Best or worst idea? Getting a Velotaxi/Rikshaw for private use

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Re: Best or worst idea? Getting a Velotaxi/Rikshaw for private use

Post by Lucifer »

kyle wrote: Tue Oct 22, 2024 1:58 am
Lucifer wrote: Mon Oct 21, 2024 11:29 pm You don't control it. You can never "control" a mental illness.
I feel this way of thinking holds too many people back, yes there are certain mental illnesses, like dementia and Alzheimers that can't be broken, but that's because of a physical disorder of the brain. I think some disorders are trauma induced, yes hell to reprogram, but still doable, The real question is it worth it or not for this person.
Now who's cherry picking? Seriously? I wrote all that, linking videos and everything, and this is your cherry picked response?

Mental illness cannot be controlled

It's basic physics, really. It's not hard to understand. It takes energy to control something like this. You have to be on watch 24/7/365 to be able to "control" a mental illness. And you have to do it with the part of your brain that's not ill.

Your thoughts take the easiest path through your brain. This is basic physics, again. It's the lowest energy solution. You have to expend energy to force your thoughts into different paths through your brain. Again, basic physics. And, as a complicating factor, if you spend your whole life trying to "control" a mental illness, that actually inflicts trauma upon you, because it can't be done.

The only disorder that's directly trauma induced is PTSD, or Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. It's right there in the name. But we still don't understand why some people get it, and others don't. For example, back when I was fencing, which also coincides with when I was most active here (0.2.8/0.3 period), I was fencing with a guy with serious PTSD. The situation? Some lady who was Iraqi brought her Iraqi baby to his squad and asked for milk for her baby. Obviously this was in Iraq, and he was an Iraq veteran. Then she blew herself up. He survived, but was in ICU. Another squadmember didn't survive. Another was injured, and another unscathed. He was the only one with PTSD. Why didn't the others get it? One of them lost his legs in the explosion, and he didn't have PTSD. He had trauma, definitely, but the guy I knew was waking up in the middle of the night strangling his wife because he was still fighting the war.

A really great depiction of PTSD is in the first Rambo movie, First Blood.

Other mental illnesses are often triggered by trauma, like Major Depressive Disorder (mine, also triggered by trauma). Schizo-affective disorders are usually triggered by puberty, though. But there's still a strong hereditary component, meaning DNA, to all of this. I've met people who have been through worse than I have who had no mental illness whatsoever. I've also directly intervened in suicide attempts for people who have been through less. None of this is as simple as you want it to be.
And like I said that eating disorder story is a real story. That person was also very fascinated with learning how the brain works.
I'd like to meet that person. I assume it's not you, but in the unlikely event it is, you have a relapse in your future.
Lucifer wrote: Mon Oct 21, 2024 11:29 pm So you need to figure out how to be ok with not understanding, but still accepting LGBTQ+ people as being real, valid people who deserve all the same rights that you enjoy.
These are mutually exclusive statements, I can still wonder and question anything I want, but I can also still be accepting of those people. Questioning how they got there does not make me dislike them.
Um, no, there's nothing mutually exclusive here. You can accept without understanding. This is part of treatment, teaching people how to accept without understanding. I don't need to understand why my ex-wife was abusive, I just need to accept so that I can move on. It's that simple, but obviously not that easy.
I've been trying to decide if I say this here or not, probably very risky, but please be open minded, I'm trying to learn, but I think it's disrespectful to women, for a trans women, to compete in certain women sports. I am open to trans playing sports, but to me it punishes girls and women by allowing them.
I think you're being wildly arrogant here. You don't know anything about women, transgender women, or sports.

Let me break it down for you.

FIrst, women and men aren't equal in sports because why? The answer is usually something about how men build up muscle mass. This is fine for things like Olympic weightlifting where muscle mass matters. It's also fine in American football to explain why a world-class athletic woman probably can't be on the line in football, but she could be quarterback or wide receiver or kicker. Obviously women aren't allowed to play those positions, even though they could. I mentioned fencing before. The bout I really loved the most is one where I lost. To a woman. Who was literally half my size (I weighed around 200, she was less than 100). She was faster with the blade, a smaller target, everything. A year ago, I was in the junior class and she was in the senior class, and I kicked the ever-loving shit out of her in a bout. Then she went and trained with the UT fencing club, and she kicked the ever-loving shit out of me. I loved every minute of it, and so did she. Not that I like losing. Anybody's who was on the grid with me at that time knows I don't like losing. I loved that she was so good at it. If I'm going to lose, I want to lose to someone who's really good at it. And we fought a few times after that, and she was definitely better than me, even though I'd beaten her a year ago numerous times (ok, maybe she had a crush on me, and that was why we kept fighting).

Fencing is a sport with a separate women's league, and the champion of the men's league is the one who's informally considered the best sword fighter in the country.

This is bullshit. In fact, the things that women tend to be better at than men show up in baseball. Hit a ball with a stick? There's no muscle mass involved, that's all technique. A woman could easily play MLB. But you know why women aren't allowed? Because men have to win.

Look at the academy awards to see what I'm saying. There didn't used to be a best actress category. Women were told if they acted well enough, they could win. Then, year after year, men were awarded the win. Women couldn't win. THere's no stupid muscle mass argument here. It was just sexism, plain and simple. So they created a category for women. Lately, there's been debate on creating categories for black people, because they win so few of the awards. It's not because of talent. It's never been about talent. It's always been about reinforcing a particular narrative on who's the superior people, men or women, white or black, whatever.

Second, the muscle mass argument. Many transgender women fail to transition the first time they take HRT. You know why? It's excruciatingly painful. It's true for transgender men, too. It's more pain than you've ever experienced. You've never experienced your muscle cells detaching and rearranging themselves. That's what happens in HRT. When a person born male, with male hormones, takes HRT, their muscles completely rearrange themselves. While under HRT, a transgender woman's muscles gain and lose mass exactly like a cisgender woman. That's what HRT does. Among other things. So, to the extent that the muscle mass argument is reasonable (it isn't), I'd support saying that trans women can compete in women's sports as long as they've been under HRT for like 2 years. Because at that point, their muscles are the same as any cisgender woman.

Third, sports. Women can excel and compete with men in any sport. Period. With the aforementioned exceptions of Olympic weightlifting, and possibly boxing. Women play differently than men, that's true. And I realize that allowing women to play alongside men would require completely rethinking how to play certain sports like basketball or football. I realize that. I guess men are just too ******* lazy to be willing to change how they play to be able to compete with women. In co-ed leagues that are male dominated, it's common for a group of women to come in and beat the every-loving shit out of the men by just playing differently. Waaaa. Deal with lag, mfers.

How about we quit coddling men and their precious little snowflake egos? Let the girls compete. Quit being a wuss. Grow the **** up.
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Re: Best or worst idea? Getting a Velotaxi/Rikshaw for private use

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If you haven't seen this guy, you need to.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xGawJI ... JlyB6kh4bN

Especially you, Kyle.
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Re: Best or worst idea? Getting a Velotaxi/Rikshaw for private use

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kyle wrote: Tue Oct 22, 2024 1:58 amI feel this way of thinking holds too many people back, yes there are certain mental illnesses, like dementia and Alzheimers that can't be broken, but that's because of a physical disorder of the brain.
This is a weird take. You arbitrarily decide some mental conditions have a physical root cause, but then dismiss others as just "thinking a certain way?" Makes no sense. Also, if mental disorders can be treated with medication then that indicates a physical disorder, no? I feel like you haven't thought this through carefully.

Oh, as long as I'm posting I should mention that I didn't always reject free will. I grew up in a Catholic household and really believed in god and prayer and choice and all that. It wasn't until suffering decades of mental illness that I came to the conclusion that free will doesn't exist. No one would choose to go what I've gone through. In a lot of ways I'm envious of your ignorance on the subject because you've been saved a trouble I wouldn't wish on anyone, but still I wish you'd trust our expert advice as you would other experts.
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Re: Best or worst idea? Getting a Velotaxi/Rikshaw for private use

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kyle wrote:yes there are certain mental illnesses, like dementia and Alzheimers that can't be broken, but that's because of a physical disorder of the brain. I think some disorders are trauma induced, yes hell to reprogram, but still doable, The real question is it worth it or not for this person.
kyle, the mistake you're making here is that you are assuming mental illnesses are either nurture or nature, when in actual fact many are a combination of the two. One thing that Lucifer has been trying to explain is the concept of susceptibility, where some people are more susceptible, due to their genetics (nature), to one or more mental illness(es), than some other people are. For example, take schizophrenia. Some people may be born with it occurring within themselves, whilst others may have it occur within themselves later on in life due to a certain amount of trauma. The amount of trauma required to induce the illness can vary from person to person. When I say trauma, I don't necessarily mean a single traumatic event either, while that is very possible and does happen, more often, trauma means a build-up of mental pain over time, an accumulation of traumatic events where the most recent one eventually pushes them over the edge, so to speak. Also, once schizophrenia occurs, it has an effect on the brain physically, making it even harder to "fix". The same is actually true with alcoholism and I'm sure many/most other mental illnesses too.
Lucifer wrote: sports. Women can excel and compete with men in any sport. Period. With the aforementioned exceptions of Olympic weightlifting, and possibly boxing
There are some sports where I believe women for sure can compete with men; sports where physicality is not an issue but skill and intellect are. There are, however, I believe, more sports than just the two you listed, where women can't compete equally with men. Examples for me would be sports where physicality matters, such as various athletic events (running, javelin, etc), tennis, soccer, swimming, badminton...
It's a very interesting subject, especially with some sports now paying women and men equally (tennis springs to mind).
Badminton is also an interesting one because it is normally played as doubles rather than singles. Mixed doubles (one man and woman vs another man and woman) is very common. In this, normally, the woman plays always at the front while the man plays always at the back. In mens or womens doubles however, players take it in turn (well kind of) to play at the front or at the back.
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Re: Best or worst idea? Getting a Velotaxi/Rikshaw for private use

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Monkey wrote: Wed Oct 23, 2024 12:46 am
kyle wrote:yes there are certain mental illnesses, like dementia and Alzheimers that can't be broken, but that's because of a physical disorder of the brain. I think some disorders are trauma induced, yes hell to reprogram, but still doable, The real question is it worth it or not for this person.
kyle, the mistake you're making here is that you are assuming mental illnesses are either nurture or nature, when in actual fact many are a combination of the two. One thing that Lucifer has been trying to explain is the concept of susceptibility, where some people are more susceptible, due to their genetics (nature), to one or more mental illness(es), than some other people are.
It's even stronger than that. There's a particular gene sequence found in 98% of addicts. 98%! We don't fully understand how it works in addiction, but we do know that 98% of addicts have it.

There's another gene sequence associated with trauma. If you're born with it, and it's not active, you're fine. But let's say your grandma had it, and she was traumatized somehow before she had kids. That gene gets activated when you suffer a trauma. Then she got with your grandpa and had your mother. Because it's also somewhat recessive, let's say your grandpa passed on a different gene next to it that dominated, so the trauma gene, while active, was still suppressed. Then your mom gets with your dad, and he gives a slightly more recessive gene next to your mom's trauma gene. But her trauma gene is active, because it was active in her mother, and now it's active in you. And it's dominant. So you'll be like 2-4 years old and showing a trauma response, even though you haven't even been traumatized yet. This is how generational trauma works. It's literally possible for you to inherit trauma from previous generations.

A quick way to describe how it works: you have the gene for a particular illness. It's not active. Then you experience something that activates that gene, now you have the illness.

Some illnesses, like schizophrenia and diabetes, turn up in teen years when the body has developed to a particular point. They can't exist before the body has reached that level of development, generally speaking. While trauma can be involved in schizophrenia, it usually shows up as a part of "normal" development.

A better real world comparison here would be the O-rings on the old Space Shuttle booster rockets. They were fine. Right? Just fine! But then they launched on a particularly cold day, and the Challenger went up. They were always a problem, but it took specific circumstances to bring out the problem. Similarly, you're not just "susceptible" to depression. It's there. Maybe it's never manifested, and maybe it took trauma to bring it out, but it was always there inside you, waiting for the opportunity to flourish.

Nobody chooses to have a mental illness. When you look at the destruction that's caused directly and indirectly by mental illness, nobody would deliberately choose that kind of life. Free will isn't even part of the equation.

On the subject of "anybody can be a billionaire", that's one of those things that's technically true, but wildly inaccurate. Someone ran a simulation, I forget where I saw this, where they actually tested to see how much luck, family money, and talent were involved in turning out billionaires, and it turned out that family money and luck played overwhelmingly huge roles and talent had almost nothing to do with it. I'd dig it up, but this was over a decade ago when I saw this. It was an evolution simulation, where they started everybody out with varying amounts of these three traits, then ran each through the same events, essentially, and had them reproduce and pass on their current status to the next generation. After a distressingly small number of generations, wealth had concentrated into a tiny amount of families and everybody else was ******. I'd see if I can dig it up, but I've actually been interested in writing up a python program to run this simulation and see if I can replicate those results.
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Re: Best or worst idea? Getting a Velotaxi/Rikshaw for private use

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Lucifer wrote: Tue Oct 22, 2024 3:58 am If you haven't seen this guy, you need to.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xGawJI ... JlyB6kh4bN
Seconded. A superb series.
Lucifer wrote: Wed Oct 23, 2024 7:26 am On the subject of "anybody can be a billionaire", that's one of those things that's technically true, but wildly inaccurate. Someone ran a simulation, I forget where I saw this, where they actually tested to see how much luck, family money, and talent were involved in turning out billionaires, and it turned out that family money and luck played overwhelmingly huge roles and talent had almost nothing to do with it. I'd dig it up, but this was over a decade ago when I saw this. It was an evolution simulation, where they started everybody out with varying amounts of these three traits, then ran each through the same events, essentially, and had them reproduce and pass on their current status to the next generation. After a distressingly small number of generations, wealth had concentrated into a tiny amount of families and everybody else was ******. I'd see if I can dig it up, but I've actually been interested in writing up a python program to run this simulation and see if I can replicate those results.
Probably not what you mean, as it's more recent, but here is an article about a simple, superficially completely fair economy simulation that nevertheless leads to massive wealth inequalities over time:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/arti ... nevitable/
Summary (as I remember reading it): You take a pool of agents, each starting with the same amount, and they participate in trades. Each trade is essentially a bet between two participants, they each bet the same amount of money, and with a fifty-fifty chance, each gets the whole thing. Totally fair, right? The wins and losses should even out, right? Well, there is a restriction: Obviously, no participant can bet more than they have, and so that nobody is left totally penniless, they are only allowed to bet a certain percentage of their wealth. How does that lead to inequality, even though it's still totally fair and zero-sum? CONTENT WARNING: MATH. Instead of the total wealth of the society, you look at the sum of the logarithms. And you find that on average, with each transaction, that sum of logarithms goes down. And which wealth distribution has the lowest sum of logarithms (think of just two participants, that makes it easier)? One person has almost all, everybody else has almost nothing. The non-linearity of the logarithm is such that the one rich guy does not contribute much to it positively, but there is no lower bound each poor person can drag the sum down to. (OK, from this argument alone, it could also result in one very poor person and N-1 equally slightly-better-off-than-they-started-at people, ruling that out as a likely outcome is left as an exercise for the reader; hint, proof by induction.).
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Re: Best or worst idea? Getting a Velotaxi/Rikshaw for private use

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Lucifer wrote:Some illnesses, like schizophrenia and diabetes, turn up in teen years when the body has developed to a particular point. They can't exist before the body has reached that level of development, generally speaking. While trauma can be involved in schizophrenia, it usually shows up as a part of "normal" development.
Lucifer wrote:Similarly, you're not just "susceptible" to depression. It's there. Maybe it's never manifested, and maybe it took trauma to bring it out, but it was always there inside you, waiting for the opportunity to flourish.
While yes, schizophrenia can show up as a part of "normal" development, in my experience, I would say that, more often than not, some level of trauma (or drugs) is needed to "set it off". The amount of trauma (or drugs) required to set it off varies wildly between different people. I would also say that your definition of having depression mostly matches my definition of "susceptibility" to it. :)

Personally speaking, I have both paranoid schizophrenia and depression. I have had paranoid schizophrenia since 2006 and depression for quite a lot longer than that but not for my entire life. My level of depression got so bad in 2006 that I had a full blown psychotic episode and I spent 3 months on a psychiatric ward in a mental hospital. Both my paranoid schizophrenia and depression were caused by a build up of traumas, pretty much all caused by other people and their behaviour towards me. I definitely don't think that I had either of these illnesses for all of my life though, I was just more susceptible to them occurring. I know that without the traumas, I would have had neither of these two illnesses. It also took quite a lot of trauma for them to happen, I've been pretty unlucky at certain points in my life.

My life is now, however, somewhat better than it used to be, plus with the right meds I function pretty well. My main lacking is motivation sometimes but on the whole I do ok.
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Re: Best or worst idea? Getting a Velotaxi/Rikshaw for private use

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Monkey wrote: Wed Oct 23, 2024 11:02 pm While yes, schizophrenia can show up as a part of "normal" development, in my experience, I would say that, more often than not, some level of trauma (or drugs) is needed to "set it off". The amount of trauma (or drugs) required to set it off varies wildly between different people. I would also say that your definition of having depression mostly matches my definition of "susceptibility" to it. :)
Yeah, and both of our models suffer from being too simplistic. :) While we're not saying the same thing, necessarily, we are talking about the same fundamental phenomenon in a compatible way. Personally, I prefer to avoid the word susceptibility because it's too weak for what I mean. It's not wrong, necessarily, and it's waaaay better than the "chemical imbalance" explanation I've run into a lot.
Personally speaking, I have both paranoid schizophrenia and depression.
I'm really curious about the interaction between paranoia and schizophrenia. I get some paranoia, too, but it's lightweight compared to what you get. But it's also all over my family. For example, I told my sister a long time ago that the authoritarian way our parents raised us (when I was little, that all changed when dad got the cancer) may have caused PTSD, and she later accused me of trying to turn her away from our parents. There's a lot of that in my family, but the hallucinations and/or extreme disordered thinking with schizophrenia don't come out.
I have had paranoid schizophrenia since 2006 and depression for quite a lot longer than that but not for my entire life. My level of depression got so bad in 2006 that I had a full blown psychotic episode and I spent 3 months on a psychiatric ward in a mental hospital.
Considering your signature, I feel like there's a story here where playing arma helped you manage these things. :)
Both my paranoid schizophrenia and depression were caused by a build up of traumas, pretty much all caused by other people and their behaviour towards me.
Over in Addiction Land, if someone says something like this, they're told they're making excuses and not accounting for whatever they did to cause these problems. I hate that AA has pushed that narrative as extremely as it has, because the actual statistics that support the causal mechanisms we've been talking about mean that we have to have been made the victims. It's not like we're running around treating people like crap and that causes depression, or schizophrenia, or what-have-you. It should be logical that whatever the trauma, it has to come first, when it's the trigger, and it is the most common trigger. That was mine. Dad's cancer triggered the depression at a young age, and it's been part of my life ever since.
I definitely don't think that I had either of these illnesses for all of my life though, I was just more susceptible to them occurring. I know that without the traumas, I would have had neither of these two illnesses. It also took quite a lot of trauma for them to happen, I've been pretty unlucky at certain points in my life.
Assuming that the cause is entirely genetic, I wasn't saying that the illness was always there and active. Maybe a better comparison is AIDS, where HIV can be in your system for decades without developing into full blown AIDS. Or cancer. People generally understand that cancer has strong genetic links, but isn't guaranteed to ever develop. But that's also where genetics starts to fall down a bit, because people without the genes we know about still develop the associated diseases, they're just much fewer (Like I said 98% of addicts have that one, but that means 2% of them don't).
My life is now, however, somewhat better than it used to be, plus with the right meds I function pretty well. My main lacking is motivation sometimes but on the whole I do ok.
I'm glad you're doing better. You're definitely a lot friendlier now than when you first showed up. :)
Z-Man wrote: Probably not what you mean, as it's more recent, but here is an article about a simple, superficially completely fair economy simulation that nevertheless leads to massive wealth inequalities over time:
It's not the same one, but it's interesting how a different approach to the same question yielded the same results.
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Re: Best or worst idea? Getting a Velotaxi/Rikshaw for private use

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Lucifer wrote: I prefer to avoid the word susceptibility because it's too weak for what I mean. It's not wrong, necessarily, and it's waaaay better than the "chemical imbalance" explanation I've run into a lot.
Agreed really, I'm not sure what other word to use though. "Chemical imbalance" ...I don't like that either, It's like we are abnormal or something, whilst other, "normal" people have chemically "balanced" brains.
Lucifer wrote:I'm really curious about the interaction between paranoia and schizophrenia. I get some paranoia, too, but it's lightweight compared to what you get.
Me too lol and yes, a lot of people with different mental illnesses get similar symptoms. Incidentally, I take both antipsychotics and antidepressants. I think that both are doing some good, especially the antipsychotics as I don't get much of the "positive symptoms" (paranoia, delusional thinking, etc) whilst I'm on them. The "negative symptoms" (depression, motivation, etc), I have found, have been less easy to treat.
Lucifer wrote:it's also all over my family. For example, I told my sister a long time ago that the authoritarian way our parents raised us (when I was little, that all changed when dad got the cancer) may have caused PTSD, and she later accused me of trying to turn her away from our parents. There's a lot of that in my family, but the hallucinations and/or extreme disordered thinking with schizophrenia don't come out.
Families have a lot to answer for where mental illnesses are concerned. Not only do they give us their genes (thanks for that) but they also tend to be dysfunctional (thanks for that also). I had both of course so I was probably doomed from the start I guess :) Seems like maybe you were too, please correct me if I'm wrong.
Lucifer wrote:Considering your signature, I feel like there's a story here where playing arma helped you manage these things.
I found the game in the same year, completely coincidentally, but yes at the time I played it a hell of a lot and it was part of my coping mechanism.
Lucifer wrote:Over in Addiction Land, if someone says something like this, they're told they're making excuses and not accounting for whatever they did to cause these problems. I hate that AA has pushed that narrative as extremely as it has, because the actual statistics that support the causal mechanisms we've been talking about mean that we have to have been made the victims. It's not like we're running around treating people like crap and that causes depression, or schizophrenia, or what-have-you. It should be logical that whatever the trauma, it has to come first, when it's the trigger, and it is the most common trigger.
Yep, there is a lot of ignorance around mental health issues/illnesses and, surprisingly, it often comes from people that should know better, often people that are paid mental health professionals I might add.
Lucifer wrote:Dad's cancer triggered the depression at a young age, and it's been part of my life ever since.
Sorry to hear that.
Lucifer wrote:I'm glad you're doing better. You're definitely a lot friendlier now than when you first showed up.
Oh sorry if I was not friendly back then, I don't remember how I behaved and I know that I was not doing so great but that's no excuse, sorry! :oops:
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Re: Best or worst idea? Getting a Velotaxi/Rikshaw for private use

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Monkey wrote: Thu Oct 24, 2024 11:45 pmYep, there is a lot of ignorance around mental health issues/illnesses and, surprisingly, it often comes from people that should know better...
Thanks for sharing your personal struggle. I've had major depression my whole life and been hospitalized a few times, it's rough. A lot of people I'm close to don't have any frame of reference, one in particular can't seem to understand that saying I should try such and such diet as a cure for depression really trivializes my experience and trauma. I remember asking her "what vitamin would you recommend for my father who was shot multiple times in Vietnam and occasionally wakes up screaming and terrified?" (she hung up on me). Other friends simply think you can medicate your way out of it not knowing that medication only helps about 40% of people (and the data on that is really suspect). But as I mentioned earlier I would rather my friends be ignorant than have first hand experience.
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Re: Best or worst idea? Getting a Velotaxi/Rikshaw for private use

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sinewav wrote:I've had major depression my whole life and been hospitalized a few times, it's rough.
Sorry to hear this sine and I can of course relate to the hospitalisation and roughness.
sinewav wrote:A lot of people I'm close to don't have any frame of reference, one in particular can't seem to understand that saying I should try such and such diet as a cure for depression really trivializes my experience and trauma. I remember asking her "what vitamin would you recommend for my father who was shot multiple times in Vietnam and occasionally wakes up screaming and terrified?" (she hung up on me).
Wow, I'm sorry you have to face this kind of gross ignorance.
I've seen ignorance in my time too, even from my mother, who has actually had two nervous breakdowns in the past. When I was really doing badly and I had social workers, they were ignorant as ****. I can not believe what they got paid considering how ignorant they were towards mental health issues. Also, when I was in a mental hospital, one of the occupational therapists said "we have had all kinds of weirdos in here". This is not good.
sinewav wrote:Other friends simply think you can medicate your way out of it not knowing that medication only helps about 40% of people (and the data on that is really suspect).
Totally right; not only is their effect of limited use but the data on it is absolute garbage. I think in the world of physical medicine, stuff tends to either work or not work, there is not so much middle ground. I assume that people without mental health issues must think along these lines for mental illness medication too, which is, of course, incorrect.
sinewav wrote:But as I mentioned earlier I would rather my friends be ignorant than have first hand experience.
Maybe, maybe not, "without dark there is no light" as they say.
Most of my friends (not that I have a lot of friends, I choose my friends carefully these days) have a better understanding of mental health issues than the average person. It helps that I have been to mental health support groups, and I worked for a mental health charity for a while too.
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Re: Best or worst idea? Getting a Velotaxi/Rikshaw for private use

Post by Lucifer »

sinewav wrote: Fri Oct 25, 2024 6:52 pm
Monkey wrote: Thu Oct 24, 2024 11:45 pmYep, there is a lot of ignorance around mental health issues/illnesses and, surprisingly, it often comes from people that should know better...
Thanks for sharing your personal struggle. I've had major depression my whole life and been hospitalized a few times, it's rough.
I've had good experiences in hospitals. I have some silly stories, too, of course. But I wanted to respond to this to say that I've been hospitalized for depression as recently as 2018, and since I joined this community back in 2004, that means y'all have known me while this shit was going on. :) Which is just a way to say that people you know are currently going through it, even if they're not telling you about it.
A lot of people I'm close to don't have any frame of reference, one in particular can't seem to understand that saying I should try such and such diet as a cure for depression really trivializes my experience and trauma. I remember asking her "what vitamin would you recommend for my father who was shot multiple times in Vietnam and occasionally wakes up screaming and terrified?" (she hung up on me).
Back when my dad had cancer, early 80s, people who didn't understand were telling him to get out, get some sun, and some exercise, and he'd be fine.

They mean well, but they can't cope with the reality, so they retreat to something safe. They're also operating on a weird combination of prejudice and stigma. But they mean well. I've taken to saying things like "I'm grateful that you mean well, but please don't offer any advice until you've learned more about it." People still get defensive, but it's not as bad, and I have to resort to "I'm setting a boundary here and I'm asking you to respect it", and then I reinforce my gratitude, and they do ok with it.

But I do want to focus on the "trivialize my experience and my trauma" part. It's not always about either of those things, unfortunately. There are people who are living in mansions who are suffering, and when you go back into their backstories, you don't find much. It's a disease that affects anybody regardless of socio-economic status, life experience, or anything. Yes, trauma plays into it for most of us. And sitting in a mansion doesn't mean you never had any trauma. It's just that, while there is a very common narrative involving trauma, trauma isn't required for someone to have a mental illness. We need to break that narrative, because when people focus on trauma, there's inevitably some normie who says "I've been through trauma and I don't have anything like that going on". Yes, that's true. It affects everyone differently.

Of course, I'm not trying to trivialize your experience and your trauma. I've got that shit in my past, too, and I'm currently living a life that a lot of people would find traumatic. I certainly don't want to start a narrative that says that mental illness just happens and trauma and experience don't matter, because they do, for like 90% of people who have mental illness. But there's that 10% who don't have these experiences and still suffer, and we need to welcome them, too. They belong at our table.
Other friends simply think you can medicate your way out of it not knowing that medication only helps about 40% of people (and the data on that is really suspect). But as I mentioned earlier I would rather my friends be ignorant than have first hand experience.
I've had a couple of doctors (well, nurse practitioners, same thing) give me condescending lectures about how they take antidepressants, and sometimes that's all it takes, even if you have to take them for life. I'm sorry, but my own treatment goals include living medication free, and while I'm willing to accept permanent medication if that's what's required, I want to work towards no medication. I'm actually currently unmedicated, except for some heart medication. Which helps a lot, actually, because if you already have depression, then other conditions like hypertension (which is what I have) will contribute to it. Sound mind and sound body does apply, but it doesn't mean "hike five miles a day and you won't have any health problems". I actually just did a video about that. :)

I've also seen medical professionals not take things like suicide ideation seriously. I've seen this both in the ER and in the mental hospital itself. This one time, in one of the hospitals I was in, one of the BHTs had left her reading glasses on the counter. I grabbed them and held onto them. She had previously been saying "You can just snap out of depression" and stupid shit like that. When she went to look for her glasses to read something, I was the asshole who said "How about you just snap out of your bad eye sight?" Then I gave her her glasses back. They were just readers, it's not like she was blind without them, but she couldn't do her job without them. Not lying, I was the asshole in that situation.

As for friends, I don't really have any friends anymore that don't have some kind of mental illness or mental condition or whatever (there's the asperger friend, and I'm not sure whether or not asperger's is an illness or just a series of personality traits that people stigmatize because they're assholes. Doesn't matter, because he's a great friend and I love him). I don't really relate to the normies anymore. I have found that by talking about mental illness as just another part of my life, a lot of people will talk about their own. This is much more common than people even realize. Most people keep quiet. I work retail, and I talk about my life with anybody, so I am saying that I've talked to a lot of random people over the last few years. It's nice to know the person behind the counter relates to you, and it's nice to be the person behind the counter knowing that you relate to me.
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Re: Best or worst idea? Getting a Velotaxi/Rikshaw for private use

Post by kyle »

Wow I've been away for a bit and, very nice conversation here. I'll probably add a little more in a few days or weeks as I'm trying to get more caught up from fighting a really bad cold.

I just want to say I truly do care about all of you, I've not faced any depression issues like you've stated, but I do understand they do exist, and understand that they can come out of the blue, or have been triggered by something. One of my grandfathers also suffered from depression, at one point in his life, I never talked to him about it or found out how he managed to stay fine after that, as the depression happened before I was born, so I never knew about it from him at all. I know towards the end of his life, he was starting to face it again, and he was questioning me about what I should do if someone is depressed and stuff, this was a few months after we lost my grandma. I think he was the one feeing depressed, and I think I was able to calm him down, as a few weeks later he said I should study to become a doctor.

Anyway, I do feel bad for anyone who has faced depression, and I'd love to help if I could in any way.
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Re: Best or worst idea? Getting a Velotaxi/Rikshaw for private use

Post by Goose »

Condolences to all of you. A friend put himself to a mental hospital as well. At least he gets a rhytm there, getting up early. His story is the sad story of someone, who never got a serious push from his parents to sustain himself. Being 30 now and never having worked and earned some money doesn't help his depression. I think the experience of sustaining oneself, that one's own power have an worthy impact (in the materialistic, undoubtably necessary sense), that's worth more than the medication, which doesn't go to the root of the problem it seems.

All I can tell you is this: If money is sparse, earning some makes very, very happy!

@Z-Man on cargo bicycles:
Bike culture really differs from city to city.
In a Bavarian city, I noticed lots of E-Bikes with a huge cabin, usually front-mounted, that looked like a riding house. Looked bulletproof!
I doubt a cabin would perfrom too well in the occasioncal harsh winds, happening here in the plains of East Germany. Instead, here in this big city a lot of so called "family bikes", which are basically e-bikes with a long carrier rack, having a flat bench instead of a basket on it. Also supported with a couple of metal tubes all around it, so that the 2-3 kid passengers can be more safe and have something to hold onto. Increases cargo loading space as well.
Wonder if using an unelectrified rikshaw would make you as strong as Superman. Sure, nothing of convenience, but at least they're affordable! A couple of rikshaws seem to have made it from India and Indonesia to Kleinanzeigen.de for about 200 Euros currently.
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Re: Best or worst idea? Getting a Velotaxi/Rikshaw for private use

Post by Z-Man »

Yeah, we test drove some variants of cargo bikes a while back, the ones with big boxes and two wheels in front (where you steer by rotating the entire box) and the ones with a long box in front with just one wheel in front (Urban Arrow being the most recognizable brand, where your handlebar rotation is transmitted to the front wheel). The three wheelers are hard to get used to. The other ones were fine, but you have to consider in the embarrassment factor :) 11 yo Z-Girl did not accept it in the end, 13 yo Z-Girl certainly would not.
Our neighbor friend now has a long tail bike with a big, comfy seat in the back. Those things feel the most like regular bikes, I gather. Maybe we can still convince Z-Girl to test that one out.
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