Wednesday, November 11, 2015

Gratitudefulness

(disclaimer: the following post is not advocating cold turkey withdrawal from prescribed medication nor is it an informed opinion on the effects of any particular drug/brain affecting chemical)

Lists!
I don't particularly go for lists... In fact I think quite often, too much importance is put on lists.
Generally I don't write them or hold to them...

Not really into lists...
Chances are my name is on a few... lists..

I always forget to take the shopping list.
I come home with the wrong stuff.
My wife writes lists. She wrote the shopping list... I forgot to get her stuff...
I reckon I coulda done with that list

I'm pondering the idea of starting a list.

My mate Rod kept a list.
They had him locked up but Rod  bailed
Heavy metal psych ward stupor is a fate worse than death he said.
Apparently Lithium is a heavy metal.
He had a heavy metal in his veins and he didn't like it.

They pumped the metal into his blood and it fused with his brain,
He couldn't catch airplanes. He said the stuff set off the security alarms...
I still don't know if that's actually true or if he imagined the alarms. Either way he developed an elaborate series of counter moves to avoid known danger spots...
Rod reckoned he had some very strange ideas in his head which he learned to isolate from what he was sure were his actual thoughts (I don't know how he managed to do that but he prayed a lot.)

Would I recognize the difference between rational thoughts and some hallucination caused by a combination of naturally occurring chemicals in the brain mixed with the highly toxic concoction used de- crazy a mad man?

Anyway Rod decided the stuff was killing him, so, Rod bolted. He travelled by land with the Lithium fog closing on him.
Paranoid withdrawal, fuel stop munchies no grog, no ganja joints or fags... no paracetamol no coffee maybe not even any chocolate! Rod did hard core detox on the road! He alighted (Southern Town) on a wing and a prayer and by the gift of God's grace he arrived in the north of the country alive and unscathed.

Rod was mad! Stone cold sober mad, mad from the cure and mad from the disease. I don't think you can't puke that stuff out and enema's won't help either... I wondered if it actually leaves at all... does it rip out chunks of your mind when it goes?

Rod threw himself to the mercy of the God of drunks and mad men and he survived...
and every day of his troubled survival and the life he salvaged he wrote a list. The list was helping him to get better. It was a special list, not of events or activities or things to do or things to get... It was a Gratitude List!
Rod took the list very seriously. One day when we were both living at the Rainforest retreat he showed me his list. His list was in a thick book and it's pages were full! His list kept him sane. Every day of his recovery he added one new thing to his gratitude list!


DAVID'S GRATITUDE LIST

11/11/15

SHOWER.



It's the buildup every day I get home hot and sweaty. In my home I have a shower. I am grateful for my shower. I let the water run a few moments to get the hot water out of the pipes and soon a lovely coolish stream of water comes flowing out of the shower rose. I stand under it and let it was the sweat and grime from my body. When I step out of the shower I feel human. Having a shower with running water is a blessing. I am grateful.


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