularly useful in treating depression symptoms, which include anxiety, tension, trouble sleeping, guilt, fear, and lack of energy.”

That’s right, you saw it with your own eyes. Guilt and  fear. Imagine a life free of guilt and fear. Pretty fucking tempting, right? All they need to work on now is loneliness, apathy, bitterness, greed and insecurity.

Still under the influence of bad hair, I was informed by KOS of an online fashion mag whose editor is 15 years old. Sure enough, it’s all about high-priced ‘avant garde’ designers and models whose hands are THIS CLOSE to touching their faces, with text like “combining armorial pieces with organic materials…”  Wait a minute, do they really mean armorial, which means “pertaining to heraldry” or do they mean “armor-like?”

Take a look at the young Sister Wolf, a poor little hippie girl at age 14. Check the velvet thriftshop dress, the crown of daisies, the elegant cigarette.

Do I know what I’m talking about, people?!

All you horrible teenage fashion girls, listen up. Stop blabbing about Rodarte and Rad Hourani and your fucking shoes and your mom’s shoes, go out and smell the roses! Put them in your hair and buy a pack of fucking cigarettes! Find a new way to be pretentious, for the love of god!  I hate all of you!  This is why it’s so hard to get a babysitter!

These girls are too busy talking about “leggy cashmere playsuits” and not spending enough time experimenting with drugs. Better to be sexting with their BF’s than squandering their precious youth on being epic in their fierce wedges and expounding on the timelessness of the Birkin bag.

Two words for you girls:  Shut Up. (I was going to say “Try Anal,” but then I thought better of it.)

I’ve been wondering where the Republicans have been hiding poor Bristol, and now I know. They’re hiding her on buses and planes, along with her sister, the very hot and soon to be impregnated WIllow Palin.

Wasn’t Bristol supposed to be finishing high school? Oh well, who needs schoolin’.

Why isn’t Bristol allowed to appear with Mrs. P? I just read that Mrs. P brought little Piper onto the Hockey rink where they were booed, in the hopes that no one would boo at a little girl! Mrs. P admitted this, so I guess she still doesn’t think it’s wrong to exploit her children.

Bristol, when your mom turns her back, run like the wind! Actually, make sure you get Trig first, so he can grow up with his real mom.  Don’t bother with that dummy Levi. Let your mom have him, he might come in handy later.

Here’s another nice picture from the McCain Palin tour, with Grandpa enjoying a midget as Cindy looks on, praying for a chance to take some Oxycontin.

A federal appeals court in San Francisco ruled Friday that a parolee cannot be obliged to attend an AA or AA-affiliated program as a condition of staying out of prison. For those who believe that 12 step programs are indeed religious in nature, and that “the God of my understanding” refers to the Christian one, this decision may come as welcome vindication.

But what else is an addict to do?

I have attended 12 step meetings in support of a loved one. The god issue was always a huge sticking point. Seasoned 12 steppers always dismiss that sort of attitude as a form of resistance to The Program. For me, it is a resistance to pretending I believe in a higher power. I know and accept that I personally am not the creator of the universe; but I don’t believe in a higher power in the sense that I can’t surrender my will to “It” if it doesn’t exist.

I’ve read about one person who decided that the law of thermodynamics would be his higher power. I’m happy if it saved him from the tragedy of addiction, but I can’t think of anything similar for my own purpose.

So, if not a 12 step program, how can an addict break free of substance abuse? A book called Romancing Opiates convinced me that addicts (in particular, opiate addicts) are addicts by choice. Not victims, not slaves, but people who lack the moral fortitude to step out of the cycle they’re caught up in. Statistics based on American Vietnam veterans suggest that the majority who returned to the US as drug addicts were able to stop using without seeking outside help.

Those statistics are refuted by everyone who uses the addiction-as-disease model. They insist that the vets who got clean did so because they weren’t as badly addicted as the group that continued to use.

“The Heroin Diaries,” a book by Nikki Sixx of Motley Crue, was reviewed here by a writer whose main complaint about it was that Mr. Sixx was really only a coke-head and therefore not worthy of the respect due a real junkie (ie a real Suffering Artist.) It struck me as irresponsible as well as stupid to perpetuate the myth of the noble junkie. I even wrote to the reviewer in the hope of having a dialogue with him. He didn’t write back.

More recently, I read a piece in the New York Times magazine by longtime Times reporter David Carr, who has written an account of his addiction called “Night of the Gun.” His writing blew me away. His brutally honest depiction of his bad behavior is difficult to take, but it is certainly bracing and honorable. For some reason, though, the comments his excerpt provoked are mostly angry and bitter. I still can’t understand why, unless it’s the fact that he doesn’t beg for the reader’s forgiveness.

If you love an addict, or have an interest in addiction, I can’t recommend both David Carr’s book and “Romancing Opiates” highly enough.

If you are an addict, you are breaking more hearts that you can possibly imagine. Choose life, damn you!

If you are neither of the above, thank the god of your understanding for missing this particular bullet.