I have begun to believe my mind is full of tiny little topics that act like pimples.

No one can predict the order they start to fester in, or when they’ll get ripe and burst.

Monday, 6 January 2014

I Just Avoided Disaster




I Ran Out of Pot
but
I Got Creative and Diverted Disaster

I have Depression andI had a major problem with my pot supply this week. I use pot to keep a lid on my mood and this is a crisis

I am happy to report that my pot crisis is over. I ran out day before yesterday and yesterday was no fun because I could feel my depression setting in and my mood changing as time passed. I too am a casualty of the Down East Freeze. My shipment of super pot from Toronto is stuck and I was facing a whole week shortfall this morning.

In panic and in search od some secret stash I had forgotten I ran across a bag of twigs and stems I had considered using to make oil. They were small twigs and stems, drier than hell and tough as rocks but they were covered with hard little green balls of leaf and resin. I needed a toke badly so I got my mortar and pestle and I pounded the hell out of a pile of lumber bigger than my fist until it was reduced to shreds and then ran it through a sieve.
I got ½ a cup of fine leaf and resin that I proceeded to pestle 200 strokes into a fine powder. I put a pinch in my pipe and did a good hit. Great Jumpin Jesus! A miracle: Really good and I’m back to normal in no time flat and I’m looking at about a two week supply of some pretty decent hoot. My panic vanished.

I decide to tell you about all this because a FB friend sent me a link to an article on FB by a girl, no a mature woman, describing her problems with depression. It was excellent and I could relate to her. I also realized that of all the other readers of her story very few understood what depression really is and what she was talking about. The simple fact is that if you haven’t been there, or been very close to someone who is, you can’t know.

What follows is my story of my relationship with Depression
1.    How I got it.
2.    What I learned it is,
3.    What it did to me,
4.    How it changed me, and
5.    The person I am becoming because of it.

I have become very conscious of how my mind works and I can detect when trouble is brewing. After two days abstinence before I created my miracle cure all the alarms were going and I was extremely concerned about what was ahead for the next couple of days.

I have learned to watch myself in my head and I can see my brain going negative, from creative thinking about my blog and what I was going to do next; to the now, today and all the problems I have in life. I can control this by using my soapstone pipe and taking teeny weeny little one puff tokes like every half hour from from 5AM to 11PM; it levels me out and I get through the day without a hell of a lot of problems. It really is amazing how the first little toke can change my whole mood in about 5 minutes, even less depending on the potency of the pot.

I’ve run out of pot on a couple of occasions and that is not good because it’s a nasty downhill slope to the bottom of the hole and I don’t want to go there but, if it keeps developing, that is where I’m heading. It’s almost predictable in its development and fortunately I’ve only been out for a short time, about three days.

Even in that time you can go from thinking about your problems and the blame game starts: you start to feel responsible for an increasing number of fuckups in your past life. That’s not too bad but if you lose it here, you start blaming yourself for imaginary fuckups that were never your fault but; you remember every bad turn in your life and you start asking yourself  “What if I has only done this? You don’t know the answer but you assume the result would have solved the problem and you start feeling guilty for your sin of omission and on and on until every waking hour is devoted to hating yourself for destroying a mostly imaginary life. You hit the bottom of the hole when you lose hope of ever forgiving yourself and getting back to normal. Thank Christ I’ve only hit bottom once when I crashed in 1999. I avoided it again today when I created a supply of pot.

What Happened To Me

When I crashed in Sept 1999 I hadn’t worked I over a year and a half, had a work accident and ruptured a disc at L4/5 six months previously, weighed 289 lbs. and was completely out of physical shape.. I was sent to a WCB Occupational Rehab Program with extreme demands and collapsed half way through the second day of a four hour exercise program. I was sent to Surrey Memorial Hospital, a suspected heart attack but I had none. I was lucky that my heart specialist was very perceptive an noticed my downcast appearance. At an office visit one week after discharge he asked me to write a very quick test of 30 questions that took less than 2 minutes to answer: As quick as you can, read each question and don’t think, just check the yes or no answer box. I scored an amazing 27 out of the 30 and was very proud until he told me that it was a test for Depression and any score over 15 was bad news. He made a phone call and I walked down the street to see a Psychiatrist a half hour later.

Apparently most depression is the result of a problem with Serotonin, a hormone that controls your moods and their intensity. I can’t remember which gland makes it but nobody knows what goes wrong and there is no cure. Fortunately there are now a number of drug treatments that will help but everybody reacts differently and what will work with you is a psychiatrist guess game. I was lucky to be put on a drug called Serzone, an SSRI (Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitor) immediately and it worked for me. Unfortunately for a lot of depressed patients finding the right drug for them can be a trial and error effort that lasts for years of ups and downs and that can be completely disabling.

I hit bottom about a month after diagnosis of depression and it took me about six month to get back to near normal. In April 2000 I was diagnosed as having a Major Depressive Disorder Recurrent and I had several bad spells over the next two or three years. I have been spell free for the past 7 or 8 years but the worst result was discovering that I was doubly depressed and had Dysthymia, a low grade chronic depression that lasts forever in some instances. It’s not so bad being gloomy all the time but for me it meant the complete loss of interest and ability to do everything that I enjoyed and made my life worth while.

What I Lost to Dysthymia

I bought my first guitar from the T. Eaton Company catalog for $5 when I was 8 and my Mom taught me to play it first as a steel guitar on my lap then as a rhythm guitar and I finally would up as a pretty good bluegrass finger picker. I was a Burl Ives fan and a good singer of his songs and other ballads and I loved to party and entertain. I knew a hundred dirty jokes and songs and I ran with a beer loving crowd of buddies.

I bought my current guitar in 1968 and it’s a pretty rare Canadian Espana guitar made for the T. Eaton Company by a Finnish guitar manufacturer out of specially provided Canadian woods. It’s a classical style guitar but I discovered its body is a little larger and its got a slightly softer deeper tone. Its my baby!

My guitar has sat in the closet for 15 years now with only the occasional attempt to play. I pulled it out about three months ago intending to get back into playing and discovered rusty fingers and a voice that hasn’t been used in years. I’ve been looking at the damned thing in the corner and wondering what to do.

What is the point of playing again? Right now, none! The only audience I have is you my readers and the only entertainment I can share with you is my Joke Collection. They are the best 70 jokes that I have collected over the past 50 years and I managed to post them as a blog to share at TheYarnBarn.Blogspot.ca/. Take a peek when you need a grin. I recommend the following

The Runaway sermon at Crestmont Methodist

The moral of the story:  
Don’t piss off the Preacher

I can read 1250 words per minute and I was a compulsive reader. I began reading Zane Grey when I was about ten, in bed at Granddads farmhouse at night by kerosene lantern light. I absorbed the Code of the West and his hero gunfighter’s penchant for pursuing justice. By the time I was 15 I had read every book in the Fort Saskatchewan town and school libraries and took the bus to Edmonton to trade for another load of fiction and fantasy every weekend. My favorites are probably James Clavell, Wilbur Smith, Jeffery Archer Robert Ludlum and Tom Clancy.

I loved books, good movies and TV series that primarily featured characters who overcame great and complex difficulties in the course of their lives. Through the exercise of good character, determination and courage they overcame their problems.

I have not read a book for at least the last ten years. I have the same problem with movies and TV. I try and I get not even a quarter ways through and I’ve just lost interest in these heroes and their problems. Who gives a shit? I’ve got problems of my own and she is watching me right now. LOL


I AVOIDED DISASTER

Up until two years ago I was in total isolation in my room unless I was at work afternoons as a Security Guard watching a bank. I had no beer, no buddies, no social circle at all. My wife was totally unaware of how depressed I was but I damned near hit the bottom of the barrel again and on the way to work just before Christmas I was indulging in suicidal ideation about how I should kill myself. I got a wake up call. I was on River Road and wanted to turn left onto Nordel Way.  I waited until the last truck cleared the orange light, turned left and was T-boned in the passenger door by a kid in a pickup truck trying to beat the light. He was going really fast and spun me around 270 degrees and landed me up on top of the lane divider about 12“higher than the road.

I was lucky I wasn’t killed. I lost consciousness for a very short time but hardly had a scratch: a badly bruised set of right side ribs but nothing else. I was taken to hospital, x-rayed and released with an Rx for pain pills. For some strange reason pot didn’t help with that rib pain and it always was like a stab in the side that took forever to quit hurting every time I coughed or farted or laughed.for two months. It was a wakeup call that it just wasn’t my time to croak. Fate, Kharma, who the hell knows, but the Big Boy didn’t want me yet..

I was familiar to a certain degree about the problems with Medical Marijuana and had some nasty relationships with the MMAD and I decided that if I was stuck here, something had to change, and that was me. Jan 1. I decided to help so I started this blog on Jan 1, 2012.
January 27, I read of the Kamermans bust and I decided to become an advocate for him and that expanded to my current range of interests.

I owe much of my recovery to you commenting readers for feedback that let me know that I am doing some good work and have helped some people. That has provided the incentive and motivation to make more changes and get back to the party animal I was. I have plans for Youtube to play and sing two very good not quite dirty songs that I want to get credit for. I have no idea where they came from but they popped into my head 40 years ago and I think they qualify as Classic Country, Just the title and chorus of each will give you a pretty good idea of what is going to come if I can get my new webcam working and learn to warble and pick again:
.
The first is called:

                                              FLATTULENCE
and its chorus goes:

FART! FART! FART! FART!
Whistle, Bang or Wheeze
Odorous and Awful now
It’s floating on the breeze

The second is called:

THE SHITHOUSE ON THE FARM

and its chorus goes

It’s that little white building by the barn
It’s the most important building on the farm
Where I used to sit at ease
With my elbows on my knees
In that little white building by the barn

Playing them at my funeral would make that a perfect send off, 
everybody would be singing along and stomping their feet.

The last two years of Facebook and the Blog have made a huge change in my mood and outlook and I hope to continue to grow more. It is a remarkable turnaround from shame to once again feeling some self esteem and actually feeling proud of myself for what I have managed to do.

So onward and upward with the Don Quixote imitation and the Code of the West belief. You charge the goddamn windmill and then when you get close enough to see the occupant you quick draw your pistol and shoot the bastard between the eyes before he can shoot you.
(Standard Police Procedure: Claim Self Defense) 
Unfortunately there is no shortage of damsels in distress around here with grow-ops to save and I expect to be busy!

That is my story and how I got here and nobody knows where I’m going until I write my next post.

Until then
Blaine Barrett

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