“Believe it or not, depressed people spend enormous amounts of energy to cheer up. Events in their lives did not make them depressed. They were not depressed because their lives were hell — their lives were hell because they were depressed.”
– Rev. Peter Morales, President of the Unitarian Universalist Association
Posted in Read Along
As I discussed earlier this week and some time ago on Canvas, brand name and generic drugs simply aren’t the …
Every now and again, I get a request to host advertising either here on this blog, or over on The Bipolar Blogger Network. I ignore them as a general rule of thumb — I don’t see the need to have adverts on my blogs, because my webhost has amazing unlimited service, and because I’m not exactly so high traffic as to need to cough up more money were my blog to somehow cross some invisible line. Nor is my hosting cost so expensive as to need help paying the bills — I consider it an annual birthday/Christmas present to myself, and now my husband (whose domain hosts the million pictures of our sweet kiddo).
I would choose to be flattered by these requests, except for one thing — they often seem to be tied to drug rehab services. This kind of angers me personally, because you know what? Yes, I totally had a drug problem at one point in my life. So did my parents. So have my siblings. You want to know why? Because we’re from the grand old United States of America, and were certainly not wealthy enough to have health care.
Because we couldn’t afford health care, one turns to what methods they can to keep themselves sane. In my youth, I smoked a metric asston of pot through high school to try and keep things distanced just enough that I could face another shitty horrible 6am to midnight day. When I joined the Air Force, I turned to drinking because it was legal (and because clearances and mental health issues aren’t compatible, so I couldn’t pursue better mental health). I chose substances because I could not afford to take care of my mental health. So did my parents, and so did my friends and family.
So of course, this begs the question — if we couldn’t afford basic health care, how the flying fuck were we supposed to afford a luxury service like rehab? Riddle me that one, buckos.
Now, once I got myself into a place where I could take care of my mental health, care to guess what happened between me and substances? I did keep smoking until I fell pregnant with my daughter, but my relationship with booze and drugs ended within a year of me moving to the United Kingdom. Why? Because I had access to health care. Because I had a supportive family environment who had access to health care. And while it took me a couple of years to get my spoons and courage together enough to actually ask for help from the mental health department local, it’s a very easy decision to not use pot or booze to cope these days because I can talk to a psychiatrist and get help tailoring actual meds to my condition.
So it basically boils down to a few salient points:
1. Rehab is a luxury service.
2. Most self-medicators (that I know) do so because they are poor.
3. Because they are poor, they cannot afford psychological help.
So no, I will not host adverts for a luxury service that presumes that I must have a drug problem, or that my readers have a drug problem. I’m guessing I should probably just add a note to my Contact Me specifying that I will never host adverts. But for now, I just needed to vent my spleen on this particular issue. I’m definitely curious as to what the rest of you guys out there think — am I reasonable in my line of thought, or am I being terribly close-minded? Not about hosting adverts — I’m sure that all of y’all would agree that a lack of adverts is a nice thing.
Hope everyone is having a nice day.
<3
The post I Don’t Like the Drugs… appeared first on The Scarlet B.
The day’s mail dumped through the slot in the steel door of my nineteenth-floor apartment on the corner of 47th and Lake Park. South Side Chicago, bad neighborhood, but somehow this award-winning architectural wonder had been built there, and because of its location in the slums, it had been designated as HUD housing (Housing and Urban Development), which meant that a starving premedical student like me could manage the rent. OK, sometimes I had to hock something, or take on an extra shift cocktail-waitressing at the glitzy downtown disco where I made my tuition money, but somehow I always got the rent money together in time.
I picked up the mail and flipped through it nervously. I had applied to five medical schools, and the acceptance (optimist) letters, or rejection (pessimist) letters, were beginning to come in. I knew where I wanted to go, and I knew where I could afford to go; and those were not necessarily the same places. But I had not applied anywhere I would not be happy to be, so it all boiled down to finances.
There it was. A catch in my throat: I couldn’t get my breath. A thin envelope meant rejection; a fat one meant acceptance, because it was full of forms to fill out and return. Here it was: a fat envelope from the University of Illinois, one of my top choices, and affordable, as it was a state school. I ripped open the envelope and read breathlessly:
“Dear Ms. So-And-So:
We are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted into the University of Illinois College of Medicine…..”
My eyes skimmed the letter. At the very bottom, as if by an afterthought, I read:
“Due to your excellent academic performance and related experience, we are pleased to offer you a full scholarship.”
I nearly fainted. My heart pounded as if it wanted to leap out of my chest.
There was a knock at the door. I grimaced. Who could this possibly be, interrupting my moment of orgasmic bliss? I stomped over to the door irritably.
“Who is it?”
Giggles in the hall.
“It’s us! Let us in!” It was the Bosom Buddies.
The Bosom Buddies were an all-woman old-time string band from East Lansing, Michigan, an easy train ride from Chicago. I was one of the two banjo players in the group, and we played fairly regularly. We played for square dances and Moose Lodge spaghetti dinners and old-time festivals and dinners-on-the-grounds, and we always had a blast. But what were they doing at my door unannounced?
“We had to come see you, and tell you the news,” said Susie the fiddler breathlessly. ”We had to come in person, so you couldn’t say no.”
Uh-oh. Sweat started rolling down my ribcage. What the hell could be so important that they had to take the train down from East Lansing, taking a chance that I might or might not be home? And not say no?
“Prairie Home Companion has asked us to be their house band!” Susie squealed.
“Wow, that’s fantastic!” I hugged them all. ”Congratulations!”
But why the fuck were they standing on my doorstep telling me this news?
“And,” panted Susie, “Mary (their regular banjo player) went and ran off with Sally (her lover), and formed a duo, and now we don’t have a banjo player, so we want you to join us and come out to Minneapolis! Will you come?”
My life flashed before my eyes.
This was more than I could have imagined in my wildest dreams. To be the banjoist in the house band on Prairie Home Companion, the famous National Public Radio show hosted by Garrison Keeler! Fame and fortune! Respectability! Getting to actually play the banjo for a living, instead of just for fun and a few bucks here and there! Not only that, playing with the Buddies, my favorite people in the whole world!
Then I looked at what was in my hand. The fat envelope. My acceptance letter to medical school, and a full-ride scholarship. I sat down on the floor and cried.
Four women sat down with me, hugging me and asking what was wrong. I cried harder. How could I possibly make a decision like this? Each of these things was the fulfillment of a dream of many years. I knew I was one of the top old-time banjoists in the country. And I knew I was destined to be a physician. Healing was in my bones. And so was old-time music.
I remembered my manners and invited them in. They had brought their instruments, so I got out the banjo and a fifth of whiskey and we had a few tunes and got all likkered up, and then I broke the news. I couldn’t go with them. My path in life lead elsewhere. We all cried.
They left, crestfallen, and I spent the rest of the night bawling. I didn’t know whether I had made the right decision or not. It just kept bouncing back and forth in my head, and my heart felt like it was being physically torn apart.
The Buddies didn’t find another woman banjo player who was up to their standards, so they didn’t take the job in Minneapolis. Guy’s All-Star Shoe Band became the Prairie Home Companion house band, and they do a real good job of it, but they’re not the Buddies.
We all went in different directions after that. A couple of the girls joined other bands. Susie hitchhiked across the Sahara desert and got a ride with an Irishman on a motorcycle, and they got married and moved to Ireland.
I went on to medical school, and then graduate school in Anthropology, and then a residency in Pediatrics. I don’t regret my decision, but every now and then I look back to the road less traveled by and think: what would have happened if……
Posted in Read Along
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