153 lines
8.9 KiB
Plaintext
153 lines
8.9 KiB
Plaintext
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= F.U.C.K. - Fucked Up College Kids - Born Jan. 24th, 1993 - F.U.C.K. =
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Out of the Closet
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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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(For Aurelius: I never knew you, but you were one of us.)
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I'm writing this file for a few reasons. One of them is that just about
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everybody in 303 (and 970) who's on IRC knows I hang out in #depression.
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Another is that several people probably know I wrote the "anonymous" FUCK
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file concerning suicide some time ago (mailed from a hacked account on my
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school's mainframe; there are only two other people in the scene who
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attend the school in question). The main reason I am writing this, though,
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is because I want to shed some light on things that people--even those who
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have clinical depression--might not realize yet.
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I am currently on 40mg of Prozac per day. I've been informed by my
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psychiatrist that I will have to maintain this level or higher of the drug
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in my bloodstream every single day for at least five more years in order to
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get the seratonin levels in my brain back to some semblance of normality.
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Seratonin is a neurotransmitter, which is a substance in the brain that
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helps send electrical impulses across the synapses. In most people who are
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diagnosed as clinically depressed, the brain abosorbs excess seratonin
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too quickly, which lowers the amount of synaptic activity associated
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with seratonin, which gives rise to a host of symptoms associated with
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depression: excessive crying, sleeping disorders, eating disorders,
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fatigue, feelings of hopelessness, and suicidal inclination. This is my
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understanding of clinical depression, which I've been studying first-
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hand for 25 years now. I'd appreciate any comments or corrections to
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this information.
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That is the medical side of clinical depression, which does nothing to
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explain how depressed people actually *feel*. I hope I can give you a
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sense of what we feel nearly every day of our lives.
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Hello. My name is Steve. I was diagnosed with clinical depression
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(commonly known as major depression) in 1992. I was diagnosed at Baylife
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Acute Care Center in Florida, where I checked myself in for suicide
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intervention after slicing my forearms with a knife. I was started on
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Prozac in the hospital and they kept me for two weeks against my
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will--when I found out that they wanted to keep me, I tried to leave,
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but Florida state law requires crisis units to hold suicide risks for a
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minimum of one or two weeks.
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Since my visit to Chez Baylife, I've had several more "episodes" of
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depression, that usually end in me going to a shrink and doing whatever
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I can to stay alive. One of the things I do to get the pain out of me is
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to externalize it; I'm what's known colloquially as a "cutter," or
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formally as a "self-harmer." When the hell of everyday life begins to
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hurt me too much inside, I slice myself with a knife I keep at my desk.
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I sharpen the knife often with a diamond sharpener, and it is literally
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sharp enough to shave with--if you look closely at the insides of my
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forearms, you'll notice that there is no hair on them for a width of
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about half an inch on each side of the veins. my upper arms (usually
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hidden under t-shirt sleeves) are masses of scars both new and old, and
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they aren't something I'm particularly proud of. Kids, don't try this at
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home. It's not "cool" to be a cutter, it's just a way to get the pain
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out.
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I recently met someone from the hacking scene on irc who is also a
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cutter. He was surprised when I told him that I was a cutter; he didn't
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think anybody else did it besides him. So this is written in part as a
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nod to him and to inform other cutters who might read this that you are
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not alone.
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"Hope is an illusion" is a topic I set on #depression every so often,
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and most of the time that's how I view life. I've learned not to accept
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hope because every time I do, something happens to remove that hope, and
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another part of me dies with it. Depression has been likened to a dark
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cloud over the mind, but I feel it more as a crushing weight that I must
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carry every day.
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Sometimes I go without eating for three or four days at a time, and
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sometimes I deprive myself of a full night's sleep just so that I can
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*feel* something, anything. This is also another reason why I slice my
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arms; I want to know if I am still capable of feeling. Sometimes I can feel
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the physical pain and sometimes I can't. The mental and emotional pain are
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always with me, though.
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I've had a traumatic past. I'm not ready to write about much of it yet, and
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I don't think I'll ever be ready, but there it is. I don't try to use my
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childhood as an excuse for my behavior, but sometimes it's hard not to
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wonder if it contributed something to my depression. Most of the seratonin
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problems I have are hereditary, but hey, you never know. I grew up in an
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extremely violent environment. I've been held hostage by a man with a 30-06
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who raped my stepmother in my presence. That "man" was my father back when
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alcohol had changed him into a demon. He shows none of the deadly traits he
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used to since he stopped drinking six years ago, but he still has a
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tendency to smash things (fortunately not people anymore) up when he's
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angry. I firmly believe that this country created his dangerous side during
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the Vietnam War, in which soldiers were encouraged to stay drunk and high
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so that they wouldn't question their country's involvement in Vietnam, and
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were sanctioned by Uncle Sam to fire upon anything that moved.
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This is the part I can write about my past; other events involving other
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people still haunt me to this day, and I still can't write about them.
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I often see people on #depression talking about how they had the gun to
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their head/knife to their veins/etc. but "didn't have the courage to end
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it." This is a misconception I'd like cleared up right now. It takes far
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more strength and courage to live on in the unceasing hell of a
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depressive's life. At the same time, I do not scorn suicide as "the
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coward's way out"; it is a means of escape as surely as are booze and
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drugs. And if everyday life is hell, the only thing I would fear from a
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Christian notion of hell would be the absence of my friends, who at least
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make life bearable.
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Those of you who know me personally should not take this file as a hint to
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watch what you say around me or anything of the sort. Many friends and
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family members of clinically depressed people feel that they have to
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tiptoe around issues of depression, but that's not the case. An admission
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of clinical depression is also not a play for sympathy, because it's
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something that is fairly hard to do in the first place. I know people who
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have been fired because they were depressed, which is a violation of the
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Americans with Disabilities Act, but employers get away with it anyway.
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An admission of suicidal feelings is something that should be taken
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seriously, because generally the person admitting to these feelings is
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asking for help.
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When people I know on irc started doing a "whois" on me they saw
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#depression and popped in to see what I was doing there. At one point this
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alarmed me so much that I changed the channel's mode to +s (secret, so it
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won't show up in a whois). One of the other regular ops immediately
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switched it back to -s and said, "no secrets." I agree now. No secrets.
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(Aurelius, a #depression regular, ended his life on February 28, 1997.)
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-Legion
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=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
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= Questions, Comments, Bitches, Ideas, Rants, Death Threats, Submissions =
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= Mail: jericho@dimensional.com (Mail is welcomed) =
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=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
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= To receive new issues through mail, mail jericho@dimensional.com with =
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= "subscribe fuck". If you do not have FTP access and would like back =
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= issues, send a list of any missing issues and they will be mailed. =
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=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
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= Files through AnonFTP FTP.DIMENSIONAL.COM/users/jericho/FUCK =
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= FTP.SEKURITY.ORG/pub/zines/fucked.up.college.kids =
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= FTP.PRISM.NET/pub/users/mercuri/zines/fuck =
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= FTP.WINTERNET.COM/users/craigb/fuck =
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= FTP.GIGA.OR.AT/pub/hackers/zines/FUCK =
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= ETEXT.ARCHIVE.UMICH.EDU/pub/Zines/FUCK =
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= Files through WWW: http://www.dimensional.com/~jericho =
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= http://www.prism.net/zineworld/fuck/ =
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= (c) Copyright. All files copyright by the original author. =
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