Dazed and Confused
I had been cycling between mania and depression for months- I'm bi-polar, this happens. Normally my medications help manage this tendency, this disconnect between what's happening in my life and how I react and feel emotionally and mentally. But sometimes the meds aren't enough; they don't stop the demons from rampaging through my brain chemistry and playing havoc with my ability to think, reason and function during these episodes.
A Roller Coaster of Pain
With bipolar disorder, always after the highs come the lows. Depression follows mania like a hangover follows a drinking spree. And the higher the high, the lower the low. Sort of like riding a roller coaster that goes progressively higher and lower faster and faster until you are no longer enjoying the ride but scared you are going to be thrown off and out in the the nether. After the high always comes the crash. So following my final, highest hypo-manic episode, I came crashing down into a suicidal depression, and decided that my life was no longer worth living. I was tired of dealing with all my problems, and tired of my friends and family having to deal with all my problems. I was and would always ever only be a burden to them and to society, therefore everyone would be better off without me. Typical suicidal thinking. 'Stinking thinking' my pastor would say. The pain of depression that severe is hard for most people to imagine. They think of feeling depressed because they don't have enough money to buy all the things they want. They think of the sadness of breaking up with a boyfriend or lover. These things are depressing. Think instead of losing your child. Think of dying of cancer, the pain so severe that medication no longer relieves it. Imagine being in so much pain that you end up begging to die; begging for someone to help you to die to end the endless pointless agony. Mental suffering can be every bit as painful as physical pain. Ask any bereaved parent or spouse. The stress on your body can be as great. Stress hormone levels in the blood from great mental anguish are measurable and are as high as in cancer victims. People who suffer extreme severe depression are in that kind of pain. They are desperate to find relief from their suffering. They want it to end, and in their clouded thinking, the only way to end it is to end their lives. This was the mental state I was in as I sat in that patrol car last spring. Exacerbating my depression was a good case of Seasonal Depression Disorder; the acronym being, aptly, SAD. In this disorder, lack of sunlight exposure that typically occurs in the winter causes a deficit of the "feel good" chemicals that are released in the brain. That, added to problems and misunderstandings in my marriage at that time all added to create the "perfect storm" that led to my breakdown.
A Danger to Myself
So, to continue my story, I was brought to the emergency room, and while the nice policeman and I were waiting for me to be seen, I mentioned I needed to go the restroom (true). The door was pointed out to me and I quickly made my way there, knowing full well that in hospital restrooms there is always a cord that hangs down to the floor that is attached to an emergency switch for use by a person who has fallen and needs help. I locked the door, used the toilet, then took the cord and tied it around my throat as tightly as I could in a knot, sat down there by the commode with the cord still attached to the wall at one end and me at the other, and waited to die. It was peaceful, and though the cord pinched my neck, I could still breathe. But it was tight enough to be cutting off my circulation, thus starving my brain of oxygen and causing me to feel faint. A pleasant floaty feeling came over me. Just as the buzzing greyness of beginning unconsciousness began, the door burst open, I heard through the haze the officer exclaiming "now you've done it!", and felt him cutting through the cord around my neck with a knife. I remember feeling very disappointed that I had failed in my attempt to end my life. I heard the nurse say, "wow, just a few minutes longer and we would have lost her!" Damn! The nurse waved something very unpleasant beneath my nose that brought me to full awareness very quickly. Truly, ammonia is a most unpleasant and shocking smell. After that, everything that followed that evening is a blur. The next thing I can remember is being told there wasn't room in the psych unit at the hospital and I was being taken to the next county's psych unit, an hour away, to be admitted for observation. I knew the routine, I had been through it several times in the past. I knew that they could only legally hold me for 72 hours; then they would have to get a court order to hold me longer, deeming me a "danger to myself or to others." But I was indeed a danger- a serious threat- to myself. So spent the first three days in the psych unit in what they call the isolation room and I call the "freak-out" room. It's the room they put you in when you need to be watched more closely, and to provide you with the quite and isolation needed when you are out of control. I spent my time there alternately crying and screaming and begging to be allowed to die. I wanted out of my life and felt that I had served my "sentence" long enough and wanted it to end. Except I didn't want parole, I wanted execution! My life felt to me like one long, unending punishment. Like I was serving time for some deficit I had or some crime I had unwittingly committed against the universe. I just couldn't imagine what I had done that was so bad that it would condemn me to a lifetime of anguish. But I definitely felt that I had served long enough. I was through. Done. So I kept screaming "I want out! I've served my time. Long enough! I want out!" I was just sick and tired of being sick and tired. Tired of the constant struggle. So they gave me a minder; they call it "individual monitoring". Basically, it's a staff member who's sole job on that shift was to babysit me night and day, 24/7. That means when I'm asleep or awake.No Privacy Allowed
Diarrhea of the Mouth
As a matter of fact, I rather enjoyed having a minder. I had a captive audience at last, and used that opportunity to air my thoughts and views in an unending stream of chatter that was almost entirely one-sided. A common symptom of bipolar illness is what the doctors call "pressured speech". You might think of it as a sort of diarrhea of the mouth. You can't stop talking, it's like a hole in the dam of your mind has opened up and the words just come spewing forth out of your mouth like a volcano in an unstoppable flow. So I spent the first three days of my confinement talking the ears off my minders. Poor souls. Can you imagine the poor guy on the graveyard shift trying to stay awake while listening to me drone on and on ranting and raving all night long? He must have thought he was in hell. But they were all kind to me there, and understanding. No one tried to tell me to shut up. No one spoke harshly to me at all. The charge nurse would just pop her head in around 3 or 4 AM to gently suggest I might want to try lying down and closing my eyes for a while. I've been in hospital psych units in this county and in the next, and the staff have always been understanding, professional, and compassionate. They have always treated me with respect and gentleness.*
I was to learn a little later that this kind of "hands-off" treatment isn't always the case. My experience at State Hospital South, to which I was eventually committed, was somewhat different. Although I managed to alienate most of the staff at both the county hospitals, they were somewhat less tolerant and forgiving at the State level. You only wind up there if you have been legally committed by a Judge. So they hold all the cards. It eventually dawned on me that at State, if I wanted any privileges at all, or to keep the ones I had, and most importantly to eventually get out, I needed to shut my mouth and be less antagonistic and obnoxious there. While they tolerated a lot of crap from patients, it was a sure bet that mouthing off or protesting the rules only lost you levels and privileges. They worked on a "level system" where you worked you way up the levels to earn more privileges. Everyone started at level 1. Which means you basically sit in the unit twiddling your thumbs all day; no TV, no magazines or books, no pencils or paper, no going out on the patio, nada. Even just being allowed to visit the hospital library or attend a class or watch TV was a privilege tied to what level you were. But until my new medication routine kicked in, I in the grips of my illness and unable to keep my mouth shut no matter how much I wanted to. So I was a real ass most of the time I was in either place, and at State, it took me almost a month before my meds starting working and I was finally to get some control back over my big mouth.
In the county psych unit, after several days of "personal attention" with my babysitters, and some new medications, I calmed down, and was no longer actively trying to kill myself. Actually, I realized right away that the unit was secure enough, and the staff watchful enough that attempting to do the deed while I was in there was useless. I told all the staff as much, so they deemed I was no longer an "immediate suicide risk" and called off my no-doubt grateful minders. I was by then likewise no longer enchanted with the experience of having someone with you night and day without a break. But they still weren't about to discharge me, although I asked to go home every day (by that time home was looking better and better all the time compared to the virtual prison I found myself in). I wasn't able to deceive the people whose job it was to examine me and determine whether I could be discharged or required further and longer treatment (commitment at State Hospital South).
Next post, I'll relate how I wound up at the State Hospital and about my experiences there. Please feel free to leave me your feedback or comments!
*I was to learn a little later that this kind of "hands-off" treatment isn't always the case. My experience at State Hospital South, to which I was eventually committed, was somewhat different. Although I managed to alienate most of the staff at both the county hospitals, they were somewhat less tolerant and forgiving at the State level. You only wind up there if you have been legally committed by a Judge. So they hold all the cards. It eventually dawned on me that at State, if I wanted any privileges at all, or to keep the ones I had, and most importantly to eventually get out, I needed to shut my mouth and be less antagonistic and obnoxious there. While they tolerated a lot of crap from patients, it was a sure bet that mouthing off or protesting the rules only lost you levels and privileges. They worked on a "level system" where you worked you way up the levels to earn more privileges. Everyone started at level 1. Which means you basically sit in the unit twiddling your thumbs all day; no TV, no magazines or books, no pencils or paper, no going out on the patio, nada. Even just being allowed to visit the hospital library or attend a class or watch TV was a privilege tied to what level you were. But until my new medication routine kicked in, I in the grips of my illness and unable to keep my mouth shut no matter how much I wanted to. So I was a real ass most of the time I was in either place, and at State, it took me almost a month before my meds starting working and I was finally to get some control back over my big mouth.
"" Global hunger could be directly attributed to meat-eating."---Chrissie Hynde
" Half the world's population does not receive an adequate amount of food to eat. Ten to twenty million die annually of hunger and its effects. The Institute for Food and Development Policy reports that, "Forty thousand children starve to death on this planet every day," or one child every two seconds.
The livestock population of the United States today consumes enough grain and soybeans to feed over five times the entire human population of the country.
We feed these animals over 80% of the corn we grow, and over 95% of the oats. Less than half the harvested agricultural acreage in the United States is used to grow food for people. Most of it is used to grow livestock feed.
Ronald J. Sider of Evangelicals for Social Action, in his 1977 book, Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger, pointed out that 220 million Americans were eating enough food (largely because of the high consumption of grain-fed livestock) to feed over one billion people in the poorer countries.
The world's cattle alone, not to mention pigs and chickens, consume a quantity of food equal to the caloric needs of 8.7 billion people. It takes 16 pounds of grain to produce one pound of beef.
According to Department of Agriculture statistics, one acre of land can grow 20,000 pounds of potatoes. That same acre of land, if used to grow cattlefeed, can produce less than 165 pounds of beef.
In his book, The Hungry Planet, Georg Bergstrom points out that protein-starved underdeveloped nations export more protein to wealthy nations than they receive. He calls this "the protein swindle."
Ninety percent of the world's fish meal catch, for example, is exported to rich countries. One-third of Africa's peanut crop winds up in the stomachs of European livestock. Half the world's cereal crop is fed to livestock and the United States annually imports one million tons of vegetable protein from Third World nations--just to feed its farm animals.
Bergstrom writes: "Sometimes one wonders how many Americans and Western Europeans have grasped the fact that quite a few of their beef steaks, quarts of milk, dozens of eggs, and hundreds of broilers are the result, not of their agriculture, but of the approximately two million metric tons of protein, mostly of high quality, which astute Western businessmen channel away from the needy and hungry."
Jeremy Rifkin, author of a dozen influential books and President of the Foundation on Economic Trends, writes in his 1992 bestseller Beyond Beef:
"Cattle and other livestock are devouring much of the grain produced on the planet. It need be emphasized that this is a new phenomenon, unlike anything ever experienced before.
"Contrary to popular belief, the poor are getting poorer each year...Increased poverty has meant increased malnutrition. On the African continent, nearly one in every four human beings is malnourished. In Latin America, nearly one out of every seven people goes to bed hungry each night. In Asia and the Pacific, 28 percent of the people border on starvation, experiencing the gnawing pain of a perpetual hunger."
"In the Near East, one in ten people is underfed. Chronic hunger now affects upwards of 1.3 billion people, according to the world Health Organization--a statistic all the more striking in a world where one third of all the grain produced is being fed to cattle and other livestock. Never before in human history has such a large percentage of our species--nearly 25 percent--been malnourished.
"The transition of world agriculture from food grain to feed grains represents an...evil whose consequences may be far greater and longer lasting than any past examples of violence inflicted by men against their fellow human beings."
In the 1970s, the United Nations Secretary General said that the food consumption of the rich countries is the key cause of hunger around the world. The United Nations has recommended that the wealthy nations cut down on their meat consumption.
The Worldwatch Institute has released a remarkable report entitled Taking Stock: Animal Farming and the Environment, which lists nation after nation where food deprivation has followed the switch from a grain-based diet to a meat-based one.
Most of the nations that now import grain from the United States were once self-sufficient in grain. The main reason they aren't is the rise in meat production and consumption.
In Taiwan, for example, per capita consumption of meat and eggs increased 600 percent from 1950 to 1990. With this change, vastly increased amounts of grain have gone to livestock, raising the annual per capita grain use in the country from 375 pounds to 858 pounds. In 1950, Taiwan was a grain exporter; in 1990 the nation imported, mostly for feed, 74 percent of the grain it used.
In mainland China, the situation is similar. Increased meat consumption has meant less grain available to feed people. Since 1978, meat consumption has more than doubled, to twenty-four kilograms. The share of Chinese grain fed to livestock rose from 7 percent in 1960 to 20 percent in 1990.
Over half Of Latin America's beef production is exported, and the rest is too expensive for any but the wealthy to purchase. From 1960 to 1980 beef exports from El Salvador increases over sixfold. Meanwhile, increasing numbers of small farmers lost their livelihood and were pushed off their land. Today, 72 percent of all Salvadoran infants are underfed.
In Brazil, major portions of the Amazon tropical rain forests have been destroyed so that wealthy multinational corporations can produce beef for the wealthy.
Corporations such as Volkswagen, Nestle, Mitsubishi, Liquigas, King Ranch, and Swift-Eckrich have bulldozed and burned literally hundreds of millions of acres, replacing the world's oldest and richest ecosystems, home to two million or more species of plant and animal life with a single crop--pasture grass for cattle.
And here, the beef produced has not gone to feed hungry Brazilians; it has been primarily exported to Western Europe, the Middle East, and North America. In 1987, the United States imported three hundred million pounds of meat from countries in Central and South America.
With the help of international lending institutions, Brazil has mounted an enormous effort to increase agricultural production, but this has been primarily meat-oriented production and for export.
In the late '60s, soybeans were almost nonexistent or Brazil. Today, this crop is the nation's number one export--but almost all of it goes to feed Japanese and European livestock. Twenty five years ago, one third of the Brazilian population suffered from malnutrition. Today, the figure has risen to two thirds.
Oxfam, the international charity, reports that in Brazil huge cattle ranches take up some of the most fertile soil in the whole country, yet 60 percent of Brazilians are malnourished.
Oxfam estimates that in Mexico, 80 percent of the children in rural areas are undernourished, yet the livestock are fed more grain than the human population eats!
The livestock are exported of course, to satisfy the developed nations' craving for cheap hamburgers.
In Guatemala, 75 percent of the children under five years of age are undernourished. Yet, every year Guatemala exports 40 million pounds of meat to the United States. It borders on the criminal!
In Costa Rica, beef production quadrupled between 1960 and 1980, but almost all this beef is exported to the United States, and what does stay in the country is eaten by a tiny minority.
Though more and more Costa Rican land is being turned over to meat production, the population is not eating more meat for the change. The average family in Costa Rica eats less meat than the average American housecat.
Throughout Latin America, land availability is a prominent social issue. Revolutionaries as well as reform-minded moderates have made land reform a major issue. Yet in many Latin American countries, forests are being leveled in order to create pastures for cattle grazing land.
In a region where land availability is a central social issue, existing land is being gobbled up by livestock agriculture. The resulting social tensions have resulted in civil wars, repression and violence.
Hunger is really a social disease caused by the unjust, inefficient and wasteful control of food. Our food security is not being threatened by the prolific, hungry masses, but by elites that profit by the concentration and internationalization of control of food resources.
In country after country the pattern is repeated. Livestock industries are consuming feed to such an extent that now almost all Third World nations must import grain.
Seventy-five percent of Third World imports of corn, barley, sorghum, and oats are fed to animals, not to people. In country after country, the demand for meat among the rich is squeezing out staple production for the poor.
The same trend can be found in the Middle East and North Africa--increases in grain-fed livestock require more imported feed. In the early '70s, Egypt was self-sufficient in grain.
Then, livestock ate only 10 percent of the nation's grain. Today, livestock consume 36 percent of Egypt's grain. As a result, Egypt must now import eight million tons of grain every year.
In the late '60s , Syria was a barley exporter. But in the intervening years, livestock has consumed increasing amounts of the country's grain. Now, despite a phenomenal 1,000 percent increase in the land area devoted to producing barley, Syria must import the cereal.
According to Buckminster Fuller, there are enough resources at present to feed, clothe, house and educate every human being on the planet at American middle class standards.
The Institute for Food and Development Policy has shown that there is no country in the world in which the people cannot feed themselves from their own resources.
Moreover, there is no correlation between land density and hunger. China has twice as many people per cultivated acre as India, yet less of a hunger problem. Bangladesh has just one-half the people per cultivated acre that Taiwan has, yet Taiwan has no starvation, while Bangladesh has one of the highest rates in the world.
The most densely populated countries in the world today are not India and Bangladesh, but Holland and Japan.
Many of us believe that hunger exists because there's not enough food to go around. But as Frances Moore Lappe' and her anti-hunger organization Food First! have shown, the real cause of hunger is a scarcity of justice, not a scarcity of food. "