Journal - Jan 13, 2017 - cold day but still grateful

I woke at 5 am.  I had a great dream.  I was in this perfect little coffee shop with mixture of old English and Turkish decor.  Dark leather couches and seats with deep red carpets, fine art on the wall.  I was talking politics with JJ McCullough. I’d read his Washington Post piece before going to sleep and had been reading about early last centuries rebellion of Arab tribes near Mecca against the Turkish Ottoman Empire.  The outcome of that late night activity was this very pleasant dream of rich conversation and pleasant surroundings. I awoke feeling blessed.  I really am blessed to have such a rich intellectual environment.
There is this issue of ‘fake news’ which has affected the world because the ‘rhetoric’ ‘appeal to authority’ is fizzling in face of the lies and propaganda. I studied logic and rhetoric and literally am appalled at the ignorance of the supposed learned ‘arts crowd’ who persist daily in all the media making errors of reason.  the cognitive distortion in the media and courts is utterly defeating. With the hard sciences and the soft arts the arts has depended more and more on a ‘gun’ or ‘money’ to lay it’s claims. In science the issue is does the thing fly.  Does it blow up something. It’s pretty apparent.  The scientific progress has far outstepped the political and legal environment.  Indeed the need for political and legal reform follows the scientic explosion.
Did anyone consider that the election was an amazingly costly entertainment with fortunes spent on silly hats and banners?  Can we really afford to do this mass hysteria every 4 years. Obviously there is a need for a democratic process and oversight but the whole campaign process seemed unusual in retrospect considering the cost and the amount of time lost in attendance.  Of course compared to a football matter or a Hollywood porn event it’s admirable. We gather for rock stars and productions so perhaps.  Really?  Imagine 2070.  Will this nonsense still be carrying on.
The computer survey and voting mechanisms are not tamper proof. That’s the solution.  Everyone everywhere referendum by computer. Consumer corporations are doing this as we speak.  Trying to find what people like to provide it at profit. Competing as politically there is competion'
But this last election was painful.
I guess trusting in God protects me.  God is good all of the time is a reassurance. This world may be harsh.  Life may get me down but at the centre there is love and concern. God is all and God is love.  The principal anxiety and fear is about the future.  Yet there’s a great book, the Holy Book, and it says, we win in the end.  Heaven is a gift and a reassurance to the Christian and spiritual.  Most religions believe in afterlife and living a good life is rewarded in a good after life. Life goes on, better.  Hell is a consequence of unloving acts. Theres’ a sense that the slate will be sorted out too.  The rich psychopath will suffer and the innocent will be rewarded.  It may be an Easter Bunny dream or for those who choose an Easter promise.
Today my proof in afterlife is my awakening from sleep. What better evidence of the birth death rebirth cycle than the daily reality of my own perceived existence. I am alive. I have this day. Just for today.  God is omniscient so time is an illusion of the bicameral brain.  The separation of the flow is a perceptual process.  Reality is streaming and we make sense of it.  In the now we meet God.  The practice of the presence of God is here and now.  In meditation and prayer I am with God not yesterday or tomorrow but today.  I have no fear in this moment. The closer to the centre of the centre of the centre I become the less I fear and the more I love.I repeat the holy name. Lord Jeus Christ. I call on the Holy Spirit to come. Lord Jesus Christ, son of God, have mercy on me.  I beg. I cajole. I wait.  It’s not that God is an emperor or king but rather he is a friend. My little dog seeks my attention so I will throw his yellow tennis ball for him. I call on god like a baby in humility. I don’t command god. I am like a child with a mother. I am with Jesus, a friend.  I speak to God as all.  There is no wrong way to speak to God.  Just as there is no wrong way for a baby to cry or coo in a crib. It is a mystery. This life is so much unknown. I’m in the cloud of unknowing.  I am alone with God or alone ‘waiting for godot’. There’s a sensate world, that which I experience with senses and an inner castle as St. Theresa describes the spiritual life.
I have just awoken from a dream world and in meditation I actively seek the presence of God by listening to the inner most thoughts and feeling beginning by awareness of my breathing, this thing so essential but which I take for granted. All that is ‘automatic in life I take for granted yet give so much importance to the little stitches and twists and touches I add to the whole of creation. I am present for God. I am with God in all but the automatic is god.  St. Francis called his body Brother Ass.  God is carrying me.  God is all this unseen proces that I take for granted.  It’s the other. It’s Thou.
I have a day ahead of me and have already walked my dog in the bitter cold of today along the icy sidewalk uneven with caked snow and ice.  He is quicker about his business these days of freezing temperature. There’s less lolly gagging. I clean up his poop into a poop bag and drop  it into a back lane bin. Then the two of us hurry back in doors.  Laura is up and makes coffee before she goes to bath.  Gilbert is asleep on her bed. I’m on my second cup of coffee. I’ve eaten the bacon cheese quiche I bought last night at Max’s .
Life is already good. I’ve woken warm inside with a fond dream compared to a nightmare remembrance of the state of passing.  I’ve had indoor plumbing. I’ve a friend beside me and a dog who is really a God send. His enthusiasm in the morning is palpable. My face has already been licked. Now he’s sleeping again.  Visually there’s colour and texture to the surroundings. Somewhere there’s a cat.  I’ve clothing. I’ll shower soon and dress and have a car to drive to work. I’m thankful for my office and work.  There is an anxiety.
The landlady leased me an office without proper zoning and the City has said I have to stop practice. I’m sadly telling everyone I have to move, giving notice with the provincial beaurocracy saying I need to give three months notice but I’ve only had a week or two myself.  I’m literally unsettled. There is hostility and danger in the work. It’s always been dangerous.  I’m afraid often with the threats and bullying and belligerence and lies and demands increasingly unrealistic. There’s no support either or ambiguous support. The ‘authorities’ are no longer protective of anyone but a little elite.  It’s often terrifying to think how far out one’s own neck is with such cowardice and failure at the helm. Being on the front lines I see the rage and fear and know that those far removed are losing. They were surprised by the election. They were lucky they didn’t get a war. The desert spring is happening here.  I’m watching a revolution. And in the middle of it is this drug and welfare set.
Addiction and idolatry are at the centre.
The consumer engine has me.
I’m looking for a new truck which requires payment and maintenance and replaces the last one which has been unreliable in cold and is the wrong truck for the work I do.  I want a new one to pull my RV where I live right now in fear of cold. There’s an illusion that the apartment and house dwellers have about heat and water. My water pipes froze this year and my propane ran out once. I’ve that sense of being very close to the elements.  There are homeless who know what I know and more.  Survival skills.
I celebrate a friend’s 31 years of sobriety today. A small group will gather and listen to her tale. We’ll go for dinner and celebrate. It’s a good day. I was paid yesterday so will have money for my gas and dinner.   There’s money going in to cover what is going out, not the truck costs but the maintenance cost. I paid for the vacation in the fall but there’s been so many surprises, so many demands and if I miss an hour of work I don’t get paid. I have no ‘guaranteed income’. I have no certainty. I am what they call a ‘wage nigger’.  It’s not a government job. It's not a union job. We are always threatened by the government individually and collectively.  Then people cough on me and bring guns and knives into the waiting room, raise their voices and show me their fists.   The security is with my knowledge and skill but there are increasingly monopolies and lock outs and restrictions. I’d be glad to cut out lumps and bumps again having so enjoyed that aspect of general practice but there’s so many loops to jump through. I sometimes think I’d just like to do ‘assessment’s’ like I did in the hospital and asylum. Meeting the new frightened strangers and recording their life over and hour or two and suggesting what could benefit. Everyone is into this ‘consultation’ process. No one wants to do the work of actually seeing if the ideas change matters. I like ‘selling’ sobriety.  I like pushing participation and confronting non adherence or non compliance but the government won’t hold people accountable or responsible because frankly the government itself won’t be responsible or accountable.  So everyone looks for money without accountability. Daily I'm asked to rubber stamp people's bullshit and collude with sociopaths but when I refuse I am punished personally and financially.
I enjoyed watching the Accountant last night. I think I like shows like that because the bad guys get their dues. It's like sophisticated westerns.
I am thankful for hollywood, the actors and directors and the movies and the entertainment. I want to see the new Star wars.  I had a lovely meal last night and watched a movie with my beautiful friend Laura and my lovely dog.
If I would resist the jumping forward into the threats of the day of work. The unknowns.  I fear the threats and the constant criticism…no resources.  No time. demands and demands for more time and more results.  I saw a fellow who continues to drink but insists it’s my problem that he hans’t stopped drinking. I’m always being blamed. No matter how often I remind a person I can’t be blamed for their not taking a pill. Another person angry because they’re still angry but they’ve not taken the medication i recommended and the courts have not punished their victimizer.  That’s so often the case. There’s horrible injustice and we’re supposed to comfort the victims of the victimizers who are only angry that they are caught and go out again to do the same.  Bullies abound.
Yet I can remember New York where millions of people got along.  Mayor Guliani’s approach to his city has resulted in an amazing success yet here we are slipping.  I can think that.
But really I’m just aging.  A clean bill of health but perhaps I have ‘gun ear’.  Decreased hearing in my ear which comes from three sources, ‘shooting’ , rock and roll’, and medications for tuberculosis as a consequence of working in the north with the reserves, where no doctors could be found for years because of fear of tb and I went there and got tb supposedly.  X-rays are clear but a year of medication that hurts the body.  I sometimes think I’m the stupidest doctor in the class because I do the shittiest stuff which smart doctors wouldn’t do.  I am usually not alone though so there’s other stupid doctors like me and we’re fun to be around.  It’s ‘the others’ . the ee cummings ‘them guys’ position. We’re okay, you’re not.  We celebrate ourselves.
I’m thankful to have work. I’m so beaten down by the bureaucracy so repeativeily criticized by the self serving authorities who are so far removed from earth they live in a space station and yet I keep trying. I think of death more and more.
I have a whole lot of skills and surprise myself with what I know and remember how little I knew as a young doctor. Their ‘confidence’ or is it ‘ignorance’ astounds me.  I was taking to another old doctor and we were both amazed at the complex cases with old people and multiple diseases we just seem to know what to do with despite the fact that they’re not in journals or textbooks. We have accumulated this mass of experience and it’s all seems to pass so fast.
Rituals and incantations.
I think of going to Africa. I think of missionary medicine again.  Psychiatry is the most complex and I do addiction psychiatry but there are all these beurocrats and walls and barriers and the lies and the broken promises.  I have a boat and want to go out to sea again. Those 25 days alone at sea in the Pacific , in the doldrums and the storms, I am ready for that again but this time the Atlantic.  I’d like to sail away.  But I haven’t the ‘money’ I say. But I’ve done so much without resources. Even now they are taking away my office. Barriers and interference.
I once jumped on a plane and got a job overseas.  Maybe it would be fun to be a secretary again.
I really do want to have a new truck though. So I ‘ll keep going and be amused at the whole idea of the ‘truck’. My ex wife blew the head gasket in a coke rage on the truck and I was at my bottom riding a bicycle wondering how I’d put my trust in another. Today I am single. I talked about being single with a sponsor yesterday and how I’d ‘trusted’ finances in marriage twice and both times their greed and drug addiction and rapaciousness had caused me losses. Of course my actions were responsible.  But that goes to the failure of the ‘partnership’ in business in addition to 50% divorce rates. The weakness of business partnerships was the reason for the development of corporations. Maybe marriages should become marital corporations to reduce the loss.
The courts destroyed the marriage business with their politics, greed and favouritism. The State is in the business of ruining couples and marriages and families for profits.  I could be sad and grieve this past too. But perception looks at a ‘slice’ and my mind defines the ‘terms of reference’. I look at her cocaine addiction or her marijuana abuse and alcohol abuse and don’t say that I was there too …I drank and smoked marijuana.  I pride myself in not getting into the coke and that I didn’t like it and that I drew the line and had a psychiatrist I was consulting with about my use, this consultant monitoring and supporting and agreeing with my action whereas she and they lied and cheated and stole.  I can say this but what was I doing picking these people. They had huge histories of drug and alcohol and families that had died from drugs and alcohol and my parents had warned me and I didn’t listen to any of the warnings or care about the abortions. I was so head strong. I was convinced it was love.
I was an idiot, a saint or a fool and they were goddesses or saints. It's all a good back story. It's all an adventure. It's all in the telling. Tragedy or comedy as they say in the theatre..  I had to learn about the via negativa. This all brought me closer to God.  I am today further along the path and never thought to live this long.  I actually have a truck and want a better newer truck.  I remember the day I was riding the bicycle and realizing that she and my friends were all a lie. My life at the time was a lie.  I was clean and sober and was riding a bicycle and that bicycle saved my life.  That exercise 40 miles a day cycling restored my lungs I'd been hurt by smoking legal tobacco.   I am so thankful that I don’t smoke cigarettes or tobacco but there I was the bitch of the tobacco company and government killing myself with substances they supported all the while I thought I was cool.
Today is so much better than that. Today I have this great friend and dog and it just keeps going along. I really am thankful. I have to let go and forgive. I have to increasingly see the positive. I have to have greater faith and more trust in God.  There have been so many near death experiences.  I am blessed and protected and so very thankful.
Really. Thank you Jesus. Thank you God. Thank you. Thank you.

Justin Trudeau, Liberal Party, New Prime Minister of Canada and Drug Addiction

Justin Trudeau, leader of the Liberal Party, is the new Prime Minister of Canada. Though a long standing Liberal I left the Liberal Party some 15 years ago to join the Conservatives. I voted for Mr. Stephen Harper.  He lost after two terms as Prime Minister. I am by all measures a Canadian.  I loved Mr. Harper's service to the country. I loved the Conservatives in power if only because the Conservatives and NDP are the only parties that have cared for Western Canadians.  So I'm sad today that Mr. Harper and the Conservatives lost.

I personally am soured by Mr. Justin Trudeau.  I appreciate his 'honesty' that he smoked marijuana while working. Was he smoking marijuana while a school teacher or just as a legislator? I hear he has perhaps minimized the times he smoked marijuana.  Politicians aren't known for their honesty.

I am glad too that marijuana has essentially be decriminalized this last decade. I fundamentally don't agree with legalization because that actually means that marijuana can then be sold like bread or milk anywhere. I was very disturbed that the illegal marijuania distributions centres of Vancouver were offering free marijuana to anyone who voted.

What fundamentally bothers me though, is that I personally smoked marijuana. The last time was 17 years ago.  I bought it from doctors, smoked it with doctors and saw a psychiatrist who recommended I smoke it.  The trouble was, that I felt wrong about smoking marijuana and working as a doctor. It especially didn't seem right that I was smoking marijuana and working as a psychiatrist.

I was never 'impaired' at work.  I wasn't an 'impaired physician'.  I didn't present a 'risk to patient safety'.  I just didn't think it was right that I was breaking the law.  I also knew too many people who had suffered negative consequences of using marijuana, loss of employment, legal records and jail time. I have seen far too many relationships and families devastated by marijuana.

Justin Trudeau's mother was a marijuana addict.  I have thought that Justin Trudeau must be in some serious denial about the effects of marijuana being the son of an addict himself.

I have mixed feelings about the process of my own recovery now.  Personally I appreciate the spiritual benefits of the wonderful learning of recovery. I am so very thankful to have the clarity of mind restored that seemed somewhat lost the last year I smoked marijuana.   Administratively thought the process was essentially 'punishment'. It was framed in different language but the process was still punishment.   It was heavy handed, threatening, bullying, incredibly expensive, and shaming. There was and remains a 'double standard'. There are those who didn't get 'caught' and those who got 'caught' and people like me who sought help only to get caught up in the mixed message of a very sick and disturbed administration.

Now here I am today an addiction medicine specialist. I have patients who were like me. They have safety sensitive jobs. I see doctors, nurses, and other health care professionals.  I am expected to provide a rigorous treatment program with many random urine testing and onerous requirements because as I was told, these jobs are a 'privilege'.  They're not a right.

Yet here the highest job in the country has gone to a person who has committed crimes without consequence.  He's never been subjected to random urine testing, required to see psychiatrists, required to see addiction medicine specialists, required to attend counselling, had supervision in the workplace, or had the threat of losing his job if any suspicion fell on him. He has not had to be 'caesar's wife' in regards to his personal behaviour vis a vis the drug using crowd.

He hasn't had to deal with both the wonderful people in the recovery health care movement and the utterly sick and disturbed power weilding petty beaurocrats who holier than thou revel in their being above the law because they haven't been caught in their addictions.  Being in the system I know so many people who have 'avoided' detection like the privileged who 'avoided' Vietnam leaving that war to be fought by the average joe.

Maybe my angst today is about the rich and privileged and the sons of the rich and priviledged.  I don't like the double standard. Indeed I could have at any time 'avoided' the negative consequences that came from my seeking help when I was concerned that my failure to do so would eventually lead to a poor judgement.  I held myself to a higher standard than those about me.   I was 'offered' ways 'around' the 'system'. I was told I could 'deny, deny, deny, and lie, lie, lie' .  Those close to me who had been 'caught' actually have used lawyers successfully to avoid consequences.  Seriously people have told me over and over again what a fool I have been for my honesty.

 I appreciate Justin's  honesty therefore.  I appreciate that the laws are wrong. There are many law which we don't agree with but there is a sharp division between the law breakers and those who don't.  At least there once was. I don't appreciate that so many criminal drug dealers got rich by being smart and have 'cleaned up their act' by whitewashing their past. I know so many incredibly wealthy people whose wealth has come directly from the multi billion dollar drug crime industry.    I'm a hopeless idealist and romantic. I have a horrible scar of cynicism.

There but for the grace of God go I. I am not here to "judge" Justin Trudeau. The country of Canada has accepted that a man of acknowledged deceitfulness and drug abuse is acceptable in the highest position. The former head of the Supreme Court of Canada was a roaring alcoholic or had a bit of a problem with drink (depending on what language one chose.)  But he wasn't engaged in criminal activities.  He wasn't a law breaker, that I know of.  Unlike Justin Trudeau and his mother and a minority of Canadians.

I've been arguing for years that our judges need to be random drug tested if we're doing that to our athletes, doctors and pilots.  There's a double standard. There's hypocricy that reigns.

I'm just struggling today wondering how I'm going to do my job. I'm kind of regretting too accepting the considerable abuse I experienced in recovery.  The stigma and shame and being shamed so seriously by my superiors who I learned later were drunkards and did more drugs than I'd ever done. It's such a hidden epidemic. Meanwhile the minimization and deceit is rampant.

That's what I remember most about when I had the occasional toke.  I didn't think there was anything wrong with it.  I just thought everyone should 'lighten up'.  Hell, I hoped everyone would 'light up'.

And it will get worse.

I see Justin Troudeau, not as others do but because of my own journey and the journey I have seen others on, I see the double standard. I wonder how I can cause people to lose their incomes and jobs and future and families by saying, it's because of the drugs ,when doing drugs has won Clinton, Obama and now Justin Trudeau their highest positions.  How can I say to kids not to smoke dope.  At least President Bush got recovery.  Mayor Ford got recovery.  Most of Hollywood got recovery.  But not these guys.

It's confusing for me.  It worries me.  I'm struggling today.  I don't really care that much if the Liberals beat the Conservatives because they're two sides of a very centrist coin. I'd rather the Liberals over the NDP but truthfully I'd really rather have had Mr. Mulcair Prime Minister over Justin Trudeau.  Tom Mulcair wasn't creepy.  But I'm probably wrong.

I did this silly little study and asked a hundred or more dope smokers and drug addicts and straights if they wanted their pilot or physician to be smoking marijuania.  They answered unanimously that they didn't want him smoking marijuana.

Now I have the head of a multi trillion dollar business called Canada admitting to smoking dope, not once, not twice, but countless times.  We don't accept the 'word' of a doctor that he isn't smoking dope. We don't accept the word of a criminal that he isn't doing crime.  We drug test and find that countless, a very very high percentage of people who have ever used drugs, lie.

This is my personal problem.  It's a problem I have with Canada today.  It's a problem I have with our justice sytem.  It's a problem I have with the supreme court. It's a problem I have with the police.  It's a problem I have with authority. It's certainly a problem I have with the rich and privileged and those above the law.  It's a problem I have with double standards.   Its a problem I have with Justin Trudeau and his dynamic twisted family.

Maybe I'm just envious too. I've thought of that.

But this is why I didn't vote for Justin Trudeau more than anything else.  That's the best I can get to the matter of why I will support him as Prime Minister but I don't think I'll trust him. I won't trust him even as much as I trusted his father.  But I was younger when I voted for his father. I find it harder to trust today. I've been personally hurt by marijuana, drug dealers, tobacco companies, and especially drug addicts and twisted authorities and their sick double standard attitudes. I don't trust easily today. I don't trust Justin Troudeau.

I hope though that as Prime Minister he will earn my trust.But right now he has made countless promises. And I know drug addicts are the best people at making promises.

So I don't expect he will subject himself to random drug testing.  Even the Supreme Court expects that of others but won't submit themselves to that.  I would only ask that he make the one promise that really counts to me.

Justin, can you promise not to smoke dope any time during your reign as Prime Minister.  Really, if you talk the talk, can you walk the walk!