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ANONYMOUS
COUNTRY DOCTOR
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. . .On the day Ariana was born, I had worn a colorful sweatshirt picturing tropical fish. When I first held her in my arms, she seemed to focus her tiny eyes upon those brightly colored fish and, though I've been told that it is impossible, I swear that I saw her smile at them. So, for Christmas, I bought her a 15-ft wall mural of appliques depicting brightly colored tropical fish in the sea and I put it along the wall by her crib. She was delighted. It seemed to please her no end to be picked up and held where she could reach out and touch the fish. The wonder of this tiny being and the feelings she inspired within me bathed my world in a warm pleasant glow that I gathered protectively about me as a talisman against the darkness hovering at the limit of my vision.
Our introduction to the practical difficulties facing working parents with their first newborn was swift in coming. Though, in Minnesota, breastfeeding falls just short of being required by law, it proved impossible for us, even with the well-intentioned but nearly-desperate efforts of the medical staff and a small army of "lactation consultants." The resulting orgy of pain, swelling, pumping, syphoning, syringing, storing, and monitoring would make quite a story by itself . . .
. . . The work at Sandoz proved tedious and dull, the atmosphere dreary and oppressive. Being only a temporary employee, I was the odd man out in the power plays and intrigue that had apparently become the norm there in response to rumors that corporate was considering downsizing the facility. By December, I had developed a nagging fear that I might lose the contract at any time, with little or no notification. Worse yet, my hearing on the drug charges resulted in the outrageous and preposterous sentence of ten years of probation, with an intial six-month term of home detention. After the absurd requirements and low success rate of the home detention program were expained to me, I began to experience a frightening certainty that some form of self-sabotage would insure my defeat -- that my dread of failure would somehow become its own self-fulfilling prophesey.
A viscid morass spawned from this whirling torrent of unpleasant emotion which threatened to inundate me-- a sucking quagmire of fear and guilt from which years of stimulant use had robbed me of the strength to extricate myself. Roiling images of the harmful consequences for my family that my impotence implied came unbidden to haunt the periphery of my thoughts. Jangling anxiety, accompanied by the dizzying sensation of inescapable impending disaster, permeated every waking moment, driving my amphetamine use to dangerous levels and diluting my sanity until I could once again see the instrument of my deliverence in my alchemical arts.
Having vowed never to attempt a drug synthesis from base chemicals again, I began searching the literature for some novel approach. The answer, ironically, came from a most unlikely source -- an article by the chief chemist for the DEA, Terry dal Cason (Dal Cason, Terry A. - Journal of Forensic Sciences, Vol. 35, No. 3, May 1990, pp. 675-697.), in which he sighted yet another article from an obscure Belgian chemical journal (Moed,H. D., Van Dijk, J., and Niewind, H - Recueil des Travaux Chimiques des Pays Bas, Vol. 74, 1955, pp. 919-936.). When finally located, it described an incredibly simple one-step reduction of a very close analogue of the common over-the-counter decongestant pseudoephedrine HCl (PE) to the corresponding analogue of methamphetamine. By simple substitution, it appeared that my goal could be acomplished by boiling 400g of PE for 24 hours in 1800g of 57% hydriotic acid (HI) over a catalyst of . . .
. . . After a quick filter, wash, and dry, I dissolved 150 mg of the resulting powder in twice its weight of USP water for injection to deliver a stunningly wicked blow of white hot venom to the beleaguered synapses of my brain.
Like some poisonous nightflower, the nether realm of neurotoxic madness blossomed evilly from the hot rush of intoxication -- a Boschian contra-reality rising up, blessed and cold, to take me deep into its dark embrace, where I so desperately longed to hide -- both from the truth of my fearful inadequacy and from the aching neediness in my heart. This refuge proved little more than a chimera though, as the strident cries of my daughter's own need, so pure in its primal absoluteness, struck an instinctual chord deep within, drawing me irresistibly back toward the hateful light of day.
Torn between the light and dark, I made a vain attempt to construct an existence simultaneously on both sides of the threshold, in blatant violation of several fundamental physical laws. By day, I began to take any work I could get which, by and large, amounted to short stints with temp and day labor outfits -- first, in a plastics factory on an injection molder, then as a trash separator in a recycling plant. Later, I shoveled snow, at 20 degrees below zero, for a week in a housing project, with two or three days here and there washing dishes in resturants. Most evenings, I would scurry down to my basement laboratory and there, late into the night and often til near dawn, to cavort darkly in my subterranean lair - my unwholesome womb deep beneath the frozen world of men. I was struggling to maintain some sort of direction as the necrotic spores of dissolution sprouted, blackly tumescent, from the corrupted flesh of my will . . .
. . . Allyson, enraged because I couldn't stop using, called the home detention officer, Rusty, and told her that she would unplug the monitoring equipment if I was not arrested immediately and removed from the home . . .
. . . I cried day and night for a month. The jail nurse withheld my medication and the withdrawal depression, black and frightening, was made almost unbearable by the circumstances. I finally had to call the Ombudsman for Corrections to force the staff to honor my right to proper health care. I had them lower the dosage of Dexedrine to 1/3 of normal and, when I could think again, began to try to help myself.
This was, after all, a Minnesota jail so, of course, they had a respectable
self-help library, if nothing else. I began to read all I could get
my hands on, such as:
1.) Love Is Letting Go of Fear - Dr. Gerald Jampolsky
2.) Choices -Creative Response to Personal Change - Dr. Frederic Flach
3.) Living in the Light - Shakti Gawian
4.) People Skills - Robert Bolton
5.)
Peoplemaking
- Virginia Satir
. . . In Virginia Satir's remarkable work on parenting, she states that, after interviewing 3000 families (10,000 individuals) as a renowned family therapist, she had found that 96% of American households were dysfunctional. Only 4% of us grow up in completely nurturing homes that provide all the skills one needs to live as healthy, happy, and self-actualized human beings capable of establishing rewarding and harmonious permanent relationships.
I was so impressed with the ideas presented in Love Is Letting Go of Fear that I wrote the piece below as a brief summation of the message it contained (the book itself, is a condensation of the prodigious work, A Course in Miracles by the Foundation for Inner Peace, Mill Valley, California -(see page 178).
Consider: that there are really only two emotions, love, & fear. All other states can be seen as expressions of one, or the other. Only one of these, love, is real, and it is our natural inheritance, being our only aspect that is unique to humans, of all creatures, and not yet having been achieved by machines. The other, fear, is an idea of protection, created by our minds, and is therefore unreal. Love is the total absence of fear. Since love and fear may not be experienced at the same time, fear often blinds us to the presence of love, which is always there, and the natural state of which is one of extension and of expansion.
Our minds are limitless unless, out of fear, we place limits upon them. With love as our natural state and our minds without limit, then we are all joined, in love. By holding onto our fears, and therefore losing sight of love, we may begin to feel that we are separated, making us feel sick, looking to blame, experiencing guilt, or trading conditional love.
We may imagine others as intending us harm, and, perceiving them as guilty, find them difficult to love, and may even seek to strike back at them, out of fear. This is insane, because, as we are all joined, then to strike out against another, is to do harm to ourselves.
When we let go of fear, and examine the behavior of others more closely,
we see that actually, they are only, either extending love, or can be seen
as fearful, and sending out a call for help, which is the same as a request
for love, and that everyone, including ourselves, is blameless, and guiltless.
It then becomes easier to practice forgiveness, and to extend total love
and acceptance. The result is a state of clarity, in which we see that
all minds are joined, that we share a common self, and that love and inner
peace are all that are real, and therefore of importance. Without the belief
in separation, we can accept our own healing and extend healing love to
those around us.
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Healing results from the thought of unity.
. . . I was full of hope when I was released on the eleventh of June 1994, to began the thirty-mile walk back to St. Paul. I sang and walked from six that morning until late in the evening when I caught a bus from St. Paul to Minneapolis where I checked into the infamous Drake Hotel, a shelter for the homeless. Within days I had found work and took a room in the basement of a decaying Victorian mansion on Lake of the Isles in the uptown area. Public assistance provided me with voice mail in order to keep up with my temporary assignments which eventually led to a longer-term position working the loading dock of an high-end oak and leather furniture store. I got along well there and, after a couple of paychecks, bought an old Buick from the boss for $300.
About this time I received a call from my father telling me that he wanted me to move to Memphis and go into his lucrative real estate business. I was delighted. He had said that he had a house in which I could live while I got started. I knew that my relationship with him was something that had troubled me for years so I made a fatal error in judgement and changed my plans. Allyson and I soon became excited about the new prospects. I wanted a small U-Haul truck but the only truck they had was a monstrous, 26-foot-long semi. This was ludicrously excessive for the contents of a 4 x 8-foot trailer and still required that I tow the car.
Just outside Kansas City, the truck broke down and I spent another twelve hours being sent from one country repair shop to another. I drove the last 500 miles straight through in this forty-five-foot-long truck/trailer combo after already having been awake for nearly thirty hours. I pulled into Memphis exhausted and already a thousand dollars in debt. After leaving the truck in front of my new home, I unshipped the car and drove to my father's house around 10 p.m.. When he arrived, he and his wife informed me that they had changed their minds and would no longer be offering me a position in their business. I was stunned, I had already studied for the real estate boards and was ready to go. The promise of the job had been the factor that had influenced me to alter my plans in the first place. I began to have serious misgivings about my decision just hours after my arrival . . .
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