Enlightenment

In a cave in the far east there lived an old man, well over a hundred, but no one knew by quite how much.  He was a legend, known far and wide for his wisdom, deeds of kindness, and some would say miracles.  An American news agency had heard of this man and sent a female journalist from Boston  to interview him. She was to gain insight into what was so special about  him that he’d gained thousands of followers and was visited by eastern dignitaries.  Indeed a shrine had been built in his honor an immense service, an outpouring of wealth and love from his followers.   Still he preferred to live in the cave high on this mountain in Nepal with just a few of his disciples.  It was here that the female journalist found him after a rather arduous trek with her LA photographer/videographer.  She was blond and wore a khaki skirt and jacket and sensible shoes. . Her white blouse was streaked with sweat. So she took a few minutes to tidy her appearance before she was to be introduced to the venerable sage who some would call a saint. .  Long ago he’d been called a zen master.  Now he was just referred to as ‘the one’.

The photographer/videographer was tired.  He’d humped his camera gear up the mountain. The day was passing and the light wasn’t very good. He hoped his partner would get on with it.  He was always in a bit of hurry.  To get the story. To get the film. To get the copy out to the publisher. Seeing the zen master, he thought he must be the oldest man he’d ever known. The man was so thin and his skin was like parchment.  He was standing near talking to his disciples in  loose fitting pyjamas.  The photographer had taken the tripod out of his pack and attached it to his camera.  The disciples were motioning to them to come forward.

When he came closer something about the old man’s  face caught the photographer’s well trained eye. . A kind of inner illumination. He saw it but did’t know if his camera would capture it.  He hoped so.  The old man bowed to them.  His hands were together before his chest.

« Namaste », he said. His voice a rich baritone.

His translater said to the journalist.  « My holy master is greeting you.  Namaste means ‘bow me you’ .  Some say it also means ‘the divine within me salutes the divine within you.’  The master was standing very still. He was sinewy rather than frail.  He waited patiently as his translater spoke to the beautiful young woman who having heard the translation put her hands together and bowed back to him. « Namaste’ she said.  He smiled..Her voice was like bird song. 

There were couches set in a semi circle and the master took a seat on one, She sat across from him. the translater to her left and the camera man with his tripod up, now positioned to the right with his back to the light of the cave opening.

The journalist brushing an errant strand of golden hair from her forehead looked  down at the notebook she’d place on her lap. It held all the questions that she’d discussed with her producers back in Boston.  She looked up and asked , « Great master, can you tell me what is enlightenment? »

The master looked to his right at his translator who leaned forward and conveyed her question in their dying language.  He nodded.

Smiling ,he turned back to the journalist and translated the words of his master.

The journalist looked to the translator.  The videographer’s camera was filming.  It’s a film that remains today a century later long after the old man had died along with the young who were there that day.

He says, « I shit when I am shitting: the translater conveyed

There was some more questions and answers after that but the interview didn’t last much longer. The sage grew tired easily at his age. His disciples were very protective of him. Perhaps  he felt too he had said what needed to be said,    Soon the young couple were leaving being shown back down the mountain by the monks.  The sun was setting in the western sky. The master would be give no more interviews.  This was certainly the last time he spoke to a westerner especially a weestern woman. It was the only time he’d been filmed too.

« I shit when I am shitting ».  

The journalist repeated this several times on their journey back to the city..

She remembered reading the words of Brother Lawrence a western monk who’d encouraged the ‘ practice of the presence of God:. She spoke with her photographer, He shared he’d  remembered  hearing  a  Canadian soldier in a lull in the war he was shooting, say, « you’ve got to get your head in the same room  your ass is. » 

« I shit when I’m shitting » the old man had said. 

The network published the story.  It aired as a piece at the end of one days news.  The journalist had considered every synonym she could think of but in the end said exactly what the translater had told her. It did get a laugh.  People laughed when she told them They laughed when the show was aired.  Though the acoustics and light in the cave were not that good  they all got to see the old man and hear the translators words. The episode was called ‘Enlightennent’. The producrs picked the title.   Sitar, violin and flute  played in the back ground.  The audience laughed a bit awkwardly at first but then a bit more loudly as they because aware others were laughing too.  

The film was shown again and again occasionally. The tape was eventually changed to digital and stored in the library archives.  Serious students continued to come acrosss it in their studies. Professors referenced it in future courses.  Despite the lighting the camera man had caught the subtle illumination that reminded some of the halos seen in medieval paintings in the Louvre.  It was less of a circle above the head but more of a sheen radiating from within.. One could even imagine his eyes twinkling as he said « I shit when I’m shitting’ , that refrain that would be recorded and shared down the ages for anyone seeking enlightenment to hear.

 

Control

The oldest law in the world is the ‘chinese law of the fish, there are big fish and little fish. The little fish must be fast and numerous.

The psychiatrist is first and foremost and agent of control. Insaniety has been described as being ‘out of control’. There is some kind of ‘normal’ to which psychiatrists adhere. That ‘normal’ is defined first and foremost by whoever or whatever wields ultimate control.  

It is said ‘history is written by the winners’.  So psychiatry and mental wellness are defined, not solely, but most significantly by those who dominate and win.  

Presently society is ruled by the UN Security Couuncil. These represent the ‘winners’ of World War II, Russia, China, USA, Britain and France.  If an individual were radically opposed to these central regimes they would be deemed ‘out of touch with reality’.  Reality in a political and material sense is defined by these ‘winners’

Deviation from the ‘norml’ is considered ‘bad’ or ‘mad’.  Bad is addressed predominantly by the Judge and jail system historically seems as ‘masculine’ and superior.  Mad was addressed predominantly by the psychiatrist and asylum system which is consider feminine and inferior.  However, if a person is considered insane they can be kept indefinitely by the Governor General’s Warrant.

In the court madness is dealt with by being declared ‘guilty’ but insane or ‘not guilty by reason of insaniety.

Saniety is being ‘in control’. 

3 am awake

I woke feeling afraid, anxious, vulnerable.  I have resisted the paranoia of the world. I’ve fought against the psychosis of modern society. I have struggled to stay open.  I began to write stream of consciousness journaling, having read Artists Way and Finegan’s Wake and seeing so much mental anguish in work. People were afraid to speak and share, living lies of ‘quiet desperation’ .

I recently explained that ‘the man who mistook their wife for a hat’ was the best little book about brain damage. It was in a discussion of dementia when a person was medicalizing forgetfulness and slippery sliding into denial of civil liberties for forgetfulness. I explained that medically dementia was a failure of neuroplasticity. The brain was a self healing organism and yet over the time the capacity to function with rationality and meaning were lost. The point was that it was ‘the little stuff’ but big stuff that counted ‘like the man who mistook his wife for a hat.’   

I was concerned decades ago that people believed ‘insaniety’ was what one ‘thought’.  I was so aware of the communist persecution and tyranny of dictatorships at the time.  I was a member of the Canadian Civil Liberties Society and Psychiatrists against the Politial abuse of Psychiatry.  I’d studied logic at university and saw that rhetoric was the norm in parliament. I was concerned reading of the Gulags and twisting thinking of Marxists whose generalizations were so appealing yet no better than the ‘deconstructionists’.  Hypocrisy. 

The oldest law of the world is the ‘Chinese Law of the Fish’.

The problem of creativity was that one’s thinking was ‘strange’ and ‘alien’.  One step ahead of the crowd you are a genius, two steps a head of the crowd you are a martyr.  The problem wasn’t in the ‘thinking’ and a need for more ‘thought police’ but rather in action.  

My Jewish genius friend told me that he is afraid to step outside anymore. “I meet people who aren’t even in the 15th century. They come from countries where the ruler is considered divine so there’s been no group consensus like the Magna Carta. Others a living before the 18th and 19th century.  They don’t know the French Revolution guillotined the poor leadership or that the American War of Independence rejected the foreign dominance.  They certainly haven’t experienced the 60’s revolution. Sex is still the ‘state’s’ And ‘my body my own’ is unheard of .  That said I’m discussing quantum entanglement in my home and mind body spiritual epistemology questioning the purpose and meaning of existence and the role of the artists in society and my new neighbour wants to live out 1950’s all over again.  When I step out of my home I find myself in this time warp recurring loop and am persecetuted by those who don’t even know the power of marketting, fringe politics of Hitler and just want consumerism and conformity.”

I wrote my blog to celebrate the breadth of ideas and that diversity was the acceptance not of the ‘state approved’ ‘groups of acceptable concerns’ but rather for the bizarre unusual and anxiety provoking.  Stephen King was an alcoholic.  The government is the primary drug and alcohol pusher for the sake of self serving taxation conveniently forgetting the 30’s referendum in Canada at least that said ‘sin tax’ was only to be used for health care not to reward politicians.  

It’s easy to be a critic. Critics are a dime a dozen.  Desire is the root of all suffering, says Buddha.  Yet Jesus said ‘take the timber out of your own eye before taking the sliver out of your neighbours’.  Jordan Peterson said that 10% of society now did not have the intellectual capacity to function in a modern society of computers and AI.  Piatian psychologists studied a cross section of society and found that the development of abstract thinking seen by Piaget in his children as occurring with adolescence wasn’t achieved by a surprising half or majority until well into their thirties.  

I just came back from a couple of months in the US and was aware of the vast differences between the political systems and government of Canada and the Us but know most Canadian media homogenizes the systems to utilize generalizations. We do. it’s communication.

I wanted my patients to realize that ‘normal’ people had all manner of fear, anger, loves, emotions , doubts and that this wasn’t insane.  I wanted to share my own ambivalence and show that yes I can be the ‘leader’ and hide my thoughts with ‘boundaries’ and all manner of ‘state approved’ deception but that this focus on the exterior in terms of thought was horribly disabling and gave rise the the greatest of tragedies.  Now we have all manner of insaniety with the term ‘emotional abuse’.  All manner of insaniety.  There is a society of malignant subjectivity, a culture of narcissism and a world of the selfie.  Whole tribes aim to be ‘influences’.  Marketting is preferred to truth. All truth is ‘my’ truth or ‘your truth’ and perspective. There’s a superficial interpretation of relativity in a world of ‘if it feels good do it’. Yet the word feeling can come from lust or love and both feel good but in an amoral society where ethics are not longer respected there’s a devil in the details.

I’m anxious because of Julian Assange and the honey traps perfected in WWII and the Cold War still being used today.  Gossip and mob violence reign.  Law and order decline. Cowardly leadership.  Weak men and long necked women.

In the middle of the night I wake afraid because I’ve tried to bare my soul to say this self reflection and expression of the good and bad is okay. It’s all about he Spirituality of Imperfection. The leaders aren’t perfect. Their power suits and pretty houses and body guards and hidden wealth are all rather passé.  I like the story Reacher.  A modern day St. Francis, the zen monk of my youthful television days.  

I have wearied of the cacophony of criticism and the demand and bullying for my time and attention and gone off alone on expeditions to the north and to sea. I’ve enjoyed solitude and not been lonely with a woman and a dog and often with just a dog and even when I had a fish or a houseplant.  So many don’t know the essence of such relationship.  I am at times aware of the great mystical wonder of being apart of the forest or the world.

I’ve found gratitude helps me adjust my attitude.  When I’m afraid and can’t sleep I write what I’m thankful for. I give up fear and replace it with faith. I believe in love. I believe the other is God. I believe I’m playing peekaboo all day with Jesus.  I pray that the saints of all religions love shine on my devotion. I am thankful for the air I breath for breathing, for the sun, for warmth and heat, for food and sustenance, for my room mate dog companion, for mobility and walking.  I am thankful for feeling. I’m thankful for showers. I’m thankful for all the well wishers. I have this fault where I hear a dozens words of praise and one word of disdain and I disregard all the positivity and focus on the negativity. I magnify disease so that I can heal it which is good in the objectivity but subjectivity I must remember Jesus said, Love God and Love your neighbour as yourself.

The weasel words are ‘God’ and ‘Neighbour’.  The natives say ‘all my relations’.  I enjoyed meeting the Jain and spending the day with him as he shared how he struggled with killing a mosquito.  He was like the Quakers who fasted for killing to but that of humans. Their neighbour was ‘humanoid’.  The war of Gods was the history at the beginning of civilizations when Yahweh and other gods were tribal gods.  

God to me is life.  All things.  All.  I loved Phillips book, Your God is too small. Then I’m talking with aetheists whose reductionism is infinitismal.  But there are no aetheists at sea or in fox holes. Aetheism is a hot house plant and the religion of communism, a dictorship.  

The movies are all ‘revenge porn’ or ‘sex porn’.  Primal stories of the Joseph Campbell variety.  The joke was if you are younger than 40 go to a Freudian because your issues are all sex and aggression but if you’re over 40 go to a Jungian because your issues are about alienation and integration.  I loved the book Denial of Death.  I fear even fleeting thoughts of suicide in depths of despair because I believe in the law of attraction.

I see depressed and angry and frightened people all day and their emotions and ideas are like infections and they are infective. I am hours on the front line knowing that the administrative class and upper class and the powerful want nothing to do with the ‘people’ .  I’m daily facing at least one ‘soul theif’.  They’re there to ‘steal my joy’ or ‘run in my day.’  They’re the kafetch and Im trying desperately to survive an hour of their fear which grates like nails on a chalkboard.  They are angry at the world and as I’m part of it I’m in their sights.  

My job is not to be their lawyer

The psychiatrist focuses on changing the invidual with psychotherapy or medications or other physical therapies.  I’m an addiction psychiatrist and trauma psychiatrist.  I am like a driving instructor who sits in the car and asks that they let me take the wheel as we crash and burn.  I walk a mile in their shoes and hope to return. I’m thoroughly buggered at the end of the day.  I’ve been spat on hit, shat on, held hostage and thoroughly abused by my superiors who hide in institutions and avoid contact with people and have the resources to walk about the wards as ‘gangs’. I’m a lone cop in a police car. I’m the priest in the battlefield.

I am holding on to life. I’m holding onto this work. I ‘m said to be at retirement age.  I’m supposed to have a referral service who screens out psychopaths and sociopaths.  Theres’ a public service and a private service but everyone is now treated as a government worker by the populace who don’t respect private business or that the damage they do to the building I’m in comes out of my income.  The government says they should be ‘free’ .  The government makes all manner of promises but takes the wealth and leaves us on the front lines like the soldiers on the beach.  I wonder how long I can do this.  

I was threatened three times today. I’ve had patients point guns at me in the office. I’ve been robbed and mugged.  So many patients live in their tv.  There are signs all over the city now don’t hurts the healing staff.  The delays and lack of services are caused by Ottawa, not me.  I’m not the enemy. The rabid dogs are bitting the hand that feeds and the police are hiding in bunkers while the corruption and greed stalk the world.

I go to work in the real world.  The majority of critics and complainers live in the safety of their screen, experiences a sanitized propaganda version of reality.

I tried explain that the diagnosis of PTSD came from what soldiers experienced not ‘emotional abuse’.  The entitled privileged narcissists screamed at me that I didn’t understand.  She had a monopoly on pain and it was always about her.

Since in the end the other is God and I am looking in a mirror I had to reflect with sadness that that was me when I was a teenager. She might be much older but the suffering I felt in her uncontrolled rage was no difference than my mother ‘s pain when I was a teen and shouting at her, blaming her for my emotional immaturity.  I sat years later in the Ashram and the Church trying to forgive myself.  I still am so ashamed that I was a toddler and shit myself.  Now am facing this in old age and wondering about compassion missing my father and brother and grand father and feeling alone.  I feel forsaken yet know I’m not.

Thank you God for the good times. Thank you God for the ‘tools’. Thank you God that I am able to recalibrate. Thank you God that I have learned what I struggle to pass on. Thank you God that I have some patience as I progress towards the only choice of acceptance on deaths bed.  Thank you God for preparing me for departure. help me to know I’m not this body, this ego, this suffering and am joy . Thank you for my being a spiritual being in a material world and knowing my mind is more than my brain.. Thank you for peace and calm and faith. Thank you God for being there with me when I feel persecuted and alone threatened and afraid.  So many threats today. So much anger.

i know these people sometimes for an hour and they say that’s they’re going to kill me as if that will solve a life of errors and defeats. I struggle to help them up while they’re flailing about having a tantrum on my office floor threatening homicide and suicide and claiming they’re going to make the world a better place by annihilating me.

Then I read that my government which paid and murdering terrorist 10 million dollars supports the Hamas terrorists and I hate that the Prime Minister is such an evil twot. As above so below.  God gives us the leaders we deserve.  Politics is the choice of the least bad alternative.  I want to go back to Israel and sit in the temple .  I remember the three markets and the disorder and sense of safety I felt or didn’t feel in each of the markets depending on the religion of the people. I don’t like the Religion of Peace that kills homosexuals.

I must find the God within to heal fron the verbal assaults and threats and abuse and the broken system with so many afraid and angry with the mismanagement of the economy and the inflation and corruption.  It’s tax time.  I’m trying to gather all the paper.  I’m pressured to meet deadliness.

I have this sense that I’m waiting for Godot. that this is where it’s’ come to.  Younger I worked and looked to a future with hope of a private plane , a family , a 

mansion a white picket fence and a family. Here I am some days feeling like the old.  My retired friends are leaving the miliaray captains or colonels knowing they didn’t make it to general and that they ‘failed’.  The rich are poor in the end. We are all 3 paychecks from eviction.  I have saved only to have the trust fund boy steal my savings and the evil witch threaten bank accounts and freeze the assets of those who love freedom. I’m afraid and can’t build up riches on earth.

There is only you God. there is no where to hide her. I went to Meteora and Cappadocia and I’ve been to the islands and to the north. There’s nowhere to hide. I have my back up against the wall of death and the abyss is there.  I walk among the delusional immortals who know no respect and haven’t been stabbed or attacked.  They’ve lived quiet lives as bullies and haven’t been to jail and asylum and haven’t seen the inside of a quiet room or solitary.  They don’t know the feeling of restraints. They’re living young without the experience of a body that betrays them, a glass spilled because the weight can not be sustained by the wrist and arm. The shaking and tremors are apparent now.  I’m laughing thinking of the shame.  

I liked Clint Eastwood, I don’t let the old man in

Trudeau wants to euthanize the mentally ill.  He claims it’s what they want.  I dentificatin with the aggressor.  Power and homeless, Solyet GReen eappeals but the rich and powerful aren’t leading the way.  Trudeau leads from the rear.  Communist leaders do.  

But then wars are for old men to kill young men.  They play their families against another’s families.  The gangs go on ….It’s like the animal and insect behaviour. All the poetry doesn’t change the barbarism.

You’ve survived.

Thank you God. thank you Jesus. Thank you for the heat. Thank you for this body. Thank you for sleep and wakeful. Thank you for the mind and heart and soul . Thank you for this day and night. May I know you more truly and surely.  

 

Chronic Pain

I made a chiropractic appt with Dr. Rowling on.  I filled out the forms and signed the papers.  

I was a psychiatrist seeing a chiropractor with my psychosomatic pain. I had just told someone that I thought we don’t see catatonic or waxy catatonic schizophrenia or the hysterias much any more because they’ve become the pain and fatigue disorders.  Here I was,  believing like turn of the century, psychoanalyst  Abraham that depression was anger turned inward and like Selye that cancer ‘was that which you could say in no other way.”  I had personally cured with psychotherapy, hypnosis, psychiatric medication disabling skin and physical disorders sent to me after surgery and internal medicine had no more to often. Here I was thinking that if only I could find the right words, understand, accept , let go of fear, trust, something spiritual then this physical pain would alleviate. I knew acute pain was an alarm system and important but chronic pain continued long after the alarm had served its purpose. Phantom limb pain persisted despite the amputation.  The superhighway pain model explained that these dramatic moments opened a high way that later could be used rather than trails.  Emotional pain, emotions really could use the freeway that happened in these catastrophic injuries. I thought there was some mystery that was warded off in the site of pain like a secret , like a tubercular gumma , an abscess.  We are as sick as our secrets. If only i could face my fear, forgive and love I’d not need the reminder of yesterday’s pain invading today.  

Dr. Rowlinson’s assistant met with me and took a more detailed history. It was unsettling to give a history of trauma and injury.  I’ve had a few years to accumulate a few. 

‘How old are you, “ she asked with youth and clear skin 

“71” I said, not admitting I was turning 72 in a matter of weeks.  Remembering when I wanted to be older. Now not so.

“Have you had any injuries, sports or vehicular?” She asked

I was taken back to the first gymnastic injury. The spotter held my hand too long as I fell from the handstand on the parallel bars, the twist and subsequent landing jarring my back.  For years since the Thoracic spine had cried under duress at times sadness and fear.  I’d paid with the mistake of my spotter and yet I’d not followed the advice of the doctor and not competed the next day.  Getting out of bed I showed up at the provincial championship and didn’t win though placed and helped the team.  In all likelihood non compliance with medical regimen left the thoracic pain to persist and be a reminder.  There was a lot to learn about control

Several back injuries in sports followed through the years and in martial arts and later working with the dangerously insane in jails and asylums when they got out and had to be wrestled down and returned to their rooms or cells.  I don’t like to open doors on those confrontations and harrowing experiences which were occasioned mostly by administrative short cuts or down right graft.  The money for staffing had been waylaid and we who worked on the front lines suffered. The common theme of self pity and betrayal sat within my pain like the Judas who betrayed Jesus.  Pieces of silver jingled and jangled and we suffered

The bicycle crashes became motorcycle crashes and then car crashes. The out of control speeding driver hitting my car when he didn’t recognise black ice causing me to pitchpole over the road only to continue rolling down the hill.  That was the first of a few whiplashes. But that was the week I stayed home from work. I’d not stayed home before or since.  But then I was glad to be alive and followed the advise of doctors and physiotherapists and was thankful there after for the chiropractors who helped the mobility in my neck which continues to scream if I spend too much time leaning over a desk,

The plane crash in the sub arctic was caused by black ice too. The pilot land just fine but we simply slid sideways flopping on our side the wing crumpled under the mass. I didn’t believe I’d live looking out the window and seeing the tragedy unfold. I felt the inertial forces but thanks to a seat belt and seat I stood up with glee and happily followed the stewardess out of the side of the plane which face upward.  I was the only passenger on this cargo flight.  Another flight in a Cessna the landing gear crumpled at the end of the landing. I felt that one more that the DC3, possibly because gravity reigned as we collapsed.

There was the motorcycle accident too , my Norton Commando when I was later award d ‘most damage to machine   least damage to man’ by my biker buddies when I walked back from the crash carrying the chain and my finger wrapped up . I’d been most afraid of losing the finger which was tongue and had a stone in the joint which to this day becomes annoyed easily. I took the stone out with tweezers, washed it with iodine and sutured it up myself.  My back was hurt but by comparison that was not a concern compared to my anxiety about my finger.

I didn’t tell her about being held hostage or being mugged or a few other things that I’d left behind. I was happy to say I’d not had any major accidents or traumas since I slipped in the rain climbing Arthur’s seat in Edinburgh after Covid.  Since then my back had  been so noisy I’d had X-rays and spoken with my Sports Medicine and Family Medicine doctor colleagues as well as the Rehab medicine doctor. I’d been reassured and given exercises which I didn’t do enough, I knew I needed to lose weight but so much else takes presences over health to me even, at this age. I’m not a good patient.

Dr. Rowlinson identified the trigger points and made a few masterful adjustments. Knowing chiropractors over the years I appreciate the best in techniques and as well the healers.  Dr. Rowlinson was both.

I resisted tears after he left the office I felt such sadness within. I was overwhelmed by the gratitude I had for life and saw alls those near death experiences I’d had as times when people helped me and saved my life. I’d focused on the aggressors and those that didn’t care but here were all these angels like Dr. Rowlinson who had just laid on hands and released the tension and let the pain slip away.  I walked out of his office lighter paying a pittance for the service he’d done. 

Driving home in the truck I was feeling this depth inside like an abscess had been knifed and the despair and fear let out. Some of the accumulated pus of life had left and another era of healing had begun.  I was so thankful All the doctors and healers over the year have helped me.  I felt inside this disappointment that I’d not been able to help the women in my life. They’d all been so depressed and I had thought I could be the one but their anger just grew and I was not enough.  Thankfully I’d gone to Codependents Anonymous and Al Anon and learned “I didn’t cause it.  I couldn’t control it. And I couldn’t cure it’. I now apply that to the relationships I’ve had and the angry women and the blaming and complaining and my carrying all their weight on my back. I think of drop the rock and how we can all get to heaven but we can’t take the baggage,. I let go of some pain today. Dr. Rowlinson opened the door. That’s the beautify of psychosomatic medicine, quantum physics and Heisenberg.  It’s all God and spiritual healing takes so many forms.  I just had to ask for help and received it God works through people.  Thank you Jesus. 

Part Object

In psychiatry, especially psychoanalysis and obviously the school of object relations, object refers roughly to ‘person’.  Freud conceptualized the ego, id and super ego which were later broadened to mean child, adult and parent or society.  Jung conceptualized the persona, the face we know and show the world, the shadow, the unconscious we don’t know or don’t show and the animus and anima, female and masculine parts along with archetypes the parts or phases of the person representing judge, heirophant, empress etc, much like the characters of the tarot deck taken from medieval cultural religious reflection,

These ideas were also linked to notion of development, the progress of the child to the adult and a linear development with various stages most represented by the work of Erik Erickson and Maslow.  

The part object as opposed to the ‘whole object’ is a dynamic especially today in the consumer society and increasing robotiziation of society with development of legalistic politic terms like ‘boundaries’ to reduce relationships between people.  The ‘part object’ is best represented by the consumer item of the ‘sex doll’ or ‘prostitute’ or labourer.  In this dyadic transactional social construct the buyer requests a ‘part’ , sex, or surgery, or the waitress from the other person and not ‘themselves’.  The employer or boss can be a ‘whole person’ but the employees are mere functional objects who performe one factory activity. John is no longer john but the ‘button pusher’.  In the military, the ‘grunt’ is the ‘rifle’ .  In Vietnam war the limited value of the person is no one wished to know the ‘new guys’ name as the turn over was so severe.

Boundaries make the workplace safe but the workplace of the medieval village was the home.  The workplace of the tribal society was also the home The workplace separation and partition of society like the invídias occurred with the ‘part object’. 

In Good Life the latest glimpse into the continuing Harvard Grant Study begun with the graduating class of Harvard 1940 the latest insight into longevity was the critical importance of ‘community’.  Community like home was normal in the tribals, agrarian and craft societies only becoming avoidable in the industrial and post industrial age of post modernism or ultramodernism. 

My elderly patient talks to the barista when he gets his morning coffee. She knows his name, the name of his children as he knows her name and the latest boy she is dating and that her friend Carly and her share cats and have cat dates.  The employer, the boss man, is hoping to replace her with machines as the main stores have done introducing self checkout.  Doctors who once lived in the community of their patients who knew them and their families as their patients knew them are advised only  ‘sell’ the drugs’ and ‘sell the procedures’ .

In psychoanalysis women were discouraged from wearing wedding rings or distinctive clothing as the work of the therapist was to establish a ‘blank slate’ and create a setting for reflection with reduced sensory input and provide a ‘hypnosis’ prone environment for the exploration of the unconscious.  

The psychoanalysit wish the patient to ‘project’ their ideas of this ‘stranger’ so the therapist could ‘interpret’ and explore with the patient the prevailing projections which carried over from the past especially from the traumas of childhood.

Today knowing the pharmacist is pro euthanasia for the elderly would be more protective for the patient than the pharmacist presenting as a blank slate.  However if the Lordco parts man’s sole job is to be inhuman with corporate ‘boundaries’ and anagrams of behaviour then of course they can be replaced by a machine.  

The efficacy of AI medical models have turned out to be less than 50 % and far less accurate than the doctors. The judge however’s capacity to identify truthfulness is no greater than the machine.  Even lie detector machines can be ‘beaten’.  The consumer society though is less interested in accuracy or truth because the numbers are not individual but rather patterns of large groups, actuarial.  

Stalin is credited as winning against Germany on the Eastern front but only because he sacrificed ‘hoards’ of men and equipment .  Studies of military leaders with untreated PTSD show that they can compete in war games but sacrifice life at an extraordinary rate.  Being a robot doesn’t improve of the success but depends upon numbers and crunching numbers rather than the brilliance associated with the novel.

Studies of pre industrial society show that there was open conversation about sex and death and violence and all else.  The diversity and creativity of later ‘circles’ like Virginia Wolf’s and the Huxley show that the whole idea of ‘boundaries’ and ‘reductionism’ and ‘part object’ were the opposite of what was sought.  Openness was beyon censorship. Stagnation is what occurred in closed censored societies and this is appearing most to the consumer society model with the part objects.  Corporations which in the law are e persons are in deed not. The idea of human becomes like their corporate part object consstuct is seen now with society reduced to laws and boundaries and individuals judged by social credits, ‘community standards better called ‘fashions’ that restrict individuals to ‘part object’ status.  This is in no way an ‘inclusive society’. 

AI is purely a part object

The psychopath is inherently a ‘part object’ becausee he/she lacks empathy , like the machine.

Communism is god less, the ideal a parody of 19th century rationalism.  The military industrial complex is of course a part object measured by ‘body counts’ . War is truly part objects while only in peace and love can one pass beyond boundaries to the grace of self actualization and full object participation in what increasingly becomes the ‘flow’ and ‘objects’s give way to the new idea of ‘personhood’.  Enlightenment. 

Rate your Doctor

I made the mistake of reading about myself on Rate Your Doctor.  

1. I really appreciated the positive reviews and am very thankful.

2. The reviews were either 1 out of 5 or 5 out of 5. 

3. I am an addiction specialist and find in the office that the patients that are upset with me are normally in denial about the effect of their drug and alcohol abuse on their brain chemistry.  A week doesn’t go by when I inform a person that their diagnosis is Cannibis Dependence or Substance Abuse or Alcoholism.  Commonly they disagree. They also have other diagnosis such as Bipolar or PTSD but these diagnosis don’t ‘offend’ them.  Too commonly other doctors who have presecribed medications for their anxiety and depression have not told them of the effects of combination of the drugs with psychoactive substances like cannibis, alcohol, cocaine, fentanyl or crystal meth. Often they are also seeing naturopaths who are giving them psychoactive substances and have not questioned them about the party drugs they are using.  90% of the time I am the first person to record the drug and alcohol abuse and discuss it with the patient.   Many people who are on disability have become angry with the diagnosis yet they have DUI’s and score high on CAGE and AUDIT and other addiction tests.  I’ve done lab work that shows their liver enzymes are incredibly high and some I’ve referred for liver transplants but they think there’s something wrong with me for suggesting they drink ‘too much’.    They are incensed that my consultation will go to their GP and even more so if the insurance company paying for them to be off work might learn that they smoke cannibis all day and drink a bottle of wine or two a night and do cocaine and mushrooms with their friends on weekends. 

4.  I tell stories. I was a hypnotist.  Colombo was my favourite psychiatrist.  Patients who see me on consultation are beyond the Gp or previous psychiatrist or psychologists care. I’m no longer a primary care doctor. I did that successfully for a decade or more.  I was a family physician.  Rational questioning is of limited benefit with patients with psychosis, psychopaths, and sociopaths.  Traditional community psychiatry was most helpful with the so called ‘neurotic’ persons not the personality disorders. Counsellors tend to take the ‘cream’ of psychiatry , the neurotics and the worried well, and those folk that originally might have been seen in psychoanalytic psychiatry. I miss my psychoanalytic patients , the weekly in depth therapy I did for years.  I listened and rarely spoke.  

With addiction the ‘traditional counselling and even conventional counselling’ have been ineffective and likely worsened the condition.  The only really good therapies are Motivational and 12 step facilitation.  Transactional analysis was also pretty good and today in groups dialectical behavioural therapy is showing value.  To assess a person in Motivation therapy you do a ‘willingness to change’ assessment to determine if a person is ‘precontemplation - they get angry and want to destroy you if you raise the issue of the real thing that needs too be changed but wax poetic about wanting to change.”  In the past horrendous amounts of limited resources were wasted on these people who wanted to not change but talk ad infinitum about wanting to change or anything about their real problem.  Contemplation phase is a person who is ‘open’ and presented with options will be thankful for the information and come back with questions and thoughts about a plan.  Determination phase is about the person who wants to change and now is willing to make actual plans. Action phase is the person who is actually doing something about the problem, not just thinking about it, not talking about it, but actually doing something and making changes.  

I’ve been trained to be ‘outcome focussed’.  I’ve spent tens of thousands of dollars of my own money beyond the psychiatry residence I trained in learning various psychotherapies . In counselling there’s no real demand to ‘cure’.  In my upper class psycho analytic based practice the multi millionaires and celebrities were successful in all aspects of their life especially according to Maslow but were still ‘unhappy’.  Listening to such a person and being a sounding board helped them find ‘joy’ or some self actualization or spiritual awakening.  Too many of my patients today are referred to me and they’re ‘lost’ and performing very poorly in life. So many need a social worker or occupational therapist or family therapist but all that is covered by MSP and hence ‘free’ is a psychiatrist who the government advises should priorize consultation, diagnosis and psychopharmacology. I always do that and do it very well. The problem arises with my continuing to do psychotherapy regarding psychosocial aspects of their care. I’m now called a ‘full service psychiatrrist’ and my other older colleague and I laugh at this designation which is kind of a put down at times for what we thought was good medical care.  Increasingly people are seen in ‘part’ and not holistically and the psychiatrist who is liked plays a ‘mini neurologist’ and avoids discussing their affairs , criminal behaviour and anything dubious that might not be ‘liked’ by the patient who just want ‘drugs’ and their disability form signed.  Indeed I often sign the disability forms but piss the patient off by suggesting alternatives that they then are astute at saying ‘yes, but’ to.  I most appreciate the young man who asked me me how few times he could see me before he could get the free heroin. I love honesty as there is hope 

Mental health is the ability to love , work and play.  Increasingly MSP psychiatrists are referred patients who aren’t working, are alone, and no fun.  Listening to such a patient does them a disservice especially when most of these people have a history of having seen very good colleagues, psychologists and counsellors who have already done that.  

At one point I was the psychiatrist of last resort seeing the dangerously insane, in asylums, and jails and specializing in the non compliant.  I have been thankful to have the heads of neurology, psychiatry, family medicine, endocrinology etc refer to me. Historically seeing the families of colleagues, word of mouth and referral from the leading doctors were the criteria that defined a doctors worth.  Rate your doctor is a popularity measure. I was called Mr. Popularity in high school.  I know how to be popular.  The most popular doctor is a drug pusher for the multi nationals. The most popular doctors ‘rubber stamp your bullshit’.  The most popular doctor in these cases is a lawyer advocate and indeed the gp is that or was when I was delivering babies.  Good physicians will always try to help you achieve potential and offer solutions to obvious problems. I diagnosed dozens of malingers who were stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars.  I stopped doing that years ago when the Minister of health of the day said that it was okay for people who could walk to have wheel chairs. The last time I objected to able bodied people parking in disability parking they laughed at me and pointed to their sticker an told me ‘the car is disabled’.  

I’ve identified about a dozen pedophiles and reported them.  They have never ‘forgiven’ me.  They told me what they were doing and what they wanted me to do more and I reported them or had them seek help.  I was doing my job and it’s interesting to me that other doctors who did the right thing, the conventional right therapy, what I would do if I was primary care and not tertiary care, ‘missed’ this.  As a psychiatrist I am required to intervene if a person is an imminent risk to themselves or or theirs. This doesn’t make me popular and most people opt for the sin of omission even though reports show a large portion or suicidal and homicidal have indeed told officials but nothing was done. People tell me they’re having sex with animals and are killings animals.  I have hundreds of times heard that people were doing massive amounts of drugs and alcohol and a real risk to themselves and others.  Victims and victimizers of domestic violence have shared with me what is going on when all that they’d been given before was anti anxiety or anti depressant medications. Not surprisingly the medications weren’t working.  They have told me this when I’ve been rambling on about something parallel.  In ‘story telling’ therapy you don’t speak directly because the person has ‘sophisticated’ defences against that but they aren’t immune to advanced techniques of interviewing which I’m thankful for having learned from the greatest teachers.  I’ve seen ten thousand patients and know I’ve done no harm. However today there’s emotional abuse and one of my patients reported an important man for ‘raping her’ but it came out that he ‘raped her with his eyes’.  Language is no longer what it was.  

5. Harm reduction and the two tier system of abstinence and labour intensive therapy for abstinence used with doctors, judges , the wealthy , pilots , etc versus the often ‘palliative care’ of in expensive harm reduction is a shift in care. MAiD and euthanasia are a shift in care.  Increasingly the government does not see people as gaining freedom and self determinations, the traditional goals of psychotherapy but more as ‘not complaining.’  We called it ‘band aid’ medicine and it was often in effective.    I do psychopharmacology as well, my undergrad in biochemistry and competence in wilderness medicine with medication and age and experience make this a ‘skill set’ much appreciated today .  We don’t talk about ‘you changing’ but triangulate discussion about the ‘pill’s.  My colleagues who solely do that are understandable to the average physician because the therapy is ‘rational’ and there’s no such thing as ‘paradoxical intervention’ or ‘homework therapy’ or ‘testing insight’.  All the treatments for non compliance are not addressed .  Psyvhiatric patients however have the greatest ‘non compliance’ and their lack of success is mostly they don’t follow suggestions regarding medication or what ever.  The common psychosis is “I’m well, you’re not well. “ ‘I’m well, the psychiatrist is crazy. “  The personality disorder seeks a lawyers or mob to ‘kill the messenger’.  I do ask people specifically what they want, and not in terms of ‘feelings’ only but ‘show me’.  Do you want children. Do you want a job. Do you want friend.  I remember one woman saying I have a friend.  i said that you told me they were your drug dealer .  They are but they’re my friend.  

6 .  I was told when I left family medicine for psyvhiatry , where I was called Dr. Kildare’ and was highly sought after and widely acclaimed that if I was a good psychiatrist I would be unpopular and need to be unpopular. Indeed in psychoanalytic training I had to learn to sit through the ‘negative transference’ of the patient.  So many are developmentally delayed with so many caught emotionally adolescent while physically adults.   As a gp   I referred a half dozen patients to the psychiatrist and they were the most difficult in practice. I also was interested in non compliance because a patient died after lying about taking his medication. The family lied too . 30% non compliance is common in all areas of medicine. It’s the elephant in the room everyone avoids talking about.  There’s 80% non compliance in some psychiatric populations.  I eventually was glad to sub specialize in addiction because they were the sickest and least likely to respond to treatment. I liked the challenge all the while I was asking why do bad things happen to good people.  I’ve described my work to friends as doing overhauls or tune ups on Ferrari’s . 

My colleague a forensic psychiatrist has been demanding for years that ‘rate your psychiatrist’ be removed as ‘rate your judge’ is removed. I’ve had guns pointed at me when I refused to give people opiates, and had my dog killed when I refused to say a drug dealer was clean.  I’ve been threatened countless times in psychiatry but wasn’t as a gp except when I worked on ‘wet reserves’ where doctors wouldn’t go and even the RCMP wouldn’t . I’m thankful I did because I stopped a meningitis epidemic. I’ve worked with the poor and marginal and yes, I’ve helped the LGBT population especially transgendered because they’re bullied .I’ve fought countless battles on behalf of patients, all un paid, though often I’ve had the benefit of working with great lawyers who were getting paid.  I’ve done a lot of pro bono work too.  It’s silly. In the end I often explain it as I’m Christian and was raised Christian and this is what Christians do. I’ve commonly found that the doctors and nurses working with me in the worst conditions were Christians.  I wish it were otherwise.  

6. I’m a front line doctor.  I’ve seen ten thousand patients. I know that administrative doctors don’t show up in Rate Your Doctor. I know that when I worked in government we saw the patients as a team and even at the university we had all the time in the world for patients. In the community I’m always late and always rushed seeing a full day practice and having emergencies for which there is no time allotted. I also know that one of the ‘favourite’ psychiatrists saw 40 patients for 40 years.  He was very popular and had all the time in the world to be involved in the politics of psychiatry. I’m exhausted at the end of every day overwhelmed.  Right now I’m doing consultation with limited follow up, often at 3 or 4 month duration.  The shortage of psychiatrists is horrendous. People waited 2 years to see me. People who should be seen weekly haven’t been able to get a family physician . Every patients I see is supposed to have a family physician.  The family physicians I work with are over worked and burnt out but really overall tremendous.   50% of my patients don’t have fanily physicians and rely on walk in clinics. Their doctors often don’t know them are thankful for my in depth assessments which tell them that the patients has children, a dog , a cat or works on the side as an escort. As one physician said he couldn’t understand why his patient had so many STD’s and has now taken the time to address safe practices.  I’m routinely thanked by family physicians who keep sending me patients which I assume means that they are thankful or at very least no one else is available. My gp friend said he was sorry but he had asked 20 other psychiatrist to see this person but when they heard their complex story they simply woudlnn’t accept the referral. My fiend felt badly as an was already seeing a half dozen of their borderline personality disorder with dual diagnosis anf felt it was unfair to me to ask me to see yet another highly demanding patient. 

7. I’m pissed that judges aren’t Rate your Doctor. I’m pissed that I”m told I have to ‘certify dangerously insane people’ and yet i have no back up or understanding or support. The wife of a pedophile still haunts me. A drug addicted employee I fired still haunts me.  I’m am still working with MSP on the front lines and the staff I work with are being threatened.  Last year a patient threatened to kill my dog and I was unprotected . They complained to the College and the College criticized me for upsetting him and not seeing him He threatened to kill his employers dog, and his lawyers dog and finally the PM himself.  Finally something was done about him.  At no point did the College or anyone express concern for me having been in the room with a dangerously insane persons threatening to klll me.  When I was held hostage by a murderer I got no ‘support’ from the College or colleagues but the RCMP was immensely psychologically supportive.  It’s weird. My colleague who had the same experience with the College expressing platitudes and saying there was a physician assistance lines felt like he was demonized and traumatized when he refused to see a threatening dangerous lying patient who then complained against them and were allied with the most dangerous powerful government agency who frequently destroy doctors and ally with psychopaths.  “It’s our mandate to protect patients, “ a safe conceited adminstratie doctor said .My colleague replied “doctors are patients to and you’re scapegoaing is not helpful as the problems today are systemic.’  Of course they were treated by the College as a ‘troublemaker’.  There is a very good physician assistance program but that’s predominantly thanks to the Canadian Medical Association, Canadian Medical Protective Association and some doctors in the College who care despite the nature of their job. 

8. I’m past retirement age and still working in the front lines. It’s a thankless lowest paid position.  I shoujldn’t say thankless because countless patients thank me. They come back decades later and tell me of completing university, marrying , getting a job or whatever. So many attribute these historically life changing positive events to having seen me and heard something I was saying.  I am blessed to get praise and thanks from referring gps and be thanked for seeing gps most difficult patients.  The ‘feel good’ medicine government based is all that counts today.  Mediocrity and doing the least are most celebrated. The grey men and women are best. I know though that I personally would not be a live if my physicians and my mentors hadn’t been human. The interchangeable robot which can be replaced with a machine is what is wanted. I’m certainly not that person.  

9. Soon I won’t work and will join my colleagues who loved practicing medicine but hated the environment.  If you don’t like me get another doctor.  I’m not government employee. I’m a private physician and private contractor.  I have won a law suit against the government saying I can refuse to see people. I like to focus care on those motivated. I have been inclusive and yet I wonder about making my practice exclusive. My colleague has done that very well, selecting only a very few people who she’ll see. She’ll do a consult but then won’t provide follow up for anyone unless she wants to work with them.  I know that when I tell patients that I will only work with them if they agree that their addiction is a contributing factor to their depression and anxiety and that their family and boss are not the sole problem they often ‘fire’ me. I’m thankful.  T’ve found that people whose doctors and family have colluded with their idea that their being an asshole is solely the result of some ancient trauma are most commonly able to get well when they accept that they have to treat their addiction before they can really move forward treating their trauma.   The ‘dual diagnosis’ movement did not develop in the pharmacologist psychiatrist division.  My subspevialization and internest in trauma began when I saw that ‘mood disorder’ diagnosis could ‘blame the viction’. PTSD was a comnpensatiable diagnosis and the ‘company doctor’ diagnosed ‘depressioh’.  I diagnosed PTSD and hundreds of patients were ‘compensated’ for their injures at war in the work place or elsewhere.   I was very unpopular with the ‘authorities’ when case after case we addressed the PTSD. I found that most commonly people before me had not done the history or explored these issues.  Today it’s politically correct to just write the chit and not ask anything about the patient except about the preconceived diagnosis the patient wants.  Dr. Google is God.

10. I’m tired. I wonder what I will do next with the vast majority of [patients have been appreciative as have their families, doctors and insurance companies and Worksafe and the military and all manner of folk who now are involved in every patient I see. Doctors and psychiatrists are the most policed in society.  I get in trouble routinely for saying ‘fuck’ or ‘shit’.  My colleague whose mother washed his mouth out with soap more than mine couldn’t swear but he gets bad ratings on your doctor reviews too. I’m really suspicious of any psyciatrist who has ‘great’ reviews.  I know one who has their family write all the reviews and they approach pychiatry as a business and are closely networked with a drug company who they sell for. I was once a good salesman. I trained as a salesman. I say today I ‘sell’ life but my colleague who works with euthanasia is paid more and is kind of sexy. It’s not that I don’t approve of selective euthanasia but I get concerned with the flavour of the month.  For now I’ll continue .  There’s a tendency today for a small minority to mob. I’m really thankful for those who have said good things about me because we know statistically the angry and dissatisfied are most likely to complain.  I’ve never written a letter of praise for Costco or Walmart or countless other services which have been okay.  I read a couple of complaints that were utter lies.  I have complained when I was falsely accused. Rate your Doctor doesn’t allow that. This whole society of decreased accountability and the increasing number of false allegations and the unwillingness in general in Canada to address deceit is concerning.  It seems no one cares until some actually shits on the bed. 

11. So many of my colleagues are retiring or retired or took early retirement but they don’t like this and they don’t like administration and they don’t feel that medicine is human any more. I guess we’ve become dinosaurs.  I will become extinct one day. Everyone loves Dr Google and even administrators think the world of these sexy apps but sadly the data shows that their accuracy of diagnosis remains less than 50% whereas I continue despite age to have a 90% accauracy based on history.   For now I’ll continue to muddle along hoping that I die before we are all expected to behave like politicians or robots.  Admittedly I’m aware 80% of doctors are burnt out and not too happy about false criticism and utopian expectations too often from people who hide and take potshots.  We do ourselves know whose working on the front lines and some like me who have been indeed outside the wire. Increasingly the leadership hasn’t that kind of experience and it shows.  

One Trick Pony and the FNG

There’s a thing called position authority. This is the person who doesn’t do anything or go anywhere but is rewarded because they remain.  They are the kid who never passes grade 6 but remains in the class room , a potential big bully.  They undermine leadership because it threatens them.  They talk change but don’t want any change unless it serves their seige mentality place.  

I’ve lived in several countries, different continents, and several cities. Any kid that has moved around schools knows what that’s like.  As an adult I”m ever at risk from the local boy who thinks they’re grand and consider anyone who comes into their little pond a threat.  They have a group of local friends not so different from the adolescent gang. I’m mostly just passing through.  

I was in dance and theatre then the university arts and then university science.  I did medical school and each year was a different rotation. When I graduated and interned and became a member of the College of Family Practice I went out to be country GP.  Everything was new. Every community a challenge.  Every year of education you are the FNG - the ducking new kid.  It’s the same when. I was a flyin doctor in the sub arctic.  All new.  Failures and challenges and constantly people sniping.  They were always few I always had the most amazing people helping me succeed. Unfortunately I have a personality and character which remembers too well those people who wanted me to fail and didn’ want me to steal their dim light by my light. They were arrogant and would rather maintain their place by killing me than to improve their skills and capacity.  I was always an outside.  Ever learning ever moving I excelled as a family physician , then norther doctor and then moved onto the dual speciality of community medicine and psychiatry. Always the FNG .  I graduated psychiatry and became the psychiatrist then I did the American psychiatry exams having had to do the American medicine exam 4 years out of medicine.  I then came to be a prof at a different university and had to deal with the corruption and addition that was rife there.  I fought to stay alive. I defended the lost and made enemies of the crabs at the bottom. But I also met the most wonderful denizens of the deep and rainbow fish and dolphins.  I swam and learned to swim.  I would go on to be a subspecialist and again go through the gauntlet of relearning and learning and being the FNG .I’m at the end of a career and I look back to when I was a GP and literally ‘knew it’.  Today I am leading in my sub speciality and it’s hard in some areas to keep up There’s no support from on high. There has been tremendous support. I’ve always had amazing referral sources and colleagues, the heads of mediocre, neurology , family practice referring to me. Doctors, Olympic Athetes, Multi millionaires, celebrities seeking me out as their doctor. I’ve arrived in a way but not as the entrenched military with it’s ribbons and glory but as a guide out beyond the wire.  

In my personal time I was always failing too , never resting on my laurels , never the guy that new it all like those entrenched in position authorities who haven’t had to learn the new.  They politic. They also are jeaalous of me.  I envy them their safety and certainty. I’d love to hide in a castle and shoot down new knowledge and insist on the old and say it was new.  

Gymnast, volleyball player, martial artist, dancer,Cyclist, runner, climber, sailer, hunter, motor cyclist.  Each of these endeavours I did an rose rapidly in the ranks gaining skills and competing and getting though the gauntlet of the FNG. Always encountering the One Trick Pony. Thank you Paul Simon for that image.

Now they lie and say I was never a doctor. Now they question that I sailed across an ocean. I’m old and all those achievements and accomplishments are not. I’m overwhelmed and ashamed of the divorces.  Decades of intimacy and the rape and abortion. These seem ever to pollute my inner world .  I don’t look at the audience and see the room full of smiling faces . I just see the frown at the back of the room.  I am so afraid. I m so beat up by the bully and his gang and I’m just passing through. I’m just trying to help these people. I’m just trying to do my job 

They kick over my books and punch me and attack and steal and generally want my attention. I’m delivering a baby , I’m convincing a boy it’s good to live. I’ m convincing a mother to stop smoking dope because she forgets her baby. I’m having a myriad of conversations and writing hundreds of things that require me to sign my name and there’s this local bully with his thugs and he’s shouting “I’ll make you respect me”.  

I’ve fought and won so many fights. I’m the FNG. I’m Clint Eastwood and Mel Gibson rolled in one. I’ve fought the ex, the father of the child who kicked his wife in her pregnant belly inducing labour then came into the hospital where I was doctoring the mother going in labour an I fought him off until security arrived. A doctor defending this woman and the unborn baby of this man’s.  Doesn’t any one get it when I say I was in charge of the dangerously insane. I sailed across an ocean in winter through hurricanes.

No he’s lying.

I was held hostage and survived.

I physically fought off five guys kicking two in the heads with elegant jump kicks., I dodged bullets and disarmed a kid with a pistol, then chased a guy with a knife.

I’m fucking insane. 

In rage I was dead and just in motion,

I’ve made my peace with god

I just ant to run away. I am trying to help the sick and lesser and I’ve come into your courts and I’ve even gone into gang houses and confronted the head guy with dozens of his armed guys around and told him his child is freezing outside and he’d better fix this problem or I’d be back. I’ve run with 10 guys chasing me.

I’m the FNG and I’ve done all the gantlets and now I’m old and tired and I hurt and I can’t run and I’m afraid. I’m afraid a lot of the time because I just want to die in my sleep.  I want Jesus and God and the cloud of unknowing to be less crazy. I am living only today but I wake and it’s another 16 hours on the track trying to avoid these guys who say I don’t exist, these liars who are even more scared and see me as a threat.  I want to avoid the showdowns of old. I want to live and let live but I’m working and I’m won so many fights in these knock down all out wars with guys who hurt women and children and want to be somebody but are afraid to leave their security .  Crabs.  Trolls.

I’m too old for this shit and can’t believe my mind won’t just show me the friends and safety and the love but no I have to look at the dark side and see the threat. I’m always scanning tor threat, back to the wall, wondering where the sniper is, wondering what lies have been told.

And I’m nobody. All is vanity.  I’m done. I’m old. I’m done.  

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference.  Don’t feed the raccoons.  

25

It’s a gratitude day. 25 years clean and sober.  I take my cake this coming week at my home group Burnaby Men’s with George insisting he’ll bring the cake.  I joke and say we celebrate the sacraments of cake and coffee of Bill and Bob.  It’s a long fast.  Thankfully the hang over goes in weeks to months though we clean up the ‘wreckage of the past’ for sometimes years’, making amends and just living sober.  

I was a binge drinker . Much of my life was intensely dedicated but I was attracted to the ‘chaos’.  I married women who shared my pleasures.  My family was orderly by comparison.  So much alcohol and mental illness with those I was attracted to or what I attracted.  I wasn’t called ‘Wild Bill’ because I was tame.  Always the first to dance on tables and do anything on a dare.  

I remember at Homewood Treatment Centre, Graeme Cunningham saying to me ‘some people run with the cheetah’s and some people run with the turkeys, you’ve been running with the turkeys’.  My dad called them ‘fair weather friends’.  He was what men called a ‘straight shooter’.  I regret that I didn’t listen more to him.  He transformed from the stupidest man I knew as a genius to the greatest man I knew as an adult.

When I stopped drinking, smoking tobacco and cannabis, so much of that life paled. We joke and say an alcoholic 10 is a  4 with a 6 pack.  Just so much of what people do when they’re drinking has no appeal sober. Like staying up late. I love the dawn now.  I love waking refreshed and alert. I can’t imagine why I would suffer a hangover and then go back and do it again.  

I can’t imagine today ‘not living life on life’s terms’.  I don’t want to be ‘dope dumb’ on marijuana joking about how stupid we talk even if it is like taking valium and relaxing. I don’t want to knee jerk emotions of alcohol and I never want the lack of peace of mind or the ability to appreciate a natural high.  Jesus said we must be like children again to enter heaven.  I remember thinking pot was coming out of my fat cells when I regained the natural love of life and joy de vivre. 

 Do you now remember the joyful times of childhood? a celebrity friend in recovery said to me.  

Suddenly I remembered myself playing baseball in a radiant green park with happy people and a glorious sun.  When we are depressed we remember depression because we are in the valley of our minds. Only on the peaks can we see all the joy of the truly high places as well as the lows and valleys of life.  Drugs and alcohol are depressing.

Asked to remember all the things in life I was proud of and would like to be remembered for I realized that the vast majority of them occurred sober, family and church and childhood, hunting and fishing, the great romances, provincial gymnastic and volleyball competitions,  dance training and competitions, theatre performances,  cycling across Europe, study of history and literature, studying  chemistry and anatomy, medical school training, working as a country gp, delivering babies, flying doctor through the sub arctic, residency training in community medicine and psychiatry. Then psychiatry and another divorce and alcohol abuse. Then work continued but my recreation increasingly was associated cigarettes, reefers and wine.  I’d gone camping to tent and fish but now looked forward to drinking a bottle of wine and smoking a joint around the fire. There was a shift.

At first it’s fun , then it’s fun and trouble, then it’s trouble..  I remember it being trouble sailing down to Mexico and then in Mexico, Instead of sailing around the world my partner and I stayed in margaritaville.  There were good times.  Sailing was spectacular.  Playing blues in the band was fun. Spear fishing and snorkelling and sun was great but it was going nowhere . When we came home she wouldn’t get help.  I didn’t want to be around her friends or my friends that drank and drugged. I’d liked her because she had her own group of dealers and prayers . Her’s tended to have university degrees but were no less ‘friends in high places and low places’ while I had friends who were interesting the sober ones in high place and the ones who crank and did dope professionals and bikers and rural.  

She would get so impaired she couldn’t work. I’d party on the weekend but I’d go to work and I was seeking help seeing professionals and told that my problems wasn’t the joint or wine I drank but the impaired wife doing cocaine. The lying and destruction increased . My unforgettable line was , “I can go to work and help. a hundred people or stay home and help one person. I can’t do both.”  I’d been years of covering for her.  I was so tired of being told a man would handle his wife. She was not a pretty site drunk and stoned though we’d both been younger. We were passed the magic forty year old place where you’re expect to be able to get your act together.  She lied and lied and lied.  It was impossible.  I never liked cocaine but she sure did.  I didn’t like the people around cocaine either. I’d liked the hippy wine and reefer world but this cocaine crowd was mean. My former friends who had fallen to cocaine were the same.  We joke that an alcoholic will steal your wallet but an addict will not only steal your wallet they’re help you look for it.

I just couldn’t carry on. I was working harder than I’d ever trying to cover for her when she suddenly refused to get out of bed forever or see a doctor. I knew this couldn’t go on.  She’d had a grow operation and with friends of her. She’d moved all the money I made into her accounts except for what required my signature.  In the end it was apparent that she’d been financially scheming for a year.  I remember thinking I’m trying to make this work and she’s been stabbing me in the back.  Separation and divorce.  The times she almost killed me and the times drunk when she almost killed us both. I saved our lives so many times, the worst being when I went off the bow wave of a tanker coming out of San Francisco harbour in the fog having again messed up the radar and lied when I asked if she’d touched it.  

I don’t want to ever be back in a relationship with someone drunk and stoned. I don’t want to ever be drunk and stoned again. I can see her behaviour clearly but only know that I was a mirror. I loved in AA the ‘restore us to saniety’ clause. I never realized how insane I was but I certainly saw how insane she was, yet I was with her and our friends were too. It was a bad sit com, something out of a Kardasian bizarro world.

I remember thinking that my life had gone wrong when I was sexually abused by my professor, when I was a psychiatry resident, when I committed adultery when I saw so much learning to understand the insane.  I thought when was my life right and remembered church and prayer and meditation. I was going to return to Winnipeg to talk to the people there I knew and trusted.  I was going to leave psychiatry and maybe go back to being a country doctor or just get out of medicine all together.  The psychiatrists I knew were drunks and addicts and as I learned the depths of my wife’s deceit and even the deceit of my therapist and authorities in general I became paranoid.  My fair weather friends stole from me as did my ex wife. Manly I’d taken nothing of hers and we’d lived on my income as most of our times she’d been a student and took her own income.  I remember thinking that as a man I was powerless and that maybe I could become a woman because I was really tired of having all the responsibility and accountability, all the blame and none of the praise.  I was utterly confused too. I’d spent 20 years with women to have a family but after marriage I learned they didn’t want children.  They wanted a daddy.  Their fathers were alcoholic or absent.  But God were they beautiful, brilliant and fun. I forfeited joy and peace for fun and drama. Not a bad trade when young but time marches on.  

I had been in church as a boy with my brother and mother and father and that was the oasis I aimed for. A Christian friend asked if he could help and offered to rent me his trailer . He didn’t smoke dope and rarely drank.  I returned to church.  She’d refused to go. In psyhiatriy the psychoanalytic professors hearing I meditated as a disciple of Paramahansa Yogananda and a follower of Christian Dr. Carl Ridd I was summarily told that meditation was harmful and must stop and that if I wished to continue my training with these two psychiatrists I had to leave community medicine and stop taking Christian studies courses while in residency.  I had left surgery and family medicine and now was told if I wanted to be a psychiatrist I needed to be a devotee of the megalomaniac analyst I who I frankly admired.  Psychiatrists then were a weird mix, mensch’s and devils.  All were charming and highly skilled. We learned from the psychopaths , narcissists and borderlines. We walk miles in their moccasins and they get under our skin. We are as much artists of the mind as scientists. I was naive and vulnerble.  I was also obedient.  Thise who rise high in systems much have this trait of obedience as the rebels get pruned.  Systems are like military organizations.  They’re like religious organizations.  The abuse of power is ubiquitous.  

I was willing to stay a doctor sober and clean. I was encouraged to go to AA and asked my friend, Kirk, who I trusted if he trusted AA. Kirk and I and been spiritual disciples our whole live, he a follower of Prem and me a Christian doctor who’d taken a detour in better living with chemistry, the tantra yoga,Daost path.  

“I think AA is a good group. I know people who belong and they’ve done well.  I think it’s good that you’ve stopped drugs and alcohol.  I didn’t think that was making you happy. I’m sorry that you and your wife have separated but I never thought she and you were that compatible.  But yes I think AA is a good thing.”  

I’d stopped drinking and left the drug crowd and was detoxing on a hillside with my Bible and my shotgun. The bikers I’d been staying with who stole my money, possessions and vehicle were threatening to come by one night and kill me for the registration.  They never came by but I saw they’d sold my vehicle without registration. I learned that I obeyed laws but so many didn’t .I was so naive. I’d also have all these ‘god’ moments. Events were constantly synchronistic.  Good came to me. I was free of the baggage and suddenly out of the dark I was in the light and it was uncanny how my relationship with God restored. I’d actually thought I was beyond God’s love.  

Bernie showed up in his new truck, the ex wife had destroyed my truck, I was riding a bicycle American Express wanted to claim, my ex wife having with her lawyer and her millions used up all my money on lawyers who said ‘she and her lawyer are refusing to meet so they’re using seige techniques to destroy you and ruin you financially.’  I’d given the last of my money to the lawyer to free my accounts to pay the rent. I was getting charity and food from the church and Christian friends. I went to welfare and the woman screamed at me saying that a ‘doctor can’t get welfare…welfare is for the poor people…you rich men can’t expect poor people to pay you….get out of my office…you’ll get nothing here.”  Every day was humiliation. I’m still hoarding food as again I was hungry like when I left my father’s home.

So i went to church and I went to AA and I trusted Christians .  I trusted godly people. I was lied to by the College of Physicians and Surgeons. I was lied to by psychiatrists but I’d been a family physician , a member of the family physician of canada before becoming a specialist in medicine and psychiatry. I found myself trusting family physicians and Godly psychiatrists. I’d extend my trust to Sam Sussman , an Orthodox Jew. I had named the psychiatrist who raped me drunk and stoned out of the blue and left field this powerful connected man ‘made me his woman’ and ‘bred me’ as my engineer friend liked to put it.  He was a misogynist.  I am still confused.  I was the wife in my marriages to female doctors doing the cooking and cleaning as well as working each day. My colleagues most had wive ‘s and mothers of their children and they went home to the traditional division of labour but I was married to female doctors and never had any support. They did school , I did the wifely duties, and worked two jobs for their ‘desires’ and maintained us while they brought in stipends.  I realized that the guy who said marriage was institutionalize prostitution was talking to me. I was destitute after divorce and they were wealthy yet I’d spent the marriage helping them academically literally dragging them to the library to study and sitting beside them as a study coach, I was ahead of them. But women repeatedly put me down projecting their anger at their husbands and boyfriends who somehow got ‘served’. I never got served’.  I cooked and cleaned and worked.  As a psychiatrist I was most interested in the escorts and their pimps. I was fascinated having pimps as patients and learning how they trained ‘their bitches’.  Exact opposite to all I did.

I read Gottman of Love Lab fame and learned that I was a master at verbally winning battles but lost the war because my wives held onto resentments.  They had horrendous relationships with their alcoholic families and their horendously abusive mothers and I’d had this straight arrow ex military engineer who supervised hundreds of men and a religious Baptist loving mother who had wanted a daughter but had me and couldn’t have more children. I failed her because while I was apparently the prefect child I left home. I preferred running with the pack and had this spiritual path that took me away from the safety and love of home. I truly was the prodigal son.  I came home after I left and then left again. My parents were always there for me. I feel sorry for so many who haven’t had that. The trouble was always my pride.  

Pride is the original sin.  Alcohol and addiction create the mental state of ‘egomania wth inferiority comp;lexes’.

I’m thankful to day because of all the people who helped me to surrender to God and let go of self. The Swami song say ‘mother father have I none I am he, I am he, blessed spirit I am he’.  In my training in theology I learned that there is God and me and if I wanted to know God more fully I must let go of ‘me’.  I had to learn to trust God. The last 25 years have been good. Better and better.

Sober I went to AA with the former head of UBC psychiatry. I continued to see Christian Psyvhiatrists who helped me deal with the addicts and alcoholics in government who abused their power rather frequently. I was blessed to know the lawyer Jonathan Meadows and lived in this great psychodrama of my life.  I was often not the centre state. The play was called William Hay but there were all these bad actors trying to make it all about them. Meanwhile I was listening to the big black Milton who in AA said he pasted a message on his mirror ‘you’re looking at the problems’ to remind him it’s his perception that is the problem.  AA taught me that alcoholism was first a ‘thinking disease’. I had thought I had thought I was spiritual but I’d worshiped the demon drink and demon pot and demon tobacco.  Now I thank God for the early deep breaths I take in the morning. Now I’m writing gratitude lists each morning thanking the Lord for my dog Madigan, my long term friend and lover Laura and all the precious people in my life. I also thank God for the ‘enemies’. The College of Physicians and Surgeons resident pervert was a trial as is the PM today. I was so thankful for the fourth step in AA and Bernie, Hank and Father John who helped me work thought my resentments and fears. I was so hurt and angry and frightened and betrayed. I really wasn’t a good man or a good husband. I probably was a pretty good doctor. I joke and say I fear a class action suit from the 100 babies I delivered who get together and find they share a thumb printed on their forehead because I held too tight guiding them into life. I also think that any day the thousands of people I convinced not to suicide will sue me for false promise.  Yet I did my best and thanks to the amazing teachers and those who went before me and the College of Physiccians and Surgeons, and the Royal College of Physiians and Surgeons and the Canadian Medical Protective Associations and the Society of Addiction Medicien and Christianity and AA and frankly and friends and dogs and cats I’ve done okay.

I’m alive and 25 years ago I so suffered indescribable and utter ‘incomprehensible demoralization.  I had such anxiety and was told by an old internist in a late night meeting of International Doctors in AA, “anxiety is a measure of your distance from God and a measure of your humanity.’  I know God is an experience and not an idea. I used to say I knew Christ and Christ consciousness but today I know Jesus as a friend. God is good all of the time.  

I continued to hunt big game with my friend Bill Mewhort shooting moose and deer and bear with him. I continued to sail and sailed solo on the SV GIRI San Francisco to Hawaii in winter through a hurricane. Thanks to Dr. Willie Gutowski I worked a couple of years in Saipan in sobriety so enjoying meetings on the beach with Frank beneath palm trees watching the sunset.  I loved learning from Phillip another sailor doctor and wise man.  I still struggled with the inclusivity of Christian churches caught between the LGBT include church of Peter and the exclusive church of my evangelical friends. I loved studying theology with the purest deepest Catholic psychiatrist John whose paraplegia he may as well have called his ‘glad gethseame’ like the catholic priest friend of Bill Wilson.  All the Christians I knew and admired were living inspirations as they were persecuted in Canada like the disciples of Jesus were.  I was blessed to go to Israel and make so many trips to conferences all over the US and be with the finest of men like Nady and Art and Carroll and Dick and men and women who are now dying or dead. I loved my friend George in recovery , another physician who would go for dinner with me before an AA meeting as we’d talk about baseball and life and love.  I’ve been truly blessed despite being a kafetch and having the worst tendency to slip into rabbit holes and whine with self pity. My military friend who told me ‘you’ve got one foot in the future and one foot in the past and you’re pissing on your day, get your head in the same room as your ass’ also said ‘get down off the cross we can use the wood’.  

Recovery is ancient healing journey. Just for today was a profound awakening for me as I felt that God , omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent was here and now and for me to be with god I had to be present. The journey I ‘d begun as a child and later continued in church and school and temple and love came to this point of intersection in the cloud of unknowing at the point of Stellate reality and Interdimensional experience with each day a beginning. I pray to know God more and to know God’s will more. I have quiet time.  I meditate. I do right livelihood . I listen to the spiritual teaching of the Bible and the Big Book of AA and Kurtz book, Spirituality of Imperfection, the great teachings of the world. Paramahansa Yolanda taught “I bow to the saints of all religions’.  I never thought of a hell and didn’t believe in the tribalism religions that said ‘our little group wins and your group loses’ but I liked Pascal’s wager and Eben Alexander the neurosurgeons ‘proof of heaven’.  I’ve known sacred and supernatural.

I would love more. I would learn to be more loving not in that sentimental way but in the way of the God of Gods.  God is all. God made the devil and free will and fate are central We like to choose free will when we do something good and blame the other guy but refuse to accept fate when ‘shit happens’.  It’s all ego.  God is good all of the time. The people like the man who abused me or the ex wife who lied and stole or the college administrator whose perversion obscured her vision , all of these people were bicycle lessons like the soldier who held me hostage threatening to kill me, or the native who shot at me and all those antagonists in my play of life with me as the protagonist.  

I’m so thankful to be sober so that I have been able to live this good life with knowing people like I do,  I struggle now with gender, sexuality and aging. At the point when I’m Shakespearean with desire greater than performance no longer a consequence of alcohol but rather a product of physically hurting and slowing. I struggle to stay fit when I was always active and climbing mountains to experience the joy above the clouds with a sober friends revelling in the beauty of existence.  I loved seeing the great works of arts and museums in Edinburg Oxford and London and Paris this spring taking Laura as a companion but missing Madigan yet knowing Karen and Belinda people I could trust with my puppy while I was away.  I can trust today and people don’t lie and betray me. I know that expectations are preformed resentments and I don’t have the unrealistic expectations I had younger.  I’m more mature. Who would have guessed. But I do miss the theatre and dance world and find so many older people still pretentious and tedious.  

I’m becoming ornery with age.  I’m happy alone.  I’m less afraid.  I worry I might drink or smoke dope again and fall into the psychosis of believing the false is true.  

It’s 25 years. A quarter century, much longer than the entire time I smoked or drank. I still don’t know what I will do when I grow up.  Right now I have to go have my hair done and the biggest challenge is whether to wear a skirt or slacks.  I’m having a lot of first world problems and very few third world problems .  I’m full of gratitude and know grace.  I really am blessed but often don’t know what next. I miss the Sturges expedition.  I knew I wanted to ride my Harley there and back like I knew I wanted to visit the church’s of Ethiopian and see the black Jesus.  I knew I wanted to go to Athens and the Vatican and Mexico City pyramids ,  I’ve known what it is I have to do but now I’m able to plan the day but don’t have any real idea for much into the future. I felt last winter I was kedging my life off the sand bars of Covid and the WHO . I’m aware that Trudeau is the devil incarnate and that I’m at best a hobbit in the spiritual warfare of today but it’s hard to see.  I’m in the cloud of unknowing and just keep walking forward with Jesus.  

I need to be sober because the world is so crazy I need all my wits about me. I don’t want to be an ostrich that puts it’s head in the sand and doesn’t know who kicked it. The Donovan song, season of the witch and beatniks are out to make it rich makes me ware of my vulnerability.  I am learning to trust God more in old age. 

I’m thankful for sobriety and don’t believe I’d have achieved the long term sobriety that Vaillant of Harvard fame wrote so eloquently about without AA.  

I’ve a doctors in AA meeting tomorrow. So I know I’m looking forward to that. I’m continuing to work. I’m here. I’’m muddling along. I have a principle responsibility to Madigan who is dependent on me.  He’s a messy room mate.  

Thank you.  25 years. Thank you, Thank you God and as I learned in AA God works through people. Thank you.

I remember being tormented after I stopped drinking and smoking. I think the tobacco was as bad as the pot. I was in withdrawal for weeks to months, hiking all day and visiting a Christian psychiatrist, going to church, praying, meditating, writing, doing odd jobs to pay 

Goals, Purpose, Meaning, Easter Saturday

Victor Frankl wrote « Man’s Search for Meaning » , an introduction to his specific form of psychotherapy, called « Logotherapy ».  Having survived Auschwitz he concluded that the main motivation of man was the search for meaning.

I consider at different points in my life I’ve had a grand idea for giving meaning to my life. Meaning overlaps with purpose.  A question which we asked was what would you like written on your tomb?  How would you like to be known?  

My friend wanted to be a doctor from a child.  My desire to be a physician occurred much later in life.

First I wanted to be an astronaught.  I’d read all the science fiction of the local library loving the explorer fiction.  I’d equally loved reading all the history tales of Marco Polo, Captain Vancouver and such.  The idea of finding new lands and people excited me. As an early teen I’d range far on my bicycle. In 1966 the original series of Star Trek premiered.  I’d race home after school to watch the next episode.  It was the Cold War early days of the Space Race. I remember watching the early Apollo  flights. They culminated  in Neil Armstrong from Apollo 11 taking the first step on the moon in 1969. « One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind, »    

I was forever exploring, Exploration and adventure. I’d bicycle. I’d canoe.  I’d walk through unknown parts of my city.  This gave me meaning.  I’d later drop acid and begin the inward search that lead to psychoanalytic psychotherapy and the whole world of recovery.  I hitchhiked across Canada and later bicycled across Europe.  

So I wanted to be an explorer but really I wanted to be an astronaught. When I did hallucinogens I was drawn to the inner exploration and  adventure and unknown and would become a space cadet.

These thoughts arose out of my adolescent years, the late 60’s and the famed summer of 69, the year of Woodstock.

I was writing poetry and performing it in coffeehouses and playing rudimentary guitar. I wanted to be a ‘Poet » but there wasn’t a job attached to that.  I actually did my first year at university in theatre with the aim of being a playwright. I was a dancer and actor at the time.  I don’t think I ever want to be a rock star though the life style appeared, So many Canadian’s want the lifestyle of the artist as opposed to the meaning and purpose and discipline. I was definitely disciplined.  

I think of my life in nodes, points at which crossroads were apparent.  Decisions that I knew were monumental at the time and looking back were even more so. When I fell in love with my first love  and made love for the first time I knew I could never be a monk or a minister. I’d been raised Christian and being good and having a family were expected, the norm.  ‘All you need is love’ was the Beatles motto of the day.  But while I wanted a partner to accompany me I saw them as being a fellow astronaught who’d loved travelling meeting the families with wife and children accompanying the man. The early communes seeded a solution.  There was such creativity and simple fun in those days.  We fucked like bunnies and got drunk and talked all night long smoking and it was good.  I played chess then too.  

I was in university again when I wanted to be a renaissance man and decided I wanted to do science more than the arts.  I had a calling in the University of Winnipeg Library. I’d begun studying Paramahansa Yoganada.  The whole spiritual awakening path was there. Along with the 8 fold path of Buddhism right livelihood and Jesus as a healer and teacher.

I remember I wanted to be a renaissance man then an intellectual.  I started in Surgery.  I wanted to be a missionary doctor. But then in the city I’d begun to study Public Health and Community Medicine but in the return to the city and pursuit of family and children I began psychiatry having found so much illness the product of choice and psychiatric disease. The accidents I was seeing were so often alcoholism. So much of illness was a consequence of depression and anxiety. The least served were the mentally ill and I wanted to understand insaniety. I loved R. D. Laing, Freud,  and Jung.  I wanted to be a psychotherapist.  While I loved medicine and had been a really good family physician I never set out to be a psycho pharmacologist but like I slid into being a psychiatrist becoming a psychopharmacologist followed from working with head injuries and psychosomatic medicine. 

While I’d been raised in a spiritual home and trained with spiritual leaders and studied the spiritual teachings of all religions I’d become a disciple of Paramahansa Yogananda and later would be born again with Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior. 

In the study of addiction medicine following psychiatry and recovery I found myself back in the quest to know God , to follow His will and understand the existentialist question of my existence.

I was an explorer travelling to different countries and sailing in my 40 foot sailboat down the coast of North America to Mexico and then solo through winter hurricanes from Canada to the Hawaiian Islands.  I was hunting and fishing and exploring the wilderness too, a wilderness doctor, among other things, writing papers in medical journals and writing stories and articles and eventually publishing a poetry book and a book of observations from psychiatric practice. I remain a blogger.  One day after decades of practice and the joy of family and friends, never having had children though I married women who said they wanted family but I’m not sure in retrospect they really did.  I had dogs. One day I was old and again contemplating life and death. The old questions of meaning and purpose and existentialism.  Mostly I was asking, what next?  I had the answers that I set out to find when I entered each of these phases and now I was kind of coasting.  Time was more important. Carpe Diem, Augustine and perspective.

So I wanted 

1. To be an astronaught, explorer

2. To be a poet, writer

3 . To be a renaissance man/intellectual and spiritual

4. I wanted to be a spiritual disciple to follow Jesus 

5. I want to be enlightened

I’ve imagined what I’d do if I stopped doing what I’m doing and I’ve had the following thoughts

1.  Sex change. Or at least live cross dressed, like black like me , and add breasts. I’ve always liked breasts.  I like wearing skirts too. I wore kilts, then sarongs and just generally like a skirt.  I lived in jeans and suits my entire life enjoying jeans for my hobby farm and riding the harley and hunting .  I found the suit with the sports jacket a power combination, the work wear of a physician and intellectual poet.  I loved best living in shorts and sarong in the tropics.  I don’t know that it’s a permanent desire,  I wonder if it’s a matter of sex addiction or just wanting a new identity or a community that’s less dominated by men with many wives and children and a desire to kill and compete. I’ve accepted long ago that I was a lover not a fighter and I really like the LGBT community.  I have had to defend myself from men and women and feel too old for that and the politics.  I think a transwoman is less a ‘threat’ to these terrribly stunted insecure folk who often suffer megalomania. They like positions in government and law.  They’re very controlling. And afraid. 

2. I’ve thought of travelling to the south away from the winter cold and snow.  I’ve thought of motorcycling down to the tip of South America.  I’ve thought of living again in Mexico. I’ve thought of taking my RV, one of them, to Arizona or Baja.  I loved Costa Rica.  I want to live in the warmth and wear as little clothes as possible.  

3, I want to write. 

I have some book projects

I still write poems

I still blog

I’d like to write a novel

I’d like to write a kind of memoir

I have some ideas about psychiatry I’d like to share in a book form.  

I’m not focused or driven. I ‘ve considered doing university courses in creative writing. I was involved with the Canadian Authors Assoviation and loved the people and time but family emergency and the demands of work interfered. I’ve lived through Covid and been thoroughly depleted often feeling all I can do is work and eat and sleep.  The despair is palpable. I’ve realized too that the government is the problem, like my nurse friend who came back from Africa tired of caring for children who were then recruited to terrorist organizations.  My existential crisis was somewhat resolved by a month of travel and art galleries and museums and the pleasure of Laura’s company.  Instead of giving I was taking in the incredible creativity of man kind and lifted by the wonders of men and women.  I was moved by the beauty.  

I’m working in this structured setting as a psychiatrist because like James Taylor’s bartender song « i like 4 walls around me. ».  My friends with children don’t realize how contained their lives are by that and that by contrast I’ve been ultra conservative given the incredible freedom of choice I’ve felt. I live my life for my dog and a few friends. My friend Laura is the most important in my life but while I felt the women I married wanted me and needed me the joy of my relationship with Laura is that we enjoy each other 

I’m  a community consultant psychopharmacologist and addiction medicine specialist and it’s okay.  I’m moseying along,  My aim is to work virtual from the south in November but continue to live and work here. For now. I’m rather blessed.  I’ve a great dog and Laura as friend. Any problem I have is me.  Like my black friend Milton said, looking in the mirror, « i was looking at the problem’.  

I am struggling to adapt to being older.  So many friends and family have died. There seems to be a limited time but there may not be.  The idea of time and being old seems often from without and within.  I don’t feel particularly old.  I imagine I look old only when I see old people like me and imagine I must look something like them.  

Seven Cardinal Sins or Capital Vices

Greed

Pride

Wrath

Sloth

Gluttony

Avarice

Envy

Lust 

Seven heavenly virtues

Chastity (versus lust)

Faith (versus idolatry)

Good Works (versus greed)

Concord (versus discord)

Sobriety (versus indulgence)

Patience (versus wrath)

Humility (versus pride) 

I like the serenity prayer

I like carpe Diem, just for today

I like the idea of faith and mystery

I like the idea of character versus personality

I like the idea of ‘spiritual progress’ not perfection.

Each day I feel I’m getting better but older.  

I’m been impatient a lot of my life and struggle with ‘thy will be done not my will’

Comparison is a problem….the intellectual utopian solutions that never take into account others and that peoplee are like cats especially when herded. 

It’s Easter weekend and the North Shore Round Up is happening too.  Hazy day but not too cold.  No snow or rain.  There’s even some blue sky. Hallelujah!



It’s Holy Saturday, not nearly as exciting as Good Friday or Easter Sunday. We saw the incredibly funny sacrilegious musical, Book of Mormon  in London. It seems Jesus was visiting America on Saturday.  This could be called Mormon Saturday if we wanted concord over discord.  

My issue these days is wondering if the whole idea of rejecting the flesh goes against creation which celebrated Adam in the garden finding and naming things. That’s where moderation comes in.  Addiction is idolatry. But all those rules that controlling types and parental types make up, probably like the good public health rules get polluted with pride.  I wonder if God might ask,  what did you do with your vacation on earth I gave you?  How would he feel if  I said I sat navel gazing.  The gospel according to Bif might have something to say to that as well as Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.  It’s easy to be a middle class Canadian Christian living a life of ‘quiet desperation’ but what’s wrong with hedonism and epicurianism anyway. Most people are celebrating the religion of aetheism and the gluttony of consumerism. Laura and I and Madigan are enjoying baguettes with bacon this morning. I’ve bought a ham for Easter dinner. There’s no way Jesus was vegetarian.