for me, the path is toward greater consciousness and memory while respecting that we are largely moved by subconscious forces that can only really be approached through right-brained activities of image, dream and art..esp using those to explore current behavioral roots in childhood.

Whatever, hippie.

I have been listening quite a bit to John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band...when i'm not wearing out my copy of merriweather post pavilion.

What if you have addictive tendencies, but also have a really short attention span?

What if you have addictive tendencies, but also have a really short attention span

Then you join BTF.

What if you have addictive tendencies, but also have a really short attention span?

you are sarah palin.

add are the first three letters in addiction.

newsweeks lead story this week is that antidepressants don't work..that is, they are no more effective than placebo.

it's a cliche, but attacking symptoms rather than causes never works in the long run. what does it mean that 2/3s of women, half of all men and 1/4 of all children are on meds long-term?

what does it mean that 2/3s of women, half of all men and 1/4 of all children are on meds long-term?

You should be long Pfizer and Eli Lilly?

For that reason (2) is the more common treatment, especially among individuals who attempt to self-correct without professional assistance. Simply put, the person re-directs their drive away from the destructive X activity (drugs, alcohol, etc.) towards a more positive (or, at least, positively viewed) activity (exercise, writing, reading, business, etc.)

This seems about right. Religion is another thing towards which people often redirect their energies.

it's not the drive theory that disturbs me so much, but the underlying assumption in western culture going back to at least Augustine that human nature, particularly our sexual nature, is corrupt/corrupting..and while very few people will voice it that way today, or use puritanical or Calvinistic language, the underlying belief is still there, though it comes out in secular judgments about productivity and control and self-discipline.

as I've dived deeper into my own personal psychology and patterned behavior, I've started to jetison a lot of long-held beliefs about religion and politics - liberalism for lack of a better descriptor. not towards the reactionary or conservative direction that most take arond my age (mid-40s), but the opposite - a rejection of the whole idea of god and of humanity's special place in the universe that so much of our thought rests upon.

not so easy to reject, not to just exchange one set of ideas for another.. dispense with god and still hold onto an entire culture and psychology that just replaces god with human.

sometimes I think I'm going to end up like Nietzsche clutching the neck of a flogged horse..and I'm too old to start gunrunning like Rimbaud when he discovered there was no escape from the corrosive effects of western civ..there is a genuine horror at the center of life none of us really want to look too closely at..like finding my 16-year-old cat this week dead, stiff as a board, death grimace on her face, claws stuck in the bed.

regardless, I'm determined to be as fully alive as I can be the rest of my too-few days 'til I meet a similar fate. And I'd rather be dead in a ditch than run over lying in the center of the American expressway of misdirected drivers.

maybe mine is a cautionary tale of what happens when you engage in a passionate affair with a beautiful coworker 12 years your junior who you can no more quit than you can let go of a high-voltage power line.

but I'd go for that electricity every time.

newsweeks lead story this week is that antidepressants don't work..that is, they are no more effective than placebo.

I don't think that's a fair characterization. I just read it, and they said that for some types of depression, the pills are absolutely effective. But it's still overperscribed and overused by a huge factor.

here's the link: http://www.newsweek.com/id/232781

I think my characterization was accurate. the only people showing any real effect were the very worst off.

the science doesn't support their use or effectiveness compared to a variety of other treatments.

like with everything else, I have my bias. I've suffered from depression, pretty severely at times. bad enough that I understand the mindset of the suicidal. I've taken some of the drugs. some have caused people to kill themselves, or try. horrible side effects and relapses.

read it again, esp the parts about seratonin and attempts to silence this evidence. buried studies, and the unwillingness of the medical/insurance industries to pay for more effective treatments.

for me, further evidence that popping pills supports denial, not healing.

Seriously, that's a major violation of the man code. I generally don't judge people but with 6 billion people on the planet, there is no person that is that special. The fact that you were his direct supervisor is arguably irresponsible as well... it isn't clearly unethical, but it's provocative.

There's no way you were a good friend to this person. I'm not taking you off my Christmas card list or putting a hit out on you, but shame on you. He had to be a pretty miserable friend to deserve what you did to him.

When you break up, you have no hold on the person you were dating any more. If someone is a good friend, and it will make them feel poorly, unless you seriously fall in love with the girl, OF COURSE you wouldn't date her, as it's just plain inconsiderate. In this case, as he claimed they were good friends, it's poor behavior (although, as said, we don't know the friendship or relationship).

That being said, any use of the terminology man code is pretty weak.

"when you engage in a passionate affair with a beautiful coworker 12 years your junior who you can no more quit than you can let go of a high-voltage power line"

Rosanne Cash says hi


I'm worried about you

I'm worried about me

The curves around midnight

Aren't easy to see

Flashing red warnings

Unseen in the rain

This thing has turned into

A runaway train



Long-distance phone calls

A voice on the line

Electrical miles

That soften the time

The dynamite too

Is hooked on the wire

And so are the rails

Of American Flyers



Blind boys and gamblers

They invented the blues

Will pay up in blood

When this marker comes due

To try and get off now

It's about as insane

As those who wave lanterns

At runaway trains



Steel rails and hard lives

Are always in twos

I have been here before this

And now it's with you



I'm worried about you

I'm worried about me

We're lighting the fuses

And counting to three

And what are the choices

For those who remain

The sign of the cross

On a runaway train



This thing has turned into

A runaway train

This thing has turned into

A runaway train

Our love has turned into

A runaway train

perrros, dude, the term "drive" is classically Freudian, just like the term "subconscious" [s/b "unconsious" if I wanted to be a dick about it]--my point being that you sound like a Freudian type of thinker, and not the American optimistic "how to fix people" Freudian, but something darker--so why dismiss the idea of the drive?

He broke up with her

Seems to me like this is the most important factor. If he broke up with her (and it wasn't because she cheated on him or something), then I don't think you have any obligation other than to talk to him about it (preferably beforehand).

yalls man code thingy is interesting. if jeff's friend breaks up with girl X (and not because of jeff) and 2-3 months LATER jeff dates her, i don't see the problem. how is it helpful if he calls his friend the next day and sez - oh, by the way, i had sex with one of your ex gf last night. especially if he wasn't even sure he was gonna see her again. he shouldn't have to call his friend to get permission to, uh, see someone his friend dumped a couple of months back. he didn't want her and she is, um, shall we say, up for grabs

how long is it before jeff doesn't have to get permission from his friend to date an ex?

how long is it before jeff doesn't have to get permission from his friend to date an ex?

According to the bro code my friends and I follow, you don't need permission so much as you need to be the guy to tell him you're now dating/hooking up with his ex. Never let him hear it somewhere else, and that goes for as long as you're bros. There's no statute of limitations after the original break-up, providing the friendship stays intact.

The only thing Jeff may have done wrong (as far as my interpretation of the bro code goes) is wait 10 days into the relationship to tell him. But it's certainly forgivable if there were logistical restraints like the bro not being around (no phone calls, texts, or emails - a true bro does what Jeff did, take him out for a beer), or if Jeff was trying to sort out what kind of feelings he had for her as part of the eventual conversation he was going to have with the bro. But it also depends on what and how much happened during those 10 days. If they made out one night and Jeff waited that long, that's one thing. But if they ###### for 10 straight days, Jeff probably should've taken a break after the first day or so to tell his bro.

It's a far more delicate situation if the bro was dumped and heart-broken. I myself probably would've stayed away. But unless I'm missing some details, Jeff did nothing wrong here. The fact that he was also his friend's boss is just an unfortunate circumstance that made it worse on his friend. Frankly, it sounds like his friend was being a bit too emo about the whole thing.

Man code or bro code is just the shortest way to describe an arrangement that a lot of people assume as existing by default in a meaningful friendship. It's about being a good friend. A failed relationship is filled with details that nobody but the two people involved can possibly know. Dating someone who was important to your friend (not a one-night stand, mind you, but a real relationship) runs the risk of seriously hurting that friend. That's a risk good friends should not be willing to take, whether or not they feel that hurt is justified.

According to the bro code my friends and I follow, you don't need permission so much as you need to be the guy to tell him you're now dating/hooking up with his ex. Never let him hear it somewhere else, and that goes for as long as you're bros. There's no statute of limitations after the original break-up, providing the friendship stays intact.

Obviously, different people are going to interpret it differently. I'm stricter that the above. I will never even entertain the idea of a friend's ex (assuming serious relationship) until I receive my friend's blessing. It doesn't happen by accident, and I'd be completely up front about it... "You dated X, and unless I have his blessing, this goes nowhere." If the person isn't willing to respect the value I place on friendship, then they aren't someone I have any interest in anyway.

Your mileage may vary. If I'm in a serious relationship with someone, I'm on the engagement/marriage track. If I'm not that focused, then it isn't serious, and none of this really applies, outside of a courtesy period of a few months (and that's just to make sure that there's not a reconciliation).

Frankly, it sounds like his friend was being a bit too emo about the whole thing.

It isn't about the friend at all. It's about being a person that doesn't put any friend in the position where they might feel that way.

Frankly, it sounds like his friend was being a bit too emo about the whole thing.

Jeff became his boss and started banging his girl, apparently in short succession! He deserved a little emo time.

“He’s not scared, but he’s apprehensive,” Lefkowitz said.

Reporter: Were you apprehensive in the twelfth inning?
Yogi Berra: No, but I was scared.

at some point, codes and rules are no substitute for feeling, for empathy.

if I sound authoritative in any of what I've said, it's only to the extent of my many failures in life.

re Freud, even he saw drive as his 'myth' and as not a scientfic tangible. so I'm objecting to seeing drives as an irreducible fact, or a stopping place in seeking healing. a lot of theory is intriguing, but you can't think your way through psychological territory as much as feel your way in the dark. maybe sharing some of my recent experience instead of theorizing would be more interesting, but I'm still feeling my way through what's been in turn both wonderful and harrowing, so bear with me.

for starters, what if the first time you were with a woman, intertwined for hours on a moonless beach, you sensed and saw a half-dozen different people, at least one of them extraterrestrial?

Ghost,

I haven't shaken what you wrote, even with a good old super bowl drinking session in between. You seem pretty locked into what seems like vain trail-blazing, all Rimbaud and Augustine aside.

I find your words, cluttered with remorse and earnestness, extremely sad. Van Morrison said "I will never grow so old again." But he never tells how to feel about a dead pet.

One day I woke up to find
Right in the bed next to mine
Someone that broke me up with a corner of her smile
It's just that demon life has got me in its sway...

thanks Doug.