fgsjr2015

While the Western way had been to fund, if not promote, barbaric psychiatric facilities, the sedation industry instead began largely running wild and free and hugely profitable. 

Besides ‘treating’ ‘mental illness’, the sedation industry greatly profits from the continual and even addictive tranquilization and concealment, via antidepressants and/or tranquilizers, of symptoms of cerebral disorders such as ADHD and higher-functioning autistic spectrum disorder, along with the notable anxiety and/or depression that often accompany them — especially when there’s related adverse childhood experience trauma. 

I wouldn’t be surprised if profit-motivated industry representatives have a say in the composition, including revisions/updates, of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. 

In Canada at least, relatively few physicians integrate adverse childhood experience or other PTSD science into their diagnoses and treatments of patients. And I don’t believe it is just coincidental that the only two health professions’ appointments for which we Canadians are fully covered by the public plan are the two readily pharmaceutical-prescribing psychiatry and general practitioner health professions.

… The combination of my CPTSD and undiagnosed autism spectrum disorder was often mistaken for ADHD during grade school, for which I was shamed and scolded.

As a boy with an undiagnosed ASD, my public-school Grade 2 teacher was the first and most formidably abusive authority figure with whom I was terrifyingly trapped. Though there were other terrible teachers, for me she was uniquely traumatizing, especially when she wore her large, dark sunglasses when dealing with me. 

I cannot recall her abuse in its entirety, but I’ll nevertheless always remember how she had the immoral audacity — and especially the unethical confidence in avoiding any professional repercussions — to blatantly readily aim and fire her knee towards my groin, as I was backed up against the school hall wall. Luckily, she missed her mark, instead hitting the top of my left leg. 

Rather than tell anyone about my ordeal with her and consciously feel victimized, I instead felt some misplaced shame: I was a ‘difficult’ boy, therefore she likely perceived me as somehow ‘deserving it’. But not being mentally, let alone physically, abused within or by an educational system is definitely a moral right; I was simply unable to see this.

I’m not an emotional/mental exhibitionist when it comes to such matters. Generally, I get embarrassed just as readily as the next person. But it’s in my nature to try to create some constructive purpose out of my decades of turmoil and misery.

Therefore, it would be great if there could be some valuable academic or clinical use elsewhere from it all in the future—to create or extract from it some practical positivity and purpose—so that all of the suffering will not have been in vain but instead possibly help other people struggling daily with a similar debilitating affliction. Because awareness is key to prevention, if not also healing.

My autism spectrum disorder is a condition with which I struggle(d) while unaware until I was a half-century old that I in fact suffered its component dysfunctions or symptoms. Then again, had I been aware back in the 1970s and ’80s I likely would’ve kept it a secret nonetheless, especially at school, lest the A-word [autism] gets immediately followed by the F-word [freak].

Throughout my ASD-addled life, I’ve occasionally been told with a tone of surprise and sometimes even a you-look-okay-to-me facial expression of doubt: “But you’re so smart”. Today, I would reply with frustration: “But for every ‘gift’ I have, there are a corresponding three or four deficits.”

It really is crippling, especially on a social and competency level that affects employability.

I’m not sufficiently unambiguously symptomatic to be perceived by the general public as having an ASD, yet I’m also not functional enough to be normally employable and sociable. Thus, I’ve seemingly always been largely seen and even (mal)treated as being inexplicably incompetent or, in more frank terminology, “fucked right up”.

Perhaps schoolteachers should receive training in (what I term) medium-functioning, as opposed to low- or high-functioning, autism spectrum disorder, especially if the rate of autism diagnoses is increasing. [By medium-functioning, I of course mean ASD diagnoses involving disability that could be described as somewhere in between low-functioning and high-functioning ASD.]

There could also be an inclusion in standard high-school curriculum of child-development science that would also teach students about the often-debilitating cerebral condition.

Maybe elementary school students could also receive neurodiversity lessons, albeit not overly complicated or extensive. Such awareness might help reduce the incidence of chronic bullying against these typically vulnerable students. The lessons would explain to students how, among other aspects of the condition, people with medium-functioning ASD are often deemed willfully ‘difficult’ and socially incongruent, when in fact such behavior really is not a ‘choice’.

It would also elucidate how “camouflaging” or “masking,” terms used to describe higher-functioning ASD people pretending to naturally fit into a socially ‘normal’ environment, causes their already high anxiety and depression levels to further increase. And that this exacerbation is reflected in the disproportionately elevated rate of suicide among them.

From my recollection and understanding: while children with low-functioning ASD seem to be more recognizable thus properly treated in school systems, medium-functioning ASD students — who tend to not exhibit the more overt, debilitating symptoms of autism — are more likely to basically be left to fend for themselves, except if their parents can finance specialized education.

If it is feasible, parents should seriously consider not enrolling their medium-functioning ASD child in regular, ‘neurotypical’ grade school. The combination of my CPTSD and undiagnosed autism spectrum disorder was often mistaken for ADHD during grade school, for which I was often shamed and scolded. A few times it even became one-direction physical against me.

I cannot recall her abuse in its entirety, but my public-school Grade 2 teacher was the first and most formidably abusive authority figure with whom I was terrifyingly trapped. Though there were other terrible teachers, for me she was uniquely traumatizing.

As a moral rule, a mentally as well as a physically sound future should be EVERY child’s foremost fundamental right — along with air, water, food, and shelter — especially considering the very troubled world into which they never asked to enter.

We in the Far West exist in a system that enables such big-money lobbyists to pull our (typically politically vulnerable) governments by the nose. High-level elected officials can become crippled by implicit/explicit corporate and/or oligarchic threats to transfer or eliminate jobs and/or capital investment, thus economic stability, if ‘requests’ by big-monied interests are not met. 

The lobbyists also write bills for our governing representatives to vote for and have implemented, supposedly to save the elected officials their own time writing them up. The practice may have become so systematic that those who are aware of it, including mainstream news-media political writers, don’t find reason to publicly discuss or write about it.

Authoritarian nations like China, on the other hand, are governed while essentially maintaining control over its own big-money and business sector thus market, which likely gives that government an overall foreign trade/relations/policy edge over that of Far West nations, notably the U.S. and Canada.

The Chinese Communist Party government is likely using our own corporate and oligarchic greed, as well as our domestically-destabilizing democratic freedoms, against us. The CCP knows that American and Canadian governance is heavily steered and therefore disadvantaged by domestic corporate/oligarchic interests, sometimes through the latter’s economic intimidation.

Ergo, maybe we need to cling less to a long-outdated capitalist-manifesto mentality and instead collectively open our eyes to increasingly disturbing insatiable greed that’s ignoring, if not exploiting via profiteering from, the legitimate needs of nations and in particular the growing number of financially struggling citizens within.

Robert Reich — a professor of public policy at UC Berkeley, co-founder of Inequality Media, and former Secretary of Labor — posted an essay on May 14, 2026, at his Substack blog, titled and subtitled “The Most Important Thing You Should Know About the CEOs Traveling to China with Trump … They all have something in common, and it’s not the interest of America”. 

Among other notable facts, he writes that: “The American CEOs traveling with Trump to China don’t think of themselves as being in competition with China. In fact, they’d like nothing better than to make more money for themselves and their shareholders by setting up more lower-cost, highly productive factories and research facilities in China and hiring more Chinese talent.

“It’s an important distinction. The CEOs of Chinese companies are in business not only to make money but also to strengthen China’s geopolitical power in the world. The CEOs of American companies want to make gobs of money, of course, but they couldn’t give a rat’s ass about strengthening America’s geopolitical power in the world.

“This basic difference is airbrushed away in breathless media stories about the competitive race between the American and Chinese economies — the so-called ‘race for supremacy’ in AI, advanced semiconductors, supercomputers, solar wafers, biotechnology, and other industries of the future. The distinction never appears in the breezy press coverage of Trump’s trip to China, along with his ‘U.S. corporate’ delegation.”

While I don’t oppose the life-for-a-life ideology generally behind capital punishment, the frightening reality of wrongful first-degree-murder convictions shows that society/humanity is in no moral position to dish out irreversible punishments.

Whenever I hear/read about how relieved people are when someone is charged with a serious or reviled crime — ‘Did they catch him? They did? Well, that’s a relief!’ — I mentally hear the phrase: ‘We’ll give ’im a fair trial, then we’ll hang ’im.’ And if I point out he may be the wrong guy who’s being railroaded, I’ll sometimes receive the erroneous refrain, ‘Well if he’s truly innocent, he has nothing to worry about.’

Justice system vice likely occurs more frequently than we can ever know about. And any wrongful charge, trial, conviction and punishment should be concerning to any law-abiding person.

I’ve noticed that people tend to naively believe that suffering such ethically challenged courtroom conduct can/will never happen to them. However statistically unlikely, the average person could someday find themselves unjustly accused and sentenced.

The real potential for false accusations/charges are essentially why the news-media should refrain from publishing the identities of accused persons — especially when the charge involves a repugnant act AND for which they are jailed pending trial — until at least after they’ve been convicted.

There’s a general callous disregard the news profession has for their criminally accused story subjects. Notably, they identify people accused of a heinous act, which therefore will likely destroy their — and sometimes even collateral-damaged family members’ — reputations thus lives.

Maybe the Biblical books’ contents are more revelatory of the writers’ perceptions of (their) God’s character than a fully accurate portrayal of God’s actual nature?

Perhaps ‘houses of worship’ were/are actually divinely meant for the parishioners — intended to be for the soul/spirit what health clinics/spas, even hospitals, are for the body and mind. And maybe the Ten Commandments were not meant to ‘obey’ in order to appease/please God but rather intended for humans’ benefit, to directly or indirectly keep people safe and healthy.

I, a big fan of Christ’s miracles and fundamental message, also don’t perceive God as being in singular humanoid form, let alone with gender; nor needing or desiring to be worshipped (or even thanked for our meals) — which, at least to me, are much more traits of frail, shallow human nature.

As for Jesus, I believe he was/is largely meant to show to people that there really was/is hope for the many — especially for young people living in today’s physical, mental and spiritual turmoil — seeing hopelessness in a fire-and-brimstone angry-God-condemnation creator requiring literal pain-filled blood-shedding penance/payment for sinful human behavior.

However, just in case …

.

If I am wrong please correct me my Lord

though I don’t believe my words pass your way

if I take the time, bless-ed time, to pray

to You to request of You something, poured

out of my soul to You even if I roared

my words out to You; perhaps I’ll someday

believe different & not from the truth astray

and not deny myself your great reward.

Perhaps if I changed as my spirit soared

and found promise in prayer it may pay

out dividends, unlike being ignored,

then I might thus your commandments obey;

but Dad (rest his soul) would’ve me implored

to still pray—to God’s fine tune I should play.

The nature and teachings of Jesus even left John the Baptist, who believed in him as the savior, bewildered by his apparently contradictory version of the Hebraic messiah, with which John had been raised. Perhaps most perplexing was the Biblical Jesus’ revolutionary teaching of non-violently offering the other cheek as the proper response to being physically assaulted by one’s enemy. The Biblical Jesus also most profoundly washed his disciples’ feet, the act clearly revealing that he took corporeal form to serve. 

Prominent actually-Christlike Christian representatives in the Far West, and not just Pope Leo XIV’s voice, should often strongly-emphasize what Jesus fundamentally taught and demonstrated to his followers. However strange that sounds, institutional Christianity seems to need continuous reminding. They all should consider that the Biblical Jesus would not have rolled his eyes and sighed: ‘Oh, well. I’m against what the politician stands for, but what can you do when you dislike even more his political competition?’

Many institutional monotheists create their Creator’s nature in their own fallible and often angry, vengeful image. Many ‘Christians’ likely even find inconvenient, if not plainly annoying, trying to reconcile the conspicuous inconsistency in the fundamental nature of the New Testament’s Jesus with the wrathful, vengeful and even jealous nature of the Old Testament’s God. 

Jesus, as God incarnate, was about non-violence, genuine compassion, love, charity and non-wealth. His teachings and practices epitomize so much of the primary component of socialism — do not hoard gratuitous wealth in the midst of great poverty. Yet, they are not practiced by a significant number of ‘Christians’, likely including many who idolize callous politicians standing for very little or nothing Jesus taught and represents.

I’m not an emotional/mental exhibitionist when it comes to such matters. Generally, I get embarrassed just as readily as the next person. But it’s in my nature to try to create some constructive purpose out of my decades of turmoil and misery.

Therefore, it would be great if there could be some valuable academic or clinical use elsewhere from it all in the future—to create or extract from it some practical positivity and purpose—so that all of the suffering will not have been in vain but instead possibly help other people struggling daily with a similar debilitating affliction. Because awareness is key to prevention, if not also healing.

My autism spectrum disorder is a condition with which I struggle(d) while unaware until I was a half-century old that I in fact suffered its component dysfunctions or symptoms. Then again, had I been aware back in the 1970s and ’80s I likely would’ve kept it a secret nonetheless, especially at school, lest the A-word [autism] gets immediately followed by the F-word [freak].

Throughout my ASD-addled life, I’ve occasionally been told with a tone of surprise and sometimes even a you-look-okay-to-me facial expression of doubt: “But you’re so smart”. Today, I would reply with frustration: “But for every ‘gift’ I have, there are a corresponding three or four deficits.”

It really is crippling, especially on a social and competency level that affects employability.

I’m not sufficiently unambiguously symptomatic to be perceived by the general public as having an ASD, yet I’m also not functional enough to be normally employable and sociable. Thus, I’ve seemingly always been largely seen and even (mal)treated as being inexplicably incompetent or, in more frank terminology, “fucked up”.

Perhaps schoolteachers should receive training in (what I term) medium-functioning, as opposed to low- or high-functioning, autism spectrum disorder, especially if the rate of autism diagnoses is increasing. [By medium-functioning, I of course mean ASD diagnoses involving disability that could be described as somewhere in between low-functioning and high-functioning ASD.]

There could also be an inclusion in standard high-school curriculum of child-development science that would also teach students about the often-debilitating cerebral condition.

Maybe elementary school students could also receive neurodiversity lessons, albeit not overly complicated or extensive. Such awareness might help reduce the incidence of chronic bullying against these typically vulnerable students. The lessons would explain to students how, among other aspects of the condition, people with medium-functioning ASD are often deemed willfully ‘difficult’ and socially incongruent, when in fact such behavior really is not a ‘choice’.

It would also elucidate how “camouflaging” or “masking,” terms used to describe higher-functioning ASD people pretending to naturally fit into a socially ‘normal’ environment, causes their already high anxiety and depression levels to further increase. And that this exacerbation is reflected in the disproportionately elevated rate of suicide among them.

From my recollection and understanding: while children with low-functioning ASD seem to be more recognizable thus properly treated in school systems, medium-functioning ASD students — who tend to not exhibit the more overt, debilitating symptoms of autism — are more likely to basically be left to fend for themselves, except if their parents can finance specialized education.

If it is feasible, parents should seriously consider not enrolling their medium-functioning ASD child in regular, ‘neurotypical’ grade school. The combination of my CPTSD and undiagnosed autism spectrum disorder was often mistaken for ADHD during grade school, for which I was often shamed and scolded. A few times it even got one-direction physical.

I cannot recall her abuse in its entirety, but my public-school Grade 2 teacher was the first and most formidably abusive authority figure with whom I was terrifyingly trapped. Though there were other terrible teachers, for me she was uniquely traumatizing.

As a moral rule, a mentally as well as a physically sound future should be EVERY child’s foremost fundamental right — along with air, water, food, and shelter — especially considering the very troubled world into which they never asked to enter.

I knew a man (‘Jake’) who was a bad example of how any man should behave, especially towards his decent wife. Instead of being a good husband, he frequently berated the good woman (‘Kate’)—a devout Pentecostal Christian—even occasionally while in the presence of visitors, such as my mother (who was Kate’s longtime friend) and I. The two of us were of Catholic upbringing, though I wasn’t much of a ‘believer’ in that nor any other religion.

“Ahh, shut your goddamn, filthy mouth,” Jake maliciously, repeatedly, sometimes unrelentingly spewed at his supposed-to-be life partner. She’d say a few things about this or that, and again out of his foul mouth came, “Ahh, shut your goddamn, filthy mouth.”

To be fair, it should be known that Jake didn’t indulge himself in vices, not even alcohol. On a few occasions, however, he did help himself to the prepubescent sisters who resided next door and confided in me about his “tummy tickling” (albeit it was considered relatively innocent playful molestation back in the 1970s).

As for his venomous verbal assaults against his wife, his cardiovascular system could tolerate only so many years of such blood-pressure-boosting, anger-based emotional abuse of Kate. One day his heart gave out, though he was lucky enough to have survived—albeit, he remained wheelchair bound, while physically, emotionally, mentally and thus verbally as weak and helpless as a kitten.

Henceforth, he didn’t say a single nasty word to Kate, who went on to love and nurse Jake, whilst he seemingly sincerely discovered the same Christian faith. Apparently, the only filthy mouth that would be profoundly shut, or at least very much mellowed, was that of Jake himself.

Following Jake’s physical and mental humbling and weakening resulting from his heart attack, another devout Christian, senior-citizen husband and wife couple whom Kate met at church a couple years prior, felt comfortable enough in her due to the absence of the usual nasty spirit (via Jake’s former full malicious potential) within the household to regularly visit her and Jake.

When came time for the closing of each visit, they would join hands in a circle as the visiting man initiated intense, deep prayer. He emphatically rambled on with some indiscernible ‘holy’ words for 35-50 seconds.

As I sat alone at the opposite end of the living-room during one such prayer circle, this time (with Mom) five in all, I inexplicably and unexpectedly felt very relaxed during the speaking-in-tongues prayer. I experienced something that was the most profound sensation I had ever encountered, before or since. I felt a spiritual lightness so incredible I couldn’t put it into accurate words. Nor could I explain it away, especially considering I had been totally sober and clear-headed that day.

“He was speaking in tongues,” I was later told by my mother, who occasionally attended the visits and joined in on the closing prayer circle, on our way home from the one occasion I coincidently and quite skeptically accompanied my mother there. “He was rebuking the evil spirits and inviting the Holy Spirit.”

The prayer session and its accompanying profound effect wasn’t new for my mother, though it would be a one-time experience for me because such an opportune visitation occasion didn’t reoccur for me.

Additionally, I feared that further joining the Pentecostal prayer circles would interfere with my guilt-free enjoyment of the illicit intoxicant party life with the usual circle of rowdy friends. I therefore ensured that none of them would ever learn of my involvement, however brief, with the speaking-in-tongues gathering, lest they laugh the hell out of me.

I’ve remained far from that spiritually-light sensation during the four decades since, though that’s mostly due to a lack of similar opportunity. But I’ve lately been seriously considering thus making a genuine effort at re-experiencing it, likely through a prayer group with the local Pentecostal church (while I still consider myself non-denominational).

To be clear, I’m not an emotional/mental exhibitionist when it comes to such matters. Generally, I get embarrassed just as readily as the next person. But it’s in my nature to try to create some constructive purpose out of my decades of turmoil and misery.

Therefore, it would be great if there could be some valuable academic or clinical use elsewhere from it all in the future—to create or extract from it some practical positivity and purpose—so that all of the suffering will not have been in vain but instead possibly help other people struggling daily with a similar debilitating affliction. Because awareness is key to prevention, if not also healing.

My autism spectrum disorder is an obvious condition with which I greatly struggle(d) while unaware until I was a half-century old that its component dysfunctions had formal names. Then again, had I been aware back in the 1970s and ’80s I likely would’ve kept it a secret nonetheless, especially at school, lest the A-word [autism] gets immediately followed by the F-word [freak].

Throughout my ASD-addled life, I’ve occasionally been told with a tone of surprise and sometimes even a you-look-okay-to-me facial expression of doubt: “But you’re so smart”. Today, I would reply with frustration: “But for every ‘gift’ I have, there are a corresponding three or four deficits.”

It really is crippling, especially on a social level that affects employability. I’m not sufficiently unambiguously symptomatic to be perceived by the general public as having an ASD, yet I’m also not functional enough to be normally employable and sociable. Thus, I’ve seemingly always been largely seen and even (mal)treated as being inexplicably incompetent or, in more frank terminology, “fucked up”.

Perhaps schoolteachers should receive training in (what I term) medium-functioning, as opposed to low- or high-functioning, autism spectrum disorder, especially if the rate of autism diagnoses is increasing. [By medium-functioning, I of course mean ASD diagnoses involving disability that could be described as somewhere in between low-functioning and high-functioning ASD.]

There could also be an inclusion in standard high-school curriculum of child-development science that would also teach students about the often-debilitating cerebral condition.

Maybe elementary school students could also receive neurodiversity lessons, albeit not overly complicated or extensive. Such awareness might help reduce the incidence of chronic bullying against these typically vulnerable students. The lessons would explain to students how, among other aspects of the condition, people with medium-functioning ASD are often deemed willfully ‘difficult’ and socially incongruent, when in fact such behavior really is not a ‘choice’.

It would also elucidate how “camouflaging” or “masking,” terms used to describe higher-functioning ASD people pretending to naturally fit into a socially ‘normal’ environment, causes their already high anxiety and depression levels to further increase. And that this exacerbation is reflected in the disproportionately elevated rate of suicide among them.

From my recollection and understanding: while children with low-functioning ASD seem to be more recognizable thus properly treated in school systems, medium-functioning ASD students — who tend to not exhibit the more overt, debilitating symptoms of autism — are more likely to basically be left to fend for themselves, except if their parents can finance specialized education.

If it is feasible, parents should seriously consider not enrolling their medium-functioning ASD child in regular, ‘neurotypical’ grade school. The combination of my CPTSD and undiagnosed autism spectrum disorder was often mistaken for ADHD during grade school, for which I was often shamed and scolded. A few times it even got one-direction physical.

I cannot recall her abuse in its entirety, but my public-school Grade 2 teacher was the first and most formidably abusive authority figure with whom I was terrifyingly trapped. Though there were other terrible teachers, for me she was uniquely traumatizing.

As a moral rule, a mentally as well as a physically sound future should be EVERY child’s foremost fundamental right — along with air, water, food, and shelter — especially considering the very troubled world into which they never asked to enter.

Half of ‘Movember’ — that being the month of November’s designation to publicly addressing men’s, though it should also include boys’, health issues, including that of the mind — typically passes before I, a daily news consumer, hear or read anything about it in the news or social media.

There remains much platitudinous lip-service on this matter, especially when it comes to proactive mental illness prevention and treatment for males. Various mainstream news and social media will state the obvious — that society must more progressively address, fruitfully treat, and even prevent such illness in general.

But they will largely fail to properly respond to the problem of males refusing to ask for help due to their fear of being perceived by peers, etcetera, as weak/non-masculine. The social ramifications exist all around us; indeed, it is endured, however silently, by males of/with whom we are aware/familiar or to whom so many of us are closely related.

The mindset maintains, albeit perhaps subconsciously: Men can take care of themselves, and boys are basically little men. It’s the mentality that might help explain why the author of Childhood Disrupted: How Your Biography Becomes Your Biology and How You Can Heal was only able to include one male among its six interviewed subjects, there presumably being such a small pool of ACE-traumatized males willing to formally tell his own story of traumatic childhood adversity. …

To get anywhere, males need the same strong support by the mainstream media (i.e. news, social, non-fiction literary, and even entertainment) that females have had for decades, and still do. Males have instead observed thus known that for the most part they haven’t been taken as seriously as their female counterparts. If anything, the media are generally cynical toward their cause.

I even recall a metro-daily newspaper senior editor sarcastically referencing some disadvantaged males as “the poor little boys” in a brief phone call with me. Her attitude clearly rang with incredulity — that males (especially Caucasian ones) cannot really be a socially/societally disadvantaged group.

In his book The Highly Sensitive Man, psychologist/psychotherapist and author Tom Falkenstein writes: “In the face of problems, men tend not to seek out emotional or professional help from other people. They use, more often than women, alcohol or drugs to numb unpleasant feelings and, in crises, tend to try to deal with things on their own, instead of searching out closeness or help from others. … While it is true that a higher percentage of women than men will be diagnosed with an anxiety disorder or a depressive episode, the suicide rate among men is much higher. In the United States, the suicide rate is notably higher in men than in women.

“According to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, men account for 77 percent of the forty-five thousand people who kill themselves every year in the United States. In fact, men commit suicide more than women everywhere in the world. Men are more likely to suffer from addiction, and when men discuss depressive symptoms with their doctor, they are less likely than women to be diagnosed with depression and consequently don’t receive adequate therapeutic and pharmacological treatment.”