Taming the Polar Bears - the Final Chapters

Taming the Polar Bears

The Final Chapters

This is going to be blunt and is likely going to hurt. But so be it. 

Why am I closing down this blog and likely removing access to my writing? As always is the case, there are numerous reasons, the most important of which 99.5% of my readers will not be able to get no matter how much they “think” they “get it”.

Personal Boundaries

I may write very openly and honestly but I remain a very private person and I expect personal privacy. That boundary was being crossed too often.

I take a good deal of responsibility, however. At various times since I first started doing the work that would become the basis for Taming the Polar Bears in its current incarnation, I've very much wanted to get involved with helping others. I knew very early on that I had something very special and very powerful; more personal experience with living with a mental health disorder and more experience being within the mental health care system AND being deeply and widely read on not only psychiatric medications but everything to do with psychiatric conditions AND neuroscience. I also knew my writing was very powerful. I also knew I possess unusual levels of empathy and understanding for those who suffer (I had all my life, my family is just that way, but especially since going through everything I have over the past seven years).

So when people reached out to me for help, I found it not only very hard not to want to try help as best I could, I felt it was very much something I wanted to do.

So yes, I can blame myself for appearing to be accessible.

But this quickly spiraled out of control and at some point I could see that though I was very knowledgeable and uniquely understanding and empathetic, in no way was I qualified for helping people deal with their issues. And in various emails and blog posts, I thought I made it clear that I was not available on a personal basis.

I also thought I made it clear that absolutely NOBODY - that would be ZERO people - have access to me regarding my mental states or mental health status.

Yet my boundaries continued to be crossed, people felt they could email me or message me in ways they had absolutely no right to do.

“Have a Kit-Kat”

These are words that I will never forget. I probably wouldn't have forgotten them anyway, such is the way my memory storage system etches things into my mind, but I won't let myself forget.

This was the heading of an email I received in response to a private post I wrote on Taming the Polar Bears.

This from a regular reader of mine, one who's always proclaimed to “get it”.

I am, even as I attempt to write this three days later, at a loss to understand this or explain it. I can say a few things that I can only hope might be clear. One, is that an off the cuff dismissive hurtful line like this is so far away from the message I've tried to get across in Taming the Polar Bears, it pretty much demolishes any faith I had that my message was getting through. This is exactly the kind of bullshit I've put up with for years and is EXACTLY the kind of thing that greased my skid downwards towards suicidal hell. I would be devastated by hearing this from the most ignorant person in my life, let alone from a regular reader of my blog.

Then, further in the same email, I get “just chill out and enjoy Christmas with your family”.

This would be the “family” (ex-wife, daughter) that looks at me as a pathetic loser, that kicked me out when I had nowhere to go and wouldn't so much as give me $20 for gas. For fourteen years I worked my ass off and made great sacrifices to keep a roof over these two ungrateful wenches' heads and who “loved” me all that time but when I'm down and out and essentially homeless, they can't get me out of their lives fast enough.

And I'm airily “advised” to just “chill out and enjoy Christmas” with them.

But the defense of this ill fitted “advise” is that it was “well meaning”.

Let me give you all some background about “well meaning advise” and me.

In the seven years I've gone through this, I've never hid anything. I had dozens and dozens of friends who had “front row seats” to my long, sickening descent from successful, financially secure home owner into madness and then poverty. None of that was necessary and it was largely facilitated by people who had no fucking clue whatsoever what they were talking about bombarding me with “well meaning advice”.

I could fill a book with the “well meaning advice” given to me and occupy a condo building with the people who shoveled it to me. All of it completely useless and mostly harmful bullshit. Because NONE of it applied to a person of my unique situation.

And I'd explain and explain and explain and yet the fucking bullshit kept coming. And all the more my skids were greased and the further I descended into hell.

Meanwhile, I've seen twenty or more psychiatrists and dozens more mental health care workers of all kinds and NONE OF THEM could help either.

Meanwhile, I've attempted to make it abundantly clear that I have about the worst form of the worst psychiatric illness (I'd argue that in some ways my advanced form of bipolar is worse and harder to treat than schizophrenia) and that the likelihood of ANYONE going through ANYTHING similar is remotely, remotely slim.

Yet for reasons that I just utterly CANNOT fathom, people feel they're “qualified” to write me and give me “advise”.

This is not only with online “friends” but people in real life. There is no possible way on earth anyone could have any idea of what I'm going through let alone what to do, yet everyone seems to think they've “been there” and are thus “qualified” to say something.

This went on for years and greased the skids for my descent into suicidal hell.

Then at some point I just had to firmly say enough was enough (by this time I was finally beginning to get my mind back) and I established a ZERO tolerance policy for any “advice” or “input” into my condition from ANYONE.

I try to establish these boundaries yet people still feel entitled to cross them.

All because I “put myself out there” on my blog.

So this tells me two things:

People SAY they read my blog and get something from it but this crossing of boundaries tells me they don't. Getting told to “have a Kit-Kat” confirms that they don't.

That makes me feel, quite reasonably, that my writing has been a waste of time and my precious, precious energy. But more on this later.

Two, is that if people continue to cross the boundaries I try to establish and further tax my very, very limited energy resources – not to mention pound me down further with ignorant bullshit “advice” - then I simply cannot afford to “put myself out there” as I have.

You see, unlike the majority of you whose “suicidal thoughts” are just boo-hoo feeling sorry for yourself “I can't go on” bullshit, I – for reason that are VERY unique to my RARE form of bipolar – face real suicidal danger. If I slip down there, it's NOT because I'm feeling boo-hoo sorry for myself.

I don't know how many posts I've dedicated to this and people “claim” to “get it” and then I still get bullshit like “have a Kit-Kat”.

MEANWHILE, I have to put up with harassment bordering on stalking from someone who claims to “love” me. And this person too is full of ignorant assumptions and “well meaning” “support” and “input”. And none of this is welcome, none of this is needed, none of this is useful. Yet if I try to explain this and make it clear, I get all this passive aggressive guilt trip boo-hoo bullshit that puts me on the spot. And then I have to waste valuable and preciously little mental energy on dealing with all of THAT.

There are many reasons people do things like this and why they “think” it's “well meaning” but I'm going to have to get to that in another piece.

Meanwhile, I literally CANNOT afford to put myself out there anymore. I walk a tightrope everyday that very, very, VERY few people can know of, let alone fathom and comprehend. I do NOT need people pushing me off that tightrope.

As for deleting the contents of Taming the Polar Bears, I'll get to that in another piece as well.

I am well, well aware how much this hurts but as Wei Wu Wei said:

So yeah, truth hurts but it takes pain to make some people learn. Then again, seeing the amount of pain some people are willing to bear and never learn anything, I'm not so sure even this will help. But that's not my problem.

I have one criteria and one criteria only for my life now - I do WHATEVER it takes to stay alive. If that means hurting some people, so be it. But don't feel bad, I've cut many, many others out of my life for bullshit I won't tolerate, including, just two days ago, my own daughter (more later). 

 

Evolution and Suicide - Part Two

I ended off  the first part of this series "if evolution is essentially a drive to survive, a drive to reproduce, why would suicide genes have survived?". "Or, on the new understanding of DNA, why would it have developed?"

As I've stated, I didn't particularly feel in control of any of my suicidal drives. It for all the world felt like something else was in control. After coming out of the states of those various episodes, I'd think that it didn't make sense. The survival instinct is the most powerful in any species; why then would anyone be driven to self-destruct?

To answer those questions I suppose it's best to start with two obvious points. One is the super key evolutionary strategy of genetic diversity. It's not the only strategy, it's just a pretty good one. That's why humans dominate the earth. We are more genetically diverse (and this is most true in how our brains vary) than any other species on earth. We are more successful than our very closely related fellow primates because we are more genetically diverse. It's why we produce seven foot tall basketball players, tiny gymnasts, Mozarts, and Einsteins all out of the same basic species. This doesn't work by design (don't listen to the Creationists on this), it happens more or less by blind fluke; produce enough variations and enough of them will "work" to make the whole species better. The environment may well one day trump all this "success" (obliterate the human race in a massive asteroid strike for example) but that's neither here nor there at the present time. Right now we're "successful". And this process has worked by grinding out the weak. Or at least it did until we evolved the smarts to start overcoming many of these weaknesses with modern medicine and other meddling. 

Two is that "you" are not important. The survival of the species is. Yes, as much as the "everybody-is-"special"-and-gets-a-gold-star" liberals would like you to believe otherwise, you and your survival are actually extremely insignificant. It's the survival of the species that's important. The odd individual may prove significant (those that made those medical discoveries for example) or sometimes individuals band together to become significant (the Bolsheviks for example) but by and large most individuals are completely insignificant. Your disappearance won't make even the tiniest little difference to the survival of the species. (yes, I know, quite sobering, isn't it) But take heart, entire civilizations have disappeared or been wiped out and the homo sapiens species, in case you haven't noticed, has carried on quite fine. 

So if we accept that the species is more important than the individual then the idea of suicide genes starts to make more sense. I know this runs counter to every liberal's core thought process but we're not talking philosophy here, we're talking raw evolutionary forces. The latter has been around for four billion years, modern philosophy for about ... what? A couple hundred or so? Evolution could give a fig about our puny thought systems. 

In truth, I shouldn't disparage left wing philosophy so much. It's actually pretty important and itself has an evolutionary basis but that's for another time and place. It's just that it doesn't overcome all countering evolutionary forces (evolution is all about back and forth jousting between competing forces, after all). Or at least not yet. So I shouldn't imply that those so inclined shouldn't try. Trying is the whole point in making any given evolutionary strategy "work". 

"Stress" is not a modern invention. We've certainly created infinitely more sources for it, but it's hardly new. What we experience as stress originates in the stress response system, a very old piece of brain hardware indeed. It involves the limbic system and some deeper brain hardware. Not all animals experience stress to the degree that we - and our higher evolved animal cousins - do which is why we have developed such a wide variety of illnesses that arise from stress. 

The stress response system evolved for situations of danger or injury. Like a charging rhino for example or getting gored by that rhino. Those are acute, short term examples. But there are chronic examples. Like long term starvation. Chronic hunger will trigger the stress response system. This is, of course, to kick a person into action (fight or flee, or in other words, do something drastic (like wipe out the next tribe over and take their food) or go elsewhere in search of food). 

It's not useful - and we're talking strictly in terms of evolutionary design here - to have weak people around in situations like this. Which is of course why so many people don't survive these situations. Don't fight or flee properly? Out of the gene pool you go. Now I was dead wrong about lefty liberals before. I was wrong because somewhere along the line we - human, primates, elephants, dolphins/whales and a few other species - evolved "empathy centres" in our brains. 

Empathy centres mean we feel others' pain along with our own. It impels us to help those others when they don't fight or flee properly. This helps the tribe, you see (and hence the species at large). So despite what the right wing conservative or libertarian kooks believe, there is a massive evolutionary advantage to lefty liberalism. (sorry, just had to sneak all this in there). 

But life on earth is tough and always has been thus (and of course today's version of "tough" doesn't hold a candle to tough times from the past (thanks in no small part to all those strong empathy centre liberal types)). And there are only so many of the weak that can be dragged along in times of chronic stressful conditions. Somebody has to go or the whole tribe (and species at large) will be in danger. 

It's never really been "cool" in our evolutionary history to just up and cull out the weak. We may have let them die, but it's not cool to kill them if they don't just die out themselves. So what to do with those who are too weak and are a drag on the whole tribe? 

Evolution of course has an answer and that answer is the suicide gene. Certain people will be "pre-programmed" to self-cull if the going gets too rough. 

The going gets rough, this triggers the stress response system, the brain and body gets flooded with stress hormones and the presence of these hormones will activate certain genetic responses (this is extremely well known and established) and one of the possible responses is to self destruct. The weak must be culled from the herd and if no one else will do it, then it must be a self-activated act. 

Bing-bang-boom, there ya go. The answer for my quest for "why?"

And on a deep subconscious DNA level, the tribe approves. Because the tribe knows that this self-culling is necessary for the tribe to survive. Which is why no one really gives a shit if someone commits suicide - on a deep level we understand that it was meant to be and for good reason. 

And even those with strong empathy centres that want and try to help have limited reserves of empathy and energy when the situation is really difficult. 

The sixty-four thousand dollar question then becomes; to what degree should our modern day tribes - society and smaller family units - be willing to help those in danger of "self-culling"? 

And of greater importance, what should that "help" look like? 

The answers to that are not easy nor one dimensional but the exploration of which is more or less the raison d-etre of this blog. A more concise summary of what I think that help should look like is in the works but I always start with my Positive Difference Making Fundamentals.

Evolution and Suicide - Part One

[updated July, 2015 - BGE]

All my interest and research into mental health issues began with a single question - why? 

I wanted to know why I was driven to take my life. I've been through many episodes of high suicidal risk and none of them felt particularly under "my control". None of them particularly felt like a "decision" by "me". It for all the world felt like a deeper drive than that. 

So I simply wanted to know why that was. I simply wanted to know "why?". My search for the answer to that simple question took me through somewhere around a million and half words worth of science books and research papers. I explored every field of science there is that's related to human behaviour from genetics to evolutionary psychology to social sciences to the science of addiction to neurobiology and to neuroscience itself. As ALL behaviour originates in the brain, thus neuroscience provides the best answers to questions regarding human behaviour. So I spent considerable time and effort studying neuroscience. As genetics and environmental conditions shape the brain, I explored those two fields a lot too. 

While I became very, very interested in ALL aspects of mental health, my biggest interest was in the science of suicide. After all, that is by far the most serious consequence of a given mental health disorder.

The following series explores one possible explanation that I found. It's just a theory of course but I think it's a very good one. It's based on solid science and something most people don't get to study - what it's like to have this drive within oneself. 

This series is a rough draft for now. I hope to one day flesh it out more and include all the proper citations. 

The Evolutionary Basis for Suicide

Almost everyone will experience emotional pain in their lives. (1) Sociopaths and psychopaths are exceptions (definitions of these vary but the basic point is that they don't feel emotions and especially empathy and empathetic pain like most of us do).

Many people who commit suicide do in response to acute or chronic emotional pain. But if almost everyone experiences emotional pain, what makes the pain of suicide victims different? Is it that much worse?

I've spent a lot of time talking to people about emotional pain or hearing or reading their stories. I've talked to numerous street people and heard their stories. I heard many stories during group sessions in the hospital. There are a LOT of VERY painful stories out there. 

What makes one person's pain more severe than another's? This is virtually impossible to quantify. One person seems to be able to bear unfathomable amounts of pain and carry on. Another person gets diagnosed with PTSD after the death of a cat. 

And why are some people so driven by pain that they actually kill themselves? Or are driven to kill themselves? 

This is an extremely hard question to answer (and no, you don't have the answer). I have seen and come up with some good possibilities though.  

One of my lifelong interests is the study of evolution and how all that works. I accept that all life is shaped by evolutionary forces. This has been demonstrated on so many levels under so many conditions that it is really beyond doubt. All that is in doubt - and which is the never ending subject of debate among those in the field - is the precise mechanism for this or that present day feature (like homo sapiens' vaunted frontal lobes or a particular wing design on a certain species of bird and countless so on). The thinking among the leaders in evolutionary theory (evolution itself is not a theory but the processes of it are) is that nothing exists without an evolutionary basis. If it exists today, it exists for a reason. If it exists today, that means it survived the millions and millions of years of evolutionary grind (which is not to say evolution won't eventually grind out of existence many of today's "features" if conditions change). 

All things evolve to adapt and any given feature of any given species today will have evolved to either adapt to something or for purposes of genetic diversity (a very key and basic element of evolution often overlooked. A lot of what is passed on through genetics may not have a discernible purpose for current conditions but is there in case of differing conditions that may arise. In other words, some sort of change in environment conditions could trigger that gene into expression). 

So if one accepts this as true - and I do (and I've not seen any convincing arguments to the contrary) - then one has to look at suicide in this light. It must be here for a reason. In the world of evolution, all animal behaviours have a reason. Or had a reason at one point (and its present day redundancy hasn't been eliminated by adaptive evolutionary forces yet). 

Evolution grinds out the weak. That's what it does. Present day bleeding heart liberals can get themselves all in a tither about that but the relentless forces of evolution could care not a fig for such baseless sentiments. Evolutionary forces will grind on regardless of our pathetic little efforts to stop them. 

And so it is, I believe, with suicide. Those that commit suicide are the weak and the inner drive is one of evolution's neat little tricks to cull out the weak. 

I don't think one can understand genetics and deny there is a genetic component to something. Evolution works through genetics. Evolutionary "features" are passed on through genes. Not all genes will necessarily be "triggered" into action though. The basic ones that make up our physical features and most brain features will but a great deal need some sort of environmental trigger to activate them. People with a genetic predisposition towards heart disease, for example, won't necessarily get heart disease; there needs to be certain environmental factors (or the power of belief in their own mind might well do the trick). 

So if we accept that there is a gene for every conceivable and possible human condition (and we should), then there is a "suicide gene". It won't necessarily kick in but certain environmental factors will do just that. And those factors will involve stressful situations (things that trigger the stress response system). Each individual's response to stress will itself be genetically determined. Genes decide how much or little one responds to a potentially stress triggering situation. So put together a highly sensitive stress response system and a suicide gene and you've got the potential for a self inflicted death.

Further on genes and genetic expression; it has recently been discovered that DNA does NOT, as has been the belief all along, stay the same throughout its carrier's life. People's DNA can change through the course of their life. It's a pretty big discovery and it's completely thrown for a loop a lot of science based on the previous notion that DNA was "set for life" (including the science of DNA identification). Why does it change? For the simplest of evolutionary reasons, I'd wager - to adapt. (and if one understands and accepts the basics of evolutionary adaption, that DNA would "adapt on the fly" makes perfect sense). 

What this means in our case here is that if you didn't start out life with a suicide gene (or DNA), then you may well develop one as life's conditions kick you this way or that. It also might mean you develop more beneficial DNA but we're looking at suicide here and the downsides of this changing DNA. Or why such a gene might have an "upside". 

The reason I bring up this seemingly trivial bit of recent scientific discovery is that it's particularly relevant in my case. 

For those of you who are not aware, I have a genetically identical copy of myself. Identical twins are the only humans on earth that start out with identical DNA. This is because the fetuses of "identical twins"  are the result of a single fertilized egg splitting in two and two different life forms growing from that single split egg and thus having an absolutely identical string of DNA. This is in contrast to fraternal twins who develop from two separately fertilized eggs and thus quite different DNA. Each egg and each sperm carries slightly different DNA. Which is why every single solitary person on earth and in the history of earth is different. With the exception of identical twins. Which is why identical twins are so highly coveted by science for genetic and environmental research. 

I respond very severely to environmental stressors. I have been highly suicidal and driven to suicide. I experience bipolar far more severely. 

If my twin and I started out genetically identical (and this is beyond any dispute), why do we react so differently to life now? 

The answer is twofold.

One is that though we have identical genes, not all of them will be activated in either of us. That is up to environmental conditions. And since childhood, we have experienced different environmental conditions (this alone requires almost book length examination though I touched on this in my post on Genetic and Environmental Factors in Brain Development). These differences greatly accelerated following high school. The big difference is that I ventured out and explored the world and he stayed close to home and stable in one field of vocation. So our differing environmental experiences would be a factor.

Two is this recent discovery of DNA "changing on the fly". DNA expression happens on the cellular level. Stuff is going on at that level all the time. And now it appears that DNA itself is changing, all in response to environmental conditions. So as cells replace themselves, they may well do so with a somewhat different DNA code than the previous generation of themselves. As DNA and cells change over a lifetime, so "we" change. Simply put, my twin and I are likely not genetically identical anymore. Which means that not only will our environments be different, we'll respond to environmental conditions more and more differently. 

And on this model I appear to have "adapted" to eliminate myself (potentially ... the deed is obviously not done yet). 

This leads to the question of "if evolution is a drive to survive, why would a suicide gene have survived?". "Or, on the new understanding of DNA, why would it have developed?" Which are excellent questions.

Sources:

Much Daniel Dennett and Richard Dawkins

Many books and research papers on neuroscience

Numerous, numerous research papers on social psychology, neuropsychology and other related behavioural studies

Please proceed to Part Two.


Update:

I hadn't read this since originally writing and posting it a year and half ago. I was in a pretty dark place when I conceived of and composed this, having just recently being discharged from yet another hospitalization to remove myself from danger. Yet rereading it now, it still holds up strong and I have seen nothing in the interceding time since my original writing to change any of the foundations for my theory and in fact would say that I have only accumulated more evidence (and I may at some point flesh this out further).

I can say that I have moved considerably away from being tortured by this "self-cull" self-destruct drive. It's still there at some times, which I touched on in Random Thoughts on Bipolar and the Inevitable and its follow up companion piece but overall I continue to improve many aspects of my mental health and outlook towards life. 

Vision for the Future of Humane Rehabilitation

Updated March, 2018. 

Just a little over five years since I conceived this, nearly fifty-one months since I originally wrote this. 

In that time I could see the need for this vision growing. It is nearly impossible to articulate how much I wanted to see this come to fruition but I realized over and over again that my own means were limited and that all I could do was keep plugging away at my blog exploring the underlying causes that would lead to mental health issues so catastrophic that sufferers would end up existing on the streets without homes, being incarcerated, being addicted to drugs (legal and/or "illicit") and caught in notoriously difficult to break cycles. 

The cost of this to individuals, families and to society is virtually incalculable.

Inexplicably, "modern" society stubbornly stays locked into  "dealing" with these issues using "systems" that have have not essentially changed in hundreds of years. The underlying attitudes that create "modern day" incarceration have in fact not advanced since Biblical times (no, I'm not exaggerating, I will make this clear in future posts). 

For our brief space here it would be too exhaustive (for both myself and readers) for me to recount just how in depth I looked into everything to do with many mental health disorders where so many difficult cases or individuals without the good fortune to have long ongoing support from family and/or friends or who fall through the cracks of the mental health care system end up on the street or in the criminal justice system or both. Or tragically addicted resulting in bouncing between the criminal justice system and the streets. Or dead. 

Through personal interviews I conducted or from countless case studies that I researched one thing struck me again and again:

This outcome was not necessary

This was preventable

Nobody chooses to end up like that. Nobody. 

For five years now I have been inordinately driven to learn as much as possible about the neurology, socio-economic conditions and life defining circumstances of the souls who end up in such cycles. 

My work through the blog and the access to people it's given me, along with dozens of other sources told me the same story in virtually every case:

- Various traumatic events in their lives and socio-economic conditions that created the neurological conditions which in turn led to the behaviours and life choices that led to their situations.

Some of this I outlined very briefly in Genetic and Environmental Conditions in Individual Brain Development.

There are many genetic and environmental conditions (by that I mean all conditions an individual grows up in from conception through early adulthood) that will add up to creating what I refer to as their "neuro-history".

Since then I have made numerous valuable contacts among academics in related fields who not only agree with this, but can provide enormous amounts of research data and case studies. 


For five years I have envisioned long term live in treatment and rehabilitation facilities where people's neurology - this "neuro-history" - would be treated and rehabilitated. As part of that process many other aspects of life and skill building would be taught along with job and work skills. It would all take place in facilities of a compassionate and understanding atmosphere, one where individuals can explore their true potential and not simply be "punished" and beat back down or "housed" temporarily until they're shoved back out to start the cycle again. 

No form of incarceration, temporary housing or "rehab" does currently does that. 

Everything I envision for treatment is based on the best compassion based neurological understanding of human behaviour and minds available. It is based on cutting edge understanding of neuroplasticity. 

There are, however, some past or present successful models to prove what different approaches can accomplish. They are as follows:

Soteria House:

Founded by Dr. Loren Mosher in the early 70s, Soteria House was a long term treatment facility for those diagnosed with schizophrenia. No medications, no doctors. NONE. And this was one of the most successful schizophrenia treatment programs in history. Patients lived there and interacted with each other and grad students (I believe ... not professionals at any rate) who received a bit of training. The patients could live in a low stress and embracing environment where they were free to talk out the workings of their inner minds in a non-judgmental environment. And patients by and large got better (which is defined by being able to return to work, raise a family and other basic societal norms). This is not the case with most people diagnosed with schizophrenia today. 

Hearing Voices Network:

I have personal experience working with a local chapter of the Hearing Voices Network. HVN provides a network of chapters that provide peer to peer counselling for those who, as their subheading reads, "hear voices, see visions or have other unusual perceptions" in a non-medical, non-judgmental setting. There is nothing, I can tell you, like peer to peer discussions about the mental phenomenon we experience for working through these issues and not be made to feel "wrong" or "broken" or "diseased" or otherwise judged. Unlike in talking with various "doctors" from the mental health care industry (psychiatrists, psychologists, medical doctors, and others), you talk with people who actually know what it feels like and who take a non-diseased approach to unusual mind phenomenon. My facility would provide a similar atmosphere and approach.  

Delancey Street Foundation:

Founded by Mimi Silbert in the 70s, Delancey Street Foundation has been doing the impossible for thousands of people for four decades. It takes the worst dregs of society - people labeled by "the establishment" as psychopaths, sociopaths and hopeless career criminals - and makes functioning human beings out of them that return to society. We're talking career prostitute drug addicts, pimps, gang members and all manner of "human garbage" that society seeks to lock away for ever then completely rehabilitating them and re-integrating them into society. Her success rate is vastly, vastly superior to the prison system. And get this - she does it alone. No staff, no doctors, no guards, no warden, no bars, no cells - nothing. She stands maybe 5' 1" and she handles about 1,500 of these career "scumbags" at a time by herself. No, I am not making this up. Mz Silbert and the Delancey Street Foundation is easily one of the most inspiring examples of what's possible for human recovery you could possibly find. 


Dr Dean Ornish's program:

Dr. Ornish also does the impossible - he turns around heart disease among those for whom triple or quadruple bypass surgery is the only option for living. Other than himself, there are no doctors, no hospital, no drugs, no surgery - nothing. It's all diet, meditation, yoga and a few other simple lifestyle changes. 

There are a few things that all of these have in common. One is that they are amazing examples of and inspiration for what is possible in human change and recovery. Two is that they are all long term residential facilities or programs. People stay in them for long periods under guided care. Ornish's is the shortest - about six weeks if memory serves - but it has long term follow up. Silbert's is the longest; a minimum of two years. The common theme is that the patients are in a structured environment tailored to their needs. I'll return to this in a moment. First I have to introduce:

Neuroplasticity: 

The brain is not set. It can and will change itself. It will rewire around horrifically damaged areas (like in stroke victims) or in the cases of blindness, it'll "remap" and restructure areas to boost other brain functions to compensate. It'll do this naturally on its own but that does not always lead to the desired results. It works best in structured environments (do you see where I'm going with this?). Neuroplasticity is a sexy popular term that gets thrown around a lot now. But the rub is that it needs structure and repetition - neurons that fire together wire together is how it essentially works. And it needs that "fire together" to happen repeatedly and in close time proximity, two things for which a structured environment and program work best. Hence the above three facilities. Silbert doesn't know this, but her program produces massive plastic change in the brains of her wards - that's how they change from sociopathic criminals into empathetic mainstream citizens. 

Edward Taub of the Edward Taub Clinic pioneered a unique therapy for stroke victims based on the principles of neuroplasticity and this too, I believe, serves as a good model. Again, the patients stay in the facility for extended periods receiving much personal help and encouragement. 

Now, my own thoughts. 

For people who end up trapped in these cycles, the only course of hope is to move forward. At the heart of every living soul is the desire to move forward. But here's the rock and hard place catch-22: A) they cannot do it alone, B) their very brain conditions rob them of the mental faculties to move forward, C) "traditional" methods of "dealing" with these people have proven over time not to work, D) the oppressive forces of societal stigma. In order to move forward, they need to be able to work and take care of themselves. Living normally like this is what true recovery is but they can't take care of themselves or work due to their mental conditions and society's view of them (which is not dissimilar to how society views the career criminals that Silbert turns around and enters into society) so they're stuck. 

The only way these people can truly be helped is in a long term facility that A) heals their minds, brains and souls and B) teaches them job and life skills that will help them return to functioning within society. I am not aware of any facility like this. Psychiatric wards certainly don't do this (ask anyone with one of the illnesses I listed who has spent time in one). Public mental health programs try to help with job skills but don't provide long term living and treatment facilities. It's a real crack in the system. When you hear of people "falling through the cracks of the system", this is the massive chasm into which they fall. 

The facility the Taming the Polar Bears Foundation envisions would be the net at the bottom of that chasm. 

In the facility we envision people would get a highly specialized program designed to heal their minds through neuroplasticity, would have a safe, peer supported environment in which to recover from the rigors of life in a society that has rejected them and heal their ravaged souls, and they'd learn job skills that would help them build dignity and esteem and get truly back on their feet again. The program would involve specialized forms of yoga and meditation specifically designed to "build up" the brain regions that are misfunctioning or underfunctioning or, in the case of the ever overactive amygdala in the majority of people with difficult cases of mental illness, calm down brain regions. Jeffery M. Schwartz deals with OCD and other disorders very much in this way, using no medications. There would be much peer to peer group work and individualized therapy. 

The Delancey Street Foundation provides the financial model; aside from doing all this remarkable work by herself, Silbert's program is - get this - completely self funding. She gets no government grants, no private grants or funding - nothing. The program entirely pays for itself (which is why it works). 

The present dominant paradigm of mental health care as run by the alliance between the psychiatric and pharmaceutical industries are not making mental health problems better. Statistics bear out that things are instead getting far worse (and all predictions are for that trend to continue). It is time for widespread alternatives to psychiatric hospitals and forced drug therapy. My vision is an attempt to give an idea of what one alternative might look like. 

Additional notes added June, 2014

A great deal of the daily activities of the program I envision to help heal these people minds and to help their ravaged cells in their brains and bodies recover would revolve around the following:

• Music therapy. There's just an enormous amount of evidence pouring in from the fields of neuroscience that show the kinds of benefits for the brain that come from regular and carefully directed music therapy
• Dance therapy. Same benefits as music but with an additional physical component
• Art therapy. Like music and dance, it opens up and stimulates vast areas of the brain that can help facilitate emotional, spiritual and physical recovery 
• Yoga, meditation and qi-gong. All of these have been demonstrated for thousands of years (and now through more scientific research involving advanced brain scan techniques) to greatly ease and reverse the damage from chronic stress (which will be a major part of what all mental health patients will be battling) along with building healthy new attitudes and outlooks as well as establishing essential daily physical exercise routines
• Lifestyle management skills. This would involve specific meal preparation skills in which patients would learn nutritional therapy from shopping to meal preparation
• Cooking therapy would be part of the above. Learning the joys of preparing oneself nutritional, tasty and inexpensive meals. Proper diet is a huge issue and shortfall in many suffering long term mental health issues
• Peer to peer counseling and support based on understanding and compassion, rather than the stigmatizing judgment most people are subjected to

All of these daily activities and routines would be built on the foundation of rebuilding the esteem and souls that have been decimated by years of living with one's mind torn apart by inner turmoil, being rejected by society and kicked to the curb of life. 

It is simply not necessary for these lives to be wasted in this way. A great deal of recovery can be achieved and a return to productive society attained.

As of this writing in March 2018, many things have changed to  begin to start bringing this vision to fruition. 

I have partnered with someone who not only sees the need for such facilities the same as I do, but who has the business skills to create the model to make it happen. Not only that, but he is a long experienced and greatly skilled web builder. 

Taming the Polar Bears has been registered as a non-profit foundation able to take in donations for and do fund raising for establishing this much, much needed facility. Additionally, the Taming the Polar Bears blog will be given a new web home, one that we envision, and my partner has the ability to build, will in time become the best resource on the web for those in all kinds of mental health needs. There is much exciting news to come on this

The new web home is scheduled to go live April 1st, 2018.  

Bradley Esau

Mania and the Story of Icarus and Daedalus

This post is from a special request from a bipolar bud of mine who follows this blog. In a conversation with him the story of Icarus came up and I mentioned that I'd researched that story in relation to bipolar and found that there was indeed a link. He in turn mentioned that he'd greatly appreciate reading what I'd found in a Polar Bears blog post. So this is for him. Here's to you, bro. 

The following is an excerpt from my (unpublished) book manuscript.

Excerpt from Dancing in the Dark - Why?

March, 2013

The hallmark of true bipolar is mania – and let's try to strike from your mind all the descriptions you've ever read about bipolar, or if you are “bipolar”, your own concepts of your experiences – so let's try start with a clean slate. I think to understand anything, we have to drill down into what this poorly understood phenomenon is. Let's go back a few years and see what we can find pre-pharmacological era (IE: pre-drug tainted era and pre-run away diagnosis era (1)). Let's set aside all these unscientific observations of behaviours, the so called “symptoms” and get down to the bare bones of “mania”. If we can find that, perhaps we can solve some of the mystery of bipolar.

The earliest reference I could find of mania is in the story of Icarus. From Wikipedia, the story from Greek mythology: 

Daedalus (his father) fashioned two pairs of wings out of wax and feathers for himself and his son. Daedalus tried his wings first, but before taking off from the island, warned his son not to fly too close to the sun, nor too close to the sea, but to follow his path of flight. Overcome by the giddiness that flying lent him, Icarus soared through the sky curiously, but in the process he came too close to the sun, which melted the wax. Icarus kept flapping his wings but soon realized that he had no feathers left and that he was only flapping his bare arms, and so Icarus fell into the sea.

When I again started to try to figure out clearer what bipolar was all about and, more importantly how mania actually affected me personally, the story of Icarus for some reason leaped to mind. Well, that's not true, I know the reason. It came to me when I was writing The Roller Coaster chapter (2) and these flights of fantasy of mine followed by hard crashes reminded me suddenly of the story of Icarus and his flight too close to the sun (getting too high) and then crashing to earth (the inevitable emotional crash following mania). I then decided to look up the story, read the Wikipedia entry and bingo – this, under Interpretation:

Literary interpretation has found in the myth the structure and consequence of personal over-ambition. An Icarus-related study of the Daedalus myth was published by the French hellenist Françoise Frontisi-Ducroux. In psychology there have been synthetic studies of the Icarus complex with respect to the alleged relationship between fascination for fire,enuresis, high ambition, and ascensionism. In the psychiatric mind features of disease were perceived in the shape of the pendulous emotional ecstatic-high and depressive-low of bi-polar disorder. Henry Murray having proposed the term Icarus complex, apparently found symptoms particularly in mania where a person is fond of heights, fascinated by both fire and water,narcissistic and observed with fantastical or far-fetched-imaginary cognition.

So here we go, this is good stuff. Frontisi-Ducroux studied mythology and not modern psychiatry and his work was published in 1975 pre-dating all of today's nonsense notions of bipolar. Henry Alexander Murray (May 13, 1893 – June 23, 1988) was an American psychologist who taught for over 30 years at Harvard. He was Director of the Harvard Psychological Clinic in the School of Arts and Sciences after 1930. So again, a pre-modern era thinker and I think we can gain some insight from his interpretations of the legend of Icarus and the phenomenon of bipolar and mania that is not tainted by today's run amok notions.

First we see mention of over-ambition or high ambition. Yes, this fits well with the older concept I've had of mania and matches my own experiences from the 1991 to 1994 years when my "ambitions" included taking over the head of a large corporation, taking over as head coach of the Ottawa Senators NHL team, trying out for the BC Lions professional football team (at the ripe old age of 34 and with zero prior professional experience) and of trying out for the vacant lead singer spot of an internationally known rock group (along with a few other “up there” delusional ideas). Yes, I think these definitely qualify as “overly-ambitious”. We see mention too of the “pendulous emotional ecstatic-high and depressive-low” of bipolar disorder. Well, that describes my worst periods of rapid cycling to a 't'. 

Now as for fondness of heights, fascination with both fire and water, I can't say any of those fit me. (3) I can't recall any particular interest in any of those. I have though read of others with mania feeling like “superman” and wanting to explore heights (Icarus like) and that these literal ascensions to heights often lead to deaths from either believing they could fly and trying to or from accidental falls. Narcism and “fantastical or far-fetched imaginary cognition” again fits my model to a 't' though. I certainly fell in love with myself and my ideas, my fantastical “grandiose thoughts” and my thinking then was certainly far fetched imaginary cognition. My cognitive powers got way too carried away.

But let's examine this portrayal of mania more closely. Now in the story, Daedalus constructed two pairs of wings. Now this suggests that Daedalus wanted his son to fly higher, in other words was encouraging Icarus to have ambition. Now if we return again to The Roller Coaster and look at my how my concepts of ambition were influenced by the short story Jonathon Livingston Seagull, we can again see the metaphor of flight and “flying high” and that at that point of that chapter that I saw nothing wrong with this ambition. 

Is there anything wrong with ambition? No, this is what makes humans what they are. This is what leads to all discoveries. This is what put men on the moon. Ambition is one of the – back to the human brain for a moment – fundamental things that separate the human mind from the animal mind (or at least we've taken it far farther than animals can. We can see some signs of ambition in the animal world as well). 

But – but! - Daedalus also warned his son not to fly too high, not too close to the sun. In other words, not to get overly ambitious. Daedalus understood the dangers here (from his own previous experience?) And look at what the description says – Icarus got “giddy from flying too high” and that he “soared through the air curiously”, and got carried away and could not control his flight and he got too high, got “burned” by being too high and thus crashed back to to the sea where he drowned (the metaphor here for depression... how we seem to “drown” in the sea of depression). So is “mania” just a form of ambition, of ambition being carried away by giddiness, by, in other words, over excitement? Of “soaring through the air too curiously”? This is an extremely important part of our examination here and we're going to drill down into this with as much detail as I can muster.

Over excitement, giddiness, again is as age old a normal behaviour as mankind. Nothing new under the sun here. So is “mania” excitement and giddiness run amok and carried to extremes? Again, this could describe many, many people. Where is the line between “mania” and excitement driven passion? Once again, and I'll just keep hammering this point home, are we looking at normal human behaviour and not a pathology of an “illness”?

But let's carry on. My “why?” is not done with this yet. So here we go, we have this basic concept of excitement and giddiness leading to getting “too high”. Now, again, is this a bad thing? I think we here have to explore the part of mania that has been buried in the mad modern rush to medicalize it and drug people into a coma to “control” it. Here we explore the up side of “mania”.

Mania has long been linked to creativity and, as we've seen, ambition. A look at famous figures thought to be “bipolar” (or manic depressive) is impressive. Since creativity and ambition are part of the mix of what's thought to be mania, this naturally leads to some famous people with big accomplishments. But again, in my drive for pure data, we have to go back to pre-pharmacological revolution figures. I can't trust any diagnosis or manifestation of mania (and hence bipolar) in the drug era (50's onward). In fact, it's hard to trust any of them because “self-medication” has always been a problem associated with bipolar like symptoms. This puts a fly in my ointment of seeking purely raw data (IE: unmedicated subjects) so I'm in a bit of a dilemma here. 

Ernest Hemingway, for example, I see is on my list of “bipolar” people. We all know how creative Hemingway was and also we can see a very adventurous life – two things that I certainly can attest for signs of possible mania in a person – but he was also a famously ferocious drinker and alcohol is rather notorious for mood alterations in people. Many people, it has long been observed, lose their inhibitions when high on alcohol and do stupid things – exactly as we see in accusations of “manic” behaviour. Alcohol can also deepen depression, the other side of mania. So it is impossible to know with ol' Ernest, outside of pure speculation, whether the metaphorical chicken or the egg came first here – did alcohol use trigger mania and/or depression, or did he drink to control the moods? Impossible to know. And once we introduce any foreign substances to the brain, we know that all bets are off as we saw in our examination of psychiatric and so called recreational drugs back in Analysis of Prescription. (4) It is just, therefore, too hard to know where the lines of the mental phenomenon of manic depression and signs of alcoholism are, the lines become too blurred. So let's move on. 

End of Excerpt

I then went on to explore the lives of several famous people from the past (including Isaac Newton) but that gets too long to include here. Perhaps another time. 

(1) There is a lot of back story here as I wrote several massively long chapters tearing down modern psychiatry's notions of "mental illnesses". These were not my own creations but instead sought to consolidate enormous amounts of academic literature and the works of science research writer Robert Whitaker. It was all, in other words, very well founded evidence. 

Whitaker's Anatomy of an Epidemic is absolutely must reading. In the chapter Bipolar Boom he very firmly establishes that many, many cases of "bipolar" that he investigated (and he is a Pulitzer Prize nominated and highly respected science investigator and writer) were either connected to recreational or psychiatric drug use (IE: the "bipolar" cleared up when the drug use stopped) and he presents very strong medical evidence for this and some case studies. He also very firmly establishes the massive "catch basin" for bipolar diagnosis that the pharmacological/psychiatric alliance established in order to write as many life long prescriptions as possible. His work is extremely well researched and scientifically established.

(2) The Roller Coaster is a chapter in my book in which I describe a period of some particularly insidious rapid cycling that lasted roughly 1992-ish to the fall of '94. If you are bipolar and have never experienced true rapid cycling, consider yourself extremely lucky. I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy. 

(3) This is not exactly true. Later, when I ruminated on my various periods of high suicidality in my life, there were many times I was incredibly - and nearly uncontrollably - drawn to water. These were bizarre, almost hallucinogenic or mildly psychotic experiences (hearing voices, commands) that implored me to come into the water and go under to join this voice calling to me. It was like it was asking me to join an underwater world. I am quite convinced that many people who commit suicide by drowning (something very, very hard to do due to very powerful instinctive reflex actions, by the way) by succumbing to voices and commands very much like I experienced. 

(4) Anatomy of a Prescription was a long chapter in my book manuscript on the science, supposed pathways of efficacy and function, and side effects and brain damage of psychiatric medications. Again, these were NOT my findings, but merely a collection and summary of related academic data and research by psychiatrists dedicated to non-pharmacological methods of mental illness treatment. It was all very well supported by long term empirical research analysis and medical research data. 

Final note: this portion of my manuscript was written when I was desperately trying to believe that bipolar was not as serious of a mental health condition as psychiatry believed and presents to the public and I was exploring all aspects and angles of several major mental health disorders. I was also desperately trying to believe that mania was not "bad" (and I was very manic at the time of this writing). Nonetheless, I still strongly support all the views I put forward in this chapter of my book manuscript. I still maintain that much of what is understood about "bipolar" is nonsense put forward by the pharmacological/psychiatric alliance almost purely in the interests of profit, a point I'll further establish another time.

Whether mania is "bad" or not will have to wait for a future blog post. (Hint: in true bipolar disorder it probably is).