There is something incredibly visceral about maximum performance take off, even just watching it, sorta like going 0-350 mph in about 4 seconds in an AA Fuel Dragster -- many AA dragsters for a few seconds are accelerating faster than this plane until the F-15 pilot dumps many gallons of jet fuel into the afterburner as is starting here! I've seen the next 10 seconds after this at an air show -- the plane is going straight up faster than a Saturn Rocket launching a Space Shuttle. They can do that to about 40,000 feet or so, look it up in Wikipedia.
Warning: I have been diagnosed as exhibiting a Cyclical Mood Disorder, so this blog, like my moods, may cover a lot of territory. There are lots of names for what I'm like, but the one that counts for the insurance companies came from my now retired psychiatrist. He said I could best be "labeled" as Bipolar 2. Of all the cyclical mood disorders, BP2, really sucks, because I never get to experience the irresponsible "top of the world" mania, but I do experience the deepest darkest depression. Since I'm fairly solitary, most people know me more by my hypomania: irritable, impulsive, explosive, and toss in a lot of arrogance. Sometimes I wonder if I'm a psychopath. My most recent PhD Psychologist said, "no, because you are not mean." That's true, I don't intend to hurt people, but because of impulsiveness, I do hurt people. To me every complex situation is a challenge - I do impulsive, irrational things just to see if I can work myself out of it. That's where the arrogance comes in; I don't see why I have to obey rules made by mediocre intelligences. It's a very fine line between that and psychopathology.
My psychiatrist was especially interested in psychopharmacology. Since he is retired, I can reveal that he was intimately familiar with some of the meds he prescribed, and we had something of a collegial relationship. Seeing him once a month for an hour for over three years, plus my own personal research interests, puts me far ahead of the typical family practitioner passing out SSRI's and antipsychotics like candy. It concerns me, because 15 minutes with a GP once a month is not sufficient to really explore these drugs and many are very powerful.
Many modern psychiatric drugs are shamanistic. One of the most popular now is Seroquel. At least for some of us, it produces very intense dreams and sometimes nightmares. I keep a bottle of the anti-panic benzo, Xanax, next to my side of the bed. Perhaps it's a placebo, but Xanax on an empty stomach in the middle of the night calms me and puts me out for 3-4 hours of pleasant dreaming within minutes. I've considered getting something injectable, like Ativan, but I can't see injecting myself successfully in the middle of a panic attack, taking a pill and some water is probably the best I can manage.
