Review: Iron Man Noir

Hello, if you've been checking this blog or Dagblog, where I contribute, you'll notice quite a bit written about SSRI antidepressants and their effects. I'm consciously avoiding that work and getting back to some more rosy topics, if anything to show that the poison of antidepressants can be defeated and overcome and those poisoned by these can return to who and what they really are.

The Avengers movie is arriving in theaters in only a couple of days, bringing a cadre of heroes to the screen in a way I never thought I would see. Times really do change - a little over ten years ago Marvel Comics was literally bankrupt. They got bought up by Toy Biz, a toy company that certainly didn't carry the legendary gravitas that Marvel did. Then Wesley Snipes as Blade happened, followed by X-Men and then Spider-Man, and suddenly comic book movies were in the mainstream. Things have cascaded since then considerably until the point in which superhero names once only known by the extremely socially awkward are now socially acceptable. Old Navy is currently selling Avengers T-shirts in full display next to its most fashionable ware. Marvel's quality of work has doubled up in recent years and the characters that make up the film to be released on Friday have been some of the most benefited.

Among some of the best recent work featuring Avengers characters is Iron Man Noir. Iron Man Noir has several copies available in the Seattle Public Library system, indicating its popularity. The concept of this edition in the Noir series (the Noir portrays various Marvel characters in the environment of the 1930s, often complete with very clever elements of that decade's culture and society. The Great Depression and 1930s concepts in the Noir series has usually stretched things to fit - the idea of Peter Parker as a Marxist revolutionary didn't really seem to make all of that much sense. With Iron Man, however, things really actually fit. Tony Stark fits very well in to the archetype of Howard Hughes. Like Hughes, this version of Tony Stark adventures across the globe - past the comfort zone that his wealth allows for him. Like Hughes, this boldness masks some very serious problems - for Hughes, it was a debilitating obsessive compulsive disorder that eventually led to Hughes escaping a world he had simply grown tired of dealing with while, for Stark, it's a heart condition (much more serious than OCD) that haunts Stark and proves the basis for his Iron Man costume.

Stark's assistant Rhodes comes with racial connotations that are hinted at (though not as much as the sexist connotations fitting Pepper Potts, who the Depression version of Namor openly looks down upon as part of an American effort of "allowing women to run around like men. In the Noir series, Potts is actually a much tougher woman - following Stark as she writes pulp novels, featuring Stark's adventures, under a male pen name) but not explored all too much. That's probably fitting, as bringing that whole can of worms in would only make the whole story all of the more complicated. The aforementioned Namor is one of the most interesting elements of Iron Man Noir and it would be really cool to see a Fantastic Four series in this universe. Namor, in this world, is a rogue fishermen who mutilates his ears to be pointed, marking him as a rough sort that can make it through the horror and toughness of the Great Depression world.

Tony Stark's complex relation with his father is explored quite a bit as well. In this world, Stark's father is a veteran of the First World War who, while Tony is growing up, experiences frequent flashbacks to the horrors of that war. As far as I've seen, there haven't been Noir incarnations of the Hulk, Iron Man or Captain America (the latter may be redundant) but a Noir version of the Avengers would be excellent. The basis is already there.

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Effected

I came off of the drug Effexor. I came off of it while visiting my uncle in the Pacific Islands. My uncle hadn't seen me in many years and the people I was staying with had little to no experience with prescription drug's malfeasance. I didn't do it on purpose. I first ran out of supply, then my second supply got destroyed in a record flood that hit Guam. Next up I was completely insane - totally gone - arguing to myself that I didn't need it and unable to access any internet or phone calls back home to people who would know how to help in this really shitty situation. The ensuing bad behavior that resulted from my initially accidental withdrawal was interpreted by the people around me as reflecting my character - which became all the more confusing to them since I had presented myself as a really, really nice guy initially. How can you think that one guy is a really nice, generous person while also possibly a sociopath or worse? The problem with Effexor, which makes its withdrawal so absolutely horrific, is dissociation and depersonalization. I think that I had this while using the drug as well as during its withdrawal, but of course the withdrawal was far worse. When things happened to me or around me, it was as if I were watching it in a movie. I'm on a very, very small doseage of Celexa now and am feeling like that horrifying state of mind is finally fleeing but it's still very disturbing. Putting it very bluntly, a psychiatrist said that it was great I didn't kill myself while coming off Effexor, even accidentally. Whatever this drug does to the brain, that apparently is the risk when the brain stops using it. For a great example, here is Charmaine Dragun, an Australian newsreader who performed a particularly brutal form of suicide after coming off Effexor after ten years of use:

CHANNEL Ten newsreader Charmaine Dragun leaped to her death three weeks after changing her depression medication to a combination of drugs known to influence suicidal thoughts, an inquest has heard. Ms Dragun, 29, was considered a rising star in the Ten newsroom when she took own her own life in November 2007. She had moved to Sydney from Perth, where she read the WA nightly news bulletin from the network's Pyrmont studios alongside Tim Webster, and occasionally read the national news. But while it seemed like she had the world at her feet, an inquest into her death has heard she battled depression and anxiety since her teens. Counsel assisting the Coroner, David Hirsch, told Glebe Coroner's Court Ms Dragun had been taking a steady dose of the anti-depressant, Effexor, for 10 years and wanted to come off the drug. Mr Hirsch said she was being treated by a psychiatrist who reduced her dose of Effexor and introduced her to a replacement drug called Lexapro. End of sidebar. Return to start of sidebar. The new treatment plan was to be supplemented by fish oil tablets, with the aim that she eventually take up to 12 fish oil tablets per day. After a few days, she reportedly told the psychiatrist she was feeling terrible and the change wasn't working, but he sent her a text message telling her to "hang on". Mr Hirsch said the combination of the two drugs, which she began three weeks before her death, was known to influence suicidal thoughts, or contemplations of suicide. But he said it didn't necessarily follow that a person taking the drugs simultaneously would take their own life. Mr Hirsch said one of the main questions the inquest will consider is whether Ms Dragun deliberately jumped from the clifftop or whether she was in a drug-induced "psychotic state" at the time and unaware of her actions. He said the objective of the inquest was not to lay blame but to help avoid further tragedies. Ms Dragun appeared to be a happy young woman with a wide circle of friends, a supportive family and a loving partner, whom she had been in a relationship with since her teens, the court heard. "Despite that support ... she decided to go to the Gap and to the cliff and she decided to take one step forward instead of one step back," Mr Hirsch said. "Why she took that step we will never know."

Hirsch, of course, is wrong. Effexor is the daddy of all of the SSRIs (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors), really belongin and has been implicated in some really bizarre and inexplicable behavior. Andrea Yates, by all accounts otherwise a good mother, murdered her five own children while on a very high dose of this poison. Dragun jumped off a cliff in Australia while coming off the drug. The drug is obviously meant to combat depression and anxiety but the side effects (based on the user's mental state or if they are coming off the drug) are really unacceptable. I've been a difficult person in the past but I've never really been like I was in Effexor withdrawal. I was in another dimension and wasn't able to really solve the problem because of the dissociation. Problems would be mentally registered and then just observed instead of solved, as if I were The Watcher from Marvel Comics. I imagine that Dragun entered a state very similar of her own when coming off of this poison. The press coverage, however, has credited her committing suicide with everything from anorexia to a feeling of "isolation," none of which had done her in for her previous decade of treatment. It's honestly pretty disturbing that such powerful drugs are not only readily available but given out like candy to anybody who claims to be depressed, anxious or suffering from some other temporary state of affairs. Big Pharmaceuticals are big all over the world and Australia, with its high suicide rate, is especially a critical market for the vultures of antidepressant manufacturers, so the coverage by the mainstream media in that country - just like in the United States - is unlikely to unfavorable to drug manufacturers. I'm still not just alive but kicking pretty significantly, back home and doing normal tasks while also going out and looking for work. Things are back to normal. Given all of that, however, something feels slightly cognitive different. I hit my head a few times during withdrawal, which was pretty damned unpleasant. (At the time, I blamed the people around me for having a shower in which no roof was available and I could easily slip but I'm not sure if any of this crap ever would have happened if it had not been for the Effexor factor.) I think things got knocked around a bit and the result is one that I'm not too sure about. That's not to mention the horrible sexual side effects of Effexor, which will have to be dealt with. My doctor says this all should be a cautionary tale. This will be the last that I really write about it because I would prefer for my story to not be knocked over the head of others too much. I'm lucky to have made it through this horrible antidepressant medication with little more than a few seizures and a whole lot of confusion. Antidepressants are still being prescribed very readily and the story of myself or an even worse story like Dragun or Yates should be remembered before taking these pills. There are alternatives, even if you have to seek them out and won't get advertised them during your favorite television show. Your effort will be worth it in the end. Tweet Share

Drugs Kill

Right before I left for Guam, Carly Henley passed away. She was found hanging by a noose in a fraternity stairwell. Carly wasn't a fan of Marilyn Manson. She didn't have tattoos on her face. By all accounts, she was attractive, intelligent enough to be a student at the University of Washington, upbeat and talented. She wanted to be a singer. Not the picture of a suicidal woman by any means.

Only a year before, she had seemed content with life:

So what happened? Two weeks before she killed herself, she had been prescribed the antidepressant Zoloft. Her mother had insisted on it after her daughter suffered a depressive spell (fairly common for that age). These pills are given out like M&Ms in the United States but can have really nasty adverse effects and withdrawal symptoms. Users (and it is so horrible to say "users" since most kids are put on this stuff by parents and doctors) are the only ones who really understand the power of these drugs. If you have a bad reaction to them, you could end up having uncharacteristic suicidal thoughts. If you go through withdrawal, as I did while traveling, you could also become self-destructive. It is bad medicine and it is not good that these things are being consumed wholesale by the American public. Tweet Share

A Drug Induced Loss Of Romance

There has been quite a bit said about the use, efficacy and safety of pharmaceutical drugs. The range of denunciation has gone from writers like Alex Knepper, a former Frum Forum contributor and current freelance contrarian, to the more predictable suspects of antidepressant and psychiatry hating at the Church of Scientology. As someone who used and is still on a very, very minor dosage of antidepressants, I would like to attest to some of the truly haunting and disturbing elements of modern psycho-medicine. One of the truly horrific arenas of the over-drugging of our society is the resulting dehumanization. Much of human history is the story of religion, organized and disorganized. Especially in Christianity, romance is inherent in the character of religion. In Islam, the Prophet Mohammed seeks spiritual guidance by secluding himself within an isolated cave, while in Buddhism, the Buddha reclines himself in to poverty and dissociation from his previous riches and prosperity in order to come closer to spiritual truth. The romance reaches its height within Christianity, where separation from guarantees and expectations reaches its height with God giving up his only begotten son. This is all very romantic and appeals deeply to people lost in life, often by their own faults and transgressions. Modern psychiatry demolishes this and replaces it with nothing whatsoever. Once you are lodged fully within the realm of psychiatric medication, personal self-development falls by the wayside. Miss a pill or start taking the wrong one and you could very well end up changing your personality completely. Whatever improvements you had learned over the years are completely useless and irrelevant as you become a robot whose circuits can be wired and rewired. Unlike a computer, however, your doctor and psychiatrist isn't at all like a technician who seeks to make you as functional and operable as possible. Instead, they seek to manage whatever you suffer from or that they perceive you to suffer from and continually plant seeds by which new disorders and problems arise. There's nothing romantic about this. There's not even anything appealing about this, but it is quite literally the state by which millions of Americans and others now find themselves. There are a plethora of anecdotes about various individuals who have broken down and transformed due to psychotropic drugs. The listing for these individuals could go on for a long, long time. A key example, in my view, is Charmaine Dragun. Dragun, a native Croatian who became a famous announcer in Australia, committed suicide after taken off the medication Effexor and placed on another antidepressant. Dragun was beautiful, she had a loving family and spouse. Why would she kill herself?

However, the month before her death she began a program to wean herself off one antidepressant while taking another. Ms Dragun drove to Sydney's Gap in November 2007 and committed suicide. She had been due to get married. Glebe Coroner's Court in Sydney was told the inquest would investigate whether a change in Ms Dragun's antidepressant medication had triggered her suicide. "Objectively, Charmaine had an ideal life, she had everything to live for, but behind the perfect exterior, there was a deep and troubling issue," said David Hirsch, counsel assisting the coroner. He said that she had a lot of help and support from her partner, Simon Struthers, her family and friends. "Despite all of that, Charmaine decided to go to The Gap on that Friday afternoon and, at the cliff, she decided to take one step forward rather than one step back." "Why she took the step forward is something we cannot know . . . (but) Charmaine was not stopped, she did not change her mind and she did die." In October 2007 Ms Dragun began reducing her dose of the drug Effexor and started on a new medication, Lexapro. Friends described her behaviour at that time as "disturbing" and "out of character". Mr Hirsch said Ms Dragun had been diagnosed with depression and anxiety in 1996 but there were indications she may have been suffering from bipolar disorder. If this diagnosis had been made, then she should not have been on Effexor. Suicide is a known risk of depression and patients of Effexor should be monitored closely at the beginning of a course of treatment or a change in dose.

Responsibility One of the key aspects of the myriad tragedies and wrecked lives due to prescription drug use is a persistent lack of responsibility. This has certainly plagued me. Why would so many people be irresponsible about drug use? After all, people are usually responsible about nearly everything else in life - we regularly are aware of not being hit by cars, avoiding loss or misuse of money and various other threats in our environment. In an article by the Los Angeles Times wherein they report that pharmaceutical deaths now eclipse automobile accidents, an LA police officer summed it up pretty succinctly:

In some ways, prescription drugs are more dangerous than illicit ones because users don't have their guard up, said Los Angeles County Sheriff's Sgt. Steve Opferman, head of a county task force on prescription drug-related crimes. "People feel they are safer with prescription drugs because you get them from a pharmacy and they are prescribed by a doctor," Opferman said. "Younger people believe they are safer because they see their parents taking them. It doesn't have the same stigma as using street narcotics."

Not only does it not have the same stigma, but unlike crack or heroin, you will find advertisements for your favorite pharmaceutical firmly implanted during various television breaks, right next to ads for car insurance or candy bars. It's no wonder that kids take up the behavior that they do: "They said they will have parties where the kids will throw a bunch of pills in a bowl and the kids take them without knowing what they are," Lori said. "We called all of his friends, but no one would say they were with him. But he must have been with someone. You just don't do that by yourself." Responsibility is a powerful thing but it is important to bear in mind that the children who grow chemically dependent early on did not seek out that state. However naive, it's not they who picked out the pills that were placed in that bowl. Their degree of responsibility may in fact be varied - as the medicine made available could have affects on their personality that not even their physician - let alone their parents - quite comprehend. Tweet Share

An Open Challenge To Those Who Would Redefine Childhood

Whenever you argue for something, you need to come with it attached with a basis of personal credibility. It doesn't matter, really, if you word something really well and make something sound fantastic. People need to know where you are coming from. Why did you arrive at this viewpoint?

There has been alot of talk on conservative websites like Hot Air about a family in Toronto (I use "family" because that is the traditionally used term for genetically related groups that cohabitate) that has decided to make ambiguity and mystery the key factor in the life of their child Storm. Despite his having been given by God, evolutionary biology and providence a penis or vagina, the family has decided that potty training and socializing will take a back seat while they use their child to loudly pronounce their ideology to the world.

What strikes me here is the psychology of people that view childhood as a grand field for experimentation. No matter how liberal I am in many arenas, supporting interracial and same sex marriage and even same sex adoption (this isn't quite contradictory with the argument I am making here, as advocates of same sex marriage and adoption consistently argue their rights on the basis that their raising and parenting children actually will fit within tradition), I don't quite understand where they are coming from. This is an issue for me that is feisty and emotional, but I have become enough of an adult by now that I can recognize that emotion and ask questions.

The original touters of this brand of feminist ideology sprouted in the bloom of 1960s liberalism. The generation that bought into a wholesale rejection of any tradition was one that, by all accounts, never grew up and faced the harsh, brutal world. The Baby Boomers came of age in an America that was the most prosperous place on earth. 1950s America enjoyed a record boom that produced suburbia, drive in films and juvenile delinquency (the latter of which, paradoxically, is at its highest in good economic times).

In other words, the Gloria Steinems of the world had never actually faced broken families, lack of tradition and identity and a chaotic upbringing, so they could dispense with the vanguard of their upbringing without knowing what the reality of their proposed alternative would be like. The imageless alternative is always utopian.

I really lived some of the chaos that this family are advocated. While not as extreme, my mother had a heavy dosage of women around and generally avoided romantic liasons because of the chaotic turmoil of her marriage to my father. Little was ever said about my father and I have only recently been able to attain peace in that realm. I empathize with lower income whites, blacks and Hispanics who have had to live in the shadow of no father. Meanwhile, I have noticed feminists like Pamela Paul, who advocate that my method of upbringing, the fatherless method that has birthed juvenile delinquency for millenia, is actually superior.

Unsurprisingly, her argument is totally academic, which I take as evidence, based on the presumption that narrative storytelling is always better to hook readers in with than polls, studies and statistics, that she doesn't have first hand experience on this matter. I've only just been able to find out, at nearly 25 years old, that my father is even still alive. I had to find this out by taking action on my own, as asking family about this basic information usually resulted in getting yelled at. Imagine that for a second because chances are most readers can't fathom that. If Paul wants to know what it's like to have no father in the real world, I recommend she call me or e-mail me. I'll tell her all about it.

My mother raised us all vegetarian. This resulted in me always being the outcast at friend's birthday parties, where pepperoni pizza arrived and I had to tell my friends, who had invited me, that I couldn't eat it. More than once, this was taken as an insult by other children and their parents, who had after all invited me to their house and offered me food. So I know the sort of feeling of being a freak and an outsider that Storm has to look forward thanks to his/her enlightened parents.

So I ask of people who think that this family, by loudly proclaiming their child genderless and devoid of a social structure, how did you grow up? Did your parents socialize you with older people of your gender? If you grew up with a childhood that was traditional, what makes your arguments stronger than the traditionalist argument of someone like me, who did grow up in an unorthodox environment?

This attitude reminds me very much of a line by Howard Hughes, played by Leonardo DiCaprio, in The Aviator. Attending the household of his lover Kate Hepburn, one of the Hepburns declares loudly, "We don't care about money." Hughes fires back, "That's because you've always had it."

When you've always had something in your life, like money, a father or a firm sense of what it is to be a man or woman, it's easy to dismiss its vitality. For those of us who had a rougher upbringing, we value what you so easily dismiss.

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The Lone Ranger

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The Creed And Religious Heterodoxy

The above film was put out by the journal First Things, a publication of the Institute for Religion and Public Life. I've read their journal frequently since the prodding of a friend of mine, Antonio Sosa, a contributor to the Daily Caller.

After watching the video, and having read through First Things frequently, I'm left wondering if the considerable work of Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, Ayaan Hirsi Ali and others may have actually had a positive result on Christianity and faith in the west. Christianity, like many big institutions that suffer unquestioning faith, has become the vessel of many a slimeball - be it pederasts in the Catholic Church or racketeers in the American televangelist movement. Dawkins and Hitchens may not actually succeed in their mission of delegitimizing faith but they have succeeded in making the faithful re-examine their own sales pitch. A Christianity that celebrates the intellectual inquiry which is a genuine part of its history (the great theologian Jonathan Edwards celebrated inquiry and didn't fear it) is ultimately healthier for its followers and for the world.

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Let's Have Another Cup of Coffee (1932)

Some good recession music.



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The Car of Tomorrow

My friend Antonio Sosa, a writer and contributor to Reason magazine and the Daily Caller, directed me to this great gem of animation:



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Classic Diana

Here's a great little piece of art by an artist called "ratscape," portraying Wonder Woman:




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