Thin ice and hallucinogens
Separate stories! More or less!
As a seven-second Epic Fail clip, it would’ve been fine, if somewhat worrisome. But it’s 1:44 and turns into a little three-act movie.
I’m a Minnesota resident so even though I’m not a skater, I know not to skate where he goes and wearing what he’s wearing.
I will leave you to infer the mental health meaning of all this by yourself.
In a previous edition, I told you about the very successful program in Denver to send mental health workers and medical personnel on emergency calls that don’t involve crime. Maybe it’s a very positive trend.
In the small coastal town of Gearhart, Oregon, the police chief, Jeff Bowman, announced that his department won’t be the first responders for certain kinds of mental health emergencies.
“I think that sometimes these individuals, even if they’re asking for help, they want someone else to talk to other than a law enforcement officer,” Bowman said. “And to be honest with you, law enforcement, we aren’t trained to be mental health counselors.”
The tipping point for the chief came when he heard about an incident in Texas.
On Jan. 10, the family of Patrick Warren Sr., a Black man, asked for a mental health professional to check on him. The city of Killeen sent a police officer instead. A lawyer for the family said the officer’s demeanor was hostile. In a statement, police said officer Reynaldo Contreras “encountered an emotionally distressed man.” Contreras ultimately shot and killed Warren.
Bowman said Contreras never should have been there to begin with, and he’s decided he won’t put his own officers in a similar situation.
Here’s a big long article in Vogue about taking Ketamine and micro-dosing LSD. The author chronicles her experiences and talks to a lot of people in that, oh, let’s call it an industry now. You might find the article interesting and useful. Or not!
I was kind of put off by an assertion early in the article that antidepressant meds don’t work. Because sometimes they don’t and sometimes they totally do but above all that, to dismiss like that on a complicated issue is irresponsible. And as someone who has relied on meds for years, I felt defensive.
To me, this is an interesting angle on this group of treatments that stem from worlds that include the terms “rave” and “tripping.” If someone can be made to feel better, to be more functional, and have it be safe, I kind of have to support that. However, we all come at information with our own biases. I’ve known people who did a lot of acid and I’ve watched their lives and brains kind of careen out of control, even as they promised that they were on a path to enlightenment. My brother, Rick, took a lot of drugs that were not sold over-the-counter in order, really, to treat his mental health issues. He probably thought of it as just getting high, not self-medicating, but that’s what it was. He became an addict and died by suicide.
So what worries me is that the language used by dopers and trippers when I was young is now being used in Vogue. Talk about finding a higher consciousness and more focus and all that. And again, this is a bias on my part. I’m not a neutral observer. And sometimes what you bring to the table is wisdom and sometimes skews the perspective unfairly and it’s hard to tell the difference occasionally. There are plenty of doctors and medical professionals in the Vogue article and I imagine very little of the dealing is done in the trashed out living room of a shady drug dealer with a messed up dog anymore but I just keep hearing echoes.
I want to cover ketamine and micro-dosing on my new show and do it in a fair manner that doesn’t condemn new things based on my own decades-old observations but also doesn’t accept everything as safe and advisable based on hearing someone had a very nice time. It’s a line I’m going to need to walk.
Conversation in a recent interview I did:
GUEST: I’m a Leo. So you know what THAT means.
ME: Nothing because astrology is a silly fake game?
GUEST: No! What sign are you?
ME: Cancer.
GUEST: Why didn’t I know that? Why don’t you tell people you’re a cancer.
ME: Because when you say, “I am a Cancer,” it tends to make people sad. Saying you’re a Sagittarius doesn’t make people think of the slow death of a loved one.
Stay tuned!
It was minus 18 yesterday and these folks were dining outside here in St Paul. Again, I will let you infer the mental health implications of this on your own.
A fellow cancer? Or a crab? Really, early astrologists hated people born in July!