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Archive for May, 2008

Britney not fit to go to court

britney2big3101_154×100.jpgCNN reports:

Attorney: Spears not fit enough to take part in probate case

* Story Highlights
* Britney Spears’ attorney says the pop star is not ready to participate in court
* Lawyer told court Thursday that Spears’ medical condition is “fluid”
* Spears’ probate case scheduled to go to trial July 31

LOS ANGELES, California (AP) — Britney Spears is not yet fit to participate in court proceedings in her conservatorship case, her lawyer told a Los Angeles Superior Court commissioner Thursday.

Samuel Ingham, Spears’ court-appointed attorney, and attorneys for the pop star’s father and conservator, James Spears, spent 90 minutes in Commissioner Reva Goetz’ chambers.

Ingham told the court afterward that Spears’ medical condition is “fluid” because her treatment is changing.

Spears’ probate case is scheduled to go to trial July 31, but Ingham said it could be “harmful” for her to participate. Goetz agreed and said Spears’ diagnosis is not complete.

The 26-year-old singer and her estate have been under the conservatorship of her father for four months.

I’d say that’s code for “she’s acting nutty again.” They probably don’t want to release that she’s got BPD. “Some form of bipolar” is likely to come up again. I mean, come on… she started this whole thing in January. How long does it take a team of doctors to diagnose her? Hmm?

Amitriptyline and BPD

For some reason, I get a lot of searches on this blog about  Amitriptyline and BPD. I posted a note on Amitriptyline and Xanax and their interaction with BPD. I still get a lot of hits on that brief snippet, even though I wrote it back in 2006. I also spelled Amitriptyline with two “l’s” as amitryptilline (Elavil). I’m not sure which is the correct spelling, but I’ll put them both here so people searching can get hits on this post.

Here’s some information on  Amitriptyline studies:

Amitriptyline (Antidepressant Tricyclic)

Soloff PH, George A, Nathan RS, Schulz PM, Perel JM.
1987 Psychopharmacol Bull.23 - Behavioral dyscontrol in borderline patients treated with amitriptyline.
Amitriptyline was associated with a paradoxical behavioral toxicity in patients with BPD, increasing suicidal ideation, paranoid thinking, and assaultiveness significantly more than among placebo nonresponders

Amitriptyline (Antidepressant Tricyclic) / Haloperidol (neuroleptic)
Soloff PH, George A, Nathan S, Schulz PM,… - Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic, University of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
J Clin Psychopharmacol. 1989 Aug - Amitriptyline versus haloperidol in borderline: final outcomes and predictors of response.
The authors report the final results of a 4-year study of amitriptyline and haloperidol in 90 symptomatic borderline inpatients. Haloperidol produced significant improvement over placebo in global functioning, depression, hostility, schizotypal symptoms, and impulsive behavior.
Significant effects of amitriptyline were generally limited to measures of depression.

Amitriptyline (Antidepressant Tricyclic) / Haloperidol (neuroleptic)
Arch Gen Psychiatry 1986 Jul - Progress in pharmacotherapy of borderline disorders. A double-blind study of amitriptyline, haloperidol, and placebo.
In symptomatic patients with borderline disorder, we conducted a double-blind, placebo-controlled trial of haloperidol and amitriptyline hydrochloride to test the differential efficacy of medication against the affective and schizotypal symptoms that characterize the disorder.
Haloperidol was superior to both amitriptyline and placebo on a composite measure of overall symptom severity, with no difference between amitriptyline and placebo.
Haloperidol produced significant improvement on a broad spectrum of symptom patterns, including depression, anxiety, hostility, paranoid ideation, and psychoticism. In contrast, amitriptyline was minimally effective, with small gains limited to some areas of depressive content.

Here’s more on that abstract about amitryptiline (Elavil):

Paradoxical effects of amitriptyline on borderline patients

PH Soloff, A George, RS Nathan, PM Schulz and JM Perel

A paradoxical increase in suicide threats, paranoid ideation, and demanding and assaultive behavior occurred among 15 borderline inpatients receiving amitriptyline in a double-blind study. This pattern differed significantly from that of 14 nonresponding patients receiving placebo.

As you can see, if dyscontrol and and increase in  “suicide threats, paranoid ideation, and demanding and assaultive behavior” occurs in people with BPD on Amitriptyline - it’s probably best to stay away from it. Of course, I’m not a doctor. Obviously, you should consult one before stopping meds or beginning new ones.

Why did I bother to write a book?

Interestingly, I have sold more downloaded books than print copies thus far. I have sold about twice as many of the downloaded version (at $7.50) than the print copy ($19.95). This is not something that I expected to happen.

I have been asked time and time again why I bothered to write a book. There are other books out there, including the best-selling Non-BP book “Stop Walking on Eggshells” (or SWOE). I read SWOE about 2 ½ years ago and found it lacking. The big problem with it for me was that the prescription for “taking back your life” wasn’t working in my life. The application of boundaries, for example, wasn’t effective. So, I sought out other resources that would be effective. I wrote my book “When Love is Not Enough” for four main reasons:

  1. Other books on the subject (most notably SWOE) didn’t work or tell me HOW to do things. I needed the know-how. My book tries to supply the know-how to “deal with” someone with BPD. I learned a lot from SWOE, but again, I wanted to know WHAT to do and HOW to do it.
  2. Obviously, the money angle comes into play. I have wanted to quit my day job for a long time now, but I need the income to support my family. I’d like to do this “Non-BP” thing full time. I feel that the Non-BP’s are missing the support resources. While I do run the ATSTP email list to help support Non-BP’s, I didn’t feel like that was enough – plus, it doesn’t pay me anything. I am hoping that I will get better sales once the book makes it to Amazon. That should happen in about a month or so.
  3. I wanted to collect all of my tools and skills in one place. Often, I have to re-educate newbies (and even some old timers) on my email list. I find myself going over the same old ground again and again – explaining the disorder, instructing on the proper use of boundaries and validation, etc., etc. It’s difficult for me to step back in time and put myself in the mind-set of someone who knows little about the disorder and what to do in the face of it. I wanted to create a compendium for the attitudes and tools that are effective when dealing with BPD. One of the key tools is, of course, emotional validation. I expect to write another eBook specifically on validation, what it is and how to do it properly. I explain it at length in my book, but there are many other concepts I have to explain before I explain validation. I think a dedicated eBook in which I explain in detail the validation process would help.
  4. Finally, the members of my email list asked me to write the book. They were also looking for a single resource that collected all of the knowledge about dealing with highly emotional people in one place. I hope the book will function in this way.

Time to Give Angelina Jolie a more detailed possible BPD analysis

1833a0cc0.jpgSince I did such a detailed analysis of Pete Doherty’s BPD-like behavior, I’d say it’s time to do the same sort of analysis with my other top 5 possible BP celebs. I’m starting with Angelina Jolie, who just bought a house in France for something like $70 million:

Self Injury

In June 2001 Rolling Stone she said that during her very early teens she started “thinking about not wanting to be around. It was when the reality of life set in, the reality of surviving.” Also, Angelina used to hurt herself during her early teens but stopped around the age of sixteen. She explained in a 2000 Maxim article, “You’re young, you’re crazy, you’re in bed and you’ve got knives. So shit happens.” But in 1999 Access Hollywood interview she explained it more in-depth, “I was..trying to feel something….I was looking at different things..thinking romantically about…about blood. I really hurt myself,” and also said, “I was just….a kid. I was like 13, And, I was saying that it is not something that is cool. Its not cool. And I understand that it is a cry for help…”

In a 2000 Jane interview she said, “This person asked me about cutting myself when they saw a scar. I’m very open, but because of that, people think that they know everything about me, and, actually, they don’t know anything. I say things that other people might go through. That’s what artists should do - throw things out there and not be perfect and not have answers for anything and see if people understand. But this person made the cutting sound interesting, like it was something I do now. [For the record, she did, but doesn’t now, and doesn’t endorse it.] And then I met somebody who said they’d seen movies of mine and then showed me where they had cut themselves. I had to explain, first off, not to do that. But it made me really fucking angry at the people who represent me in a way that would get that person to do that and show me. I don’t understand why people would want to use something so damaging. It’s like, let’s make me look ‘cool’ and worry a lot of people in my family.”

Suicidal Tendencies

“Yeah. I was in a New York hotel room,” Jolie says. She was going to use a knife and sleeping pills. In preparation, she wrote a note for the housekeeper asking her to call the police, so that the housekeeper wouldn’t have to suffer the distress of finding her body. Then Jolie spent the day walking around. She almost bought a kimono, then she realized how crazy that was. “I didn’t know if I could pull the final thing across my wrists,” she says. But it was the sleeping pill part of the equation that stopped her, at least on a practical level. Worried that she didn’t have enough, she had asked her mother to mail her some more, and she realized that her mother would feel responsible. She realized something else, too: “That we can make that decision any time. And I kind of lay there with myself and thought, `You might as well live a lot, really hard, and not give a shit, because you can always walk through that door.’ So I started to live as if I could die any day.”

The next day, she went back and bought the kimono.

Did you ever feel that low about living again?

Well, I had felt like that before. When I was thirteen or fifteen.”

Did you ever feel like acting on it?

“Yeah. It’s seems like there’s always been times. This is going to sound so insane, but there was a time when I realized I was going to have to hire somebody to kill me. It comes from a place of … With suicide comes the guilt of all the people around you thinking that they could have done something. With somebody being murdered, nobody takes some kind of guilty responsibility.”

Poor Self-Image

Later, Jolie frets about the ways she’s sometimes talked about. “I am fragile and fucked up. There are lots of things about my life in recent years that people don’t know anything about,” she says. “People assume . . . People have said things about me, they’ve said I’ve slept with my brother, they’ve said that I’m a drug addict and that all I do is get fucked up, and they’ve also made it seem like I’m some slut. I’m far from perfect as a person ….. She shakes her head.

Volatile Relationships

She tells me anyway. It was just before she and Thornton got married. She was sectioned for seventy-two hours at UCLA. “What happened,” she says, “is we didn’t know if we were going to be able to be together.” She pauses. “I remember him driving somewhere and not knowing if he was OK…. We had wanted to get married and then for all these different reasons we thought we couldn’t. We both were just … are just, it’s a beautiful kind of love, but it’s also a little insane, and I for some reason thought something had happened to him and I lost the ability to … I just went a little insane.”

Confused Sexuality

When Barbara Walters asked her if she was bisexual, Jolie responded: “Of course. If I fell in love with a woman tomorrow, would I feel that it’s okay to want to kiss and touch her? If I fell in love with her? Absolutely! Yes!” - July 2003

In an interview with Elle magazine, Jolie said: “Honestly, I like everything. Boyish girls, girlish boys, the heavy and the skinny. Which is a problem when I’m walking down the street.” - June 2000

Eating Disorder

The tattooed former wild child — who in her younger years battled an eating disorder and self-mutilation and later famously wore a necklace containing a drop of her then-husband Billy Bob Thornton’s blood…

Substance Abuse

A British tabloid newspaper has published images of a video which allegedly shows Angelina Jolie in a “drug den” with a woman who is openly smoking heroin.

The actress is shown in video images published in The Sun newspaper looking disheveled and wide-eyed as she smokes a cigarette and tells the camera of her past drug use. The video captures the star reportedly saying, “I’ve done coke, heroin, ecstasy, LSD, everything.”

Last month, it was reported by the National Enquirer a videotape of Jolie allegedly smoking and snorting heroin had been offered for sale for $70,000. But in this footage, thought to be taken in the 1990s when she was in her 20s, Jolie does not take drugs, telling the camera, “I gave them up long ago.”

Well, that’s it for now. I think an argument can be made for her impulsiveness (married 3 times) and for Brad Pitt’s impulsiveness too. I have to say though, she and Brad have much better management people than some other celebs. You don’t hear much now about her nutty behavior. She has found someone to control the press - something that Britney, Lindsey Lohan and others could learn a lesson from.

Sleep and BPD

fe_da_080321health_apnea.jpgOne of the physical aspects of BPD is problems with sleep. People with BPD are likely to have trouble going to sleep and trouble getting up in the morning. One of the reasons is the “ruminating” aspect of BPD. Another seems to be that their brain chemistry is configured in such a way to utilize serotonin ineffectively. Many people with BPD will require sleep medications and sometimes will take these medications in large doses. This inability to sleep and awake punctually can also contribute to getting fired from jobs. If a BP can’t get up on time and make it on time to a job, they might get fired. Losing a job can contribute to shame. Jobs that have a lot of “down time” (time in which nothing is going on, like lulls in retail positions) can cause more ruminating and may lead to conflict between someone with BPD and their co-workers or superiors.

I found another reference to sleep issues on the Internet. According to this site, people with BPD have “significant abnormalities in REM sleep with more rapid onset and more intense REM sleep.” I’ve noticed that my wife has trouble falling asleep with major insomnia and has trouble getting up in the morning. If your BP has a job that he/she has to be at early in the morning, it might be time to find a new job.

Here is a reference I found on Paul J. Markovitz M.D., Ph.D.’s CV:

Markovitz, PJ, Comorbidity of migraines, PMS, IBS, fibromyalgia, neurodermatitis, and sleep apnea in borderline personality disorder: a possible serotonin link. Presented at the World Health Organization meeting on Personality Disorders, Cambridge, MA, September 1993.

 

 

Technorati is pissing me off

This morning when I came to check my blog, I found that the Technorati widget I put on my sidebar - the one that shows tags and my blog authority - was showing what I can only describe as SPAM. Now the Technorati website is broken. I will have to remove the widget until it clears up. Did Technorati get hacked?

Back to SPAM

I find it discouraging that I get comment SPAM (literally almost 1000 SPAM comments) about several main things - prescription meds (which I rail against consistently), sexy pictures (which I don’t condone) and gambling sites (which many BPs might find interesting, but not my BP). I find it frustrating that I get SPAM about the very things I am trying to protect against. I mean WTF? I have received 7 times the SPAM comment-wise as the real thing. What a mess.

Why Love is Not Enough

A comment on the title of my book, When Love is Not Enough. I’ve had several people say the book is perfectly titled and others say they don’t like the title. I decided to title it that because I believe that you need more than love to help someone with BPD and to help yourself. The problem with love is that saying “I love you” to someone with BPD can be invalidating. Saying “I’m proud of you” can be even more invalidating. And saying “You can do it” even more so. Let me explain.

Validation is about the other person’s emotions (the BP). It is not about you and your feelings. The statements of “I love you” or “I’m proud” of you are about you. A person with BP needs to learn that their emotions are normal and that everyone feels that way from time-to-time. If they feel weird or broken, healing cannot begin. In fact, the likelihood of poor (even suicidal) behavior follows those feelings. A simple of expression of your love for them could spiral into a session of self-hate. If you say, “I love you” in response to their poor self-image, a likely reaction (in their minds) is “then you’re stupid, because I don’t love me.” When someone feels like they are not able to cope, telling them they CAN cope breeds mistrust. In other words, if you express positive feelings or “positive mental attitude” statements, they are likely to not trust you, because, on the inside, they believe they CAN’T do it, and you’re not seeing their feelings for what they are.

So, love is NOT enough. What you need is skill. In the book I try to teach the skill (through attitudes and tools) necessary to start the healing – for the BP and for you.

My Spam - Urgh!

I’ll be writing again soon. I have about 10 new ideas for posts. What I wanted to respond to tonight is: What is the deal with my comment SPAM? I rail against Xanax for BPs and then I get 50 SPAM comments about buying Xanax without a prescription. WTF? I hate SPAMers - as I know all of you do too.

Heather Mills to write “book” giving health advice

I read today that Heather Mills (on my standby list of celebs with possible BPD) is writing a “book” called “Get Healthy with Heather.” I really felt I had to put “book” in quotes because it’s only 64 pages - more of a booklet IMO. Personally, I think it should be called “Get Wealthy with Heather,” considering her $40 Million dollar settlement from Paul McCartney. Here is a gem of healthy wisdom from Heather:

Last November, she launched a campaign with vegetarian group Viva - which is also involved with her new book - encouraging people to drink rats’ and dogs’ milk to help save the planet.

Arguing that livestock creates more carbon emissions than transport, Heather suggested drinking the different milk could help cut global warming.

She said: “There are many other kinds of milk available. Why don’t we try drinking rats’ milk and dogs’ milk?”

Rats’ milk? Maybe she can show us how it’s done and drink it directly from the momma rat.

I wonder if her next book will be “Mental Health with Heather”? She needs some serious treatement for whatever condition she has. I find it sad that she is such a publicity hound. I guess her goody-goody reputation was impugned with all that nastiness with Paul. Maybe I need to do a long analysis of news stories to see where she lands on the celeb BPD-o-meter (hey, come to think of it, the celeb BPD-o-meter ain’t such a bad idea, hmmm…..). I know, I know, I’m pandering to the “celebrities with borderline personality disorder” crowd out there, but when 60% of my searches are about that subject, I guess I gotta feed the audience what they want (unless it’s rats’ milk - yuck!) - at least some of the time.

seanyoung_l.jpgI do wish that some celeb would come out and be the face of BPD, maybe Sean Young? Her career needs a boost and some attention right now. And given that May IS BPD Awareness month, this would be a perfect opportunity for her (’course I don’t KNOW she has BPD, but her behavior begs the question).

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