Tag Archives: ACE score

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first impressions

I am taking a writing class and our next book is on cultural appropriation.

This interests me. I tend to be a little gender blind and race blind when I meet people. I am using my super skill instead. My skill is developed from a really scary childhood: I read the stuffed emotions. The stuff people are hiding.

No way, you say. Oh, yes, I say.

My sister described coming home from high school and stopping when she walked into the house. She was trying to sense what was going on. Were our parents fighting? Was our father drunk? Yes, he was drunk, but which stage?

We talked about the stages and which we hated most.

Stage goofy/silly was annoying but not toxic. We said we had homework.

Stage asleep in a fetal ball in the upstairs hallway. My sister said she would step over him to get to her room.

Stage maudlin. We both agreed this was the worst. He would cry and say, “You can tell me anything.” Once he caught me in that stage and I was in tears by the time my mother got home. I left the room. The next morning mother said, “He said you two were discussing the cat’s disappearance.” I didn’t answer. We never said a word about the cat. I didn’t know if he was lying or was too drunk to remember it the next day, so made it up. Don’t care. Avoid.

He was never physically abusive. He and my mother would scream at each other at 1 or 2 am through most of high school. Reading her diaries, she writes that she drinks too much. I think they were both alcoholics, thought the family story is that he was the bad one. But I can’t imagine yelling with a drunk at 1 or 2 am for an hour. What is the point? They are drunk. So either she was drunk too or needed to fight.

Emotionally abusive, yes, both parents. My mother would take any show of fear or grief and tell it as a very very funny story to every person she ran into. Is it any surprise that I had to go into therapy after she died to learn to feel fear or grief? My sister would say, “She’s got her stone face on,” about me. Um, yeah, I am NOT going to let my family see my emotions…

Anyhow, that is what I read in people when I first meet them. It’s not the suit, the clothes, the make up, the race, the gender. I pretty much ignore those. I was fashion blind in junior high, a girl geek, could not read the code and did not care. I had given up on socializing with my fellow students. I was hopelessly bad at it. I did a lot better with the adults around my parents. I could have actual conversations with them.

I had one patient who was transgender where I couldn’t remember which direction. I didn’t care, either. That was a really angry person. Anger is always covering other emotions, so I avoided pronouns and tried to be as gentle as possible.

I complained to a counselor once that I can’t turn this “off”. And that it’s fine in clinic with patients, but it screws with my relationships with my peer doctors. They do not like it if I “read” them.

It took me years, but I finally realized that I have to use my clinic skills with everyone. I can’t turn off “reading” any more than you turn off your eyes when you meet a new person. But I can be as gentle with everyone as I am in clinic. I realized that as I started on a trip and the trip was amazing, everyone was so nice.

This reading is a product of a high ACE Score: Adverse Childhood Experiences. I score about a 5. One of my patients set off my ACE alarms on the first visit. I asked if he had had a rough childhood and gave a very short explanation of ACE scores. “Oh, I am a ten out of ten,” he said. He was, too. Ran away from home at age 6 or 8.

The ACE scores of all the children are rising from the last two years. The war will raise them even more, worse for the children there and the kids trying not to starve in Afganistan and Syria and world wide.

It will be interesting to read about cultural appropriation. But I don’t care much: I don’t “see” those things when I meet someone.

Hugs and blessings.

The photograph is me and my sister Chris in 1987, before my wedding. We were dancing before the wedding. She died in 2012 after 7 years of breast cancer.

Doctors and nurses and hospital staff are the last caregivers for the elderly alcoholics and addicts who are alone, whose families have finally cut them off. I think this song illustrates their pain. We try to take care of them.

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Update on Addiction 2022: Mouse Cocaine Addict Studies

Recent experiments on mice are giving us interesting information on addiction, and suggesting that l-dopa may be able to control/mitigate addiction. This lecture about how dopamine works in addiction using a mouse model (poor mice) blew me away. The mice fell into two categories: maintenance users and vulnerable addict rats. The study of the dopamine postulates a reason for the difference.

20th Annual Drug Conference Washington State from 2019

Notes from lecture 3: Paul Phillips PhD
Dopamine Neurotransmission in Substance Use Disorders: from Preclinical studies

For a long time there were no agreed upon animal models: rats don’t steal money from other rats to buy drugs. However, rats do get addicted and this can be studied.

There are features in rats, rat behavior and rat brains that might translate to humans.

1. Basic discoveries about dopamine neurotransmission in substance use disorders is discussed.
A neurotransmitter study checking every ten minutes in brain examines two areas: dorsal and ventral striatum. Dopamine is increased in the area between cells from the administration of substances “first time use” in animal models: cocaine, alcohol, methadone, cannabinoids, nicotine, amphetamine, morphine. This is the first clue re addictive drugs, whether there is an increase in dopamine intraneuronally. The endpoint is that direct effect on dopamine receptors, which has a different brain mechanism for each drug. Cocaine blocks the receptor that reuptakes the drug into the neuron. Methamphetamines and amphetamines reverse the reuptake pump, makes the receptor spit it out. Gaba neurons act to inhibit dopamine neurons, normally mu receptors on the gaba interneurons and the opioids block those. Ethanol has another mechanism of action. It changes inhibitory activity, lowering the inhibition of the gaba interneurons. Nicotine REALLY messes with multiple receptors and multiple cells, but main effect is increase of dopamine in the striatum.
Increased dopamine in human brain relates to the feeling of being high: brain PET scans show amphetamine and dopamine bound less, reduction in the binding. Subjects were substance abusers. Subjective questioning of how high they felt correlated with the amount of dopamine released on the PET scan. Methylphenidate was used in that study. Canada study: cocaine increases dopamine in human brain by PET scan.
Addiction does lead to changes in the brain, on both PET scans and functional MRIs.
PET scans measuring dopamine binding in the brain show that the baseline in brains of substance abusers differs from non-abusers. The levels of dopamine receptors is lower in the substance overuses and there is lower binding than controls: heroin, alcohol, meth, cocaine (and obesity and ADHD…..). (This has been known for opioid overuse and chronic use for a while: the brain cells withdraw receptors, so the same dose does not reduce pain because there are less receptors. The change in receptors appears to vary in different subjects. Recovery is very slow.)
The role of dopamine has been confusing. It is known that it is involved in the cue evoking cocaine “craving”, but is also involved with — satiety. This has been confusing and contradictory — what does dopamine do but also the dynamic structural signaling.

2. The animal studies demonstrate that the dopamine signals are phasic.
Rat studies measure changes in dopamine minute to minute electrochemistry for sub-second dopamine detection in vivo, which means we can measure changes in dopamine in real time. There is an identified output signature for dopamine levels, measure in 8.5 millisecond, ten measures per second.
The rats were voluntarily taking cocaine. The cocaine was available in a liquid with a light that would come on when it was available, for two hours daily. The animal presses a lever when the light cue is on and gets an infusion of drug. With the ten measures per second, the first and smaller dopamine response in the brain is before the lever is pressed. That is, there is a rise in dopamine BEFORE the rat presses the lever. If stimulated dopamine, the animal would go press the lever. Then there is a larger reward dopamine signal when the drug hits.
Dopamine is the chicken and the egg: signal to USE and signal that has ARRIVED.

3. Changes that take place with drug use
There is a signal change over time that correlation with features of addiction.
The mice had an implanted brain electrode, tinier than human hair, 7 microns, biocompatability — don’t make the brain attack it as a foreign object so rat brain keeps working. The study involves tyrosine hydroxylase, a precursor of dopamine. A food pellet response of the tyrosine remains the same at 1, 2, 6 months so can monitor substance abuse brain changes. These are cocaine addicted rats. They get cocaine via a nose poke of a button when it lights up. Pellets, not iv (they learn that faster). There are 2 ports to nose poke: active and inactive. The signal that cocaine is available and the pellet is active: a light comes on for 20s and then drug arrives. Can take again after 20sec. The rats titrate cocaine use: not continuous. They pace cocaine use, wait for it to wear off. Over time, drug use 1 hour access daily… slow increase, relatively stable.
When the access is bumped up to 6 hours access daily… rats do increase use — first of 6 hours, escalation of drug use faster — in humans development of tolerance.
With 1 hour cocaine availability, the dopamine response to the cocaine in the rat brain is lower by the 2nd and 3rd week, slowly decreases, then with 6 hours of access the loss of dopamine is very robust, happens faster, dopamine signal gets smaller every time.
Rats long access: were there individual differences? Yes, metric, nonescalated vs escalated groups so like humans. 60 escalated 40 didn’t and stayed stable. So essentially I named these “Vulnerable addict rats” and “Maintenance rats”.
Which group most motivated to take cocaine? The study ups the price of cocaine for rats, how many times are you willing to receive the drug? The escalating animals made more responses, “worked harder” for the drug. The escalator brains, Vulnerable Addict Rats, had just about a complete loss of dopamine signal by three weeks.
The nonescalators had more stable dopamine responses, retained some dopamine brain function.
The greater the loss of dopamine, the more the animal escalates the drug use.
The Vulnerable Addict rats would use cocaine to the exclusion of food, water, sex and sleep and died early.
This is a feedback loop. The rats get a success signal when the drug is taken — but over time don’t get the success signal because dopamine receptors are gone — so take more. In the Vulnerable Addict escalators, the dopamine signal of anticipation goes down in response to the cue, the drug effect takes a little longer but the pharmacological response to drug actually remains.
They tried giving l-dopa, a parkinson’s drug and if treat, the rats get a restoration of the dopamine cue — pharmacological response didn’t change — how does this affect behavior? A daily shot of l-dopa and the animals on the l-dopa have less escalation. (wow!) The l-dopa didn’t affect the nonescalators/maintenance rats. When they remove the l-dopa in the vulnerable addict rats, the animals jump to higher use and so the brain changes are happening even when it is masked by the l-dopa but does not stop the brain changes.
They ask the question: can you reverse escalation? With the the l-dopa, they use less.
Dopamine signaling to take drugs (the anticipation cue when the light goes on) decreases in animals that escalate drug taking, but does not change in animals with stable drug taking.
Restoring dopamine signaling with l-dopa can prevent or reverse escalated drug taking.
This dopamine signaling….

4. Mechanisms — drug cue elicits dopamine.
So this is about triggers. This is a paired drug cue: the light signals that the drug is available. If a non-contingent drug given to animal, the light still elicits drug seeking. Using a naive animal: pair reward with cue, over time the cue will increase dopamine.
(hmm. Facebook. blogging. Instagram. “You have mail”. )
The initial addiction has a short access time. One hour out of 24. When this is changed to long access, some animals escalate vs non escalation — as take more and more drug, the response to the drug taking cue gets larger in the escalators/Vulnerable Addicts. Presentation of cue — by investigator vs animal:
If elicits drug seeking than the dopamine response gets larger to the cue over time.
If the cue is given but other choices of liquid, then the dopamine response gets smaller in some rats — so terminating drug seeking. The Vulnerable Addict Rats had a larger and larger dopamine craving cue spike, the longer they were off the drug. The the increase in the cue drives craving and decrease drives seeking — so both bad.
The conclusion in the rats is that craving for drug, related to cues, is dependent to length of time off drug. The longer the rats were off the drug, the larger the dopamine spike when the cue light comes on. The measure of cue behavior gets worse …. 60 day study in rats, this is not physiological withdrawal, is prolonged way beyond the withdrawal.
1. noncontingent
wait a day or wait a month
work harder to get drug, harder a month out
reaction to drug cue presentation, enhanced over time
at start of drug small signal to drug cue
long access then cue gets bigger
same a day after stop drug
but huge in a month after no drug — huge dopamine response

(my thought was then swearing. how do we treat this?)
In chronic drug use the cue signal shrinks which reinforces drug use AND stopping increases the cue response which ALSO reinforces.

5. Implications for treatment
treating rats
They discuss a virus with promotor that affects dopamine cells, light activated ion channel, cells release dopamine when light stimulated
only activates release of dopamine, to understand mechanisms.
For the self administered nose cue …. In the nonescalator maintenence rats, dopamine cue response stays fairly robust, stimulate those cells and no change.
In the escalator/vulnerable addict rats… if do a virus stimulation of dopamine in the brain, more dopamine to cue boosted, so they use less cocaine and look like the non-escalators.
5th cue less dopamine than 1st cue: if put dopamine back then maintains the drug seeking.

What underlies the decrease in dopamine release?
When the animals use cocaine, dynorphin goes up (kappa antagonist).
They injected a kappa receptor blocker — animal no longer escalate (not in humans at this time, don’t understand well enough) treating animals that are escalating, so the bad addict/vulnerable rats.
Most animals don’t escalate — but pretty serious amounts of drug cocaine so not abstinent.

For future
Dopamine diametric changes: dopamine may reduce consumption but might increase craving, so it is difficult to treat.
l-dopa — treatment — some studies, looking for abstinence, does NOT produce abstinence. Does not make abstinence worse. Says that promise seen relates to the status of the subject — helps with people who are still using (some) but doesn’t help increase or prolong abstinence. So could reduce harm but not abstinent….politically unpopular. Happier with turning alcoholic into a social alcohol user, but that idea is less popular/politically ok with cocaine/opioids (and especially meth).

They are studying mouse nosepokes for alcohol — reduced intake when the rats are on l-dopa.

There is a functional agonist for kappa receptors == buprenorphine, might have effects on drug consumption, speculation across different drugs.

Dynorphin is a stress related peptide, so does that signaling produce escalation of drug taking? So other stress drugs — like corisol, CRF, plan for more studies.

Question: Stress related hormones– babies in stress in utero and in stressful childhood have less dopamine receptors and need more dopamine for pleasure, susceptibility to drug addiction (ACE scores) so is still really early studying neurotransmitters.

Dr. Question: why do people do better with agonist therapy than abstinence in opioids vs other drugs? Answer: we don’t know….. yet.

further information:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1920543/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC80880/
https://archives.drugabuse.gov/news-events/nida-notes/2017/03/impacts-drugs-neurotransmission
https://nida.nih.gov/

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abuse, enabler style

I am raised by a family of triangulating enablers and enablees.

The enablers are my mother and two uncles. They are very very smart. Let me qualify that: they are very very smart intellectually. Emotionally, not so much.

The two uncles have PhDs and are professors. They marry wives that are lessor in their view. One tells my mother that he wants a woman who is not as bright as he is. I don’t know if she is less bright, but she is a hella better athlete. I also have the impression that she had a time where she drank too much.

The other uncle marries a woman who tends to be a hypochondriac. He takes her to India, where she gets polio while pregnant. She is then a sick hypochondriac, which is very difficult. The ill can control their families by planning things and then getting sick at the last moment. On the other hand, chronic fatigue and fibromyalgia are very real and we are on the edge of figuring them out. That uncle divorces his wife and I instantly like both of them better. They stop being a weird unit and are suddenly individuals.

My mother tells me, when I am in college, “I wondered if your father was an alcoholic when I married him.” I want to hit her. She won’t leave him, she won’t stop enabling him, they scream at each other at 2 am often. Now I wonder about that and conclude that either screaming at someone was something she needed or she was an alchoholic too.

After my mother dies, I ask my uncle, what about his parents? After all, the three of them learned enabling somewhere and it pretty much has to be at home.

My uncle tells me his parents had a PERFECT marriage and that my grandmother LOVED being the wife of a physician and professor.

Um, so, then, why did she pay my tuition to medical school, uncle?

And I think about my mother’s stories. Once, she says, your Uncle Jim bet his friend Dick that Dick was too chicken to shoot a cigarette out of Jim’s mother’s mouth. Ooooo. With a rubber band shooter. Yes, my grandmother. Bob took the bet and succeeded. My grandmother roared with anger and the two boys ran like hell and hid.

And someone in the family tells me: your grandfather helped your grandmother control her temper.

There it is. The enabler/enablee.

The enablers die first. My grandfather of cancer at 79, my mother of cancer at 62. The cousins are all angry at me because I won’t follow the family rules and triangulate in a satisfactory manner, and I don’t care any more. I am ignoring them. I got my father’s banjo back and I am done. The two cousins I own land with jointly are not the worst triangulators.

I have to remind myself: for them, this is love. For some people, controlling or being controlled is what functions as love and intimacy. Fighting and tears when person A talks to person C about person B and person C then lets person B know, that is how they feel close. It is not only families, but communities. Clay Shirky’s description of a group being it’s own worst enemy describes the same patterns: identify an enemy inside or outside the group and then everyone comes together against the enemy. The enemy says the wrong thing, doesn’t worship the right god/desses, wears different clothes, looks different. And the group feels safer once the scapegoat has been killed, the guy has been burned. It would be nice if we could burn a ritual guy instead of torching each other.

The real anger is in the enabler. They control it by having the enablee express it. Then it is not “theirs”. They can feel superior to the enablee who is out of control. Sadly, the problem is only fixed temporarily and they will need their anger expressed again and again and again.

The cycle can be broken. It is a lot of work.

Blessings.

______________________________________________

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Adverse Childhood Experiences 13: unsense

As a child in an alcoholic/addict household where you can not trust adults, who do you trust?

You either trust yourself or you buy in the alcohol story.

If you buy in, you have a high probability of either becoming an addict or marrying one, depending if you prefer the enabler or the enablee role.

If you trust yourself, you develop certain senses. You pay attention to people’s emotions. You pay attention to what people FEEL, what people DO and not what people SAY. You do not care what they say: what matters is what they do. My sister said she used to walk my parent’s house during high school and try to feel the mood. Did she need to hide?

The enabler role is trying to control the other person. There are amazing variations on this. I cared for a person whose sister would not take care of herself. Every time the sister is hospitalized, the person goes and cleans tons of garbage and rotted food from the apartment.

“Stop doing that,” I say, “You are enabling her. Call Adult Protective Services to go look at it instead.”

It can be very difficult to stop and can take years. People can change.

I have noticed that the enabler role is lethal. The enablers seem to die before the enablee. Certainly in my immediate family and with many patients too.

Enablee is the person controlled. Alcohol, drugs, gambling, anger, emotions. It is very very interesting to watch. I have read parts of my mother’s diaries. She was the enabler, with my father as the enablee. However, the diaries document them fighting in the middle of the night when he is drunk. And I remember high school, putting the pillow over my ears, because they were screaming at each other.

But wait. Why would she argue with her drunk husband? Why would anyone argue with a drunk person? You have to wait until they are sober.

And slowly I realize that my mother too was an alcoholic. I remember her drinking. Best cover for an alcoholic is a worse alcoholic, right? It’s fairly horrid. But it explains some stories and my food insecurity. They would not get up in the morning to feed me. My mother told stories of me trying to feed myself: cheerios and laundry soap. If my father was hung over, ok, but, why wouldn’t my mother get up? I think they were both hung over. That or else she really did not want a child. Especially a nine month old with opinions while she was trying to get over tuberculosis. She never got to hold me after birth until 9 months. And then I did not want her. I wanted her mother.

Trusting yourself, life can be a bit complicated. You sense the emotions others are hiding. Being a physician allows me to ask about the hidden things, very gently. Sometimes they come out right away. Sometimes it takes months. Sometimes years and sometimes never. My sister and I discussed going to parties and thinking, oh, that person is the child of an addict/alcoholic. This person is in pain. This person is quite happy but hiding stuff.

I told a counselor I do not know how to turn it off. She replies, “Why do you think I am a counselor?”

I don’t see auras. I feel things: like a cloud. Like a tiger, like a bear, like a whale, singing.

I think I will go with the whale.

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Ode to defiance

Is oppositional defiance running YOUR life?

I am oppositional defiant. I have been for as long as I can remember. I ALWAYS want to argue when someone tells me to do something or gives me advice. BUT, I have learned to work with it.

I work with it by arguing with myself.

Give me a topic. Or advice. I will promptly argue the opposite, internally or externally. Then I will argue the original side. Then my demon fights my angel until they are both tired and decide to go have a beer. Somewhere along the way I will make a decision and also I will laugh, because it’s funny.

B has figured this out. “You argue with EVERYTHING.” he says.

“Yes, and if there is no one around, I argue with myself. All the time.”

However, he is also oppositional defiant. He is smart too, and doing some self examination.

“I am thinking about my life. I think ALL of my important decisions were oppositional defiant ones.”

“Someone told you you couldn’t do that?

“Yes.”

He’s chewing on that. Heh. He accuses ME of overthinking. I replied that I am making up for his underthinking, heh. He suggests that I STOP overthinking and I say, “You want to DESTROY the SOURCE of my poetry?” Double heh.

The point is, some of us are oppositional defiant, but really, we don’t want that to run our lives EITHER. We don’t want ANYTHING or ANYONE to tell us what to do.

B says, “I think that everyone refusing the vaccine is oppositional defiant.” He has a lot of friends, both liberal and conservative.

“That is interesting.” I say. And I wonder if it is worth dying for, to be oppositional defiant. Not if it’s running your life, right? I don’t want ANYTHING to run my life except ME.

So then I spend a bunch of time arguing with myself about the causes of refusing the vaccine. And I have not reached a conclusion. Yet.

I took the photograph at the Bellevue Mall on Monday. A three story waterfall. Really? Isn’t there enough rain in Seattle? We should have a three story sun instead.

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Why care for addicts?

I posted this in November, 2015. I am reposting it.

_________________

Why care for addicts?

Children. If we do addiction medicine and help and treat addicts, we are helping children and their parents and our elderly patients’ children. We are helping families, and that is why I chose Family Practice as my specialty.

Stop thinking of addiction as the evil person who chooses to buy drugs instead of paying their bills. Instead, think of it as a disease where the drug takes over. Essentially, we have trouble with addicts because they lie about using drugs. But I think of it as the drug takes over: when the addict is out of control, the drug has control. The drug is not just lying to the doctor, the spouse, the parents, the family, the police: the drug is lying to the patient too.

The drug says: just a little. You feel so sick. You will feel so much better. Just a tiny bit and you can stop then. No one will know. You are smart. You can do it. You have control. You can just use a tiny bit, just today and then you can stop. They say they are helping you, but they aren’t. Look how horrible you feel! And you need to get the shopping done and you can’t because you are so sick…. just a little. I won’t hurt you. I am your best friend.

I think of drug and alcohol addiction as a loss of boundaries and a loss of control. I treat opiate overuse patients and I explain: you are here to be treated because you have lost your boundaries with this drug. Therefore it is my job to help you rebuild those boundaries. We both know that if the drug takes control, it will lie. So I have to do urine drug tests and hold you to your appointments and refuse to alter MY boundaries to help keep you safe. If the drug is taking over, I will have you come for more frequent visits. You have to keep your part of the contract: going to AA, to NA, to your treatment group, giving urine specimens. These things rebuild your internal boundaries. Meanwhile you and I and drug treatment are the external boundaries. If that fails, I will offer to help you go to inpatient treatment. Some people refuse and go back to the drug. I feel sad but I hope that they will have another chance. Some people die from the drug and are lost.

Addiction is a family illness. The loved one is controlled by the drug and lies. The family WANTS to believe their loved one and often the family β€œenables” by helping the loved one cover up the illness. Telling the boss that the loved one is sick, procuring them alcohol or giving them their pills, telling the children and the grandparents that everything is ok. Everything is NOT ok and the children are frightened. One parent behaves horribly when they are high or drunk and the other parent is anxious, distracted, stressed and denies the problem. Or BOTH are using and imagine if you are a child in that. Terror and confusion.

Children from addiction homes are more likely to be addicts themselves or marry addicts. They have grown up in confusing lonely dysfunction and exactly how are they supposed to learn to act β€œnormally” or to heal themselves? The parents may have covered well enough that the community tells them how wonderful their father was or how charming their mother was at the funeral. What does the adult child say to that, if they have memories of terror and horror? The children learn to numb the feelings in order to survive the household and they learn to keep their mouths shut: it’s safer. It is very hard to unlearn as an adult.

I have people with opiate overuse syndrome who come to see me with their children. I have drawings by children that have a doctor and a nurse and the words β€œheroes” underneath and β€œthank you”. I  have had a young pregnant patient thank me for doing a urine drug screen as routine early in pregnancy. β€œMy friend used meth the whole pregnancy and they never checked,” she said, β€œNow her baby is messed up.”

Addiction medicine is complicated because we think people should tell the truth. But it is a disease precisely because it’s the loss of control and loss of boundaries that cause the lying. We should be angry at the drug, not the person: love the person and help them change their behavior. We need to stop stigmatizing and demeaning addiction and help people. For them, for their families, for their children and for ourselves.

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resistance

Over and over
I resist
I stand at the edge
I stare at the torrent
The cliff
The falls
The abyss

Over and over
I resist

Over and over
I let go
I fall
Over the cliff
Down the falls
Into the abyss

Over and over
I am sure
I will drown
I will lose my way
I will not surface

Ecstasy is in the air
Between trapezes

I am elsewhere
I am other
No words
No thoughts
No body
No mind

The water is cold
As I expect
When I hit
I knew by the spray
Before I jumped

Submerged
Immersed
Subversive
Over and over

I am born
From the surf
I emerge
From the waves
I am delivered

Fear is my key
Grief is my key
In the places I do
not want to go
That’s where I must go

Over and over I resist
And then let go

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The AntiDating Patch

I wrote this in 2009. I was in one of THOSE moods, where I had completely given up on ever dating anyone or anything again. There are some anatomical terms in here but I don’t think it qualifies for x-rating.

The Antidating Patch!
New from Astronomical-Zenith!

Tired of dating? No one interesting around you? In fact, are the single people around you creepy losers who make your skin crawl?

You are not alone! You need the patch. FDA approved and tested, the AntiDating Patch will repel people of either sex who normally would want to date you. People are contrary beasts, so this will make them want to date you all the more, but you will remain aloof, pure and free of sexually transmitted diseases, as if you were hermetically sealed in a plastic bag or old refrigerator.

Herbal remedies make the same claim but they have not paid the large sum of money to the FDA to fast track their product or even to evaluate it at all. Also, 35% of dating sufferers using the herbal remedy are actually unhappy about their privates turning blue. We are unsure about the rumor that parts have fallen off. The herbal company did change its’ formulation recently, but they don’t have to tell you that on the label, because it is a natural product, no FDA evaluation needed, and in fact, it is treated just like other natural foods including carrots even though we remain unconvinced that it fell off the tree in patch form!

The Antidating Patch is safer, more thoroughly tested, doesn’t turn your privates blue (except for one person) and we price it to reflect those facts! For men, choose Thong, Old Lady Full Coverage Underwear, or Bikini style patches.* Consider shaving off all that nasty hair before applying to skin. You may want to wear it on your arm, where the ladies (and gents) can see it. NO, YOU ARE NOT, REPEAT NOT, TO STICK IT ON YOUR PRIVATES. THIS MEANS PENIS, WANG, DOINK, TUBESNAKE, DORK, BALLS, TESTICLES AND WHATEVER ELSE YOU CALL YOUR PERSONAL EQUIPMENT. DON’T STICK IT THERE. WE WON’T BE RESPONSIBLE FOR ANYTHING FALLING OFF IF YOU DO. For ladies, choose Boxer, Itsy Bitsy Tight Well Hung (ethnicity of your choice here) or Speedo. Don’t put it on or in your privates, but we know you have more sense then that. This would include boobies, tits, yumyums, mams, breasts, ‘gina, down there, silver beaver, box, cunt, slit, vagina, anus, hole and anything else you learned to call it.

Side effects are rare but include and are not limited to hearing alien voices, high blood sugar, we swear that your privates don’t turn blue or really mostly not. That’s just a faint tinge. Fainting, homicidal behavior, acting like George Bush the Younger, delusions of grandeur (oh, we just said that, didn’t we?), jumping off of buildings, hating sex, loving sex, becoming pregnant (only one man so far and some ladies) and irritation of the privates. Also they can get cranky from lack of use.


*Little Girl style will not be marketed since even though many gents loved it in premarketing testing, those damn strident militant feminists** were up in arms again. We just don’t get it. Those whacko women also didn’t like the Little Boy style for women.

**I qualify for all but the militant bit.

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Fuzzy Poet Doctor and the small child

I think I finally understand what I have been doing in clinic all these years. And not just in clinic. As a theory it explains both why patients, nurses, hospital staff and specialists really really like me and my fellow Family Practice doctors, particularly the males, and the administrators, really really do NOT like me.

I am on a plane flying to Michigan a few weeks ago. Double masked. N95 with another mask over it. Sigh.

A friend keeps saying that he can see into me. He can, but he can see thoughts. Not feelings. I am wondering if I see feelings. But I see the stuffed feelings particularly, the ones that people keep hidden. They are like clouds.

And then I think, oh.

I automatically scan any new person for their small child. The inner small child, who is often damaged and hidden. The small child is hidden under those stuffed feelings, which I think of as monsters. In Ride Forth, I am writing about pulling every monster feeling that I can find stuffed out and letting myself feel them. And that people do not like seeing me like that. Their monsters attack me!

Except that the monsters don’t attack. The monsters come to me and say, “Please, please, help me. I want out. The small child needs to heal.” The monsters lie their monstrous heads in my lap and weep.

Now WHY would I develop this skill? That is weird.

I develop it because my parents both drink. The myth in the family is that it was my father. But my mother’s diaries and also her stories make it clear that she drank heavily too. I think they were both alcoholics. And she told two stories about me trying to get someone to get out of bed to give me food as a toddler. As jokes. But it is not a joke. I have food insecurity. At every meal, I think of the next one and whether there is food available. My daughter has it too….. epigenetics.

I think that the only way I could love my parents was to have compassion for them. Once you see another person’s damaged small child, then how can you not feel compassion for them?

With patients I learned to be very very delicate and gentle about asking about the cloud. Just gently. Sometimes people open up on the first visit. Sometimes they shut tight like a clam and I back off. Sometimes they return the next visit or the 3rd or the 8th or after a couple years… and say, “You asked me about this.”

It’s nonverbal communication. The reason why I take the WHOLE history MYSELF at the first visit is for the nonverbal communication. When the person doesn’t want to answer a question, veers away from a topic, switches subjects: there is my cloud. That is where the hurt is. That is where the pain is.

The first cracks in the United States medical system collapse are appearing. Not doctors quitting, not nurses, but medical assistants. Here is an article about how clinics all over can’t hire medical assistants. Because there are tons of jobs, employers are offering more money, why would you do a job where you may well be exposed to covid-19 if you can do something else? And make as much money or more….

The cracks will widen. Ironically doctors are doing what I have done for the last ten years: “rooming” the patients themselves. Ha, ha, good may come out of it, after the disaster. Which is getting worse fast. If people don’t put their masks on and don’t social distance and don’t get vaccinated, I predict more deaths in the US this winter then last winter. Sigh. And in the US we will run out of medical assistants, doctors and nurses.

It is ok to gently ask a patient about that cloud. It is not polite to “see” it in a Family Medicine colleague or and administrator. I can’t “not see” it. I can’t turn it off. However, on the plane my behavior changed even before I could put all of this into words. The words are that I have to be as gentle with everyone as I am with patients.

And the trip felt so odd. I was putting this into effect before I had words. That is how my intuition works. But everyone, absolutely everyone, was kind to me on the trip. A Chicago policeman helped me in the train station and was super kind. It was weird, weird, weird, with bells on. It took me a few more days to be able to put it into words.

Problem intuited, after 60 years of study. Implementation of solution proceeds immediately. Logical brain struggling to catch up, but results satisfactory long before logical brain gets a handle on it.

Pretty weird, eh? I think so. My doctor said that an episode of Big Bang Theory could be written just by following me around for a day. I think it was both saying that I am smart AND that I have no social skills. But I have implemented the social skills program already. She’s just upset that I gave her justifiable hell two visits ago and also…. I do hide my brain. Because sometimes colleagues are jealous.

But maybe they should not be jealous. Maybe they can learn it too. Maybe I can teach. Maybe….

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Liars and the lying lies they tell

This blog post: hanging from a telephone wire intrigues me.

Why do the liars lie?

I disagree with Ms. Kennedy.

The liars lie for the same reason that addicts lie. They are not lying to you or to me. They are lying to themselves FIRST. They want to believe what they say.

“My marriage is perfect.”

“I love all my children the same.”

“I never make an error.”

“I talk to my mother every Sunday morning because we are so close and love each other so much.”

“I can see right in to your head.”

“I don’t care about anything.”

“I am happy all the time.”

Whew. A totally easy list to come up with and I could go on and on and on…. and so could you. When someone says something like this… I am always (fill in blank) or I never (fill in blank)… stop. Think. They want to believe it. They might like you to believe it too. They might even kind of know that it’s a lie and very convincing one but the best liars have convinced themselves.

I saw it in clinic all the time. Over and over and over.

It’s the glitter that gives it away. When they come in all glittery and sparkly and their eyes shine and they are too beautiful for words and they charm your socks right off…. check your wallet. They are an addict or a manipulator or they WANT SOMETHING FROM YOU. And there are people who just do it automatically. They lie all the time.

Whatever. When someone reminds me of my mother or my sister… or the other extremely well trained enablers on the maternal side of my stupid family…. ooooooo. The person has my full focused attention. Which thing is the lie? What do they want? What are they going to try to get out of me?

When I trained in buprenorphine treatment, the guy (enabler) that I was dating was horrified. “You can’t treat addicts!” he said.

“Why not?” I asked.

“They LIE.”

I laughed. “ALL patients lie. There are studies. They lie about whether they are taking their blood pressure medicine. They lie about how much salt they are eating. They lie about exercising. The first question I ask if someone’s blood pressure is too high, is “Are you taking the medicine?” More than half the time I get a sheepish, “Yeah, well, no, I ran out of it two weeks ago.” “Yeah, well, then I can’t tell if it’s working or not, can I? And you’ll have to redo the stupid labs once you have taken it for two weeks and come back for another check.” “Ok, ok, I get it.” If you lie to your doctor, well, you might get hurt. Tell them about the pills your friend gave you, tell them about the supplements, and that infected toe? Might help if you tell the truth about it. Even though it was when you um inserted well we were just, like he has an infected um. That is important information and changes which antibiotics I use plus now I want to check for chlamydia and gonorrhea and same sex male so we gotter talk about HIV prophylaxis and this is a 15 minute clinic visit? I am now running late and annoyed. You need another visit in 1-2 days or else I gonna hospitalize yo dumb self.

And WHY do people, and especially people in addiction, lie to themselves?

Damage. ACE scores. Adverse Childhood Experience Scores. They wish that they were that close to their mother. They long for a perfect marriage. They were beaten in secret by the perfect father. The famous man, their grandfather, sexually abused them. The list is endless.

And how do we help? The person I just stopped dating told me that his children said to him “My picker’s broke.” Our pickers are not really broken. We are attracted to the people who can teach us.

In the book Passionate Marriage, the author writes about how we are attracted to the people who have what we lack. What we want to learn. What we are afraid of. What we need to learn. I needed to learn how to really look at anyone I date with my full on intuition right away and also that it is seriously Not Nice of me to get curious, activate my inner scientist and stick around. I recognize the projection on me at some point and then the scientist in me is intrigued. Really? The most recent one said that inside me there is a sweet innocent joyous tiny girl.

Well, I thought. No, not really. There certainly is a baby. But it’s a baby honey badger or a baby Iron Bitch Alien Lizard. Don’t care what you call it. But it is about as sweet as a pissed off porcupine or skunk. Polecat. Octopoggles done got us! Squirting ink and sliding into an impossibly small space and escaping from the acquarium over and over until the captors let me go…..

And that was actually the moment I should have spoken up. Calmly. Kindly. “Um, no. I was never a sweet innocent joyous tiny girl. I was bathed in antibodies to tuberculosis in the womb and no doubt alcohol and my parents were newly married and I came out saying, “What is happening now? Some new torture? Augh! Bright lights! Is there food? I am really really hungry. Feed me or I will eat YOU.” And then I lost my mother for nine months so that I would not catch tuberculosis from her and die. I didn’t really understand it. I thought people kept giving me away and that you couldn’t trust those evil adults.

In the end this is all actually necessary, says the Passionate Marriage author. WHAT? WHAT? Well, in a truly loving relationship, both people will withdraw the projection. The projection is the “falling in love” where the person is golden, perfect, your true love. No, they aren’t. But you love that aspect of them that you want/need/can’t do. True love is when you withdraw the projection and you see the real person and you love them.

It isn’t easy. But people do it. Birds do it, squirrels do it, trees do it, even elementary bees do it… let’s do it… let’s fall in love.