I feel lucky at the moment. Although over the past month I have had dreams about a nuclear strike. Last night I had a dream that three nuclear explosions occurred off the coast of Sydney. I have had three dreams so far. The first one that occurred I thought how little people cared for others. They are willing to destroy lives but really the grind of destroying lives has been spearheaded by Western aggression over the past twenty years but it has a long history.

The aggression by Russia needs another twenty years or so to match the Western military machine. Western countries though are busy feeding the aggression by supplying weapons rather than trying to find a solution. The solution is not something that I necessarily know anything about but I can’t imagine that putting Russia into a corner and adding more pressure will lead to anything but an expansion or explosive climax in a nuclear strike.

Other than nuclear armageddon I have been quite happily being creative and my own problems seem quite meaningless currently. I am in a pretty good position and I like the fact I can be creative on my own terms. I am not being pressured, I don’t need to plead to anyone to like what I do. I can pretty much just make art on my terms and that is pretty rare these days. Although I don’t take anything for granted and hope that what I do has some point other than keeping me interested and busy.

Things haven’t always been like this mind you, I have had schizophrenia which was more or less a cyclic thing until it became a permanent fixture at thirty years of age. In some ways getting a diagnosis helped me although I had a short relapse on a medication change. People with schizophrenia come in generally two types, one type denies, one type accepts. My Dad was a denier and never accepted having schizophrenia although later in life he slightly improved from treatment but he would avoid treatment when he could.

I basically felt like there was something wrong with me from a young age so I accepted the diagnosis and put up with the initial heaviness of medications. What I found was after four to six months even the most tranquillising medication became fine and lost its negative side effects. It has been twenty years now and I would prefer to not have to take medications but after years I don’t have symptoms although if I socialise for long periods I can get pretty tired and if I want to stay out late I have to skip meds until I get home. 

I am all for people taking magnesium, B group vitamins and so on which I also do and I am not a fan of being on antipsychotics but if you are in that category stick it out and make sure you care for yourself. I dropped alcohol which helped me immensely, people hit the booze to self medicate. Also it is hard to afford the help you need to get back on track after neo-liberal public service butchering. When I look at when I was diagnosed I basically had public services available that cost me nothing and I got sorted out, but really it took about six years to recover. 

Now it takes about three months just to see someone and they will give your wallet a workout but some are cheaper than recreational drugs. I had to get a general mental health check up a few years ago and it cost me $50. I hope people can get things sorted in the current environment and do everything you can to prioritise your mental health if you are suffering. I still have schizophrenia but I am not ‘suffering’ from it. Also get rid of alcohol if you can, all my horrible dreams disappeared after I went dry.