I recently re-watched Star Trek, The Next Generation episode "Tapestry"

[hunter]

After being attacked on an away mission, Picard dies and meets Q in the afterlife who offers him the chance to change a crucial moment in his history and prevent the mistakes he made in his youth.

http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Tapestry_%28episode%29

Picard got himself stabbed through the heart in his reckless youth. It was Picard's good fortune that Star Fleet medical could save him by replacing his ruined-beyond-repair biological heart with a mechanical substitute.

At a similar age of stabbed-through-the heart Picard, I jumped out of my worst-ever-girlfriend's moving car, leaving too much of my skin and blood on the streets of Berkeley, California. And the incident was echoed twice at the same spot, full blown PTSD. (Ask my wife, ask my VERY concerned friends...)

I'm good now, my last visit to that spot, happening headed to my niece's graduation with honors, was merely uncomfortable.

And I think what might have been, had I not jumped out of that moving car... And it wouldn't have been good, even had I been celebrated as "successful" by our twisted society.

I'm beginning to think the same of my 2016 vacation to the locked pysch ward.

I got there what I needed.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

1. So glad you got what you needed, my dear hunter!

It does not always happen.

[hunter]

2. If only I knew how Hunter's quit-his-meds, or faded-meds, learned to cultivate social safety nets.

My very worst self is an extremely paranoid and very very invisible human, dumpster diving, living in my dead car in a church parking lot, or the garden shed of a very messed up, maybe worse than me, Vietnam war vet. (He once handed me a gun to hunt the possums in his attic. Nope, no Gary, I'm not your guy. Never shot a possum, never will.)

"But they are pooping up there!"

He really couldn't accept that they were pooping up there. In his attic.

My wife didn't quit me when I jumped out of her car, same spot a few years later in Berkeley, stopped at the traffic light. We were having a minor newlywed tiff, nothing that warranted my behavior. I ran away, and walked near an hour up into the Oakland hills where her sister lived, and where my wife had landed. I begged forgiveness from all, which was miraculously accepted.

My next visit to that spot, years later, was with a friend.

I threw up out the window of his rented car.



He dropped me off back at his hotel room to crash. He was in California recovering from an ugly divorce, not of his making, his wife had run off with her successful businessman boss who was not some perpetually impoverished science and science educator dude, and my friend had just met a woman he could do science with in Alaska, and I'd met her and offered whatever blessings mine were worth.

No, I'm not quite ready to tell my 2016 locked-psych-ward-story yet, something to do with fading meds (ah, the merry-go-round, sometimes meds stop working and your doctor retires, maybe because he's worn out by difficult non-complaint patients like you) but I've never ever been a danger to others. (

Not like a Wild West grandma and great grandma who flamed out of this world as Berserker dangers to others, as well as themselves.

Those times I'm a very dangerous fellow when I don't know what I'm doing, I always do my best to apologize.

Maybe forgiveness, that's the secret.

Or maybe my stories are why I got booted out of my last group therapy, and maybe even the psych ward.

My newest meds, and the stories, they keep me sane.

[tymorial]

3. I have a moment like that too

I was 25 and engaged to my first wife. I was with my college friends in the mountains, camping for the weekend. We have gone every year since college. We were climbing down a ravine to swim in the spring when I made a very stupid decision and went down way too fast. I ended up falling hard. On the way down I tore an mcl in my left knee, got a concussion and broke my clavicle. I ended up needing surgery on my knee to repair the damage. I was given Vicodin for the pain. Three weeks prior I had my wisdom tooth taken out and was given Vicodin then as well. I never took the Vicodin for the tooth but I did after the surgery. I was in a lot of pain but I loved the feeling of the Vicodin. Unfortunately I had more than enough to get me hooked.

Prior to this I was extremely straight edge. I drank once in awhile. I was in great shape and my career was awesome. My fiance was amazing. It all fell apart within the span of a year. I won't go into detail but I was a disaster and hurt everyone around me.

I turned my life around and got clean and sober. I am remarried with a beautiful girl. It took a long time to climb back. Sometimes I wonder what my life would have been like. That accident was a result of a bad decision in how I approached the climb. If I didn't have the accident then I wouldn't have needed the surgery. The addiction may have happened anyway but my career and marriage was destroyed. I lost a lot of friends.

But then again I am very comfortable in my skin today even after all the pain. I wouldn't have my beautiful family; my daughter. I can't imagine life without her. I wouldn't be helping others work through their own battles.

That accident led to a long time of struggle, I don't think I would change it. Before my f
Daughter maybe. Now, no way.