Early Thursday a.m. rawness...

…And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead
“Mistakes and Regrets”
Madonna / Merge / 1999

[ D R A F T ]

While the modern / alt rock radio format was arguably cratering back then, the smoldering post-grunge music scenes of the late nineties managed to usher in some very solid creative forces like Austin’s …And You Will Know Us By The Trail of Dead.  Trail of Dead and their artistic peers rose above glib subgenre labels like “emo” and delivered thrilling, transcendent rock that has aged well into the current day.  Songs like 1999’s “Mistakes and Regrets” don’t sound out of place here in the early 2010s, where many of us are still feeling lingering doubts, distrust, frustration, and malaise left over from the end of the “False Reset” decade.

A fifties-ish friend who often (rightfully) takes me for a fool commented that my demeanor was zombie-like a few weeks back.  For the record, I am on Lithium Carbonate (900 mg) and Fluphenazine (10 mg).  (The lithium is prescribed to stabilize my undesirable¹ moods and the Fluphenazine is indicated to pacify my erratic² thoughts.)

But then seeking out numbness has been a common thread of the generational experience of a certain subset the Gen X/Y/Millennial crowd.  This anaesthesia and release comes from many bromides; in my personal experience, prescription psychoactive medication has been a big part of cultivating my own numbness, impassiveness, and emotional disconnection.

I have come to know countless people born from about the mid-’60s onward who’ve been taking cocktails of prescription drugs — including things like behavior-taming ADD/ADHD drugs, mood-toning anti-depressants, mind-blunting anti-psychotics, emotion-dampening mood stabilizers and so on — since they were preteens or young adolescents.  Many of us were middle-class and upper-middle-class kids struggling to grow up according to Old Boomer rules of straining for precocious adulthood and responsibility.  We were somewhat sheltered “good kids” who were shuttered away from the same youthful indiscretions that our older siblings or cousins indulged in, the kids who came of age during the reactionary-cum-revolutionary ’70s and early ’80s who got to screw around and get high and experiment more fully with their reckless youthful urgings.

We unwitting Reagan-Youths-turned-Prozactive-Young-Adults had a different sort of deal than them.  A lot of nineties music helped us Rx-doped youths tear holes through the prescriptive drug hazes we were in (and other insensate states of unfeeling and seeming unbeing).  The beautifully raw, sour, damaged music of the nineties helped a few of us actually feel something — anything — again, even if it was just smoldering pain or smarting anger.

Among the various crowds I used to know, I came to sense over time that too many of us were quietly raging over something absent in our young lives — something sweet and natural and real — that we sensed was missing and perhaps not meant for us, something we longed for while we rushed headlong into the Boomer-to-Tomber ruts of our aging authoritarianistic parents, those loving antagonists and smothering protectors.

We sad kids of the nineties often found solace in music.  Listening to certain strains of this music, you hear a blend of older decades of sonic and spiritual influences.  There is even a hint of the sweetness and light of the fifties and the eighties in certain pop confections of that era, particularly at the opening and closing of the nineties, when the zeitgeist was turning.  But much more present in many nineties songs is the passion and fury of the sixties and the spiritual slow-burn of the seventies.

These echoes should come as no surprise.  Many musicians who thrived during the nineties were children way back during the tail-end-sixties fallout and fertile ferment of the early-to-mid-seventies (which was overall a surprisingly creative and reflective decade).  Here are a handful of my favorites:

b. 1965......Black Francis, Björk
b. 1966......Stephin Merritt, Stephen Malkmus
.............Tanya Donnelly, Kristin Hersh
b. 1967......Kurt Cobain, Mark Robinson
.............Billy Corgan
b. 1968......Tricky, Thom Yorke, Kathleen Hanna

It can be argued that this essay³ is folly and vanity and that the last decade of the last millennium was much like any other before it.  After all, the nineties witnessed the evolution and re-emergence of artistic ages and creative spirits seen in earlier decades.  But since I was yet another sad, lost, heartsick youth during much of the nineties, I suppose it comes as no surprise that I often remember the saddest, most heartsick melodies of those times most fondly and dearly during these times of loss and searching.

* * *

Just for reference, here are the lyrics to “Mistakes and Regrets.”

Lyrics:

If I could make a list
of my mistakes and regrets,
I'd put your name on top
and every line after it

’cause every inch of hope
becomes a world of shame
I’ve had to walk through
each and every day

And if I screamed ‘you were wrong’
at the top of my lungs,
you would never return
all the faith that I’ve lost

And there is nothing left to say
that has not been said
If I shouted, you wouldn't listen
I don’t think it’d even sink in

If you forget how to feel
reach inside your chest
Is there a heart beating?
Is there just emptiness?

Footnotes to self:
¹moods (and states) undesirable among my circles of family and friends
²thoughts that are too erratic when (a) they become too disorganized and disjointed, and (b) I break with consensus reality, no matter how mad that collective reality seems to me and those like me
³a form of expression which few of my friends will probably see, despite all of my sad little invitations; yes, my fairweather friends always reject me at every turn even when I turn to them for the most rudimentary sustenance and answers; I must start walling myself off to them again to protect myself from their cool apathies and their cautious distances; putting myself even in the periphery of their existences will only spur me to find myself alienated and alone and fearing again; I am alone and feel I will always be alone at my core; I must remove myself from lifeless, numb, overcautious people before I go mad once more; I just cannot be like them, I’ve tried it again and again and again and again and I can’t do it anymore; why can’t they let me be myself, mad and happy and (((FINALLY NOT HATING MYSELF FOR NOT BEING LIKE THEM))); the true, worst madness for me is the slow numbing madness of forcing myself to be what I cannot understand and repeatedly seeking out those who I can’t seem to feel the same tenderness for anymore; I cannot trust people anymore; they want me numbed again so I’m like a tired old ragdoll; I am alone and this is all a trap set up for me, their glib reassurances wear thin, they repeat things they read and hear and do not think about all of the crueler possibilities; they do not know this slow death and panic like I/we do; I cannot do this all over again; I must leave here somehow

Group therapy is getting me down...

I am beginning to hate group therapy again.

Picture being trapped in a smallish room with about ten to twelve adults, all facing each other in a crowded, too-intimate little circle of a supposedly therapeutic nature.  Imagine that they are messy, confused, depressive people with bona fide “Problems.”  Sometimes even “Big Problems,” the kind that require a generous regimen of fat, pastel-colored pills ... or perhaps a few bilateral-hemisphere electroconvulsive therapy sessions ... or even a good lawyer on retainer.

A room where you are coerced to share, share, and share until you are practically telling people what you ate (or drank) for breakfast and what your cat’s favorite toy looks like.

An uncomfortably cozy space where you are nudged to give everybody verbal group hugs about every ten minutes or so.

That, folks, is what my existence at PHP (Partial Hospitalization Program) and now IOP (Intensive Outpatient Program) has been like.

And yes, the forced empathy is starting to strain my flaccid showing-empathy muscles.

Remember: We can only be pretend friends in here.

I wish I could somehow tactfully signal to my fellow group therapy inmates: 

Hey look, fellow group therapy hand holders—

I’m a manic-depressive coming down from a “natural” high that felt kind of great, actually.  Not to brag, but it was pretty damn special.  I am not quite ready to “feel your pain” just so intensely right now.  I cannot always come up with constructive and supportive “feedback” of a nature that will help ease you through your difficult time, which seems to know no bounds at the moment.

Perhaps instead you can feel my soft psychic waves of lukewarm supportiveness radiating out toward you in lieu of actual authentic Real Friend empathy.  You see, I do not know you very well, despite your intimate expressions of heartfelt sharing and very shattering displays of vulnerability.  Speaking of which, I really do not have enough of an idea why you are rocking back and forth and crying convulsively like that all of a sudden to offer you truly useful feedback here.

Also, I am on medications that actually suppress my humanness and clog my natural emotional response channels.  This makes me act like a vaguely empathic and life-like android, carefully rearranging my face and body every so often in an artful repertoire of sensitive expressions of support.

But, yes, I still do “care” about your problems.

“Yes, Smother.”

My problem is not with my fellow group therapy sufferers.  It is with these “facilitator” women who run the show at my current program.  Let’s call them “Professional Empathologists.”  They are really killing my fading bipolar buzz with their soft smothering chidings and constant verbal nudgings and fakey-and-flaky ersatz-empathy reflexive-reflecto-deflecto group therapy ego strokings and brain pokings.

Oh, man.  In particular, I am peeved at how these group therapy leader women (who are often vaguely smug All-Natural Earth Women of the My-Body-Is-A-Temple type) jumped all over me yesterday for daring to suggest that the previous medication I was on potentially causes hormonal disruptions that could lead to long-term endocrine complications and even infertility.

I took this medication for something like seven years, which qualifies me as somewhat of an expert on it.  Over those seven years it helped turn me into a depressive, crazed hag.  After being a lean, mean 90-pound weakling for most of my young life, I started rapidly putting on weight.  My uterus alone seemed to double in weight.  There were stretches of being thirty or forty pounds overweight where I felt suicidal almost every month around *that* time (Pre-Menstrual Dysphoric Disorder).  My hair fell out in thick clumps in the shower.  Hearing a baby cry was like being stabbed repeatedly in the viscera with a rusty shank.  I also wanted to breed like a jackrabbit, and with very little good reason.

Ahh, sweet memories of youth.

In short, I felt like I was being endocrinally hijacked from the ovaries out.  For somebody who has steadfastly stayed off of oral contraception her entire life, this felt like a betrayal by my doctors, who seemed entirely unaware of these hormonal side effects.  They were also almost totally ignorant about PMDD.  (In fact, many of these psychiatrists spent the first ten minutes of every fifteen-minute session shuffling papers around trying to figure out exactly who I was again and thus also what particular cocktail of drugs I was carrying on about.)

These pill-pushing doctors actually made me miss the old-fashioned frigid Freudians I used to go to.  At least those guys gave you an hour.  Plus they reminded you of dear old Dad (i.e. remote, cold, and vaguely judgemental).

I am so thrilled that I don’t have group therapy today.

Disclaimer:

If there really is not a “conclusive” link between valproate and endocrine conditions such as PCOS (Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome), then, sadly, I believe that I fall into the unlucky subset of women with noticeable hormonal disruptions on valproate.

A couple of references:

“Valproate is associated with new-onset oligoamenorrhea with hyperandrogenism in women with bipolar disorder”
Biol Psychiatry. 2006 Jun 1;59(11):1078-86. Epub 2006 Jan 31.

“Polycystic ovaries and hyperandrogenism in women taking valproate for epilepsy”
N Engl J Med. 1993; 329:1383-1388.