CPT Thought for tomorrow - a bit longer...

The Facebook Blues - What Happens to Facebook When People Run Out of Things to Say?

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Aren’t We All Suffering From 'Facebook Depression?'

So once we become a member of Facebook and achieve immortality as a viral digit what happens when we finally run out of things to say?  It sounds like a good question to me.  I've been on Facebook several years and watched a lot of people come and go although the digital world is reluctant to let go of you long after you cease to be a member.

You see those mythical clicks still generate money for the social media types and it never really mattered whether you read the advert, clicked through the adverts, withdrew from membership, or even died.  For some strange reason they expect you to notify them in the event of your death and then they may carry a tribute page for you until you return from the grave to cut it off.

Yet there is also the problem of what to do when you do run out of things to say.  I must say I thought it was impossible for some people to run out of words.  It was as if they had a bionic mind attached to bionic fingers pounding out an endless stream of sense and nonsense on social media.

However, as I tracked them over time I noticed there was an obvious sequence of steps that indicated they were slipping into a stage of intellectual constipation, followed by a bout with subject drought, each step bringing shorter and shorter messages.  Soon Tweets replace talks and life was limited to 140 characters, minus the length of your username.

Soon they were posting automatic e-birthday greetings and calling it a digital-days work.  By now, the kids were grown, details on every possible disease were painstakingly provided, they described numerous physical calamities, and by now their story was becoming boring even to themselves.  The addiction was complete but the withdrawal was a distant pipedream.

Now that is a problem.  So, they entered the Freudian stage of self-analysis and concluded that they very well might be the most boring person they knew.  Self-awareness leads directly to writers block as one debates the cause of their condition and realizes it all is a direct result of being mentally abused as a child or being a lifelong Democrat.

Either way they now turn their attention to finding a lawyer and deciding whether to sue their parents, school, siblings, or political procrastinators on television for their woes.  Then they have to decide whether to make it a class action suit on behalf of their siblings, or extend it to everyone in the entire digital world.

Unfortunately, a class action in the digital world might be hard to pull off when there are 597 million Americans on Facebook, and only 310 million Americans alive.  Obama never mentioned we could have 287 million illegal digital immigrants, or illegal aliens as Republicans like to say.

Anyway, we are reaching the point where we desperately need help for the virtual captive, digital addict, and Facebook fool.  There is always intervention, or group therapy, private counseling,  or prescription drugs.  You see, unlike illegal drugs, prescription (legal) drugs contribute to the economy and if you get enough prescriptions you are bound to find one that works.

Today the news media said that 50% of all people given legally prescribed addictive narcotic painkillers for a 30 day period are still using them three years later.

 

The painkillers in question "include things like codeine, morphine, and brand names like Percocet and Vicodin,"

"Now more people die from overdose of these prescription drugs than from cocaine and heroin overdose combined."

About 1 in 3 people taking prescription painkillers were also on some type of anti-anxiety or muscle relaxant prescription, according to the report, "A Nation in Pain," which was produced by Express Scripts.

The report found that among patients using opioids on a long-term basis, 30 percent had also filled a prescription for benzodiazepines, short-acting anti-anxiety drugs such as Xanax (alprazolam) and Ativan (lorazepam).

Nearly 30 percent of patients who took opioids also had a prescription for muscle relaxants. Approximately 8 percent of patients were taking all three medications at the same time.

Since the combination of these drugs can be lethal, meaning it kills you dead, then about 60% of people taking legal prescription narcotic painkillers are clearly suicidal since they should know the risk.

According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, the U.S. accounts for only 5 percent of the world's population, yet as a country we consume at least 75 percent of all opioid prescription drugs - including 99 percent of the world's hydrocodone, the opiate that is in Vicodin.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently reported that overdose deaths from these drugs quadrupled from 1999 to 2010.

Experts say most of those prescriptions are unnecessary. The United States makes up only 4.6 percent of the world's population, but consumes 80 percent of its opioids -- and 99 percent of the world's hydrocodone, the opiate that is in Vicodin.

Who is prescribing all that Vicodin? More than 600,000 doctors, from surgeons to podiatrists, are licensed by the Durg Enforcement Agency to prescribe the drug. At the top of the list of pain relief prescribers are primary care doctors, followed by internists and then dentists. According to many critics, doctors often prescribe Vicodin because it is not as tightly regulated as other narcotic pain relievers are, although it is just as dangerous.

Now just who are your friends?

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Farewell to our Friend Patti Wagner Counter

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Goodbye Patti

It's not often that one gets to walk with an angel.  Yet, if there are angels surely we shared one named Patti Wagner.  She was just a country girl from an Iowa farm who came to the city for school and taught all the kids a thing or two about life.

In my little world I was a late bloomer when it came to girls.  I was far too busy in grade school to give them much notice.  There was adjusting to a new town, new friends, an overwhelming sports schedule, learning to play rock and roll, trying to keep up the grades, and being a model alter boy among many pressures.

Add in paper routes, caddying at the golf courses, Cub and Boy Scouts, working for my dad and practicing thousands of hours at baseball, basketball and golf and time was a very precious commodity.

All the time I expected to be attending Walsh High, an all boys school at the time.  Then came the Ottumwa Heights fire that destroyed the girls high school.  Suddenly everything changed and the boys and girls were thrown together for the first time at the old Navy Base.  Our class of '64 would be the first co-ed class to graduate.

It was tough being a new freshman with those upper classes determined to put us in our place.  In addition, the freshmen came from three different schools and were together for the first time far from town.

That was where I first noticed Patti and before long we became great "secret friends."  Over the next four years we would run in to each other at different events and times and if neither of us had a date, which was quite often for me but not so often for Patti, we would talk and talk and just enjoy each other's company for hours on end.

There were times others would be with us like Edith Tray, Curt Trilk, and Mary Ann Conroy and we wound up in some rather odd places as we talked through the night like graveyards, houses under construction, and even just sitting along the side of the river.

Like I said, the times were not often but we made up in hours for the lost opportunities.  Patti could talk about anything and everything and to me she was a stabilizing force because she could laugh about my wildly fluctuating passions for world affairs.  Yet we chose to keep our occasional meetings a secret.

After graduation, our lives changed but our friendship didn't and Patti was the only person in the class I stayed in touch with for every decade of our lives.  First it was by letter and phone, then email and phone.

We counseled each other through our problems, disappointments, dreams, and hopes and it seemed whenever either of us needed a friend the other was always there.  That was Patti.  Solid as a rock and always ready to help out a friend.

After she got sick we talked and emailed often as she moved from Colorado to Maryland to North Carolina and my only regret was five years ago when I got sick and was not able to go see her these past few years.

My many adventures over the years gave her a lot of laughs but she was genuinely interested in them and wanted to hear every detail of the good and bad.  Then she always encouraged me to keep pursuing dreams.

We talked a few times about how it might have been if we had been together all those years but Patti was never one to dwell on lost opportunities.  Besides, she would point out, had we been together we would not both have our wonderful children.

She was very special and will be missed by family and friends.  But, she would never let her own health problems stop her from living, from loving and from inspiring others.  I was one who found her shoulder always there to lean on whether I was in Iowa, New Jersey, New York, Arizona, or California.

Another empty chair

I was honored to know and cherish Patti Wagner and will always remember her smile, strength, adventurous attitude, curiosity, and genuine interest in everyone who knew her.  Mostly, because she was so connected to her faith in Jesus and strength in God, I will know she is home and one day we will see her again.

Farewell Patti

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