US Army active duty suicides were up in 2007, according to Pentagon officials, surpassing the number of suicides in 2006, reaching 108. And to think that not too long ago there were actual discussions taking place at to the merits of post-traumatic stress disorder. One truly unfortunate aspect of this news is that a quarter of those that took their own lives did so while in Iraq.

While on the subject of Iraq, many of you are probably aware that former Press Secretary Scott McClellan’s new book makes some interesting assertions about the Bush Administration’s reasons for going to war in Iraq and the way in which the war was promoted and planned. Not surprisingly, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is defending the administration claiming that the fundamental reason for invading Iraq in 2003 was the threat of weapons of mass destruction. Her logic? That you can’t look at it from a current point of view, but rather one prior to the invasion given the intelligence available.

Ya, Curveball was an amazingly reliable source, Condi.

Rice also employed the term ‘liberated’ with regards to the invasion and occupation. Five years, and countless lives after the ‘liberation’ of Iraq, it remains the most dangerous place in the world. So much so that millions of Iraqis have fled ‘liberated’ Iraq.

Of course, this is where those with no leg to stand on will point to the tyrannical realities of the Hussein regime and claim that his removal from power was paramount, that he was responsible for mass murder and a laundry list of other crimes.

And that’s true. I’m not going to argue that at all. But having said that, let’s have a little fun with a timeline regarding a horrible event that many pro-war pundits like to use as an example of why the Hussein regime needed to be overthrown.

1) In 1988 the Kurdish village of Halabja was gassed. Thousands were killed and injured in the attack, which was condemned throughout the world.

2) After the attack, Congress voted to stop all military and financial assistance to the Hussein regime.

3) President Ronald Reagan vetoed it.

4) The United States continued to aid the regime of Saddam Hussein.

This is fact, not fiction, and it would be well of those that believe that the removal of Saddam Hussein was of paramount importance to remember that the United States had dealings with Mr. Hussein as far back as the mid 1960’s.

You do not get to help create and feed monsters only to claim that history is inconsequential when it doesn’t suit your hegemonic objectives. Unless, of course, you’re the most powerful country in the world. Then you can get away with just about anything – including rewriting history, or simply making it disappear.

9/11 did more than just blind a nation, allowing one of the most dangerous foreign policy doctrines in US history to be instituted. It also largely rendered history moot. And that, no matter what the occurrence, is a very dangerous thing indeed.

This afternoon I was honoured to received the Canadian Mental Health Association’s Mental Health Voices Award for 2008, which is given out to those whose efforts have helped raise awareness about mental illness.

To be honest with you, I feel entirely unworthy of the award being that all I did was tell my own story. There are literally thousands of volunteers, professionals, and advocates that deserve recognition for their work on a daily basis, making receiving such an honour entirely humbling next to their tireless dedication.

Roy worries about me. To be honest, that worry is returned, but in this case he has substantive journalism to back it up, so he wins.

As many of you are aware, actor Heath Ledger died not long ago from an overdose. Of course, that word can be misconstrued, and following his death, especially given his profession, morbid speculation was rampant – because let’s be honest with ourselves, we live in a society that loves gossip and morbidity above all things. Had I not survived my own close call with Ativan in 2006, many would have chalked it up to suicide, perhaps speculating that it had to do with my divorce and not the affects that an anti-depressant was having on me with regards to amplifying the symptoms of a mental illness and my exhaustive desire to combat the mania produced because of it.

In an Op-Ed piece in yesterday’s Los Angeles Times, Gayle Greene wrote the following regarding Ledger’s death and insomnia…

“When a star dies from an overdose, there’s a tendency to write it off as “drug abuse.” That amazing combination of drugs in Heath Ledger’s body, for instance — what was he thinking? Blame the celebrity, chalk it up to reckless living, a self-destructive lifestyle, a pursuit of pleasure through recreational drugs.

But the drugs that killed Ledger — three types of benzodiazepines, an antihistamine, two pain relievers — are all substances people take for sleep. Ledger, we know, was desperate for sleep. A month or so before his death, he told the New York Times that he was going night after night on no more than two hours of sleep.

He was described by his ex, Michelle Williams, as having a mind “turning, turning, turning.” That might explain the variety of benzodiazepines he took that night — Valium, Zanax and Restoril. All are effective at quieting a whirring mind.”

Being that I have suffered from insomnia, on and off, my whole life, I understand what it’s like to turn to a variety of different sedatives in an attempt to get some sleep – even though it’s not what one would call real sleep. I have, in the past, relied on dangerous cocktails that include everything from prescriptions drugs combined with cold medicines to over the counter drugs, such as Gravol, taken in excess. Even these days, as a part of my daily drug regiment, I take 1mg of Clonazepam at night, and after a year and a half it has little to no affect. After taking Ativan routinely over a period of eight months, it too had diminished affects. In the summer of 2006 I was able to operate on up to 7mg’s of it a day. Put into perspective, a single milligram is enough to usually knock a person out within a half an hour.

Looking Glass

I saw myself yesterday at the airport, three rows of seats away, my legs bouncing up and down ever so slightly, my hands fidgeting, my brow light with sweat. I was in my mid fifties; my countenance betrayed my discomfort with my surroundings, my desire to be anywhere other than where I was.

It wasn’t me, of course, but a complete stranger. But as I sat there watching him I saw myself reflected in him. And it hit home, perhaps more than it ever has, that when I am that age I will still be in the grips of the chemical betrayal within my brain, a compliant prisoner that has learned to live with a view that will never again be without bars corrupting it. No matter how effective the medication, no matter how healthy I might perceive myself to be, it will always be there, just under the surface, like a drugged Kodiak too immobilized to lash out.

When I got sick in Los Angeles I was unable to keep my medication down for a while and the ramifications of that hit home in the days that followed. My mania returned, mostly at night when I was alone in hotel rooms, causing unbearable insomnia. I would watch films, half paying attention, or pace around, opening and closing the curtains of the room to check if the sun had come up. I fidgeted with digital clocks, brushed my teeth incessantly, stood in showers, rearranged my suitcase, cleaned the contents of my toiletries bag, attempted to reason my way out of the unknowns still caged within me, and smoked like Atlanta after Sherman was done with it.

In the end the only respite available to me was to turn to a combination of pills to knock myself out.

Someone asked me not long ago what full a full-blown manic episode is like. I told them to imagine the one thing that they were most terrified of, then to times it by a thousand and imagine themselves trapped with it in a buried coffin that’s shrinking. To be honest, that doesn’t even come close to really describing one, but was the best I come up with at the time.

I look back on my life and realize that I spent years tormented by something that I thought normal. Sometimes I think that maybe thinking it normal was better than knowing that it isn’t. I have no idea where I would be right now, alive or dead, still fighting to keep my head above water in the middle of some immensely large and terrifying body of water, or zombie-like in some back alley somewhere not to far from this apartment. Sometimes knowing is just as bad as not. Sometimes knowing provides solace and a sense of salvation. But in the end salvation isn’t something that’s possible, only the solace provided by the realization that you’re aware that it never will be.

In every life there is a little hell of our own making. For some, hell was provided them before they had the chance to create it. I can only sit here and imagine what it must be like to suffer such a hell in a place that also outwardly reflects it - in the confines of some refugee camp, in some remote impoverished village where blogs and rock music are laughable when compared to the importance of basic sustenance, in the trauma filled neighbourhoods of Iraq. Who am I to complain, when all is said and done, when there are those that must suffer both?

I am no one.

Mine is an illness of arrogance in that I am afforded the luxury of living in a society in which help is available. That’s not to say that it isn’t without its problems, one only need to walk the streets of the Lower Eastside to figure that out, or stroll into an emergency ward and ultimately be sent home with a pat on the head despite the fact that you are teetering on the edge of oblivion. But at least there aren’t bombs falling from the sky. At least I can wander into that emergency room without the risk of being shot on the way there. When I do sleep at night, I dream of the past as if stretched on a torturer’s rack, but am still whole and physically uninjured when I awake.

I’ll not bullshit you, that reality shames me more than you know. Despite my illness I have indeed been fortunate, even though the price paid seems highly disproportionate to me most of the time. But all I need do to put myself back into place is to imagine what it would be like to suffer from such an illness where no help is available, where death and trauma are daily features of life, where insomnia exists because of the fear that your front door might be kicked in by soldiers, your father and brothers hauled away in bindings, your sister and mother raped.

For every hell in this life there is one that is far worse. For every simple pleasure that we take for granted on a daily basis there are millions besides that would consider it a miracle – something as simple as running water.

Your Petty Problems

Can’t get your hands on that hot new purse? Worried about your figure? Worried about being able to afford that new sports car or that trip to Vegas? Pissed off that your new haircut isn’t perfect or that the hot girl you met the other night isn’t returning your calls?

You’re not dead. You’re not in a shrinking coffin with your worst fears amplified. You’re not living in some war torn, third world shit hole. You’re right here, and yet still spend most of your time bitching about it. If that’s not luxury then I don’t know what is. And to think, even as it pertains to our responsibilities with regards to playing an active role in the conduct of our own governments, we’re still the most apathetic people on the planet.

Crazy? My friends, we were born crazy and we’ll die crazy. You don’t have to have an actual illness around here to be considered nuts. Everyone’s doing a fantastic job of playing the part no matter.

Greetings from Baltimore. Being that I’m flying to Buffalo in the morning we’re staying here by the airport rather than in Virginia, which isn’t too far off anyway. Tonight’s show will be interesting in that the venue does not sell tickets in advance, so.

I was plagued by a horrible night terror last night. If you have read what I have written about them in the past with regards to how they have affected me my entire life, then you are aware just how traumatic they are for me the following day. As has been the case for the last two years, last night’s was once again about my ex-wife. Being that my marriage ended without any answers being provided me, it’s something that my subconscious routinely deals with when I am asleep. I wake up soaking wet, the sheets and pillows soaked through, often shaking and unable to focus. When I was a child I would sleep walk and then, at some point, start screaming. As an adult I stopped suffering from those two symptoms, but the night terrors are just as vivid nonetheless.

If there is one place that we cannot escape ourselves it is when we are asleep. To be honest, over the last two years, sleeping has become something that frightens me. Only when I am suffering from complete exhaustion do I tend to sleep untroubled, which might be one reason that my insomnia returns every now and then. When I was younger, in my early and mid twenties, I suffered from horrible insomnia, most probably because of the untreated mania that I was enduring. But as I got older, it seemed to subside and I was able to sleep better. Unfortunately, these days it’s become somewhat of a toss up.

Anyway. Time to get cleaned up and get ready to leave for Virginia. If you’re coming to the show tonight, enjoy yourself.

Jeff Tweedy of Wilco wrote an interesting piece in the New York Times yesterday about his life-long battle with migraines, depression, and anxiety. Though I have never suffered headaches in my life, I completely understand what it’s like to vomit for 12 hours at a time. In my case it was due to anxiety, though for some years I laboured under the misconception that it was an ulcer.

One of the more impacting passages from his piece, for me anyway, was…

“I’m sure there were misperceptions about my condition. You know, seeing a rock musician vomit on the side of the stage, I’m sure people thought I was completely out of my mind on drugs or strung out.”

Prior to my diagnosis, and getting on the proper medication, many of you might recall images of me looking as if I was akin to a skeleton. I had been rail-thin my whole life, rarely ate, and never quite understood why. Drugs have never been a factor in my life, and for ten years, between the ages of 20 and 30, I didn’t drink. I was thin because of the affects of intense mania, though wouldn’t figure that out until I was properly diagnosed. My mood swings were also a result of my condition, but that didn’t stop a lot of people from thinking that I was a drug user.

At one point in my life I weighed a mere 134 pounds. Standing six feet tall, that’s extremely thin. I now weigh 180 lbs, but even my gaining weight didn’t stop some from claiming that I was ‘getting fat’. It was, and is, somewhat of a no win situation with regards to public perception.

I commend Tweedy for being so open about his problems. Besides being one of the best songwriters of my generation, in my opinion anyway, it’s good to know that he’s also courageous enough to speak publicly about his experiences.