The worst thing about the holiday season is the post-holiday crash. Even if I’m staying at home for Christmas and New Year’s, everything seems too frenetic and stressful until some point in mid-January when suddenly my mind decides reality is nothing more than a gaping black maw of doom. I hate depression. I would almost rather [...] Read Full Story

Happy holidays everyone. Lest you think this greeting is a little late, consider that I was out of town for the past week or so, and had no computer access. Also, waiting for after the holidays ensures that they were happy, so I’m not lying or wishing in vain. I’m still working on medical issues. Right [...] Read Full Story

Sometimes, the various agencies that combine to provide services to the mentally ill work wonderfully. Other times, quite the opposite. When I was last hospitalized, I applied for Social Security Disability, which I had to do to apply for state general assistance. I was approved for general assistance immediately, and began getting monthly medical coupons, to [...] Read Full Story

A couple of people have posted comments asking for advice on how to deal with a loved one’s schizoaffective disorder or other mental illness. Rather than post multiple comments in reply, it seems easier to simply write a post. First and foremost, it’s important for everyone to understand that I am not a mental health [...] Read Full Story

Sometime toward the end of February, I swallowed a fifth of gin and two boxes of sleeping pills. Some people would call this a cry for help, but it was more of an honest attempt to just not be here anymore. I remember drinking the gin. I remember swallowing the pills. I remember writing a very [...] Read Full Story

Again. Hopefully, a more stable version of me now haunts the net. I have lots to talk about, but not net access at home currently. I’ll be writing, then going to the library or a cafe to upload. God, but it’s good to be back. Read Full Story

If you’ve never been in a position to need emergency mental health care, but are afraid you someday might be, I think there are a couple of things you need to know first. Primarily, psychiatric wards at hospitals are designed to stabilize a patient experiencing a disturbing mental imbalance at the moment. Whether a person is [...] Read Full Story

Lately, I’ve been spending an inordinate amount of time on silliness. Perhaps it’s the new medication, but I chock it up mostly to a desire not to have so much stress and misery in my life at the current moment. As such, I’ve been spending most of my online life at my other blog, reveling [...] Read Full Story

As I mentioned in my last comment on my previous post, I just got out of the hospital, where I spent a delightful (for various values of “delightful”) week in the local funny farm, aka the GaGa Hilton, aka the Muppet Motel, aka the psych ward. In retrospect, I should have seen this coming. Last year, [...] Read Full Story

So, I have this mental illness, as I mentioned in my last post. It’s called schizoaffective disorder, and is a combination of bipolar disorder and schizophrenic symptoms. Let me be the first to tell you, it’s a bitch. They say that, like schizophrenia, this disease takes hold during adolescence, which in my case may or may not [...] Read Full Story