Occupation: Dreamer

I've gotten to know my mind and body over my (now) long life. My mind, for the most part, has driven me nuts, and some of the things I've learned I wish I had known when I was a child, a young adult, and an older adult. I've healed a lot along the way, but I've worked at it almost incessantly, trying to be a better person. First, we are all different. So what works for me may not work for you. That's one of the fallacies of the ADHD treatment protocols - some people need stimulant medicines, some need calming medicines - but they all start the same way: with stimulant medicines.  I was lucky in this regard. My first psychiatrist, who really understood ADD/ADHD in the 80's, wouldn't prescribe stimulant medicine for me. He had identified that I had substance issues, and stimulant medicines are highly addictive. (In fact, I had taken stimulant medicine (ritalin) in the early 70's. If it worked, I didn't recognize it.) What he said is that I should quit ...

Reading the New Yorker this morning - Goings on About Town - and a snippet about the actress playing Janet in the Broadway revival of the Rocky Horror Picture Show (RHPS), a sudden wave of nostalgia rushed over me like an unexpected ocean swell. My friend Hugh Cole introduced me to Brad and Janet (the New Yorker incorrectly called him "Sam") and the RHPS when I hitch-hiked to his house in Short Hills, NJ, from Maine that day, when he told me about the evening plans.  "We're going to this midnight show where people dress up and act out the parts." Okay. Didn't tell me about the whole cross-dressing thing. It made an impression. It was 1978, and we stood in a line under the dim streetlights outside a suburban village movie theatre, among other young people, some goth and lingerie-clad, slightly buzzed and ready for excitement. It lived up to the billing. People threw water and hot dogs at various times. Suddenly, there was a new, cooler version of "freak,...