When I was selling books in Oregon and learning about manifestation, I decided I wanted to become rich. So I worked at trying to allow the universe to increase my sales and my income by selling more books.

However, I hated the book business, hated packing books, hated listing them, hated the whole thing. Just sick of it. Sick of the greed, of the constant adapting to circumstances to survive.

Then one day after reading a book, enlightenment came. I realized that I was restricting the flow of wealth through a certain conduit (books), like electricity flows along a particular wire or a radio plays on a certain frequency.

On the one hand I was telling the universe to “make me rich through my business,” and on the other, “I don’t want to pack any books.” Needless to say, I was treading water. This was completely fear-based, because if I gave up the book business, then what would I do???

I decided then that I would no longer restrict the channel of income. I wouldn’t decide how it would come to me. Then a vendor charged $5,000 on an old credit card on file, taking me $4500 over my limit. That’s when I first considered bankruptcy. Then the IRS came in, I had to shut down the business, gave up the house and everything else, and here I am in Pennsylvania.

Was it the end of the world? No, not at all. I got a completely fresh start and a lot of time to think and set priorities, focus on me, what’s wrong with my thinking, what I really want to do, work on character defects that need changing, a slew of things that I used my work to distract me from. I took the time to invest all that energy into ME instead of into a business. My personal evolution is far more important to me than the success of any business.

I can tell you this: The Universe, God, the Infinite, the All That Is, the Cosmic Consciousness, whatever you want to call the designing personal (or impersonal, if you like) intelligence that forms and enlivens all life is always moving toward happiness, love, fulfillment and evolution. We just need to align ourselves with that intent.

Fear is useful if you’re being chased by a lion or walking home late at night through a bad neighborhood. It’s no good otherwise. It represents a complete distrust in your own power to create and in the universe that sustains you.

And I can tell you from personal experience, fear and worry are a COMPLETE WASTE OF TIME. They accomplish NOTHING but they do poison the body and spirit. Giving up all thoughts of worry or fear is the single greatest accomplishment in my life.

I’ve set my intention to be wealthy, to help others, and lately to be an actress. My mind wonders, “How can I become an actress? I have no money? Los Angeles is a long way away. I can’t afford to go to school. There’s so much competition.”

I don’t concern myself anymore with all the details. The Cosmic Consciousness knows the best path because it exists outside of time and space. I trust that path to lay out before me in the proper time. Intuition will guide me. Doors will open.

I’m learning patience. I’m learning how to delay gratification and enjoy today. And I’ve learned that I don’t have to have money to be happy. So I have released the emotionally pressing “need” for money. When I really need it, it shows up.

I’ve been having trouble getting a decent night’s sleep since moving to PA. My neighbors seem rather whacked to me. Two days ago we had a heavy snowstorm, and my neighbor’s kids across the street cleared the snow with their gas-powered snow blower–at 11:15 p.m.! They worked for about an hour. A couple times I started to drop off to sleep but jolted awake when one of the kids yelled to the other.

Finally, I went to the front window and watched them for a while, willing the blower to break or run out of gas. Not nice, I know, but I actually tried to go to bed early for a change. Then the blower stopped working. The kid pulled on the starter cord about 20 times before thinking to look into the gas tank, whereupon he yelled, “That’s why it won’t work! It’s out of gas!” DUH. I went to bed at 11 p.m. but didn’t get to sleep until 1 a.m.

The neighbor across the street to the right also snowblows after 10 p.m.

I had to say something to my next-door neighbor when he was shoveling his backyard sidewalk at 3:30 a.m. outside my bedroom window. Now he waits until 7 a.m.

The neighbor across the street and two houses to the left is apparently missing the button for his car alarm or there’s something wrong with it. He can open the door with a remote, but he has to turn the alarm off from inside. So he presses a button as he approaches the car, :::honk::: :::honk::: :::honk::: gets inside :::honk::: :::honk::: :::honk::: and turns off the alarm.

A woman four houses down across the street came home from the bar around the corner at 1:30 a.m. She was accompanied by three friends. They yelled at one another as they walked down the street, and then they yelled in her front yard for ten minutes. They must think they’re the only people on the planet. I heard last night from an acquaintance that it’s a crack bar, which would explain the man asking as I walked past one night, “Want to buy?”

Many cars come by to pick up friends who live across the street. They never park the car and knock. They all :::honk::: :::honk::: :::hoooooooonk::: :::hoooooooooonk::: :::honk::: :::honk::: until their friend comes out. Even at 11:30 p.m. And then often the friend sticks his head out the door and yells to be heard over the motor: “Hold on, dude!”

I feel like I’ve landed in the land of ignorance and self-centeredness, and I’ve been trying to find a way to accept it and let it wash over me instead of anger me. I’m so very tired. I’m tired of entering into that fuzzy state between wakefulness and sleep only to be pulled violently back by the shout of a neighbor or honk of a horn. I’ve even entertained fantasies of walking out with my gun and blowing people’s heads off.

While reading Matrix Energetics yesterday I came across a statement that might help me:

I told him that he needed to turn that frustration into fascination, which would keep him in a more resourceful state.

So can I find fascination in the behavior of my neighbors? It’s worth a try. It’s better than fantasizing shooting them.

Here’s a great video by Robert Anton Wilson on Naive Realism. It’s a little over two minutes but quite worth watching and thinking about.

I (sometimes) enjoy participating in discussion boards related to health and wellness. I love sharing things I’ve learned to help people recover from their diseases. I don’t always go about it the best way. I have my own hangups. I have the temerity to suggest that people are usually responsible for their illnesses. It’s akin to physically beating them, based on the responses I get. And when I tell them they may be able to reverse their disease, I get excuse after excuse as to why they’re sick. Here are some of the responses I’ve read:

“You don’t know what it’s like to have this disease. How dare you comment on it.”

Why would you want to hear only from people who are just as sick as you? That’s called the blind leading the blind. Wouldn’t you want suggestions from people who have managed to retain good health? Wouldn’t you prefer hearing from people who have had the disease and reversed it? Or from someone who has reversed any other chronic disease?

Most of the time the people subconsciously don’t want to get well. They’ll coo and aah over the sympathetic posts and bristle at the ones suggesting self-responsibility and change. If you take away their disease, you take away their identity. If they are responsible, then they can’t blame mom, dad, brother, sister, husband, wife, daughter, son, church, God.

“I’ve had this since I was a child.”

Just because your particular physical dysfunction occurred when you were young doesn’t mean that a change in life style can’t help you. Your body’s cells are renewed daily. The quality of the cells being created depends on the quality of the nutrients ingested and your body’s ability to assimilate the nutrients. If you eat damaged food, you build damaged cells. Why do you think trans fats are now outlawed? Because they build faulty cells. I’ve read that scientists can examine your fat cells and tell you what you’ve eaten the past six months.

“I’ve tried everything.”

This is usually in response to my suggesting a raw food diet or an extended fast under professional supervision. I guarantee these people have not tried either of these. These methods are only for the most determined of people, and such people don’t build communities with other sick people on discussion boards.

Fasting (which means consuming water only) allows the body to excrete a tremendous amount of toxins and break down damaged and diseased tissues and upon resumption of a healthy diet rebuild healthy, functional tissues. Animals always fast when they become sick. Numerous books and websites extol the virtues of fasting for renewal of health.

Raw food does the same thing but much slower. People have recovered from so many chronic diseases on raw food diets and have become literally young again. Okay, it’s hard. If you don’t want to do it, that’s one thing. I remember telling someone that he could probably reduce his arthritic pain if he quit eating grains. He said, “I’d rather die than stop eating grains.” Now that I can respect. It’s his body, his choice. And I never mentioned it again. But denial doesn’t get anyone anywhere.

“My disease is incurable.”

Here’s the BIG problem. Few chronic diseases are “incurable.” True, there are no cures. There is only derangement of function and correction of function when cause is removed. The body is self-repairing.

Sometimes organs or tissues are permanently damaged and there is no turning back. But that’s no excuse not to change one’s poor habits: insufficient sleep, processed food diet, high sugar consumption, lack of sunshine, no exercise, sour disposition, the list goes on. Are you on the planet just to get by? Or do you want to improve all aspects of life: physical, mental, emotional and spiritual?

“This is God’s will. There’s nothing I can do about it.”

This one’s my all-time favorite and it’s a complete copout. My neighbor, my friend, told me this before she died a needless death from cancer. She was tired and simply gave up. She subconsciously wanted to leave the planet and blaming God absolved her of responsibility.

Your illness has nothing to do with all that candy you eat or the six-pack of cola you drink every day. It has nothing to do with that bitterness over your mother that you carry or the heavy load of all the wrongs people have done to you. Preservatives and additives in the canned and frozen food you microwave to death are irrelevant. And it has nothing to do with your workaholism or the heartburn you get every time you eat pizza, steak and potatoes, pasta with tomato sauce. And it certainly has nothing to do with that horrible relationship you stay in because you’re afraid to be alone.

So God did it to you. God is trying to teach you a lesson. God is punishing you. God is trying to increase your faith in him by inflicting you with a painful malady. Maybe if you buy another Christian book you’ll find the answer there.

To look upon poverty and sickness as sent by God and therefore inevitable, is the way of the weakling. God never sent us anything but good. What is more, He has never yet failed to give to those who would use them the means to overcome any condition not of His making. Sickness and povery are not of His making. They are not evidences of virtue, but of weakness. God gave us everything in abundance, and he expects us to manifest that abundance. If you had a son you loved very much, and you surrounded him with good things which he had only to exert himself in order to reach, you wouldn’t like it if he showed himself to the world half-starved, ill-kempt, and clothed in rags, merely because he was unwilling to exert himself enough to reach for the good things you had provided. No more, in my humble opinion, does God. –Robert Collier, Secret of the Ages.

God gives you exactly what you ask for. If you concentrate on negativity and disease, that’s prayer in action. And God answers. If you dwell on health, happiness, long life, that is what God will give you. God is physics in action.

Jesus, the master mystic, was very clear:

‘Have faith in God,’ Jesus answered. ‘I tell you the truth, if anyone says to this mountain, “Go, throw yourself into the sea,” and does not doubt in his heart but believes that what he says will happen, it will be done for him. Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours. And when you stand praying, if you hold anything against anyone, forgive him, so that your Father in heaven may forgive you your sins.’

When I was a Christian I interpreted this as meaning that if I didn’t forgive people, I was a horrible, unforgiving wretch, and God wasn’t going to forgive me. So how can God give me anything when I’m on his shitlist?

Now I interpret it to mean that if I believe that I will receive what I desire, and do not stray from that course with doubt and disbelief, that I will manifest that desire, whether it be for material things, health, happiness, whatever.

The doorway to freedom, health and happiness is to forgive others, to let the past go, don’t keep score. Live in the present moment. Dragging around wrongs done you will poison you and keep you in perpetual bondage. When you forgive others, then you can then forgive yourself and let drop your burden of guilt.

It’s up to you. You can choose the life you want. But you have to work for it. Excuses are just thoughts you use to convince yourself you are powerless. Stop using excuses. Choose to get well. Don’t believe people who tell you you can’t change, especially not those who benefit monetarily by your illness.

Medicine does not study health. It studies disease. So medicine does not find cause, therefore it cannot remove cause. Look to medicine if you want to “manage” your disease. If you want health, look for people who study health. Ask healthy people how they stay healthy. Let the dead bury the dead.

I once played tennis with a man who berated himself after every missed or faulty hit. “You idiot!” “Stupid, stupid, stupid.” “How could you miss that?” “Dummy!” What was supposed to be a game of fun was an exercise in self-condemnation. He wasn’t even aware of it; it was a conditioned response, perhaps taught to him by his parents. He would never talk that way to someone else.

We screw up and say “I can’t believe I did that! How stupid of me. I’m so embarrassed. My, what a wretch I am.” And I don’t think we’re embarrassed because of the mistake itself. I mean, if no one knew, would we feel as bad? It’s because of how people will judge and condemn us, reject us. We will be unlovable. But you would have to be perfect to not make any mistakes.

Mistakes are Neither Good nor Bad

I remember a story about an employee who lost his company a million dollars. When the boss called him into the office the employee said, “I suppose you’re going to fire me.” The boss exclaimed, “Fire you? I just paid a million dollars to train you!”

What would happen if we were to stop judging our mistakes as good or bad? If we removed all emotional weight from them, all condemnation? We would be in a much better position to view the mistake from all angles. We could consider better choices we could have made. We could actually learn from the mistake and not repeat it.

Society holds us accountable for our mistakes. It wants us to suffer. And so we accept that, judge ourselves poorly, and carry around needless, deadly guilt. Or we try to dismiss the mistake (without learning from it) by refusing to take ownership of it. “Yes, I made the mistake, but it was because so-and-so….” It takes a lot of energy to lie to ourselves which creates resistance in our body and soul.

In The Four Agreements the author rightly says that animals in nature pay for their mistakes once but humans pay over and over. First we remind ourselves repeatedly of our stupidity, and then our friends and loved ones throw our mistakes back in our faces.

If you have inadvertently harmed someone and it is in your power to correct what happened, to apologize, to mend, to compensate, then take responsibility and do so. Just refuse to carry guilt over your mistakes.

People Won’t Want to Let You Off the Hook

But be prepared. People aren’t going to like it. They’re going to want you to demonstrate appropriate guilt and remorse. They’ll want you to hang your head in shame and grovel for forgiveness. If you don’t, the person offended might think you weren’t really sorry, which means you aren’t really their friend or dutiful son or faithful employee. You harmed them and don’t care. To get right down to it, you have betrayed them. And they want you to hurt for a while like they hurt.

Emancipate yourself. Don’t let the demands or expectations of others cause you to condemn yourself for being human. Guilt will suppress your immune system and can make you sick. Do animals ever feel guilt? How unnatural!

One of the greatest benefits of forgiving yourself for your mistakes is that you’ll be much more forgiving of others. As they say, “What goes around, comes around.” So learn once and forgive yourself. And don’t make others pay a price for their mistakes.

Post inspired by The Power of Your Supermind.

As I lay in bed last night unable to fall asleep, I thought about the things I would have to do today. I have the distasteful task of writing a letter to my book vendors informing them that my corporation is insolvent and is now closed, and that they would receive no more money. I also had to begin the tedious work of documenting my entire inventory: a 1,100 square foot shop, about 1,200 square feet in my home, and two 15 X 30 two storage units full of boxes. I would have to open each box, count the books, seal them up again, and record them. I was dreading Monday.

I closed my business last Tuesday, packed books Tuesday and Wednesday, and then thought I’d take the rest of the week off. Just relax. Just enjoy not having to pack books. But the relief of closing this business that I’d grown to hate was replaced by knowledge that it wasn’t over yet. Now I have to figure out how to sell the books for enough money to pay off the IRS, support myself over the next couple of months and then get myself and my few belongings to the east coast.

This morning when I woke up I thought about how I had bought cat food yesterday, which I could only have done if yesterday was Saturday, because the pet food store is closed Sunday. As I lay in bed procrastinating getting up I realized that it was only Sunday. Yay! One more day of freedom! Happy happy.

We Really Screwed Things Up

For several years selling books I loved the business so much that I worked every day, even weekends. I liked weekdays better because I could go shopping and encounter far fewer people at the store or on the road. But then when I lost interest in the business and it became a burden, every day was a workday with few days off.

How did we get to the place where five days out of the week are dreaded or tolerated to get to the other two? When I was in the working world I hated Monday and most of the days following it. We’ve given Wednesday the name “hump day” because the tedious climb through the week is downhill from that day. Hump day? Makes me feel like I’m mining coal. I couldn’t wait to get to Friday night.

Evenings during the week were spent in front of the TV recuperating from the daytime boredom by entering into someone else’s fantasy. When I was younger I escaped in sci-fi or fantasy books or alcohol and sad love songs. Saturday was the day I got everything done, then Sunday was used mostly to build up dread of Monday.

A lot of people choose the weekend to enter into a drug-induced coma so that they miss its glory and end up at Monday none the better for the time off. That’s what I used to do in my twenties. Friday night was the night to enjoy life by getting completely smashed. Saturday usually involved a hangover and depressed condition. Sunday was, again, the day before Monday.

Then there’s the whole housecleaning routine. When I was a child Saturday was the day for chores. Why choose one of the few days off and then spend hours cleaning a house? You mean I have to go to school all week, and now that I don’t have to go I have to polish the furniture, vacuum the carpet, wash the windows and hedge the lawn? What happened to gathering with the tribe, eating together and dancing to drumbeats?

Do farmers dread Monday? Do those people who own a small home, grow their own food, and trade with their neighbors dread Monday?

What Have We Lost? What Have We Gained?

Have we given up five days of the week so we can have the modern appliances, cars, computers, homes, TVs, DVDs, IPODs, constant noise and stimulation? What would it be like to own a small home on a little piece of land. You could grow your own food. You could grow trees to cut and burn for heat. A few livestock, some grain and canned goods could provide sustenance through the winter months. And perhaps a loved hobby could produce goods to be traded for money to buy the other things you can’t make or do for yourself. To make some pocket change to spend at the town coffee shop visiting with your neighbors?

That’s how we used to live until the last hundred or so years. There were few corporations. People owned small businesses and traded with others. Neighbors helped neighbors. Yes, I’m sure there was hardship as well, hungry, cold nights, backbreaking work, isolation. But at the end of the day in front of the fire with your boots off, your dog at your feet, your spouse sitting beside you, was having a body capable of such work a reward in itself? Was your exhaustion that of the builder or the consumer? I know I exhaust my mind long before my body grows tired.

We have become slaves of corporate owners who pay us just enough to want more. We are brainwashed into coveting things we don’t need and needing credit to get them. Isn’t there a way to combine the conveniences of modern life with the simplicity of the small country home?

If you love your job, you are in an enviable position. If you love the city, you are most blessed in this age. Please make sure you save up enough money to care for yourself should you lose that job or grow tired of it. If you own a home, pay it off as quickly as possible.

For those who hate their work, think of ways you can get out of it. Do you work a job you hate to pay for an expensive house in the city? How much work would you have to do if you sold that house and moved to a less expensive home or city? A small business can provide income, tax writeoffs, and independence. What do you love to do? Find out what that is and figure out a way to make money from it.

I Met a Farmer Woman

I visited a farm last week owned by a single woman. She has five acres. Her main source of income is raising rabbits for food. She has two long, open-sided buildings with thousands of rabbits. I bought some for my cats. Most of her rabbits feed a local wildlife refuge. She also has a couple cows with names of restaurants (one of them was IHOP) to remind her they are food, not pets. She grows a garden and has many chickens for meat and eggs. She is mostly self-sustaining and well fed. She earns enough to pay her way, pay for her house and land, but not enough to have to pay taxes. But she owns five acres and a nice home in the country and is not far from the city. How hard would that be to duplicate?

The Price of Giving Up Our Independence

We’ve moved away from the country and given over the growing and raising of our food to corporations. And where has that gotten us? We enslave animals and house them in horrific conditions. And we eat that nastiness. Our food is grown and raised with the help of toxic chemicals that make us and the land sick. And simple fluctuations in oil cause the prices to rise or fall. We are at the mercy of others just to eat. If a catastrophe happens or transportation stops, where will you get your food?

I knew a woman who wanted to move out of the city but had to be sure she was near a major hospital. What the hell is that? That’s awful! This woman was obese with high blood pressure and arthritis and was on hormones after the doctors removed her uterus. She invited me to her home for dinner with friends and served a delicious multi-course meal that would make anyone sick over time. And she used to argue with me about health! Like she knew something about the topic. She traded independence for tastebud stimulation.

This is a modern dilemma. I doubt anybody was worried about living near a hospital a hundred years ago, unless he was a doctor, but then he probably had a little family practice in his own home town where the major problems were broken bones, not diabetes, heart disease, and cancer. Do you think you’d need that hospital if you grew your own food, worked your land, took your ease on the porch, played cribbage with your neighbors?

Woodstock

Joni Mitchell is my favorite songwriter and singer, and she eloquently expresses the longing in my soul for connection with the land. She wrote this song about the Woodstock festival, and the song is a classic that has been covered by many bands. It was published in her third album Ladies of the Canyon.

I came upon a child of God
He was walking along the road
And I asked him where are you going
And this he told me
I’m going on down to Yasgur’s farm
I’m going to join in a rock ‘n’ roll band
I’m going to camp out on the land
I’m going to try an’ get my soul free

We are stardust
We are golden
And we’ve got to get ourselves
Back to the garden

Then can I walk beside you
I have come here to lose the smog
And I feel to be a cog in something turning
Well maybe it is just the time of year
Or maybe it’s the time of man
I don’t know who I am
But you know life is for learning

We are stardust
We are golden
And we’ve got to get ourselves
Back to the garden

By the time we got to Woodstock
We were half a million strong
And everywhere there was song and celebration
And I dreamed I saw the bombers
Riding shotgun in the sky
And they were turning into butterflies
Above our nation

We are stardust
Billion year old carbon
We are golden
Caught in the devil’s bargain
And we’ve got to get ourselves
back to the garden

Joni Mitchell
Copyright © Siquomb Publishing Company

Do you want to move to the land? Try books like Finding & Buying Your Place in Country. For an alternate view, there’s Back from the Land: How Young Americans Went to Nature in the 1970s and Why They Came Back. (I haven’t read that one yet, but the reviews are intriguing and I’ve added it to my wishlist.)

Are you interested in living on the land? What would you like to get out of it? If you do live on the land, what do you like and dislike about it?

My friend Polly did a remarkable thing. She saved money and took time off work to educate herself so she could improve her marketability. In five years she earned a Masters degree in communication. Actually, the Bachelors degree took four years and the Masters one. When she first told me she was going back to school, I thought, “Yeah, okay. Take a few classes. I’ve done that.” But this woman got a Masters! Then she spent a couple years caring for her sick mother who is doing much better. I am in awe of her determination and her accomplishment.

She called me this weekend crying because she’s having trouble finding work. The recruiters she is talking to say she’s been out of the work force too long. What? She hasn’t kept up her skill set. What? Here’s a woman who not only made a decision to get a degree and actually got it, but she also planned and saved so she could take the time off from work and still support herself. How many people do you know have such discipline and foresight?

I’m a believer that we choose our life lessons, and that everything happens for a reason, though we may not understand it at the time. Polly believes these things too. But we need each other to remind us because it’s easy to get lost in the problem. So I reminded Polly. I tried to cheer her up with positive encouragement. While we were talking another call came in that she had been waiting for, so she promised to call me back.

After we hung up, I started thinking about her situation. I realized that it wasn’t that she couldn’t find a job that made her cry. She’d been looking for only a couple of weeks. It was lack of control. She had had complete control for years. But now she was in a position where she had to rely on the cooperation of others to meet her goals.

Polly wasn’t afforded simple courtesies by these people that she was now relying on to help her find employment. Her phone calls weren’t returned. Her emails were not acknowledged. She was just another “client” that was easily set aside and ignored. The recruiters abandoned manners in favor of efficiency. I imagine they just don’t care about Polly’s goals.

I also got to questioning why I was trying to cheer her up? What about our society makes sadness so unwelcome? She was frustrated. Okay. Feel the frustration. She was crying. Go ahead and cry. It’s all good. It’s all part of life. Why was I trying to fix it?

The last two years have been some of the hardest years of my life. I lost a beloved cat, George, who was the finest person I ever knew, and I lost his sister, Tiny, a couple months before. My business income was being reduced every month by competition and a failing economy. I couldn’t afford my house. I was perimenopausal and anemic. I was vitamin D deficient and depressed. I was having a hard time of it and cried quite a bit. I was being emotionally and physically wrung out.

People that I confided in suggested I see a doctor for hormone replacement or antidepressants. One woman was concerned that I might become suicidal because, I guess, her own depression had made her suicidal. I appreciated the concern of these people, but I wasn’t suicidal. Suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem. I don’t even think I was depressed. What is “depressed” anyway? I was simply experiencing the full range of emotions that humans are built to experience.

I had physiological reasons for feeling sad and depressed, and I certainly had enough negative thoughts to further disrupt my body chemistry. I was grieving the loss of a loved one. I was fearful because I was unable to pay my mortgage. I hated my work but had to keep doing it to pay the bills. These negative emotions were a normal response given my circumstances. So I embraced them. I rested in them. Why would I want to deaden my emotions and feelings because they happened to be unpleasant? Why run from them?

Why are we so obsessed with feeling good and so afraid of feeling bad that we take drugs and food to elevate our mood? People trade emotional pain for a fog of pharmaceutical bliss, a fog that diminishes their capacity for both joy and grief. People run from tears, try to fix others that are tearful. I drank for 15 years to drown my own emotional pain and had to face it when I got sober.

You will have times when you are sad and depressed and hopeless. But if you fight the feeling, if you tighten your body against it, you’ll only be worse off. Embrace your pain. It’s all good. Let yourself cry. Don’t deaden it with drugs or alcohol or pharmaceuticals. Let it motivate you to change.

Many doctors will be happy to prescribe an antidepressant for you, and it sure seems like a quick way out of pain. But at what cost?

Anxiety, agitation, panic attacks, insomnia, irritability, hostility, impulsivity, akathisia (severe restlessness), hypomania, and mania have been reported in adult and pediatric patients being treated with antidepressants for major depressive disorder as well as for other indications, both psychiatric and nonpsychiatric. Although FDA has not concluded that these symptoms are a precursor to either worsening of depression or the emergence of suicidal impulses, there is concern that patients who experience one or more of these symptoms may be at increased risk for worsening depression or suicidality. Therefore, therapy should be evaluated, and medications may need to be discontinued, when symptoms are severe, abrupt in onset, or were not part of the patient’s presenting symptoms.–FDA Public Health Advisory

Do you want to trade unpleasant and painful emotions that can motivate positive change for anxiety, agitation, panic attacks, insomnia, irritability, hostility, impulsivity, akathisia, hypomania, mania, worsening depression and suicidality? Manipulating body chemistry is a scary thing.

Polly is now dependent on strangers for help. It’s not a comfortable place to be in when you’re as determined and accomplished as she is. But relinquishing control can also be a life-affirming step, a step that teaches you to trust God, trust the universe, trust the flow of life experience to take you where you need to go.

The Serenity Prayer of AA is:

God, grant me the serenity
To accept the things I cannot change
The courage to change the things I can
And the wisdom to know the difference

That saying has helped a lot of drunks, me included. Let it help you and motivate you through your hard times.