Atheists believe in themselves?

[Angrboda]

I don't know why you have chosen not to take your medication, Mystic. Sometimes there are good reasons for stopping medication, but the times when doing so is not good far outweigh the times when doing so may be beneficial. Given that, I hope that you will reconsider taking your medication.

As someone who has suffered severe mental illness from childhood, I'm somewhat familiar with the questions. Medication has never offered me much relief though, so I haven't faced the same questions you face. I haven't been taking my blood pressure and cholesterol medication for a long time, which might very well mean that I could die as a result, have a stroke, or a heart attack. But the reasons I don't take my medication aren't in any way similar to yours, except, perhaps, in that you may face some very real mortal risks from not taking your medication. (I recently watched a video talk of a psychiatrist discussing the problem of people with psychotic illnesses who aren't aware that they are ill [not meaning you]. He made a point of turning the usual expression of "he killed himself," around to emphasize that it is less that people who are mentally ill choose to die as it is that mental illness causes these people to kill themselves; the illness killed them, they didn't "kill themselves.")

I understand that perhaps, by not taking your medication you will be unbinding possibilities that are more important to you than stability, but often that's a false hope. [There is an apocryphal tale, attributed to many such as William James or Ogden Nash about a person who was convinced that the euphoria induced by opiates or some such psychodelic drug enabled him to reach insights that could not be obtained in a sober state (opening what the poet Blake referred to as the doors of perception, after which the rock band "The Doors" is named). In one particular drug induced revery, he had what he considered a sublime epiphany, which he hurriedly wrote down before he lost it. When he awoke the next morning, returned from his drug experience, he read what he had written. "Hogamus bigamus, Men are polygamous, Higamus hogamus, Women are monogamous." Now, granted, this likely never happened, but I think it is a useful cautionary tale that, when one ignores the sign saying, "Here there be dragons," some dragons may be found, and some fair maidens rescued; most, however, just get eaten, or lost. (I suggest watching one of the documentaries on DMT and ask whether you think the tales of wild trips are more likely pieces of truth, or fragments of error.)


Anyway, I've got off track and started rambling. I've been harsh with you in the past, and perhaps you think it's because I dismiss you and your ideas. It's probably closer to the truth to say that I'm harsh with you more because of the ways we are alike than because we differ. I entertain the same questions as you do, the same wonder, the same ecstacy. But we differ for reasons which I'm tempted to address, but perhaps need not do so. I care about you Mystic, and despite my harshness, I do like you. And I rather suspect, like what I see as you "rushing from an interesting beginning... to an imaginative ending or answer" without doing the hard, painful, slow work of taking each step, carefully, cautiously and slowly, rather than lose one's way in the rush to reach the end, I suspect that not taking your medication is another example of you not accepting your (and my limitations), and looking for a shortcut, or a cheat, that will get you there faster than simple, patient, sober reasoning. If it is, I think it is a mistake, and hubris.

If you have chosen unwisely to discontinue your medication, I hope you will reconsider. If you choose to continue without medication, I simply wish you the best. PM me if you feel like.



(ps. Canticle for Liebowitz is AWESOME!)