Maybe it will feel better in the morning. I don't know about that but I do know that I won't make the decision to give in. Some people think that this makes me weird but I've drawn a lot of inspiration from Stephen R. Donaldson's work with the Covenant books being the most inspiring of all. I tell myself that I can be proud of myself as long as I don't give in to despair and destroy what I love out of the misguided belief that it would be for the best. No suicide even if I think it would help Melissa because it wouldn't work out that way and I would remove all of my potential for doing some good at the same time. In the books, Donaldson refers to this as desecration with suicide being self desecration which is the worst.
The problem (heh...one problem) is that there are many other things I could be doing wrong by sabotaging myself. Where is the line separating an honest failure to apply resources properly from failing to try? When I look at others in similar situations, I see only people who couldn't do it. They tried to make their move and failed. There's nothing wrong with that. In my case, I fall apart trying to talk about important business on the phone. Melissa does much better but her scheduling calendar has two categoriesL work and sleep. She hasn't had time to help so the problem sits and festers.
Every once in a while, there's a bit of bad news that probably has nothing to do with me. There's no direct connection anyway so that lacking allows the news to sneak up on me. This time, it was a mortality statistic involving white middle aged men. While everyone else is living longer, men in a cohort with a range of 44 to whatever number of years old are dying younger. Let's just pretend that you care and asked about the link to me. Well, the conclusion of this study is these men are dying from pain medication. The news reports went on to cite certain prescriptions that I know are less dangerous than the ones I'm on.
As the usually very intelligent host listed statistics, I tried to place them in context and failed horribly to comfort myself. I take my medication according to the prescriptions. That gives me a considerable amount of protection, of course, so I started to feel better about risky medication. I had one of my little ten second nightmares featuring my doctors taking me off my main pain medication. The doctor who owns the practice offered me a dream apology in that authoritative but not accusatory tone that has gotten us through a crisis oe or a dispute that turned out to be a misunderstanding.
The apology was over having to take me off all my effective pain meds and putting me back on over the counter meds. He explained that it was about "the government" but I understood the dream shorthand. Kids who were trying to get high on their parents' medication were dying. Since their parents refused to be responsible and lock away their meds, I had to give up mine. I was too horrified to react in that dream paralysis. My ultimate fear isn't dying from some unlikely overdose. I fear being left to die very slowly in agony over the course of years. I considered reaching out to a smuggler but the entire station was under a medical embargo. (Somehow, the dream relocated me to "Babylon 5" but I'm just realizing that 12 hours later.) I was left with no alternatives since I was being punished for someone else's crime.
Now, as a liberal Democrat, I am very quick to embrace complexity. People are dying and the fact that many of them were dying from behaving foolishly doesn't matter to me. Well, I suppose it matters some but not as much as it does with others. My difficulty trusting myself has led me to a lot of questions starting with "What if I am an addict and don't know it..." but I've gotten better about suppressing that fear these days. My favorite shrink trusts me as do my medical doctors. Try to protect the sick with addiction folks along with the just plain foolish enough to try getting high once or twice but not at the expense of my suffering.
Governor Christie had some sort of small campaign event about drug addiction within the past few days where he said some sensible things. When a guy like that starts talking sense, you know he's up to something. I don't mean anything illegal or even dishonest per se. It might even make sense in his head but I can all but guarantee you that alternatives to prison for drug offenders will turn into a ban on another whole class of useful medications that can be misused. When that happens, despair will have me by the throat instead of the ankle.
Am I being hypocritical with regard to this versus my positions concerning gun control? That started off as a tough one but I came to the fundamental flaw in the hypocrisy argument. Narcotic medication is not designed to kill people whereas assault rifles and handguns are designed with lethal force against other humans as their primary function. That gives me a leg to stand on in any case.
My arguments may be decent but the outlook for this nation isn't. The Republicans have started up on "entitlement reform" again which is code for hurting those of us who need Social Security or Social Security Disability for most or all of our income. The last trick involved an attempt to combine the two major Social Security programs so that the disabled and the elderly would have to fight it out over the same dollars. This is a tricky little move because it takes advantage of voting patterns and human nature.
Do I believe that the elderly are out to starve the disabled? That's a complicated question because there's more to it than meets the eye. I do not believe that any single senior citizen would take one dollar away from me. Generally, I believe that individuals are honest but there will be plenty of dog whistles and lines between the lines. Think of how dishonest Social Security related ads are already. Every five minutes or so, some Republican politician will claim that Social Security is going to be insolvent because more money will be coming out of the system than going in for a certain amount of time. Back in the early 80s, payroll taxes were increased to help finance the Reagan tax cuts for the rich. In return, those extra payroll taxes represented a guarantee in the law stating that full benefits would be paid out even at the cost of raising income taxes. Since then, we've been bombarded with nonsense about how the Treasury has mere IOUs and scraps of paper to cover the Baby Boomers. No, we have the full faith and credit of the United States government backing those notes.
Now, I can only imagine what the Sunday shows and certain "news" channels will tell us. I can just see the sweet old actors telling you to call Congress to protect your Social Security. We can expect instances of "protect your Social Security by betting on the stock market" to return. Since elderly voters show up in greater numbers on Election Day than disabled people, our representatives will favor the elderly over the disabled in the zero sum game they will have rigged.
Yes, I saw a feature on increased mortality for middle aged white men that blamed narcotic medication but then I saw another that suggested the cause and effect was backwards in the initial report. The increase in white male mortality happened to follow shortly after the economic collapse under Bush. The increase in mortality followed the group that lost the most jobs and the most wealth: non-college educated white men. (Minorities and women suffered a lot as well but the white men had the furthest to fall.) The deaths are just as attributable to alcohol overdoses and obvious suicides as to Chris Christie's formerly rich lawyer friend hurting his back while living the ideal life and then losing it all due to getting addicted while recovering from what might have only seemed like a lot of pain to someone who doesn't experience it every day.
I didn't feel better in the morning. If the anti-medication crowd gets its way, it will be much more than a ten second nightmare for me.
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