So when I was at College, I went to my University's counseling service (which you should never do), and I told a bunch of people I was thinking about killing myself and I wanted to talk to someone about these feelings. I never said that I immanently was about to do it or anything and I needed someone to stop me, I just said I was having suicidal ideation. Now, at that point in time I was very mentally ill, I'd recently gone through a nasty breakup and I was thinking all sorts of terrible things. But the response from the university was severe.
Little did I know, my school had its own psychiatric hospital, which I found myself in: the door locked behind me, I was never told that entering that building might lead to me being committed, I was only interested in outpatient programs. But I didn't get much choice in the matter: after telling my story, I was told that either I "voluntarily" committed, or they would go and get a court order and have me forced to come back within 72 hours. Now if I was at all intelligent, I would've told them to let me go, and I would've gtfo of the state for about a week and gotten a lawyer. But as a young college student I didn't know any better--and I also didn't realize how much money they made off of voluntary patients like myself (my insurance never paid for the say, by the way). Well a week later, after taking medication that didn't work but gave me terrible side-effects and me telling more than enough lies about how I was feeling better, they got me out of there (since its not there job to keep people there forever anyway), and I was on my way. It wasn't so terrible except for the forced medication, the constant threat of being moved essentially to jail in the form of involuntary commitment, and the basic dehumanization you experience.
Though it wasn't so simple: my university decided that I needed to go into an outpatient program or else they wouldn't "approve" me going back to class. That is why I say you should never go to your schools counselors: they will always use it against you. I was forced into an outpatient program, which my insurance also wouldn't pay for (or else I wouldn't be able to go back to school), but thankfully I was able to convince someone in there to move me to a less intensive program. I'd also, by then, stopped taking my medication (and haven't taken a single psychiatric drug since).
Well, long story short at this new program I was getting bullied by one of the members of the staff, but instead of taking my complaint seriously the head of the program (which was quite small) simply ejected me before I could talk to anyone higher up. And from the university's perspective, I was done with my treatment. You think that this would be the end of the story, but the school kept their eye on me for years after; the amount of run-ins I had with the police over supposed alarms about my "mental health" was both horrifying and shocking. Thankfully, I eventually learned just to tell them I wouldn't talk without a lawyer, and they stopped bothering me after. But its very scary feeling like you're being constantly surveilled all the time, and fearing that if you ever talk to the police they'll try to take you in to a psychiatric facility.
Years later and I'm very happy: but not on account of any help from contemporary psychiatric institutions, modern psychology, therapy, or anything (though I did get a therapist who wasn't affiliated with my university), but from my readings. God you couldn't know how much Nietzsche and Freud can help someone like me, but they certainly put me through, and I'd have to guess that as their influence waned in American psychology, so did the quality of treatment--but what can you do when all their readers say that the system is the problem, and it just so happens the functionaries of power control the purses of psych programs! Everything radical, actually life-affirming and helpful was shunted from mental health and the whole thing was turned into some sort of pseudo-scientifical escapade for extracting as much money as possible from a socially dissatisfied population: they made a whole business out of ennui--what else is "positive psychology?"
Anyway I'm on the other side of things and all I can say is this: stay the fuck away from mentally ill people, they will ruin your life and only make you feel worse. Also, get exercise, eat decently, and stay hydrated, that usually helps. And never, ever, trust your run of the mill, CBT practicing psych: they either didn't do very well in med-school and became a psychiatrist; or, they studied psychology because they didn't know what else to do and they ended up practicing. There are people out there that can help, who aren't scam artist or just mindless NPCs; but there aren't a whole lot of them, and its almost impossible to differentiate the good from the bad until you get to the other side of things. I would recommend just doing some reading on your own: read Nietzsche, read Camus, read Kierkegaard (I haven't read him but I hear he is good): there is freedom, joy, and affirmation of life to be discovered here--which is nothing that our current mode of organizing society wants for you!
This is actually quite common because alcohol consumption effects GABA and serotonin levels in the brain, as well as the sensitization of GABAergic and serotonergic neurons, and both neurotransmitters are involved in anxiety and panic. It can also be the result of a very light kindling[1] effect.
The colloquial term seems to be "hangxiety" if you want a term to search for.
I have intimate personal experience with the FCRA. Sadly I don't have an hour to talk about it at the moment, but ping me any time. Short version: it's one of the most absurdly customer-friendly pieces of legislation in the US, assuming you know how to work it. There exist Internet communities where they basically do nothing but assist each other with using the FCRA to get legitimate debts removed from their credit report, which, when combined with the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, means you can essentially unilaterally absolve yourself of many debts if the party currently owning it is not on the ball for compliance.
The brief version, with the exact search queries you'll want bracketed: you send a [debt validation letter] under the FCRA to the CRAs. This starts a 30 day clock, during which time they have to get to the reporter and receive evidence from the reporter that you actually own the debt. If that clock expires, the CRAs must remove that tradeline from your report and never reinstate it. Roughly simultaneously with that letter, you send the collection agency a [FDCPA dispute letter], and allege specifically that you have "No recollection of the particulars of the debt" (this stops short of saying "It isn't mine"), request documentation of it, and -- this is the magic part -- remind them that the FDCPA means they have to stop collection activities until they've produced docs for you. Collection activities include responding to inquiries from the CRAs. If the CRA comes back to you with a "We validated the debt with the reporter." prior to you hearing from the reporter directly, you've got documentary evidence of a per-se violation of the FDCPA, which you can use to get the debt discharged and statutory damages (if you sue) or just threaten to do that in return for the reporter agreeing to tell the CRA to delete the tradeline.
No response from the CRA? You watch your mail box like a hawk for the next 30 days. Odds are, you'll get nothing back from the reporter in that timeframe, because most debt collection agencies are poorly organized and can't find the original documentation for the debt in their files quickly enough. Many simply won't have original documentation -- they just have a CSV file from the original lender listing people and amounts.
If you get nothing back from the reporter in 30 days, game over, you win. The CRA is now legally required to delete the tradeline and never put it back. Sometimes you have to send a few pieces of mail to get this to stick. You will probably follow-up on this with a second letter to the reporter, asserting the FDCPA right to not receive any communication from them which is inconvenient, and you'll tell them that all communication is inconvenient. (This letter is sometimes referred to as a [FOAD letter], for eff-off-and-die.) The reporter's only possible choices at that point are to abandon collection attempts entirely or sue you. If they sue you prior to sending validation, that was a very bad move, because that is a per-se FDCPA violation and means your debt will be voided. (That assumes you owe it in the first place. Lots of the people doing these mechanics actually did owe the debt at one point, but are betting that it can't be conveniently demonstrated that they owe the debt.)
If the reporter sends a letter: "Uh, we have you in a CSV file." you wait patiently until day 31 then say "You've failed to produce documentary evidence of this debt under the FDCPA. Accordingly, you're barred from attempting to collect on it. If you dispute that this is how the FDCPA works, meet me in any court of competent jurisdiction because I have the certified mail return receipt from the letter I sent you and every judge in the United States can count to 30." and then you file that with the CRA alleging "This debt on my credit report is invalid." The CRA will get in touch with the debt collection company, have their attempt timeout, and nuke the trade line. You now still technically speaking owe money but you owe it to someone who can't collect on the debt, (licitly [+]) sell it, or report it against your credit.
I just outlined the semi-abusive use of those two laws, but the perfectly legitimate use (for resolving situations like mine, where my credit report was alleging that I owed $X00,000 in debts dating to before I was born) is structurally similar. My dropbox still has 30 PDFs for letters I sent to the 3 CRAs, several banks, and a few debt collection companies disputing the information on my report and taking polite professional notice that there was an easy way out of this predicament for them but that if they weren't willing to play ball on that I was well aware of the mechanics of the hard way.
[+] Owing more to disorganization and incompetence than malice, many debt collection companies will in fact sell debts which they're not longer legally entitled to. This happened to me twice. I sent out two "intent to sue" letters and they fixed the problem within a week.
[Edit: I last did this in 2006 and my recollection on some of the steps I took was faulty, so I've corrected them above and made it a little more flow-charty.]
I have a slight fascination with sweeteners. About five years ago I imported a kilo of "Neotame" sweetener from a chem factory in Shanghai. It was claimed to be 10,000-12,000 times sweeter than sugar. It's a white powder and came in a metal can with a crimped lid and typically plain chemical labeling. Supposedly it is FDA-approved and a distant derivative of aspartame.
US customs held it for two weeks before sending it on to Colorado with no explanation. When received, the box was covered in "inspected" tape and they had put the canister in a clear plastic bag. The crimped lid looked like a rottweiler chewed it open and white powder was all over the inside of the bag. I unwisely opened this in my kitchen with no respirator as advised by the MSDS which I read after the fact (I am not a smart man).
Despite careful handling of the bag, it is so fine in composition that a small cloud of powder erupted in front of me and a hazy layer of the stuff settled over the kitchen. Eyes burning and some mild choking from inhaling the cloud, I instantly marveled at how unbelievably sweet the air tasted, and it was delicious. For several hours I could still taste it on my lips. The poor customs inspector will have had a lasting memory of that container I'm pretty sure.
Even after a thorough wipe-down, to this day I encounter items in my kitchen with visually imperceptible amounts of residue. After touching it and getting even microscopic quantities of the stuff on a utensil or cup, bowl, plate, whatever, it adds an intense element of sweetness to the food being prepared, sometimes to our delight. I still have more than 900g even after giving away multiple baggies to friends and family (with proper safety precautions).
We have been hooked on it since that first encounter. I keep a 100mL bottle of solution in the fridge which is used to fill smaller dropper bottles. I've prepared that 100mL bottle three times over five years, and that works out to about 12g of personal (somewhat heavy) usage for two people in that time. Probably nowhere near the LD50.
I carry a tiny 30mL dropper bottle of the solution for sweetening the nasty office coffee and anything else as appropriate. Four drops to a normal cup of coffee. We sweeten home-carbonated beverages, oatmeal, baked goods (it is heat stable), use it in marinades, and countless other applications.
I don't know if it's safe. The actual quantity used is so incredibly tiny that it seems irrelevant. I'd sweeten my coffee with polonium-210 if it could be done in Neotame-like quantities. Between this, a salt shaker loaded with MSG and a Darwin fish on my car, I'm doomed anyway.
To avoid network congestion, the TCP stack implements a mechanism that waits for the data up to 0.2 seconds so it won’t send a packet that would be too small. This mechanism is ensured by Nagle’s algorithm, and 200ms is the value of the UNIX implementation.
Sigh. If you're doing bulk file transfers, you never hit that problem. If you're sending enough data to fill up outgoing buffers, there's no delay. If you send all the data and close the TCP connection, there's no delay after the last packet. If you do send, reply, send, reply, there's no delay. If you do bulk sends, there's no delay. If you do send, send, reply, there's a delay.
The real problem is ACK delays. The 200ms "ACK delay" timer is a bad idea that someone at Berkeley stuck into BSD around 1985 because they didn't really understand the problem. A delayed ACK is a bet that there will be a reply from the application level within 200ms. TCP continues to use delayed ACKs even if it's losing that bet every time.
If I'd still been working on networking at the time, that never would have happened. But I was off doing stuff for a startup called Autodesk.
I'm a regular reader of HN and a sometimes commenter. My other account is over 1100 days old. I'm going to write this anonymously because the content is otherwise not well linked to my online profile.
I started writing this in response to @Gibbon1's comment: Might be people suffering an episode of mania in a rural area pass unnoticed by the various authorities.
Which raises the question: which is better, to be noticed by the authorities, or to have your episode of mania / psychosis, and then return to your (slightly more?) centre way of being?
Presumably once you've had one episode that gets noticed by the authorities you then probably get 'treatment'. Yet do we even know what these conditions really are, and do the treatments work? If the definition of the treatment worked is that the person is too dulled or numbed to function well enough to have another episode then, in my opinion, we aren't really treating the condition, we don't understand it well enough to heal it.
The troubling thing is when the episode results in harm, or risk of harm, to others. With reference @Hydraulix989 comment, perhaps the ominous house up the road is a better place to be an in a city crawling with cops and psychiatrists. There are, or tend to be?, fewer 'services' for mental in rural areas, but maybe that's a good thing because I'm not convinced who the services serve.
Urban mental health services are a form of institutionalisation of people with mental health issues. The overwhelming dogma of the medical field is that mental health needs treatment of some sort. More recently we're seeing that treatment can include things like dietary or gut flora therapy, relaxation meditation, that sort of thing.
I was adopted, I met my biological parents when I was 22. Biological father went to high security prison for a home invasion and drug dealing / growing pot, biological mother lost access to her children for a good deal of time due to her wayward lifestyle. I ended up being charged with drug trafficking myself, and only just avoided a sentence when the charges were dropped due to the police's illegal methods. I have a couple of assault charges up my sleeve. I've experienced several 6 month periods of injecting methamphetamine 4 days out of 7, and longer periods of lesser usage. This one time I stayed awake for 6 days, my housemate was awake for 7 days. I have seen my own child a handful of times since it was born.
I've always made it a point to be very careful who I talk to about my internal experience, you don't want to reveal that sort of thing to the wrong sort of people and end up on a court ordered medication program. Ordinarily I'm quite normal and well behaved.
Through a set of pretty terrible circumstances I've moved away from the city I lived in, stopped contact with almost everyone I knew, and now live in a smaller city where I've had a stable well paying job for nearly 3 years, have had pre-approval for finance to purchase a house, and just put in an offer to buy a place. I would hope that, rather than end up on medication, or in a cycle of treatment and poverty, I become that ominous house up the road - I think that would be a better outcome for me. But perhaps I can live a relatively normal life if I make the enough of the right choices enough of the time.
I'm lucky that, given regular sleep, good nutrition, and plenty of exercise, and having avoided all of the doctors medications, and never spent a day in psychiatric care or prison, nor suicided, I can maintain my composure fairly indefinitely, I hope.
I'm not very good at intimate relationships, they seem to be a trigger for, or lead to a set of circumstances where I become unhinged, and having written all of this down for the first time I think I'm going to make a commitment to stay out of them.
Little did I know, my school had its own psychiatric hospital, which I found myself in: the door locked behind me, I was never told that entering that building might lead to me being committed, I was only interested in outpatient programs. But I didn't get much choice in the matter: after telling my story, I was told that either I "voluntarily" committed, or they would go and get a court order and have me forced to come back within 72 hours. Now if I was at all intelligent, I would've told them to let me go, and I would've gtfo of the state for about a week and gotten a lawyer. But as a young college student I didn't know any better--and I also didn't realize how much money they made off of voluntary patients like myself (my insurance never paid for the say, by the way). Well a week later, after taking medication that didn't work but gave me terrible side-effects and me telling more than enough lies about how I was feeling better, they got me out of there (since its not there job to keep people there forever anyway), and I was on my way. It wasn't so terrible except for the forced medication, the constant threat of being moved essentially to jail in the form of involuntary commitment, and the basic dehumanization you experience.
Though it wasn't so simple: my university decided that I needed to go into an outpatient program or else they wouldn't "approve" me going back to class. That is why I say you should never go to your schools counselors: they will always use it against you. I was forced into an outpatient program, which my insurance also wouldn't pay for (or else I wouldn't be able to go back to school), but thankfully I was able to convince someone in there to move me to a less intensive program. I'd also, by then, stopped taking my medication (and haven't taken a single psychiatric drug since).
Well, long story short at this new program I was getting bullied by one of the members of the staff, but instead of taking my complaint seriously the head of the program (which was quite small) simply ejected me before I could talk to anyone higher up. And from the university's perspective, I was done with my treatment. You think that this would be the end of the story, but the school kept their eye on me for years after; the amount of run-ins I had with the police over supposed alarms about my "mental health" was both horrifying and shocking. Thankfully, I eventually learned just to tell them I wouldn't talk without a lawyer, and they stopped bothering me after. But its very scary feeling like you're being constantly surveilled all the time, and fearing that if you ever talk to the police they'll try to take you in to a psychiatric facility.
Years later and I'm very happy: but not on account of any help from contemporary psychiatric institutions, modern psychology, therapy, or anything (though I did get a therapist who wasn't affiliated with my university), but from my readings. God you couldn't know how much Nietzsche and Freud can help someone like me, but they certainly put me through, and I'd have to guess that as their influence waned in American psychology, so did the quality of treatment--but what can you do when all their readers say that the system is the problem, and it just so happens the functionaries of power control the purses of psych programs! Everything radical, actually life-affirming and helpful was shunted from mental health and the whole thing was turned into some sort of pseudo-scientifical escapade for extracting as much money as possible from a socially dissatisfied population: they made a whole business out of ennui--what else is "positive psychology?"
Anyway I'm on the other side of things and all I can say is this: stay the fuck away from mentally ill people, they will ruin your life and only make you feel worse. Also, get exercise, eat decently, and stay hydrated, that usually helps. And never, ever, trust your run of the mill, CBT practicing psych: they either didn't do very well in med-school and became a psychiatrist; or, they studied psychology because they didn't know what else to do and they ended up practicing. There are people out there that can help, who aren't scam artist or just mindless NPCs; but there aren't a whole lot of them, and its almost impossible to differentiate the good from the bad until you get to the other side of things. I would recommend just doing some reading on your own: read Nietzsche, read Camus, read Kierkegaard (I haven't read him but I hear he is good): there is freedom, joy, and affirmation of life to be discovered here--which is nothing that our current mode of organizing society wants for you!