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cpuusage

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2 minutes ago, cpuusage said:

i do feel in truth that a lot of what comes under mental health are psychogenic / spiritual crises, But everyone is different & see things differently, & i also wouldn't deny that there can be biological & sociological aspects to all these areas as well. i feel it makes sense that biology, psychology, sociology & spirituality is all totally interconnected, interrelated & interdependent.

 

i have asked myself this question a lot, & i don't think that anyone will ever fully answer the question of etiology / causes.

It does make sense to me to give people the best understanding, help & support possible, & the comprehensive psychological / social alternatives i think can be effective, but it's dependent on such alternatives being provided in ways that are appropriate to the individual.

Various psychiatric drug treatments since 1990. Prozac & Stelazine in 1994 for a few years. 1200mg Amisulpride in 1998 for a year. 1999 to current time have maintained 200mg of Amisulpride & increased to 300mg a few years ago, with 2 stopping attempts in 2001 & 2003/4. i stopped all medications 5 times, for around 8 years in total, but the last 3 withdrawal/stopping attempts were disastrous. Am very unsure about stopping medication again. Have recently (in Winter 2018) had to increase the Amisulpride to 400mg. 

Healing Sanctuary - http://healingsanctuary.proboards.com/

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:)  Yup.  I'll have to come on back later and read some more.  Enjoy your Sunday.

Late 2023- gone to emeritus status, inactive, don't @ me, I can check who I've posted on, and I'm not really here like I used to be......thanks.

Started with psycho meds/psychiatric care circa 1988.  In retrospect, and on contemplation, situational overwhelm.

Rounding up to 30 years of medications(30 medication trials, poly-pharmacy maximum was 3 at one time).

5/28/2015-off Adderal salts 2.5mg. (I had been on that since hospital 10/2014)

12/2015---just holding, holding, holding, with trileptal/oxcarb at 75 mg. 1/2 tab at hs.  My last psycho med ever!  Tapered @ 10% every 4 weeks, sometimes 2 weeks to

2016 Dec 16 medication free!!

Longer signature post here, with current supplements.

Herb and alcohol free since 5/15/2016.  And.....I quit smoking 11/2021. Lapsed.  Redo of quit smoking 9/28/2022.  Can you say Hallelujah?(took me long enough)💜

None of my posts are intended as medical advice.  Please discuss any decisions about your medical care with a knowledgeable medical provider.  My success story:  Blue skies ahead, clear sailing

 

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1 hour ago, manymoretodays said:

:)  Yup.  I'll have to come on back later and read some more.  Enjoy your Sunday.

 

Thanks - you too.

Various psychiatric drug treatments since 1990. Prozac & Stelazine in 1994 for a few years. 1200mg Amisulpride in 1998 for a year. 1999 to current time have maintained 200mg of Amisulpride & increased to 300mg a few years ago, with 2 stopping attempts in 2001 & 2003/4. i stopped all medications 5 times, for around 8 years in total, but the last 3 withdrawal/stopping attempts were disastrous. Am very unsure about stopping medication again. Have recently (in Winter 2018) had to increase the Amisulpride to 400mg. 

Healing Sanctuary - http://healingsanctuary.proboards.com/

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"When you call yourself an Indian or a Muslim or a Christian or a European, or anything else, you are being violent. Do you see why it is violent? Because you are separating yourself from the rest of mankind. When you separate yourself by belief, by nationality, by tradition, it breeds violence. So a man who is seeking to understand violence does not belong to any country, to any religion, to any political party or partial system; he is concerned with the total understanding of mankind."

 

http://www.jkrishnamurti.org/krishnamurti-teachings/view-text.php?tid=48&chid=56789

Various psychiatric drug treatments since 1990. Prozac & Stelazine in 1994 for a few years. 1200mg Amisulpride in 1998 for a year. 1999 to current time have maintained 200mg of Amisulpride & increased to 300mg a few years ago, with 2 stopping attempts in 2001 & 2003/4. i stopped all medications 5 times, for around 8 years in total, but the last 3 withdrawal/stopping attempts were disastrous. Am very unsure about stopping medication again. Have recently (in Winter 2018) had to increase the Amisulpride to 400mg. 

Healing Sanctuary - http://healingsanctuary.proboards.com/

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The UN declares the UK’s austerity policies in breach of international human rights obligations

 

The UN are “seriously concerned” by the state of inequality in the UK.

 

https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk/2016/06/un-declares-uk-s-austerity-policies-breach-international-human-rights

Various psychiatric drug treatments since 1990. Prozac & Stelazine in 1994 for a few years. 1200mg Amisulpride in 1998 for a year. 1999 to current time have maintained 200mg of Amisulpride & increased to 300mg a few years ago, with 2 stopping attempts in 2001 & 2003/4. i stopped all medications 5 times, for around 8 years in total, but the last 3 withdrawal/stopping attempts were disastrous. Am very unsure about stopping medication again. Have recently (in Winter 2018) had to increase the Amisulpride to 400mg. 

Healing Sanctuary - http://healingsanctuary.proboards.com/

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Round up of a few links in the news feed this morning -

 

Are Mental Disorders Brain Diseases ‘In Waiting’?

 

https://www.madinamerica.com/2017/11/mental-disorders-brain-diseases-in-waiting/

 

Dear Mental Health Professionals: Please Stop Defending Yourselves and Listen

https://www.madinamerica.com/2017/09/dear-mental-health-professionals-please-stop-defending-yourselves-and-listen/

 

Science is Broken

 

https://www.madinamerica.com/2017/11/science-broken-2/

 

Dr. Noel Hunter and Brett Francis: Diagnosis, Empowerment and Equality

https://www.madinamerica.com/2017/11/dr-noel-hunter-brett-francis-diagnosis-empowerment-equality/

 

Deleuze Guattari: Societies of Control and Antipsychiatry

 

 

Various psychiatric drug treatments since 1990. Prozac & Stelazine in 1994 for a few years. 1200mg Amisulpride in 1998 for a year. 1999 to current time have maintained 200mg of Amisulpride & increased to 300mg a few years ago, with 2 stopping attempts in 2001 & 2003/4. i stopped all medications 5 times, for around 8 years in total, but the last 3 withdrawal/stopping attempts were disastrous. Am very unsure about stopping medication again. Have recently (in Winter 2018) had to increase the Amisulpride to 400mg. 

Healing Sanctuary - http://healingsanctuary.proboards.com/

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Prenatal ‘Mini-brain’ Scans May Solve Schizophrenia origins

By

Juliet Childers

-

November 27, 2017

 

https://edgylabs.com/prenatal-mini-brain-scans-may-solve-schizophrenia-origins

Various psychiatric drug treatments since 1990. Prozac & Stelazine in 1994 for a few years. 1200mg Amisulpride in 1998 for a year. 1999 to current time have maintained 200mg of Amisulpride & increased to 300mg a few years ago, with 2 stopping attempts in 2001 & 2003/4. i stopped all medications 5 times, for around 8 years in total, but the last 3 withdrawal/stopping attempts were disastrous. Am very unsure about stopping medication again. Have recently (in Winter 2018) had to increase the Amisulpride to 400mg. 

Healing Sanctuary - http://healingsanctuary.proboards.com/

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"The Pleasures of Self-Forgetting
 
Man's meaningless motions and agonizing appetites are nothing more than
attempts to forget himself. Alcohol, social climbing, material acquisition
— all are attempts to escape an unwanted self.
 
What is this unwanted self? We come back, as always, to man's false sense
of identity. Man yearns to escape from _his own pretensions of who he is_.
Inwardly, he knows that he is not the pseudo-self going around with surface
smiles, drawing excitement from applause, swelling with pride over some
achievement. His intuitive mind tells him that is all an act — and how
weary he is of the routine role.
 
So he tries to forget. But he never succeeds. He always does the wrong
thing. His churning and chasing merely cover up the anxiety, leaving it
to do its dark destruction.
 
But there is a genuine way of self-forgetting. The false self and its
built-in pains, can be demolished. Like a ball of string held at one end
and rolled along the floor, the false self can become smaller and smaller
and finally disappear altogether. Then you forget it. Who thinks about
something that doesn't exist?"
 
              The Mystic Path to Cosmic Power, Chap. 10, p. 173

Various psychiatric drug treatments since 1990. Prozac & Stelazine in 1994 for a few years. 1200mg Amisulpride in 1998 for a year. 1999 to current time have maintained 200mg of Amisulpride & increased to 300mg a few years ago, with 2 stopping attempts in 2001 & 2003/4. i stopped all medications 5 times, for around 8 years in total, but the last 3 withdrawal/stopping attempts were disastrous. Am very unsure about stopping medication again. Have recently (in Winter 2018) had to increase the Amisulpride to 400mg. 

Healing Sanctuary - http://healingsanctuary.proboards.com/

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4 hours ago, cpuusage said:
"The Pleasures of Self-Forgetting
 
Man's meaningless motions and agonizing appetites are nothing more than
attempts to forget himself. Alcohol, social climbing, material acquisition
— all are attempts to escape an unwanted self.
 
What is this unwanted self? We come back, as always, to man's false sense
of identity. Man yearns to escape from _his own pretensions of who he is_.
Inwardly, he knows that he is not the pseudo-self going around with surface
smiles, drawing excitement from applause, swelling with pride over some
achievement. His intuitive mind tells him that is all an act — and how
weary he is of the routine role.
 
So he tries to forget. But he never succeeds. He always does the wrong
thing. His churning and chasing merely cover up the anxiety, leaving it
to do its dark destruction.
 
But there is a genuine way of self-forgetting. The false self and its
built-in pains, can be demolished. Like a ball of string held at one end
and rolled along the floor, the false self can become smaller and smaller
and finally disappear altogether. Then you forget it. Who thinks about
something that doesn't exist?"
 
              The Mystic Path to Cosmic Power, Chap. 10, p. 173

Who thinks about something that doesn't exits.hi I love this peice ,especially this line .I am literally stuck inside my thoughts since I started tapering .the mentall anguish I go throught everyday day is exausting ,even going to the hardware store to buy something to fix my shower today is filled with anxiety and over thinking and paranoia ,I cant look at anyone in the eye .humans cant exist for ever like this .

PB

Alcohol free since February 2015 

1MG diazepam

4.5MG PROZAC.

 

 

 

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18 minutes ago, powerback said:

Who thinks about something that doesn't exits.hi I love this peice ,especially this line .I am literally stuck inside my thoughts since I started tapering .the mentall anguish I go throught everyday day is exausting ,even going to the hardware store to buy something to fix my shower today is filled with anxiety and over thinking and paranoia ,I cant look at anyone in the eye .humans cant exist for ever like this .

PB

 

Hi. Thanks. It's by Vernon Howard - he was an authentic spiritual teacher.

http://www.anewlife.org/

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vernon_Howard

 

It's a tough one - personally i eventually had to stop fighting everything in the same way - i came to acceptance of the diagnosis / condition / illness & medication. It's a low dose of one medication, i can live with that & it's a lesser of evils. 

 

Outside of that i have done my best to focus on a basic disciplined spiritual path.

 

What i have found has helped is a very basic & gentle non religious contemplative / meditative practice that i have had for the past 16 years.

Various psychiatric drug treatments since 1990. Prozac & Stelazine in 1994 for a few years. 1200mg Amisulpride in 1998 for a year. 1999 to current time have maintained 200mg of Amisulpride & increased to 300mg a few years ago, with 2 stopping attempts in 2001 & 2003/4. i stopped all medications 5 times, for around 8 years in total, but the last 3 withdrawal/stopping attempts were disastrous. Am very unsure about stopping medication again. Have recently (in Winter 2018) had to increase the Amisulpride to 400mg. 

Healing Sanctuary - http://healingsanctuary.proboards.com/

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2 hours ago, cpuusage said:

 

Hi. Thanks. It's by Vernon Howard - he was an authentic spiritual teacher.

http://www.anewlife.org/

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vernon_Howard

 

It's a tough one - personally i eventually had to stop fighting everything in the same way - i came to acceptance of the diagnosis / condition / illness & medication. It's a low dose of one medication, i can live with that & it's a lesser of evils. 

 

Outside of that i have done my best to focus on a basic disciplined spiritual path.

 

What i have found has helped is a very basic & gentle non religious contemplative / meditative practice that i have had for the past 16 years.

Thanks for the link ,the one thing I'm seriously lacking is spirituality and belief in a higher power .I constantly listen to self development videos to no avail ,these meds and this process mite have just robbed my soul it feels like

Take care .

PB

Alcohol free since February 2015 

1MG diazepam

4.5MG PROZAC.

 

 

 

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12 hours ago, powerback said:

Thanks for the link ,the one thing I'm seriously lacking is spirituality and belief in a higher power .I constantly listen to self development videos to no avail ,these meds and this process mite have just robbed my soul it feels like

Take care .

PB


Forget about belief & the mind. i have had this conversation so many times on-line & with people in my life. The basic teachings of spiritual principles & universal contemplative tradition is incredibly simple. There is Nothing complex to understand. It is based entirely on application.

Adyashanti is very good for the outline of what the basic principle & application is of spiritual practice (all on you tube). It is the case of doing it yourself. No one can do it for you.

 

Various psychiatric drug treatments since 1990. Prozac & Stelazine in 1994 for a few years. 1200mg Amisulpride in 1998 for a year. 1999 to current time have maintained 200mg of Amisulpride & increased to 300mg a few years ago, with 2 stopping attempts in 2001 & 2003/4. i stopped all medications 5 times, for around 8 years in total, but the last 3 withdrawal/stopping attempts were disastrous. Am very unsure about stopping medication again. Have recently (in Winter 2018) had to increase the Amisulpride to 400mg. 

Healing Sanctuary - http://healingsanctuary.proboards.com/

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‘Arrivederci Roma: The Crisis of Late Antiquity’ - John Zerzan

"Edward Gibbon wrote The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire in the 1780s, and it remains a classic. Beyond the merits and deficiencies of his Enlightenment creation stands its title, in itself an enduring proposition. That is, many have wondered whether their own time and place — especially in recent times — is not also experiencing a decline and fall. Today, for example, do we not see a parallel to “the spiritual and social exhaustion of the Roman world”?

Getting back to the subject, it was more than just the Empire that declined and fell. Rome’s authority melted away in the fifth and sixth centuries A.D. And Greco-Roman civilization itself disintegrated and vanished — socially, culturally, politically, and militarily. It was a rupture unparalleled in the history of the West.

There are some who deny this, seeing, rather, only a bit of transition or adjustment. Noel Lenski, for instance: “The model of decline and fall is... a modern invention, which we have finally begun to cast off in our postmodern world.” Just as postmodernism “casts off” change in general, or the possibility of change.

More intelligently, Aldo Schiavone — and to some degree, Michael Rostovtzeff and F.W. Walbank before him — asks a very probing question: why didn’t Roman society, so fully developed a civilization, continue directly on to modernity rather than fail? Why did it have to fall apart and require a new start?

A partly valid answer is the standard one, provided by Gibbon, among others. It was Rome’s “immoderate greatness,” with frontiers that ranged across all of Europe, North Africa, and the Levant. Rome could not persevere forever, faced with “barbarians” on every side. I will take
up barbarians later, but note in passing a barbarian’s remark recorded by Tacitus: “They [the Romans, of course] make a desert and call it peace.” The Marxist explanation is that Greco-Roman civilization was based on slavery, and the transition toward a feudal system meant the end of that whole structure.

Rome was fully formed, a civilization of vast extent but insufficient depth. There had been a basis of traditional bonds and reciprocities underlying all else. It slowly broke down, socially and economically, and “unraveled down to its smallest elements between the sixth and seventh centuries.” A malaise settled over every sphere of life, beginning in the second century, deepening into exhaustion, sterility, and resignation. Learning was neglected, for example, with the gardens of Epicurus and the portico of the Stoics almost deserted. Knowledge no longer mattered.

Some achievements did endure. Oswald Spengler argued that the last phase of any civilization is a technological one. Trajan’s second-century 3,000-foot Danube Bridge comes to mind, along with aqueducts that are still standing, and public baths and latrines, the latter with heated marble seats!

Rome began as a small settlement on the Tiber, in the eighth century B.C. if not earlier. By 270 B.C. its power had been consolidated throughout Italy. And by this time, gold, silver, grain and slaves flowed into the Roman treasury from other conquests. When the new millennium arrived, however, “the people of the Empire were obsessed with a vague feeling of deterioration.” Well underway by 200 A.D. was a sharpening of class divisions and “the accumulation of wealth and status into ever fewer hands.”

At the same time that the wealth, including slaves, of far-flung regions began to run dry, it was clear that “everywhere the extension of Roman rule had elicited armed resistance.” Rome became increasingly dependent for its defense on barbarian warriors; there had been “virtually no Italians in the ranks of the legions since the time of Trajan” in the second century. In fact,
“by the late fourth century even slaves were sometimes enlisted.”

Rising dissatisfaction within a stagnating economy brought a period of unparalleled crisis between 235 and 284, “during which the Roman Empire nearly came to an end.” According to Rostovtzeff, this crisis was largely brought about by “a revolutionary movement of the masses
of the population which aimed at a general leveling.” Rome weathered the storm, and in the process became an absolute monarchy. The long period of challenge transformed the defensive Empire into what had not heretofore been seen in this part of the world: an absolutist state. Rome had emerged from the crisis, but was much weakened.

Compared with the third century, the fourth was a time of governmental stability and economic improvement. It was also, as Ramsay MacMullen put it, “the great age of tax collectors.” There was a reason why the early medieval hymn “Dies Irae” conceived of the Day of Judgment in terms of the arrival of the late Roman tax collector. The state began to impose intolerable burdens upon town and country: “heavier taxes and an oppressive system of forced services and requisitions.” At the same time, the currency was repeatedly debased (with less gold and silver in the coinage), and rural depopulation set in.

The end neared in the fifth century as a period of “stark and rapid economic decline, perhaps unprecedented in recorded human history,” afflicted much of the Empire. Early on, North Africa fell to the Vandals, with a crippling loss of tax revenues from Rome’s wealthiest province. Also compromised thereby was much of the grain and oil subsidies to the Roman populace, half of the well-known “bread and circuses.” Gladiatorial contests had been a legacy of the early-conquered Etruscans, with widespread construction of coliseums for the “circuses” to entertain the urban masses. These were something of a priority, usually built before public baths.

A climate of futility and decay could not be dispelled by government, despite military decrees, enforced by many agents, spies, and informers, to monitor Roman subjects. In the countryside, tenant farmers were now tied to the land along with their heirs, a significant move toward serfdom.

Rome itself was breached and sacked several times, the final blow falling in 476 when barbarian mercenaries deposed the last Western Roman emperor. Byzantium and its capital of Constantinople survived, the Eastern remnant of Greco-Roman civilization. In the same year of 529 Justinian closed the university of Athens, and Benedict founded the first monastery of the West on Monte Cassino. Not until 554 was Roman authority at last re-established in Italy.

A sense of decline had long been underway, along with a lurking fearfulness. A basic part of the background for this, basic to civilization, is the erosion of community and the separation of the individual from communal bonds. The most primary driver of this process, and most primary to civilization, is division of labor. In Late Antiquity we see activities transformed into professions, e.g. legal specialists. Formal and informal dress codes developed to distinguish the various orders, and in portraiture there is less attention to individuality, “in order to focus on the insignia of a role, with laborious exactitude.”

The general poverty of intellectual life was a clear sign of decline, as it is today. Despite imperial support, higher studies of all types languished. Fewer schools existed, less was written and read, original thought was wanting. There was a dearth of handbooks, encyclopedias, maps, etc. According to Carlin Barton, there was “a positive hostility toward the life of the mind,” dating from the 300s, possibly earlier.

The universe became devoid of meaning and a stratum of irrationality thickened over Rome’s final centuries. “The mass of the people, dispirited and depressed, found hope in magic and superstition or in ancient cults, Oriental mystery religions, and Christianity.”

Various forms of pervasive violence perhaps also forecast a failing system of domination. Painful obligations on the citizenry produced resistance and, in turn, extraordinarily punitive measures. Restraint on the part of the powerful was lost, even as the legal right of the individual to decent treatment was steadily degraded. Judicial punishment was “specially aggressive, harsh, and ruthless,” really amounting to cruel savagery.

The ruling classes, concluded Peter Brown, carried a “static electricity of violence.” At school future Church father Augustine encountered the violence of well-to-do students who called themselves the Wreckers. By the fourth century Augustine’s fellow bishops had taken notice of “the endemic domestic violence of the upper classes.” Nor was this confined to the elites. Philosopher and anatomist Galen’s On the Passions and Errors of the Soul had much to say about violent outbursts, judging that “The passions have increased in the souls of the majority of men to such a point that they are incurable diseases.”

Besides the symptoms of internal emptiness and anxiety in a civilization waning in meaning, there were barbarians; and in the popular account it was their repeated invasions that proved fatal. Kenneth Clark put it this way: “By the year 1000. . .the long dominance of the barbarian wanderers was over, and Western Europe was prepared for its first great age of civilization.” That’s us, of course.

They were “not particularly numerous,” as E.T. Salmon remarks. The Vandals, who conquered the richest province of the Empire, were “a small people. . .indisputably weak when measured against Rome,” found David Lambert. Many historians have seen the barbarians as more notable for their incorporation into the fabric of the West than for their invasions. More often than not, they were enrolled in the Empire’s defense, as the number of Italians available for the legions steadily declined.

Not that this was always a seamless proposition. The Goths, for example, made a substantial military contribution, but not as an integral part of Rome’s armies. Their autonomy meant that their loyalty could be shaky. But even in Rome’s worst of times, barbarians in general “regularly disclaimed any intention or desire of destroying it.” The Gothic chieftain Alaric sacked Rome in 410, disappointed in his desire to become a high Roman official. He had already been a mercenary in the pay of both the Western and Byzantine parts of the Empire.

Sometimes loyal, sometimes untrustworthy, the “barbarian” as a figure served various ideological purposes. Violent barbarians were used to justify huge military expenditures by the state. Portrayed as noble savages, they were a means of criticizing degenerate civilization. On the Government of God was Salvian’s fifth-century Christian take on the virtuous simplicity of barbarians vs. debased Romans. Earlier and more famously, the historian Tacitus praised moral, democratic, hospitable, and happy denizens to the north in his 'Treatise on the Situation, Manners and Inhabitants of Germany?' Petrus Patricius described the Scythians, in the east, as having “jeered at those who were shut up in the cities, saying, ‘They live a life not of men but of birds sitting in their nests aloft; they leave the earth which nourishes them and choose barren cities; they put their trust in lifeless things rather than in themselves.”

In modern times J.B. Bury referred to Slavonic barbarians of late Rome “who could defy the justice of civilization in thick forests and inaccessible ravines — regions echoing with the wild songs and romances of outlaw life.” But the “barbarians” in Europe had been practicing domestication for at least four millennia, and the processes of state formation had been going on for four hundred years in the Germanic world. Nonetheless not all the earlier, freer modes were extinguished. Bury again: “The east German barbarians were still in the stage in which steady habits of work seem repulsive and dishonorable.”

And though various tribes had versions of “a warrior-aristocracy far removed from the tastes and ambitions of their own rank and file,” not to mention kings, they structured their authority very much after the Roman model. Theodoric wrote the emperor in 508 to assert that “Our royalty is an imitation of yours, modeled on your own good purpose, a copy of the only Empire.” King of the Germanic Ostrogoths, his aim was to restore the glory of Rome.

Going back as far as fifth century B.C. Herodotus, one can find the warlike quality of barbarians seen as a result of contact with a succession of rapacious Mediterranean empires. Far more recently, E.A. Thompson argued that slavery in the Germanic world was the exception and that it was only much developed “in the two areas where Roman influence was the most extreme” and civilization the most advanced.

Aside from the nature of barbarian society and/or its dialectic with Rome — and the difficulty of generalizing about various groups — there were some connections with Romans that may seem surprising. Peter Sarris wrote of fourth-century Goths and their “campaign of destruction aimed at members of the Roman governing classes” — in which “the barbarians were expressly aided... by members of the Roman lower classes.” In 'On the Government of God', the Christian author Salvian declared, “A large part of Gaul and Spain is already Gothic, and all the Romans who live there have only one wish, not to become Romans again.” Joseph Tainter saw it similarly: “Contemporary records indicate that, more than once, both rich and poor wished that the barbarians would deliver them from the burdens of the Empire.”

The dominant idea remained that only those who dwelled in cities were civilized; Roman civilization promoted urbanization. This was not limited to the capital, but “the early years of the fourth century A.D. saw a great increase in the population of Rome.”

Oswald Spengler declared an endpoint to civilization to be the triumph of the inorganic world-city over the organic land. (See especially “The Soul of the City” in The Decline of the West, volume 11.) The Marxist Kautsky, Spengler's opposite politically, also observed the loss of contact with nature and the unmooring of the individual from ancestral supports. Excessive urbanization was the main cause of the Roman collapse, in the opinion of Guglielmo Ferrero.

It was “a world of dwindling towns and bloated cities” in which the countryside was taxed and exploited to sustain urban living, resulting in rural depopulation. Meanwhile the urban framework was itself falling apart. The mounting stresses on Roman civilization, its empire in retreat, meant a “hard” regime tending toward what we would call privatization. Less expenditure for public buildings and public cults. “The cities, which had created and sustained the higher forms of economic life, gradually decayed, and the majority of them practically disappeared from the face of the earth,” to quote Rostovtzeff.

“Mass unrest,” often due to food shortages, was “an inevitable phenomenon in cities of the Roman world,” in A.D. Lee’s words. Robert Knapp found that “the natural recourse was to riot.” There was substantial social war violence from the Middle Empire to the end of late antiquity. The fourth-century soldier and historian Ammianus Marcellinus wrote of the prominence of violent unrest in Rome, blaming the ruling class for disturbances and squalor. Significant riots include a 348 clash over delay of the grain subsidy and repeated incidents in 365 over the high price of wine.

Antioch saw major riots in the fifth century, and Peter Brown characterized Alexandria as “a notoriously riot-prone city,” to cite just a couple of non-Rome locations. Solomon Katz mentioned “terrible peasant revolts” in various parts of the Empire, while outlawry became an important presence.

Between the late third century and the first half of the fifth, the Bagaudae, described as both brigands and revolutionaries, embodied outlaw peasant rebellion in parts of Gaul and Spain. Their egalitarian risings against the rich were a powerful radical critique in action.

What came to be referred to as paganism was a mainstay of Greco-Roman civilization. It was the official ensemble of gods and rites, emphasizing the citizens responsibility to imperial authority, and embodying unity. In this way paganism was close to a general attitude of patriotism, respectful of civic tradition. Victor Ehrenberg declared paganism to be “a political rather than a religious matter... no question of belief or even emotional feeling.” Its ritualism left little room for spirit, its orientation more empirical than a matter of faith. And since its gods were tied to the reigning politics, paganism tended toward the same breakdown Rome was
experiencing. Its gods belonged to an early age, and were far from omnipotent. Civilization renders citizens powerless, and its religious parallel is a monotheistic, unrivaled power over its subjects in the spiritual realm.

The word pagan originally meant one who lives in a pagus, or village. It didn’t exist as a religious term before Christians began calling non-Christians pagans. But the usage is clear enough to us, and though it had about seven centuries of tradition behind it by the 400s, paganism was lacking in substance. Too impersonal and far from totalizing, this civic religion was unable to bear much weight. It was overdue for a crisis, along with the rest of the ruling order. The old gods were too limited and too formal. They fell into the shade.

Roman globalization acquainted people with other options, via travel, trade, and conquest. With increasing insecurity, a feeling of “cosmic pessimism” grew steadily stronger. 62 So-called “mystery religions” arrived, mainly from the East, as misery begot mysticism. Mithra worship became a mystery cult from a branch of Persian Mazdaism, via the Greeks. It was fairly strong in the army, but its appeal was limited by its exclusion of women. From Egypt arose sun worship, the cult of Sol Invictus with his December 25 birthday, and also an Isis cult. Dionysus emerged, a powerful, universalizing god of salvation, prefiguring the Christian savior in several respects. Native paganism in its last stages took on a Neo-Platonic coloring, a decidedly monotheistic move like most of the other religious tendencies, but not decisively enough.

The emperor Constantine converted to Christianity in 312, made it Rome’s official religion, and declared paganism illegal. Anti-pagan repression was often laxly pursued, however, and two centuries after Constantine the old cults lingered. Paganism persisted in part because of its lack of a center; still largely polytheistic, it was multiple and versatile. But especially in its old Roman dress, paganism continued to fade in the sixth century, its sacrifices and temples abandoned. By the 390s the Christian church, a unified institution, had already visibly secured its hegemony.

Christianity had rather suddenly and unexpectedly succeeded, providing a personal religion in place of an impersonal civic one. “Seldom has a small minority played so successfully on the anxieties of society,” as Peter Brown put it. Its central and original message of love was preached to the poor, the burdened, the outcast, not excluding women and slaves. Christian populism caught on with many in Roman civilization, especially the miserable urban masses. It not only offered heavenly reward, but also a stronger sense of belonging than that of the devotees of Mithra or Isis, for example.

Another central focus was of course Christian belief in a resurrected figure, Jesus as divine Savior. It is clear that the early Christians expected an impending return of Christ, which gave their efforts a special intensity. The unique status of women and Christian care for the sick during epidemics were more down-to-earth contributors to success. The original churches were homes, which in itself gave women prominence, but during the third century the status of women was beginning to decline.

The Gospel of Luke, written in about 100, contains many condemnations of the rich, e.g. “It is easier for a camel to go through a needles eye, than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God” (18:24). These were typical radical sentiments — which became inconvenient as the Church grew to be a powerful financial institution by the end of the third century. “The time was ripe for a reconciliation of state and church, each of which needed the other,” in Rostovtzeff's judgment. Early on there were Christians who appreciated the relation between one god and one state, the helpful implications of monotheism for a universal and unified civilization. Constantine, less abstractly, came to the conclusion that Christianity was the only glue that could help hold conflicting social elements together. The old ruling elites, or paideia, were no longer able to maintain control. With Christianity as the new public religion, religious and secular authority became integrated in a more binding and powerful partnership.

Preaching in fourth-century Antioch, John Chrysostom proclaimed, “Oh! how passing wonderful is the power of Christianity, that it restrains and bridles a man.” Ambrose of Milan, another Church father and an aristocrat, in the same vein in 388: “The bishops are the controllers of the crowds, the keen upholders of peace. . ,.” He also asserted that “priests should have nothing of the masses about them, nothing of the people, nothing in common with the pursuits and manners of the barbarous multitude.”

Christians had made the poor visible, and soon enough this made them more amenable to control. The Church took over much of the state’s almsgiving and adopted a new style of pacification in civilization’s never-ending task of securing its authority. More or less always stated in religious terms, the power of bishops, with their scores of guards, could hardly develop otherwise than along lines in tandem with the secular economy and society.

Rather like “closed shop” employment, where expulsion from the union spells loss of that employment, excommunication had temporal as well as spiritual consequences. It enforced the temporal power; e.g. soldiers who refused to fight in a war that the Church deemed just faced excommunication. Bishops preached increasingly to the elites, and the papacy made more and more of Rome’s glorious past. And yet Christianity never lost its power to offer a radical sense of community, even if that community was more symbolic than actual.

A monolithic and centrally organized religion and its professional hierarchy took charge of various administrative functions of the Christianized Empire, including roles performed by barbarian authorities. The growing Church to some extent took over what Rome had created. Of course, there existed various philosophical differences; the searching criticisms of Augustine and — as we have seen — Salvian come to mind. A united front against common enemies of church and state certainly held sway, however. It is clear that almost every emperor urged the Church to define correct doctrine so as to enforce its official monopoly. Intolerance in matters of dogma was a new arrival to the Mediterranean world. Doctrine is of supreme importance for the first time in civilization.

A striking counterpoint to the accommodationist, power-oriented direction of the Church was a primitivist monasticism that swept the Roman world in the 300s. It began in the deserts of Egypt, where the number of radically ascetic monks neared 200,000 by the beginning of the fourth century. The impulse to return to a pre-Fail, Eden-like
simplicity pitted the movement against the Church hierarchy, civic authority, urban life, and even culture itself. Historians such as Rufinus described the ability of monks to mingle with wild animals. Their revolt favored egalitarian virtue over the achievements of civilization. “They had dropped out of the world, because they found society more than they could endure,” concluded Michael Grant. Bishops frequently allied with local elites to bar monks from their towns and to defend the ancient customs. “Emperors, too, in their edicts, declared the inmates of the monasteries to be fanatical, unruly, and rebellious.”

Violence was a not uncommon response to this challenge, which reached a high point with the Circumcellions in North Africa, in the second half of the fourth century. The anarchic offshoot of a non-radical sectarian heresy, Circumcellions (vagabonds, literally) sought to restore the primitive equality of humankind. These millennium-seekers attracted fugitive slaves and destitute peasants, and their base consisted of native Berber and Punic elements. Hostile to urbanism and the dominant order, they preserved their independence until the Muslim conquests of the eighth century suppressed all forms of Christianity in the region.

Most historians have agreed that the end of late antiquity coincided with the end of slavery. Slaves in earlier civilizations tended to be few compared with those of Greco-Roman civilization . In the latter era slavery was extended from the sphere of domestic labor to the mines, fields, and workshops, but it seems to have been fading in the late Empire. Walter Scheidel argues that the number of slaves in Italy was “significantly smaller than previously thought ” even before an overall decline set in.

Peter Sarris contends that “there is every sign that agricultural slavery continued to be a widespread reality in late antiquity ,” but the new, bigger estates moved away from slave labor, according to Niall McKeown . There were few or no slave rebellions; the Spartacus revolt, for instance, occurred several centuries earlier. But slaves escaped in large numbers, a continuous feed for outlawry . The Romans, as McKeown put it, citing other historians, were “having serious difficulties controlling their slaves .” There was movement toward their replacement by the “colonate” — those tied to the land, toward the serf condition of medieval times.

Another transition involved the symbolic institution or dimension of time. For the Greeks, cyclical time still held sway. Their sense of historical or linear time remained quite tentative at best. Roman Stoics (e.g. Cicero and Seneca) introduced a progressive, non-repetitive concept later developed further by Augustine. We have been under the sign of historical temporality ever since. Restlessly striving to dominate it somehow, while unable to escape the helplessness resulting from civilized, complex society.

Rome’s thousand years were, at base, just another civilization that came and went, subject once again to longings and anxious disquiet and requiring yet another new model of the same. Carlin Barton, in her often brilliant Sorrows of the Ancient Romans, refers to the Roman confrontation with time: “They were terrified by beginnings; this dread was one of the sicknesses of Roman culture .” One symbol of which was the gladiator, that figure of ultimate despair, with its thrill of what became inescapable. A fitting face of civilization." - 'Why Hope?: The Stand Against Civilization', pg. 44-54

Various psychiatric drug treatments since 1990. Prozac & Stelazine in 1994 for a few years. 1200mg Amisulpride in 1998 for a year. 1999 to current time have maintained 200mg of Amisulpride & increased to 300mg a few years ago, with 2 stopping attempts in 2001 & 2003/4. i stopped all medications 5 times, for around 8 years in total, but the last 3 withdrawal/stopping attempts were disastrous. Am very unsure about stopping medication again. Have recently (in Winter 2018) had to increase the Amisulpride to 400mg. 

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This has always been known - it was certainly known some 20 thousand years ago & before within the Indus valley civilisation.

 

A new theory of consciousness: the mind exists as a field connected to the brain


Between quantum physics and neuroscience, a theory emerges of a mental field we each have, existing in another dimension and behaving in some ways like a black hole

 

https://www.theepochtimes.com/uplift/a-new-theory-of-consciousness-the-mind-exists-as-a-field-connected-to-the-brain_2325840.html

 

http://europepmc.org/articles/PMC1295660

 

Human Energy Fields -

 

https://energyreality.com/overview-of-the-human-energy-field/

 

Various psychiatric drug treatments since 1990. Prozac & Stelazine in 1994 for a few years. 1200mg Amisulpride in 1998 for a year. 1999 to current time have maintained 200mg of Amisulpride & increased to 300mg a few years ago, with 2 stopping attempts in 2001 & 2003/4. i stopped all medications 5 times, for around 8 years in total, but the last 3 withdrawal/stopping attempts were disastrous. Am very unsure about stopping medication again. Have recently (in Winter 2018) had to increase the Amisulpride to 400mg. 

Healing Sanctuary - http://healingsanctuary.proboards.com/

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  • 2 weeks later...
Please anyone that cares do something about all this - The general treatment of people suffering mental health difficulties in the UK is diabolical -
 
Full Campaign here -
 
 
 
"The planned Mental Health Act review: a need for urgent action by NSUN members
 
'My Government will reform mental health legislation and ensure that mental health is prioritised in the National Health Service in England.'
 
In June this year, the Queen’s Speech included the statement above which appeared to commit to working ‘towards a new Mental Health Act’.
 
It is positive that there are plans to reform the current Mental Health Act. However, the government’s current approach seems to stem from a continued emphasis on the medical model (a continuing emphasis on NHS services). The government is also focusing on a reduction in detentions and compulsory treatment instead of recognising that these represent a breach of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD). At NSUN, we see the planned changes as an opportunity to advocate strongly for a rights-based Mental Health Act and for alternatives to a medical model, with investment above and beyond NHS provision.
 
At the end of June the Mental Health Alliance published a report of its Mental Health Act survey 'A Mental health Act fit for tomorrow - An agenda for reform'
 
As a member of the Mental Health Alliance, NSUN welcomed the possibility of research that was designed to gather views on the principles of the Mental Health Act, including views from those who use mental health services. In addition, the report which resulted from the survey contains some important emphases on improved rights for people detained under the Act. However, there are also some serious shortfalls in the approach taken to the research and conclusions reached from the findings. Therefore, NSUN strongly emphasised the need for further research to be undertaken before the completion of the study and the circulation of the report; we wanted to ensure that those most affected by the Act were adequately represented in the report. Unfortunately, the report was published regardless and the Mental Health Alliance has been strongly promoting it with the government.
 
NSUN decided not to endorse the report for the following reasons amongst others:
 
Although people from black and minority ethnic (BME) communities are particularly likely to be detained and made subject to compulsory treatment, only 8% of the 61% of respondents who supplied demographic details came from BME communities. In addition, numbers of BME respondents with personal experience of detention were too small to be statistically significant
70% of respondents who named their gender were female. Therefore, men were seriously under-represented amongst respondents.
The conclusions drawn about the numbers of respondents who supported detention under the Mental Health Act appear to be overstated
The questions used to determine respondents’ views about detention are problematic and rest on the assumption that people are aware of valid alternatives to detention.
 
You can read NSUN's full response to the Mental Health Act Survey report here."
 
[Active Links in Link]
 
New report highlights concerns that the Mental Health Act overlooks the dignity and human rights of people with mental illness
 
 
NSUN’s feedback on the final draft of the Mental Alliance report With Alliance response in blue Further NSUN response in green
 

Various psychiatric drug treatments since 1990. Prozac & Stelazine in 1994 for a few years. 1200mg Amisulpride in 1998 for a year. 1999 to current time have maintained 200mg of Amisulpride & increased to 300mg a few years ago, with 2 stopping attempts in 2001 & 2003/4. i stopped all medications 5 times, for around 8 years in total, but the last 3 withdrawal/stopping attempts were disastrous. Am very unsure about stopping medication again. Have recently (in Winter 2018) had to increase the Amisulpride to 400mg. 

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The Historic Einstein-Tagore Meeting: Is Truth Independent of us?

 

"And when the conversation shifts to the nature of reality — whether Truth can exist independently of humanity — Einstein admits that his beliefs may not rely solely on what he can know through science.

“I cannot prove scientifically that Truth must be conceived as a Truth that is valid independent of humanity; but I believe it firmly. I believe, for instance, that the Pythagorean theorem in geometry states something that is approximately true, independent of the existence of man.”

Although this interaction between science and spirituality took place over eighty years ago, it is still relevant today. In spite of all the advances in science since that point — especially in quantum physics — the questions of the very nature of the universe, from fundamental Truths to Beauty, still resonate with us today."

www.scienceandnonduality.com/the-historic-einstein-tagore-meeting-is-truth-independent-of-us/

Various psychiatric drug treatments since 1990. Prozac & Stelazine in 1994 for a few years. 1200mg Amisulpride in 1998 for a year. 1999 to current time have maintained 200mg of Amisulpride & increased to 300mg a few years ago, with 2 stopping attempts in 2001 & 2003/4. i stopped all medications 5 times, for around 8 years in total, but the last 3 withdrawal/stopping attempts were disastrous. Am very unsure about stopping medication again. Have recently (in Winter 2018) had to increase the Amisulpride to 400mg. 

Healing Sanctuary - http://healingsanctuary.proboards.com/

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“Everywhere, invertebrates are threatened by climate change, competition from invasive species and habitat loss. Insect abundance seems to be declining precipitously, even in places where their habitats have not suffered notable new losses. A troubling new report from Germany has shown a 75% plunge in insect populations since 1989, suggesting that they may be even more imperilled than any previous studies suggested…
 
If this trend were to continue indefinitely, the consequences would be devastating. Insects have been on Earth 1,000 times longer than humans have. In many ways, they created the world we live in. They helped call the universe of flowering plants into being. They are to terrestrial food chains what plankton is to oceanic ones. Without insects and other land-based arthropods, EO Wilson, the renowned Harvard entomologist, and inventor of sociobiology, estimates that humanity would last all of a few months. After that, most of the amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals would go, along with the flowering plants. The planet would become an immense compost heap, covered in shoals of carcasses and dead trees that refused to rot. Briefly, fungi would bloom in untold numbers. Then, they too would die off. The Earth would revert to what it was like in the Silurian period, 440m years ago, when life was just beginning to colonise the soil – a spongy, silent place, filled with mosses and liverworts, waiting for the first shrimp brave enough to try its luck on land...
 
But to think about the coming invertebrate extinctions is to confront a different dimension of loss. So much will vanish before we even knew it was there, before we had even begun to understand it. Species aren’t just names, or points on an evolutionary tree, or abstract sequences of DNA. They encode countless millennia of complex interactions between plant and animal, soil and air. Each species carries with it behaviours we have only begun to witness, chemical tricks honed over a million generations, whole worlds of mimicry and violence, maternal care and carnal exuberance. To know that all this will disappear is like watching a library burn without being able to pick up a single book. Our role in this destruction is a kind of vandalism, against their history, and ours as well.”
 
—Jacob Mikanowski on why we need to start paying attention to what is happening to the world’s insects and invertebrates.
 

Various psychiatric drug treatments since 1990. Prozac & Stelazine in 1994 for a few years. 1200mg Amisulpride in 1998 for a year. 1999 to current time have maintained 200mg of Amisulpride & increased to 300mg a few years ago, with 2 stopping attempts in 2001 & 2003/4. i stopped all medications 5 times, for around 8 years in total, but the last 3 withdrawal/stopping attempts were disastrous. Am very unsure about stopping medication again. Have recently (in Winter 2018) had to increase the Amisulpride to 400mg. 

Healing Sanctuary - http://healingsanctuary.proboards.com/

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The AA Promises

 

1. If we are painstaking about this phase of our development, we will be amazed before we are half way through.

2. We are going to know a new freedom and a new happiness.

3. We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it.

4. We will comprehend the word serenity and we will know peace.

5. No matter how far down the scale we have gone, we will see how our experience can benefit others.

6. That feeling of uselessness and self-pity will disappear.

7. We will lose interest in selfish things and gain interest in our fellows.

8. Self-seeking will slip away.

9. Our whole attitude and outlook upon life will change.

10. Fear of people and of economic insecurity will leave us.

11. We will intuitively know how to handle situations which used to baffle us.

12. We will suddenly realize that God is doing for us what we could not do for ourselves.

 

Are these extravagant promises? We think not. They are being fulfilled among us - sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly. They will always materialize if we work for them.

 

Alcoholics Anonymous p83-84

Various psychiatric drug treatments since 1990. Prozac & Stelazine in 1994 for a few years. 1200mg Amisulpride in 1998 for a year. 1999 to current time have maintained 200mg of Amisulpride & increased to 300mg a few years ago, with 2 stopping attempts in 2001 & 2003/4. i stopped all medications 5 times, for around 8 years in total, but the last 3 withdrawal/stopping attempts were disastrous. Am very unsure about stopping medication again. Have recently (in Winter 2018) had to increase the Amisulpride to 400mg. 

Healing Sanctuary - http://healingsanctuary.proboards.com/

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"The great supreme cosmic commander in chief of the universe has
assigned you a commission, has given you a task to enter the
fierce battle of human and social existence on earth. You were put
here to battle. I'm sure that you understand that we’re talking
about battling in a different way - not the battle to get the
rewards of this world, but the battle to win insight into
seeing that we do want the rewards of this world and it’s the
only important thing to us presently - and to change all that."
 
    from a talk given 9/19/1987
  Vernon Howard's Higher World - MP3 CD Volume 14, talk 347, track 15

Various psychiatric drug treatments since 1990. Prozac & Stelazine in 1994 for a few years. 1200mg Amisulpride in 1998 for a year. 1999 to current time have maintained 200mg of Amisulpride & increased to 300mg a few years ago, with 2 stopping attempts in 2001 & 2003/4. i stopped all medications 5 times, for around 8 years in total, but the last 3 withdrawal/stopping attempts were disastrous. Am very unsure about stopping medication again. Have recently (in Winter 2018) had to increase the Amisulpride to 400mg. 

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On 11/12/2017 at 10:15 AM, cpuusage said:
Please anyone that cares do something about all this - The general treatment of people suffering mental health difficulties in the UK is diabolical -
 
Full Campaign here -
 
 


It's Not looking good with it all But then things Never really change within all this area & it won't all change in my lifetime. i've largely given up with it all & arguing the toss. 

https://finolamoss.wordpress.com/2017/12/08/s-135-mha-17-removal-for-treatment-private-mentals-ultimate-harvesting-tool/

Various psychiatric drug treatments since 1990. Prozac & Stelazine in 1994 for a few years. 1200mg Amisulpride in 1998 for a year. 1999 to current time have maintained 200mg of Amisulpride & increased to 300mg a few years ago, with 2 stopping attempts in 2001 & 2003/4. i stopped all medications 5 times, for around 8 years in total, but the last 3 withdrawal/stopping attempts were disastrous. Am very unsure about stopping medication again. Have recently (in Winter 2018) had to increase the Amisulpride to 400mg. 

Healing Sanctuary - http://healingsanctuary.proboards.com/

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The US economy would grow by $2.5 trillion under basic income, study finds
 

 

Various psychiatric drug treatments since 1990. Prozac & Stelazine in 1994 for a few years. 1200mg Amisulpride in 1998 for a year. 1999 to current time have maintained 200mg of Amisulpride & increased to 300mg a few years ago, with 2 stopping attempts in 2001 & 2003/4. i stopped all medications 5 times, for around 8 years in total, but the last 3 withdrawal/stopping attempts were disastrous. Am very unsure about stopping medication again. Have recently (in Winter 2018) had to increase the Amisulpride to 400mg. 

Healing Sanctuary - http://healingsanctuary.proboards.com/

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Intergenerational Impact of Adverse Childhood Experiences
 
The daughters of children evacuated from Finland during World War II show increased number of psychiatric hospitalizations
 

Various psychiatric drug treatments since 1990. Prozac & Stelazine in 1994 for a few years. 1200mg Amisulpride in 1998 for a year. 1999 to current time have maintained 200mg of Amisulpride & increased to 300mg a few years ago, with 2 stopping attempts in 2001 & 2003/4. i stopped all medications 5 times, for around 8 years in total, but the last 3 withdrawal/stopping attempts were disastrous. Am very unsure about stopping medication again. Have recently (in Winter 2018) had to increase the Amisulpride to 400mg. 

Healing Sanctuary - http://healingsanctuary.proboards.com/

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  • Moderator Emeritus

Thank you cpu. 

 

And........do not lose hope in change.........I repeat........do not lose hope in change..........do not lose hope..........do not lose........

 

Happiest that we all can muster for the holidays!!!

 

And best,  :) (can you believe I used to not like smiley faces?)

 

mmt

Late 2023- gone to emeritus status, inactive, don't @ me, I can check who I've posted on, and I'm not really here like I used to be......thanks.

Started with psycho meds/psychiatric care circa 1988.  In retrospect, and on contemplation, situational overwhelm.

Rounding up to 30 years of medications(30 medication trials, poly-pharmacy maximum was 3 at one time).

5/28/2015-off Adderal salts 2.5mg. (I had been on that since hospital 10/2014)

12/2015---just holding, holding, holding, with trileptal/oxcarb at 75 mg. 1/2 tab at hs.  My last psycho med ever!  Tapered @ 10% every 4 weeks, sometimes 2 weeks to

2016 Dec 16 medication free!!

Longer signature post here, with current supplements.

Herb and alcohol free since 5/15/2016.  And.....I quit smoking 11/2021. Lapsed.  Redo of quit smoking 9/28/2022.  Can you say Hallelujah?(took me long enough)💜

None of my posts are intended as medical advice.  Please discuss any decisions about your medical care with a knowledgeable medical provider.  My success story:  Blue skies ahead, clear sailing

 

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7 hours ago, manymoretodays said:

Thank you cpu. 

 

And........do not lose hope in change.........I repeat........do not lose hope in change..........do not lose hope..........do not lose........

 

Happiest that we all can muster for the holidays!!!

 

And best,  :) (can you believe I used to not like smiley faces?)

 

mmt


Thank you - i have been really trying to refocus things on my own experience, strength & hope - to try as best that i can to have some hope, trust & faith in goodness, the Universe, the spirit of the Earth, Life - the Universal Life Force - Source - my own Being - everything that can help me to try & feel a bit better about things.

Facebook doesn't really help much.

Best wishes to you for Christmas & a good New year.

Various psychiatric drug treatments since 1990. Prozac & Stelazine in 1994 for a few years. 1200mg Amisulpride in 1998 for a year. 1999 to current time have maintained 200mg of Amisulpride & increased to 300mg a few years ago, with 2 stopping attempts in 2001 & 2003/4. i stopped all medications 5 times, for around 8 years in total, but the last 3 withdrawal/stopping attempts were disastrous. Am very unsure about stopping medication again. Have recently (in Winter 2018) had to increase the Amisulpride to 400mg. 

Healing Sanctuary - http://healingsanctuary.proboards.com/

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  • Moderator Emeritus

:blink::mellow::)  Facebook??!!!  I take my timely breaks and try, try, to just stick with family and a few old friends........ 

 

I don't get too caught up in the "issues" there.  I sometimes like the links, etc. that just appear and then again........sometimes I don't. 

 

Ditto.

mmt

Late 2023- gone to emeritus status, inactive, don't @ me, I can check who I've posted on, and I'm not really here like I used to be......thanks.

Started with psycho meds/psychiatric care circa 1988.  In retrospect, and on contemplation, situational overwhelm.

Rounding up to 30 years of medications(30 medication trials, poly-pharmacy maximum was 3 at one time).

5/28/2015-off Adderal salts 2.5mg. (I had been on that since hospital 10/2014)

12/2015---just holding, holding, holding, with trileptal/oxcarb at 75 mg. 1/2 tab at hs.  My last psycho med ever!  Tapered @ 10% every 4 weeks, sometimes 2 weeks to

2016 Dec 16 medication free!!

Longer signature post here, with current supplements.

Herb and alcohol free since 5/15/2016.  And.....I quit smoking 11/2021. Lapsed.  Redo of quit smoking 9/28/2022.  Can you say Hallelujah?(took me long enough)💜

None of my posts are intended as medical advice.  Please discuss any decisions about your medical care with a knowledgeable medical provider.  My success story:  Blue skies ahead, clear sailing

 

Link to comment
16 hours ago, manymoretodays said:

:blink::mellow::)  Facebook??!!!  I take my timely breaks and try, try, to just stick with family and a few old friends........ 

 

I don't get too caught up in the "issues" there.  I sometimes like the links, etc. that just appear and then again........sometimes I don't. 

 

Ditto.

mmt



i have got really addicted to facebook over the past couple or so years. i was in active / severe addiction / alcoholism for 17 years - am now over 16 years T-Total - But the addiction has really now gone around tobacco, coffee & the internet.

i have stopped using most mental health forums & most fb mental health discussion pages.

In part there is a kind of endless double bind / catch 22. i gave up with it all 13 years ago & just had to accept the whole thing - what else could i have done & what else can i do. It's Not my fault with it all. i don't like all the blame & attack from all sides on the services users who are stuck in the middle of it all. i have been often been & get attacked from the pro biomedical psychiatry side for trying to discuss alternatives & healing & i get attacked from all the anti-psychiatry side for having to accept the diagnosis / condition / illness & medication. i can't win. Other than my own pages & forum i have removed myself from a lot of mental health pages - it's all a dead end - i can't have the same endless debates with people.

Genuine Diplomats & people trying to be Diplomatic about it all are usually the worst attacked - & people are destroying themselves over it all - same with the Global Terror War - the Endless Drug War - the endless Environmental War - & all the other bullsh*t.

Bottom line in my view it needs a whole person, individualised, person centred fully integrated integral holistic system, based on comprehensive, humane & compassionate understandings, care, help & support. Some endless anti / critical / pro / alternative psychiatry argument / polemics & people arguing endless biological / biomedical, psychogenic, sociological & spiritual / transpersonal agendas has Not & will Not work - the whole thing will just get worse & worse.

i don't think that there will be appropriate & proper understanding, care & support until the wider society transforms to something a lot more civilised. All these areas just reflect the wider society / system.

Various psychiatric drug treatments since 1990. Prozac & Stelazine in 1994 for a few years. 1200mg Amisulpride in 1998 for a year. 1999 to current time have maintained 200mg of Amisulpride & increased to 300mg a few years ago, with 2 stopping attempts in 2001 & 2003/4. i stopped all medications 5 times, for around 8 years in total, but the last 3 withdrawal/stopping attempts were disastrous. Am very unsure about stopping medication again. Have recently (in Winter 2018) had to increase the Amisulpride to 400mg. 

Healing Sanctuary - http://healingsanctuary.proboards.com/

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Best wishes & respect, cpusage, you have some very worthwhile thoughts.

Born 1945. 

1999 - First Effexor/Venlafaxine

2016 Withdrawal research. Effexor.  13Jul - 212.5mg;  6Aug - 200.0mg;  24Aug - 187.5mg;  13Sep - 175.0mg;  3Oct - 162.5mg;  26Oct - 150mg 

2017  9Jan - 150.00mg;  23Mar - 137.50mg;  24Apr - 125.00mg;  31May - 112.50mg holding;  3Sep - 100.00mg;  20Sep - 93.75mg;  20Oct - 87.5mg;  12Nov - 81.25mg;  13 Dec - 75.00mg

2018  18Jan - 69.1mg; 16Feb - 62.5mg; 16March - 57.5mg (-8%); 22Apr - 56.3mg(-2%); CRASHED - Updose 29May - 62.5mg; Updose - 1Jul - 75.0mg. Updose - 2Aug - 87.5mg. Updose - 27Aug - 100.0mg. Updose - 11Oct 112.5mg. Updose - 6Nov 125.00mg

2019 Updoses 19 Jan - 150.0mg. 1April - 162.5mg. 24 April - Feeling better - doing tasks, getting outside.  7 May - usual depression questionnaire gives "probably no depression" result.

Supps/Vits  Omega 3;  Chelated Magnesium;  Prebiotics/Probiotics, Vit D3. 

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3 hours ago, peng said:

Best wishes & respect, cpusage, you have some very worthwhile thoughts.


Thank you Peng - that is very kind of you. Best wishes to you & yours as well.

Various psychiatric drug treatments since 1990. Prozac & Stelazine in 1994 for a few years. 1200mg Amisulpride in 1998 for a year. 1999 to current time have maintained 200mg of Amisulpride & increased to 300mg a few years ago, with 2 stopping attempts in 2001 & 2003/4. i stopped all medications 5 times, for around 8 years in total, but the last 3 withdrawal/stopping attempts were disastrous. Am very unsure about stopping medication again. Have recently (in Winter 2018) had to increase the Amisulpride to 400mg. 

Healing Sanctuary - http://healingsanctuary.proboards.com/

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  • 2 weeks later...

Various psychiatric drug treatments since 1990. Prozac & Stelazine in 1994 for a few years. 1200mg Amisulpride in 1998 for a year. 1999 to current time have maintained 200mg of Amisulpride & increased to 300mg a few years ago, with 2 stopping attempts in 2001 & 2003/4. i stopped all medications 5 times, for around 8 years in total, but the last 3 withdrawal/stopping attempts were disastrous. Am very unsure about stopping medication again. Have recently (in Winter 2018) had to increase the Amisulpride to 400mg. 

Healing Sanctuary - http://healingsanctuary.proboards.com/

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“The truth of the matter is that most people who say they want awakening don’t actually “want to awaken”. They want their version of awakening. What they actually want is to be really happy in their dream state. And that’s ok, if that’s as far as they’ve evolved.
 
But the real, sincere impulse toward enlightenment is something that goes far beyond the desire to make our dream state better. It is an impulse that is willing to subject itself to whatever is needed in order to wake up. The authentic impulse toward enlightenment is that internal prayer asking for whatever it is that will bring us to a full awakening, no matter whether it turns out to be wonderful or terrible. It is an impulse that puts no conditions on what we have to go through.
 
This authentic impulse can be a bit frightening, because when you feel it, you know it is real. When you have let go of all conditions- when you have let go of how you want your own awakening to be and what you want the journey to be like -you have let go of your illusion of control.
 
In my experience, everyone will say they want to discover the Truth, right up until they realize that the Truth will rob them of their deepest held ideas, beliefs, hopes, and dreams. The freedom of enlightenment means much more than the experience of love and peace. It means discovering a Truth that will turn your view of self and life upside- down. For one who is truly ready, this will be unimaginably liberating. But for one who is still clinging in any way, this will be extremely challenging indeed. How does one know if they are ready? One is ready when they are willing to be absolutely consumed, when they are willing to be fuel for a fire without end.”
 
-Adyashanti

Various psychiatric drug treatments since 1990. Prozac & Stelazine in 1994 for a few years. 1200mg Amisulpride in 1998 for a year. 1999 to current time have maintained 200mg of Amisulpride & increased to 300mg a few years ago, with 2 stopping attempts in 2001 & 2003/4. i stopped all medications 5 times, for around 8 years in total, but the last 3 withdrawal/stopping attempts were disastrous. Am very unsure about stopping medication again. Have recently (in Winter 2018) had to increase the Amisulpride to 400mg. 

Healing Sanctuary - http://healingsanctuary.proboards.com/

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Various psychiatric drug treatments since 1990. Prozac & Stelazine in 1994 for a few years. 1200mg Amisulpride in 1998 for a year. 1999 to current time have maintained 200mg of Amisulpride & increased to 300mg a few years ago, with 2 stopping attempts in 2001 & 2003/4. i stopped all medications 5 times, for around 8 years in total, but the last 3 withdrawal/stopping attempts were disastrous. Am very unsure about stopping medication again. Have recently (in Winter 2018) had to increase the Amisulpride to 400mg. 

Healing Sanctuary - http://healingsanctuary.proboards.com/

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Various psychiatric drug treatments since 1990. Prozac & Stelazine in 1994 for a few years. 1200mg Amisulpride in 1998 for a year. 1999 to current time have maintained 200mg of Amisulpride & increased to 300mg a few years ago, with 2 stopping attempts in 2001 & 2003/4. i stopped all medications 5 times, for around 8 years in total, but the last 3 withdrawal/stopping attempts were disastrous. Am very unsure about stopping medication again. Have recently (in Winter 2018) had to increase the Amisulpride to 400mg. 

Healing Sanctuary - http://healingsanctuary.proboards.com/

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Nice, cpu.

 

Attended concert by Bob Marley in 1981.  Felt it like a spiritual event rather than a rock concert.  Maybe it was just the prescribed psychotropic medication?  Hope not.

Two years previously, I had slept through half of the Star Wars premier in Edinburgh.  Battle scene woke me up for a bit.  I was on the "non-addictive" benzo Ativan.  Bless all the prescribers and pharmas, Not. 

Born 1945. 

1999 - First Effexor/Venlafaxine

2016 Withdrawal research. Effexor.  13Jul - 212.5mg;  6Aug - 200.0mg;  24Aug - 187.5mg;  13Sep - 175.0mg;  3Oct - 162.5mg;  26Oct - 150mg 

2017  9Jan - 150.00mg;  23Mar - 137.50mg;  24Apr - 125.00mg;  31May - 112.50mg holding;  3Sep - 100.00mg;  20Sep - 93.75mg;  20Oct - 87.5mg;  12Nov - 81.25mg;  13 Dec - 75.00mg

2018  18Jan - 69.1mg; 16Feb - 62.5mg; 16March - 57.5mg (-8%); 22Apr - 56.3mg(-2%); CRASHED - Updose 29May - 62.5mg; Updose - 1Jul - 75.0mg. Updose - 2Aug - 87.5mg. Updose - 27Aug - 100.0mg. Updose - 11Oct 112.5mg. Updose - 6Nov 125.00mg

2019 Updoses 19 Jan - 150.0mg. 1April - 162.5mg. 24 April - Feeling better - doing tasks, getting outside.  7 May - usual depression questionnaire gives "probably no depression" result.

Supps/Vits  Omega 3;  Chelated Magnesium;  Prebiotics/Probiotics, Vit D3. 

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Hi Peng. Yes Marley was spiritual.
 

 

Various psychiatric drug treatments since 1990. Prozac & Stelazine in 1994 for a few years. 1200mg Amisulpride in 1998 for a year. 1999 to current time have maintained 200mg of Amisulpride & increased to 300mg a few years ago, with 2 stopping attempts in 2001 & 2003/4. i stopped all medications 5 times, for around 8 years in total, but the last 3 withdrawal/stopping attempts were disastrous. Am very unsure about stopping medication again. Have recently (in Winter 2018) had to increase the Amisulpride to 400mg. 

Healing Sanctuary - http://healingsanctuary.proboards.com/

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  • Moderator Emeritus

Awesome.  I had a cat name Bob Marley.  B)  And always considered Star Wars to have a somewhat ? biblical theme, or now something I can now define as "spiritual".   It's been awhile though since I saw Star Wars.......I think it was something about Luke and then Dark Vader..........hmmmm, not sure where Princess Leia came in..........oh, well.  :blink:

Late 2023- gone to emeritus status, inactive, don't @ me, I can check who I've posted on, and I'm not really here like I used to be......thanks.

Started with psycho meds/psychiatric care circa 1988.  In retrospect, and on contemplation, situational overwhelm.

Rounding up to 30 years of medications(30 medication trials, poly-pharmacy maximum was 3 at one time).

5/28/2015-off Adderal salts 2.5mg. (I had been on that since hospital 10/2014)

12/2015---just holding, holding, holding, with trileptal/oxcarb at 75 mg. 1/2 tab at hs.  My last psycho med ever!  Tapered @ 10% every 4 weeks, sometimes 2 weeks to

2016 Dec 16 medication free!!

Longer signature post here, with current supplements.

Herb and alcohol free since 5/15/2016.  And.....I quit smoking 11/2021. Lapsed.  Redo of quit smoking 9/28/2022.  Can you say Hallelujah?(took me long enough)💜

None of my posts are intended as medical advice.  Please discuss any decisions about your medical care with a knowledgeable medical provider.  My success story:  Blue skies ahead, clear sailing

 

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Psychosocial Adversities Should be Included in Diagnosis

Proposal to include psychosocial adversities that impact mental health in ICD and DSM diagnoses

 

https://www.madinamerica.com/2018/01/psychosocial-adversities-included-diagnosis/

 

Publication of the Power Threat Meaning Framework

 

https://www.madinamerica.com/2018/01/publication-power-threat-meaning-framework/

 

https://www1.bps.org.uk/system/files/user-files/Division of Clinical Psychology/public/INF299 PTM overview web.pdf

 

Various psychiatric drug treatments since 1990. Prozac & Stelazine in 1994 for a few years. 1200mg Amisulpride in 1998 for a year. 1999 to current time have maintained 200mg of Amisulpride & increased to 300mg a few years ago, with 2 stopping attempts in 2001 & 2003/4. i stopped all medications 5 times, for around 8 years in total, but the last 3 withdrawal/stopping attempts were disastrous. Am very unsure about stopping medication again. Have recently (in Winter 2018) had to increase the Amisulpride to 400mg. 

Healing Sanctuary - http://healingsanctuary.proboards.com/

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