Order has more significance than heat

03/12/13 06:04 [Tuesday]
I have just downloaded cryptlib which is a software library containing encryption algorithms made accessible to those who don't wish to get involved in the nitty-gritty of computation. What led me to do so was the desire to back up my stuff without having to plug in auxiliary devices, that is to back it up via wireless internet which means to, or via, 'the cloud'. Now 'my stuff' is stored in Truecrypted files which are 4000MB in size (or sometimes bigger) and backing up one of these files via WiFi would take a while and it would be desirable for every little update or alteration I made. My idea therefore was to split up the big files into segments and back up afresh only those segments which have altered since the last backup, or (simpler but not tying in with the way Truecrypt works) separately encrypt each file I work with and back up afresh only those which I have worked on recently. The main thing I wanted to do with cryptlib was not so much encrypt files as produce a trustworthy hash value to verify the files backed up (and perhaps to assess which files - or segments of the big files - have altered since last time).
This has led to me thinking about what the point is of life, or - because I'm pretty sure there is no point as such - what there is of significance to life, or in the universe. And myself, I think it's information. Some people are more physical, and do physical things to look after their bodies (play sports, for example) or do things which bring physical pleasure to their bodies; but the way my brain and body are, I am more mental than corporal.
I'm still working out just what 'information' is, but broadly speaking homo sapiens is constructed - more so than other animals - for processing it. Human processing of information has as a large component of it simplifying or summarising information. Part of this is pattern recognition: we observe things in the world around us which we categorise towards the end of processing all instances in a category much the same. Tables can be treated all very similarly, and so can dogs. Of course a lot of what makes for interest in life is that things even within a category are not identical: there is symmetry but imperfect symmetry.
Another way of saying it is that human processing of information is a battle against increasing entropy. This applies also to life in its physical aspects. The fact that animals reproduce versions of themselves - similar but not identical - is on the face of it a contradiction of the law which states that entropy (a measure of randomness or chaos) always increases. Of course it isn't in fact a contradiction because in putting things into order a lot of waste heat is emitted and that is an increase in entropy. I'm not so much thinking of hot air here as steam, that is in converting hot vapour into an ordered to-and-fro motion of a piston a steam engine is considerably less than 100% efficient.
Jedenfalls, this is what life is and specifically it's what human life is: on this planet circumstances have arisen whereby a lot of order comes into existence - order measured at a certain level of abstraction - at the same time as the creation of a lot of heat. I am with Sartre in noting that order - a piece of music for example - doesn't exist within the physical universe and as such for some of us more than others order has more significance than heat.

Twitter diary for November 2013

This is to be found at http://www.colinbrough.co.uk/November_2013.html

Mundane life

24/11/13 16:47 [Sunday]
I’m at a bit of a loose end so I thought I might take the opportunity to set down a few facts about my mundane life of late, and especially how we are getting on with selling the bungalow.
We had several viewings scheduled in October. According to my diary - filling in the details from memory - Mr and Mrs B were supposed to come on Sunday 13th but cancelled. Then later (possibly on the Monday) they re-made the appointment and came in the event on Tuesday 15th October. We were told (probably on the Wednesday) that they thought the bungalow too small for their needs.
Mr and Mrs C viewed at 6 pm on Thursday 17th October and I think this must have been their second viewing, because we accepted an offer from them put to us via the estate agent on Saturday 19th and my recollection is that they told us at the viewing that they would put in the offer - which we said at that time we would accept - and we thought we might hear from the estate agent on the Friday but were disappointed. But, as I say, that disappointment was reversed the following day Saturday.
We were therefore able to phone the estate agent in Bawtry (near Doncaster) and say that we could proceed with the offer accepted earlier in the year for the house in Harworth to be near Dawn’s relatives. I think it was after the weekend that we heard back that both parties to that sale - a separated or divorced couple - had been informed and had given the nod. However the lady moving from the property had still to find somewhere to buy.
She was looking over a period of perhaps three weeks and the estate agent kept in touch, saying several times that she had put in offers but they had not been accepted. Eventually she put in an offer which was accepted - quite quickly if you think about it, the time she took to find a place - and yesterday I heard that the chain was complete in that everybody - the people she was buying from, the people they were buying from, and so on (although it isn’t a very long chain in fact) - had found funding and provided the evidence necessary to the lending companies. The last I heard the Bawtry estate agent will any day now send out the memorandum confirming the acceptance of our offer and we shall be one more step along the road to Harworth (because up to now the house we are buying has not been listed as ‘Sold’). The expected timescale - which we have mentioned to Mr and Mrs C buying our bungalow - is for exchange of contracts just before Christmas and moving day just after Christmas.
Mr and Mrs C came last Saturday - a week ago yesterday - to do some measuring up and any day now we expect their mortgage valuation surveyor to make an appointment. We trust this will go without a hitch especially as seemingly only a small mortgage is required. We have heard from the Cs’ solicitor with minor queries and out of that we are having our central heating serviced this week, as when it was done (less than a year ago) no confirmatory paperwork was left with us.
On the evening of Wednesday 6th November Dawn and I retired to bed at a reasonable time - not perhaps as early as sometimes - but I was rather annoyed (let’s call it) not to get any proper sleep because Dawn was tossing and turning. Finally she woke me up fully around 1 am saying she had been sick eight or nine times and had terrible tummy pains. I suspected appendicitis and phoned 111 (the successor to NHS Direct), and I must say despite what I have read they were spot on with us that night. I imagine they thought it might be a heart attack, and they sent for an ambulance without much ado. First to arrive was a paramedic, who could see much better than I how much pain Dawn was in. He gave her morphine and sent for a transport ambulance, which arrived about 1.30 am. There was a lot of waiting before getting into the ambulance and actually in the ambulance, as Dawn was given more morphine and they have to give it slowly interspersed with intravenous water (saline solution, I suppose).
They did then convey us to hospital - Dawn’s daughter who is now living with us holding the fort at home (or in truth asleep with the dog in her room) - and we arrived about 2.30 am.
The upshot was that there was a strong supposition that it was gall-stones (either that or very bad indigestion, the doctor said) and for gall-stones thy don’t like to do emergency operations if they can be avoided. But we were to go urgently to the GP next day and arrange for a scan (an ultrasound scan, it is) so that’s what we did.
The GP said it might take up to six weeks before the scan but in fact it was last Wednesday (20th November) that I went with Dawn to the old Guest Hospital and she had the scan. The technician told her there and then that it was gall-stones (and the gall-bladder was inflamed) so this coming week we are going to the GP expecting him to arrange for an operation. We hope it will be before we move - otherwise Dawn might have to start on a fresh waiting list in Bassetlaw - and if we remind the GP that we are moving very soon they might bring the operation forward.
The other fact of life for me at present is Dawn’s daughter living with us (as I said) and her dog. The dog has developed a fondness for jumping and biting at Dawn if she hasn’t seen her for half an hour (or overnight, say) and Dawn finds this difficult. As a result of this I am not able to go out - Dawn is quite scared of the dog - unless my step-daughter is in (and out of bed and able to take charge of the dog).
So that covers the salient features of my practical life the past two months or so.

Thinking and politics

15/11/13 06:11 [Friday]
I have been thinking about one or two things but have not yet come to any proper conclusions. I have been thinking about my preference for understanding phenomena with less rather than more information. This ties in with the difficulty I have - and others with a similar mental make-up have - dealing with matters in physical reality while at the same time mentally 'processing' for them. One aspect of this is not finding it easy to converse or certainly not on any but small-talk topics (although there is an exception for conversations which are more talking to oneself in one's own thoughts even if in the presence of someone else and even parallel with someone else: that is philosophical discussions which are almost exclusively thinking and which typically do not involve eye contact).
When I was younger I couldn't even converse on small-talk topics, but now with experience having developed routines for such conversations without having to think, really, at all, I can perform them. I'm not able to gossip about people (or about such things as what was on TV) because to talk about people's motivations (or the plot or even just the sequence of a TV programme) we need to think to a degree while at the same time (if gossiping with someone else) interacting with the person we are discussing with. Again, the exception is if I am understanding people's personality according to some abstract philosophical theory and preferably one I have thought up myself, or understanding the plot of a piece of fiction (and even then, preferably one of my own fantasy) according to a theory similarly. These facts can amount to an impression that I am not interested in people (or in what's on TV, or in sport, or in countless other subjects a lot of people are centrally interested in) and there is a certain truth in that because it is the fact, I'm sure, that I spend less time myself thinking and gossiping about other people (or sports games played by people, etc) than the average person does.
I don't say exactly that I prefer thinking, but rather I have an inability to do both at the same time: think my thoughts and indulge external senses at the same time. This being so, it is comprehensible that if I can understand phenomena in the external world with little sensory data to go on, I enjoy it more. Twitter is one example of this, that is reading relatively few words from other people on the internet and piecing together my own understanding of what they are about or what they are like. A more general example from the world of the internet is to track down a person from the traces they leave on the internet, and piece together their life, or some aspects of their life. (I mention this because a friend I had at school has recently emailed me after more than forty years having tracked me down via the internet.)
I will add the obvious parallel with scientific enquiry, that is people like me make good scientists because we enjoy assembling scanty data and formulating a thoroughly explanatory theory based on that data. No-one has ever seen a quark but its existence and the theory behind it are inferred from what data there is.
The other topic I have been thinking about (of the 'one or two' mentioned) is democracy versus truth and good taste. Democracy - the decision of the majority - doesn't always give the right answer. Mathematics puzzles on Facebook have proved to me that often a majority get the wrong answer. However, democracy in politics seems a success, and certainly I am a believer in it. I have yet to think out how it works, though: for people overall not to vote into a position of power the type of candidate who might appear on the Jeremy Kyle Show - even though that show is very popular - but instead to bring forward and favour quite clever and sensible candidates (even though - another paradox - people when polled have a low opinion of politicians).
I am still thinking, on and off, about these matters.

Twitter diary for October 2013

This is to be found at http://www.colinbrough.co.uk/October_2013.html

Change in medication circa 2001

02/11/13 05:57 [Saturday]
I have been awake since Very Early and mainly I have spent the time scanning my diary from June 2001. Thinking to give people (my public lol) a flavour of what life was like for me without troubling you to read my handwriting, I transcribed one day's entries from the diary for that month. Finishing up what I was doing this morning I noticed a diary entry from May 2001 - scanned two or three days ago but not read through - which is very helpful in including a copy of a letter I wrote, this letter setting my life then in context. So that day's diary also got transcribed.
I haven't really sorted out very well the sequence of my life in the decades 1980-2010, and especially the years preceding my parents' deaths in 2003. I haven't been able to think clearly, either because I was on a high dosage of medication or because I was on zero medication and was then rushed and confused. I have, since being on the present Risperdal medication starting 2011, sorted out past years to the degree of understanding my theories to explain events were wide of the mark. I was not compelled to have medication at very high dosages since 1980 because of some long-term scheme to 'investigate' schizophrenia or the effects of medication in schizophrenia, but rather the compulsion originated in the incompetence of the psychiatrist I did not escape from between 1980 and about 2000, Anthony Dew Armond.
He retired sometime around the year 2000 and thereafter I was under the care of Dr Matthew Kurian, a much more sensible fellow. I haven't tracked down a record of just when the changeover took place, and I have pondered whether my greater sociability and greater general activity level since say 2001 were due to the medication change when Dr Kurian took charge, or, alternatively, from the advent of the internet in my life making it easier for me to communicate with people before ever meeting them in person.
This question is now answered pretty certainly from what I have gleaned from the diary volumes I have been looking at. I first got onto the internet and into AOL chat rooms in the summer of 2001, but already by then my interest in life had reawakened (following decades of nothing better than death-in-life) as can be seen from my joining a dating agency earlier in 2001, that is a dating agency which did not rely on the internet. I had also had cable TV installed in my bedroom (I was living with my parents), and my own phoneline. I had bought my first motor caravan: again, early 2001. So all these changes - and my signing up with AOL to get on the internet - had come about thanks to Matthew Kurian lowering the dosage of dopamine-blocking drugs I was by then not able to evade, and also putting me on antidepressants.
Words of explanation
25/5 means procyclidine (anti-side-effect tablets) from a prescription dated 25 May, so I could keep track of how long the supply was lasting.
I was taking ibuprofen because I had toothache (constantly for months I think) and I put it in inverted commas because I suspected these tablets contained improper drugs I was being spiked with.
Symptoms like leg cramps and nasal congestion I took to be evidence I was being spiked with drugs.
I was suspicious of the water my mother put in the kettle.
Over many years I particularly noticed reversing vehicles and could not believe it was natural for me to see so many.
By the Ancient & Medieval people I meant a book club
I did not feel myself responsible for things going well - for example successful computer programming - nor indeed for things going badly.
I was constipated a lot of the time I was on the older dopamine-blocking medication, say up to 2005 when I was first given Risperdal.
Diary entry
12th June 2001. [Tuesday] 03h50
I woke up about 03h30 (five hours) with an upset stomach. I have had a mug of Nescafé and some biscuits, and have taken two indigestion tablets, and now feel a bit better. Perhaps I should take another indigestion tablet, though.
The 25/5 and "ibuprofen" I took (22h14) have no doubt helped to wake me up.
The birds are starting to twitter.
(What I mean is the 25/5 and "ibuprofen" may well contain amphetamine.)
04h00. Back to bed....
07h22. I have woken up after another 3 hours (eight hours in total) with severe cramps in my legs and severe nasal congestion.
My mother has got up and is in the bathroom.
What else can I say (write)? I am having a little difficulty hand-writing.
08h05. I am depressed, for example about going into Kingswinford, which we are supposed to be sometime today. My mother made sure to supply the water for my coffee this morning. It was noticeable how she had filled the kettle.
I have taken 25/5 and "ibuprofen". I am not anxious. I am fairly "relaxed". I have yet to wash.
08h38. I have become rather anxious, now, about having to go out.
09h50. I went out on my own. I drove into Kingswinford and took and fetched sheets at Cavendish Cleaners. I posted three items and bought stamps. I paid for the papers and got a Coke. Now I have returned home. (Oh yes - I got What's On TV.)
10h08. I am a bit irritable and remain anxious.
12h18. Sibelius before lunch/dinner. It has occurred to me: I didn't see one reversing vehicle this morning. I am very pleased. But what shall I do this afternoon?
P.S. My rear-view mirror had come off when I went to the vehicle this morning. I have tried to get it to stick back. It remains to be seen how firmly it is now fixed.
All-Share down.
12h54. I thought I might go out this afternoon, but since dinner/lunch I have been feeling tense. It seems to be wearing off as time passes. Perhaps it was hot food bringing some drug (pemoline, probably) out of the tablets inside me. At other times, pemoline does not seem to be acting.
I am no longer what I would call anxious.
... If I'm not going out, I should get the computer running.
... I can't decide.
13h41. My rear-view mirror has come off again.
To be posted:
1. Order to the Ancient & Medieval people.
16h09. Mozart wind concertos. Tomorrow I have to see the nurse Fifi at The Poplars. I may go early to get in a visit to Merry Hill. I need a few spare rear-view mirrors.
All-Share down a bit less than 1%.
16h54. I took 2nd 25/5 and "ibuprofen". The computer is working on. I have said I shall probably go to London next Monday. I am thinking of going very early in the day. Last time I went I was underactive and didn't get much out of it. I could go to the Atlantis Bookshop, despite their letting me down and not sending a Crowley title I ordered. A. Crowley: not V. Crowley. (I wonder if that is her real name.)
This recognition is virtually 100% accurate. I have been quite successful as regards pattern recognition. I am unsure how much hypnotic help I have been given. They helped me write programs when I was on ASM [antischizophrenic medication] and couldn't think. They with a capital T.
20h09. The computer is still on. I went downstairs this evening and we listened to Mendelssohn. I was "high" and very talkative. Now I am rather subdued, after supper, and have unnatural hunger. I shall have to eat some chocolate biscuits....
20h26. I have taken three Senna laxative tablets.
21h21. The computer is testing now to see how many and how fast it can recognise. This run seems to be less accurate. The text is taken from a magazine, not a book.
21h40. Since eating supper my mood is not so elevated.
This computer is not recognising so well.
I am drinking Nescafé and eating biscuits. I might have a go at a packet of crisps.
22h21. I did eat those crisps. The PC has come to the end of what it was doing. I am going to bed.

Boisterous stimulation

28/10/13 08:06 [Monday]
I am in a bit of a condition of excitement, or perhaps a better word is urgency, which without a doubt has developed (or the propensity for it has) over the months I have been on the lower dosage of Risperdal instead of the higher dosage (in fact the dosage I was on was the middle one of three available dosages, and I am now on the lowest). One major point I wish to make is that this condition - an elevated turnover of dopamine, doubtless - has taken many months to work itself up and does not correspond hour by hour (or even day by day) with the reduction in Risperdal in the metabolism. I presume the condition has come about through some sort of slowly effective positive feedback by which the dopamine turnover has ratcheted up. One alternative hypothesis is that it has come about so slowly because it depends on changes in the synapses, that is synapses altering in the sort of way they do when memory traces are laid down, to gradually allow more transmission of dopamine. I believe there is evidence that people on dopamine-blocking drugs over an extended period develop some slight tolerance, as the synapses adapt and allow more dopamine through despite the dopamine blockade. So one would guess the number of receptor sites in the target plate increases as some of the existing ones are rendered ineffective by being blocked constantly. (Of course the trouble with that theory is it might lead one to expect the opposite on withdrawal or reduction of a dopamine-blocker, that is for the number of receptor sites to decline as a greater proportion of them become effective.)
I did not get a lot of sleep last night. I slept from about 8 pm to about midnight, and this is a feature I have in my nature, to get sleepy early but also to wake up early and what one would have to call disproportionately early many mornings. I have been logged into Twitter most of the hours since midnight, and I was finding that slight stimulation (which you can understand mostly disconnected fragments such as get through from Twitter provide) was capturing my interest and keeping me 'on the hook'. However, the interest I find in explaining myself here was enough - the foreseen interest, that is - to persuade me to turn Twitter off and start writing down my experience and my interpretation of it.
I have to say some nights I do catch up on my sleep and the following day feel refreshed and able to cope easily with any stimulation I need to process for. I suppose it strengthens what I think of as the positive feedback if I am tired (not having had enough dreaming sleep to post-process during the night) so that in the daytime I rush at things without adequately preparing. Deliberately removing stimulation (turning Twitter off) and taking time over what needs to be done surely is a method which despite the electrochemistry of the brain (versus the pharmacology) will improve matters. To be honest, that's one thing which hospitalisation has always provided - even before effective drug treatments - that is removal of factors needing processing in a version of a holiday, hopefully to interrupt the positive feedback loop. That was the ideal of hospitalisation, although on first arriving at the hospital finding a weird and unlearned milieu (and quite possibly unanticipated, if the patient was Sectioned) would worsen symptoms by giving more to process on.
As regards my situation today - I mean today Monday - while I was on Twitter I was not planning what I need to do, to make sure I cope efficiently and effectively; and I am not even planning adequately now, as I am writing this. If I had had more sleep (to show up with more exemplary detail how it would work) I would be doing the planning at the same time as doing other 'processing', on Twitter or composing what I am writing. Without adequate planning I will rush from place to place, from activity to activity, and tire myself out more than need be, and worsen the 'positive feedback' cycle of having to cope with more and more but having fewer and fewer resources (especially if I keep missing sleep).
What I actually need to do today is fairly simple, when thought through explicitly, and certainly is less taxing than if I were in a position where I needed to go to work and also cater for my home life. I need to go shopping, and the only slight complication is I need to go to two different towns, and what I call planning for efficiency and effectiveness comes down (to a large degree) to going to the towns in the right order, and (I suppose) at the right times. I am better off, in some ways, with spending my time writing this, as it is not actually costing me much physically - in terms of energy or money - and at least it is related at one remove to the genuine planning I would be well to engage in.
When I was awake in the night - possibly this was caused by the numerousness of the distinct stimulations on Twitter (separate Tweets, put simply), or more likely by less time having passed since the physical stimulations of yesterday at home (even if the additional passing time has not seen me sleep a lot of the hours) - I was feeling active and as though I might go out very early (say as soon as buses started running) which would have been a cost in money (because my Concessionary Bus Pass is not valid before 9.30 am) and a cost in worsening positive feedback from exposing myself necessarily to more stimulation out and about. (Incidentally, readers will see that getting into that sort of cycle is the very antithesis of leading the empty worthless life I lead on too high a dosage of medication.)
I think all I have to add now - before thinking more thoroughly about what time to go out and where to go first - is that mentioning 'physical stimulations at home' I had in mind the fullness of the house this week, my grandchildren (step-grandchildren, anyway) having come to visit their mother who with her dog is herself a semi-permanent fixture in our home now. What I mean is, my elevated level of mental activity, which risks turning into an elevated level of physical activity and elevated in the sense of variety requiring processing (not going for a brisk walk every day on a regular route at a regular time, which might be a beneficial increase in activity), could well have come about substantially because there are more people now in my day-to-day life, and they are more boisterous people.

Variety and stimulation

12/10/13 05:38 [Saturday]
To put more of the full facts in proper order I shall need my Filofax. I hope I could glean from that information on the latest dog-sitting Dawn and I did, which I believe was around the beginning of September.
Our arrangements here at the bungalow have changed the past two weeks because of the arrival to stay with us, until she finds a place of her own, of Dawn's daughter, who (to mention a fact readers might not initially presume) is deaf. She has brought with her a flat-load of furnishings and as a result we have less room for swinging cats.

Prior to this we could have managed a certain amount of swinging after we got rid of our three-piece suite (which originated about five years since from my cousin), a hall-stand and a large wardrobe (the hall-stand having been bought as a semi-antique for a vast price from a place in High Wycombe circa 2007 and the wardrobe of 1960s vintage having belonged to my parents). The reason we disposed of our furniture was that we are moving home (sooner or later, I'd better say, rather than 'sometime soon') and not only did we want less to take with us but also those advising on selling houses say that if viewers see the place relatively empty they can more easily imagine their own stuff in. As I say, these good intentions have been rather undermined now.

The laptop I mainly use is no longer kept permanently in the living room, although this morning (unlike mornings over the past two weeks) I have brought it back into the living room. I had been using it in the bedroom but have finally determined that the seating I use in there is truly uncomfortable. In summary, I no longer spread myself about the bungalow, and specifically at night my pockets remain full of the impediments I carry about in the daytime, and my pockets remain in the bedroom. Hence (the upshot) I must go to the bedroom to fetch my Filofax ....

12/10 13 06:09

Saturday 24-Aug-13 my step-son (Dawn's son) and his girlfriend attended a wedding in Swindon, and drove there via Birmingham. It had been arranged that they would drive us to the part of North Nottinghamshire south of Doncaster where most of the family live, on their way home. In the event it was quite late on the Saturday when they arrived here on the northward leg so they stopped overnight and we all travelled to the final destination Sunday morning. What I'm saying is the latest bout of dog-sitting (or I should say distant dog-sitting, as we now have my step-daughter's dog here with us at our bungalow as a form of local dog-sitting) started on Sunday 25-Aug-13. That was August and it was still summer, this brought to my notice (amazement at the passage of time, which I often experience) through the fact that we have recent days needed to put our central heating on.

We were dog-sitting for my other step-daughter, the one who lives up there where I am always on about south of Doncaster. She and her family went to Wales that week (Bank Holiday week) for a camping holiday and Dawn and I held the fort at their home. The two daughters' dogs are different but each lovable in her own way. The one up north is too small to be any real trouble, and we have larked about with her several times already in the past. The deaf daughter's dog is larger and can be boisterous, and these two weeks have covered our first mutual encounter.

Telling a story of what went on the latest week of dog-sitting - late August - should be based on clear memories. Unfortunately my memories are cloudy. We took the opportunity to visit members of my in-law family, I know, as well as a friend Dawn has had from decades past. I must say I enjoy having people to meet up with, a thing we rather lack while we are living in Kingswinford. I have lost contact with the people I knew from my school days (this fact being made certain by my being so little capable of interest in things over a period of decades), and my own family have always lived at a distance. Apart from visiting, that week in August, my days were very similar to my days here: spent shopping at Asda (mainly it is Asda). The main difference is the cafés are fewer and further between in the sticks in north Nottinghamshire.

The holiday-makers returned on the Friday, and we stopped with them that weekend, coming home here on Monday 02-Sep-13. I find I have much clearer memories of that weekend than of the week leading up to it, and I can put this down to more variety and stimulation on the basis of more people in the house.

The thing is, one wants enough unpredictability and stimulation but not too much.

Twitter diary for September 2013

This is to be found at http://www.colinbrough.co.uk/September_2013.html

What good is Risperdal to me?

07/09/13 07:01 [Saturday]
I have thought on and off about making a diary entry (with the intention of uploading it to my blog) and asking myself (in the introspective way natural to me) why I am setting pen to paper (electronically) now, I note that yesterday I converted my Twitterings for August into a form suitable for publication and uploaded the result to my website colinbrough.co.uk.
For several months now I have been waking up early, on and off: in contradistinction to the way things were when I was on the higher dosage of Risperdal through 2011. I was on 37.5mg of Risperdal Consta injection every two weeks from the time I was in hospital early 2011, but from Thursday 03­-Nov-11 it was 25mg every two weeks. The changes I have noticed since coming off the higher dosage - changes which I suspect professionals in the field might deny derived from the drug dosage but would attribute to something within my own nature - have occurred over a period of many months, that is (in fact) over getting on for two years. One of the changes, as I say, is in my sleeping pattern. On the 37.5mg dosage through the summer of 2011, I recall, I was sometimes awake in the night - suffering discomfort in my tummy as often as not - but (having in mind something along the lines that there was no point) I just lay there. This is an example of the effect of dopamine-blockers (which Risperdal is) of reducing the activity level in a manner parallel to the way in depression the activity level is reduced, sometimes to near zero. What I think to myself now in the night when I suffer discomfort in my tummy (or when I wake up for other reasons) is in complete opposition: what I feel now is that it is too boring to lie there so I should get up if there is anything at all I could find to do.
The point I am mainly making, though, is that in this recent period I have been sleeping fewer hours overall and seemingly not suffering any ill effect. In the earlier period I had come off the higher dosage I did wake up early and frequently got up early, but also I went to bed early and if I had not had enough hours of sleep would be tired in the daytime (and would catch up on sleep subsequent nights). I suppose it is still the case that if I get very little sleep I feel tired and catch up as I have just said, but it is also the case that I do not (usually) go to bed so early but still get up early, and get fewer hours of sleep on average while still feeling satisfactorily rested. I put this down to what in my terminology of a few years past I called ‘processing capacity’: that is on the lower dosage of Risperdal I have higher processing capacity and can take in and use more information through the waking hours without the need for such lengthy ‘post-processing’ during dreaming sleep.
I can see that being on the dosage of Risperdal I am on is a help to me, and it interests me to understand - if the lower the dosage of Risperdal the higher the processing capacity - what is wrong with a zero dosage (and I used to be convinced a zero dosage was best, certainly in my own case, and that any dopamine-blocking was negative and a horror). The answer is that with so much dopamine in my head as was in it on a zero dosage of dopamine-blocker, I did do a lot of processing while requiring relatively little sleep, but the fact is I was making mistakes in the processing without in the least suspecting they were mistakes (if I had suspected, then that itself would have elevated the ‘processing requirement’ which I suppose - striving to sort out my suspicions - would have required me to sleep more: indeed would have ensured I slept more, because it would automatically have made me tireder and I would either have slept at night or had to sleep in the daytime). To give a concrete example: when my computer went wrong, instead of understanding the real reason - or guessing and then checking until I found the real reason - I dismissed it with hardly any ‘processing’ as some organisation - ‘the Authorities’ - trying to steal and perhaps succeeding in stealing information from out of the computer, by introducing non-standard software that is some sort of spyware. Looked at from a more global, top-down perspective which I was not capable of in the years before 2011 because of the flood of data from the environment (and from my memories) taking up my processing resources in other ways, it is easy to see that no organisation with such influence and capabilities (able to interfere with the postal system, for one thing) would have any reason to want information from me.
I think I’ve explained that well enough (self-congratulatory preening here: I am lucky to have high natural levels of serotonin so I don’t castigate myself at every opportunity as some with my diagnosis do) and I don’t want to tax readers too much so I will close and defer until another time an exposition more focused on the events in my life the past few weeks.

Twitter diary for August 2013

This is to be found at http://www.colinbrough.co.uk/August_2013.html

What good is money to me?

16/08/13 06:34 [Friday]
I went to bed last night at 8.30 and although I was awake briefly on and off during the night I felt when I got up soon after 4 that I had had enough sleep. Recently I noticed a contrast in my mood from one day to the next, and concluded the marked improvement was due to having a good night’s sleep in between. Now this morning I feel on an even keel and have been revolving questions in my mind in a way impossible if I am lacking sleep (as not infrequently I have been over the past twelve to eighteen months).
What I was thinking about was our finances. We seem to have incurred a lot of expenditure the past month or two, and now we are recovering to a more balanced budget I am asking myself what it is I would wish to spend money on: in effect, what is the point in having money?
One of the conclusions I came to, in fact in trying to establish where the money had gone in recent months, was that we - Dawn too - are eating much better than before April. From mid April we have been on a 5:2 diet in which you are supposed to be dieting only two days out of each week but in practice the book makes suggestions for the ‘non-diet’ days as well. Medical people have verified this diet and, as I say, by restricting your intake of carbohydrates two days a week you can successfully lose weight without suffering adverse health consequences. What I have found is that eating the meals suggested in the book provides such variety of taste and overall food experience that I am much less tempted to eat inappropriately between meals. You are allowed treats between meals, but even the treats are designed to satisfy a desire for varied taste and texture without being too fattening: things like celery and houmous, and low-fat cheeses. It appears to me that the way I used to eat - putting on several stone in weight (this partly blameable on the Risperdal medication though) - was based on being at a loose end and filling time. This still applies, in the sense that I do not have a life which is especially busier than it was, but by eating this diet satisfying a desire for variety I can add interest to life without adding calories. Over four months I have lost just short of a stone, and they do say a steady but continuing loss of weight is a desirable aim, and then the loss is less likely to be easily reversed.
But to go back to the original point of where our money has been going: I noticed that from April our expenditure on food has shot up, and in association I have been making many more trips for food shopping (mainly to Asda at the Merry Hill shopping centre a bus ride away). (I said my life is not especially busier than it was, but to a degree it is since I have been getting more outings to the shops.) The main part of the increased cost to us of food I believe comes from meat. Previously as regards meat I was living almost exclusively on pork and chicken. Now we hardly ever have those meats, but do have a lot of beef and lamb. This in combination with the inclusion of much more fresh veg, and also the use of spices and herbs to improve variety of taste in meals, gives the basis for my saying that I am eating much better.

In summary it is the case that variety of experience provides almost all of what is a pleasure in my life. In the years following the deaths of my parents I could afford to travel about a lot, mainly within Britain and mainly by train, staying in hotels and all this providing variety of experience. I miss doing that. Yesterday I realised the last time I had been far afield and stayed in a hotel was April 2012 when I went to Edinburgh for two nights. Dawn doesn’t like hotels, and it is true we have something of what I like in travelling north (mainly north, although some of the family are in London and nearby) to see her family, and staying in their homes dog-sitting, more often than not. Also we go for day trips to Worcester, which I enjoy.
Anyway, the answer to what by choice I would spend money on - as well, now I think of it, as occasionally updating the technology I own (something again I did rather to excess in the years immediately following 2003) - are more trips to a greater variety of destinations (in Britain except that I would like to see Dublin again), stopping nights away from home as would naturally be appropriate.
Life is pretty good as it is, I have to say, as we do get to travel in going to see Dawn’s family. In fact we have such a trip coming up in the next few weeks, so that is something for me to look forward to.

Recent events in my life

06/08/13 07:30 [Tuesday]
I have been scanning my diary from July 2004 and I suppose it is this which has led me to think of once again setting down in a diary my day-to-day doings. In recent months - years, in fact - I have felt I should only bother to write stuff down in a blog if I have thought it through and it is something I consider ‘clever’ and which other people might consider clever. However reflecting on events in my life over the past few months - years, in fact - I come to understand readers of my blog (and whether there are any interested enough to ‘follow’ I don’t know but one thing I suspect is that people I used to talk to on the internet in the early 2000s and perhaps friends from longer ago than that may from time to time catch up with what is happening with me, or try to) will have little clue what I am about.
On the other hand I am infected a little by Dawn’s reticence, for example in mentioning events involving members of her family in a blog which is public, and more realistically than in 2009-2010 I am concerned with security of various species (for example in saying where I am going to be from time to time). I have to say these concerns - reticence with information and something which sounds like paranoia over ‘security’ - are typical of the schizophrenic personality type (if I can put it like that) and those of us with genetic predisposition have the personality type even at times we are not diagnosed with the illness.
Also I have more immediate concerns, and specifically I mean putting the kettle on for coffee and in addition making toast, so I shall break here.
06/08/13 07:57
We are hoping to move to the little town south of Doncaster where Dawn grew up and where many of her family still live. She misses her family and I myself can see the desirability of being near someone who can support us as we get older. Our bungalow in Kingswinford has been on the market since late 2011, but the market has been slow. We found a buyer and had arranged to move in early April - even paying the removals firm - but the buyer of our buyer’s house pulled out at the last minute so we are still here. Our buyer is still interested and will move in here if and when he sells his house. In the meantime we have had to put the bungalow back on sale - because there is no telling if the buyer we agreed with can sell his house, or when - and in fact we have a viewing in a day or two from now.
The other thing I find mainly to be in my head this morning is our recent trip to Redcar. We went to look after Dawn’s sister’s dog and house while she was on holiday (with her partner and others) and in truth it was a holiday for us too. Redcar, for those who may not know (and I didn’t until say eighteen months ago), is by the sea, but it is no longer a very popular resort because the region is heavily industrial.

Dog-sitting is something we find ourselves doing occasionally, and when we go to see Dawn’s family (for the purpose of dog-sitting or otherwise) we also try to catch up with other friends of Dawn’s in the area. I get to spend time with other people when under other circumstances I might be on my own a lot. In fact for the first year Dawn was living near her family and not with me - she ‘ran off’ as I put it in the summer of 2010 because of my outlandish behaviour before I was on the present medication - that is when I was seeing nothing of her, I used to go to a day centre on the basis that without that life would be completely empty. (I have to say though that the seeming emptiness of my life that year was largely caused by the higher dosage of Risperdal I was on. I would stress to professionals - if I were ever in a position to tell them - that while dopamine-blocking drugs have very desirable effects at the right dosage it is essential to find the right dosage for the individual.)
Many days over recent months I find myself doing the shopping, mainly at Merry Hill shopping centre. This gets me out when I might be bored at home, and another piece of advice I would give (if it were within my remit) is that however lacking in motivation patients might be it is a very good thing if they can engage in some variety. The thing I would also say, though, is that they should strive - possibly with professional help - to find some way of getting this variety which suits them and does not make them over-anxious or negative in other ways. I say that because in the 1980s I was compelled to go to a day centre which I detested and which made me very anxious and very depressed - given the medication I was on and the dosage, a major contributing factor in my unhappy state of mind - because my psychiatrist did not want me at home doing nothing all day every day and he did not strive to accommodate my own interests and inclinations.
What I gather from my Twitter feed is that many people think present-day mental health services are failing in numerous ways, but my experience is that the way patients are treated is immensely better than some decades ago. The fundamental reason is that patients have a voice and the powers-that-be listen to what they want and what they don’t want. Some of this improvement comes thanks to technology: that is people who may be backward in coming forward find it easier to have their say on some version of computer forum, and even before social media took off there was the possibility of using technology to survey the wishes and experience of mental health patients in such a way that the results were accurate and meaningful (instead of the patient mumbling ‘I’m OK’ meaning ‘Leave me alone’).

Twitter diary for July 2013

This is to be found at http://www.colinbrough.co.uk/July_2013.html

Twitter diary for June 2013

This is to be found at http://colinbrough.co.uk/June_2013.html

My ideas on Character Recognition

Character Recognition Summary written 06/03/13 10:26 [Wednesday]
Since my teenage years I have been interested in visual perception: how humans (and animals) see things and recognise them and thereby negotiate the world. Rather than go into the entire history of this interest of mine, though, my intention here is to summarise the programming work I have done over recent years to implement ideas I have had on how particularly humans view the world using their eyes.
In 2006 the computer I owned was capable, for about the first time since I had owned a computer, of doing in a reasonable time the lengthy computation I needed to compare printed characters (that is characters with exemplars to try to identify what the characters were, from the alphabet) according to a formula I had thought up for a measure of similarity. I published on my website a description of my ideas with some specific results from what I may call experimentation. Towards the end of 2006 I was grappling with the problem of printed characters running together through over-inking instead of standing separately, and thinking in terms of the aspect ratio characters have on average as a method for trying to separate individual characters.
This led in a natural course to my trying in 2007 to vary the greyscale threshold for distinguishing black from white in such a way as to separate out characters one from the next. Instead of looking for seeming characters with an aspect ratio in a particular range though I had the idea of measuring how fragments of black emerged with a raising of the greyscale threshold and preferring the range of threshold where the fragments appeared most stable. This had the advantages that the estimation could be done locally for neighbourhoods within the scan (so that shadows across part of a document would not throw the estimation out) and that the method could be applied to general images and not just pictures of objects within a known range of aspect ratio.
By 2008 instead of using the raw greyscale for each pixel I was doing what I call a ‘blackdensity’ computation so that black pixels locally to a given pixel will increase the measure of blackness at that pixel. By taking a local average in this way (but an average where closer pixels have more weight) mistaken measurements from the scan at particular pixels are evened out. One thing coming out of this methodology was that peaks of blackdensity (‘saliences’) could be counted and the way the count varied as resolution varied could be observed. This led to the hope that there would be a ‘natural’ scale of distances (that is, resolution) for a given pattern imaged so that the same object seen from different distances - giving the same pattern of saliences but scaled differently - might still be recognised.
From 2009 to 2011 because of the condition of mind I was in I got bogged down in too much detail and the work on ‘Visual field analysis’ was in abeyance, except for the general idea emerging in my mind of using a measure of ‘busyness’ of fragments to indicate how useful was the information contained in the pattern. The correct way to measure information in a greyscale pattern I now think is to compute what I call the clustermeasure. This has a formula very like the similaritymeasure which I was using in 2006, except that similaritymeasure is for two different patterns being compared. One thing I did achieve in 2009 was a very lucid explanation of clustermeasure and its additive simplicity as new clusters are added.

More details may be accessed via http://www.colinbrough.co.uk/Character_Recognition.html

Twitter diary for May 2013

This may be found at www.colinbrough.co.uk/May_2013.html

Twitter diary for April 2013

This may be found at www.colinbrough.co.uk/April_2013.html

Twitter diary for March 2013

My Twitter diary for March may be found at www.colinbrough.co.uk/March_2013.html

Absolutely correct

03/04/13 03:13 [Wednesday]
I woke up about 2.30 AM and I can’t say this is the reason I was awake and couldn’t get back to sleep (that had more to do with the headache I had and discomfort in my tummy) but running constantly through my mind was the phrase ‘in-depth profile’. This phrase was used in a TV ad for a series of magazines when I was a teenager, and is troublesome in that a profile is an outline so how can it have depth? I was trying to think whether any meaning could be ascribed to ‘in-depth profile’ as I was waking up this morning.
Since I have got up I have been thinking about a sequence in The Big Bang Theory where Sheldon says one cannot be ‘more wrong’ because wrong is absolute: on a particular question one is either wrong or not wrong. And I have been thinking of other similar phrases used nowadays less strictly than really they ought to be: ‘more essential’ and ‘very key’.
The person replying to Sheldon on that matter in The Big Bang Theory (the comic store owner, I think) said it was a little wrong to say that a tomato is a vegetable but a lot wrong to say something else which I can’t recall but which was unarguably wrong or I should say more commonly declared wrong. Without getting too much into the question of the nature of truth and the nature of error, it is ‘unarguably wrong’ that a tomato is a vegetable but it is quite commonly thought to be right not wrong.
So for some qualities which are actually binary - either the case or not the case - there are associated measures of degree which seem natural. To say ‘more pregnant’ means in fact ‘further along in the pregnancy’. And for the case of wrongness there are as it were votes which could be taken showing what proportion of people realise (or ‘believe’) that the thing is wrong and what proportion believe it to be right.
If something is essential to something it is a necessary condition for it. Guessing what ‘more essential’ might mean (without having to hand a specific example) I suppose it means ‘more likely to fail if this condition is absent’, in which case the condition is not in truth essential but is simply important. Or possibly we can resort to voting again: perhaps we do not know whether this condition is essential but a certain large proportion of people believe the thing would fail without the condition.
I’m not quite sure what ‘key’ means not having thought through the etymology, but in ‘very key’ it means ‘important’ or ‘significant’. ‘Very key’ sounds wrong to me but it is quite a common phrase.
People like Sheldon Cooper (and Mrs Thatcher as she used to be) in coming to conclusions or decisions are very sure of them. Personally I think this is related to the way dopamine fires up in their central nervous systems, that is when dopaminergic neurons are excited they are very excited very suddenly and when they cease to be excited they cease suddenly (and this of course is related to schizophrenia). Commonly nowadays though individuals are not trusted: managers do not take decisions based on what they know to be the case but rather a questionnaire is sent out to determine what people on average believe to be the case. Hence I can understand the more frequent use nowadays of phrases like ‘more wrong’ which depend on the notion of what people on average believe instead of what is in truth the case.
Addendum
According to dictionary.reference.com (the online OED via the Dudley Council website being unavailable) key (as an adjective) means chief; major; important; essential; fundamental; pivotal. (I recommend also www.merriam-webster.com which I have discovered through the unavailability of the OED.) I should think the prior meaning of key is essential as a key is a sine qua non for getting through a door (or something else locked), and hence my doubts about ‘very key’ which is like saying ‘very essential’.
Nowadays the idea that anything is absolute is eroded, and even in physics the belief has become prevalent that there is not any absolute truth but only theories which come and go and for a while explain things quite well.

Dopamine-blocking drugs

01-02 April 2013 [Bank Holiday Monday - Tuesday]
When my thoughts and feelings were less restrained by dopamine-blocking medication - that is in the years preceding 2011 - I was very concerned that I might be made to have dopamine-blocking medication as I had been over decades up to my parents’ deaths and that it would affect me very badly as it had then. This fear (to say genuinely what it was) was combined with anger that I had been made to have such medication in those decades and that it had resulted in a terrible and empty experience for me of life then.
I am now being given the minimum dosage of Risperdal Consta injection, which is 25mg every two weeks, and I can see that it is improving life for me. This contrasts with the conclusion I had reached, that any dosage of a dopamine-blocker would do the opposite of help me.
My concern now is that - especially as I am moving home soon - a new psychiatrist may increase the dosage and thereby again consign me to hurt. Up to about a year ago I was on a higher dosage of Risperdal Consta - in fact it was 37.5mg every two weeks - and it made for an unpleasant experience of life for me, doing me hurt not good. I wish to set down the effects of the higher dosage in a version I can make available to any doctor who might think to put me on a higher dosage than 25mg. (This is especially so when at the time I am on the higher dosage I cannot formulate words and sentences adequately to convey what I mean.) It strikes me such a description might be of help to others if published on the internet - not that everybody responds the same to the same dosage but still it would be a warning of the possible adverse effects of too high a dosage for the individual - and a description of the helpful effects of a successful dosage (25mg for me) might be an encouragement too, for example to patients who have encountered nothing but hurt from the dosages (too high I mean) prescribed by psychiatrists who may be insufficiently caring and attentive. For now though I defer a description of the helpful effects.
The main results in me of the higher dosage of Risperdal were those I read reported as side-effects of reserpine, that is depression and anxiety (but anxiety not accompanied by the usual physiological symptoms such as increased heart rate and increased breathing rate). Also I was markedly underactive - going to bed early in the evening because I could find nothing of interest to do and not pursuing my usual interests such as those connected with computing - and indecisive. I found it difficult to engage in conversation because thoughts did not come to mind: my mind in fact was a blank. If I was in a context of requiring to talk to people - as I was because matters arose relating to the bungalow I owned and occupied, in 2011 specifically - I lost track of what I had to say and could not draw together the facts of the case in my mind as the conversation (what passed for a conversation) progressed.
It seems plain to me that the way the brain works one thought leads to another - or ideas presented from other people through language or other symbols set off chains of thought - through a mechanism where neural structures are physically linked by dopaminergic connections. Blocking some dopaminergic synapses weakens the connections so that the excitement of neural structures downstream from some stimulation is reduced, and blocking too many synapses results in thoughts petering out before they really get going. This effect was very apparent to me through introspection in the years when I was given very high dosages of dopamine-blocking drugs.
As regards anxiety, my experience of it since being on dopamine-blocking medication (but not at the current low dosage) is that it arose because the little degree of mental ‘processing’ I did resulted in no decisions being come to - I did not (and could not) think things through enough to reach conclusions - so I was in a constant state of uncertainty. On top of that because of underactivity I did not do things I should have done in preparation for any known up-coming need, so that I was unprepared for things which might arise even when I knew beforehand that they were going to arise. Examples of that would include getting together (that is I did not get them together, because I was underactive) ready for some application I was going to make (say a form I had to fill in, or to be more specific phoning a workman for help with my central heating).
Regarding depression: I am sure nature (or rather evolution) has made it a pleasure to mentally ‘process’ (up to a certain degree). What I think happens in the absence of dopamine-blocking is that as one becomes aware of problems or decisions to be taken the dopamine turnover in the brain increases. This corresponds to ‘processing’ to try to resolve what is perceived as needing resolution (an example which could be tested being the presentation of and the attempt to solve some mathematical puzzle). When the problem is perceived as solved - when some final decision is come to - the level of dopamine drops, sometimes quite suddenly. This gives a surge of serotonin, which is experienced as pleasure. But it is the ebb and flow of dopamine which gives rise to surges of serotonin, and a constant low level of dopamine does nothing for serotonin (and for completeness I remark that a constant high level of dopamine - corresponding to having puzzling problems which never get resolved - equally means there are no surges of serotonin).
Returning to the phenomenon of anxiety, I remark that the more usual origin of anxiety is, not insufficient ‘processing’ to come to any conclusion or decision, but rather, constant ‘processing’ on and on without ever coming to a conclusion or decision because there are too many factors in the ‘processing’, that is too much going on in the mind, in a mutually contradictory and self-defeating range.
In summary, too high a dosage of dopamine-blocking medication causes my mind to be empty. I do not do things I need to do and I do not reach any conclusions, this manifesting as anxiety; I cannot find anything to contribute to a conversation; and life is nothing but depression - death-in-life with very high dosages - because it is so unstimulating.

Levels of dopamine, high or low

25/03/13 01:35 [Monday]
I’ve just woken from a dream about dopamine, and specifically the different behaviours associated with different levels of dopamine in the brain, from high down to low. The basic idea is that higher levels of dopamine create more of a distinction (when translated into behaviour) between objects or concepts the nervous system differentiates. The subject feels more certain that things which appear different from each other - perhaps only slightly different - genuinely are from different categories. On the other hand things between which differences are not noticed are more readily believed to be identical, or from identical categories. Things are seen more in an all-or-nothing manner. At lower (more normal) levels of dopamine the subject feels less certain that things are either different or (on the other hand) the same. At lower levels (I suppose) there is greater acceptance that things in the real world might be being perceived mistakenly: the response to things and events is more ‘gradualist’ with less investment in the initially formed way of regarding the thing or event and an easier quicker ability to change tack. (Also with lower levels of dopamine other people’s, or ‘Society’s’, ways of interpreting objects and events play a larger role in determining the individual’s response.)
Something I have been thinking about when awake recently is that some behaviours can be associated (the same) with both high and low levels of dopamine. For one thing this makes it difficult for doctors to be sure whether symptoms of schizophrenia are being seen, or on the other hand the effects of too powerful a dosage of dopamine-blocking drugs. For example, if the subject’s mind is empty of thoughts (from low levels of dopamine) he will be silent and appear withdrawn; but also if his mind is full of thoughts he may well appear the same since he cannot put the many and probably mutually contradictory (or ‘counteracting’) ideas into words until he has processed them, and he may never have time to process them to make them definite especially if he is being bombarded with new experiences either questions and an insistence on engagement from the doctor or (worse) the fearful experience of being hospitalised especially the first time and especially if it is by compulsion.
I adhere to the view I have come to, that schizophrenia (and related conditions: for nowadays I get the impression schizophrenia is less readily given as a diagnosis but conditions like Asperger’s or Autism more readily and earlier) results from dopamine responsivity which is too high. Given only slight stimulation very high-amplitude and possibly fluctuating waves of excitement of dopaminergic systems result. The degree and duration of the continuing fluctuation will depend on the precision of the neural networks available to do the processing ‘downstream’, that is on their resolution. The effect of such unpleasant results from any stimulation is that the subject evades stimulation, that is he becomes ‘avoidant’ or withdrawn. In turn that results in an absence of fluctuations in dopaminergic systems and this also is experienced as unpleasure, in the form of loneliness and perhaps boredom. There are ways available to a person having an over-responsive dopaminergic system of obtaining stimulation which is (if things go well) not at an overwheliming level, some more traditional (like reading, or listening to the radio or watching TV) and some new-fangled (like communicating with others - and best it is with others similar - via the internet). I will mention that Emily Brontë obtained pleasurable stimulation from her sister Charlotte when the latter described to her her ventures ‘into society’: there is something more directly appealing in real-life stimulation even at one remove (more nearly real-time, I suppose) than is available from fictive stimulation as from reading a novel.

Notes on my treatment in the 1980s

18/03/13 14:22 [Monday]
I am very subject to distraction from physical events (and, when I am not on dopamine-blocking medication, from extraneous ideas arising randomly in my head). The fact that Dawn might enquire what I am writing about, and more so if she were to express disapproval (that I keep dwelling on the past), causes me to be unable to set down my thoughts unless she is asleep or otherwise absent.
Nevertheless I do feel a sort of pressure - which is the same word, and actually the same phenomenon in a more subdued version, as is used by psychiatrists when they observe the symptom ‘pressure of speech’ - to express myself in words on the subject of what dopamine-blocking drugs did to me in the past. I must again mention the psychiatrist who prescribed them for me - compelled them on me - over the two decades starting 1980, that is Anthony Dew Armond, and state that he insisted I take them - by injection in the long-acting form so that I was never out of their influence - in very high dosages without having a clue himself what the effect on me was.
I can think more clearly at present, on a modest dosage of the dopamine-blocker Risperdal, than any time since the late 1970s. When not on medication my mind becomes filled with concerns to expose what went on over the years I was treated by Anthony Dew Armond, and the flood of thinking creates confusion and distraction so that I fail to expose what I feel I must expose. Yet when I am on medication at the dosage Armond prescribed my mind becomes blank - apart from a vague but powerful feeling of resentment and a powerful desire to escape the drugs - so that I cannot collate what it is I have to say in order to explain myself.
For practical purposes I would do well to give details of the effect on me of Risperdal at the dosage I was on in 2011, my idea being to dissuade doctors in my immediate future who might be ill-advised and prescribe a higher dosage than I am on now, and this I hope to get round to doing. As I say, when I am on the higher dosage - and this was the case in 2011 after I had been discharged from hospital - I become incapable, through a general stilling of my activity level and specifically the activity of my thoughts which should coalesce into an explanation: incapable of explaining with detail what undesirable effects the medication is having on me.
However, what is pressing in my mind this afternoon is the effect on me in the past of the medication under Armond, and most particularly the effect on my chances of employment. I remember when I had run away from going to work in the employment I had had with Dudley Council over the three years since university - this was late 1981 when the people at the Council offices were urging me to return to work if I could, and Armond was asked for reports on my progress - Armond said to me, ‘Write down in a list what is for the job you have, and in another list what is against it.’ This shows the terms he was thinking in.
The answer, which I was unable to explain to him for reasons given above (and more so when he aggressively said to me, ‘Tell me about the bloody job’), was that there were no reasons in favour of my returning to work, and it wasn’t anything like a decision or choice I had to make: what it was was I was disabled from returning to the job I had had or to any comparable job by the effects of the drugs Armond was compelling on me. Those drugs stilled my thinking completely, so that I was unable to keep up any sort of conversation and could not marshal any ideas (which Armond interpreted as symptomatic of schizophrenia, saying to my parents that he was ‘worried that Colin cannot marshal his thoughts’). Those drugs caused my legs to be terribly restless all the time. My Dad used to say I had ‘shaky legs’ and that annoyed me considerably, as it gave the impression that there was some sensation in my legs - a tickling or tremor of the muscles - which I took note of as signals from outside of myself like say tightness of my shoes. Whereas the truth was my legs insistently drew my notice to themselves in a style whereby I had to either move them to and fro - taking conscious effort - or resist moving them (which took more conscious effort). This having to devote conscious attention to my legs prevented me settling to think of anything which required thought, and what I had been doing in my employment did require thought. I did try to read, as I had been a great reader and my days now were empty - hour after hour and day after day of emptiness: a mind empty of any pleasure or indeed of any stimulation positive or negative: a living death - but I did not take in any of what I read, which at the time appeared to me to be because all I took in was the fact of my legs and their unpleasant insistent occupation of my consciousness.
I found that by lying on my bed in a semi-doze - although it was a doze involving every so often unpleasantly starting into wakefulness - the reslessness of my legs subsided. So that’s what I did with my time: lay on my bed most of my daytime as well as the nighttime when I got a type of sleep. I couldn’t ease the unpleasantness in that way every day though, because Armond insisted I attend a day-centre three days a week, and when that became utterly unbearable to me and I refused to go he implemented the Section I was on (I was ‘liable to be detained’ for over two years from 1st March 1984) and took me into hospital. I think it was on that occasion he discovered I had attempted suicide because of his treatment of me - the drugs caused me depression as well as all the other terrible ‘side-effects’ - and thereafter I attended the ward once a week instead of the day-centre and was given much gentler attention.
When we have moved home I hope to find out the true sequence of events from my old diaries. It is true I was not marshalling my thoughts at the time, not organising my memories, so the sequence of the memories I have is confused.
18/03/13 15:40
Re-reading the above it strikes me I was extraordinarily unlucky to be saddled with Anthony Dew Armond as my psychiatrist. He completely misunderstood me and the effect the drugs were having on me, yet did not shrink from signing papers which were taken to give legal sanction to the compulsion of the drugs on me. (The reason I doubt they were genuine legal sanction is that I had only one Tribunal in more than two years I was on a Section in the mid-1980s.)

Twitter diary for February 2013

I have uploaded my Twitterings for February to my website at http://www.colinbrough.co.uk/February_2013.html

The sense of "I" - the physical and the mental

23/02/13 06:24 [Saturday]
I have been thinking about the sense of being "I". Probably the origin of these thoughts this morning was a feeling - from the wear and tear involved in packing for our removal and most specifically from getting up and down into the loft - that I am growing old, and a realisation that I will not endure forever and also that I am not quite the same as I was as a child (and yet, by counterpoint, I am still "I" as I was in those days).
When I was going through puberty I used to have very strong feelings that it was very odd that I should be "I", that is this person born on that particular date and living through those particular life experiences. It seemed such a statistically rare thing, that I should be this person and no other.
I suspect the strength of those feelings I had related to the personality type I was (to put it like that). In other words I was half way to being autistic, because of the way dopamine operated in my brain (and autism, Asperger's and schizophrenia are surely all closely connected), and therefore felt very powerfully that I was an individual separate from all the rest. This feeling I had was obviously exaggerated too by my being an only child.
And it is still a question of interest to me, what is it that makes me "I" or, to put it another way, how to explain the mechanism in human beings which lets them know they are each an individual with bounds in time and in spatial extension.
Readers who follow much of what I write will not be surprised at my conclusion that what creates the sense of "I" in people is the fact of evolution. What "I" am is whatever is preserved by mechanisms of self-defence combined with whatever is passed to succeeding generations. What is passed to succeeding generations is the tendency not to die, and what "I" is is the ensemble that doesn't die. My skin dies fairly regularly, and (I suppose) every cell in my body dies in the course of my lifetime, but something - the tendency not to die, or more physically the structures implementing that tendency - does not die until the final catastrophe. And after the final catastrophe, if I have had children or otherwise transmitted the tendency not to die, some part of what is "I" lives on.
What I am saying, in more practical terms, is that when I fight to remain alive (or take steps less vigorous than fighting, although to say fighting brings it out more powerfully) what is "I" is the part - or in fact the structure - which nature gives me the innate feeling I must preserve. This is not any particular portion of my body, because I would feel willing to sacrifice a limb or other body part for the sake of "self"-preservation. It must be some complex structure - involving the continuing ability to think, unarguably - which even though it is complex I have innate understanding of (even though I cannot say what it is except approximately through writing an essay). But whatever it is evolution has led me to know that it exists and to understand it for the practical purpose of tending not to die.
It seems to me (to take the matter a little further) that people fall into two broad camps, that is those who are more physical in their attitude and those who are more mental (which latter is a bit of a pun, I admit). Those who are more physical will have it in their nature to perpetuate the tendency not to die by procreating children. In this case I am tempted to say what is "I" - for them - is their DNA, since this is what gets preserved from generation to generation: and the 'structure' it gives rise to is a particular body type plus a particular way of looking at the world deriving from the results on the brain of the DNA blueprint. Furthermore such people will not come close to being autistic because they need to interact with a member of the opposite gender in order to procreate. They are not selfish in that they accept that their children will not be identical copies of themselves but will share part of their partner's DNA. Of course the largest part of humanity leans to this end of the spectrum of people who are physical in their attitude. This follows from the fact that procreating children has been the readiest means of transmitting the tendency not to die, failing a very complex interwoven Society to preserve more abstract structures.
People who are more mental transmit the tendency not to die through ideas - abstract structures - which when implemented (in a Society capable of implementing them and saving them beyond the one generation, that is through libraries, universities and more recently developed informational networks) protect and preserve human beings.
What I gather from the internet leads me to suppose that mental people are likely to be more successful (counted as a proportion of 'Society') in future. People who do little but think and who in earlier times suffered feelings of isolation affecting them adversely now have a resource of emotional support, and moreover can get their ideas across without needing wealth or a specific position in academia. Society in Britain (and likely other jurisdictions too) through the ways of the Government machine is striving more to include ideas from all species of persons, including those who are mental to the degree of mental illness, in formulating policy for the way forward.

We are sold

22/02/13 05:38 [Friday]
I don't keep my diary anything like as fully as I did in years gone by (when the dopamine in my brain was a greater flow, that is before I was on the present régime of dopamine-blocking medication). I do now upload my Twitter posts to my website colinbrough.co.uk monthly, but it is possible a coherent story does not emerge from perusing them.
I had been living apart from Dawn but in January she returned to the bungalow we are trying to sell in Kingswinford, with the intention of living here with me until it should be sold, at which date we move to Harworth near Doncaster which is the village where she grew up. We have now had an offer for the bungalow which we have accepted, so if things run smoothly it is sold and we shall be moving. We have also made an offer for a house in Harworth which has been accepted, although the lady in occupation there has yet to find a new place. We hope that all goes according to plan so that we can move home within say two months.
In preparation - driven by Dawn's vigour - we have been packing a lot of our belongings.

Computer records and other records over the years

29/01/13 14:31 [Tuesday]
I have noticed as a general principle that when my level of ‘activation’ gets going the brain cells oscillating more (that is the neural structures with increased rates of firing) bring out memories of sequences from my past. More than this I become enthusiastic to organise and make sense of the remembered sequences. More specifically I have found that after interludes - sometimes very lengthy, years-long, ‘interludes’ - in which my thinking has been suppressed by dopamine-blocking medication (at too high a dosage: this is what I mean) I become earnest, and sometimes vigorously enthusiastic, to fill-in what I missed, not so much by thinking after the event - because the sensory data to base the thinking on has been lost forever - but instead by putting together what memories I do have to reconstruct the sequences that I think must have occurred. If I become over-concerned, that is obsessed, with thinking through what I should earlier have thought through (in the case of complete, and especially if it is sudden, withdrawal of medication), my thinking becomes confused and irregular. In the past this has led to prescription of renewed high dosages of dopamine-blockers.
For example in the summer of 2004 after I had suddenly stopped accepting injections the preceding autumn which I had been having at very high dosages since 1987, I became wholly overwhelmed with confused and mistakenly based effusions of thinking (part of which involved my sleeping very little) so that in September 2004 I was sectioned for the fourth separate time in my life and detained at Bassetlaw Hospital.
I am now becoming interested in sorting out past sequences, starting with the period 2009-2011 and working things out in reverse to cover those years, this period coming to my attention because then I had more-or-less ceased to upload an online diary. The interest arises on the basis that during and following my detention over the winter of 2010-2011 I was made to accept injections of Risperdal in the middle range of dosage which was not so bad as having very high dosages as in earlier decades but still it rather suppressed the thinking I would have had it in my nature to do. Since I am now on the reduced dosage in the lower range - thanks to the good sense of the psychiatrist who was responsible for my case during that most recent detention and for a few months afterwards - I have gradually over the months of 2012 to the present time been recovering my powers of mentation but without anything like the rebound (as indeed I regarded it at the time) of 2004.
In 2007 I had got into something of a volatile state - again because I had suddenly come off the medication I was accepting throughout 2006 - so that in December 2007 I fled the park home Dawn and I had been occupying part of the time, which was located near her family south of Doncaster, and returned to Kingswinford where I had lived most of my adult life - in fact up to the year my parents died. The increasing disorganisation of my thinking can be traced in the fact that I was keeping regular computer archives but these had become desultory by the end of 2007 and then petered out (certainly until I felt at the end of 2008 that I should try again to keep records of what I had done but then and until recent months now the archives I put together were irregular in time and disorganised in structure).
Nonetheless in 2008 I was still uploading an online diary as sort of a record although it was not such as to require proper structuring. Some months of that year - June and December I can say for sure - the activity in my brain was in such flood that I did not keep up with the blog. Instead I wrote my effusions in handwritten notes, and indeed some of these were scanned in 2008 and formed part of my blog then, and now recently I have been hoping to make it more complete. I was also becoming suspicious that what I put on my computer was subject to interference in the form of deletions and alterations and in tandem I was interested in recruiting help from real-life bodies - Government bodies, I mean - to look into and put right the wrongs I had suffered over the decades, and indeed (this leading to ‘amplificatory feedback’) the wrongs I believed I was suffering in trying to recruit the help.
The upshot of this was that instead of putting up an online diary I started writing to MPs (and others whose addresses I found from Who’s Who) and simply as a record saving what I wrote on the computer without otherwise much rhyme or reason. In truth it has been considerable work to put together the computer records from 2009-2010 as a dated diary, and I am still processing what I have before I can publish it.
But, as I said, I am operating a reverse sequence and recently included in my blog my diary from March 2011 when I was in hospital at Bushey Fields (the psychiatric hospital for Dudley). When I was hospitalised in September 2010 I was very concerned to keep records of what I thought was happening and did so in the form of numerous texts to members of Dawn’s family some of which I can trace copies of. Today I am working on January 2011 because that month I was on leave from what was a very extended detention and did some diarying on the computer whereas in the February I was back in hospital and have sparser records. The reason for this I’m sure was that the medication I had been on in the autumn which was resumed in the February was having the desired effect of reducing my thinking overflow. The records from February 2011, made in hospital, are in the form of notes within my Filofax.

Persistence

12/01/13 08:11 [Saturday]
I was watching Stargazing Live the other evening and the question arose of whence the fluctuations in the universe derived, where by fluctuations I mean the presence in certain parts of objects with mass - for example planets (but more basically particles) - or other things which differ from one location to another (for example electromagnetic fields). In other words why is the universe not the same throughout its expanse, that is empty or an unchanging sea of some force (which means empty since there is nothing for the force to act on) or an unchanging lattice of mass (which means empty since mass has no meaning but for either gravity or inertia due to it)? Some answer was given relating to the speed of the initial expansion in the fraction of a second following the Big Bang, but the answer which satisfies me is that quantum fluctuations at the outset of the universe led to the lumpiness it now has.
What I myself have been thinking as a consequence, though, is that there is a natural propensity in the human mentality to believe things must stay the same unless there is a reason for them to change. Before Newton came up with his First Law people believed objects had in their nature to be still unless some force acted on them, and the First Law altered that slightly into 'had in their nature to continue in a state of zero or uniform motion' unless some force acted on them. So people think the universe ought to be the same throughout space and time - an unchanging sea you might as well call nothingness - unless there is some reason for it to be different in different locations and at different times.
What this is is the human presumption of causality. It is in human nature to believe that if things alter (from place to place or from time to time) there must be a causal antecedent to the alteration. Modern physics is slightly freeing us from this presumption, in that alterations at the quantum level occur randomly, that is unpredictably and for no reason. Of course what has led to the human insistence on causality is the fact that thinking that way has helped us survive in the context we are in - life on Earth - and the theory of evolution is accurate.
However the way human beings think on this Earth need not be a guide to the way the universe operates outside the Earthy realm. Thus on the scale of the imperceptibly small - the quantum scale - and also (I say) on the scale of the unthinkably big (or lengthy in time) changes arise without cause.
Given all the things that could happen to our planet from one day to the next it may surprise some that it persists day after day: why doesn't it just fizzle out into vapour or nothingness? My answer to that is that it has proved valuable to us (including animals) in evolutionary terms to presume that things go on day after day. I suppose some day it will fizzle out but anyone remaining will get the impression that I have fizzled out. (Hint on humour: this is the end.)

Consequence or inconsequence

07/01/13 08:14 [Monday]
I was going to tweet about one thing leading me to another so that if I introduce too much change (or am subject to too much change) I do one thing then have to do more in the knock-on then have to do more to retrieve mistakes and alterations and so it goes on possibly without end. But less so now I am on dopamine-blocking medication. I cannot tweet it though because there are too many words to it.
One of the things on my to-do list (prepared early this morning soon after I got up) is to scan the remainder of my Filofax diary for 2012. However I cannot get at the scanner because it has stuff on it as a consequence of Dawn's return to live here at the bungalow until the bungalow is sold. We have her stuff scattered all over the place here where it was off-loaded from the van it was brought in.
The knock-on task then was to clear the top of the scanner. This led to me putting items left over from Christmas in the Welsh dresser we have in the living room. That in turn led me to realise I had not catalogued all the items (mainly documents) in the Welsh dresser on the occasion recently I was cataloguing so much. So I have catalogued them and things still remain now on top of the scanner. So I have not done my scanning.
Anyway, the dopamine-blocking in my head results in my sensing how boring this is - cataloguing about cataloguing - so I will now grind to a halt. I will however mention that on the higher dosage of Risperdal I was on last year, anything I might do struck me as boring, empty and devoid of consequence before I started it. So it is a matter of balance: do so much but not too much which the average observer would declare inconsequential.

Twitter diary for December 2012

http://www.colinbrough.co.uk/Twitter2012Dec.html