Good Morning to you friendly reader.
I hope things are looking up for you and you are enjoying the increasing daylight if you live in the Northern hemisphere, or a nice summer for you in the Southern hemisphere.
I've been pondering the idea of sanity, or normality, illness or wellness, lately.
Have you ever read the description of an illness or side effects of a drug, and thought some or all of the symptoms somehow described you?
In many cases I think they do. But here's the key -
It's all a matter of degree.
Let's say you are listening to the ad for a drug, which you happen to be taking, and when they get to the possible side effects they say something like, "may cause dry mouth, diarhea, muscle fatigue, and backache."
You think wow that sounds like me. Not remembering that you drank a quart of Jack Daniels yesterday and have a terrific hangover today. You sort of have a hazy memory that after you went to bed it got so hot up in your second floor bedroom you decided to move out to the roof to cool off. It's a little fuzzy when you get to the part where you fell asleep, rolled down the roof and dropped the 12 feet into the bushes in front of your house.
Ah yessss but the matter of degree part.
Let's say you read the symptoms for Adult Attention Deficit Disorder provided courtesy of the Eli Lilly Company maker of a drug called Strattera that can help you with your malady. Eli asks us, "Have you felt unfocused, disorganized, restless for as long as you can remember? Does your concentration drift in and out? A flood of thoughts that you can't seem to control? Like the channel keeps changing in your mind and you don't have control of the remote."
Yes that describes me and you too. The key is, all together now...it's all a matter of degree.
You know you could get some of that Strattera or you could try taking a deep breath and learning a little bit about relaxation techiques. The link I have on my main page to the Interlude Meditation site has a lot of thoughts about breathing and a variety of ways to focus, clear your mind. There are people who devote a lifetime to trying to keep their minds focused...they are called yoga's or something. Maybe they are called bodhisatvas? Why do all that work though...take a God Damn Strattera.
Whoops I'm swearing again, must be the Tourette's kicking in.
Have you ever heard of Prader-Willi syndrome? I knew a guy who worked in a house for the poor souls with that syndrome. One of the symptoms is an insatiable appetite. The residents would eat any food that wasn't locked down. If a bag of flour was left out...bam..it was eaten.
Sound like your house? Sound like you?
Have you ever heard of Darius McCollum? There's an excellent article about him in Harpers May 2002 edition written by Jeff Tietz called "The Boy Who Loved Transit". Darius did all kind of jobs for the New York City Transit Authority...driving subways, inspecting tracks, drinking coffee and eating rolls with the crew. The wrinkle is described in this paragraph from the Harper's article where Darius is getting ready to go to work in the morning by putting on his work clothes, getting his 139 keys used for access to trains, subways....
"Six weeks earlier, Darius had been paroled from the Elmira Correctional Facility, near Binghamton, New York, where he had served two years for attempted grand larceny--"attempted" because he had signed out NYCTA vehicles for surface use (extinguishing track fires, supervising maintenance projects) and then signed them back in according to procedure. Darius has never worked for the NYCTA; he has never held a steady job. He is thirty-seven and has spent a third of his adult life in prison for victimless offenses related to transit systems."
Darius was diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome. One description I found for Asperger's is that it is, "characterized by severe and sustained impairment in social interaction, development of restricted and repetitive patterns of behavior, interests, and activities."
Yes that describes me and most of the other 100 or so engineers and techs I work with :-)
Back on the ADHD track again though. Oh forgot to mention ADHD is a new disease.
Here's how this progresses -
1960 - Parents had small people living with them called children. They acted weird or downright bad some times. Some more often than others. No one knew a generic term to categorize those kids so we called them Jack, Joe, Jan, Larry, Kim, Betsy or a variety of other names.
1963 - Someone figured out that some kids were overly active. Overly active of course was a matter of opinion and not an objectively defined condition. I think it was actually Miss Ellis my second grade teacher who discovered the medical condition known as hyperactivity and I may have been the first person to be diagnosed with this disorder.
1980 - Some kids weren't paying attention in school and are generally just screwing around. Back in the early 60's those kids were known as "kids", later they became hyperactive, now they have Attention Deficit Disorder. Don't worry though since this condition can be treated with a drug provided by our friendly pharmaceutical companies.
1990 - Some kids aren't paying attention in school and are generally just screwing around. Do those kids have Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) or a newer form of the disease known as Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder (ADHD)? Good question; but not to worry since it can be treated with a drug provided by our friendly pharmaceutical companies.
2000 - Some adults aren't paying attention and are generally just screwing around. It's not just that though, they have Adult Deficit Attention Hyperactive Disorder (ADAHD).
Dear God please save us from this crap.
Here's the description Eli Lilly provides for Attention deficit -
"Some of these symptoms include not paying attention, making careless mistakes, not listening, not finishing tasks, not following directions and being easily distracted."
and for Hyperactive -
"Symptoms include fidgeting, talking excessively, running around at inappropriate times, interrupting others and having difficulty awaiting turns."
Yes that's any kid and it's a matter of degree. If I'm a teacher or a parent without the patience or love to take care of those kids maybe we could medicate them? That's all a matter of degree too. There are certainly some cases where a child needs some thing more than love and patience.
I want to wrap this up with one last thought. In the area of sanity/insanity normality/abnormality it's all a matter of degree. Let's think of some behaviours we would define as insane.....Maybe -
Talking to yourself, thinking or saying outlandlish things.
Yes we all do those things. Some really smart people like you and me do them quite often. It's okay...because by golly we are smart enough and funny enough and kind enough to be just fine.
I think I'll be moseying along now. I hope you have a good day and may you find peace within.
justjack
