Jack Bragen
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Mental health, commentary, fiction, science fiction, any other interesting topic I can think of.
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Hard sciences, How to get rich, car repair, how to pilot a Cessna.
Articles by Jack Bragen
Two decades of writing for Bay Area street newspapers
When I was young, in my twenties, I took pride in being able to get letters to the editor published. For a young adult with severe psychiatric illness, a letter to the editor in a paper is pretty good. But I wanted more. I really wanted to become a published writer. Periodically, I would submit stories to publications, and if you consider the level of the writing I produced back then, I stood little or no chance of getting something accepted. I married my wife when I was 31.
Post-election shock and it’s effect on one psychotic man
At a reasonable guess, most of the readers and writers of this publication are unhappy, to say the least, with Donald Trump returning to the White House. I am no exception. And with my psychiatric issues, I am not as able—as many people probably are—to be resilient and to come back to a normal space. I use the word “normal” meaning baseline and it is not a term used to exclude those who are normally different.
Neurodivergent people have limited options for supportive care
Yearsago, while I sat in a waiting room at a mental health clinic, I observed an old man who might have had dementia being brought in to get his shot of medication. He was grumpy and complaining at first, but said he felt better after the shot. It is plausible that the person administering it was to the man’s liking. It seems more doubtful to me that the medication, very likely a time-release oil compound injected into the muscle, would quickly make him feel noticeably better.
Life with cognitive differences
I am close to age 60, and I have lived with substantial psychiatric issues for the past 42 years, my entire adult life. It’s a difficult fact of life and it will never go away. In this essay, I will summarize some of the hardships that come with being considered severely mentally ill. This manuscript is in no way comprehensive. Because having a mental illness affects everything.
The right to exist is a human right
“Everyone has the right to life, liberty, and security of person.” – United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 3 Every person of every race, religion, ancestry, sexual orientation, and ability should have the right to exist, and people should let us be when we are minding our own business.
Tales of insomnia - Street Spirit
I’vewoken at about 2:30 in the morning and I am not tired. I might have forgotten to take AM medication yesterday. This morning I’m taking the pills very early to be sure I don’t miss them. I have chronic schizoaffective disorder, or at least that’s my current diagnosis. In my past, I was pegged with “Schizophrenia: Paranoid-type.” My diagnosis was changed because the presumption is, if you are intelligent and able to do things with your mind, you are not schizophrenic.
MENTAL HEALTH, APOLITICAL: Tragic Lives
Government is a disaster in the U.S. But let's refrain from saying the Democrats are horrible, the Republicans are horrible--or refer to any particular politician. The net result is the same: The basic needs of people with mental disabilities are not being met, and really, it is worse than that. This essay marks the beginning, I hope, of a new phase for my writings in the Berkeley Daily Planet.
ON MENTAL ILLNESS: Varieties of Harassment
Harassment exists where someone doesn't want to be contacted, and where the other person is violating this expressed need. Harassment can exist in numerous contexts. Harassment causes people to lose their jobs. Even presidents of universities have lost their beloved job because they have abused their position. Harassment is a major issue in the modern world, where society is trying to evolve into something better.
MENTAL WELLNESS: Organized Activity Alongside Others Can Heal
MENTAL WELLNESS: Organized Activity Alongside Others Can Heal Jack Bragen In the mid to late nineteen eighties, I worked at numerous jobs, and I succeeded at some of them, meaning I kept the job six months or longer. Some were too hard for me, and some I could do. But eventually, I became burned out on conventional employment and couldn't keep doing it. I'd worked myself too hard. I'm wondering how much of a role being medicated played into this.
MENTAL WELLNESS: What Happens When We Outlive our Parents?
I am closing in on the mark of sixty, and I expect I will make it into old age. Additionally, I have retained my faculties, and I don't have dementia. This description is contrary to the prognosis I was given forty years ago at Kaiser Martinez, when I was first sick. It was believed that my prospects were limited. The doctor in his own mind believed he was being cautiously optimistic. But he vastly underestimated me, and he wasn't doing me a favor.
MENTAL WELLNESS: Rude Awakenings
I awoke tonight after a long nap, and it occurred to me I could be headed for a number of unpleasant surprises. They would be caused by foolish decision-making and ensuing circumstances that I could not foresee. I'm looking at possible threats to my survival. And this is because it wasn't good enough for me, in my way of thinking, to be the same as some others with a psychiatric disability, and accept what is being offered, and simply live poor.
MENTAL WELLNESS: Some Worries Are Safely Dismissible, But How?
Many of our worries could help us in making sure that we mind the many details in life. However, we know there are downsides to excessive worry. If you have psychiatric issues, especially paranoid tendencies, the worries that you might get could be very farfetched, your belief in them could be stronger, and the intensity of the worry could be at a level where it is debilitating. Another point: It is harder for a mentally ill person to assess the realism of their worry.
ON MENTAL WELLNESS: Delusionality vs. Synching to the reality of a Modern Day Dystopia
This week's edition could be short, less filtered and more spontaneous than my usual. I've got health and business issues going on and I need to tend to them. But I figured it wouldn't do me any harm to type a few paragraphs. In the past, being highly psychotic took you away from a "normal reality" and thrust you into a horrible quasi reality produced by the illness.
ON MENTAL WELLNESS: A Few Ideas on Maintaining The Mind
A person's mind may not right itself following a period of disorganization, unless you use deliberate effort. For example, in my past I had psychotic episodes, and following reinstatement of medication, I wasn't well right away--it took a while, and it took some doing. I needed to draw on memory as a model for how my mind was supposed to work. Also, I have learned self-observation.
ON MENTAL WELLNESS: Pipe Dreams and Denial Systems
Being in denial could mean not acknowledging something difficult, and/or, it could mean unrealistic thoughts of getting something, (any impracticable thing you're after). This is not unique to people with psychiatric issues. I know several non-neurodivergent people who are in unhealthy denial about their life situations. And if they could face a few bleak facts, they might be able to take necessary steps to get their situations resolved.
RESPONSE TO "COGNITIVE TESTING FOR LAWMAKERS"
Dear Jagjit Singh: You have brought up an interesting point and a valid concern in your call for a cognitive test for lawmakers and judges. And I have given thought to the subject in the past. It is important that we have leaders who are fit to lead. However, I believe implementation of cognitive tests would undermine democracy and not shore it up. A mental fitness test would convert a selected group of psychologists, neurologists, and psychiatrists into a political body.
ON MENTAL WELLNESS: Resuming Essays
This is a quote from me, but I don't doubt someone else has said this long before I arrived at it: The wish in life is to do something, or be something or someone, you fill that, or you don't, you experience it, and it is or isn't what you wanted or thought it would be, but then it is finite - you experience it, and it is gone... Here is another one: Life: fairness has nothing to do with it; things happen and that is the nature of living in the physical world...
ON MENTAL WELLNESS: Imperiled
Over the past two or three decades, the caprices of fortune have not boded well for mentally ill disabled people. If a person has a mental or emotional difference that makes it hard for them to get and maintain work, it is automatic that they are at risk for homelessness. The amount we receive to live on is inadequate in the San Francisco Bay Area to pay for housing, forcing some to accept institutionalized housing when this is not appropriate for their level of development.
ON MENTAL WELLNESS: We Need Some Say in What Medications We Take
Doctors and especially psychiatrists believe they can dictate to us how we're going to live. This is accurate if we are under conservatorship. However, in the absence of a court mandate, we have choices in what medications we're going to take or refuse. And if a doctor wants to give us a new "miracle drug," we should research the drug or the proposed treatment before we accept it.
ON MENTAL WELLNESS: for some, journaling can bring peace,, but I suggest a shredder
For decades, long before I was able to get material published, I had a constant activity of writing notes to myself on paper tablets. I would gain a better mood and therapeutic benefit through this activity. It was a way of checking in with myself, "grounding" myself, and learning more about the internal workings of my consciousness. This doesn't fix everything, but it can bring better feelings.
Bewildering Stories biography
Department header Bewildering Stories biography As a teenager, I read a lot and lacked social skills. At that time and in my twenties, I made some pitiful attempts at becoming a published author. I was diagnosed with schizophrenia in 1982 but was determined that this diagnosis would not ruin my life. In this vein, I had numerous work attempts for the next fifteen years, and some of them were successful. In my late twenties, I somewhat threw in the towel and began to live on public benefits.
ON MENTAL WELLNESS: You Shouldn't Force Work on Yourself
The rules of life differ for persons with almost any psychiatric condition versus those without one. The great "work ethic" is not appropriate for those who suffer from a mind-altering brain illness and who take mind-altering drugs to deal with that condition. Regardless of how much we might yearn to see ourselves as not disabled, we people who have a mental illness or similar condition need to take more care of ourselves, and we need to back off from overdoing it.
ON MENTAL WELLNESS: Part of Recovery is Letting Go of the Unrealistic and/or the Unworkable
Many of my readers probably know what it is like to go through a psychotic episode. It is hell. It is not only hell on the psychotic person, but also on family and anyone else who is trying to help a psychotic person get into treatment. People probably wish they could wave a magic wand and get a relative or close person into treatment, whether voluntary or not. Just get meds into the person, any method that works. People have put medication into a relative's food.
ON MENTAL WELLNESS: The Lasting Damage of Mistreatment
I have not trained myself to have an arsenal of insulting language, or defenses from foresaid from other people ready to be delivered whenever the moment calls for it or when I think I can get away with it. I never thought it was necessary to use language as a weapon rather than a tool. Moreover, I lack a filter. When I get angry, I'll say things that usually work against me and that won't give me any kind of advantage. I am not a good verbal fighter. My intent with words is that of communicating.
ON MENTAL WELLNESS: What We Face
In the past twenty-two years I've had the recurring privilege of being a published writer. However, I've also experienced a psychotic condition for my entire adult life. I'm in my late fifties, and I've been medicated for psychosis and mood changes for the past forty years. When I was in my early twenties, I was still well enough to work at skilled and unskilled employment and support myself with the wages. As I got older, I've needed to obtain Social Security and SSI to survive.
ON MENTAL WELLNESS: two perspectives: Treatment Advocates vs. Rights ADVOCATES
Treatment Advocacy is a non-profit organization operating from Arlington, Virginia, (possibly an hour's drive from Richmond, Virginia, home of Phillip Morris) and has the agenda of making it easier to get noncompliant mentally ill adults into involuntary treatment. Some of this agenda will help some mentally ill people find their way in life. I agree at least partway with their ethic. I find that to survive, I need psychiatric medication.
ON MENTAL WELLNESS: Damage from Overload
I'm prefacing this week's feature with a disclaimer: This piece doesn't contain proven scientific fact, and it should not be used as a basis for how you deal with your or anyone's psychiatric condition or lack thereof. This is conjecture, or maybe it is an oversized anecdote. Here it is: Certain kinds of life situations and environments can be damaging to some people. This could often be a separate issue from a psychiatric condition.
The ‘unemployable’ also have a right to exist
Home Opinion The ‘unemployable’ also have a right to exist View Articles in Other Categories I’mdisabled and I’m unable to make it in a conventional job. I’m facing very hard challenges at this point in life. I’m creeping up on age sixty and I have few or no prospects of bettering my financial condition, which is dismal. I live in a challenging home environment, I’m facing multiple health problems, and I continually think, “There must be a way out of this.” But is there?
ON MENTAL WELLNESS: Intolerance Toward Disabled People Signals Absence of Development
Picking on a person for having a disability is infantile, crude, and obnoxious. Yet it is all too common for those blessed with wealth and easy conditions to find amusement in mocking disabled people and showing us the door. Or putting a broom in our hands and keeping us around for amusement. This behavior of those blessed with privilege shows that many people have a long way to go before they measure up to the term, "human beings." I have lived among people with disabilities for forty years.
ON MENTAL WELLNESS: Confessions of a Nicotine Addict
This is a note from a smoker inspired by Carol Denny's photo of a smoker and reference to smokers in her April 30 piece and in other pieces by her. I began smoking cigarettes before this act became socially unacceptable, and I think the year was 1990. I was in my twenties, and medical repercussions seemed very distant. I was off medication, I was relapsing, and I smoked and "decompensated" listening to my brother's Jethro Tull album, and I used up all my brother's cigarettes.
ON MENTAL WELLNESS: Confessions of a Nicotine Addict (Response to Carol Denney:)
This is a note from a smoker inspired by Carol Denny's photo of a smoker and reference to smokers in her April 30 piece and in other pieces by her. I began smoking cigarettes before this act became socially unacceptable, and I think the year was 1990. I was in my twenties, and medical repercussions seemed very distant. I was off medication, I was relapsing, and I smoked and "decompensated" listening to my brother's Jethro Tull album, and I used up all my brother's cigarettes.
ON MENTAL WELLNESS: The Insidiousness of Psychosis
Mental illness is serious business, and if you fail to treat it, you will reap dire consequences. In 1982, I was given the diagnosis of "Schizophrenia: Paranoid-type," by Dr. Trachtenberg at Kaiser Inpatient Psychiatric Ward. And at the time the diagnosis appeared correct. But in the past twenty years, give or take a few years, my diagnosis was changed to "Schizoaffective," to allow for being smart.
ON MENTAL WELLNESS: The Mental Health Treatment System is my Frenemy, Part II
This week's column concerns how the mental health treatment system is designed to manage the "population" of mentally ill people and to exert some levels of control. I believe the purpose of the system is not only to help us, but also to keep us walled off from society-at-large, so that people will not be bothered by us. The more we enter the arenas of "normal people" the more of a perceived "problem" we become.
ON MENTAL WELLNESS: The Social Service Systems Punish Success
It is widely known that if you receive Social Security and/or SSI, you are not allowed to earn much money before your benefits, essential for survival, are jeopardized. You can make up to eighty dollars in a month without any penalties, and without the requirement to report. Beyond that, you must report money you earn. Additionally, a history of working jeopardizes the criteria that, to government, proves disability.
ON MENTAL WELLNESS: The Scenario of Getting a Job
Brittany Spears, bipolar and an incredible performer, is formerly under conservatorship by her family. She was a great breadwinner for them until she was able to get out of conservatorship. She is one of the few exceptions to the guideline I'm about to offer. A person who suffers from a chronic psychiatric condition should not rely on a job to be able to survive. You need Social Security to cover you in the inevitable times that you can't work.
Public Comment from The Berkeley Daily Planet
Soylent Green A 1973 movie, Soylent Green, starring Charlton Heston, was science fiction that projected a dystopic future including the "Greenhouse Effect," which is global warming, plus out-of-control overpopulation, and the death and putrefaction of Earth's oceans. Sound familiar? Science has known about global warming and the threat to the oceans since the 1970's and before.
I hate smoking cigarettes but I can't quit
View Articles in Other Categories I am a cigarette addict not yet in recovery. The need to pay for cigarettes is decimating my budget. I continue under the excuse that I can’t function to do basic tasks unless I keep smoking because of how deeply the addiction is embedded into my system. Smoking wastes a great deal of time. It has caused me health problems, and it has caused me relationship problems. Quitting would allow me to focus more on work–thereby improving my future.
Living with mental illness: the burden of stereotype
Mostmainstream people seem to lack tolerance of people living with mental illness, and I believe this is because they haven’t been educated about us. People with mental illness are often good people with bad problems. It is a hard life circumstance when one’s own mind is a source of betrayal. It is harder when people lack sympathy. People view us in stereotypes. They may see homeless mentally ill people who are in the process of falling apart, who are doing irrational and often antisocial things.
The terror that comes with being poor, aging, disabled
Fearis a familiar frenemy if you are in a continuous struggle for survival. You might hardly remember a time in your past when you were not afraid. Fear can take hold when we have an idle moment, or it can happen when we face the specter of trying to maintain a viable budget on a small source of income. The idea that we could become homeless worsens this. If disabled and if one has health issues, we might not physically be able to survive a period of homelessness–it could spell the end.
ON MENTAL WELLNESS: NAMI Pushes for Non-Police Response to Crises
I've had some misgivings about certain things related to NAMI for many years. This is even though my mother has very heroically and selflessly volunteered for them, including through the Clubhouse in Concord. But my attitude is shifting. My wife, when we were sitting in the living room of our two-bedroom apartment, read a snippet to me about NAMI advocating for a non-police response when someone calls with a mental health crisis for themselves of their loved ones.
Car man: Who am I?
Ilive in my car, and that could qualify me as homeless. I also have a memory problem: I can’t remember what my name is, with whom I once lived, or even where I came from. I have a wallet. It has my Driver’s License that calls me “John Doe.” It is a valid license so far as I can tell. But I am certain my name is not John, or Doe. I drive. Every day and night I drive. Why do I drive–you might ask? And I can’t tell you why. I wish I knew. Maybe I’m trying to find something familiar.
The real-world impact of Trump’s crackdown on government benefits
Forthree decades, I have relied on Social Security benefits to put a roof over my head, to put food in my belly, and to provide much needed medical care. I have valid, documented reasons that I am entitled to these benefits. However, for over a year, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Social Security Administration sent me harassing communications, threatening to cut me off should I fail to comply with their demands.
People with psychiatric issues have a harder time adapting to changes in life compared to the neuro typical. I have heard this said by a professional who worked with mentally ill people, and I've seen it in myself and in neuro atypical peers. Sometimes when we face a major life challenge, it is enough to bring back severe symptoms to the extent that we could wind up hospitalized again. One example of this is when we must deal with a death in the family.
ON MENTAL WELLNESS: To Get Appropriate Help, We Must Make Our Best Case
A tangential note: One of the Big Fatal Mistakes of inexperienced persons who embark on self-employment is to undervalue oneself, and as a result, to undercharge. Customers do not respect this. When the price of something is too low, people invariably perceive that something is wrong with it. This detracts, and it is a reason that many entrepreneurships fail. Yet, there are many types of salesmanship applicable to many situations.
ON MENTAL WELLNESS: Anger is a Valid Response in Many Situations
Anger happens; it just does. Even "enlightened" Zen Masters experience anger and must cope with it through breathing exercises or with other mindfulness. (I've witnessed as much firsthand and have also read of it.) If you try to deny your anger, it potentially becomes an internal agent of self-harm. If you try too hard not to be angry, this can cause you to disassociate, or it can cause an uptick in symptoms of a psychiatric illness.
At what point was the term "reintegration" dropped from the mental health vocabulary? Furthermore, at what point did it become a major achievement rather than the expected norm for a mental health consumer not to be incarcerated or homeless--or for it to be an accomplishment to live into one's sixth decade? At what point did it become ingrained into people's minds that a mentally ill person can't have a professional career or a decent relationship?
The power of one’s voice as a nonviolent form of self-defense
Home Opinion The power of one’s voice as a nonviolent form of self-defense View Articles in Other Categories Being“fearless” is totally not the same thing as being “invincible.” But mastering some of your fears makes you more able to defend yourself through nonviolent strategies. One of them is the use of your voice.I have at times needed to deal with assaultive people. In general, an assaultive person uses the projection of fear as a weapon.
ON MENTAL WELLNESS: Two Topics This Week
The first casualty of being a mental health consumer is Your Truth. When you speak your truth, you are contradicted. You are told that what you've said isn't real. You are told that your judgment isn't valid. You are never taken at your word. The assumption is that you are mentally sick and thus anything you say should be either ignored or disregarded. If you tell people a fact that you know for certain is a fact, they may contradict that and they may say they have notes that tell them otherwise.
ON MENTAL WELLNESS: Our Existences are Fragile
Mentally ill people in recovery need a lot of help, from family, from society and from the mental health treatment systems. Generally, families are supportive--mine always has been. Yet, society doesn't want to deal with us, and would rather we do not share space with the "good working people," those who congregate at Starbuck's every morning before work. They do not want their tax dollars to go toward helping us live. At least, not near to them.
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