Oh, my god!
Avedon Carol
Forget everything else, this guy should _not_ be AG.
http://washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A29596-2001Jan7.html
When he was in the Senate, Ashcroft denounced the idea of spending
money on treatment as a trick to siphon funds away from interdiction;
a government that offers treatment "accommodates us at our lowest and
least," he said. To be fair, his bill on methamphetamines did provide
$10 million for treating addicts. But more than half of the $55
million in new spending that the bill envisaged was for get-tough
policies. And when Ashcroft sponsored a bill on prison addiction last
year, his proposal was to give prisoners drug tests before releasing
them; he offered no money for treating addiction.
--
I am reading from rec.arts.sf.fandom, where I am on-topic;
follow-ups are set accordingly, just in case.
T Nielsen Hayden
Avedon Carol <ave...@thirdworld.uk> wrote:
>
>Forget everything else, this guy should _not_ be AG.
>
>http://washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A29596-2001Jan7.html
>When he was in the Senate, Ashcroft denounced the idea of spending
>money on treatment as a trick to siphon funds away from interdiction;
>a government that offers treatment "accommodates us at our lowest and
>least," he said. To be fair, his bill on methamphetamines did provide
>$10 million for treating addicts. But more than half of the $55
>million in new spending that the bill envisaged was for get-tough
>policies. And when Ashcroft sponsored a bill on prison addiction last
>year, his proposal was to give prisoners drug tests before releasing
>them; he offered no money for treating addiction.
Doesn't Ashcroft's wing of the Republicans object to all sorts of social
programs because it can't be sufficiently demonstrated that they're
sufficiently beneficial? But here he is, coming down hard in support of
policies which are known (in great detail, and with dazzling clarity) to do
more harm than good.
Ick, ick, ick! Did Bush pick this guy as his nominee because he's so awful
he'll distract us from all his other nominees?
-t.
Mike Kozlowski
T Nielsen Hayden <t...@panix.com> wrote:
>Ick, ick, ick! Did Bush pick this guy as his nominee because he's so awful
>he'll distract us from all his other nominees?
That actually occurred to me, as well. It's pretty much a given that the
rightmost of Bush's appointees will be the one getting the most criticism
from the left, so if you just make sure that the rightmost one is way the
hell out there, you can move the rest of them a lot further right than
would be otherwise possible.
--
Mike Kozlowski
http://www.klio.org/mlk/
Danny Lieberman
Teresa, from some of the accounts Ive read, it seems clear to me that
Bush has made very few of the choices himself, and I would venture
most of them were made by Cheney and his right-wing colleagues.
Ashcroft was a surprise pick, and a story in the Wash Post (I think)
had them going with Roscoe (the Montana gov, spelled Racicot?) but
conservatives scuttled that choice and told the Bushies to appoint
Ashcroft.
--
Danny Lieberman
d...@panix.com
adrian...@hotmail.con
>Forget everything else, this guy should _not_ be AG.
I find myself thinking that disturbingly often, for a
disturbing variety of "everything else."
>http://washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A29596-2001Jan7.html
>When he was in the Senate, Ashcroft denounced the idea of spending
>money on treatment as a trick to siphon funds away from interdiction;
>a government that offers treatment "accommodates us at our lowest and
>least," he said. To be fair, his bill on methamphetamines did provide
>$10 million for treating addicts. But more than half of the $55
>million in new spending that the bill envisaged was for get-tough
>policies. And when Ashcroft sponsored a bill on prison addiction last
>year, his proposal was to give prisoners drug tests before releasing
>them; he offered no money for treating addiction.
"...his bill on methamphetamines" is called The Methamphetamine
Anti-Proliferation Act, and it was deeply disturbing, even by
the standards of the War On Drugs. It attempted to criminalize
*information* about drugs, including medical, educational, and
political writings. It brought a whole new shudder of relevance
to the old slogan about Silence = Death. The War On Drugs has
caused a lot of personal and constitutional casualties over the
years, but legislative contempt for the First Amendment can still
shock me. Ashcroft was an evil senator, and I'm glad the people of
Missouri voted him out.
Adrian Turtle
sidewalk radical
Joel Rosenberg
You might also, just in passing, be glad that he had the grace not to
mount a legal challenge to his defeat, as he had at least a fighting
chance of winning.
Erik V. Olson
adrian...@hotmail.con <adrian...@hotmail.con> wrote:
>shock me. Ashcroft was an evil senator, and I'm glad the people of
>Missouri voted him out.
I'm not -- and I voted against him. Ashcroft in the Senate was just one
(idiotic) voice amongst 100. I'd much rather have him as a Senator, rather
than AG.
--
Erik V. Olson: er...@mo.net : http://walden.mo.net/~eriko/
Kip Williams
> Teresa, from some of the accounts Ive read, it seems clear to me that
> Bush has made very few of the choices himself, and I would venture
> most of them were made by Cheney and his right-wing colleagues.
>
> Ashcroft was a surprise pick, and a story in the Wash Post (I think)
> had them going with Roscoe (the Montana gov, spelled Racicot?) but
> conservatives scuttled that choice and told the Bushies to appoint
> Ashcroft.
Pretending to consider Racicot was his payback for being an attack
dog in the Recent Unpleasantness. All accounts were that he was
known as a nice guy up to then. Well, I hope he's happy now.
--
--Kip (Williams)
amusing the world at http://members.home.net/kipw/
Marilee J. Layman
I've seen that suggested, but it looks like Chavez is the first
casualty.
--
Marilee J. Layman The Other*Worlds*Cafe
HOSTE...@aol.com A Science Fiction Discussion Group.
AOL Keyword: OWC http://www.webmoose.com/owc
T Nielsen Hayden
Chavez went up and then down again like a target in a carnival rifle booth.
-t.
T Nielsen Hayden
adrian...@hotmail.con <adrian...@hotmail.con> wrote:
I keep wondering whether there were consciously evil motives behind that
bill and its choice of targets. Methamphetamines is emphatically one of
those drugs where ignorance can too easily become death. If you want to
generate some grisly drug-related deaths, putting speed into the hands of
amateurs will do it.
-t.
Joel Rosenberg
>
Gotta wonder if that wasn't the plan all along, although it probably
wasn't.
Still, they did let her get hung out to dry.
Kip Williams
And very shortly after asserting they would stand by her. Golly.
Avedon Carol
wrote:
Christ, did they ever! Phhht! A part of me wonders if it _was_ the
plan (more seriously than you do), and a part of me wonders whether
this wasn't rather typical of the Perfect Example phenomenon; that is,
if you're a woman/minority, you have to be a paragon, but if you're a
white boy you get to make mistakes.
But mainly, I wonder what else they found out about her that they were
afraid would come out. ("Look, if the press looks too deeply into
this, they're going to find out those poor illegal aliens you helped
out were really Contras being specially trained to distribute crack in
LA!")
Avedon Carol
><adrian...@hotmail.con> wrote:
>>"...his bill on methamphetamines" is called The Methamphetamine
>>Anti-Proliferation Act, and it was deeply disturbing, even by the standards
>>of the War On Drugs. It attempted to criminalize *information* about
>>drugs, including medical, educational, and political writings. It brought
>>a whole new shudder of relevance to the old slogan about Silence = Death.
>>The War On Drugs has caused a lot of personal and constitutional casualties
>>over the years, but legislative contempt for the First Amendment can still
>>shock me. Ashcroft was an evil senator, and I'm glad the people of
>>Missouri voted him out.
>
>I keep wondering whether there were consciously evil motives behind that
>bill and its choice of targets. Methamphetamines is emphatically one of
>those drugs where ignorance can too easily become death. If you want to
>generate some grisly drug-related deaths, putting speed into the hands of
>amateurs will do it.
Oh, I'm sure it was "just politics", in the sense that pharmaceutical
houses contribute a fuckload of money to political campaigns, and meth
is pretty heavy competition from some of their best-selling drugs.
Erik V. Olson
>I keep wondering whether there were consciously evil motives behind that
>bill and its choice of targets. Methamphetamines is emphatically one of
>those drugs where ignorance can too easily become death. If you want to
>generate some grisly drug-related deaths, putting speed into the hands of
>amateurs will do it.
In both use and manufacture. A Missouri cop once told me that they way they
find about half the meth labs they do is by finding the bodies of the people
running the labs, after they screw something up and kill themselves.
Occasionally, they explode, which makes them rather easy to spot.
Pete McCutchen
wrote:
>t...@panix.com (T Nielsen Hayden) writes:
I think that they felt that they'd been lied to by her, and that this
affected their willingness to support her in the crunch. In the case
of Ashcroft, by contrast, they knew that there was going to be a
fight.
--
Pete McCutchen
nyje...@my-deja.com
Kip Williams <ki...@home.com> wrote:
>
> And very shortly after asserting they would stand by her. Golly.
>
> --
> --Kip (Williams)
> amusing the world at http://members.home.net/kipw/
>
Bill Maher (sp?) said that was the kiss of death.
Sent via Deja.com
http://www.deja.com/
nyje...@my-deja.com
ave...@cix.co.uk wrote:
> But mainly, I wonder what else they found out about her that they were
> afraid would come out. ("Look, if the press looks too deeply into
> this, they're going to find out those poor illegal aliens you helped
> out were really Contras being specially trained to distribute crack in
> LA!")
>
> --
> I am reading from rec.arts.sf.fandom, where I am on-topic;
> follow-ups are set accordingly, just in case.
>
And dump Alligators in the sewer system.
nyje...@my-deja.com
er...@mo.net wrote:
> In both use and manufacture. A Missouri cop once told me that they
way they
> find about half the meth labs they do is by finding the bodies of the
people
> running the labs, after they screw something up and kill themselves.
> Occasionally, they explode, which makes them rather easy to spot.
>
> --
> Erik V. Olson: er...@mo.net : http://walden.mo.net/~eriko/
>
Time for the chemist on top of your television to explode.
--
First they said it was about Gore being a sore loser.
Then they said it was about Nader being a spoiler.
Then they said it was about Bush being a crook.
IT'S ABOUT THE SACREDNESS OF THE VOTE STUPID!
obscurity
> bill and its choice of targets. Methamphetamines is emphatically one of
> those drugs where ignorance can too easily become death. If you want to
> generate some grisly drug-related deaths, putting speed into the hands of
> amateurs will do it.
As someone who has taken a lot of speed in the past (it is my preferred
recreational drug), I would be *very* interested in hearing you elaborate on
this. Are the grisly deaths you refer to related to manufacture, or usage?
I know that some medical conditions (eg, high blood pressure, over-active
thyroid gland) can cause problems with it, and of course there's the whole
speed-psychosis thing, and eating/sleeping disorders with long-term regular
use, but I've not heard of anything, well, *grisly*.
Everything I've read so far (and I did make a deliberate effort to read as
much stuff as I could before deciding which drugs I would/would not take,
and how I would take them, when I first considered recreational drug use)
has led me to believe that, used in moderation, speed isn't too bad.
If you have information to the contrary, I'd really like to read it.
--
obscurity.
"Only the great masters of style ever succeed in being obscure." - Oscar Wilde
P Nielsen Hayden
Danny Lieberman <d...@panix.com> wrote:
>Teresa, from some of the accounts Ive read, it seems clear to me that
>Bush has made very few of the choices himself, and I would venture
>most of them were made by Cheney and his right-wing colleagues.
>
>Ashcroft was a surprise pick, and a story in the Wash Post (I think)
>had them going with Roscoe (the Montana gov, spelled Racicot?) but
>conservatives scuttled that choice and told the Bushies to appoint
>Ashcroft.
I think you've been spun. The entire point of this story is to
preserve the illusion that George W. Bush is a "moderate." Of course,
he is no such thing.
--
Patrick Nielsen Hayden : p...@panix.com : http://www.panix.com/~pnh
P Nielsen Hayden
adrian...@hotmail.con <adrian...@hotmail.con> wrote:
You are not, you should pardon the expression, whistling Dixie.
Attorney General nominee John Ashcroft's so-called "Methamphetamine
Anti-Proliferation Act" would criminalize the distribution of
information about how various drugs are made, and would give the DEA
and the FBI the right to order ISPs to close down a site without
notice *merely on request of the police* without any need for a court
order. It would also allow secret government searches of your home,
office, and computer without a warrant, and remove the existing
responsibility of the government to provide an inventory of items
seized.
T Nielsen Hayden
nyje...@my-deja.com <nyje...@my-deja.com> wrote:
>In article <3A5C5DEC...@home.com>,
> Kip Williams <ki...@home.com> wrote:
>>
>> And very shortly after asserting they would stand by her. Golly.
>>
>> --
>> --Kip (Williams)
>> amusing the world at http://members.home.net/kipw/
>>
>
>Bill Maher (sp?) said that was the kiss of death.
Bill Moyer?
The full-scale kiss of death is saying they're sure it'll all be cleared up
soon, and they intend to stand by her. That should be understood to be
contingent: if it's all cleared up soon, they'll stand by her, but not
otherwise.
-t.
Joel Rosenberg
To give the devils their due, the Bushies apparently had a grievance
-- when they quizzed Chavez about any skeletons in her closet, she not
only apparently didn't mention having zoebairded an illegal alien, but
went to her neighbor and asked that she not tell the FBI when they
came around.
Given her own writing on the Zoe Baird matter, she had to know that
that was bound to be a serious embarrassment when it came out, and
probably should have been smart enough to know that it would come out,
and certainly should have known that the Democrats would do to her
what she had cheered the Republicans for doing to Baird.
T Nielsen Hayden
obscurity <obsc...@obscure.org> wrote:
><blink> <marquee>
>On 10 Jan 2001 05:41:44 GMT, T Nielsen Hayden <t...@panix.com> wrote:
>> I keep wondering whether there were consciously evil motives behind that
>> those drugs where ignorance can too easily become death. If you want to
>> generate some grisly drug-related deaths, putting speed into the hands of
>> amateurs will do it.
>
>As someone who has taken a lot of speed in the past (it is my preferred
>recreational drug), I would be *very* interested in hearing you elaborate on
>this. Are the grisly deaths you refer to related to manufacture, or usage?
Usage.
I'm exceptionally fond of speed myself.
>I know that some medical conditions (eg, high blood pressure, over-active
>thyroid gland) can cause problems with it, and of course there's the whole
>speed-psychosis thing, and eating/sleeping disorders with long-term regular
>use, but I've not heard of anything, well, *grisly*.
Ever seen someone with a bad case of emaciation and speed psychosis? I'd
rate that as grisly.
>Everything I've read so far (and I did make a deliberate effort to read as
>much stuff as I could before deciding which drugs I would/would not take,
>and how I would take them, when I first considered recreational drug use)
>has led me to believe that, used in moderation, speed isn't too bad.
>
>If you have information to the contrary, I'd really like to read it.
Used in moderation, or in judicious immoderation, speed isn't too bad. But
if you don't know what you're doing, you can get seriously screwed up. You
know the usual issues: REM deprivation, electrolyte imbalance, mounting
dosage tolerance, potential for dependence, characteristic aberrant
behaviors in later stages, etc. Not terribly complicated, but if you don't
have the info you can easily come to grief.
I'm old enough to remember when drug education mostly consisted of
authorities lying their heads off about marijuana. People tried dope, found
it wasn't the demon weed they'd been warned about, and correctly concluded
that the drug warnings had been lies. Then speed came along. Some warnings
about speed are eminently justified, but people ignored them because they
knew drug warnings all just propaganda. Trouble ensued.
As far as I'm concerned, the most important piece of drug warning info about
speed is, "Try to avoid people who are taking large amounts of it over long
periods of time."
-t.
Joel Rosenberg
> bad.
This is, of course, true for most drugs, for most people.
Avram Grumer
> On Wed, 10 Jan 2001 18:34:22 GMT,
> nyje...@my-deja.com <nyje...@my-deja.com> wrote:
> >
> >Bill Maher (sp?) said that was the kiss of death.
>
> Bill Moyer?
I think Bill Maher is the host of _Politically Incorrect_.
--
Avram Grumer | av...@grumer.org | www.PigsAndFishes.org
If music be the food of love, then some of it be the Twinkies of
dysfunctional relationships.
Avram Grumer
<jo...@winternet.com> wrote:
For most everything, actually.
Zack Weinberg
>On Thu, 11 Jan 2001 06:00:22 GMT,
> obscurity <obsc...@obscure.org> wrote:
>>I know that some medical conditions (eg, high blood pressure, over-active
>>thyroid gland) can cause problems with it, and of course there's the whole
>>speed-psychosis thing, and eating/sleeping disorders with long-term regular
>>use, but I've not heard of anything, well, *grisly*.
>
>Ever seen someone with a bad case of emaciation and speed psychosis? I'd
>rate that as grisly.
"The whole speed psychosis thing" just doesn't cover the territory.
I would like to tell a story at this point. Names have been changed.
Not so long ago I was living in Berkeley with a pack of students. I came
back from dinner to find a strange man sitting in the living room, bolt
upright, staring straight ahead, not blinking, hands behind his head.
I will refer to him as "Ed".
Ed stayed like that for the next twenty-four hours. At any noise - this
was an old house, and it creaked - he would jump up and attempt to answer
the door. He said that the police were after him and he was just going
to go quietly because he didn't want them to shoot him. He wouldn't tell
me anything about himself because he thought the police were listening
to the conversation with laser mikes. (There were no police anywhere
on the block.)
I wound up sitting in the living room with Ed, so that I could (a) keep
an eye on him, and (b) prevent him from panicking, until about 2 AM.
Then my flatmate "Ken" showed up. He knew Ed, had given him a key to
the apartment that morning because he'd been evicted and needed a place
to store his stuff. Ed had apparently been normal at the time. He had
no more clue than I did what was wrong with him (paranoid schizophrenia,
obviously, but was it the real thing or drug-induced? We couldn't tell.)
He said he'd call Ed's mother in the morning and she would know.
I went to bed at that point; Ken stayed up with Ed for the rest of the
night. When I got up the next morning they were still there. Ken had
to go to work, so I got to sit with Ed for another six hours until his
mother came. She told me about Ed's speed habit. At that point Ed was
just barely starting to come down; you could tell because he would blink
every now and then. She took him home.
This is probably the most frightening thing that has ever happened to me.
You go around all your life assuming that everyone else experiences the
world in more or less the same way that you do. You expect some level of
differences, but not enough that you can't communicate at all. Then you
meet someone whose experiental universe is internally consistent, based
in the same external reality as yours, and totally unconnected to what
you experience. You can't make any judgement about what they might do.
You have no idea if the person is dangerous to you. Or to themselves.
You don't know why they have this disconnect, or when it started, or if
they will ever revert to consensus reality. And there is nothing that
can be done.
Ed was lucky - when the speed wore off he was fine again. Some people
never come back. And that, I think, is the most frightening bit of all.
zw
Mark Jones
Nielsen Hayden) spake thusly:
>You are not, you should pardon the expression, whistling Dixie.
>Attorney General nominee John Ashcroft's so-called "Methamphetamine
>Anti-Proliferation Act" would criminalize the distribution of
>information about how various drugs are made, and would give the DEA
>and the FBI the right to order ISPs to close down a site without
>notice *merely on request of the police* without any need for a court
>order. It would also allow secret government searches of your home,
>office, and computer without a warrant, and remove the existing
>responsibility of the government to provide an inventory of items
>seized.
That was Ashcroft's baby? I thought that was Feinstein's doing. Or
maybe I'm conflating the Meth act with _her_ previous (sadly
successful) assault on the First Amendment.
--
"Fight until Hell freezes over. Then fight on the ice!"
--attributed to Joe Lieberman, quoting someone else
P Nielsen Hayden
Mark Jones <sin...@pacifier.com> wrote:
>And yea, verily, on 11 Jan 2001 03:45:53 GMT, p...@panix.com (P
>Nielsen Hayden) spake thusly:
>
>>You are not, you should pardon the expression, whistling Dixie.
>>Attorney General nominee John Ashcroft's so-called "Methamphetamine
>>Anti-Proliferation Act" would criminalize the distribution of
>>information about how various drugs are made, and would give the DEA
>>and the FBI the right to order ISPs to close down a site without
>>notice *merely on request of the police* without any need for a court
>>order. It would also allow secret government searches of your home,
>>office, and computer without a warrant, and remove the existing
>>responsibility of the government to provide an inventory of items
>>seized.
>
>That was Ashcroft's baby? I thought that was Feinstein's doing. Or
>maybe I'm conflating the Meth act with _her_ previous (sadly
>successful) assault on the First Amendment.
Just for the record, Dianne Feinstein is probably the national Democratic
politicians I would most readily work to unseat. I would certainly be
apalled at her being nominated as AG, as well.
Evelyn C. Leeper
Avram Grumer <av...@bigfoot.com> wrote:
> In article <wku276b...@winternet.com>, Joel Rosenberg
> <jo...@winternet.com> wrote:
> > t...@panix.com (T Nielsen Hayden) writes:
> > >
> > > Used in moderation, or in judicious immoderation, speed
> > > isn't too bad.
> >
> > This is, of course, true for most drugs, for most people.
>
> For most everything, actually.
Ob SF Reference: Even moderation.
--
Evelyn C. Leeper, http://www.geocities.com/evelynleeper
Haiku for a New Year:
Two thousand and one: / A new odyssey led by / George W. Bush
--Mark R. Leeper
nyje...@my-deja.com
>
> The full-scale kiss of death is saying they're sure it'll all be
cleared up
> soon, and they intend to stand by her. That should be understood to be
> contingent: if it's all cleared up soon, they'll stand by her, but not
> otherwise.
>
> -t.
>
N.I.B.
--
First they said it was about Gore being a sore loser.
Then they said it was about Nader being a spoiler.
Then they said it was about Bush being a crook.
IT'S ABOUT THE SACREDNESS OF THE VOTE STUPID!
Kevin J. Maroney
>rate that as grisly.
Gah. One of the most appalling books I've ever read was Kim
Wozencraft's _Rush_. There's a scene in the middle where the male
protagonist develops severe paranoia from amphetamine psychosis which
made my flesh crawl.
The novel is basically autobiographical; I assume that some of it is
exaggerated for dramatic purposes, but I also fear that it is not.
--
Kevin Maroney | kmar...@ungames.com
Kitchen Staff Supervisor, New York Review of Science Fiction
<http://www.nyrsf.com>
Bruce Baugh
<jo...@winternet.com> wrote:
> Given her own writing on the Zoe Baird matter, she had to know that
> that was bound to be a serious embarrassment when it came out, and
> probably should have been smart enough to know that it would come out,
> and certainly should have known that the Democrats would do to her
> what she had cheered the Republicans for doing to Baird.
I think this is the thing that baffles me about a lot of public
personalities of all political hues and saturations. After one has been
in the public spotlight a lot over the course of years, I would _think_
that one would develop a certain self-interested appreciation of how
much a handful of probing-minded seekers of information (and dirt) can
acquire. And that one would act on this awareness.
Apparently I'm wrong, and I'm not sure why. Is it just hubris? Does,
perhaps, an aptitude for flourishing in the spotlight correlate to some
extent with the same sort of impaired ability to judge odds that studies
have found in repeat felony offenders? Dunno.
Of course I also marvel at how many long-term representatives are such
terrible public speakers.
--
Bruce Baugh <*> bruce...@sff.net
Writer of Fortune
I'm a professional vulture/haruspex, presenting pop culture's entrails
to the world as nicely arranged hors d'ouevres. Er, I mean, I'm a writer.
T Nielsen Hayden
>T Nielsen Hayden <t...@panix.com> writes:
>>On Thu, 11 Jan 2001 06:00:22 GMT,
>> obscurity <obsc...@obscure.org> wrote:
>>>I know that some medical conditions (eg, high blood pressure, over-active
>>>thyroid gland) can cause problems with it, and of course there's the whole
>>>speed-psychosis thing, and eating/sleeping disorders with long-term regular
>>>use, but I've not heard of anything, well, *grisly*.
>>
>>Ever seen someone with a bad case of emaciation and speed psychosis? I'd
>>rate that as grisly.
>
>"The whole speed psychosis thing" just doesn't cover the territory.
>I would like to tell a story at this point. Names have been changed.
>
>Not so long ago I was living in Berkeley with a pack of students. I came
>back from dinner to find a strange man sitting in the living room, bolt
>upright, staring straight ahead, not blinking, hands behind his head.
>I will refer to him as "Ed".
>
>Ed stayed like that for the next twenty-four hours. At any noise - this
>was an old house, and it creaked - he would jump up and attempt to answer
>the door. He said that the police were after him and he was just going
>to go quietly because he didn't want them to shoot him. He wouldn't tell
>me anything about himself because he thought the police were listening
>to the conversation with laser mikes. (There were no police anywhere
>on the block.)
Check. His nervous system was solarizing.
>I wound up sitting in the living room with Ed, so that I could (a) keep
>an eye on him, and (b) prevent him from panicking, until about 2 AM.
>Then my flatmate "Ken" showed up. He knew Ed, had given him a key to
>the apartment that morning because he'd been evicted and needed a place
>to store his stuff. Ed had apparently been normal at the time. He had
>no more clue than I did what was wrong with him (paranoid schizophrenia,
>obviously, but was it the real thing or drug-induced? We couldn't tell.)
>He said he'd call Ed's mother in the morning and she would know.
>
>I went to bed at that point; Ken stayed up with Ed for the rest of the
>night. When I got up the next morning they were still there. Ken had
>to go to work, so I got to sit with Ed for another six hours until his
>mother came. She told me about Ed's speed habit. At that point Ed was
>just barely starting to come down; you could tell because he would blink
>every now and then. She took him home.
>
>This is probably the most frightening thing that has ever happened to me.
It was scarier for him. If he's lucky he won't remember it.
>You go around all your life assuming that everyone else experiences the
>world in more or less the same way that you do. You expect some level of
>differences, but not enough that you can't communicate at all. Then you
>meet someone whose experiental universe is internally consistent, based
>in the same external reality as yours, and totally unconnected to what
>you experience. You can't make any judgement about what they might do.
>You have no idea if the person is dangerous to you. Or to themselves.
>You don't know why they have this disconnect, or when it started, or if
>they will ever revert to consensus reality. And there is nothing that
>can be done.
I have terrible news for you. Chances are you already know people who come
close to fitting that description. You've never asked them, so you're not
aware of it; but the variability of paradigms and processing styles is
stunning.
Sometimes the ones who seem disconnected are making connections, only not in
expected ways and not at a normal pace.
What can you do with the really bad ones? Give mercy when you can. Pray, if
you're the praying sort. Mental illness is horrible. Many of the mentally
ill know something terribly wrong is happening, but can't sort out what it
is. Contra many narrative cliches, most madness is neither cute nor
comfortable nor funny. It's more like a tour of duty in hell.
>Ed was lucky - when the speed wore off he was fine again. Some people
>never come back. And that, I think, is the most frightening bit of all.
One of the interesting things about speed is how far gone some people have
been who subsequently trekked all the way back to normal. There are even
cases where shy, tongue-tied people who did lots of speed for a while, and
who got into speedrapping, continued to be able to speak more freely when
they cleaned up and stopped taking the drug.
If you ever find yourself in that situation again, feed the guy Gatorade or
orange juice. It's very, very likely that he was suffering from dehydration,
electrolyte imbalance, and low blood sugar. He'll also have been severely
REM-deprived, but that tends to take care of itself when the drugs wear off,
and there's not much you can do about it short of that point.
-t.
Jeanne A. E. DeVoto
<sin...@pacifier.com> wrote:
>And yea, verily, on 11 Jan 2001 03:45:53 GMT, p...@panix.com (P
>Nielsen Hayden) spake thusly:
>>You are not, you should pardon the expression, whistling Dixie.
>>Attorney General nominee John Ashcroft's so-called "Methamphetamine
>
>That was Ashcroft's baby? I thought that was Feinstein's doing. Or
>maybe I'm conflating the Meth act with _her_ previous (sadly
>successful) assault on the First Amendment.
God knows there are enough to be confusing. As far as I can tell,
Feinstein and Hatch wrote the thing and Ashcroft sponsored it in the
Senate.
--
Morning people may be respected, but night people are feared.
Bruce Baugh
wrote:
> Many of the mentally
> ill know something terribly wrong is happening, but can't sort out what it
> is.
I have been there, with what turned out to be manifestations of a
not-yet-diagnosed auto-immune problem. It was scary beyond my ability to
describe, and just as bad on friends and loved ones. Finding oneself
locked into behavior that one doesn't like but genuinely cannot control
is...bad. It certainly cured any lingering impulse I might have had to
sneer at such miseries.
Lots of folks have things going on that don't necessarily show, and
reasons others aren't going to know for what does show. I find that life
goes better if I start by assuming that what other folks do may in fact
make a great deal of sense, if only I understood what they do.
mike weber
>If you ever find yourself in that situation again, feed the guy Gatorade or
>orange juice. It's very, very likely that he was suffering from dehydration,
>electrolyte imbalance, and low blood sugar. He'll also have been severely
>REM-deprived, but that tends to take care of itself when the drugs wear off,
>and there's not much you can do about it short of that point.
>
"You say it was this mornin', when you last saw your old friend..."
--
"It's not what you don't know that can hurt you -- it's the things that
you do know that AREN'T true..." ("The Notebooks of Lazarus Long"?)
================================================================
mike weber kras...@mindspring.com
half complete website of Xeno--http://weberworld.virtualave.net
Mark Jones
DeVoto" <ja...@jaedworks.com> spake thusly:
>In article <3a5f57ce...@news.pacifier.com>, Mark Jones
><sin...@pacifier.com> wrote:
>>And yea, verily, on 11 Jan 2001 03:45:53 GMT, p...@panix.com (P
>>Nielsen Hayden) spake thusly:
>>>You are not, you should pardon the expression, whistling Dixie.
>>>Attorney General nominee John Ashcroft's so-called "Methamphetamine
>>>Anti-Proliferation Act" [horrors deleted]
>>
>>That was Ashcroft's baby? I thought that was Feinstein's doing. Or
>>maybe I'm conflating the Meth act with _her_ previous (sadly
>>successful) assault on the First Amendment.
>
>God knows there are enough to be confusing. As far as I can tell,
>Feinstein and Hatch wrote the thing and Ashcroft sponsored it in the
>Senate.
Oh, okay--that sounds more like what I thought I remembered. I was
pretty sure Feinstein had her fingers in it somewhere, though I also
had a feeling that she wasn't alone.
gfa...@savvy.com
>>
>> Gotta wonder if that wasn't the plan all along, although it probably
>> wasn't.
>>
>> Still, they did let her get hung out to dry.
> And very shortly after asserting they would stand by her. Golly.
Bush places a great importance on personal loyalty, and certain forms of
demonstrating that. Concealing from Fred Fielding and her interviewers that
she had harbored illegal imigrants blew that, and Bush's instant reaction
was -- this is not a quote, this is my appraisal of his reaction -- "she
screwed us; screw her."
In this I have no beef with George Bush. Playing games with the FBI and
trying to get witnesses to rehearse testimony and conceal facts is, say,
something Linda Chavez has been heard to criticize when accusing others of
doing so.
--
Gary Farber New York
gfa...@savvy.com
gfa...@savvy.com
> On 10 Jan 2001 00:05:57 -0600, Joel Rosenberg <jo...@winternet.com>
> wrote:
>>t...@panix.com (T Nielsen Hayden) writes:
>>>
>>> Chavez went up and then down again like a target in a carnival rifle booth.
>>
>>Gotta wonder if that wasn't the plan all along, although it probably
>>wasn't.
>>
>>Still, they did let her get hung out to dry.
> I think that they felt that they'd been lied to by her, and that this
> affected their willingness to support her in the crunch. In the case
> of Ashcroft, by contrast, they knew that there was going to be a
> fight.
They knew there would be a fight about both, and about Gale Norton, but so
far they don't have any reason to think that either Norton or Ashcroft lied
to them and concealed facts and otherwise was disloyal by Bush values.
gfa...@savvy.com
Kevin J. Maroney <kmar...@ungames.com> wrote:
[. . .]
> Gah. One of the most appalling books I've ever read was Kim
> Wozencraft's _Rush_. There's a scene in the middle where the male
> protagonist develops severe paranoia from amphetamine psychosis which
> made my flesh crawl.
> The novel is basically autobiographical; I assume that some of it is
> exaggerated for dramatic purposes, but I also fear that it is not.
She did a lot of intereviews when it came out, and affirmed that it was
mostly all true.
The book was also made into a tolerable, though not more than that, movie,
starring Jennifer Jason Leigh, which you probably know.
Kevin J. Maroney
>Kevin J. Maroney <kmar...@ungames.com> wrote:
>> Gah. One of the most appalling books I've ever read was Kim
>> Wozencraft's _Rush_.
>The book was also made into a tolerable, though not more than that, movie,
>starring Jennifer Jason Leigh, which you probably know.
The movie was in parts quite good--mostly when it stuck closely to the
novel--but overall not.
Joel Rosenberg
> gfa...@savvy.com wrote:
> >Kevin J. Maroney <kmar...@ungames.com> wrote:
> >> Gah. One of the most appalling books I've ever read was Kim
> >> Wozencraft's _Rush_.
>
> >The book was also made into a tolerable, though not more than that, movie,
> >starring Jennifer Jason Leigh, which you probably know.
>
> The movie was in parts quite good--mostly when it stuck closely to the
> novel--but overall not.
Probably worth renting, then; Jennifer Jason Leigh is a quite good
actress, and remarkably decorative in a non-stereotypic, non-bimbo
sort of way. (Not knocking those folks who are blessed/cursed with
those sorts of looks; one of the brightest young women in my high
school had that pneumatic sort of stunningness, and was cursed with a
high-pitched, babydoll voice to boot.)
gfa...@savvy.com
> gfa...@savvy.com wrote:
>>Kevin J. Maroney <kmar...@ungames.com> wrote:
>>> Gah. One of the most appalling books I've ever read was Kim
>>> Wozencraft's _Rush_.
>>The book was also made into a tolerable, though not more than that, movie,
>>starring Jennifer Jason Leigh, which you probably know.
> The movie was in parts quite good--mostly when it stuck closely to the
> novel--but overall not.
Which I averaged out to "tolerable."
Kathy Routliffe
(snip a great deal about speed psychosis. I have met people who've done
too much, and it is a tragedy.)
>
> Sometimes the ones who seem disconnected are making connections, only not in
> expected ways and not at a normal pace.
>
> What can you do with the really bad ones? Give mercy when you can. Pray, if
> you're the praying sort. Mental illness is horrible. Many of the mentally
> ill know something terribly wrong is happening, but can't sort out what it
> is. Contra many narrative cliches, most madness is neither cute nor
> comfortable nor funny. It's more like a tour of duty in hell.
Amen.
--
Kathy R.
---------------------------
If a human disagrees with you, let him live. In a hundred billion
galaxies, you will not find another.
-- Carl Sagan
Zack Weinberg
>>
>>Ed stayed like that for the next twenty-four hours. At any noise - this
>>was an old house, and it creaked - he would jump up and attempt to answer
>>the door. He said that the police were after him and he was just going
>>to go quietly because he didn't want them to shoot him. He wouldn't tell
>>me anything about himself because he thought the police were listening
>>to the conversation with laser mikes. (There were no police anywhere
>>on the block.)
>
>Check. His nervous system was solarizing.
I've never heard "solarizing" used in this context. What does it mean?
...
>>You go around all your life assuming that everyone else experiences the
>>world in more or less the same way that you do. You expect some level of
>>differences, but not enough that you can't communicate at all. Then you
>>meet someone whose experiental universe is internally consistent, based
>>in the same external reality as yours, and totally unconnected to what
>>you experience. You can't make any judgement about what they might do.
>>You have no idea if the person is dangerous to you. Or to themselves.
>>You don't know why they have this disconnect, or when it started, or if
>>they will ever revert to consensus reality. And there is nothing that
>>can be done.
>
>I have terrible news for you. Chances are you already know people who come
>close to fitting that description. You've never asked them, so you're not
>aware of it; but the variability of paradigms and processing styles is
>stunning.
>
>Sometimes the ones who seem disconnected are making connections, only not in
>expected ways and not at a normal pace.
I do know people who are disconnected in one way or another. "Ed"'s
situation felt qualitatively different to me. I don't know that he was
any worse off in absolute terms than the others, but I could talk to
them and not him, and that made all the difference.
What's a good example... okay, there's this street vendor on Telegraph
Avenue who honestly believes he lives in the universe of this one
particular role-playing game. Once I figured this out I had no particular
difficulty communicating with him, because I could get to where he was.
Ed's situation, painted with broad strokes, was not that different from
this street vendor's. Both had a single counterfactual idea rooted
in their worldview and could not be persuaded otherwise. Yet I could
communicate with the street vendor and not Ed. Perhaps Ed's idea was
more pernicious somehow - how could anyone help him when he assumed all
actions were malicious? Perhaps it was the very plausibility of his
idea that caused trouble. It is not that farfetched to believe the
police are after you, when you do in fact manufacture illicit drugs.
Contrariwise, believing you live in an RPG does no particular harm to
your ability to sell bent-wire jewelery on Telegraph Avenue.
All I know is that there he was and there I was, in the same room, but
different universes.
>If you ever find yourself in that situation again, feed the guy Gatorade or
>orange juice. It's very, very likely that he was suffering from dehydration,
>electrolyte imbalance, and low blood sugar. He'll also have been severely
>REM-deprived, but that tends to take care of itself when the drugs wear off,
>and there's not much you can do about it short of that point.
I wish I'd thought of that at the time. We did try to feed him at one
point but he said he wasn't hungry.
zw
Matthew Austern
> On 9 Jan 2001 13:28:18 -0800,
> adrian...@hotmail.con <adrian...@hotmail.con> wrote:
>
>
> >shock me. Ashcroft was an evil senator, and I'm glad the people of
> >Missouri voted him out.
>
> I'm not -- and I voted against him. Ashcroft in the Senate was just one
> (idiotic) voice amongst 100. I'd much rather have him as a Senator, rather
> than AG.
In that case, I recommend that you write to your Senators and ask them
to vote against confirming Ashcroft as AG. Remember, it only takes 40
Senators to block a nomination.
Erik V. Olson
Well, I have written to one of them. The other (Bond-R MO) is a lost cause.
--
Erik V. Olson: er...@mo.net : http://walden.mo.net/~eriko/
obscurity
On 11 Jan 2001 04:39:38 GMT, T Nielsen Hayden <t...@panix.com> wrote:
> On Thu, 11 Jan 2001 06:00:22 GMT,
> obscurity <obsc...@obscure.org> wrote:
> >I know that some medical conditions (eg, high blood pressure, over-active
> >thyroid gland) can cause problems with it, and of course there's the whole
> >speed-psychosis thing, and eating/sleeping disorders with long-term regular
> >use, but I've not heard of anything, well, *grisly*.
>
> Ever seen someone with a bad case of emaciation and speed psychosis? I'd
> rate that as grisly.
No, I can't say that I have. Nothing that I'd think of as even close to
grisly, and certainly nothing fatal. I suppose if someone took enough of
the stuff then, yeah, I can see something like that happening, but it'd have
to be a hell of a lot.
> >Everything I've read so far (and I did make a deliberate effort to read as
> >much stuff as I could before deciding which drugs I would/would not take,
> >and how I would take them, when I first considered recreational drug use)
> >has led me to believe that, used in moderation, speed isn't too bad.
> >
> >If you have information to the contrary, I'd really like to read it.
>
> Used in moderation, or in judicious immoderation, speed isn't too bad. But
> if you don't know what you're doing, you can get seriously screwed up. You
> know the usual issues: REM deprivation, electrolyte imbalance, mounting
> dosage tolerance, potential for dependence, characteristic aberrant
> behaviors in later stages, etc. Not terribly complicated, but if you don't
> have the info you can easily come to grief.
Right. I was a little worried that there was some effect of the drug that I
hadn't heard about, hadn't taken into consideration. I do try to be an
informed consumer in these matters :)
> I'm old enough to remember when drug education mostly consisted of
> authorities lying their heads off about marijuana. People tried dope, found
> it wasn't the demon weed they'd been warned about, and correctly concluded
> that the drug warnings had been lies. Then speed came along. Some warnings
> about speed are eminently justified, but people ignored them because they
> knew drug warnings all just propaganda. Trouble ensued.
I'm not old enough to remember that, but my parents bought all that bullshit
and raised me to believe that All Drugs Are Evil (well, except the legal
ones, of course, they're just fine) and would guarantee a life of misery
followed by an untimely death. And, of course, I had the Grange Hill 'Just
Say No' propaganda pumped at me while I was a teenager. I'm really glad that
there was literature there for me to go read up on this stuff when I started
questioning all this.
> As far as I'm concerned, the most important piece of drug warning info about
> speed is, "Try to avoid people who are taking large amounts of it over long
> periods of time."
Best advice I've ever had is "Don't buy it off someone you don't know". I
saw someone after she'd snorted a wrap of household cleaner once. That
wasn't pretty.
--
obscurity.
"Only the great masters of style ever succeed in being obscure." - Oscar Wilde
T Nielsen Hayden
Bruce Baugh <bruce...@spiretech.com> wrote:
>In article <slrn95sds...@pnh-0.dsl.speakeasy.net>, t...@panix.com
>wrote:
>
>> Many of the mentally
>> ill know something terribly wrong is happening, but can't sort out what it
>> is.
>
>I have been there, with what turned out to be manifestations of a
>not-yet-diagnosed auto-immune problem. It was scary beyond my ability to
>describe, and just as bad on friends and loved ones. Finding oneself
>locked into behavior that one doesn't like but genuinely cannot control
>is...bad. It certainly cured any lingering impulse I might have had to
>sneer at such miseries.
I spent something over a week in hell when I was carelessly given Biaxin (an
antibiotic, one of the mycins) for bronchitis. I still have a copy of a note
I e-mailed to a friend shortly after it started, saying "I know I'm
hallucinating, but knowing that doesn't make it go away." The one mercy in
the situation was that I have a lot of experience with hallucinations. I
think that's all that saved me. I developed extreme anxiety and delusional
beliefs within a few days of started. It was terrifying. I don't know how I
managed to figure out that it was a drug-induced problem.
Prior to that I'd known intellectually that madness is no fun. I have a
friend who's worked in mental facilities. He gets furious when TV and movies
depict the insane as being cute, funny, or a convenient source of mystical
revelations. Spending a week having terrified delusions gave me ... calling
it "a whole new appreciation of the matter" is inadequate.
>Lots of folks have things going on that don't necessarily show, and
>reasons others aren't going to know for what does show. I find that life
>goes better if I start by assuming that what other folks do may in fact
>make a great deal of sense, if only I understood what they do.
My experience too. Also that if I ask them, they'll sometimes explain it.
-t.
T Nielsen Hayden
>T Nielsen Hayden <t...@panix.com> writes:
>> Zack Weinberg <za...@stanford.edu> wrote:
>>>
>>>Ed stayed like that for the next twenty-four hours. At any noise - this
>>>was an old house, and it creaked - he would jump up and attempt to answer
>>>the door. He said that the police were after him and he was just going
>>>to go quietly because he didn't want them to shoot him. He wouldn't tell
>>>me anything about himself because he thought the police were listening
>>>to the conversation with laser mikes. (There were no police anywhere
>>>on the block.)
>>
>>Check. His nervous system was solarizing.
>
>I've never heard "solarizing" used in this context. What does it mean?
It's a metaphoric description. It helps if you know what solarization looks
like in photographs and videotapes.
Ed's problem wasn't primarily cognitive. It didn't proceed from a single
pernicious idea, or from several pernicious ideas. It was chemically based.
He was reacting to an abnormal range of stimuli, some of them internally
generated. Too much speed will make you paranoid. Your body's telling you
you're scared. Your brain supplies the list of things that scare you,
because if you're scared you must be scared of something; and from that you
construct your own personalized version of paranoia. This process is an
illusion, only apparently cognitive. All paranoid delusions are
individualized, but their basis is identical: a drug that's telling your
body that you're scared, and your body passing on the bad news to your
brain.
Depression works the same way, only instead of your body telling you you're
scared, it tells you that you hurt. Again, your brain supplies the specific
content, but in this case it's a list of things that hurt to think about.
You use it to create your own personal depressive ideation. But the ideas
aren't causing the feelings. The feelings are causing the ideas.
>All I know is that there he was and there I was, in the same room, but
>different universes.
Yes, you were.
>>If you ever find yourself in that situation again, feed the guy Gatorade
>>or orange juice. It's very, very likely that he was suffering from
>>dehydration, electrolyte imbalance, and low blood sugar. He'll also have
>>been severely REM-deprived, but that tends to take care of itself when the
>>drugs wear off, and there's not much you can do about it short of that
>>point.
>
>I wish I'd thought of that at the time. We did try to feed him at one
>point but he said he wasn't hungry.
No kidding. Appetite suppression is one of the most characteristic effects
of speed. It's one of the reasons speedfreaks get into trouble.
-t.
Janice Gelb
>On 10 Jan 2001 00:05:57 -0600, Joel Rosenberg <jo...@winternet.com>
>wrote:
>>
>
>plan (more seriously than you do), and a part of me wonders whether
>this wasn't rather typical of the Perfect Example phenomenon; that is,
>if you're a woman/minority, you have to be a paragon, but if you're a
>white boy you get to make mistakes.
>
>But mainly, I wonder what else they found out about her that they were
>afraid would come out. ("Look, if the press looks too deeply into
>this, they're going to find out those poor illegal aliens you helped
>out were really Contras being specially trained to distribute crack in
>LA!")
>
I don't really think there was anything else lurking. I
just think she was going to cost them in good-will points
and the minority&female points weren't worth it on the
other side (plus they had Chao, another minority/woman
combo, waiting in the wings). They didn't owe her anything
so it didn't take much for them to abandon her.
Ashcroft does fit the white boy profile above but, more
importantly, he is owed a lot of favors so they'll stick
by him.
******************************************************************
Janice Gelb | The only connection Sun has with
janic...@eng.sun.com | this message is the return address.
http://www.geocities.com/Area51/8018/index.html
When I was in college, there were certain words you couldn't say
in front of a girl. Now you can say them but you can't say 'girl.'
- Tom Lehrer
nyje...@my-deja.com
jan...@marvin.eng.sun.com wrote:
> Ashcroft does fit the white boy profile above but, more
> importantly, he is owed a lot of favors so they'll stick
> by him.
>
Dealing with the Devil..
> ******************************************************************
> Janice Gelb | The only connection Sun has with
> janic...@eng.sun.com | this message is the return address.
> http://www.geocities.com/Area51/8018/index.html
>
> When I was in college, there were certain words you couldn't say
> in front of a girl. Now you can say them but you can't say 'girl.'
> - Tom Lehrer
>
>
--
Heather Anne Nicoll
> scared, it tells you that you hurt. Again, your brain supplies the specific
> content, but in this case it's a list of things that hurt to think about.
> You use it to create your own personal depressive ideation. But the ideas
> aren't causing the feelings. The feelings are causing the ideas.
Oh.
Never thought of it that way.
That makes a disturbing amount of sense.
- Darkhawk, with something new to muse about
--
Heather Nicoll - Darkhawk - http://aelfhame.net/~darkhawk/
Watch what you say, or they'll be calling you a radical, a liberal
Fanatical, criminal. . . . -- Supertramp, "The Logical Song"
Vicki Rosenzweig
>
>Ed's problem wasn't primarily cognitive. It didn't proceed from a single
>pernicious idea, or from several pernicious ideas. It was chemically based.
>He was reacting to an abnormal range of stimuli, some of them internally
>generated. Too much speed will make you paranoid. Your body's telling you
>you're scared. Your brain supplies the list of things that scare you,
>because if you're scared you must be scared of something; and from that you
>construct your own personalized version of paranoia. This process is an
>illusion, only apparently cognitive. All paranoid delusions are
>individualized, but their basis is identical: a drug that's telling your
>body that you're scared, and your body passing on the bad news to your
>brain.
>
>Depression works the same way, only instead of your body telling you you're
>scared, it tells you that you hurt. Again, your brain supplies the specific
>content, but in this case it's a list of things that hurt to think about.
>You use it to create your own personal depressive ideation. But the ideas
>aren't causing the feelings. The feelings are causing the ideas.
Sometimes it's not that coherent. Or maybe I'm lucky, and got treatment
before it got to that point. I asked for, and got, an antidepressant
when I realized that I was walking along and starting to weep, and over
nothing in particular. Not even that there was nothing major wrong for
me to cry over then, but that *at the time the tears were forming* I
couldn't identify anything I was sad about. I suspect that, if it had
gone on, I would have connected the unhappiness to something besides
itself, and might not have realized what was going on.
--
Vicki Rosenzweig | v...@redbird.org
r.a.sf.f faq at http://www.redbird.org/rassef-faq.html
Kip Williams
...
> Ed's problem wasn't primarily cognitive. It didn't proceed from a single
> pernicious idea, or from several pernicious ideas. It was chemically based.
> He was reacting to an abnormal range of stimuli, some of them internally
> generated. Too much speed will make you paranoid. Your body's telling you
> you're scared. Your brain supplies the list of things that scare you,
> because if you're scared you must be scared of something; and from that you
> construct your own personalized version of paranoia. This process is an
> illusion, only apparently cognitive. All paranoid delusions are
> individualized, but their basis is identical: a drug that's telling your
> body that you're scared, and your body passing on the bad news to your
> brain.
...
Some great descriptions in this. Thanks for a very educational post.
I'm happy that I'm now grown-up enough to read descriptions of
mental aberrations and not try to fit them to myself. Although there
are little bits in there I'd do well to remember, for special
occasions.
--
--Kip (Williams)
amusing the world at http://members.home.net/kipw/
Bruce Baugh
wrote:
> >Lots of folks have things going on that don't necessarily show, and
> >reasons others aren't going to know for what does show. I find that life
> >goes better if I start by assuming that what other folks do may in fact
> >make a great deal of sense, if only I understood what they do.
>
> My experience too. Also that if I ask them, they'll sometimes explain it.
Very often, yes. Particularly when we ask and actually want to know, and
grant at least condition respect and courtesy until we find out. I'm
aware of having experienced greatly heightened awareness of tone, body
language, and so on, and gather that this isn't uncommon. People can
often tell when they're being sneered at, and I don't expect anyone to
like it any more than I do. (I know from other posts of yours that we
agree on this point.)
Marilee J. Layman
wrote:
For years after I got sick, I'd think of killing myself, but what
would happen to the cats? I've provided for them in my will, but I
don't want to put them in that situation sooner than necessary. It
was the morning after I thought "I could just break their necks, then
we could all die," that I called the doctor for an appointment. When
I saw her, she was suddenly surprised that nobody had given me an SSRI
before because I have so much brain damage. You'd think she'd have
noticed that earlier.
--
Marilee J. Layman The Other*Worlds*Cafe
HOSTE...@aol.com A Science Fiction Discussion Group.
AOL Keyword: OWC http://www.webmoose.com/owc
Eimear Ni Mhealoid
T Nielsen Hayden <t...@panix.com> wrote in message
news:slrn969fa...@pnh-0.dsl.speakeasy.net...
> Too much speed will make you paranoid. Your body's telling you
> you're scared. Your brain supplies the list of things that scare you,
> because if you're scared you must be scared of something; and from that
> you construct your own personalized version of paranoia. This process is
> an illusion, only apparently cognitive. All paranoid delusions are
> individualized, but their basis is identical: a drug that's telling your
> body that you're scared, and your body passing on the bad news to your
> brain.
>
> Depression works the same way, only instead of your body telling you
> you're scared, it tells you that you hurt. Again, your brain supplies
> the specific content, but in this case it's a list of things that hurt to
> think about. You use it to create your own personal depressive ideation.
> But the ideas aren't causing the feelings. The feelings are causing the
ideas.
That's interesting. I had come to the conclusion that a lot of my worrying
was free-floating anxiety and that I was then assigning it to being "about"
things, thus creating a vicious circle where I worried more about those
things.
I've seen something similar used in a fictional system
of magic; love spells work by giving you the raised heart-rate, sweaty
palms, slight nausea etc. of infatuation, and the rest of you decides you're
in love with the person in whose presence you get the symptoms.
--
Eimear Ni Mhealoid
T Nielsen Hayden
Kip Williams <ki...@home.com> wrote:
>T Nielsen Hayden wrote:
>
>...
>
>> Ed's problem wasn't primarily cognitive. It didn't proceed from a single
>> pernicious idea, or from several pernicious ideas. It was chemically based.
>> He was reacting to an abnormal range of stimuli, some of them internally
>> generated. Too much speed will make you paranoid. Your body's telling you
>> you're scared. Your brain supplies the list of things that scare you,
>> because if you're scared you must be scared of something; and from that you
>> construct your own personalized version of paranoia. This process is an
>> illusion, only apparently cognitive. All paranoid delusions are
>> individualized, but their basis is identical:
I should have said "chemical" rather than "drug". This can happen to people
who've never touched speed.
>> a drug that's telling your body that you're scared, and your body passing
>> on the bad news to your brain.
>
>...
>
>Some great descriptions in this. Thanks for a very educational post.
>
>I'm happy that I'm now grown-up enough to read descriptions of mental
>aberrations and not try to fit them to myself. Although there are little
>bits in there I'd do well to remember, for special occasions.
You're welcome. Glad it's useful.
-t.
T Nielsen Hayden
><blink> <marquee>
>On 11 Jan 2001 04:39:38 GMT, T Nielsen Hayden <t...@panix.com> wrote:
>> On Thu, 11 Jan 2001 06:00:22 GMT,
>> obscurity <obsc...@obscure.org> wrote:
>> ><blink> <marquee>
>> >I know that some medical conditions (eg, high blood pressure, over-active
>> >thyroid gland) can cause problems with it, and of course there's the whole
>> >speed-psychosis thing, and eating/sleeping disorders with long-term regular
>> >use, but I've not heard of anything, well, *grisly*.
>>
>> Ever seen someone with a bad case of emaciation and speed psychosis? I'd
>> rate that as grisly.
>
>No, I can't say that I have. Nothing that I'd think of as even close to
>grisly, and certainly nothing fatal. I suppose if someone took enough of
>the stuff then, yeah, I can see something like that happening, but it'd have
>to be a hell of a lot.
It takes some work to get that far.
>> >Everything I've read so far (and I did make a deliberate effort to read
>> >as much stuff as I could before deciding which drugs I would/would not
>> >take, and how I would take them, when I first considered recreational
>> >drug use) has led me to believe that, used in moderation, speed isn't
>> >too bad.
>> >
>> >If you have information to the contrary, I'd really like to read it.
I've already taken Dexedrine twice today. Speed is my friend.
>> Used in moderation, or in judicious immoderation, speed isn't too bad.
>> But if you don't know what you're doing, you can get seriously screwed
>> up. You know the usual issues: REM deprivation, electrolyte imbalance,
>> mounting dosage tolerance, potential for dependence, characteristic
>> aberrant behaviors in later stages, etc. Not terribly complicated, but if
>> you don't have the info you can easily come to grief.
>
>Right. I was a little worried that there was some effect of the drug that
>I hadn't heard about, hadn't taken into consideration. I do try to be an
>informed consumer in these matters :)
Nothing new. I understand the gummint has decided phenylpropanolamine is
dangerous because it slightly increases the risk of strokes in people who're
taking it. Well, duh. I figure it was because they finally noticed it was an
upper.
>> I'm old enough to remember when drug education mostly consisted of
>> authorities lying their heads off about marijuana. People tried dope,
>> found it wasn't the demon weed they'd been warned about, and correctly
>> concluded that the drug warnings had been lies. Then speed came along.
>> Some warnings about speed are eminently justified, but people ignored
>> them because they knew drug warnings all just propaganda. Trouble ensued.
>
>I'm not old enough to remember that, but my parents bought all that bullshit
>and raised me to believe that All Drugs Are Evil (well, except the legal
>ones, of course, they're just fine) and would guarantee a life of misery
>followed by an untimely death. And, of course, I had the Grange Hill 'Just
>Say No' propaganda pumped at me while I was a teenager. I'm really glad that
>there was literature there for me to go read up on this stuff when I started
>questioning all this.
The more emphatic and all-encompassing they got, the faster they collapsed
when hit with a counterexample. I'm convinced that the biggest thing the
propaganda campaigns did was serve as consumer education.
>> As far as I'm concerned, the most important piece of drug warning info
>> about speed is, "Try to avoid people who are taking large amounts of it
>> over long periods of time."
>
>Best advice I've ever had is "Don't buy it off someone you don't know". I
>saw someone after she'd snorted a wrap of household cleaner once. That
>wasn't pretty.
Ick. That's gratuitously nasty. If all you need is powder of the right color
and texture to sell to suckers, there must surely be other substances you
could use.
-t.
Doug Wickstrom
<dilk884...@isolde.research.att.com>
Matthew Austern <aus...@research.att.com> excited the ether to
say:
It might be useful to point out that the process of doing so
blocks all other Senate business, too.
--
Doug Wickstrom
"I always knew that I would see the first man on the moon. I never
dreamed that I would see the last." --Jerry Pournelle
Michael T Pins
>On Tue, 9 Jan 2001 23:19:32 GMT, in message
><dilk884...@isolde.research.att.com>
> Matthew Austern <aus...@research.att.com> excited the ether to
>say:
>>er...@physiciansedge.com (Erik V. Olson) writes:
>>> I'm not -- and I voted against him. Ashcroft in the Senate was just one
>>> (idiotic) voice amongst 100. I'd much rather have him as a Senator, rather
>>> than AG.
>>In that case, I recommend that you write to your Senators and ask them
>>to vote against confirming Ashcroft as AG. Remember, it only takes 40
>>Senators to block a nomination.
>It might be useful to point out that the process of doing so
>blocks all other Senate business, too.
And this would be bad in what way? The less "business" that gets done in
Washington the next two years the better off we all are.
--
**************************************************************************
* Michael T Pins | mtp...@visi.com *
* keeper of the nn sources | mtp...@nndev.org *
* ftp://ftp.nndev.org/pub | #include <std.disclaimer> *
Avedon Carol
wrote:
>Doug Wickstrom <nims...@uswest.net> writes:
>> Matthew Austern <aus...@research.att.com> excited the ether to
>>say:
>>>In that case, I recommend that you write to your Senators and ask them
>>>to vote against confirming Ashcroft as AG. Remember, it only takes 40
>>>Senators to block a nomination.
>
>>It might be useful to point out that the process of doing so
>>blocks all other Senate business, too.
>
>And this would be bad in what way? The less "business" that gets done in
>Washington the next two years the better off we all are.
I think it was being suggested that it is a _good_ thing.
--
I am reading from rec.arts.sf.fandom, where I am on-topic;
follow-ups are set accordingly, just in case.
Doug Wickstrom
<b4tg6t0epvmteuma6...@4ax.com>
ave...@thirdworld.uk (Avedon Carol) excited the ether to say:
>On Fri, 19 Jan 2001 01:18:32 GMT, mtp...@visi.com (Michael T Pins)
>wrote:
>
>>Doug Wickstrom <nims...@uswest.net> writes:
>>> Matthew Austern <aus...@research.att.com> excited the ether to
>>>say:
>>>>In that case, I recommend that you write to your Senators and ask them
>>>>to vote against confirming Ashcroft as AG. Remember, it only takes 40
>>>>Senators to block a nomination.
>>
>>>It might be useful to point out that the process of doing so
>>>blocks all other Senate business, too.
>>
>>And this would be bad in what way? The less "business" that gets done in
>>Washington the next two years the better off we all are.
>
>I think it was being suggested that it is a _good_ thing.
No it was not. If all the Senate does is pass the budget and
adjourn, it _must_ do that much.
--
Doug Wickstrom
"The president has kept all of the promises he intended to keep."
--George Stephanopoulos