Stella O'Malley on the Link Between Euthanasia, Transition, and Psychiatric Medication: SG #71

[@janebennetto5655]

I am my husbands assistant/ carer since he broke his neck and sustained a partial spinal injury in October 2018. My coping with my anxiety levels became untenable and I was not able to enjoy my life as myself and a carer. I commenced Prozac last year after being ‘stoic’ for 4 years and I am back to myself again. I am so glad for Prozac -I hated Talking Therapy as it just highlighted all the things I have to deal with and I am now able to just get on with them. I enjoyed this discussion and see how over- medication of all sorts of disorders have been a disadvantage to many people BUT I also appreciate that medication has helped me and my life with my husband. ❤🇬🇧

[@skylinefever]

Indeed. Therapy was useless to me, and felt like more motivational coach bullshit.

[@liberality]

​@@skylinefever Quality of therapists can vary.

[@skylinefever]

@@liberality yes. However, I went to more than one and it all sounded like motivational bullshit.

[@ribbrascal]

Stella nailed it (no pun intended) about the beauty of going to church as communal sacrament. I was raised Catholic, lapsed away for various ecumenical disagreements, and started going to Mass again with my elderly uncle, and say "peace be with you".

[@skylinefever]

I was forced into religion, and it made me a reddit athiest.

[@squirrel490-n1p]

This was just a combination of my two favourite podcasts Gender: A Wider Lens and the Radical Centre

[@theradicalcenter]

That's a big compliment- thank you ♥️

[@debbielondon1809]

Marvellous discussion. My mother remembered her first bout of depression when she was eight years old - she realised the reality of death and found it an unbearable idea. She told nobody, although her mother worried about her because she stopped telling her younger sister stories. As an artist she remained philosophically troubled throughout her life. Passing depression was a part of her questioning the world and the universe - it was also part of her capacity to empathise with others which in turn contributed to her being a marvellous teacher. Re Stella's story of the boy who could not sit still in school - we desperately need to reassess our school system. My take is that we are expecting children to sit still more than ever at school. Kids used to have much more time to run around. A properly physically exhausted child can sit down for an hour or so, but this is no longer available to them. Now they are even given book bags to take home from age 4 - instead of being let out to ride their bikes etc. School/education was a limited torture...now it dominates children's lives. They are also being introduced to the idea of failure far earlier...this did not dawn on me (I am 62) until I was about 10. Yet we think we have progressed!

[@AndyJarman]

The Scottish assembly is currently holding an inquiry into the state's response to the COVID pandemic. It has been revealed that vulnerable people have been routinely issued, unsolicited, Do Not Resuscitate orders, and advised to put them next to their beds for first responders to see. There was a time I trusted the medical profession to use its judgement when to change my care from curative to palliative. Not anymore though.

[@NinjaKittyBonks]

STEEEEEELLLLLLAAAAAAAAAAAAA ! No, The Kitty will NOT stop saying that 🥰Thank you all, our wonderful ladies of Solid Ground for another nice conversation 🐈

[@Clem62]

Kitty did you hear about the new medication that is the active chemical in cat nip? It's safe supply. You don't have to worry about getting bad adulterated stuff anymore.

[@NinjaKittyBonks]

@@Clem62 ... it's too late😿Needed intervention a few months back..... it was pretty bad 😭 . kzbin.infoEZpi3k7CA7U

[@NinjaKittyBonks]

@@Clem62 .... it's too late😿Needed intervention a year or so ago.... it was a low point😭 Search: @petcollective channel for "Cat nip craziness" 1 min short video yt deleted my comment, because it had hyperlink

[@janinegriffiths8281]

This was a great conversation. Stella is amazing, thanks for having her on.

[@ribbrascal]

This was a profound episode. I also choose Analog Human Island over Transhumanist Modification Woketopia, in a heartbeat.

[@cestmoi4532]

I must say, when Leslie said that I had such a visceral reaction. To the Island! 🛶

[@Jules-Is-a-Guy]

I just commented on another channel abt euthanasia, this is darkly serendipitous. I don't think it should be completely illegal, or at least not significantly criminalized (depending on the state,) but the creation of perverse incentives around this issue is a real problem, therefore it shouldn't be institutionalized by the State, and there might be some additional considerations, and protections along these lines I'd support (I'll need to learn more abt this issue in the future).

[@ribbrascal]

Agreed. I helped my paraplegic friend end her life when her prognosis foretold a long and painful death after 30 years in a wheelchair after skiing off a cliff onto a tree in Aspen on Valentine's Day. I poured the second bottle of morphine into her mouth when her one gimpy arm became useless after consuming the first bottle. Her doctor knew what I did, she was in the other room, along with a few other friends. No regrets whatsoever.

[@Jules-Is-a-Guy]

@@ribbrascal That's really tough, sorry.

[@skylinefever]

This is why I often argue that there should be free market Futurama phone booths.

[@mrlawilliamsukwarmachine4904]

I recall identity as a youth/teen in the 1980s. We each had our own super powers (like x-men or avengers). You’d be known as being particularly good at something. Maybe pulling a wheelie; keepy-uppies; drums;drawing;puzzles…SOMETHING!

[@Accountdeactivated_1986]

Being good at things is now racist and part of white supremacy culture. In the future we will all be bad at everything and be happy.

[@groworforage342]

the way you zeroed in on comparing mental illness to a physical injury is interesting to me because I have always liked to explain why talking therapy hasn't helped my severe ptsd from being sa/kidnapped is like if you had a broken arm and learned every aspect of a broken arm from the anatomy to the particular way your arm is broken- your arm would not be healed and your suffering would not be less. what is the thing that actually turns the screw on healing- time? If it is then the time would pass if you are in therapy or not but if you are in therapy you might assume all the talking is helping when it's really just the time.

[@skylinefever]

I think about how many therapists will deny that therapy can make misery worse.

[@carolsimpson4422]

@@skylinefever i read somewhere about a sudy that has actually shown that expressing a bad memory verbally, or in writing, is only helpful when the memory is no longer so raw, so it brings less emotional reaction. An anology given is removing stitches too soon- it just makes it worse, increasing ptsd symptoms. After that period, these topics can be tackled and can lead to greater mental well-being.

[@dani_no_thank_you]

Great conversation today.

[@ireallymeanthis2760]

What a brilliant debate. So many strands seem to have been pulled together.

[@KarenKennedy-lq8nt]

The doctors have a chart from the insurance company that matches up to the symptoms the drugs to use for it.

[@cestmoi4532]

So wonderful. Thank you so much for this excellent conversation. ❤

[@281992pdr]

This is a great channel. I always learn something from the sessions. Thank you.

[@donalfoley2412]

Thank you. I enjoyed listening to your reasonable conversation. One reservation: you take it for granted that many woman saints suffered from anorexia because they fasted. Fasting is a part of ascecis in Christianity and in other traditions which the modern West finds weird but which was and is normal in most parts of the world. Of course we can go too far with fasting as with any other practice, and I am sure samples abound, but to say that all those woman saints were anorexics because they imposed strict fasts on themselves is unreasonable. Of course there were many man saints who imposed the same kind of fasts on themselves. Were they anorexic too? Is it reasonable to say that anyone in the past who does something that we modern Westerners who worship comfort find unreasonable must be suffering from some kind of mental illness? Might there not be another, deeper explanation? Are we the first or second generation for thousands of years (at the very least, Christians and pagans together) to think it is necessarily unhealthy to fast (unless it is to make us more attractive)? Any answers or objections welcome. And thank you again. It was like a breath of fresh air to hear you.

[@LordBlk]

Stella is just great!

[@billyray105]

Great Job as always cheers from Canada

[@HomeAtLast501]

They probably kept your grandson under special care in order to "optimize revenues per patient". They had an excuse to use, which was that he was premature.

[@skylinefever]

That does not surprise me at all. Gotta milk insurance for all you can, then wonder why nobody can afford it.

[@HomeAtLast501]

@@skylinefever This is rampant and common. In the late '80s I worked in consulting in the healthcare industry, and whenever a doctor we were working with bought a certain piece of diagnostic or treatment equipment they began doing medically unnecessary procedures. At that time Medicare was cutting reimbursements on certain surgeries on a planned year-by-year schedule of reduction, and as they cut those reimbursements the NUMBER of procedures the doctors performed increased substantially. I had one doctor openly admit to me that he was doing medically unnecessary surgeries to compensate for the lower compensation per procedure. I myself have had doctors try to get me to do unnecessary surgeries, including spinal surgery. I could go on and on, but you must ALWAYS skeptically examine a doctor's financial motives.

[@AndyJarman]

The ever accelerating never ending liberation of social norms until there is no societal cohesion, and intergenerational wisdom is lost, is a BIG problem with liberal democracy. Accelerated technological change is making parental guidance appear irrelevant. It's encouraging children to ignore traditional norms at an accelerating rate. The lure of more conservative political parties is a symptom of this sense of a loss of core societal values. Mass immigration due to a sense of the nation state as an irrelevance in an increasingly globally integrated world is doing nothing to reassure people that the world they are familiar with, it's shared certainties, is spinning away.

[@ZFabia2010]

Great 4

[@AndyJarman]

41:00 I was reflecting on what my parents must have gone through bringing up five kids in the 60s and 70s. We were so irrespinsible, spoilt and ungrateful. My parents were raised between the wars, living through the Depression and the second war. Their parents were labourers during the Victorian era. We grew our hair long, had free university education, took drugs and openly slept with each other outside of marriage! We think trans is bad!

[@DirtySanchez658]

Stella is lovely

[@AndyJarman]

I can't speak for others, but I found my state school's inclusion of Church of England bible readings and prayer singing at the morning assembly very reassuring and interesting. As is normal with kids, I asserted these stories were all 'made up' to reassure and control people. As I've aged I've found it disturbing to discover kids today have no idea about any of this, they no longer sing together en masse, they have no shared mythological understanding about right and wrong.

[@skylinefever]

I was forced into it, and I got nothing out of it.

[@Jules-Is-a-Guy]

Dam, Leslie & Co. predicted the whole trajectory for my month-long art project! AnCap was first, religion starts next.

[@AndyJarman]

This sounds interesting, can you link me to anything? You might find the TIK History channel video Public vs Private interesting. It dispels the left-right political model, placing libertarianism as the ultimate private non state right wing extreme, and maximum state management while retaining some semblance of democratic process as far left. All totalitarian systems are neither right or left wing because they are outside of liberal democracy altogether. Stalin, Mussolini and Hitler were all totalitarians. Religion is similarly authoritarian - but ideally it could be a private self imposed limitation in line with Ancap anarchism. Jung's observations have given me access to religion without "signing up" to a formal organised religion.

[@indigoandbrown]

I don’t understand the way you’re referring to euthanasia. Assisted dying is legal in my state but you can only be considered for it if your doctor believes you have less than six months to live. Is it different in other places?

[@gaylehudson7267]

I tried mindfulness in 2016, and it made all the things that are unfixable about my life, including untreated chronic pain, come into more painfully-clear focus. NO. THANKS. IGNORANCE AND AVOIDANCE ARE BLISS!!! LOL.

[@VedantaKesari]

The fruits of a spiritually impoverished and nihilistic culture.

[@skylinefever]

How do you get spirituality and meaning out of people who don't get it in the first place?

[@VedantaKesari]

@@skylinefever By speaking up. If you have gained something from God, Guru or a Saint then don’t forget to give back to society by spreading it forward. Don’t gatekeep. Share that light, that love, that message so others benefit around us too. Society gets uplifted. The world gets uplifted. The world really needs it right now.

[@skylinefever]

@@VedantaKesari I guess I was too much of an aspie to get spirituality.

[@VedantaKesari]

@@skylinefever You are in the majority. Most people don't. It's an evolutionary thing.

[@Jules-Is-a-Guy]

Gen X in the 90's was reacting to the Boomer consumerism of the 80's. (This was relatively more recent).

[@AndyJarman]

There was a huge rally in London this last weekend mourning the loss of, and celebrating the love of national identity. England, Scotland and Wales flags were flown, along with Israeli ones! There was a communal recital of the Lord's prayer and an open assertion of Christianity as a core national value. The Socialist Worker newspaper reported it as a far right neo nazi rally. Saying prayers together and searching for common interests? Mutual respect for, but no enforced agreement about differences? Flying the Jewish flag, these are neo Nazi symbols now? Two arrests of pro-Palestine protestors - no other trouble. Cognitive dissonance?

[@janinegriffiths8281]

Unitarian Universalism is a very accepting liberal spiritual tradition that was originally based in Christianity. I am a practicing Pagan but I go to a UU church for the community and deeper delving into spiritual life and it's benefits.

[@juliam3980]

Yes, in the early 2000's I and my young family attended a UU congregation. We called it church without the church. We had services on Saturday afternoon, monthly potluck dinners, singing, all the good stuff without the heapin' helpin' of guilt. Sadly, the UU has been riven by critical social justice craziness and I don't think I could go there now.

[@MK-ih6wp]

I can count on 1 hand the number of people I know who don’t take AT LEAST one daily prescription medication.

[@philliasphog6689]

Meditation with Homa is guaranteed to change lives.

[@skylinefever]

I saw therapy as an NPC spewing the same old crap that motivational speakers did, then added the gaslight effect. I saw holy people as sprinkling God and Jesus into the same motivational garbage, then saying "Pray harder" or "just believe." I would be less painful for me to receive a nutcracker kick than having psychotherapy CBT. "Happiness is a choice" says the therapy or motivational type. I ask "where is the switch for happiness mode" and the NPC can't answer. I argue for allowing euthanasia, because we were dragged into this world without our consent, the least we could have is an exit on our terms. I think I hate so many things because life was "just do xyz and it will be good." I do xyz, and things still suck. Then people look at me like I am some kind of idiot. I often say the problem is that people fell for the "power of positive thinking" scam. Power of positive thinking thought cops won't tolerate the idea of people having non fixable problems. I defend allowing transhumanism in hopes the Idiocracy is lessened. I hear people complaining about the masses wanting quick fixes. I argue that the problem is that slow fixes are broken. We all heard about how we can't get rich quick. Well, we can't get rich slow anymore by just doing really well in school, working hard at the job it got us, and put money in the bank. Now the jobs aren't there, inflation destroys what we try to save, so why not try to get rich quick. Religion works for the people it actually works for. Go ask the reddit athiests who were forced into religion how much good it did for them. All I got was years of paranoia for hellfire and brimstone sermons. It's why I tell the Southern Baptist Convention can take their Bibles and cram them. Everthing happens for no reason could just be replaced by the reason that everything everything sucks is because God is a raging narcissist. "Change your attitude." It felt like telling the wind not to blow and expecting results. I like how the Collins institute looks into making a religion because to many youth, religions look like dumb fairy tales. There may be utility value to religion, but it can't be accessed if the people can't believe that stuff in the first place.

[@philliasphog6689]

+1 acknowledging the loss of faith. This is just loss of faith accelerated by the information age.

[@skylinefever]

I think about how many people can't believe, and find reddit. It could all start with "Jesus promised to return with the disciples lifetimes. Well, aren't we nearly 2000 years overdue?"

[@philliasphog6689]

@@skylinefever he did return, he's in our hearts and in the tabernacle. The Bible plays out everyday. Science is made us too concrete.

[@skylinefever]

@@philliasphog6689 It never showed up to that "God shaped hole" that holy men insisted everyone had. Not a day in my life did that stuff ever work.

[@philliasphog6689]

@@skylinefever The business of the church buries the teachings. I tried everything until practicing Hindu Homa/yagnas unlocked what Christian faith revealed.

[@HomeAtLast501]

Come on --- Freud himself referred to it as the "talking cure", with the goal being to resolve psychological problems. This is not a new thing.

[@RB-jl2qb]

As did Carl Jung who was also a psychiatrist who preferred talk therapy as a first port of call.

[@HomeAtLast501]

@@RB-jl2qb You're missing my point. I'm challenging her claim that it's a new, recent development that the goal is to resolve a problem. My point is that the goal of talk therapy has always been to resolve a problem, to bring it to closure, as the first person to use discussion as a medical methodology called it the talking CURE. Freud's goal was to CURE the patient, to CURE them of a problem, to resolve the problem. The goal wasn't the process, as this woman is claiming it has always been. The goal has always been to solve the problem and bring it to closure.

[@RB-jl2qb]

@@HomeAtLast501 I’m not missing the point. I’m agreeing with you.

[@HomeAtLast501]

@@RB-jl2qb The point you made was that Jung also was focused on talk therapy, as though my point was that Freud invented and advocated talk therapy. It's ALL talk therapy. My point was that the goal is to CURE the patient, not to just "take a journey", as the guest was suggesting it had been in the past. Your point and my point are different.

[@liberality]

​@@HomeAtLast501 Actually it was Bertha Pappenheim (Anna O) who called Freud's method 'the talking cure'. Freudian analysis can last indefinitely.

[@OrwellsHousecat]

🐱

[@OldBuzzardProduction]

meddiation works for study stells you shoould of told the girl meditation works to help you relax before beginning your exam as well as practices

[@HomeAtLast501]

Could you edit your comment so we can comprehend it?

[@OrwellsHousecat]

Often works, sometimes bad side effects