Medication II

I will see Agnes tomorrow afternoon. I have been debating asking for an increase in the dosage of the Latuda. Something I could do with my evening medication. It means compromising. Any increase is sure to increase side effects such as avolition, sluggishness and unclear thinking. It might help me to sleep a little longer. It could slow down my reactions when I get up in the early morning hours, which I need. In the long run, a medication increase might contribute to my functioning better overall. The patient can’t win with anti-psychotics. Either the illness gets worse with less or the side effects increase with more. I’m now in charge of my mental health, almost completely. The input I have from Agnes is the seasoned advice of a lifetime of practice in administering medications to the mentally ill. I am still in charge of what she gives me and the dosages and the times to take them. I decide based on my experiences. I never know what will happen. It’s all a big experiment. Something diabolical. I might suffer from an increase, but I am suffering from too little now. The schizophrenia is all a living hell.

Making Fun of My Symptoms

I had reached a point in my illness where I found I could defray symptoms by laughing at them. Schizophrenia presents itself to the mind with bad thinking-we reach conclusions which are incorrect, perceptions which are inaccurate. Some of the thinking is so egregiously wrong, it is laughable. Hallucinations-ideas of things that aren’t really there-are not simply misperceptions, they are overwhelming systems of thought depending on the different senses. We patients have no recourse but to accept the erroneous sense perceptions which come up. Other absurdities arise as well-mistakes in language for instance, delusional thinking, where something we think is untrue, and misrepresentations of reality. At first, as the illness develops in the brain, followed by the erroneous thinking in the mind, the symptoms are harmful to the person thinking them. As time passes, and the condition becomes chronic, we are faced with pain at our own inadequacies and mistaken misperceptions of reality. Hearing voices can lead a person to commit murder or suicide, but usually they are simply misleading and distracting. Sometimes they can become overwhelming. As my illness developed, and I had received a fairly good amount of therapy, and even some psychoanalysis, I became objective about the arising of the symptoms. It became possible for me to look at them with a certain amount of distance and analyze them as they happened. Later on, reaching my sixtieth year, I developed thinking that encompassed the symptomatology and “ran it” in my mind during the day like a recording. A lot of the symptoms reoccurred as reified and crystallized thoughts. I call this my consciousness now. When the objective point of view developed, I began to compare my pathological thinking to healthy thinking, which I have to a certain degree, stored in my objectivity-something that doesn’t “know”, but is there to counter the bad thinking-in juxtaposition to it. I began to laugh at the ridiculousness of my thoughts-out loud in fact-like talking to yourself, although without the hiatus of words. As I reached my seventies, the tension between the ridiculous thinking and the objectivity became so strong and so constant that I resorted to constant laughter during the day, something that I lost control of for a year or so. I was hounded by laughter both in public and in private. Of course, this was embarrassing for me and caused some shame. It certainly was a strange form for an illness to take! Harmful symptoms becoming harmful in a new way. I tell my schizophrenic friends to laugh at their symptoms, to not take themselves so seriously, but they turn a deaf ear and continue on in their painful suffering. I want them to have some relief from the pain, but they are unable to see it that way. I would dearly like the objectivity I have to coalesce into something more meaningful, something which might take precedence over the symptoms and become a new mind, but this hasn’t happened yet. The symptoms seem to have lost their importance, which is nice. Recently, unfortunately for me, I have begun to try to prove some of my thinking, which is a return to some sort of psychosis. Also, I have taken to laughing uncontrollably for periods of time, without any object of thought. Laughter and laughing have become a part of my consciousness. I am left with laughing at my laughing.

My Recent Build

Yesterday I tried to finish up my new build. The idea was to download WIN 10 and get it up to snuff. The downloads weren’t taking. After two hour and a half to two hour waiting periods while Microsoft downloaded WIN 10 to the computer, I went to Microsoft Answer Desk to try to get them to help me with their product, which wasn’t upgrading at the last minute. The two techs I talked to, one of whom was in the Philippines, both were at a loss as to what to do about the upgrade not finishing. They suggested I do the same things I was already doing. After trying one more time, and this now at the end of the day, I gave up. I found that one of the new parts wasn’t working and had to order a new one. I set the computer aside until the new part comes in. When it does, I will repeat the procedure of downloading WIN 10 to a disc and then installing it on the HDD. This work with a new computer is tedious and demanding time wise. Of course, I am not doing anything while the software is downloading. You have to be there for some of it, but, since I have nothing to do, I choose to be there for it throughout the download. This gives me a feeling of being in control, but it is terribly boring. The scary part is knowing that at any minute I could push the wrong button and lose hours of waiting for software to download. Then I have to start all over again. I identify with Sisyphus at that point. Twenty four hours are gone now, lost to sitting twiddling my thumbs because I don’t understand something to do with my computer.

Update on this paragraph: Yesterday evening, after reinstalling WIN 8.1, the computer started crashing at every moment. Guessing that the problem was basically the motherboard, I disassembled the computer and put everything aside. I lose a HDD, memory, a motherboard, and an O/S. I gain a new case, a video card, a wireless adapter, a DVD writer, a new Power Supply, and an old 3.3 GHz processor with its heat sink. The mistake was using an old motherboard from 2010 with a lot of new hardware. It was like new wine in old wine skins.

The Phenomenon of the Automobile

We have Mr. Daimler Benz inventing the automobile in 1880 something. The airplane was invented in 1900 or thereabouts. In a few short years, the airplane became a weapon of global extinction with the atomic and hydrogen bomb. We are presently looking at extinction from global warming partly caused by car exhaust. We will be able to blame Mr Daimler Benz, a German, for the extinction of the human race. Automobiles are responsible for a form of noise pollution. The detritus left by automobile use alongside roads is a good example of what the automobile can do when left to its own devices. Air pollution is caused by the smell of burning gasoline and the CO2 left behind by the burning of the gasoline. Is this a useful, helpful invention? What you get is the telescoping of distances so that you have to move faster to get places which were once inaccessible time wise. What took several weeks to get from one place to another by horse can now be done in a few hours by automobile. Where have all the horses gone? What was time to the human race has now become a frantic attempt to do away with that time for less time. No one has any time anymore. Is this a useful, helpful invention? You have computers doing away with the human brain and the human mind so that we can relax and have total leisure time, but are we relaxed?  No, we are aren’t. You have to bear the discomfort and boredom of sitting in a car for several hours where you could be walking or riding a bicycle, giving your body the work that it needs to feel well. The only things you can do in an automobile are to increase of decrease the pressure on the gas pedal with your right foot, and occasionally apply pressure to the brake pedal, and hold onto the steering wheel. This is the torturing little-ease of the automobile. If you get in an accident, you can harm your body, even unto death. Then you have to buy a new automobile, which is the second most expensive item next to a home in modern life. Automobiles are expensive. They are required items in modern life. Everything is now farther away because of this invention. Like most things today, automobiles look beautiful, but they are basically ugly in their usage. With a computer you are condemned to get Karpal Tunnel Syndrome with the use of a mouse. The video screens are also bad for your eyes and consequently your brain. Are these healthy, sane inventions? You can go to an airport and be searched for a bomb, sit for hours on the tarmac while other airplanes are getting ready to take off, pay large amounts of money for tickets, deal with  the hassles of getting to the airport and parking your automobile, put up with lost luggage, be served and eat airline food which doesn’t deserve the name of food. I am having to put up with this nonsense at my age, 74 years. It is harming me daily, esp. the noise pollution from automobiles. I have gone completely deaf in my right ear and am approaching deafness in my left one. It is strange to drive. I have come to prefer walking and a bicycle, but can I really get anywhere without an automobile? It makes me want to stay at home and live in my cellar.

The Dead of Night

As I did in New Jersey, I have taken to leaving the house in the dead of the night, from 2am- 3am, on my bicycle. It is quiet at that time. I have been going out of town onto side roads leading to other small towns in the area. There are always a few cars and trucks passing by out there, esp. on the main roads. I prefer walking alongside the bicycle instead of riding it. I walk long distances-several miles-without riding. The bike becomes a prop, my only possession, like a walker for a disabled older person. My body responds to the walking by accumulating energy. It heats up. Out there, on a clear night, I have the moon and the stars. I turn off my lights and am in complete darkness. The air is clear and sweet. I am free of the world of other people, of the hustle and bustle of the day in town. As it has been for a number of years, I am left alone with my thinking. If there is ever a place where things that go bump in the night, it is here. I must admit, I do like approaching the lit up area of town on my return. I am suddenly assaulted by the noises of the town-the heatpumps and generators outside the houses and buildings. I am always on the lookout for the police. Although I am in compliance with their regulations for riding a bicycle at night with my protective clothing and my bike lit up, I still fear being accosted by them. I guess I am within my rights. People tell me it is dangerous out there at that time of night. Well, let them accompany me and see for themselves if it is dangerous. Why waste the night in bed sleeping? Sometimes I stop walking completely and stare around for a while at the horizon and the night sky. The land is flat with farmers’ fields all around. I call this experience an epiphany. I couldn’t be any more alone than at this time. People are sleeping.

Leaving the Buddhist Sangha

I found myself thrown in with a group of older women in a Buddhist meditation group two years ago. They were almost all married. After a while, I began to question my own presence in the group. I felt I was there out of interest in Buddhism, but where was the Buddhism for these women? They seemed to be talking about things that were irrelevant. Lately, I have noticed a pattern in my behavior in groups. I court the favor of the leader to the exclusion of the other members of the group. I also question the other group members’ integrity. Do they really know what it is being put forth as the practice of the group? Why don’t they speak to the group purpose? In this case, was this merely a women’s social group? Finally, I master the group purpose and drop out.

Meditation Notes April 4, 2016

Sixth sense in the background…Nonsensical sixth sense occurring twice…Getting colder…Light appearing twice to my right-steady…did not disappear-the candle was down on the floor to my right…Felt as if I were stepping on the corner of a book w/ my left foot throughout the meditation…Usually my left heel seems to be upraised slightly..No cars…Was able to focus on my body more than usual…Breathing…Breaths were highly erratic..No consistent breathing…Breaths were coarse, not subtle…I was lifting my arms throughout the meditation…Flexing them about in different positions…Trying to relieve the chronic pain in the left side of my back down toward my waist…I think the meditation position, w/ the hands held on the knees, is to facilitate the onset of the jhanas by steadying the breath solely in one position throughout the time of the meditation…I am quite capable of observing my breath in whatever body situation I put myself into…Need yoga…Restlessness…doubt…sense desires…the body wants to be comfortable…Fire…temperature..hot and cold…maturing, ripening…Air…pressure…vibration…Strange musical form-rhythm I am familiar with due to vibration…Breath…Earth element wasn’t there…Strange visual representations of different imaginary forms for my body-esp….above the waist…moved my arms about in different symmetrical positions in order to get them comfortable..I was trying to relax the muscle in my right lower back…Observing various reasons for Dukkha…Esp. and only moving my arms about in various positions…Something I’m not supposed to do…Feeling of guilt…Rebelling against meditation technique…Only observing the breath at the nostrils throughout…I can quite easily follow the breath…The first jhana is possible and within reach…I felt meditation posture was sterile and counterproductive…One reason for moving my arms about …Got colder and colder…Various visual representations of Pema Chodron throughout the meditation.

“There are eight different stages of meditative absorption, and they are like eight rooms in a house. If one has finally found the front door with the right key and opens it up and goes into the first room, there is no reason why one can’t walk into all the other seven rooms also. It is not so difficult to find the front door and put the key in. The key is called mindfulness of breath…” from “Being Nobody, Going Nowhere” by Ayya Khema

 

Medication

I have been having trouble with my anti-psychotic medication lately-major trouble. The tension exists between the prescriber and the prescribee. Anti-psychotic medication is a necessary evil. It makes you feel bad. It is harmful, but it helps as well. The helping is accomplished by shutting down portions of the brain which the prescriber deems overly active. With schizophrenia, the prescribees’s judgment is impaired. He is not capable of managing himself without help. Anti-psychotic medication came about by accident. The first drug was meant for some other problem (Recovering from anesthesia after an operation). All subsequent versions of the first drug have worked pretty much the same as the first one. They are all variations on a theme. What I’m working up to saying here is that I don’t like anti-psychotic medications. They are harmful. I had been trying to change my medications but the attempt backfired. I had to take matters in my own hands. In psychiatry, this is called self-medicating-something the patient is not supposed to do. I’ve finally got things ironed out so I am on the right dosage and taking the right medication at the right times. We schizophrenics are incapable of standing up for ourselves enough so that we can influence Big Pharma to give us the help we need. We neither have the money nor the influence to get the right medication from them. You have to be a chemist specializing in pathology. I am presently fighting psychiatry. They are smarter and better qualified, but I am the recipient of their service and simply have to speak up on my own behalf, not let them ride roughshod over me. I am a docile, trusting person who has been harmed by letting other people take advantage of my simplicity and trusting nature. Psychiatry has been harming me all my life. In the guise of service you have domination. It is scary for me to confront my torturers a the end of my life, but I am doing it. Even this sounds to me like a paranoid rant of some kind against what seems on the surface to be an obviously benevolent helping of some kind. Who would attack psychiatry? Especially the patients? I hope the researchers and the doctors get their act together in the future enough to actually help some of us sufferers. Until then, I will have to continue living with the hell that is schizophrenia.

Building a Computer

I’ve launched into building a computer. This is somewhere around my 100th computer. I have to choose the parts on the Internet, order them, wait for them to show up at the house, install them, and turn it on. The case has a funny name-“Silencio 352”. It is insulated against the noise of the internal fans. The case is made of graphite and some plastic. It is pitch black. The cases for computers are all manufactured in China. Mine is a “Cooler Master.” Cooler Master headquarters are in Taipei. It has a good number of fans in it keeping it cool. A computer generates a lot of heat. I have been struggling with the fear that I am spending too much money. I am on an extremely limited monthly budget, but parts are inexpensive. The hardware usually works. If it doesn’t, I have to send it back and get a replacement. All this getting and sending involves FedEx and the Post Office, the companies involved, and me-packaging, addressing, time, and money. You should see some of this packaging. It is not to be believed. I build basic computers-no frills or extra software. I’m limited by my imagination and money. A basic computer needs a central processing unit, a motherboard, memory, a hard drive, an optical drive, a video card, a wireless adapter card, and an operating system. The parts have to be compatible, esp. the CPU, the motherboard and the memory. I have a lot of little black screws of different shapes and sizes for assembling the parts in the case. The case stays BLACK. It has room for four 120 mm fans. It has two air filters to keep dust out. It is lined with some kind of rubberized foam to keep the noise of the fans down. There are a lot of wires and cables that have to be attached to the motherboard and to the parts. It has a front door. I have a blue table I got at Walmart to put the case, the parts and the tools on. I am doing this in my stepfather’s new spacious, black tiled laundry. Now I am waiting for parts to come in. This is a hobby and a pastime, although most of the time is passed waiting for parts to show up. Computers are magical to me. Building one is a challenge. I feel excited, enthusiastic or tense if something doesn’t go as planned. I might try to sell this one locally on Craigslist. I don’t think girls build computers. This is strictly left brain activity. I’m a 74 year old man acting like a 15 year old kid. I take care and pride in assembling these things. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention I am a schizophrenic.

Update on the Computer I am building

I have it built. The five fans are whirling around. I am waiting now for a Hard Drive to arrive from CA so I can install the mind-the O/S or operating system. This computer gave me problems. The I/O shield wouldn’t install correctly. I couldn’t get a visual the first time around. With a little help and encouragement from my friends on computerforum.com, I got things going this morning.

Microsoft and Me

Continuing on today with Microsoft. I am trying to get help from them. I have been unable to print important emails in their WIN 10 email app. This is my second day with their technicians. I have spoken in chat form with five of them, yesterday and today. They have been unable to come up with the right answer. I am still unable to print the emails. I can see their logic as they tackle the problem. I can watch them think. One of them was an American. The rest were foreigners. One was located in India. Another in The Phillipines. Two of them were women.  Each one of them approached the problem pretty much the same way. First they had to ascertain if the printer had a driver. They all wanted to know what browser I was using. They all had to know if my printer was printing at all, outside of email and inside as well. Then they launched into their own explanations. None of them fit. The email still doesn’t work. I am blogging about this because, apart from the fact that I have brought all this on myself, the time and the effort and/or work devoted to this problem, mine and theirs, seems futile and  pointless. This is getting to be really tedious. I have sat here in front of my screen and watched them think about the problem and do things I could never do with software. I have gotten mad and been impatient. I have been sympathetic. This is getting to be a bad joke. The problem is with their WIN 10 software, not with my printer or my computer. With all and any of these five technicians, foreign or not, I am not getting anywhere, not making any progress at all. The whole thing is beginning to wear me down and out. One thing it does do is show their incompetence. It shows up Microsoft, a huge multinational corporation, as a group of people incapable of understanding what they have done, professing to know it all, and really knowing nothing at all. I am still left with my two emails, unable to print them up although it says PRINT in bold letters on the screen. This is really a triviality, not worth the time and the money that have gone into the solution. I have the time. They have the people. I have to get up to go the bathroom occasionally. I wish someone knew something useful. This is hardly timely anymore. What am I going to do? Go back to them a sixth time? Do I really need to print emails?