The fine line between sanity and madness blurs as a jittery librarian in downtown Miami with body sores, unkempt hair and tattered clothes gives fiery sidewalk lectures.
Onlookers who recognize the senior librarian shake their heads as they toss a dollar or a get-well note into a tip jar with the hash tag #litwithfire scrawled on it. As the 57-year-old hippie throwback from San Francisco rambles on about spiritual warfare, chem trails and legalizing weed, a struggle between rational and irrational thought plays out on the public stage.
I am Theo Karantsalis, a longtime college library administrator who has suffered from serious mental illness since childhood, or for about 50 years. This includes multiple suicide attempts, drug addiction, and bizarre behavior resulting in police standoffs, countless trips to jail, dozens of lawsuits, restraining orders, and lots of psychiatric intervention.
A crumpled doctor’s note in my pocket is a reminder to take medicine which includes immune system injections, large doses of anti-psychotics, anti-depressants and mood stabilizers. It reads: “chronic mental illness, poor coping skills, evidence of paranoid and persecutory delusions, most recent episode manic, severe, with psychotic features.”
Over the years, a team of doctors have helped keep me afloat with schizoaffective disorder bipolar I type, or a combination of schizophrenia and bipolar.
Regardless of how consistent one is with treatment, there are risks of unexpectedly going off the rails, as I did earlier this year. This left coworkers in our tight-knit College community scratching their heads and whispering.
When I requested emergency leave last April, the official reason was something valid and visible: psoriatic arthritis, which has left me covered head to toe with skin lesions that make it hard to sit, stand or walk. If need be, I was ready to stack the request with multiple sclerosis, a condition that for twenty years has given me a neurological golf umbrella to hide any mental misfires.
One thing that I could never admit was that I had been sucked into a psychotic black hole. I recklessly spent thousands on Rolex watches, passed out $100 bills to strangers, filed a bizarre lawsuit against the College in federal court, chose to sleep on the streets, and recently fired two psychiatrists for being spies for the CIA.
Years ago, when I started my librarian career with Miami-Dade County, I looked the other way as homeless bathed and shaved in our restroom sinks or violated other minor rules like sleeping or eating. Deep down, I knew that I was just one psych ward visit away from joining them. And I did.
Ending up on the streets outside the main library – disheveled, delusional and with Diogenic indifference – I saw first-hand what it was like to panhandle near the metro rail station, watch the sun rise from a decrepit alley, wait for handouts of day-old muffins and coffee, smoke discarded cigarette butts, and feel the disdain some locals have for the downtrodden.
At the College, the mentally ill make up a slice of the folks we serve, and many colleagues have confided in me that they too suffer, albeit quietly. And for good reason, as words like “schizophrenia” or “bipolar” conjure up fear and the related stigma might affect a promotion or a career.
There were signs in the months leading up to my break that things might be amiss like handing out psychedelic business cards and custom bookmarks that detailed my extensive medical and drug use history, including LSD, cocaine and meth. I also wore the same wrinkled and stained clothes for weeks on end, quickly lost about 75 pounds, stopped shaving or combing my hair, and often shed clothes and spoke to wildlife by the lake.
While in a psychotic state, one often has poor insight or an ability to perceive that he or she is ill.
And even if I did have a sliver of insight, who might I have reached out to at the College about being under attack by inter-dimensional demons? Or that meetings were a waste of time, as we should just send mind messages back and forth via ESP? Or that out-of-tune foreign radio stations in my mind scrambled my thoughts and words jumped from my computer screen onto the desk and scattered into the walls?
Perhaps it is time for the College to address mental illness from within the ranks so we can better understand and help each other, as well as those with similar issues seeking our services.
As I wind down my wonderful 15-year journey at the College, I leave you with a simple, best-life practice that has helped me deal with police, jail, court, and living on the streets.
Smile.
This is an international signal that no threat exists. Just love. These words from Crosby, Stills, Nash’s ‘60s classic, Wooden Ships, say it best.
If you smile at me, I will understand/ 'Cause that is something everybody everywhere does in the same language
The reason those of us suffering from schizophrenia and bipolar may appear distant, aloof, or otherwise detached is because our minds tend to run on different operating systems. Though I now have flickers of clarity and reason, my thoughts and speech remain fragmented and disorganized, drowned out by noises and visions from another dimension.
We live in another world, at times a wondrous and magnificent world, but one that is often disconnected from your version of the world. We remain somewhat tethered to Earth in various degrees, some with a fat rope, and others, like me, with a tiny thread. And the library is the magnet that instinctively pulls us as we seek direction, meaning and purpose.
As I glance down from another galaxy, like Major Tom floating in a tin can, the signal bars waft in and out of service and I wonder what life will be like when and if I eventually land.
But I think my spaceship knows which way to go.
Theo Karantsalis, Associate Director of Learning resources at Miami Dade College’s North Campus, will retire from the College on July 29, 2019.
This Bible verse helps me move forward. 2 Corinthians 12:9, "But he said to me, 'My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.' Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me."
My first suicide attempt came at age 12, when I was a seventh grader at Will C. Wood Middle School in Alameda, Calif.
A regular day at school included switching the spark plug wires on teachers' cars or shooting fire extinguishers in the hall. The best day ever was when I shot a spit ball at Mrs. Cooper and she turned around and fired an eraser at the head of my friend Mike.
But the finer moments of youth were tempered by terrorizing visions, inter-dimensional energy fields and evil spirits. The idea of death for me was one of liberation as I felt detached from life.
A bottle of sleeping pills from the cupboard went missing one spring day in 1974 and ended up in my pocket and then in mouth. Wood school only had three floors but their was a staircase that led to the roof. As I laid down, the sound of kids playing outside waned.
It was soon time to go to heaven as a fluorescent green cave started its descent. When the death cave landed, it was time to get in.
By the grace of God, I did not enter the cave and instead hobbled home. Unlike my second suicide attempt in 1977, which required hospitalization, no one ever knew.
Suicide risk among those with bipolar disorder is one of the highest of all mental illnesses. The earlier it strikes, the higher the risk.
Photo: Theo Karantsalis at age 12, in 1974, shortly before attempting suicide for the first time.
People who used high-potency cannabis on a daily basis — with THC levels exceeding 10 percent — were nearly five times more likely to have a psychotic episode, compared with those who didn’t, according to a new study in The Lancet Psychiatry.
In Florida, THC levels can be even higher in products sold for medicinal marijuana.
“The THC levels are as high as 90 percent on concentrated products and 30 percent on flower,” said Victoria Walker, a spokesperson for Trulieve, one of the largest medical marijuana dispensaries in Florida.
In the study, conducted by researchers at King’s College London, researchers collected data on 901 cannabis users, between 2010 and 2015, who were diagnosed with first-episode psychosis after presenting themselves to mental health services during this period. The 901 were culled from 11 study sites across Europe and Brazil.
The 901 were compared with 1,237 individuals in the healthier control group. The study participants were between the ages of 18 and 64.
The researchers concluded people who used low-strength cannabis on a daily basis — with THC levels below 10 percent — were three times more likely to have a psychotic episode, compared with those who had not used cannabis. These rates increased to five times more likely of having a psychotic episode if high-potency cannabis — with TCH levels of 10 percent or more — was consumed daily.
“Our findings confirm previous evidence of the harmful effect on mental health of daily use of cannabis, especially of high-potency types,” the study said.
NORML officials said the study is premature and potentially flawed.
“Cannabis use has increased over the years, which puts doubt on the study as incidents of psychosis have generally stayed the same,” said Karen Goldstein, director of NORML Florida.
Added NORML’S national deputy director, Paul Armentano, in a blog post: “It remains premature at best, and sensational at worst to claim that a causal relationship exists between marijuana use and psychiatric disorders on the basis of this new paper.”
He added: “Subjects in the study self-reported their cannabis use. As a result, authors had no ability to verify the THC content of the marijuana consumed by participants.”
Others, however, say the study raises red flags and more research should be done.
“Unfortunately, marijuana has been classified as a Schedule 1 substance by the FDA, and thus hasn’t been studied completely,” Dr. Jennifer Treusch, an Arizona psychiatrist told ABC 15, an Arizona TV station. “We would greatly benefit from having studies done so that we could completely understand what marijuana is doing to the body and mind.”
Since childhood, I have peered into another dimension and have observed inter-connected, fantastical shapes and colors with intricate designs that breathe, vary in scale, and communicate without words, but this description dilutes their grandeur.
A magnificent - and real - angel from heaven hovered behind my bedroom door, ate age 8, where I often played Partridge family 45's on an old record player from the fifties like "I Think I Love You."
Frightened, I ran and told my mother who was skeptical and alarmed. Visions were part of our lives, I thought, and I believed my mother when she woke screaming in our rural village in Greece one night after she saw headless nuns, without faces, surround my bed.
It became apparent that sharing visions beyond Santa Claus or maybe the Easter Bunny might result in punishment with a belt or soup spoon.
Aside from being told I was crazy and stupid, my mother brought me to meet with "Canon Gottschalk," the director of the Life Abundant Movement, located at 321 Mountain Ave., in Piedmont, for private counseling sessions. We had a hard time making it up the hill in our 1968 Austin America which meant we sometimes had to get out and push.
Gottschalk's sprawling estate had an expansive view of the Bay Area and was loaded with artifacts and treasures from around the world that included a solid gold Buddha, a stuffed parrot that was once his pet, and a Rehsus monkey that frolicked about and seemed unhappy inside a metal cage.
Those who attended private services in the makeshift basement altar appeared to be affluent and included doctors, attorneys and Captain Lawrence, a real ship captain and the father of my babysitter, Paul, who was shot dead in 1986 during a raid in Libya.
What took place at the multi-million dollar compound, which was razed in the early '80s, was shrouded in mystery. But I was often left alone with Gottschalk to be hypnotized, as well as his companion on long trips in his black 1965 Lincoln Continental with suicide doors, which was purportedly done to help me get better grades.
In the breakfast nook, Esme, the live-in maid, once showed me a photo of God pointing down his finger down from heaven during a service. No one questioned its authenticity. Esme gave me $50 as a birthday gift in the early '70s, and Gottschalk gave me an Oral Roberts' Bible as well as an Acme 6001 juicer, which I still have today.
Counselors have described a state of normalcy as a baseline one should strive for and I have questioned since childhood how this is possible once you have stepped into another dimension. I believe that the Lord blessed me and sent a guardian angel down as a sign that he had my back on what would be tough life ahead.
As I search for purpose and meaning in life, the following questions remain: Where do we come from? Where are we going? Why are we here?
Note: This post has upset my family. Sorry, maybe we can just call it fiction?
BY THEO KARANTSALIS
If you suffer from schizophrenia or bipolar, you might want to cross meth off your drugs-to-do list.
My parents expected big things from me in 1984 but I bailed on college to tend to more pressing matters like mania, delusions and psychosis.
Around that time, I was a driver earning $3.25 an hour and it beat working as a cashier at a Santee mini-mart nestled between a Hell's Angel's biker bar and a strip club.
Pete was the boss and his vocabulary centered on the word 'fuck.' Scarface memorabilia tackily graced the office walls and he talked about putting his initials on a replica faux-leather chair with plastic gold trim. Like Tony Montana, he did mountains of coke at his desk and would spin around before barking orders.
Pete freaked when I earnestly showed up in a $59 three-piece polyester suit. The original tag said $110, but I found a tag with a better price. Dark suits made him nervous.
"What the fuck, you fuck, you're a fuck," Pete said with his Brooklyn accent. When I paused, he became infuriated and asked me what my problem was. I was trying to figure out whether he used fuck as a verb or a noun. "Get the fuck outta here, you fuck," he added, smiling.
Pete, 40, knew what age 22 was like and he knew I had my eyes on a 1976 Turbo Carrera that I often volunteered to take to the car wash on El Camino Real. It pulled like a rocket ship in second gear. More so when I was stoned.
Pete didn't trust me with his new 1984 Ferrari BB512 but on Fridays, I could demo it if he was in the car with me. The new Carlsbad business park had few tenants and I drifted along the turns off Palomar Airport Rd., near I-5.
Driving some 12 hours a day takes a toll and a coworker just released from prison offered me some "ice." It sounded refreshing and a lot safer than doing coke like the fellas did back at the shop. We sucked a fat line into our nostrils and it burned as blood poured from my nose. Surgery in 1985 repaired my nasal septum.
We zipped up to the docks in San Pedro as I felt it rain inside my head. Our 1984 red Mercedes-Benz 280 SL convertible had just arrived from a 6-month voyage from Germany. The lady inside the custom's broker's office had a beehive hairdo that I really dug and the manager wore dark sunglasses indoors and stood with his arms folded.
Hundreds of new BMWs, Mercedes and Porsches at the docks had the keys in the ignition and there was no fence. Our car had Blaupunkt Houston model cassette player, the best you could get back in 1984, and we had some white trash music ready to load.
We were two sorry-ass, white dudes high on meth driving up and down Sunset Blvd. at 2 a.m. until we rounded up two hookers who liked our ride and we headed to the Hollywood Hills. Our naked bodies glistened as the orange sun rose and I noticed my date had a five o'clock shadow. But I didn't trip. Eyes shifting left and right, I fidgeted, scratched imaginary bugs and ground my teeth.
Energy bound, it was off to see my kid sister at nearby UCLA. On the way in, we rolled up on to the Beta Theta Pi fraternity house. Her boyfriend, who would later become my brother-in-law, would love to meet me, I thought. Outside, the hookers fought. Their services weren't free and they wouldn't take a check. My bad.
Squished in the tiny backseat, they adjusted themselves. I was pretty sure my date was a dude after he yelled at my friend in a deep voice and then nailed him in the head with a purse. They left behind condoms, lipstick and a defective pink dildo on the car floor that started buzzing.
My introduction at the UCLA Beta Theta Pi fraternity house was less than stellar, even though I was a member of the same frat in San Diego.
Inside, I was deteriorating.
I wasn't there the day DEA agents raided our Carlsbad warehouse. They seized dozens of cars, several kilos of cocaine and my boss, Pete, who asked if he could finish his Klondike bar before being cuffed. He was sentenced to federal prison at Terminal Island for drug trafficking.
A guard snapped this photo of me and Pete during visiting hours a few months before he escaped, was caught, and ended up at Lompoc.
On a ripped sofa I found in the alley, my girlfriend twisted her long, brown hair as she smoked a joint. My dingy apartment in the 5800 block of El Cajon Blvd. sat above a liquor store in San Diego's red-light district.
The manager, Mr. Cantrell, looked like a biker outlaw. He had a menacing beard and wore a heavily patched Levi's jeans vest that had chains dangling from it. When bill collectors came calling, he had my back. When drug dealers got aggressive, he let me move upstairs. Sometimes I would hear banging and yelling downstairs while watching MTV: "Open up the door you son of a bitch, I'll fucking break your legs."
My old lady was a 21-year old, size-zero stripper at a one-star nightclub who was addicted to heroin. She wasn't pretty but she had a good sense of humor, shot meth and smoked a lot of weed, so we naturally hit it off.
Caring and sweet, she gently sewed me up and rubbed cocaine into my wounds when I stacked my bike.
We did what we had to do to survive. If we were desperate, she might bring a John home for sex. But it didn't last long, she knew some tricks.
The local clinic hooked us up with lots of free stuff like condoms, needles and Flagyl to treat our STDs. Doctors told us to alert our sex partners, both men and women for both of us, but that was impossible. Since we shot up with dirty needles, we also got screened for hepatitis.
Some sorority girls at San Diego State University accused me of giving them chlamydia and gonorrhea but I denied it and blamed them.
Strip clubs and bars were not my bag and I never understood how I always seemed to hook up with dancers, junkies and losers. It was about 3 a.m. outside our frat house near SDSU when a heavyset, tattooed lady with big arms cruised her Harley up Linda Paseo. She was like a shark looking for prey. And I was a minnow.
Very thin, strung out and clad only in tartan plaid boxer shorts, I jokingly asked her if she wanted to fuck. "Hop on, asshole" she said. At first I declined but my friends said the frat rules said I had to go. As we drove off, the laughter faded and I balanced myself clutching her sagging breasts - mainly for safety - as she accelerated and took turns.
We parked on a lawn behind the Tarastec dormitory nearby and she desperately yanked off my shorts. She was a bull, rough and loud, until an old man came out, turned on the lights and swatted a broom on his porch.
Sorority girls wore pearl necklaces and initialed sweaters and were terrible dates. All they talked about was who they knew and who on the campus had violated the Preppy Handbook. One night, I pulled a hamstring when I took an Alpha Chi Omega sorority girl out for prime rib at Lehr's Greenhouse. As usual, I didn't have any money so I asked her to wait by the car while I settled the bill. It is really hard to dine-and-dash when you overeat, so I skipped desert.
One night, my old lady sat nude by an open window shaving the legs on her tiny, 95-pound frame. It was late, outside the signal lights flashed yellow. On the table were old syringes, bent spoons, aluminum foil, shoe laces and a lighter. And an 8 ball of meth!
Not sure really if we smoked, snorted or shot meth, or meth mixed with heroin, but it launched my skinny ass into level-10 psychosis. She had a higher tolerance and wanted to have sex as I jumped off the balcony. Once I was on I-8 on my barely legal, 180-cc Honda motorcycle, I aimed for San Francisco. Where else?
Wearing ripped jeans and sandals, I was invincible as spectacular trails of electric rainbow lights lit up the sky and I flew through space amid the stars. With an emergency chunk of Lebanese blonde hash in my pocket, I pulled over to hit it. Though it turned out to be a balled-up piece of lent I smoked it anyway along with a joint I rolled with Lipton Tea.
The deadly Central Valley fog set in and it was hard to tell if the cars were close or far as the taillights glowed. Space and time is altered when the fog rolls in. More so on a motorcycle as it clouds vision, thickens air and muffles hearing, as if you in a sound-proof room.
The semis floated as if they stood still and I caressed and spoke to them. My face, teeth and hands were covered with dirt and bugs. Once home, I grabbed a soda, kissed my mother goodbye and went back. This time with a shirt.
The following year I got clean.
I moved from San Diego to San Francisco, got a haircut, close shave and a lucky break. A bank hired me as a manager trainee and I would work at 249 Broadway St., in Laguna Beach, one of the gayest cities in the country. If one was sexually active, this was the place.
Our family produce market in downtown Oakland was across the street from Golden West Financial. The founders, Herbert and Marion O. Sandler, as well as number three Jim Judd, watched me grow up and took a liking to me. The Sandlers went on to become billionaires and we always kept in touch. Even after I let them down.
My cousin Kathleen helped me secure a tony oceanfront pad in the 3900 block of Seashore Dr., in Newport Beach. The owner, Tom Blandi, had a string of seaside properties and often invited me to his home in Big Canyon. Even among the wealthy, there are different strata and Tom was up pretty high.
World Savings quickly promoted me to a coveted loan officer position in La Costa, Calif., which was really just the nice part of Carlsbad. Once my former stripper girlfriend found out I was at the bank, she made a big scene in the lobby and said I owed her money. She looked so fucking hot shaking like a dancer in her sandals as her tiny breasts jiggled under her see through top.
Holding my head low, I thought I was in trouble but the manager seemed impressed. He thought I was gay and seemed disgusted by my highlighted hair, lacquered fingernails and perfectly tailored suits. So this episode elevated my status at work not just as a dude, but a motherfucking dude - a dude of the highest caliber!
Soon, back to San Francisco, then Boulder and Denver, all in short time, never staying long in one place. Moving was a snap, I would just leave and I always wondered what happened to all the clothes, drugs and sex toys.
The bank terminated me after about two years or so for exhibiting bizarre behavior. No big, I have been fired from every job I ever had for the last 40 years for the same reason. Unlike a hurricane, there are no warnings when the winds of schizophrenia and bipolar blow.
In Oakland, I went psychotic during official bank training. Though I do not recall what happened exactly, I was told it involved a weapon. Police set up a perimeter while I scaled the roof of Scott's Seafood Grill & Bar, a popular East Bay eatery located in Oakland's Jack London Square.
"Fuck you," I yelled when they told me to come down. When several officers used their hand-held car mics and spoke at the same time, it fucked with my mind and nothing made sense. So, I threw my clothes at the cops and dove into the estuary between two docked sail boats then swam to Alameda, a nearby island.
When I got to the other side, all I had on was my World Savings company tie.
It was night, dark and dangerous along the active shipping channel for the Port of Oakland. Coast Guard officials quickly detained me and after a a few minutes of questioning, they figured I was just drunk. They hooked me up with a clear plastic garbage bag and drove me back to the Boatel, in Oakland. If it happened today, it would have been a 5150, a California law section that deals with taking someone to the psych ward.
The lady at the front desk looked tired and didn't glance up when she asked me if I needed anything. Then she saw my privates underneath the sheet still shriveled up from the cold water and discreetly handed me a small bag with my cheap polyester suit which held up remarkably well.
It was all there: underwear, shoes, a belt and an ash tray from the restaurant. Oh, and a business card from the police with a case number and a note that said not to leave Oakland without calling a detective first.
After getting fired, my new girlfriend Vail scored me a basement room in a seedy part of Denver off Race St. We met on the phone when she called my branch in Southern California and we would joke around. She had a sexy voice and reminded me of Silver, a lady I would call often on the bank's dime at 50-cents a minute. If I ever moved to Colorado, we would go party in Vail.
Three months later, we rode off from Denver on I-70 together to Glenwood Springs, then Vail.
Vail said she knew I was gay as I came off as a little too pretty. I admitted that I was gay but that I had recently switched back. Before long, she started talking about gerbils and unusual sex as we drove and it seemed we had a natural chemistry together. We spent the night in my Chevy Sprint, near Vail, and I apologized for not having enough money to take her out for dinner or to stay in a hotel.
Soon, I was going out with her and her Jewish girlfriend who worked at Lickety Split!, a neighborhood ice cream shop off Colfax Ave. We would often chunk out on ice cream then head to the midnight movies where we watched classics like "The Man Who Fell to Earth" and "A Clockwork Orange."
Not sure why but I have always attracted lesbians, especially tough ones. Once, back in San Francisco's Castro District, two girls that I met at the junkyard invited me to see an indie movie. It wasn't long before things heated up between them and I ended up back at their pad. The next day, my ass was still swollen from their makeshift whips.
Back to Denver, I went manic and was evicted from my room for playing the same song over and over at full blast.
Denver police stopped by one day and told me it was illegal to paint flowers on the sidewalk or to run into the street and do jumping jacks without clothes. It made neighbors nervous, they said. They came back again when the landlord saw I painted bizarre designs on every wall downstairs. He pushed and threatened me, foamed and spit and screamed with an Iranian accent. The vein on his forehead throbbed.
Thousands in damages, he claimed, and he was going to sue. The heavy, oil-based color paints that coated the ceilings, floors, heaters, fans and pipes released a cloud of toxic fumes when the heater turned on.
I split in the middle of the night back to San Francisco. Once home in Berkeley, I fell back into my native hippie ways. No more meth, hippies aren't into that shit. Just weed and acid.
As a teenager, I rode the 51 AC Transit bus up Telegraph Ave. to the People's Park in Berkeley. That was the place to get a good deal on Afghani hash, opium and LSD. We flocked there in the '70s to skateboard outside the Bear's Lair at the University or eat at the Top Dog. Plus, there was more variety and we could score some Panama Red, Colombian Gold or Thai Sticks. You could find us playing pinball machines at the Silver Ball off Durant Ave.
I was always on the lookout for my dad, as our market was down the street and he delivered produce to most of the beatnik restaurants in Berkeley like the Marakesh Express, Seven Palms, Cafe Intermezzo. The Chez Panisse, headed by Alice Waters, went on to become world famous.
My distant uncle Frank worked nearby, too, and he ran the eponymous Andronico's Park and Shop that employed Greek spies which raised my threat level to orange. But I had some leverage and knew who went visited Diane's Nude Rap Sessions. The shingle outside read: "Don't talk to me with your clothes on."
At Berkeley Salvage, I had a job with no rules, earned $60 a day, drove an old VW bus I scored for $300, and smoked Humboldt Kush. I also had Katy, my new flat-chested, hippie chick girlfriend with hairy legs and underarms.
Welcome home.
Psychotic symptoms are commonly associated with methamphetamine use. If you also suffer from schizophrenia or bipolar, and use meth, danger awaits.
After recently participating in a terrific Human Library event at Miami Dade College, I have been asked to reach out and share messages of hope with a wider audience.
As one who has suffered for many decades with severe physical and mental illnesses, as well as drug addiction as a young adult, I want to be open about these challenges so that others facing similar issues might see that there is a way out no matter how bleak life appears. Specifically, my goal is to educate and inform people suffering directly or indirectly with multiple sclerosis, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and drug addiction.
Librarians by nature are inclined to share information. There is no agenda, no one wants your money. Just an old librarian who spends his free time scouring various science and medical journals searching for answers to many of life's puzzles.
Over the decades, I have met only a few doctors who after medical school take time to read and study the current scientific literature. As a volunteer medical research librarian for NutritionFacts.org, I spend spend hours each week locating, organizing, and interpreting large amounts of data.
Each blog post will address a serious topic and will have a link at the bottom that points to a relevant, evidenced-based scientific study for further review.
If there is something you would like me to research and write about that relates to one of the above-mentioned illnesses, please email me and I will consider it. theo@litwithfire.com
The vibration of a Milwaukee Sawzall at its highest setting would make my arms go numb by the time I finished cutting roofs off cars, an unusual habit. Unless you are in the throes of psychosis due to schizophrenia or bipolar.
Cutting up American cars like my 1960 Chrysler Imperial was tougher which required extra measures. That is why I preferred foreign cars, especially BMW 2002s.
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