A character-driven, long format online comic that updates three times a week. Comedy! Drama! Revolutionary Communists, runaways, creative taxidermy and more.
“A number of chemical salts of lithium are used medically as a mood stabilizing drug, primarily in the treatment of bipolar disorder, where they have a role in the treatment of depression and particularly of mania, both acutely and in the long term. As a mood stabilizer, lithium is probably more effective in preventing mania than depression, and may reduce the risk of suicide in certain bipolar patients.”
I’d say an emphatic YEZ :P
Sweet catch! I forgot to keep on the lookout for Chapter title refs.
Lithium loses 1-10 to the new treatments for bipolar, though. It has to be painstakingly monitored with blood tests… which Ben hasn’t had done in the last – how long has he been at Templar now? Might be one reason his doctor’s so worried about him though.
Lithium isn’t an SSRI – those are the second gen. meds.
Sorry, sorry, sorry. Gonna have to go back one day and count how many times Ben has said ‘Sorry’ in the story so far.
Love this character tho. I remember Spike saying once that by the time Templar was through NO ONE was going to like Ben very much. I’ve wondered since if she meant the cast or the audience. Or both.
Can’t wait.
Also, is Ben sporting punky, skunky hair on this page or is it a funky highlight?
Wow! That’s interesting that Ben will change so much (as he is so likable now), but fascinating and realistic if he goes off his meds cold turkey.
I had a bipolar boss who dropped his meds cold turkey. He went from being an all-around awesome (though chatty) guy to being a total @ss. He became paranoid, judgmental, and started sexually harassing me. While I felt for him for having a condition, I could not deal with having him as a boss when he wouldn’t stay on his meds.
That’s the whole thing tho right? WHY do we think Ben is such a nice guy? He hasn’t DONE anything. In many ways he’s the least fleshed out character so far (well that’s not fair and not entirely true, what I mean is that this character is almost completely ALL subtext. There’s nothing OVERT about him). We only get brief glimpses as to his inner thoughts and opinions (his pr0n fic, the parrot thing, his interactions with Gene but largely too, as Scipio put it, that he’s “good with lunatics”. Not that I think Gene’s a lunatic. Maybe that should be his interactions with “The EXTREME Other”. And everyone’s an EXTREME Other in this book :P It’s a city FULL of extreme others. Maybe this was Spike’s point in putting him there.) but still don’t know anything concrete. The two most active and telling things he’s done have been how he dealt with the Cook (which went well in his estimation judging by his “happy high”) and how he dealt with Dr. Bash (which went decidedly NOT well as he tried to “throw is life over a cliff over it”). What I’m saying is we know precious little about his CHARACTER and next to NOTHING about his PERSONALITY. And yet still “Ben’s such a good guy”. WHY do we make this assumption? It’s fucking fascinating no? Cuz it’s not just us, the CAST does too. And they know LESS about Ben than we do!
*caps are for emphasis not internet!yelling. sorry about rambling in your direction :P
Also sorry about your boss. There’ve been a few people in my life who have the disorder and it’s so fucking crushing watching them struggle with the dichotomy of it while at the same time having to you yourself (and I hate to use this word) “deal” with it.You want to stand by them but sometimes..it is hard. For both parties. What kills me is that, independantly of one another (the people whom I know don’t know each other), they’ve related to me the same sort of idea that they don’t know if who they really are is who they are when they’re on the pills or who they are when they’re off. Watching and anticipating the character grapple with this is why I’m so emotionally invested in him.
Don’t get me wrong, cuz she had me right from the get, right with “GONZO” and Mexican transvestites, but REALLY, verge of tears TRULY, Spike had me at “I just had a good day. Wanted to tell someone. And they’d know what I mean.” God. Yeah.
Ben’s the audience surrogate. He’s the excuse for us to see all these things for the first time. He’s a geeky, shy, dreamer type with mental issues who keeps getting thrust into situations he doesn’t know how to handle. This comic has a demographic, and while I suspect that not every reader can relate to Ben, move of us find something like ourselves there. Spike’s doing a decent job slowly showing us more of what makes him tick, but he’s more important as a story mechanic than as a character.
I would have to disagree. Surrogate, yes, to a certain extent, and especially in the beginning, but he’s not alone in playing that part. ALL the characters have played and continue to play that role. They’ve all shown us different aspects of the Templar Universe that only they are uniquely equipped to do.
That summary of Ben feels off too. Geeky. Shy. Dreamer. We don’t know any of that about him. He’s exhibited some anti-social behavior (ex: Reagan having to force him out of his apartment) but I don’t think that should be confused with shyness, it’s not the same thing. From what we’ve seen he’s been able to “roll with it” moderately to pretty well. I feel that it’s not so much that he keeps getting thrust into situations that he CAN’T handle but that he doesn’t know HOW he’s GOING to handle. This uncertainty is likely a danger he faces daily and feeds into any anti-social behavior we might see and stems from his naivete and possible mental illness. Because while I believe Ben does have some sort of bi-polar disorder (and has probably been institutionalized at least once) this is all just speculation as nothing has been said concretely in the story so far.
It’s also a disservice to Spike to suggest that she’s pandering to any one specific “demographic” and relegate a main character to simply “type” and “story mechanic” (She also seems better than to tack on “mental illness” onto a character as just some “exotic” piece of backstory. I know you didn’t say that but it felt kind of implied. Like it was dressing.) If she was worth her salt at all we should be able to find SOMETHING relatable about most or all of the main characters. To assign relatability or SURROGATE to ONE person and write them off as ONLY that is kind of short-sighted. Our main four and Templar as a whole are/is SO much richer than that.
“He’s a geeky, shy, dreamer type with mental issues who keeps getting thrust into situations he doesn’t know how to handle.”
see this is why Spike will make us all hate him by the end. if he’s sympathetic because he’s got all these negative traits we’re willing to forgive him for having, she’s got to show us where they’re coming from and why they are unacceptable to have in an adult.
it’s like gordon, mr, girl hater-rape-eye gets redeemed in the eyes of the audience by having a reason to be that fucked up Ben who starts out, as our protagonist, automatically on our good side will have to be broken in our eyes to have been fully explored and fleshed out as his own person outside of being the audience surrogate.
Or maybe he really doesn’t need the meds and his parents are the problem.
I’d say one reason why Ben seems ‘unknown’ is just that he’s introverted. Pretty much every other character is extroverted to the extreme (apart from maybe Scip), whereas Ben is the opposite end of the scale. Whenever I meet new people, I pretty much do what Ben does; try not to offend anyone, and in the process completely suppress my own personality. It takes a while to get to know me, and I reckon the same is true of Ben, we just haven’t seen enough of him in his comfort-zone to see what he’s really like.
And, of course, there’s whatever the medication is for, since we still don’t know exactly why he needs it.
Hey, you’re right, “Sorry!” is his go-to response to the world and everything in it. Huh. Sounds like Ben is originally from Wisconsin. It would explain why he has cereal made of dismantled Vikings, I guess.
I’d just like to point out how abso-corkin’-lutely perfect it was that when I first loaded the page, the banner ad above this comic transitioning away from the Jakes was for the Mormon Church.
…And then I killed it with “Block content“. GOD BLESS YOU, OPERA.
That’s a hacked up Viking on the back of the box. I guess “Viking flavor” was quite literal, and explains the helmet bowl on the front. The Thunderbird Tribe didn’t waste anything, they used every part of the Viking. Is this more offensive to First Nations or to Scandinavians, I wonder? Do they market it in Norway? Or do they sell Indian Flavor Lutefisk Cereal there?
The native indian hacking up the viking is an interesting take on negative racial/ethnic stereotypes used in marketing. I love the fact the native indian is portrayed in the protagonistic role, and that a viking is being used (rather than something like a cowboy).
I do hope that Reagan’s reaction to “that’s not even a garbage can” isn’t to pick it out of the little crate and chuck it out the window, into a dumpster.
If this were a comedy, those meds would be doomed. Example: Reagan tosses the crate out a window; it lands in a dump truck; the dump truck blows up. But this isn’t a comedy so they’ll be fine. It would take a highly improbable sequence of events to put them at risk.
He’s been off them for a little while now, and is starting to leave his comfort zone (which was pretty small).
He apologizes so much, he must have done a lot of apologizing when he was younger. So maybe his meds were for an uncontrollable aspect that he would be apologizing for regularly? It does sound a lot like bipolar disorder…
It’ll be interesting when he’s fully off them, that’s for sure!
“He’s been off them for a little while now, and is starting to leave his comfort zone (which was pretty small).”
You think? Last time I can remember him (probably) actively going for them was when buddy came in through the window (“Digging for the prize?” “Kinda.”) and last time I remember seeing them was when Dr.Bash nearly made him flush them down the toilet. I dunno, never got the feeling that he’s stopped cold turkey. Why do you think so?
Gosh, Maria, why are you hating on Ben so much (in multiple comments on this page). No he’s obviously not perfect. But the positive traits people are bringing up really are positive — yet it seems you are determined to shoot down each one.
Would Reagan even approve of Ben taking his pills? I would think she would like him better without them even if he really did “need” them, even if he really is bipolar. True, her attitude toward all the extreme subcultures scattered across Templar is boredom and mild disdain; but when she encounters a new one (the Jakes are a perfect example), she loves it simply because it’s new to her. Is this a subtle campaign of hers to bring out the “real” Benny? And if so, is it because she wants him to expand his comfort zone, or just because she wants a show?
I don’t know, I get the sense that no one knows about Ben’s meds or mental problems, whatever they may be. He’s never discussed it or brought it up with any other characters in Templar, has he? I think the only times we’ve really learned anything significant about it were on the phone with his doctor (or therapist, whatever the case may be).
Ben is so incredibly private. Honestly, I can’t wait to learn more.
To some of the commenters… I understand your comments are made lightly in the spirit of slightly cynical humour that Templar comments tend to be about, but… when joking about mental health issues, keep in mind that they touch some people here more closely than others. My “pet peeve” is the concept of “happy pills”. In most cases the medication is needed for the individual to be able be NORMAL (for example, not seeing things or not feeling so depressed you’d rather die), not excessively happy. Just needed to say that.
I really doubt that EatBooks meant it in that way at all. “Happy pills” can be used negatively, but in most contexts (including that of the comment in question) it’s just another comical word for “medication”. Hell, I’m on pills for depression and I still have no problem calling them “happy pills”, “uppers”, etc. for no reason other than making something drab and serious something more bearable.
Personally, I call my meds my happy pills, crazy pills, brain-fixers and wobblymeds. Since my friends know about my problems, but a few of them really don’t understand it, I like to use the daft and not-at-all-accurate phrases that make the whole thing something less serious-seeming… stops them worrying and asking so many searching questions.
*Seriously guys, sometimes I am really actually not going to the loo to hide a sudden attack of the crazy wobbles, or to hide from the nasty sources of sensory overload. I just really need to take a dump. No, really. If you want I can hold off flushing next time so you can inspect it.*
It’s a common, goofy phrase. I’ve spent half my life in the mental health system and I have never had a problem with people misunderstanding what the meds do. Over 15% of Americans are on psych meds so chances are most people have a close relative who is on them and they get a better understanding of what they do.
I don’t know anyone who has gone off their meds because they were “too happy.” I do see a lot of people that think they are fine now and don’t need them any more, go off them, and then end up really screwed up again.
That’s pretty much exactly what happened to the mother of a close friend of mine. . . she wound up in a closed ward in mental hospital, my friend (at the time still child) ended up being taken away from her, and spent the next eight or nine years in foster care – he’s surprisingly mature in understanding of what happened, though. His mom has never been quite the same, even if she’s now supervised closely so that she keeps taking her meds.
Hmm, I must have missed something somewhere. Everyone seems fairly certain that Ben is bi-polar and I never particularly got that impression. I just sort of assumed that the meds and the therapy was his parents thinking he was depressed and angry because his relationship with them was not what they thought it should be. The whole adopted son experience not turning out as rosy as expected. And that he’s been on medication of some sort for so long that it’s made him question his ability to deal with the adult world without them. I’m going to have to read through the archives again.
I don’t think I’ll be able to get that lizard spit thing out of my head.
Do they need a specific kind of lizard? Or will anything scaly do?
Is there any chance that this is little-known trivia about a well-known product?
I could probably google this, but that just feels like cheating.
Well, when you take into account that pretty much all meds are poisons but that at low dosages they have positive medical effects, and that some lizards are poisonous (not always toxic to humans, mind you), I wouldn’t be surprised if it was some derivate. Although if it’s a “natural remedy”, I’d toss it out of the window. XD
Most vitamins and even foods are poisons too at high doses. I know a guy who died from a water addiction.
For my own part, I first got the impression that Ben was bi-polar or manic depressive at the very end of Book One, when he was talking to Dr. Bright and said that he’d had “a good day” and wanted to tell someone who knew what that “meant”. Pretty much everything he’s done or said or that has been said to/around him have cemented this idea for me.
Another example I guess would be when Reagan is talking to Scipio about Gordon in Book 2. Despite the fact that it is Ray and Scip who are talking and that Flannery is coming over, when Ray makes her let’s “see how crazy he is when crazy’s got consequences” speech the focus in that panel is all Ben.
His reaction to and behavior during the discovery of Dr. Bash in the middle of the street.
His face when Scipio tells him he’s “good with lunatics”.
His use of SORRY. Go back and look at the way he uses that word, like really look (and then go back and revisit the night he left Yakima).
So i dunno, for me, it’s been lots of things, big and small.
It hadn’t really occurred to me before, but his conversation with Morgan definitely seems to support you, Maria. About how he hasn’t changed and how he used to be a bad person because he “would do stuff that didn’t make sense to anyone” and his insistence that he’s not on a hair-trigger.
Oh man yeah, that convo is definitely one of the big reasons. I mean he all but tells her.
A funny thing I liked about Ben’s speech was that single panel of Morgan saying “I’d read that” at the end. Almost feels like shes commenting on the story at large, Templar, Arizona as a whole. It’s silly and reaching but I like the idea.
I can definitely see what you mean and I’m not disputing the idea particularly. It’s been so long since I’ve had time to sit down and really read the archives Ben may have been beamed down by aliens in the beginning and I could have forgotten. Maybe.
So lots of hints to his mania, bi-polar disorder, or something of that nature, history could be all over the place and I missed them. Especially since I tend to focus on the other characters in the scene. I find Ben rather less interesting in comparison to most of the rest of the cast.
I guess the SORRY thing in particular just seemed to me to be more, I’m not sure how to describe it, the way he would react to being a perpetual disappointment/mystery to his family. Somewhere (and now I have no idea where) I got the impression that his parents just never “got” him and instead of thinking it was simply a personality clash that can happen in any family, biological or otherwise. They assumed it was related to his having been adopted and that he was acting out to get back at them in some odd self-centered way that made everything about him (Ben) really about them. And Ben just went non-confrontational as usual, went along with their assessment, and likewise told the therapists they sent him to what they expected to hear.
I think I’m going to go back to the beginning and reread everything (oh horrors! How ever will I cope?) before I comment any more, see if I still think any of this once I’ve had a chance for review.
Do the damn thing, this book is so rewarding during re-reads! Lots of little things to pick up on that you might not have before (Doing this a while back, I pretty much convinced myself that Reagan was the author of Amber’s Confessions).
Also, if ever you can, pick this up in book form. If ONLY to read Spike’s notes (although I think the narrative flows better in this form too). Not only do you learn shit despite yourself, but they can be really…helpful. Figuring-characters-out-wise. For example, since we’re on Ben: During the Book 3 notes she makes mention of the family cat, Patton. Why the name Patton? “Because it needed a name Ben would never have given it”. Patton (the dude) was famous for being disgraced after slapping a soldier suffering from Shell Shock because he thought he was a “coward”. So if it was one of his parents that named the cat that, what does that say about their relationship with Ben (and I tend to think it was his dad)? Especially when keeping in mind how Ben uses “SORRY” and what Bash had to say about the way Ben used it/and generally behaved with him: “You’re not BRAVE. Nobody’s impressed kid”.
You know what really works to get into a characters head too (while writing or reading for them both)? Isolate their dialogue.
SORRY: I have a lot of ideas about this. Another part of it is revealed, again, during the confrontation with Bash. “tell me what you want me to say and i’ll say it”. It’s just such a great telling sequence for both characters.
Or with Reagan during the first book; “What are you sorry for?” “I dunno”. Jeez, so much more to this I just don’t have the brain cells left to properly articulate myself right now :P
One thing tho, mebbe your feeling that Ben and his parents later had issues “getting” each other is a subconscious knee-jerk reaction to the racial difference. On top of everything else Ben’s got going, I’ve wondered how this was going to come into play.
My first thought on the name Patton was general Patton. . .
My apologies, we were talking about the same Patton, I just didn’t realize it until reading the article about him on Wikipedia. It’s different to say just “Patton” and “general Patton”, at least in my mind. . . XD
Yeah, the entire compulsive apologizing thing, especially that horrifying conditioned reaction to Dr Bash (“just tell me what to say and I’ll say it!” or whatever it was, blue ribbon psychological realism moment for Templar there) makes it hard to tell if Ben is legit mentally ill or has just been labeled pathological by the Patton-lovin’ Kowalskis . Clearly BEN thinks he’s got something chemically the matter with him, or at least is worried about it, but the emotional abuse angle makes me think his actual psych history could be anything from a full-blown psychotic disorder to, IDK, being given tranquilizing doses of Zoloft by a shrink who’s writing a paper on the effects of SSRIs in treating attachment disorders in trans-racial adoptees.
“One thing tho, mebbe your feeling that Ben and his parents later had issues “getting” each other is a subconscious knee-jerk reaction to the racial difference. ”
Possible, but I think it might have come from listening to Spike (god I hope it was Spike, I’ve got a mind like a sieve and pretty much lose the ability to remember sources after a week goes by) mentioning on one of the Ustreams about adoption failures (there is a specific word for it, that I can’t remember either) and how it’s more common than most people realize and that often bringing the kid (racially the same as the adoptive parents or not) home doesn’t make them feel or see each other as a happy united family. And it just sorta seeped in with my perceptions about Ben and his folks. Unless it was somewhere else entirely that I heard all of this and it was just mentally shelved with Templar stuff.
NOTE ON PATTON: To say nothing about the racism. Forgot to mention that. Pfft. Way to late at night for critical thinking -_-…
I predict he goes off-med, becomes completely psychotic, and murders Reagan accidentally-on-purpose while raping her at knifepoint. I could be wrong, but consider this: How would his neighbors describe him? “Oh, Ben was always very quiet. A polite young man. Kept to himself.”
Nah, too boring an outcome – he should join the Jakes instead, leading them to a bloody crusade against the cityfolks. . . or as a good second, give EJ his cummupance.
Noticed several folks talking about the “real Ben” when off his meds, and about folks who wonder who their “real me” is, the one on meds or off. I believe this question keeps some people from taking meds that could help them. Are diabetics not their “real me” when they take insulin? Lack of insulin can lead to wacky sugar levels, and those can affect mood. Really messed up insulin levels can lead to coma. But would diabetics describe their “real” selves as moody or comatose? Insulin is just a drug that helps their body work the way it is supposed to, normally, and lets them express who they are when they are not sick. It’s no different with meds for mental conditions.
Perhaps in this story, Ben was misdiagnosed, or forced by his parents to take meds, or some such. I know some folks can have very bad experiences when taking the wrong drug or wrong dose, or with bad side effects, and I know drug prescription for mental illness is hardly an exact science. However, if Ben does haven an illness and it is going untreated, I doubt that’s good for him or lets him be his “real self”. If he is sick, but can get better without meds, just by changing his lifestyle and thinking, great! But some folks do need meds and benefit from them, and they are just as “real” when on meds as anyone else.
Yes, the stigma that the mental drugs “change you” keep people who need to be on them from taking them (or staying on them), but that stigma is not entirely untrue. If more doctors actually listened to their patients and tried to work with them to find drug combinations that helped, more people would stay on their drugs…or at least not just dump them cold turkey.
The diabetic on insulin = mentally ill person on mental has always been a very illogical argument that gets used way too often. For one thing insulin is actually part of our bodies to begin with. Antidepressants, antipsychotics, and a large number of other mentally altering drugs *are not*. Then there’s the fact these drugs *can* radically alter the way a person behaves—in a sense changing their personality.
I was on Paxil for two years. I had a very stressful childhood (divorce, abusive parents, etc., etc.) and a hellish start into adulthood (nutjob live-in fiance). I attempted suicide, and when I saw a therapist afterwards, I scored in the 90+ percentile for anxiety (woo-hoo).
The meds at the time were necessary to keep me from hurting myself. However, they did squat for my situation. My therapist didn’t really listen to anything past my answer (yes or no) when he asked how I was feeling. The drugs worked to an extent, but they didn’t change the fact my parents were abusive and my fiance was a psychotic nutjob who I needed to dump. So when I’d come in and say I was feeling down, the doctor would keep upping the dosage. It was like getting morphine because your arm hurt…only your arm was actually hurting because someone was slowly sawing it off. The morphine might stop the immediate pain, but it didn’t completely stop it all or help you save your arm from being cut off.
After the dose got hiked up high, the drugs *did* change me in a not so good way. They made me completely disconnected emotionally from the rest of the world and numb. When I ended up having a seizure while driving (from the drugs) I quit cold turkey. It was a very stupid and dangerous thing to do, but I was desperate as my doctor wasn’t listening to me when I complained of the side effects.
My point is mental drugs *can* change who you are. For people who need to be on them for life—just to function—it can be a serious battle to find the right combination and dosage. The physical side effects can be a bitch (weight gain, hot flashes, lowered libido, etc…), but the mental side effects can be devastating.
My aunt has schizophrenia, and has been in and out of hospitals most of her life. It took her over 30 years to find a drug combo that worked for her. My bipolar boss quit his drugs, because he felt they were interfering with his creativity (something he depended on for a living) but it made him unbearable to work with for his coworkers (so half of us left).
Who are they really? Are they the scary people with the mental conditions or the folks who are taking the drugs and having to deal with the side effects that come with them?
I think that’s something everyone who has to take mental medication has to come to terms with. Perhaps it’s not so much who you are on or off the pills, but who you want to be and what you go through to get there. It’s really a difficult balance to find and not an easy thing to make peace with.
Not trying to downplay the side effects, or the need for correct dosage and qualified therapists. However, I think we hear mostly the bad, and not enough of the good. I believe you, and I sympathize. I have heard *many* similar accounts. It’s almost all I hear because the people who are satisfied don’t talk about the drugs, maybe from fear of the stigma. I take Zoloft and it helps me tremendously. I can sleep normally. I don’t get heart palpitations anymore. Problems that seemed catastrophic and insurmountable look more manageable now. I haven’t had any bad side effects as far as I can tell. I’ve been fortunate in that my doctors do listen and they understand that cognitive behavior therapy is very important, it addresses some root causes. But low serotonin is also a root cause, and Zoloft treats that.
For many years, I refused to even try medication because I thought I wouldn’t be me, that my accomplishments wouldn’t be mine. Now, I’m much happier, I can get more done, my physical health is better. I don’t feel like a different person, just a happier, healthier person. As for my accomplishments, they’re mine. The drug just removes an impediment, an illness, it doesn’t accomplish things for me. My emotional responses, my thought patterns are different, yes, but I’m glad of these changes, I want the changes. Who among us doesn’t change as we learn and grow, with or without drugs?
Okay, I’ll share. I was very reluctant to get on an anti-depressant, but it was the right choice. But I’ve been fortunate to have good listening doctors who know what they’re doing. Also, I would guess that I can express my experiences pretty well, being a navel-gazing writer type.
Do drugs change one’s fundamental self? No more than a lot of other factors can. But what is this “fundamental self” of which we speak? Anyone who’s found themselves in a strange crowd and a strange situation acting completely different from their usual can tell you that the human personality is plastic. (This is my real take-away from the Stanford Prison Experiment.) So do drugs change you? Sure. But so does everything.
My main takeaway from reading most of the landmark psych experiments is don’t participate in psych experiments. I would especially recommend that you stay away from clinical drug trials. Let someone else be the guinea pig, it’s your life we’re talking about.
This is where it gets tricky. I still feel like me on my meds, just me with fewer/less frequent issues that made life so difficult beforehand. I admit I was always scared to seek help for my problems, and I am still scared now, but that was less down to fear of the “real me” and more my delightfully paranoid fear of getting labelled irrepairably crazy and being locked away.
That said, I can totally understand where this fear comes from. So many of the things that have changed since the meds were things I never even realised were related to my problems, because they’d been a part of me for as long as I could remember.
You aren’t going to be held against your will for any length of time unless you are a credible danger to yourself or others. Threatening suicide to intake personnel at a hospital won’t even necessarily get you admitted to a unit. The government and hospitals simply do not have the money or the space to hold people on psych wards, let alone locked units, for very long.
However, let’s say through some extraordinary circumstances, you DO end up on a locked unit. (Most likely those circumstances would be a very serious suicide attempt where your injuries were serious enough to land you in a hospital room.) By far the most common type of involuntary confinement is a “72 hour hold.” That basically is a 3-day-maximum confinement. A doctor must order this (this means a therapist or psychologist or social worker cannot order it). There must be an immediate risk to your life or the life of someone else. You have the right to a hearing to protest that kind of hold. The vast majority of people on a 72-hour hold are either released immediately after the 3 days are over or transferred to an unlocked unit if they consent to further inpatient treatment.
The point I am making is that you don’t have to be afraid of being locked away forever if you confide in a psychiatrist or therapist.
I think maybe it’s premature to diagnose Ben’s possible disorders – from what I’ve seen, it’s just as likely that he has a severe (but chemically controlled, for now) anxiety disorder or panic disorder. He might not explode so much as just break down.
It’s just that when someone really breaks down, and others get too nosy (I mean, sheesh, Reagan is nosy by definition), about half the time there tends to be some sort of violent reaction with the message “leave me alone”. That violence might be verbal as well as physical, and it could also be towards himself and not at others, but the possibility of the outburst seems rather high.
Assuming he’s demanding to be left alone, instead calling Reagan (or Scip) and begging her (him) to come over because he’s in the middle of a panic attack and it feels like his heart is going to explode. Assuming he doesn’t just stay in bed and quit eating or working. Or clean and repaint his entire apartment over the weekend. Or just leave.
Not all severe dysfunctions – even those requiring medication – necessarily result in *violence.* I can see why the “violent outburst” option, from a storytelling perspective, might be a cooler choice for Ben. But Templar seems filled to the brim with violent crazies already. It’s just as possible that Ben is something different.
I think one of two things is going to happen to Ben, 1). he’s going to go off on everyone and tell them how he feel’s about everyone or 2). he’s going to have a nervous break down. The way he was freaking out over his pills (Book 1), makes me think his pills is either 1) bi-polar meds, 2) sugar pills, 3) Tourette meds, or 4) depression meds. Maybe that’s why he ran away from home, because of his condition. He seem so nice, but I have a feeling that (like everyone said) either his med’s is making polite or he’s composive liar with multiple personality disorder. Either way, I can’t wait to see Ben’s dark side :), maybe he’ll scare the shit out of Regan and/or Sunny.
It kind of bothers me when people say a person’s ‘off his meds’ because it means they’re in an altered state of mind, not really the same. On the other hand I know if we don’t get my family’s prescriptions filled it is a lot less happy around my household. I still have nightmares about people committing suicide. In a lot of ways Ben is a hero to me. He’s really awesome, manages to make a few right decisions, is levelheaded and self-sufficient.
Lithium?
“A number of chemical salts of lithium are used medically as a mood stabilizing drug, primarily in the treatment of bipolar disorder, where they have a role in the treatment of depression and particularly of mania, both acutely and in the long term. As a mood stabilizer, lithium is probably more effective in preventing mania than depression, and may reduce the risk of suicide in certain bipolar patients.”
I’d say an emphatic YEZ :P
Sweet catch! I forgot to keep on the lookout for Chapter title refs.
I’ve been wondering what exactly is up with Ben ever since the first appearance of the pills.
Yay. Hopefully you’re right about the chapter title.
…Is Ben going to become unlikeable because of losing his meds somehow? ‘Cause, I swear, that pill bottle seems to constantly be in danger.
Lithium loses 1-10 to the new treatments for bipolar, though. It has to be painstakingly monitored with blood tests… which Ben hasn’t had done in the last – how long has he been at Templar now? Might be one reason his doctor’s so worried about him though.
if he’s on lithium, I assumed it was just depression meds.
SSRI prozac type drugs, nothin’ fancy.
Lithium isn’t an SSRI – those are the second gen. meds.
Sorry, sorry, sorry. Gonna have to go back one day and count how many times Ben has said ‘Sorry’ in the story so far.
Love this character tho. I remember Spike saying once that by the time Templar was through NO ONE was going to like Ben very much. I’ve wondered since if she meant the cast or the audience. Or both.
Can’t wait.
Also, is Ben sporting punky, skunky hair on this page or is it a funky highlight?
Wow! That’s interesting that Ben will change so much (as he is so likable now), but fascinating and realistic if he goes off his meds cold turkey.
I had a bipolar boss who dropped his meds cold turkey. He went from being an all-around awesome (though chatty) guy to being a total @ss. He became paranoid, judgmental, and started sexually harassing me. While I felt for him for having a condition, I could not deal with having him as a boss when he wouldn’t stay on his meds.
That’s the whole thing tho right? WHY do we think Ben is such a nice guy? He hasn’t DONE anything. In many ways he’s the least fleshed out character so far (well that’s not fair and not entirely true, what I mean is that this character is almost completely ALL subtext. There’s nothing OVERT about him). We only get brief glimpses as to his inner thoughts and opinions (his pr0n fic, the parrot thing, his interactions with Gene but largely too, as Scipio put it, that he’s “good with lunatics”. Not that I think Gene’s a lunatic. Maybe that should be his interactions with “The EXTREME Other”. And everyone’s an EXTREME Other in this book :P It’s a city FULL of extreme others. Maybe this was Spike’s point in putting him there.) but still don’t know anything concrete. The two most active and telling things he’s done have been how he dealt with the Cook (which went well in his estimation judging by his “happy high”) and how he dealt with Dr. Bash (which went decidedly NOT well as he tried to “throw is life over a cliff over it”). What I’m saying is we know precious little about his CHARACTER and next to NOTHING about his PERSONALITY. And yet still “Ben’s such a good guy”. WHY do we make this assumption? It’s fucking fascinating no? Cuz it’s not just us, the CAST does too. And they know LESS about Ben than we do!
*caps are for emphasis not internet!yelling. sorry about rambling in your direction :P
Also sorry about your boss. There’ve been a few people in my life who have the disorder and it’s so fucking crushing watching them struggle with the dichotomy of it while at the same time having to you yourself (and I hate to use this word) “deal” with it.You want to stand by them but sometimes..it is hard. For both parties. What kills me is that, independantly of one another (the people whom I know don’t know each other), they’ve related to me the same sort of idea that they don’t know if who they really are is who they are when they’re on the pills or who they are when they’re off. Watching and anticipating the character grapple with this is why I’m so emotionally invested in him.
Don’t get me wrong, cuz she had me right from the get, right with “GONZO” and Mexican transvestites, but REALLY, verge of tears TRULY, Spike had me at “I just had a good day. Wanted to tell someone. And they’d know what I mean.” God. Yeah.
Ben’s the audience surrogate. He’s the excuse for us to see all these things for the first time. He’s a geeky, shy, dreamer type with mental issues who keeps getting thrust into situations he doesn’t know how to handle. This comic has a demographic, and while I suspect that not every reader can relate to Ben, move of us find something like ourselves there. Spike’s doing a decent job slowly showing us more of what makes him tick, but he’s more important as a story mechanic than as a character.
I would have to disagree. Surrogate, yes, to a certain extent, and especially in the beginning, but he’s not alone in playing that part. ALL the characters have played and continue to play that role. They’ve all shown us different aspects of the Templar Universe that only they are uniquely equipped to do.
That summary of Ben feels off too. Geeky. Shy. Dreamer. We don’t know any of that about him. He’s exhibited some anti-social behavior (ex: Reagan having to force him out of his apartment) but I don’t think that should be confused with shyness, it’s not the same thing. From what we’ve seen he’s been able to “roll with it” moderately to pretty well. I feel that it’s not so much that he keeps getting thrust into situations that he CAN’T handle but that he doesn’t know HOW he’s GOING to handle. This uncertainty is likely a danger he faces daily and feeds into any anti-social behavior we might see and stems from his naivete and possible mental illness. Because while I believe Ben does have some sort of bi-polar disorder (and has probably been institutionalized at least once) this is all just speculation as nothing has been said concretely in the story so far.
It’s also a disservice to Spike to suggest that she’s pandering to any one specific “demographic” and relegate a main character to simply “type” and “story mechanic” (She also seems better than to tack on “mental illness” onto a character as just some “exotic” piece of backstory. I know you didn’t say that but it felt kind of implied. Like it was dressing.) If she was worth her salt at all we should be able to find SOMETHING relatable about most or all of the main characters. To assign relatability or SURROGATE to ONE person and write them off as ONLY that is kind of short-sighted. Our main four and Templar as a whole are/is SO much richer than that.
“He’s a geeky, shy, dreamer type with mental issues who keeps getting thrust into situations he doesn’t know how to handle.”
see this is why Spike will make us all hate him by the end. if he’s sympathetic because he’s got all these negative traits we’re willing to forgive him for having, she’s got to show us where they’re coming from and why they are unacceptable to have in an adult.
it’s like gordon, mr, girl hater-rape-eye gets redeemed in the eyes of the audience by having a reason to be that fucked up Ben who starts out, as our protagonist, automatically on our good side will have to be broken in our eyes to have been fully explored and fleshed out as his own person outside of being the audience surrogate.
Or maybe he really doesn’t need the meds and his parents are the problem.
I’d say one reason why Ben seems ‘unknown’ is just that he’s introverted. Pretty much every other character is extroverted to the extreme (apart from maybe Scip), whereas Ben is the opposite end of the scale. Whenever I meet new people, I pretty much do what Ben does; try not to offend anyone, and in the process completely suppress my own personality. It takes a while to get to know me, and I reckon the same is true of Ben, we just haven’t seen enough of him in his comfort-zone to see what he’s really like.
And, of course, there’s whatever the medication is for, since we still don’t know exactly why he needs it.
Hey, you’re right, “Sorry!” is his go-to response to the world and everything in it. Huh. Sounds like Ben is originally from Wisconsin. It would explain why he has cereal made of dismantled Vikings, I guess.
I’d just like to point out how abso-corkin’-lutely perfect it was that when I first loaded the page, the banner ad above this comic transitioning away from the Jakes was for the Mormon Church.
…And then I killed it with “Block content“. GOD BLESS YOU, OPERA.
Hah, she DOES think they’re full of it. She only likes ’em cuz they bother other people.
HOW IS BEN GONNA GET OUT OF THIS ONE? DOES HE TELL REAGAN ABOUT HIS HAPPY PILLS?
OR WILL HE NERVOUSLY STARE AT THE REMAINS OF THE BOX THROUGHOUT THE VISIT?
Nervous staring. Am definitely gonna have to go with the nervous staring.
They’re in his apartment. they leave, he comes back later nd retrieves them.
Oh wait, he doesn’t have a working door…
That’s a hacked up Viking on the back of the box. I guess “Viking flavor” was quite literal, and explains the helmet bowl on the front. The Thunderbird Tribe didn’t waste anything, they used every part of the Viking. Is this more offensive to First Nations or to Scandinavians, I wonder? Do they market it in Norway? Or do they sell Indian Flavor Lutefisk Cereal there?
I am suddenly wondering if ‘Pemmican Flakes’ there ISN’T a joke, and is actually another alternate history note in the Templar timeline.
Remember the movie Pathfinder? :D
Lutefisk cereal just rose to my number one spot of “Imaginary Foods I Fervently Wish Never Come to Be”. XD
*cue my tastesbuds screaming bloody murder*
Although…does it have strawberries? :p
Ray is the reason I read this comic.
The native indian hacking up the viking is an interesting take on negative racial/ethnic stereotypes used in marketing. I love the fact the native indian is portrayed in the protagonistic role, and that a viking is being used (rather than something like a cowboy).
I do hope that Reagan’s reaction to “that’s not even a garbage can” isn’t to pick it out of the little crate and chuck it out the window, into a dumpster.
If this were a comedy, those meds would be doomed. Example: Reagan tosses the crate out a window; it lands in a dump truck; the dump truck blows up. But this isn’t a comedy so they’ll be fine. It would take a highly improbable sequence of events to put them at risk.
Uh oh… do we want to see Ben off his meds?
…actually, I think I might.
He’s been off them for a little while now, and is starting to leave his comfort zone (which was pretty small).
He apologizes so much, he must have done a lot of apologizing when he was younger. So maybe his meds were for an uncontrollable aspect that he would be apologizing for regularly? It does sound a lot like bipolar disorder…
It’ll be interesting when he’s fully off them, that’s for sure!
“He’s been off them for a little while now, and is starting to leave his comfort zone (which was pretty small).”
You think? Last time I can remember him (probably) actively going for them was when buddy came in through the window (“Digging for the prize?” “Kinda.”) and last time I remember seeing them was when Dr.Bash nearly made him flush them down the toilet. I dunno, never got the feeling that he’s stopped cold turkey. Why do you think so?
Gosh, Maria, why are you hating on Ben so much (in multiple comments on this page). No he’s obviously not perfect. But the positive traits people are bringing up really are positive — yet it seems you are determined to shoot down each one.
Would Reagan even approve of Ben taking his pills? I would think she would like him better without them even if he really did “need” them, even if he really is bipolar. True, her attitude toward all the extreme subcultures scattered across Templar is boredom and mild disdain; but when she encounters a new one (the Jakes are a perfect example), she loves it simply because it’s new to her. Is this a subtle campaign of hers to bring out the “real” Benny? And if so, is it because she wants him to expand his comfort zone, or just because she wants a show?
I don’t know, I get the sense that no one knows about Ben’s meds or mental problems, whatever they may be. He’s never discussed it or brought it up with any other characters in Templar, has he? I think the only times we’ve really learned anything significant about it were on the phone with his doctor (or therapist, whatever the case may be).
Ben is so incredibly private. Honestly, I can’t wait to learn more.
Just what is Ben hoping to achieve there?
To some of the commenters… I understand your comments are made lightly in the spirit of slightly cynical humour that Templar comments tend to be about, but… when joking about mental health issues, keep in mind that they touch some people here more closely than others. My “pet peeve” is the concept of “happy pills”. In most cases the medication is needed for the individual to be able be NORMAL (for example, not seeing things or not feeling so depressed you’d rather die), not excessively happy. Just needed to say that.
I really doubt that EatBooks meant it in that way at all. “Happy pills” can be used negatively, but in most contexts (including that of the comment in question) it’s just another comical word for “medication”. Hell, I’m on pills for depression and I still have no problem calling them “happy pills”, “uppers”, etc. for no reason other than making something drab and serious something more bearable.
My wife’s term for hers are “happy to be alive pills”.
And I’m happy about that, too.
Now THAT definition I would agree to. :-)
Personally, I call my meds my happy pills, crazy pills, brain-fixers and wobblymeds. Since my friends know about my problems, but a few of them really don’t understand it, I like to use the daft and not-at-all-accurate phrases that make the whole thing something less serious-seeming… stops them worrying and asking so many searching questions.
*Seriously guys, sometimes I am really actually not going to the loo to hide a sudden attack of the crazy wobbles, or to hide from the nasty sources of sensory overload. I just really need to take a dump. No, really. If you want I can hold off flushing next time so you can inspect it.*
It’s a common, goofy phrase. I’ve spent half my life in the mental health system and I have never had a problem with people misunderstanding what the meds do. Over 15% of Americans are on psych meds so chances are most people have a close relative who is on them and they get a better understanding of what they do.
I don’t know anyone who has gone off their meds because they were “too happy.” I do see a lot of people that think they are fine now and don’t need them any more, go off them, and then end up really screwed up again.
That’s pretty much exactly what happened to the mother of a close friend of mine. . . she wound up in a closed ward in mental hospital, my friend (at the time still child) ended up being taken away from her, and spent the next eight or nine years in foster care – he’s surprisingly mature in understanding of what happened, though. His mom has never been quite the same, even if she’s now supervised closely so that she keeps taking her meds.
Hmm, I must have missed something somewhere. Everyone seems fairly certain that Ben is bi-polar and I never particularly got that impression. I just sort of assumed that the meds and the therapy was his parents thinking he was depressed and angry because his relationship with them was not what they thought it should be. The whole adopted son experience not turning out as rosy as expected. And that he’s been on medication of some sort for so long that it’s made him question his ability to deal with the adult world without them. I’m going to have to read through the archives again.
I’m not certain, hence the question mark in my first comment.
I mean, my diabetic gf is currently being prescribed a drug derived from *lizard spit*. Who knows what wacky meds they’ve got in the Templarverse?
I don’t think I’ll be able to get that lizard spit thing out of my head.
Do they need a specific kind of lizard? Or will anything scaly do?
Is there any chance that this is little-known trivia about a well-known product?
I could probably google this, but that just feels like cheating.
Well, when you take into account that pretty much all meds are poisons but that at low dosages they have positive medical effects, and that some lizards are poisonous (not always toxic to humans, mind you), I wouldn’t be surprised if it was some derivate. Although if it’s a “natural remedy”, I’d toss it out of the window. XD
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exenatide
Most vitamins and even foods are poisons too at high doses. I know a guy who died from a water addiction.
For my own part, I first got the impression that Ben was bi-polar or manic depressive at the very end of Book One, when he was talking to Dr. Bright and said that he’d had “a good day” and wanted to tell someone who knew what that “meant”. Pretty much everything he’s done or said or that has been said to/around him have cemented this idea for me.
Another example I guess would be when Reagan is talking to Scipio about Gordon in Book 2. Despite the fact that it is Ray and Scip who are talking and that Flannery is coming over, when Ray makes her let’s “see how crazy he is when crazy’s got consequences” speech the focus in that panel is all Ben.
His reaction to and behavior during the discovery of Dr. Bash in the middle of the street.
His face when Scipio tells him he’s “good with lunatics”.
His use of SORRY. Go back and look at the way he uses that word, like really look (and then go back and revisit the night he left Yakima).
So i dunno, for me, it’s been lots of things, big and small.
It hadn’t really occurred to me before, but his conversation with Morgan definitely seems to support you, Maria. About how he hasn’t changed and how he used to be a bad person because he “would do stuff that didn’t make sense to anyone” and his insistence that he’s not on a hair-trigger.
Oh man yeah, that convo is definitely one of the big reasons. I mean he all but tells her.
A funny thing I liked about Ben’s speech was that single panel of Morgan saying “I’d read that” at the end. Almost feels like shes commenting on the story at large, Templar, Arizona as a whole. It’s silly and reaching but I like the idea.
I can definitely see what you mean and I’m not disputing the idea particularly. It’s been so long since I’ve had time to sit down and really read the archives Ben may have been beamed down by aliens in the beginning and I could have forgotten. Maybe.
So lots of hints to his mania, bi-polar disorder, or something of that nature, history could be all over the place and I missed them. Especially since I tend to focus on the other characters in the scene. I find Ben rather less interesting in comparison to most of the rest of the cast.
I guess the SORRY thing in particular just seemed to me to be more, I’m not sure how to describe it, the way he would react to being a perpetual disappointment/mystery to his family. Somewhere (and now I have no idea where) I got the impression that his parents just never “got” him and instead of thinking it was simply a personality clash that can happen in any family, biological or otherwise. They assumed it was related to his having been adopted and that he was acting out to get back at them in some odd self-centered way that made everything about him (Ben) really about them. And Ben just went non-confrontational as usual, went along with their assessment, and likewise told the therapists they sent him to what they expected to hear.
I think I’m going to go back to the beginning and reread everything (oh horrors! How ever will I cope?) before I comment any more, see if I still think any of this once I’ve had a chance for review.
Do the damn thing, this book is so rewarding during re-reads! Lots of little things to pick up on that you might not have before (Doing this a while back, I pretty much convinced myself that Reagan was the author of Amber’s Confessions).
Also, if ever you can, pick this up in book form. If ONLY to read Spike’s notes (although I think the narrative flows better in this form too). Not only do you learn shit despite yourself, but they can be really…helpful. Figuring-characters-out-wise. For example, since we’re on Ben: During the Book 3 notes she makes mention of the family cat, Patton. Why the name Patton? “Because it needed a name Ben would never have given it”. Patton (the dude) was famous for being disgraced after slapping a soldier suffering from Shell Shock because he thought he was a “coward”. So if it was one of his parents that named the cat that, what does that say about their relationship with Ben (and I tend to think it was his dad)? Especially when keeping in mind how Ben uses “SORRY” and what Bash had to say about the way Ben used it/and generally behaved with him: “You’re not BRAVE. Nobody’s impressed kid”.
You know what really works to get into a characters head too (while writing or reading for them both)? Isolate their dialogue.
SORRY: I have a lot of ideas about this. Another part of it is revealed, again, during the confrontation with Bash. “tell me what you want me to say and i’ll say it”. It’s just such a great telling sequence for both characters.
Or with Reagan during the first book; “What are you sorry for?” “I dunno”. Jeez, so much more to this I just don’t have the brain cells left to properly articulate myself right now :P
One thing tho, mebbe your feeling that Ben and his parents later had issues “getting” each other is a subconscious knee-jerk reaction to the racial difference. On top of everything else Ben’s got going, I’ve wondered how this was going to come into play.
My first thought on the name Patton was general Patton. . .
My apologies, we were talking about the same Patton, I just didn’t realize it until reading the article about him on Wikipedia. It’s different to say just “Patton” and “general Patton”, at least in my mind. . . XD
Yeah, the entire compulsive apologizing thing, especially that horrifying conditioned reaction to Dr Bash (“just tell me what to say and I’ll say it!” or whatever it was, blue ribbon psychological realism moment for Templar there) makes it hard to tell if Ben is legit mentally ill or has just been labeled pathological by the Patton-lovin’ Kowalskis . Clearly BEN thinks he’s got something chemically the matter with him, or at least is worried about it, but the emotional abuse angle makes me think his actual psych history could be anything from a full-blown psychotic disorder to, IDK, being given tranquilizing doses of Zoloft by a shrink who’s writing a paper on the effects of SSRIs in treating attachment disorders in trans-racial adoptees.
“One thing tho, mebbe your feeling that Ben and his parents later had issues “getting” each other is a subconscious knee-jerk reaction to the racial difference. ”
Possible, but I think it might have come from listening to Spike (god I hope it was Spike, I’ve got a mind like a sieve and pretty much lose the ability to remember sources after a week goes by) mentioning on one of the Ustreams about adoption failures (there is a specific word for it, that I can’t remember either) and how it’s more common than most people realize and that often bringing the kid (racially the same as the adoptive parents or not) home doesn’t make them feel or see each other as a happy united family. And it just sorta seeped in with my perceptions about Ben and his folks. Unless it was somewhere else entirely that I heard all of this and it was just mentally shelved with Templar stuff.
NOTE ON PATTON: To say nothing about the racism. Forgot to mention that. Pfft. Way to late at night for critical thinking -_-…
I don’t think a psychiatrist would consider having a manic episode to be having a good day.
I think he is just apologising to distract her so he can get the pills back without her discovering them, or eating them, or tossing them away!
I predict he goes off-med, becomes completely psychotic, and murders Reagan accidentally-on-purpose while raping her at knifepoint. I could be wrong, but consider this: How would his neighbors describe him? “Oh, Ben was always very quiet. A polite young man. Kept to himself.”
-G.
Nah, too boring an outcome – he should join the Jakes instead, leading them to a bloody crusade against the cityfolks. . . or as a good second, give EJ his cummupance.
Noticed several folks talking about the “real Ben” when off his meds, and about folks who wonder who their “real me” is, the one on meds or off. I believe this question keeps some people from taking meds that could help them. Are diabetics not their “real me” when they take insulin? Lack of insulin can lead to wacky sugar levels, and those can affect mood. Really messed up insulin levels can lead to coma. But would diabetics describe their “real” selves as moody or comatose? Insulin is just a drug that helps their body work the way it is supposed to, normally, and lets them express who they are when they are not sick. It’s no different with meds for mental conditions.
Perhaps in this story, Ben was misdiagnosed, or forced by his parents to take meds, or some such. I know some folks can have very bad experiences when taking the wrong drug or wrong dose, or with bad side effects, and I know drug prescription for mental illness is hardly an exact science. However, if Ben does haven an illness and it is going untreated, I doubt that’s good for him or lets him be his “real self”. If he is sick, but can get better without meds, just by changing his lifestyle and thinking, great! But some folks do need meds and benefit from them, and they are just as “real” when on meds as anyone else.
Yes, the stigma that the mental drugs “change you” keep people who need to be on them from taking them (or staying on them), but that stigma is not entirely untrue. If more doctors actually listened to their patients and tried to work with them to find drug combinations that helped, more people would stay on their drugs…or at least not just dump them cold turkey.
The diabetic on insulin = mentally ill person on mental has always been a very illogical argument that gets used way too often. For one thing insulin is actually part of our bodies to begin with. Antidepressants, antipsychotics, and a large number of other mentally altering drugs *are not*. Then there’s the fact these drugs *can* radically alter the way a person behaves—in a sense changing their personality.
I was on Paxil for two years. I had a very stressful childhood (divorce, abusive parents, etc., etc.) and a hellish start into adulthood (nutjob live-in fiance). I attempted suicide, and when I saw a therapist afterwards, I scored in the 90+ percentile for anxiety (woo-hoo).
The meds at the time were necessary to keep me from hurting myself. However, they did squat for my situation. My therapist didn’t really listen to anything past my answer (yes or no) when he asked how I was feeling. The drugs worked to an extent, but they didn’t change the fact my parents were abusive and my fiance was a psychotic nutjob who I needed to dump. So when I’d come in and say I was feeling down, the doctor would keep upping the dosage. It was like getting morphine because your arm hurt…only your arm was actually hurting because someone was slowly sawing it off. The morphine might stop the immediate pain, but it didn’t completely stop it all or help you save your arm from being cut off.
After the dose got hiked up high, the drugs *did* change me in a not so good way. They made me completely disconnected emotionally from the rest of the world and numb. When I ended up having a seizure while driving (from the drugs) I quit cold turkey. It was a very stupid and dangerous thing to do, but I was desperate as my doctor wasn’t listening to me when I complained of the side effects.
My point is mental drugs *can* change who you are. For people who need to be on them for life—just to function—it can be a serious battle to find the right combination and dosage. The physical side effects can be a bitch (weight gain, hot flashes, lowered libido, etc…), but the mental side effects can be devastating.
My aunt has schizophrenia, and has been in and out of hospitals most of her life. It took her over 30 years to find a drug combo that worked for her. My bipolar boss quit his drugs, because he felt they were interfering with his creativity (something he depended on for a living) but it made him unbearable to work with for his coworkers (so half of us left).
Who are they really? Are they the scary people with the mental conditions or the folks who are taking the drugs and having to deal with the side effects that come with them?
I think that’s something everyone who has to take mental medication has to come to terms with. Perhaps it’s not so much who you are on or off the pills, but who you want to be and what you go through to get there. It’s really a difficult balance to find and not an easy thing to make peace with.
Not trying to downplay the side effects, or the need for correct dosage and qualified therapists. However, I think we hear mostly the bad, and not enough of the good. I believe you, and I sympathize. I have heard *many* similar accounts. It’s almost all I hear because the people who are satisfied don’t talk about the drugs, maybe from fear of the stigma. I take Zoloft and it helps me tremendously. I can sleep normally. I don’t get heart palpitations anymore. Problems that seemed catastrophic and insurmountable look more manageable now. I haven’t had any bad side effects as far as I can tell. I’ve been fortunate in that my doctors do listen and they understand that cognitive behavior therapy is very important, it addresses some root causes. But low serotonin is also a root cause, and Zoloft treats that.
For many years, I refused to even try medication because I thought I wouldn’t be me, that my accomplishments wouldn’t be mine. Now, I’m much happier, I can get more done, my physical health is better. I don’t feel like a different person, just a happier, healthier person. As for my accomplishments, they’re mine. The drug just removes an impediment, an illness, it doesn’t accomplish things for me. My emotional responses, my thought patterns are different, yes, but I’m glad of these changes, I want the changes. Who among us doesn’t change as we learn and grow, with or without drugs?
Okay, I’ll share. I was very reluctant to get on an anti-depressant, but it was the right choice. But I’ve been fortunate to have good listening doctors who know what they’re doing. Also, I would guess that I can express my experiences pretty well, being a navel-gazing writer type.
Do drugs change one’s fundamental self? No more than a lot of other factors can. But what is this “fundamental self” of which we speak? Anyone who’s found themselves in a strange crowd and a strange situation acting completely different from their usual can tell you that the human personality is plastic. (This is my real take-away from the Stanford Prison Experiment.) So do drugs change you? Sure. But so does everything.
-G.
My main takeaway from reading most of the landmark psych experiments is don’t participate in psych experiments. I would especially recommend that you stay away from clinical drug trials. Let someone else be the guinea pig, it’s your life we’re talking about.
This is where it gets tricky. I still feel like me on my meds, just me with fewer/less frequent issues that made life so difficult beforehand. I admit I was always scared to seek help for my problems, and I am still scared now, but that was less down to fear of the “real me” and more my delightfully paranoid fear of getting labelled irrepairably crazy and being locked away.
That said, I can totally understand where this fear comes from. So many of the things that have changed since the meds were things I never even realised were related to my problems, because they’d been a part of me for as long as I could remember.
You aren’t going to be held against your will for any length of time unless you are a credible danger to yourself or others. Threatening suicide to intake personnel at a hospital won’t even necessarily get you admitted to a unit. The government and hospitals simply do not have the money or the space to hold people on psych wards, let alone locked units, for very long.
However, let’s say through some extraordinary circumstances, you DO end up on a locked unit. (Most likely those circumstances would be a very serious suicide attempt where your injuries were serious enough to land you in a hospital room.) By far the most common type of involuntary confinement is a “72 hour hold.” That basically is a 3-day-maximum confinement. A doctor must order this (this means a therapist or psychologist or social worker cannot order it). There must be an immediate risk to your life or the life of someone else. You have the right to a hearing to protest that kind of hold. The vast majority of people on a 72-hour hold are either released immediately after the 3 days are over or transferred to an unlocked unit if they consent to further inpatient treatment.
The point I am making is that you don’t have to be afraid of being locked away forever if you confide in a psychiatrist or therapist.
I think maybe it’s premature to diagnose Ben’s possible disorders – from what I’ve seen, it’s just as likely that he has a severe (but chemically controlled, for now) anxiety disorder or panic disorder. He might not explode so much as just break down.
It’s just that when someone really breaks down, and others get too nosy (I mean, sheesh, Reagan is nosy by definition), about half the time there tends to be some sort of violent reaction with the message “leave me alone”. That violence might be verbal as well as physical, and it could also be towards himself and not at others, but the possibility of the outburst seems rather high.
Assuming he’s demanding to be left alone, instead calling Reagan (or Scip) and begging her (him) to come over because he’s in the middle of a panic attack and it feels like his heart is going to explode. Assuming he doesn’t just stay in bed and quit eating or working. Or clean and repaint his entire apartment over the weekend. Or just leave.
Not all severe dysfunctions – even those requiring medication – necessarily result in *violence.* I can see why the “violent outburst” option, from a storytelling perspective, might be a cooler choice for Ben. But Templar seems filled to the brim with violent crazies already. It’s just as possible that Ben is something different.
Just got books 1-4 in the mail. Thanks, Spike!
I looove Reagan’s gloves in this strip!
I think one of two things is going to happen to Ben, 1). he’s going to go off on everyone and tell them how he feel’s about everyone or 2). he’s going to have a nervous break down. The way he was freaking out over his pills (Book 1), makes me think his pills is either 1) bi-polar meds, 2) sugar pills, 3) Tourette meds, or 4) depression meds. Maybe that’s why he ran away from home, because of his condition. He seem so nice, but I have a feeling that (like everyone said) either his med’s is making polite or he’s composive liar with multiple personality disorder. Either way, I can’t wait to see Ben’s dark side :), maybe he’ll scare the shit out of Regan and/or Sunny.
It kind of bothers me when people say a person’s ‘off his meds’ because it means they’re in an altered state of mind, not really the same. On the other hand I know if we don’t get my family’s prescriptions filled it is a lot less happy around my household. I still have nightmares about people committing suicide. In a lot of ways Ben is a hero to me. He’s really awesome, manages to make a few right decisions, is levelheaded and self-sufficient.