Debilitating symptoms of Tourette Syndrome may also fuel creative energy

...crows Times Online. It be cool, but bemusing 'tis as time(s) marches (merches?) on there is less and less of the known world not colonised by mental illness. Dysfunction, disorder, whatever.

This really makes me laugh: "Recent speculation has focused on Mozart as a possible Tourette sufferer, based mainly on scatalogical references in letters and music. However, some experts suggest it may have been more the exuberance of youth than a clinical condition." Yeah, and the funny thing is(n't) that at the moment overly exuberant youth are often being diagnosed and medicated for being overly exuberant.

Bipolar Expeditions: "Bipolarity is the universal natural definition, dominating all the physical evolvements..."

North Pole, South Pole, Bi Pole.

...2 Bipolarity is the universal natural definition, dominating all the physical evolvements
Everything is bipolar, and owing to the interaction of the bipolarity contradiction, creates the life-likeness of existing and evolving motion.
From quantum wave-particle duality, quantum transition absorbed energy and delivered energy, particle and antiparticle, real particle and virtual particle, anion and cationic, matter and antimatter, matter and dark matter, positive energy and negative energy, action and reaction, attraction and repellence, accumulation and dissipation, division and synthesis, fission and fusion, chaos and harmony, order and disorder, dark and light, red shift and blue shift, expansion and collapse ,etc, and even female and male of living nature, chromosome X and Y, etc, which including the physical relationship of bipolarity existing and evolving motion, we should realize: no matter for microcosmic quantum field or macrocosmic large-scale structure, universe has defined the universal law and dialectical principle of physical existing and evolving motion bipolarity.
Finding out the sources, quark is the least unite declassified by humankind so far. Quark has six types, formed to three pairs mutually: the first pair is “up” quark and “down” quark (their lepton families corresponding objects are electron and neutrino), the second pair is strange quark and charm quark (their lepton families corresponding objects are µ meson and neutrino), and the heaviest pair is top quark and bottle quark (their lepton families corresponding objects are τ particle and neutrino). The quark and antiquark can be combined by pair to so-called meson format. The quark defines bipolarity corresponding.
Two elementary particle families composing the whole atom substance are quark and lepton, bipolarity corresponding combination of quark families and lepton families define elementary particle.
The least part of element, namely the unit taking part in chemical reaction－atom, is constituted by a tiny positive nuclear and a group of negative electrons surrounding. Positive electricity and negative electricity’s bipolarity define the atom.

Polar molecule and nonpolar molecule’s bipolarity constitute molecule’s electric structure.

The elementary particle deduces substance, energy and fundamental force of the universe with wave-particle duality bipolar attribute, living bipolarity dialectical motion of microcosmic quantum field and macrocosmic large-scale structure.
With the explorations of several generation physicists, many bipolar relationships of the elementary particle, substance, energy and force have been discovered and concluded. We can present the bipolar relationship figure as follows:



Bipolarity is the universal natural definition, dominating all the physical evolvement, the whole of universe is the construction of opposite and unity of elementary particle bipole. All the physical bipolar relationship can be summarized as positive pole and negative pole, all the evolvement motion have the “pole change” tendency and direct or inverse relationship, which may extend toward positive polar dimension or negative polar dimension; If the polar boundary (pole change key point) is exceeded during bipolarity approaching process (“approaching process”—developing along the direction of one dimension. Positive pole approaching process is developing along the positive pole dimension; negative pole approaching process is developing along the negative pole dimension), the poles changing to each other will occur, the positive pole changing to negative pole or negative pole changing to positive pole (Positive poles are such as: positive, Yang, advance, rising, light, solid, combining, etc; negative poles are such as: negative/minus, Yin, back, falling, dark, void, separating, etc.). All the existing and evolvement motion keep to the universal law and dialectical principle of direct or inverse development of the unity of opposites of contradiction.

On Being a "Survivor"

While I was swimming this morning - exercise=recovery yada yada - I reflected upon the term "survivor". Before its current vogue in a different context I associated this word, as a child of post-Holocaust Jews - with hobbling out of Dachau alive, or being rescued from some Japanese POW camp with bamboo still growing under my fingernails or, say, beating cancer.

Now, of course, there are new kinds of survivors. You can be a survivor of almost anything. For example, I am a survivor of 25 years of Eastenders ;) The word does have new meanings and associations and they're not all devalued. What caught my handsome reflection, though? I thought: Many survive many things that cause, induce or increase their mental illness. But as far as I know all I have survived is myself. I am at the centre of my psychodrama. Nobody, as far as I know - and Woody Allenesque upbringing notwithstanding - has done much of importance to me...except me.

Kerry is bipolar. She believed she was an alien. Kerry, dear, if you are bipolar then you are an alien! Do you have any idea how many people that are "mentally ill" believe at some point that they are aliens? Think about it. Who wants to come from this planet anyways???

Kerry Katona's alien belief
Wednesday, 29 April 2009
Kerry Katona revealed she once believed she was an alien during her battle with mental illness.
The reality TV star spoke frankly about her bipolar disorder and struggle with fame as she addressed the Oxford Union yesterday (28.04.09).
Britain's The Sun newspaper reports she said: "I sat on the bed and said, 'Mark, I'm an alien' - and I really thought I was an alien.
"I didn't brush my teeth for a week. It's part of my personality."
Former Atomic Kitten star Kerry was a guest speaker at the debating society of the prestigious Oxford University. She spoke with students in a question and answer format for an hour and said there were no topics which were off limit.
Kerry was accompanied by her husband, Mark Croft, at the event - which was filmed by MTV for a forthcoming reality TV series.
Student Anshul Bakhda, 19, told Sky news afterward: "I thought she was really good. She was very frank and open.
"It was a really refreshing question and answer session. She talked about her history with mental illness, her mum, and the impact of the media on her family."

"I Yam Whad I Yam": Pop-I

Not so long ago someone was saying something to me that involved sources in living for regret-shame-deceit and all that bundle of scum. I snapped, "You have to live!" Look, I've done my share of things I'm not proud of but I'm not 'shamed of them. What might have hurt my kids I care about, and as for the rest it's like combat, we're all on the field, there will be casualties, no free lunches abound.

Recovery, to some extent - and maybe a great extent - is about acceptance and self-acceptance. But I say, it's about defiance, too. In order to have meaning recovery has to include a degree of "I-don't-give-a-****(of yer choice)". It's gotta have guts. Apologies are nice, you should say your sorries and then move on. My attitude is that you have zero obligation to spend your recovery feeling sorry for the people you hurt. They'll take every opportunity, given a chance, to remind you of what a monster you were (and still are, if they can fit that in). Don't spend the life you have saved killing it with undue kindness. Recover, but for life, not some lukewarming of the hearts of the hard-done-by.

Explorer

• Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear. - Ambrose Redmoon

• Fall seven times, stand up eight. - Japanese proverb

There is talk of replacing the word “recovery”. It isn’t exact, descriptive or adequate. It misses. I don’t mind it but I don’t like it. I was reading – a blog, what else? – and it hit-not-missed-me: explorer. That’s what I am, an explorer. Sure, we’ve heard about explorers in consciousness, in mind, innerly, inside-beyond, mental. Trips. It grabbed me: explorer. I’m looking for something I can’t lose. I almost lost it. I’m snow blinded and underfed. I’m supposed to be finding out but I am actually losing in. I didn’t lose “it”. I lost myself. I was lost, now I am finding. No records of value are kept. I have no map that isn’t burning. I’m not a suitcase, I never packed. I’m not alone, the terminal is full, the lines follow the horizon at right angles. I’m going in corners. Instead of limping around the point, let’s cut it all loose. I am an explorer, a random discoverer, and I am lost and wish to remain so.

I reject that in this world madness is a distinct or important reality. Interestingly some of the greatest criminals in history were not insane and nor were the minority that permitted them with their apathy to let the crimes be perpetrated at length. It takes a madman to kill one man and a sane man to kill one hundred thousand. I reject the description of a Hitler as “insane”: he was at the apex of sanity. He saw clearly that the collective conscience is scarred with its own cruelties, and that it can be used. The insane are at the edges. Like hungry dogs existing on the scraps of the sane, but important for their explorations beyond and behind – and inside – the Saneworld. I disdain Saneworld: it is known. It has nothing to teach me and by stumbling out of it and into the explorer role I glimpse freedom from the sane and their dreary and self-important cruelties.

If this sounds radical it is because you hear it only from habitual sanity. I am nothing to lose. I love when they say, “It’s all in your mind”, as though the predictable stupidities of Saneworld are less deluded. Unless you’re like me I am bored with you and that makes us about square. What makes me laugh is that one is mad, acts mad, and then is accused of and denigrated for being and for their madness. And that the sane are blind to their own insanity. It’s highly amusing and remarkable that the supposedly sane are so crippled with self-importance over their superior mental state. Yet we are all explorers. My exploration is of your madness, to know and feel it. Yours is to be sane and rejoice in it. I don’t need as many reasons for things: a taste of freedom. You want answers, which I have, but no questions, and so no context. What do I need answers for? I am an explorer of the unfindable and blind.

The author, possibly two.

The author, possibly at three. Or four?

Victim of Dreams - Civil War in the Soul
By
Jeremy Gluck

ISBN: 978-1-84747-613-5
Published: 2008

“I've read your book and I am impressed - and obviously I relate. I hope it sells well because I am sure it will help many people.” - By Katy-Sara Culling, The Bipolar Foundation

Description

Novelist, poet and musician Jeremy Gluck draws on his experiences of growing up in post-War Canada in a breath-takingly beautiful and poignant account of his battle with bipolar disorder (manic depression). He contrasts a depiction of his descent into depression and madness with the narrative innocence of his childhood.

Victim of Dreams can help others to understand what it is like to develop, have and/or survive a severe and enduring mental health condition. More than anything else service users want empathy: Manuals and guides are essential, good medical support crucial, medication crucial of course, but those with serious MH conditions are so plagued by feeling misunderstood and isolated that empathy is the key. Exploring in anecdotal and lay terms the genetic and environmental genesis of the disorder in me, the book is written in a highly professional literary style, including vivid memoir and especially penetrating accounts of depression and manic delusion – drawn largely from journals kept at the time and therefore vivid in their evocation of mania and depression - and is a new kind of survivor book that eschews “misery” for memory and asks, again and again, searching questions about the nature of our lives, minds, memory and capacity to endure what is, after all, a part of ourselves seemingly set to destroy another, more benign part.

The book is in three parts or "lives". The first part is my innocence, when the illness lies dormant but shadowing. In the second part, I wrestle with madness as the illness reveals itself. Coming from a more balanced and objective viewpoint, in the final part I review both having brought myself back. I can now show myself as someone different, neither the innocent nor the madman, and importantly not the person I have been accused of being.

A Definitive Guide To Mental Health Recovery

A Definitive Guide to Mental Health Recovery by Jeremy Gluck is a unique, experiential guide to recovering mental health. Based on trainings to mental health services staff, supplemented by thoughtful and very original reflections and explorations of this momentous new development in attitudes to the successful transformation of mental health, and including new and unusual articles and interviews with mental health professionals and service user mavericks, this book is indispensable to a more profound and penetrating understanding of what it is like to recover, what it means to recover and why recovery is necessary and indeed the right of services users.

About the Author

Jeremy Gluck is an expatriate Canadian who, with a parallel, successful life in the arts, is now working in the voluntary mental health sector in Wales as a mental health information and research worker. His lifelong experience as a published writer and author has equipped him ideally to write this companion volume to his memoir “Victim of Dreams”.