Me 'N the Scientologist Agree!

Until 1990, I'd never even heard of anti-depressants. Then I briefly dated a guy who started taking them after a slight emotional jolt sent him "over the edge" (into depression?). While my then boyfriend was poppin' whatever the pre-cursor to Prozac was, his speech was slurred, his driving skills were terrifying and his over all ability to roll with day-to-day life evaporated. Eventually his sister, who was a nurse, flushed his meds and life returned to relative normal.

In 1995, I had a couple of college friends who were on Prozac. One liked to cut up her wrists with car keys while on it because she said she 'couldn't feel anything.' The other calmly told me she had lurid nightmares of murdering her parents and dismembering their bodies ... but that was just part of the 'process of adjusting to the meds.'

When I moved to Seattle in winter 2003, I (very) briefly rented a room from a 58-year-old, unemployed Boeing engineer who had been on Zoloft for about three years. This was the same amount of time he'd been unemployed. His doctor had initially prescribed the drug for just three months while my roomie was recovering from a mild heart attack but he had since found other ways to get his Zoloft fix.

My roommate's favorite pastimes included: sitting in the living room by himself with the lights off for hours, getting up at 4:30am every Saturday and Sunday to "meditate" and watching the Home Shopping Network. Every day. At a certain prescribed time. He told me he had no doubt that he was "addicted" to Zoloft but that he loved how it had made his life "fuller." His aging Filipino girlfriend was on something similar, Celexa, I think. They enjoyed swapping meds and playing around with the dosages just to see how it would alter the high.

Jesus fucking Christ in a hat.

Recently, I worked a month-long temp assignment for a guy who was on Paxil. This abrasive Yuppie asshole admitted he was addicted to it and he gleefully recounted how he'd mixed up his indigestion meds with the Paxil and "accidentally" taken triple his prescribed dose for several months. He said despite the liver damage, he'd "never felt better." And the guy was twitchier than a monkey after a triple-shot espresso. He was incapable of concentrating on anything for more than three minutes and paranoid? His paranoia made every cocaine or pot user I've ever worked with pale in comparison. They're all plotting against me was his personal mantra.

A five-minute trot around the Infobaun reveals a whole bunch of things about so-called mood stabilizers. First of all, psychiatrists -- a profession not historically known for it's open-mindedness or long attention span -- have admitted that they "don't know exactly how Selective Seratonin Re-uptake Inhibitors work."

There's tons of stuff out there arguing against SSRIs (Zoloft, Prozac, Paxil, etc.) at least until doctors have a clue what they do to our brains ... or the pharmacutical corporations admit what they know (it burns holes in your head, your brains fall out your ass, whatever).

Ironically, I'm in agreement with the Scientologist. One of their celebrity darlings, Giovanni Ribisi, said it best: "You're taking a pill not to feel an emotion."

My own psychologist of a half-dozen years was opposed to mood stabilizers unless someone was screaming crazy. He said essentially the same thing that actor said that our culture tries to medicate depression and sadness rather than understand it.

Here's a small list of just some of the side effects of taking these sketchy drugs: irritability, aggression, nightmares, dizziness, extreme nausea, psychological dependency, physical dependancy/withdrawal symptoms, crying spells, light headedness, coordination problems, sweating, vomiting, agitation, memory/concentration difficulties and general fatigue.

And Number One on the Top Ten List of reasons why you shouldn't ever take it: a marked increase in the likelihood of extreme depression and possible suicide attempt.

Oh, I'm sooo stickin' with a Friday night cocktail and a joint ...


-- Mz M.

Child Abuse

I wish I could go back in time, find my 11-year-old self and beat her senseless with a leather belt until she brushed her teeth at least twice a day. There is a legitimate excuse for child abuse: dental care. Not only am I in pain but root canals and the thrill of follow up visits and crowns and all that crap is breath-takingly expensive.

Tragically, I lived on Slurpees and popcorn when I was a kid and refused to take care of my teeth until I was 13 and after a 5-hour stint in a scary hillbilly dentist's office to the tune of about 10 fillings and God knows how much that set my mother back. If I hadn't sucked my thumb when I was little and if I'd not been a stranger to my toothbrush, I wouldn't be sitting here in pain right now unable to eat dinner.

-- Mz M.

Where's Yer Moses Now, Huh?

So I'm watching this cheesy-ass remake of The Ten Commandments and Moses, played -- by the whitest Brit on earth (glow-in-the-dark Honky) -- has just been sent out into the desert by his brother, Naveen Andrews (much browner). And what does Naveen give him as a going away gift?! A scarf! It's like: "Oh wait, Moses. Here take these mittens. It might drop down to 90 degrees tonight."

I never thought I'd miss ol' Chuck Apes-with-Guns-Kill-People Heston but, at least he bothered to get a tan first.

This remake is a bunch of Limeys on a Moroccan holiday gone wrong. Their youth hostel cards have expired so they're all being forced to live in really dirty tents and not wash their hair for a month.

I miss Edward G. Robinson. You never knew if he was gonna breed sedition against Moses or ... push him down a flight of stairs in a wheelchair. Ya know, have him whacked.

-- Mz M.

The Two 'F's or Why I've Hated Hollywood Since 1986

Last night while Hollywood was 'quietly judging' poor Jon Stewart as he steered the ol' Academy Awards back into port at it's usual social iceberg; I remembered when I first decided the Oscars were just plain shit.

In 1986, I was just 21 and living in the 'big city' of Sacramento. One day, on a whim I wandered into a mostly empty art house theater in the downtown area. I'd never been in an art house theater before, and aside from the uncomfortable chairs and the 1920's architecture, I initially thought it was like any other Cineplex, just smaller. I saw a movie I'd never heard of by a South American filmmaker I'd never heard of starring one actor I'd vaguely heard of (William Hurt). The movie was Kiss of the Spider Woman, and as the cliche goes, it changed my life.

For the first time I thought maybe movies (and storytelling) could actually do something. Forget that it was Raul Julia playing a political prisoner in an anonymous Latin American prison. And please forget that it had William Hurt deftly playing the most mincing and effeminate of drag queens. Because if you think that's all that movie was about, 1) you slept through it and 2) you're an idiot. Kiss of the Spider Woman was William Golding-ish in scope. It asked THE big questions: why do people do the right thing versus the wrong thing? Are they only inspired by selfish lust or does something more altruistic prompt people to risk their lives for the intangible good?

Within a year, I was living back in Nevada, far from the balmy winters and art house theaters of Sacramento. I watched the Oscars with my mother and sat there in dumbfounded shock when the Best Picture for 1986 went to Out of Africa; a bland movie about lily-white people loving and dying of syphilis in dark-brown Africa. I realized what a lot of other people already knew about the most self-congratulatory and self-censoring business in America. Hollywood has been bending over for conservative America's big raging paranoia hard-on for decades.

Last night Brokeback Mountain lost to an over-blown, wanna-be controversial film about a car accident because Brokeback has fags in it. EeewwW!

While Howard Stern had it right, the 'L' word (lesbians) equal money; the 'F' word sends legions of worried, ignorant Americans scampering for the exits. Both fags and feminists upset the patriarchal dynamic paradigm and it's high time the boys from 'Ave. G' realized that. The patriarchy likes things they can quantify, objectify and above all else, control. Homosexual male sex upsets them enough because it hints that masculinity, like femininity, is a myth and because it implies that male beauty must subscribe to some of the same cruel rules feminine beauty has slaved uselessly under. Men might just have to be as trim, young and pretty as women and where would that leave all these fat, ugly old patriarchs? But male homo love sends the gippers sprinting for their Mercedes SUVs! If some men actually LOVED each other there'd be no ... violence ... no ... war. Wouldn't that fuck up every Halliburton shareholder's day?

I like all of filmmaker Ang Lee's movies. For an Asian working on a green card, he sure can take America's pulse. I quite enjoyed The Ice Storm and the way he showed the hypocrisies of the 1970's without losing empathy for that film's unlucky characters. (Imagine Neil Labute if he had a heart.) But Brokeback Mountain is flawless. Lee took a broadly sketched Anne Proulx short story and made it flesh and blood. And Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal did what actors are SUPPOSED to do. They took a big chance. Who gives a shit if Lee went home with one less trophy last night? I predict this movie will be much like the big ones of old. Like Inherit the Wind, no one will soon forget Brokeback Mountain.

-- Mz M.