What's with all these bi-polar people?

[ryanman]

[Gandalf]

There is a natural self. It is the me that is typing these thoughts and the me who reads what I read and the me who plans my lessons etc. This is what makes me an individual. I am an individual who is capable of making conscious decisions quite distinct from others. It is finite and limited, but while it lasts it is what I am.

I just don't understand how we can say that a gloomy or depressed disposition is not natural. To the person predisposed to that condition surely that is a normal state of affairs? That is what they have been born and raised with and that is what they must work through. If they cannot procreate then that is their hard luck. They should at least have pretended to be cheerful on a date.

As one who has no particular desire to pass on genes to any other poor little chap, I don't really have too many opinions regarding the need to create offspring. I don't really see the need for that and probably think more like the resourceful panda than a rabbit. I have probably learned from my parents in that regard...to resist and reject it all.

I just think a natural condition is the way that one was intended to be so why interfere with that process? If they can't pass on their genes? Well, who cares? Maybe it's better for the world that more depressed people don't get pregnant as the world is getting rather full as it is.

How so? You don't have a soul right? The thinking processes are just a part of your physical brain, so if somebody has a different chemical balance they would think differently and effectively be somebody else.

You are merely a chemical receptor and responder with a big haddrive of memories of past experiences.

You are not you, it's just part of your brain that has memories of past events stored and the current receptors in your brain give meaning to that in order to learn from past events which gives you the illusion of having a personality thought. But you don't really, how could you? The atoms andmolecues that made up your body 10 years ago have virtually all died and been replaced now. You are no longer who you were 10 years ago, your brain merely has stored that organisms past experiences to learn from and to be able to interact within the world today.

Stop talking about self, its a religious concept, not a scientific one. You are a very confused man...

You are indeed trying to draw me in. The natural self is who I am. I am the product of human beings with minds of their own who decided to do whatever they did. If I am not natural then I don't know what is. It is also easily explainable through science.

The self is a scientific concept too Bilbo. It is individuals who create the science by which we make sense of this world.

Religion itself was created by man and not god. The self is a very human and in turn scientific concept. I see no real difficulty with that.

That's my last post on that topic. Not because you have won, but because people seem to think that I am ignorant on this topic and I am not so sure that I am. I want to discuss this for a bit.

[Youngblood]

Having bipolar disorder is akin to having diabetes or cancer, or any one of a number of human ailments. One that can often be treated and controlled. It should not be understood any differently. Yet there are terrible stigmas, and mainly bred by ignorance. No one will ever condemn a cancer patient for being sick. They didn't choose to be, right? Same goes for diabetes. You get sick, there are treatments, sometimes they work, other times they don't.

Let's look at cancer. There are different types of treatment to choose from, and no one will look at that person as some dreg of society if they choose something different then the norm. Just a person faced with the most difficult of situations. And whatever call they do make, you can be sure that call will affect the lives of those around them. This is the nature of bipolar disorder. But yet, people really view them as weak or flawed, almost no matter the outcome. It's sad really.

The problem with the treatment of mental illness is, and particularly bipolar, the side affects of the treatment make it difficult for many of the people taking the drugs to stay on them. Imagine you are an artist or scientist, and you have a wall of inspiration in front of you draw from. That at times there is a portal there, that opens up and burns bright giving you energy, inspiration, understanding of the world around you, heightened senses of the world and feelings so powerful they are hard to rationalize not experiencing them. w/e the cost.

For example, if you were say a God believing person, and you truly believed you were close to touching the face of God and understanding everything only ever speculated on, proving his existance to humanity for once and all...could you really choose not to? If you were an atheist with an interest in science and space, and felt you were about to unravel the universes deepest secrets could you really choose not to, because of some spinoff effects of outcome, or causality to others? THE MOTHERFUCKING SECRETS OF THE UNIVERSE FOR ONCE AND FOR ALL!! When you get to those points the costs become irrelevant. And these are the types of things that mania and delusion bring on. Extremely powerful feelings, things most of us will never know.

And then there is the cost. When the portal closes, when that burning bright light begins to fade, to close and becomes but a pinhole, a trickle of it's former all knowing all being self, through medication or simple chemical changes in the brain. And all that is left is the reality it was all but a dream. It wasn't real. And the cost is all that is left. That terrible cost, that is usually to those around you.

You've just went from master of your known universe, to the villain of your reality. That's a big and bitter pill to swallow.

And why so many of them will not swallow their pills for long.

And they didn't ask for it. To have to make these choices. Fate just jumped in and said YOU, this is your existance. No different most often then the cancer patient, the person with diabetes.

[Kev]

But what is your self that you are talking about?

You are in your belief entirely physical. There is no spiritual or soul part of you.

You have a physical place in your brain that stores memories, a physical place that processes and regulates things such as movement, hunger, thirst levels, fear, sexual excitement etc.

If the parts that controlled these parts of you were removed you would no longer have thought or personality, as they don't exist independently of the brain according to your world view.

Furthermore as all the cells in your body are constantly being replaced your physical body is comprised of totally different molecues than it was several years ago.

Think an axe when someone replaces the head, then years later replaces the handle. It's not the same axe any more it's physically different.

You are an entirely physical organism too. All the cells in your body have been changed and replaced many times. How can you possibly be the same person unless you have a spirit or soul independent of your physical form?

So confused...

[Gandalf]

I do have some experience with depression and that is my mother. She is a pretty hardcore depressive and has been so for as long as I can remember. I guess being married to my Dad and then having to raise me and my sister after he jumped ship was not easy. Actually, being married to my Dad was probably a bit more difficult than raising me. She has been on all kinds of anti-depressants all these years and it is something I never really understood. I guess my rejection of all things parental has also led me to rejecting that kind of thing too.

I am not ignorant of mental health, but do have a strong sense of resistance. Maybe it's a denial of the unfortunate aspects that the gene pool has passed on.

[Kev]

I do have some experience with depression and that is my mother. She is a pretty hardcore depressive and has been so for as long as I can remember. I guess being married to my Dad and then having to raise me and my sister after he jumped ship was not easy. Actually, being married to my Dad was probably a bit more difficult than raising me. She has been on all kinds of anti-depressants all these years and it is something I never really understood. I guess my rejection of all things parental has also led me to rejecting that kind of thing too.

I am not ignorant of mental health, but do have a strong sense of resistance. Maybe it's a denial of the unfortunate aspects that the gene pool has passed on.

Anybody want to take a sig bet that Miles' next thread will be about his visit to the doctor and his Prozac prescription

[Gandalf]

But what is your self that you are talking about?

You are in your belief entirely physical. There is no spiritual or soul part of you.

You have a physical place in your brain that stores memories, a physical place that processes and regulates things such as movement, hunger, thirst levels, fear, sexual excitement etc.

If the parts that controlled these parts of you were removed you would no longer have thought or personality, as they don't exist independently of the brain according to your world view.

Furthermore as all the cells in your body are constantly being replaced your physical body is comprised of totally different molecues than it was several years ago.

Think an axe when someone replaces the head, then years later replaces the handle. It's not the same axe any more it's physically different.

You are an entirely physical organism too. All the cells in your body have been changed and replaced many times. How can you possibly be the same person unless you have a spirit or soul independent of your physical form?

So confused...

I don't know fully what I am, but I do know that I seem to be quite distinct from many others. I am also quite similar to many more. You are what you are, how can you be anything else?

You seem to be having issues with my definition of soul. Must soul be only a religious term? I don't think so. I think of soul as a human with those various facets that you yourself describe. But I do think intellectualism is a part of the brain that plays more of a role within some than others. Sure, the cells are continually fading and that what I think is me is actually long dead. But it is reproduced in memory and there is physical documentation of what I once was.

Within this body and via the food and liquids I digest this physical form is somehow perpertuated and that is all I know. I also know that one day I shall die and that it really will disintegrate for good. I have no issues with that.

Sure, you want people to change their moods with drugs, then fair enough. I don't mind all that much. But it is unnatural.

The mind should be able to adapt on it's own and it usually can. If it can't then I question the purpose of it continuing.

[Gandalf]

I do have some experience with depression and that is my mother. She is a pretty hardcore depressive and has been so for as long as I can remember. I guess being married to my Dad and then having to raise me and my sister after he jumped ship was not easy. Actually, being married to my Dad was probably a bit more difficult than raising me. She has been on all kinds of anti-depressants all these years and it is something I never really understood. I guess my rejection of all things parental has also led me to rejecting that kind of thing too.

I am not ignorant of mental health, but do have a strong sense of resistance. Maybe it's a denial of the unfortunate aspects that the gene pool has passed on.

Anybody want to take a sig bet that Miles' next thread will be about his visit to the doctor and his Prozac prescription

No, it will never happen.

I shall always resist. I suppose my recent alcohol rejection is on much the same lines. My grandfather drank too much as did my father and over the years I guess I have too. Morally I have far more in common with good old grandad, but in terms of the binge drinking it's much the same.

Another time to dig in and shout resist. We live and die by the choices that we make and it is a short lifetime. But I think it important that you stand on your own two feet or at least die trying. Maybe it is in such moments that I do actually reject science.

[Gandalf]

Well, that last sentence doesn't make any sense and that is because I was rash with the edit. Obviously I do not reject science.

[Conrad]

When I was in my early 20's and very immature my fiance at the time suffered from depression, so much so she tried to take her own life at one point. At the time I just didn't understand the whole depression thing as there was nothing for her to be depressed about. My advice of 'You just need to snap out of it' or 'FFS just cheer up' certainly didn't help.

Coincidently at the same time a work colleague who I was very good friends with suffered from depression and anxiety attacks as a result of losing her brother in a car accident a few years previously. Again, my similar offerings of advice were no help at all. At the time I just couldn't comprehend what it must be like for them to have something like that. Or more to the point, I plain just didn't believe any of it - "it's all in their head" I wrongly thought. I was 100% positive it could never happen to me as I wasn't 'built' that way...

Fast forward a few years and I had a very messy breakup with a new girlfriend who'd been fuckin somebody behind my back. Unless you have actually experienced something like this yourself it's very hard to explain the pain and hurt you feel. I was basically a wreck and I'm not ashamed to admit it. Unfortunately for me the pain I felt and my obssesing over what she'd done went on for the best part of year. It was during this time when I was at my lowest that I began to understand in part what my fiance and friend had been through.

I don't think I was ever actually depressed even though I thought I was at the time. But after the way I felt I'd never now judge somebody who suffers with depression or anxiety etc in the same ignorant way I did when I was younger. I also realised that no matter how confident you are that 'something like that couldn't affect me', you never know how you'd respond mentally to a tragic event like losing a loved one like my friend did...

[CFH]

Ok, seriously Bilbo/Miles, it's getting damn tiring of you guys trying to turn every thread into a debate about your respective beliefs regarding God. This is actually a pretty interesting topic & it doesn't need to be about Miles lack of belief in God rather his lack of understanding for people with mental illness. So what if there are some contradictions in it, we're all contradictory in our beliefs.

This x1000. It's seriously fucking annoying, so much so that I almost always automatically stop posting in any thread that you guys turn into a philosophical wack-off contest.

[Gandalf]

I am clearly in the minority in terms of expressing my own views in this thread and I accept that. I have tried to play the devils advocate, but know that when I do that the argument is usually quite close to home. Either way, people with mental difficulties have a hard life and I shouldn't make it harder.

[Kev]

Ok, seriously Bilbo/Miles, it's getting damn tiring of you guys trying to turn every thread into a debate about your respective beliefs regarding God. This is actually a pretty interesting topic & it doesn't need to be about Miles lack of belief in God rather his lack of understanding for people with mental illness. So what if there are some contradictions in it, we're all contradictory in our beliefs.

This x1000. It's seriously fucking annoying, so much so that I almost always automatically stop posting in any thread that you guys turn into a philosophical wack-off contest.

Such intolerance, hostility and anger issues.

To be honest I only really post nowadays to talk to Miles. Post's I'm not interested in I just skip past and ignore.

There are many threads I don't even enter as the subject/poster don't interest me. I don't go in to complain though, that would just be rude.

[El Kabong]

Well, that last sentence doesn't make any sense and that is because I was rash with the edit. Obviously I do not reject science.

Then why do you reject psychology and more importantly psychiatry? That's science, the drugs they perscribe DO have an impact, they do treat real symptoms and they do provide help.

I find that most people who reject those sciences are either #1 in denial #2 don't fully understand them or #3 they are scared of them.....which are you miles?


I grew up never believing in all that stuff either, but I've seen it in action, I've had life experience, and although I am 100% on board with Personal Responsibility and not blaming problems on a mental disorder or chemical imbalance or whatever sometimes you can't help but explain/treat/handle things through those fields of science.

[ryanman]

Ok, seriously Bilbo/Miles, it's getting damn tiring of you guys trying to turn every thread into a debate about your respective beliefs regarding God. This is actually a pretty interesting topic & it doesn't need to be about Miles lack of belief in God rather his lack of understanding for people with mental illness. So what if there are some contradictions in it, we're all contradictory in our beliefs.

This x1000. It's seriously fucking annoying, so much so that I almost always automatically stop posting in any thread that you guys turn into a philosophical wack-off contest.

Such intolerance, hostility and anger issues.

To be honest I only really post nowadays to talk to Miles. Post's I'm not interested in I just skip past and ignore.

There are many threads I don't even enter as the subject/poster don't interest me. I don't go in to complain though, that would just be rude.

Yeah but they came into a thread that was seemingly about Bi-Polar disorder. Not religion. I personally don't mind but can see their point.