Care to Dance?

So. I sorta quit paying attention to McNeil/Lehrer The News Hour last night about 20 minutes or so before it actually ended. I got wrapped up reading something or other, and by the time I looked up Jim Lehrer’s smiling face was gone and this had begun:

Live From Lincoln Center
Mozart Dances
Mostly Mozart Festival
Mark Morris Dance Group

It was the music that caught my ear, and I looked up. The Mark Morris Dance Group is pretty good, if you like that sort of thing. Understand, Gentle Reader, I could stick what little I know about “dance” in my eye and it wouldn’t hurt a bit. I’ve never been to a dance recital. This is the first recital I’ve seen on TeeVee, to the best of my recollection. So, it’s with a grain of salt you’d be taking when I say this was Modern Dance. I know it wasn’t ballet—no tutus. And it wasn’t folk dancing—no ethnic stuff. And I’ve come to the end of my dance-description rope, right here. Right now.

I stayed with the program…but only for the music (Mozart is my absolute favorite composer). I’m not much into watching half-naked men dancing around a stage— especially when they’re dancing with each other rather than with the women. And there was a lot of that, seemingly every other time I looked up from my reading.

And as for the women-only segments of the program? They were just OK, these segments. The women were beautiful and very well put together (in that athletic, dancer sort of way), the costumes were interesting, and the dancing complemented the accompanying music. There was a critical element missing, however, that ultimately impaired my enjoyment of the performance…

No poles.

Via blog-buddy Morgan, we get this link to a BBC article noting that “Depression is ‘over-diagnosed’.” And like Morgan, my immediate impression was “Gee. Ya think?” Excerpts:

Too many people are being diagnosed with depression when all they are is unhappy, a leading psychiatrist says.

Professor Gordon Parker claims the threshold for clinical depression is too low and risks treating normal emotional states as illness.

Writing in the British Medical Journal, he calls depression a "catch-all" diagnosis driven by clever marketing.

But another psychiatrist writing in the journal contradicts his views, praising the increased diagnosis of depression.

Professor Ian Hickie writes that an increased diagnosis and treatment of depression has led to a reduction in suicides and removal of the old stigma surrounding mental illness.

Under the current diagnosis guidelines, around one in five adults is thought to suffer depression during their lifetime. This costs the UK economy billions in lost productivity and treatment.

[…]

Marjorie Wallace, chief executive of the mental health charity Sane, said: "Depression can be a complex and challenging condition ranging from feeling low to being so disabled that the person may be unable to get out of bed in the morning, sustain relationships or work.

"It is not surprising that with such a wide range of symptoms, identification varies from one doctor to another.

One can go back and forth on this subject, spending endless hours in beer- or scotch-fueled debate, and I have. Speaking as an individual who’s been diagnosed in the past as “clinically depressed,” and further as an individual who spent a couple of months on Paxil as a direct-result of said diagnosis, I believe depression IS over-diagnosed. But there’s also merit in the counter-argument, regarding the reduction in suicides and such. I suppose it all depends on the accuracy of the diagnosis and the severity of the depression…which can range from feeling low to climbing out on that ledge.

My depression was pretty debilitating even though I was never suicidal. I suffered from the sort of depression that left me incapacitated, in that I would literally spend days on my couch staring blankly at the TeeVee from a fetal position…unable to go to work, feed myself, or perform even the barest of human functions, save relieving myself. It was pretty bad.

Still and even, I took myself off the Paxil after two months and after re-visiting my doctor (there are dire warnings about “stopping abruptly” in the drug packaging. God only knows what that means.) My personal experience… and I emphasize the “personal” here… was the depression, even in its worst stages, was preferable to walking around in a gauzy sort of haze where I felt nearly nothing. The drug “leveled me out” in such a way that I didn’t feel anything: no joy, no sadness, nothing. I hated that, and preferred the occasional bouts of “sleep on the couch” for days as opposed to being chemically numbed-up. It was sorta like Novocain for the psyche. Not good, in other words.

I still get depressed, although the bouts are mild and infrequent. But I’ll never resort to drugs for the condition, ever again. Unless I’m institutionalized, of course, and if I ever get to that point the situation will be well and truly out of my control.

One of my favorite hot buttons, again:

This is worth repeating. The FBI has determined that in some cases, it's better to let innocent people be assaulted, murdered, or wrongly sent to prison than to halt a drug investigation involving one of its confidential informants.

Could Murphy assure the U.S. Congress, Delahunt and Lundgren asked, that the FBI has since instituted policies to ensure that kind of thing never happens again?

Murphy hemmed and hawed, but ultimately said that he could not make any such assurance. That in itself should have been huge news.

Shortly after the Johnston hearings concluded, another informant scandal emerged.

Jarrell Bray, a longtime informant for the Drug Enforcement Administration's Cleveland field office, admitted that with the cooperation of DEA agent Lee Lucas, he had repeatedly lied in court to secure the convictions of innocent people. Bray said he and Lucas fabricated evidence, falsely accused people who had done nothing wrong, then concocted bogus testimony to secure their convictions.

Bray's admission could result in dozens of overturned convictions.

Dozens of overturned convictions? How about hundreds, if not thousands? These guys are out-of-frickin’-control. Please: Tell me how much good the “War on Drugs” is doing, will ya? Can ya? I doubt it. I really, seriously doubt it. This war, unlike some others that come to mind, is indefensible, pure and simple.

(h/t: Chap)

Today’s Pic: Didja know there’s such a place as Pennington, Minnesota? Well, now you do, and you have visible proof in the form of a hastily (and poorly) composed pic of El Casa Móvil De Pennington, in Pennington. Or something like that.

June, 2000.