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ziq wrote

Do you know any bipolar people?

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An_Old_Big_Tree wrote

Yes - one of the family members I mentioned.

I really haven't had the opportunity or the strength to try to see together with that person and others how they might go about living a life without the drugs that they take. (At the same time, I've had to watch them barely respond to tragedy, probably because their drugs even out their emotions). I don't know what is possible there or how definitively it would be doomed to fail, but I do spend real time wondering whether if a small group of people were to band together in support of that person's life, taking collective precautions and care against the wide range of harms that might befall us, taking responsibility for each other, how we might create a space where it is possible for that person to live without drugs, and what the very existence of that space would mean for the world.

I suspect that most attempts at this would be doomed to quite overwhelming failure, but I don't know. I haven't seen what a kind of deeply radical mutual aid, mutual interdependence network would produce.
I do think that it would produce something new though - something outside of what capitalism can capture, a conceptual world outside of what exists that fundamentally threatens what exists.

I'm quoting crimethinc a lot but I'm thinking here also about that quote they have on beauty; "Beauty must be defined as what we are, or else the concept itself is our enemy."

I should reiterate here that I have no negative judgement for those who take drugs.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on these things.

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ziq wrote

I don't feel qualified to offer my thoughts.. beyond having people in my life that have taken medication for depression / bipolar disorder / adhd / etc. I really don't know anything about this.

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