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From: Jasper
Date: 28 Sep 2005
Time: 09:42:21 PM
Marilyn, ……. I said in a previous post on this subject that I hated the acronym PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder). Nomi Fredric, a brilliant psychiatrist who used to post with us, was the one who figured it out. In our phone conversations we talked about the condition at length but every time I tried to say “PTSD” I stumbled badly. …….. Finally, I said, “I don’t know why I can’t say that word.” ……..She said, “It’s because you hate it.” ……..Eureka! The mild discomfort I consciously experienced whenever I heard “PTSD” or tried to say it almost erupted in tears before morphing to an angry outburst at my “PTSD” shrink and psychiatry in general. Nomi did not take it personally. She concurred. ……..Post Traumatic Stress Disorder was invented to further political and financial agendas. There is a pharmacological basis to the syndrome (depression, rage and panic attacks, nightmares, sleep deprivation, etc.) but the condition itself is rooted in an event like the assault on Mario. We survive without going nuts by suppressing the feelings we had when the event occurred. But those feelings do not disintegrate; they hibernate. ……… Delayed Stress Syndrome (DSS) was the original name for what happened to me when all of those feelings from over a decade earlier came rushing at me simultaneously. It was descriptive, accurate and devoid of political connotations. It was simply a delayed reaction to an immensely stressful situation characterized by a group of symptoms (a syndrome) you would expect to see in the individual when the incident occurred. It was like getting hit in the head with hammer and feeling the pain years later. When you separate the cause from the effect as you do with “post traumatic” (after the trauma does not necessarily mean because of the trauma) you are not being descriptive or accurate. Calling the effects a “disorder” sets the stage for labeling the victim defective in some way that people of superior character are not and treating the symptoms with lots of expensive therapy sessions and expensive drugs that make the condition worse. ……… Nomi filled me in on the biology and corresponding pharmacology of DSS, which led her to a drug that worked, like the drugs used to treat schizophrenia. But it was not on the American Medical Association’s list of drugs “recommended” for treatment of this “disorder.” When I first heard about Nomi in connection with the death of Steven Ammerman and Don Simpson I speculated that she might be a drug dealer because of the way the Chuck Phillips articles about her make her sound. The unlawful suspension of her license to practice medicine had more to do with politics than anything she did wrong. She did nothing wrong. ………Bill Wasz did a lot of things wrong. Writing We Only Kill Our Friends wasn’t one of them. His book shows that our justice system works like our medical system to ruin people’s lives for political advantage and money. These machines are destroying our country and time after time we’ve seen the same people at the controls. –Jasper