Well I'll keep at it even though pro'lly no one gives a flying fig for this blog. You mean everyone isn't dying to get a whiff of my life? You mean people don't notice me, spy on me, care what I think, recognize me, or follow me? Haaawhaaaaat? I guess that realization makes me (gulp) UN-paranoid schizophrenic!

I have a neighbor who thinks he's being spied on. He thinks: 1. In about 1990 George H.W. Bush flew a helicopter over his house. 2. People use computers to spy on him and therefore computers are evil. 3. Now, every time he goes to the park to fly his kite, planes deliberately fly very low because they think his kite is a weapons system and they are swooping low to check it out. And more, more, more...

The sad truth is there is no one, no paparazzi, no government officials, no one interested a fig in what he thinks. He stops short of seeing people who aren't there, but I do have a friend who actually has bouts of schizophrenia. Sometimes he's totally lucid, very successful, very engaging, and then sometimes he goes through a phase where he's so totally out there. The last time he went through a phase he said quite calmly that there are aliens all about, he's part alien, and he can tell the aliens from regular humans because he can see their real face behind the superimposed human phase. OK, now I have a brother who I KNOW does a lot of work helping cities clean up environmental toxins. But he also swears he's had people tap his phones, follow him on planes, there are always shadows around corners...because he knows things that others don't know about gov't plots to aid polluters...now to a certain extent his experiences fighting big business and the army are real (he helped lobby 8 cities from burning army chemical weapons, which causes severe anomalies in those affected- this part's true, cause I had to look it up myself), and I'm not always exactly sure where the truth ends and the illusions begin...now he had a bout with some types of recreational drugs that may have caused some of the illusory enhancement of his experiences. And he's actually becoming much more lucid now that he isn't smoking as much pot (maybe none at all) and he hasn't done heavy things in years. I am hoping that it is his brain repairing itself. He still drinks too much alcohol and I fear it hinders the process. So I pray...the alcohol doesn't give him weird ideas but it does just numb him sometimes. Some people have thoughts with such sharp blades that they feel a need to numb them for a while. Of the 4 of us siblings he was probably the smartest and I hate that there's so much knowledge up there mixed with imagination, which tends to negate what he DOES know to the rest of the world. He is really intelligent and does know a lot of stuff. Oh to pick his brain and throw out the trash! What a world of knowledge he has!

Additional thought: I think my brother's whole start with drugs and stuff is due to depression which runs like grassfire through the generations of my family, both sides but especially my mother's- I personally am on effexor for the rest of my life- it's an utter godsend to a bipolar person such as myself. Many people need prozac or zoloft or lithium or effexor (tried 'em all) at some epoch in life but in my case, my depression is utterly NOT experience-based (though the fact that I had depression caused me to make bad decisions that CAUSED bad experiences). What I'm saying, I remember having depression as a child, wondering if it would ever end, why did I worry, and I also remember having horrible horrible HORRIBLE visions of people cutting my cat to pieces and how I cried!!!!!! I LATER had these visions post-partum and had visions of people taking my babies and doing awful things. After I took effexor, these visions totally DISAPPEARED! The BRAIN is an organ and you MUST look after its health. Having enough serotonin to transmit messages is super important, what I take is an uptake inhibitor. Side effects? Fatigue, weeeeeeiiiird dreams which often repeat over and over, which are extremely vivit but NOT unpleasant! ....and night sweats with those dreams. I wake up soaked head to foot but I'd never stop my medicine on that account. I'd rather lose my limbs than have depression again. YES IT IS THAT BAD!!!! When I was 17 and had mono I think my depression was one of the worst ever- and I believe God allowed me to have that experience before my parents or even most doctors knew how to diagnose or treat it the way they do now. (I was born for such a time as this.) Now I KNOW, years later, that the epstein-barr virus is one of the most extreme serotonin depleters ever! But it is amazing the talks I had with God at that time. And then amazingly I was healed within 3 weeks.
I now have many family members- cousins, etc., who have had to take things for depression. And other people (my brother Dave for example) who seem to remain amazingly unaffected. Aren't THEY lucky!
In my case I'm bipolar- the flip side of depression is the mania- which is like being on a fast, fast roller coaster all the time- utter euphoria- utter giddiness- and you think somehow you rule the world, you're famous, people guess or know or admire you. And intellectually you know it isn't true. But you get so incredibly CRAZY you make ridiculous decisions (which I have done), or (which I have ALSO done), you make ridiculous decisions which in turn cause more mania. It's like you're flying, swimming, swinging, moving, looping in a race care, not caring, not wanting to stop, laughing, pure exhiliaration. It's CRAZY! The bad thing is that when you're IN mania, someone else who knows you has to stop you, because you don't want to leave that altered state.