MENTAL ILLNESS

Culture of the Gun Revisited…Again

/ cigarman501 / 8 Comments

“I am saddened and horrified. What I am not is surprised.” –Don Miller

Let the war of words begin. It is sad, but by the time I share this the furor over violence will have moved on until the next act of violence against our children. It has been six whole days.

Most of the reactions will follow a familiar path, “thoughts and prayers”, media outcries for change, pro-gun rights folks debate limited-gun rights folks and anti-gun rights folks. Time passes with nothing changing except more guns are bought until the furor dies and we are again shocked with the next school shooting. The debate begins again and honestly…we don’t seem to be as shocked as we once were. It has become another day in America.

This battle of words will be different this time. While most school shooters are male, this time the LGBTQ+ community will be the center of political arguments…and conspiracy theories and “false flag” conspiracies. If you follow the “there are only two genders” logic the shooter was male, if not she was a female. Does it matter to the dead?

I’ve seen suggestions resurfacing to arm teachers, my least favorite out of myriads of least favorites, to we must “harden the targets.” That sounds like something from a war zone or a “sh!th@le” country once described by a naval orange dressed in a blue suit. All ignore the underlying issue. A culture that embraces violence over diplomacy with access to vast amounts of weapons to execute that violence.

The arming of teachers I find reprehensible. Blaming teachers for every educational ill, accusing them of “grooming” or “indoctrination”, questioning their ability to choose books and now your wish is to put them armed in a class with your juvenile delinquents? I don’t really believe they are juvenile delinquents but wanted you to know that words hurt…so does a round from a rifle or pistol.

Another suggests “evil exists, and laws will not change that.” Why do we have laws at all then? Are laws for honest people? Evil does exist but why are we not keeping weapons out of the hands of evil?

Do I believe this latest killer is evil? No. I believe she was a troubled person who committed an evil act. An evil act that she is responsible for. I also believe there were contributing factors. I blame her for pulling the trigger, but I also blame those who helped put the trigger in her hand.

Let me be fair. It is not just about school, church, or supermarket shootings. It is the drive by in LA, or gang violence in Chicago or Baltimore, or the drunken good ole boy who decides to William Tell a PBR can off his friend’s head and misses a bit low with his hunting rifle. It is about domestic murder in the South and the death of college students in the Midwest.

It’s about students wounded while walking to their prom.  It is about gunfire due to road rage and looking cross eyed at the wrong person. It’s about good old boys strapping AR-15s to their back when they get a coffee at the local coffee shop. It is about a lack of empathy and ignoring the sanctity of life in favor of an amendment to the Constitution.

I’ve shared this before but in case you missed it, in 2020, the last year for complete data, gun violence became the leading cause of youth deaths surpassing automobile accidents. Most were suicides. According to the Pew Research Center, in 2020, 54% of all gun-related deaths in the U.S. were suicides (24,292), while 43% were murders (19,384). The numbers came from the CDC and were backed by other sources.

According to CNN, personal safety tops the list of reasons why American gun owners say they own a firearm, yet 63% of US gun-related deaths are self-inflicted from a gun in their home. Please check my research. You might learn something.

It is a fact that it took a finger to pull the trigger, the gun didn’t do it on its own, and these Pew and CDC statistics do not reflect accidental gun deaths or where guns were a contributing factor but not the cause of death.

An undeniable truth is that we live in a gun rich environment. Five percent of the world’s population owns 44-46% of the world’s civilian firearms depending on the study you might be reading. According to a recent CNN study, we own more guns than we have people, one hundred-twenty guns per one hundred people. In 2022, 1.65 million guns were purchased by Americans, which is a slight decline from 2020. One Point Six Five Million.

According to a Scientific American study in 2015, and from what I’ve pieced together it hasn’t changed, assaults with a firearm were 6.8 times more common in states that had the most guns, compared to the least and the data is limited since until recently the federal government was effectively barred from gathering it. Thank the NRA and the “Dicky Amendment.” More than a dozen studies have revealed that if you had a gun at home, you were twice as likely to be killed as someone who didn’t.

Research from the Harvard School of Public Health determined that states with higher gun ownership levels have higher rates of homicide. Data even tells us that where gun shops or gun dealers open for business, killings go up. There are always exceptions to the rule, but some politicians would have you ignore the overall data and quote the exceptions rather than the rule.

Guns are big money. In an article by Fortune Magazine published by Yahoo, Gun rights groups spent $15.8 million on lobbying in 2020, compared to just $2.9 million in lobbying from gun control groups. Beyond lobbying, gun groups have contributed $50.5 million to federal candidates and party committees between 1989 and 2022, with most of those contributions going to Republicans. They spent especially heavily in the 2020 election, with $16.6 million in outside spending.

Oh, but the Second Amendment…. I’m not going to debate it except to say that one side always ignores two words, “well regulated.”

Will there be a change? If history repeats, I expect not. I don’t believe I am an overly cynical person but why would I expect change? Guns are as much a part of our culture as mom, apple pie, and Chevrolet. Other than exchanging duck and cover drills for active shooter drills little has changed.

Our history is rife with violence, mostly involving a gun. Our country was born from violence and expanded using violence, facts we don’t want our school children to hear. Do we have a greater propensity for violence than other countries? I believe so but if not, other countries have done a better job of curbing theirs.

We have violent games, violent movies glorifying the gun and the heroic figure welding it. I’m just as guilty. Several of my novels include violence…gun violence but the good guy with the gun always saved the day…unlike real life. 

When I read my comic books, Zane Grey, or Louis Lamoure, I knew it was fiction. James Arness or John Wayne wasn’t really gunning them down in the streets. After I became a history student, I found out their fiction was…based on fiction.  There were few gunfights in the streets and the Gunfight at the OK Corral lasted about thirty seconds. My novels are no different. They are fictional…but…real violence is real.

Other cultures have violent games, movies, and literature, but they don’t have real-life violence like we do here. Should we work to keep guns out of the hands of the violent? Should we look at the underlying issues that lead to violence and attempt to correct them?

It is mental illness. I believe someone who goes out and kills multiple children and adults is mentally ill…but that doesn’t give that person a free pass. As I said before, she pulled the trigger but if you are going to blame it on mental illness, other countries with much lower murder rates have mental illnesses too. Could it have something to do with our health system? Should we work to keep guns out of the hands of the mentally ill?

It is parenting, but why? Single parent homes? Parents having to work multiple jobs leaving their children to their own devices? Cycles of poverty? Again, among the states and cities in those states, statistics show that the higher the poverty rate, the higher the homicide rate…the higher the overall crime rate. This is true across all races and ethnicities and in blue, red, or purple states. Should we work to end poverty?

Criminals will always find a way…yes probably. Should we cut off access at the source? Gunmakers and smugglers? Everything is done after the murder instead of trying to prevent it. Could it be gunmakers and politicians are making too much money off the sale of legal and illegal firearms? Should we limit contributions from the gun lobby and NRA?

Maryland was one of the outliers in the Pew study. Strict gun laws but a higher number of gun deaths. Sixty-five percent of the guns used in violence in Maryland that could be traced came from other states with laxer gun laws. I don’t know the numbers but the same can be said about Chicago, I’m sure. Just something to ponder. Should we strengthen our gun laws?

Cain killed Abel with a rock. Yep, if the Bible is to be believed. I would rather confront a killer walking around with a bag of rocks than a bag of thirty round magazines and a rifle or pistol to put them in.

Along the same lines, “We’ve taken God out of … fill in the blank.” There are many countries who aren’t considered “Christian Countries” who have much lower gun homicide rates. Research Shinto Japan and while you are at it research their gun laws. Japan has a very violent history at times. How did these less Christian countries overcome the problem?

It does seem we have lost our appreciation for the sanctity of life…all life. Our hatred for others leads us to violence. Rhetoric against the Trans Community will increase due to this act, so will acts of violence toward them. Disagreement has become life threatening. We pick some “other” to spew our hateful rhetoric on.

Some Christians will say it is because we have become Godless, I will say that some Christians have driven me from organized religion because they are Jesus-less as they have replaced him with an idol in the shape of an assault-style rifle. If you can’t appreciate the Earth and the people who live on it, I want no part of you or your religion.

I don’t expect any of this will change anyone’s mind about guns…or violence…or mental illness and I don’t believe any effective change will occur. Gun violence is too engrained in our culture, and we pass it on to our children. I fear it is who we are.

***

Research cited

What the data says about gun deaths in the U.S.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-science-is-clear-gun-control-saves-lives/

https://www.cnn.com/2021/11/26/world/us-gun-culture-world-comparison-intl-cmd/index.html?fbclid=IwAR2vEhlMbsPbVhwBEXTyXtC6iUkx2VAkGf37uCdLzyMABlHEDSPSANOacV0

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/lobbying-gun-rights-

https://www.fortune.com/

Harvard School of Public Health

Related: https://cigarman501.com/2018/02/15/thoughts-and-prayers/

***

Don Miller’s violent fiction may be purchased through Amazon. So can his less than violent non-fiction. The link is https://www.amazon.com/stores/Don-Miller/author/B018IT38GM?ref=ap_rdr&store_ref=ap_rdr&isDramIntegrated=true&shoppingPortalEnabled=true

The Morning I Woke Up Crazy

/ cigarman501 / 11 Comments

“When you are crazy you learn to keep quiet.”― Philip K. Dick, VALIS

I remember waking up crazy.  It was a summer morning in the late Seventies or early Eighties.  I know it was the summer because I didn’t have to go to school that day… maybe it wasn’t summer, maybe a weekend day. Sometimes you just don’t know if you are loopy. Probably a good thing on the day you realize you are going insane.

You do realize, I didn’t just wake up and say “Well Don, you are insane…around the bend, looney, as crazy as an outhouse mouse.”  I had to get used to it, ease into it, take my time realizing I was looney-tunes.

I know now my deep slide didn’t just happen overnight.  But this wasn’t now, this was then. Then, I just thought I awoke one day with a mind like a broken kaleidoscope.  All the pieces were there, they just didn’t fit together anymore. Now, I realize it occurred slowly over time until one day it was “Wham-oh, Change-oh” I have gone off the deep end.

I was functioning despite my madness. There was such a stigma during this time.  You didn’t even whisper you were having problems.  People were still being locked away in asylums.  Electroshock Therapy was still used.  Remember “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest?”  There was the proof. 

No one could know I was crazy.  No one could know all I wanted to do was lower the blinds and draw the covers over my head…forever.  There was no one I could talk to…well, there were plenty of people I could have talked to if I had been willing to tell them my secret.  The stigma!  “Hey Bud, how are you doing?” “Well.  My television seems to have lost its vertical hold, can you help me?”

All I wanted to do was sleep…except when I tried to sleep, I couldn’t.  I couldn’t concentrate, I couldn’t focus. When I was awake I was like a Mexican Jumping Bean. I didn’t want to be awake.  

Depressed, anxious, sad, melancholy…more than just a “bit blue”, I was suicidal.   That’s when I knew.  I had a great life, why was I contemplating removing myself from it.  I had a great job, a home, a wife…a wife I was driving away…drove away. 

I hated the questions I asked myself.  “Am I depressed because my marriage is bad or is my marriage bad because I’m depressed?” Well, that certainly worked itself out now didn’t it?  Any question beginning with “Why?” drove me even crazier.  Can a crazy person be driven crazy?

I didn’t want to be around people.  The more people the more anxious I was.  I remember putting on my happy face as I met my classes later in the year.  Every minute was like fingernails on the chalkboard.  I lived for my planning period.

I lost weight, I had no energy.  I was worthless, lower than whale poop in the deepest trench in the Pacific Ocean.  I wanted to die.  Worse, I worried someone might find out.

One evening I sat on the foot of my bed.  A tiny 32 caliber pistol in my hand.  I remember the oily feel of the weapon.  I remember emptying it, reloading, spinning the chamber.  I remember the fear I felt realizing what I was contemplating.  I called my doctor the next day.  Stigma be damned!

I talked, cried a bit.  I answered a questionnaire and he talked with me at length.  Blood work and more talk.  Clinical Depression. A chemical imbalance in the brain.  We’re going to try Elavil, “better living through chemistry”, and therapy.  I also decided to tell someone.  It wasn’t as bad as I expected. No one showed up with a white jacket with belts.

It has been over forty years and I still have bouts of depression.  I’m not cured but I’m off of the drugs.  Every time I begin to slide I worry I might stay there.  I still become unfocused, my mind wanders but one thing I can concentrate on. “I know what it is.  I know I can climb out of the valley.”  Knowledge is power.

I know I’m not alone.  There are others just like me, and I know it is a disease just like any other. It is not something we asked for, it just is.  It is not something that would go away if we were built of sterner stuff.  Yeah, some idiot told me that and suggested it was a weakness in character. 

I don’t worry about stigma, I don’t worry about people knowing because I tell all who will listen.  Stigma kills people and there should be no stigma.

Today is World Mental Health Day, an international day for global mental health education, awareness, and advocacy against social stigma.  The one day of the year that we set aside to make people aware mental health. 

The other three hundred and sixty-four, we kind of ignore it…unless there is a school shooting.  On those days we spin platitudes expressing our concern over mental health to deflect from discussing gun violence until a couple of days or weeks pass and something new has taken over the news.

We don’t talk enough about mental health and the stigma that causes people to die.  Nationally, the suicide rate increased 25.4% from 1999 to 2016, with increases occurring in every state, save for Nevada. In 2018, there were an estimated 1.4 million suicide attempts and more than 48,000 deaths by suicide, making it the tenth leading cause of death in the United States. Firearms were involved in half of all suicides, and there were more than twice as many deaths by suicide than by homicide during the same period. In 2020, suicides decreased by five percent to a bit less than 45,000.

Men are over three and a half times more likely to commit suicide than women. Native Americans and Alaskan Natives have the highest rate of suicide.  Older adults have higher rates than younger adults, LGBTQ adults and youth are more likely to commit suicide than hetero counterparts.  Veterans are one and a half times more likely to commit suicide than nonveterans. 

So, on World Mental Health Day let us all pledge to destigmatize mental health.  Let’s pledge to be a friend to the bullied, to accept LGBTQs as first and foremost, as people and call out bullies.  Let’s cut out a couple of Tomahawk missiles and provide the mental health services our veterans need.  Above all, let’s try empathy, something we once had but seems to be in short supply.

The national suicide helpline number is 800-273-8255. Use it! The number is manned twenty-four hours a day.

Don Miller’s new release, “Pig Trails and Rabbit Holes” maybe purchased at https://www.amazon.com/Don-Miller/e/B018IT38GM?fbclid=IwAR3NeUQc6vEYiJm1P_3pB-pn0LHPonVrvst95cfhs4HxF5jNjIkwp6mO2q0

Nevah Endin’ Loop

/ cigarman501 / 9 Comments

 

I don’t know why I’m thinking in my womanly, Southern voice,  “Nevahhhhhhhh Endin’ Loop.”  Elongated syllables and soft gees.  It is about my lack of sleep or the Southern character I’m trying to write.  My night was like the opening lines of a famous novel…”It was the best of nights, it was the worst of nights,” from A Tale of Two Darknesses.

I slept hard for four hours…and then awoke with a mind that simply refused to turn off.  Negative thoughts chased one another like wolves chasing the sheep I counted as I tried to get back to sleep.  I finally tried to write…and failed to write.  A loop of gloomy, bleak and fatalistic thoughts flicker like old black and white movies from a nickelodeon kept getting in the way.

Because I’m fragmented…History lesson alert!  A nickelodeon NOT Nickelodeon.   Many of you may be unaware that back in the day, there were motion picture machines found in storefronts called nickelodeons.  In the middle of the first decade of the 1900s, for a nickel, you could watch silent shorts or “peep shows” of people sneezing, silent vaudeville acts and women taking their clothes off.  This was before VHS, smart cards, flash drives, streaming, satellite TV and Pornhub.

Images were imprinted on “a strip or sheet of transparent plastic film base coated on one side with a gelatin emulsion containing microscopically small light-sensitive silver halide crystals” and ran as a film loop over a hand-cranked projector.

The loop continued to repeat as long as you desired to crank.   Thank you, Wikipedia. No, I have no idea what I quoted means…magic maybe! Exactly how did that image of a Victorian lady taking off her clothes get on to film?  Research to come.

At three in the morning my mind decided, on its own, to begin running an imaginary film loop of everything that was bothering me, ovah, and ovah, and ovah again.  A never-ending, mental, horror movie loop of sick and blind puppies, aging puppy parents not able to take care of themselves much less their puppies.  A friend who had emergency bypass surgery, home, and yard work that must be done, a tractor that does not run like a Deere, and two vehicles with over four hundred thousand miles combined with strange noises emanating from them.  Worse is my total lack of motivation to do anything other than sleep…except I can’t…even…sleep.   I have presents to deliver to my grandchildren…from Valentine’s Day.  Ah sweet depression, a depression by any other name is still a depression.

Can you be losing the battle if you are worrying you are losing the battle?  Did that make sense?  Probably not to anyone other than me.

It is late-morning now.  A gloomy mid-morning that matches my mood.  I walked in the sleet until I said ‘Oh Fudgenuts’ and went home.   Not because I was cold, I was.  Not because sharp, minute chunks of ice were hitting me in the face, they were.  Not because the weather gurus had missed the forecast, they had.  I could have overcome all that.  It is the never-ending loop running in my head…never quite ending and adding frames as it continues along.   Now I’m watching the sleet bounce off my metal roof.  The sleet is not helping me end the loop nor is writing this.  Wait…I just yawned…maybe a nap?  Ah, sweet silence.

For other musings, https://www.amazon.com/Don-Miller/e/B018IT38GM

The image is from https://www.britannica.com/technology/projector/media/478521/95460

“SOUTH WACKO-LAKI”

/ cigarman501 / 2 Comments

 

An early morning thunderstorm has jarred me out of a sound sleep.  Sleeping soundly is unusual for me lately.  My sleep seems pain-filled, both from arthritis making its presence know if I lay in one position too long and from the dreams tormenting my mind.  Don’t feel too much concern and it’s not the point of this post.  Compared to many of my friends and family my age, physically I’m doing quite well.

The dreams…the dreams are due to my fragmented mind, torn asunder by depression and anxiety.  Some chemical in my brain has gone wacko, taking the rest of me with it.  I now reside in the state of “South Wacko-Laki” just across the river from “A-Kook-Among-Us.”

Could it have been triggered by diet; the sausage biscuits I should ‘never’ eat, the bee sting or a thousand other triggers that may or may not be the reason?  God how I hate asking, “Why?”  Maybe it’s just getting old.  Maybe there is no reason.  It is what it is…I hate ‘it is what it is’ too.

Anxiety is a new adversary while the depression an old enemy.  I have too much going on, too many things I need to be doing.  Plenty to be anxious about…but I’m retired, I have plenty of time to go forth and be productive…NOT.

My retirement has taught me one life lesson.  I am not a very good steward of my own time.  My lack of self-discipline explains why I’m failing in my early morning attempts at writing while simultaneously NOT really watching a rerun of Bobby Flay, staring at my computer screen wondering where my last thought came from or went to, all the while worrying about the lightning, thunder, and rain washing away my plans for the day.  What plans?

A checklist…that’s what I need.  Little square boxes to check as I complete small tasks.  I wonder how many trees would have to give their lives to create my checklist.  Okay, a few easy things to begin with like “Just get out of bed!”  Sometimes, even that is not easy.  “Walk three miles.”  Why has my walking become so much harder?  Not physically…MENTALLY!

A harder one, “Stay away from social media!”  Scrolling through Twitter or Facebook along with WordPress fits nicely with my fragmented mind…and probably contributes…not probably.  I can’t totally stay away because I use social platforms to advertise my books to people who are NOT buying them.  I must come up with a better plan.  Maybe write something people WANT to buy?  Purchase an advertising service? Quit entirely?

I have four stories I should be working on.  Should be an indication of how fragmented my dried up gourd of a head is.  If I shake my gourd does it rattle with dried seeds?  The seeds are not germinating, I can’t finish the stories.  I’ve reached a point in each…a barrier of some sort.  I can imagine the end but can’t quite find the rain-shrouded path to take me there.

Maybe a hiatus is in order.  Something to recharge my over-used but underutilized brain.  Go hide in a dark cave for a while…no, I’m already in a cave it seems, and the light from the computer screen doesn’t seem to be the light at the end of the tunnel.

Buffett’s lyrics echo in my fragmented head, “but I got to stop wishing, got to go fishing, down to rock bottom again.”  Could it be as simple?  Well, wishin’ sure ain’t gettin’ it done!  Fishing…maybe.  Probably should wait until the storms pass or maybe just embrace being at rock bottom in the state of “South Wacko-Laki.”

For a saner Don Miller, one should probably go to https://www.amazon.com/default/e/B018IT38GM?redirectedFromKindleDbs=true

If interested in “Mommy Porn” with a twist, you might also consider Lena Christenson at  https://www.amazon.com/default/e/B07B6BDD19?redirectedFromKindleDbs=true

The image is from “Rule the Wasteland”  http://rulethewasteland.com/?page_id=28

 

The Easy Way Out

/ cigarman501 / 20 Comments

I first wrote this two years ago but with recent celebrity losses stimulating “discussion”, it bears repeating.  “Suicide is not an easy way out.” My own contemplations of suicide and my battles with clinical depression fuel my emotions, along with the thoughts of three friends and former students who in the last year have opted to take the “easy way out.”

“A brave man once requested me,
to answer questions that are key,
‘Is it to be or not to be,’
and I replied, ‘oh why ask me?’”

“’Cause suicide is painless,
it brings on many changes,
and I can take or leave it if I please…
and you can do the same thing if you please.”
Theme from MASH, “Suicide is Painless” by Johnny Mandel

I don’t believe there is anything easy about committing suicide nor do I think is it totally painless. That would be two of the major reasons I don’t attempt it. Some say, “It’s taking the easy way out.” When you are sick like me, one may find it may not be the easiest of ways out. I don’t mean sick as in “I have a terminal illness and it is going to eat me up from the inside out” kind of sickness but the “I’m crazy as a bed bug” kind of sickness. I have suffered from clinical depression for over forty years now so I believe I have the right to say, “I’m crazy as a bedbug.” Also, like a world-class alcoholic, I have become very adept at hiding it. You see, almost daily, I still have thoughts of suicide or when I do something I consider “wrong,” there are the thoughts that I deserve to be hurt in some way even if I do it to myself. YES, I JUST CUT OFF MY FINGER ON PURPOSE!!!! I’ve done neither so suicide may not be the easy way out after all.

Being suicidal and repeatedly not pulling the trigger, not slitting a wrist or taking a short step out of a very high window is hard. I spend some of my “very best” depressed “self-speak” contemplating, quite morbidly, the pain of a bullet entering my head as opposed to the pain the same bullet would have on the people I leave behind. The people I love and, despite my depressive hate speech, those I know to love me, at least I think…maybe. My wife, my daughter, and son-in-law, my grandchildren, who I don’t yet know as well as I want, my brother and my friends. So far, my belief is that the pain of my action on those I leave behind would be greater…therefore, I don’t do it. There is also the fear of the unknown. Am I going to find myself inside of a vat of boiling “hellfire and brimstone” for instance or am I just going to “wink” out of existence? Both options are scary, as are others, and I find I am not a very brave person or is “sticking out” the mental anguish, in itself, brave?

Clinical depression is one of the odd ducks of mental illness. “Oh you are just a little blue…” and the Grand Canyon is a little hole. Logically you ask yourself, repeatedly I might add, “What have you got to be depressed about?” Right now it is a non-functional tractor and lawn mower, but they should not be “life-altering” should they? Or, friends and loved ones ask, “Why are you depressed?” Those questions are quite tiring because there is no answer.

My depression is due to a tiny, little, itty bitty chemical imbalance in my brain. AND IT IS TREATABLE, once you figure out it is nothing more than a disease. No different than diabetes, or arthritis, or toenail fungus except that for some reason it seems to be much more embarrassing to say, “I am clinically depressed and suicidal” rather than “I have toenail fungus and it is yucky.” It shouldn’t be.  We need to dispell the stigma of “I’m crazy as a bedbug” and treat the illness.

These thoughts and my own depression were triggered by a phone call. A friend told me of a suicide. I didn’t know the man; I know the family he left behind and can only imagine the pain they are going through. The unanswered questions, “Why?”, “Why didn’t I see it coming?”, “What did I do wrong?” Suicide was not an easy way out for them. Suicide was not due to an incurable and painful illness like cancer. It was due to an incurable and painful illness like clinical depression.  There are no answers to the “Why” and “What” questions.

His suicide has me, selfishly, thinking about ME. I worry that someday suicide will appear to be the easy way out…that I won’t have enough clarity of thought to keep me from pulling that trigger. No there is nothing easy about suicide including the contemplation of it. Before you react, NO! I do not need to be put on suicide watch…at least yet. I’ll try to let you know and you should be paying attention. This blog post is for the people who have not had their clinical depression diagnosed or those who have and still battle it every day. You are not alone. There are many of us out there, a depressing estimate of one hundred and twenty-nine million worldwide, one out of every ten Americans and even more depressing, eighty percent never receive treatment. I was lucky. There ARE people you can talk to. If there is no one in your life, try these:
National Suicide Hotline (800) 273-8255
Teen Health and Wellness Suicide Hotline: 800-784-2433
Crisis Call Center: 800-273-8255 or
text ANSWER to 839863
For more statistics copy and paste http://www.healthline.com/health/depression/statistics-infographic

If you are interested in reading more “Ravings of a Mad Southerner” or other writings by Don Miller, please use the following link:  https://www.amazon.com/Don-Miller/e/B018IT38GM

Tide Pods and Heroes

/ cigarman501 / 4 Comments

I wasn’t going to react…I really tried hard but the “daddy” teacher in me has reared its ugly head and I will not sit on the sidelines while thousands of young people exercise their First Amendment Rights…and get ridiculed and called names for doing it.  My inner child of the Sixties has stood up and grabbed me by the ass and shook me.  I was young once and so were you…and if you didn’t do stupid things, you should probably head to the doctor and find out what is wrong with your memory.

Yes, some of these youngsters are stupid…no not stupid.  Some are immature and do stupid things.  Like, take the Tide Pod challenge.  Stupid things like goldfish swallowing contests, flagpole sitting, telephone booth stuffing, pet rocks, flappers, zoot suits, platform shoes, lily-white Irishmen in Afros and lime green leisure suits.

Abuses like beer drinking, smoking marijuana and premarital sex with the wrong woman.  Stupid things that immature young people from previous generations did (I know this for a fact) …and went on to do great things.  Before you say that I’m advocating for beer drinking, marijuana use, and premarital sex…JUST STOP IT!  That is not my point.

Growing up is being taught by caring people if you are lucky enough to have them: parents, teachers, family members, the clergy of your choice…the village.  Unfortunately, or maybe, fortunately, it’s also about ignoring what you were taught, striking out on your own path, and somehow managing to survive it…and learning from it.  I was lucky…I survived.  I didn’t learn much, but I hope the newest generation survives and learns.  I believe they will and that they will go on and do great things too…but they won’t do it our way.

I saw plenty of heroic young people, not one of them had a Tide Pod in their hands…or mouth.  We focus on all the immature actions and fail to recognize that they have a voice that echoes their pain, their concern, and their fear…whether they are high school students or not. They don’t have the life experiences.  Tell that to a kid whose mother works two jobs and leaves him to care for a little brother…no don’t.  You don’t have the right.

Sure, some left just to get out of class and there were, as my brother pointed out, some knuckleheads.  There would have been knuckleheads fifty years ago during YOUR or my generation, and after.

Others knelt in hallways when they weren’t allowed outside.  Peace signs were created by elementary school kids.  Shoes were placed in protest near the capital. Chicago students marched for mental illness awareness, equal educational opportunities, safety in their OWN communities and THE PARKLAND, FLORIDA, DEAD, and SURVIVORS.  I watched one young man march and stand silently…the only person in his march.  I think it was pretty goddammed heroic.

For deflectors and detractors, sure the problem is more than JUST about gun control.  I don’t want your gun, I have one.  But their march…their conversation was about guns and dying in a school.  Organize your own march…I’ll march with you.

The PROBLEMS are about a failure in a law enforcement and background system that allows a mentally ill youngster to obtain a legal weapon that can kill thirty people in a minute.

It is about bullying, something some people still blame on the victim not being tough enough.

It’s about something being wrong with men of my race and gender who have a need to shoot up things with weapons only one or two steps down from a battlefield…and call it huntin’.

It is about violence in certain cities and the double, the national norm, unemployment figures that go with it…and the inequality in the education they receive.

It’s about prisons for profit that robs families of men who have minor brushes with the law when other men get a slap on the hand and community service.  But that’s something some of us don’t want to hear or even entertain.

It’s about a judicial system that seems to punish, more severely, one group over another.

It’s about moral depredation, Christ follower or Athiest, that must be someone else’s fault cause it ain’t mine.

And, it’s also about smart and consistent gun control, even if it means JUST enforcing the laws already on the books.

There are plenty of facets to the problem…just pick a cause…or not.  But that will be YOUR CAUSE, not theirs.  Or just sit back and denigrate young people who want to start a conversation…one we can’t seem to have without yelling.  I’d say you failed at quieting them and I think that is a good thing.

To quote Buffalo Springfield:

“There’s battle lines being drawn
Nobody’s right if everybody’s wrong
Young people speaking their minds
Getting so much resistance from behind”

Don Miller is a multi-genre writer who may be found at https://www.amazon.com/Don-Miller/e/B018IT38GM

The featured image was taken by Amber Nelson Wagner

Video from YouTube

A SLIP OR A SLIDE

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When does the slip become a slide? A slide an uncontrolled skid? Or when does a skid become a full-fledged plunge over a cliff, my arms and legs flailing against air, hoping against hope to gain purchase, pinwheeling into the abyss. Everyone laughs when the comedic actor slips on a banana peel. I don’t. It reminds me of my metaphorical banana peel, depression. I don’t even laugh when Wile E. Coyote goes over the edge. I know he will survive the sudden stop at the end of his fall. I sometimes wonder if I want to survive mine…just go ahead, take that step. Falls have never killed anyone…but what about the crash at the end?

My depression hasn’t hit full force in decades. It doesn’t have to. My mini-depressions have hit like Wile E.’s anvil, just not in full force. Depression is a constant companion, offering me a taste, a bit of the poison, waiting for its chance to kick me over the edge. Every time my “blues” hit, I wonder, is this it? Is this going to be the one that lasts for a lifetime instead of two or three days? All I need is the memory, or is the remembrance a self-fulfilling prophecy? Does remembering make it more probable? Do all the questions with no answers depress me even more?

I napped heavily yesterday, a harbinger of depression? Was it the gloomy weather, lousy football games or my depression returning to sap not only my strength but my will to stay awake? Early the next morning I awoke in the darkness made heavier by the continued gloom and argued with two of the dozen or so voices normally residing in my head.

The feminine voice, one as smooth as aged whiskey implores, “Stay, pull the covers over your head. You have nothing to do…just stay, stay here with me.”

The other, a deep voice on steroids orders, “You lazy sumbitch, get your ass up, you’re burning daylight!”

They argued on and on until the drill sergeant’s voice wins and kicks me out of bed. Will there be a time when I ignore his deep baritone and succumb to the siren’s call of smooth whiskey, pulling the covers over my head and giving up? Is this the slip that starts it all?

Normally my exercise unscrambles and silences the voices. This morning the voices become shadows, flying behind my eyes in shapes and patterns resembling those found in a broken kaleidoscope. The colors and forms are there but I can make no sense of them. Is this the slide? The skid sending me over the edge?

Tomorrow is a new day. I pray for sunlight…bright and glorious sunlight to burn away the depression…if it will. In the winter of the year, my depression’s whisper become deafening, the slide more out of control. The nights are too long and the sun is still low in the sky. I pray for the sun and short nights. I dream of long days and a sun high in the sky even if it brings the heat, humidity and mosquitos of summer.

Until then I will have to try and battle my voices, wrap up against the cold when I go for a run, hoping the voices are silenced or at least softened and my slide ends up against a wall instead of over the edge and the abyss below.

For more of Don Miller’s unique views of life, humor and Southern stories of a bygone time, try http://goo.gl/lomuQf