Being a geek at heart, I was delighted yesterday when the NIH released data on $5 billion in grants it has awarded with stimulus funds. I sliced and diced the data, extracted the mental health grants and sorted them descending by the amount of the grant. Click here to find out who got how much and what for.

There are 388 mental health grants worth about $207 million. The two biggest grants – about $10 million each  - were awarded to investigators at Yale and the University of Southern California to create a “Transcriptional Atlas of Human Brain Development”  and to the Henry M. Jackson Foundation for Military Medicine to develop “Modifiable Risk and Protective Factors for Suicidal Behaviors in the Army.”

About $2.6 million funds mental health research affecting African Americans. Nine grants, totaling $1.1 million, will fund research on mental health among Hispanics.

I just slept 15 of the last 18 hours. When I finish writing this I will sleep some more.

I feel guilty. I should be at work. I know what is going on. No mystery here. I am not happy. I am not sad. I am on the floor. My medications prevent me from falling any further. They are the floor beneath me.

I have flat lined. My face has been injected with depression Botox – the muscles are slack. I am so tired. I don’t want to leave the house. I play a game with myself. I make my bed and sleep during the day with a blanket on top of the covers. I keep the curtains open. This is supposed to convince me that I am not seriously depressed, just on the floor.

This has been coming on for awhile. I know it. I didn’t want to see it. My therapist saw it months ago. She kept telling me but I kept on going, plowing through the stress in my life like an ice breaker in the Arctic sea that can go no more and is surrounded – trapped – by the crushing ice around it.

I chose not to see this coming but by body refused to ignore it. The muscles between my shoulder blades are so knotted, so painful, that my insurance company has agreed to pay for massage. My back is bruised where the masseuse tried to loosen them with her thumbs. I stretch, and stretch and stretch every morning. First my hamstrings, then my calves, quads, hip flexors and lower back. My biceps, shoulder, chest , lats, obliques and stomach. I am fine for awhile. But a couple of hours after I walk into the newsroom, my shoulders and neck ache.

I have been a journalist for nearly 30 years. Most of those years I did the old fashioned shoe leather reporting. I went somewhere, witnessed an event or its aftermath, interviewed people, pulled some records and wrote a story. But for the last 10 years I have done a new kind of journalism, called computer assisted reporting or CAR.

I love CAR. It is …

I cannot sleep any longer. I have slept 24 of the last 36 hours. I am still tired but I cannot sleep. Give me a couple of hours and I am sure I could go back to bed for another 4 or 5 more hours. But I have decided to go back to work today. I took off yesterday. I could not get out of bed. This could be the beginning. I feel horribly guilty for taking off work yesterday. If I had the swine flu I wouldn’t have thought twice about sleeping 24 of the last 36 hours. But depression, I still beat myself up for getting depressed.

Here’s the deal with my depression. I have the tools to recognize and defuse it. My problem is picking them up and using them. This depression has been in the making for a couple of months now. It is fueled by my fear of being laid off and that fear has fueled my furious you-can’t-live-without-me work pace. Long, long hours. Uber intense concentration. Faster than the speed of light.

“You know where this is headed, right?” my therapist asked during my last visit.

I do now.

So in between my naps yesterday I told myself that my world is not ending, I won’t always feel like this, my life isn’t bad. This is just the illusion of depression. Your depression is making you feel like this but this is not the real world… This is the world you feel and see when you are depressed… You are sick… It won’t last… Talk about it… Tell your friends how you feel… Call your nurse-practitioner… Go visit your therapist… Rest, but not too much… Take your meds… Get off the pity pot… You can change your thoughts… You have control over your thoughts…Your life doesn’t suck… You just published a book!… You have book signings coming up!… Remember, this is the world you see and feel when you are sick… this won’t last, this won’t last, this won’t last…Get up and walk the damn dog!

In the last 24 hours I have watched two television programs depict recovery. I am pretty sensitive to portrayals of mental illness on television – from Quiznos commercials to the emmy award winning program Intervention. I am a recovering (some would say “recovered”) alcoholic.

Last night I watched the season premier of House. I like this program. No one can do narcissism and anti-social personality disorder like actor Hugh Laurie, who plays a brilliant doctor addicted to pain pills and being rude. Laurie makes a fine addict, especially when he stole the prescription pad from another doctor – also his best friend, who refused to write Dr. House any more prescriptions for pain killers. That is real. We addicts and alcoholics do things like that. Even addicts who are well-educated and well-to-do.

Last night’s portrayal of Dr. House’s withdrawal from pain killers was real, too. He vomited and hallucinated. He writhed and convulsed and ended up tethered to his bed. He looked like hell. He looked like someone in detox. It was a brilliant performance. The only part I did not like was the depiction of the mental ward where Dr. House was locked down. Straight out of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, with Dr. House playing Jack Nicholson.

Tonight I watched another one of my favorite mentally ill characters: Dexter, the vigilante serial killer. I have known two serial killers in my career and neither were like Dexter.  Tonight’s episode had Dexter getting mixed up with his Narcotics Anonymous sponsor. I did NOT like this episode. It did NOT portray recovery – especially the sponsor/sponsee relationship – well. In fact, it did a huge disservice to the 12-step program.

To most people 12-step programs are a mystery. The 12-steps are like a secret initiation rite that no one talks or inquires about. They know that there are meetings and that we say “Hi. My name is Christine and I’m an addict/alcoholic.” They may have heard about sponsors but they do not know the sponsor’s role.

Which is why I got ticked off tonight at the portrayal of Dexter’s relationship with his sponsor. There are no rules in 12-step programs …

Among all the wonderful news in this morning’s paper, I found a story about an “insane killer” who escaped on a field trip to the Spokane county fair in Washington last Thursday.  Of course the first question that will be asked is what they hell was this guy doing at the county fair?

He was on a field trip with 30 other psychiatric patients from a state hospital. Apparently in the last few years the policy about the types of patients allowed on outings has been relaxed. (You have to wonder whose idea it was to go to the county fair -busy, loud crowded – full of overstimulated kids and bright, blinking lights. How about a play or concert next time, where you can see when someone gets up to leave?)

Anyway, police are still looking for the man, who was found not guilty by reason of insanity for killing and elderly woman, dousing her in gasoline to throw off search dogs, then burying her in a flower garden. Hopefully, this case will finally prompt some policy makers to ask, “What should we do with these people?”

In my twelve years covering criminal courts for The Palm Beach Post I saw many cases – most homicides – in which an insanity defense was raised. The one that still touches me was Ola Nolen, a grandmother who threw gasoline on a coworker and set her on fire because Ola believed the coworker had stolen a $1 million check that President John F. Kennedy had given her to solve the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Ola’s attorney allowed me to interview Ola at the jail before her trial. Quiet, soft-spoken, polite, gray-haired – she looked like she had just walked out of central casting for a grandmother role. She described in detail her meeting with JFK and his brother Bobby. The carpet in the Oval Office was blue. They put a bag over her head as they led her into the White House. She was a little foggy on details fo how she solved the crisis but there was no mistake about the check or her co-worker, an innocent working mother, whom she …

I got a new phone. It takes pictures, plays music, counts calories and tells me where I am, just in case I don’t know.  It’s sleek and blue. It is the keeper of my schedule, the dictaphone I always wanted and the flashlight I never have handy. It finds sex offenders in my neighborhood and French restaurants. The only drawback is that it weighs about 100 pounds. I can’t lift it to my ear.  That’s the excuse I use for not returning your call. I couldn’t pick up the phone.

All my phones have been heavyweights. Even the old fashioned rotary dial, hooked to the wall in our family’s kitchen. Can’t…seem…to…pick…up…the…phone. It’s rude. I know. I am a rotten friend when it comes to talking on the phone. I seem to interrupt and never know how to end the call. “Hey, gotta go.” or “I’m going to get back to…” or “Nice talkin’ to you.” Personal phone calls make me very, very uncomfortable.

Why is this a big deal? Because my therapist tells me that isolation is bad, it is old behavior, it encourages my depression. I tell her over and over that I LIKE TO BE ALONE. I HAVE ALWAYS LIKED TO BE ALONE. I AM COMFORTABLE ALONE. That’s why as a kid I became a top-notch age-group swimmer. I could be around the kids but I did not have to speak to them. That’s why I like reading and writing – I do it alone. That’s why I like scuba diving, solitary walks on the beach and wearing my Ipod at the gym.

Technology as made it much easier and more appropriate to be alone. I can completely avoid human contact by emailing and text messaging. I can have friends on Facebook. I can get a date on match.com. I can shop, buy stamps and direct deposit my paycheck. Thanks to caller ID, I don’t have to talk to anyone I don’t want to talk to. In fact, last month I actually had a weekend in which I spoke to no one. I realized it Sunday night, as I was getting ready for work on Monday. …

I do not like to make sweeping generalizations but after this week, I am comfortable saying this:

We are not nice. We are not tolerant. We do not play well together.

• I had to sign a permission slip to allow my 17-year-old daughter to listen to the President of the United States at the conservative Christian school she attends.
• Someone seeded a road beloved by local cyclists – which cuts through one of the richest towns on the planet – with small carpet tacks. The town, Jupiter Island, doesn’t want groups of riders on its beautiful roads.
• I listened to a grown man with a few beers in his belly use the “N” word indiscriminately in front of his 10-year-old son.

What the heck is going on? For some reason, people assume that because my daughter attends a conservative Christian school that I am a Limbaugh-lovin’ dittohead. Others assume that because I am a journalist at a left-leaning newspaper that I am a Jane Fonda wannabe. I wear preppy clothes, but underneath I have a tattoo. I was born in Gerald Ford’s Republican hometown, but I live in the gayest neighborhood in town. I have no bumper stickers and I am registered as an independent voter.

I am not what people think I am but because they mistakenly assume I am, I get to hear and see people in their most honest state, when their guard is down. My liberal friends are as pedantic and self-righteous as the conservatives they bash. My conservative friends send me horrible emails and jokes about liberals and minorities.

What does any of this have to do with my mental illnesses? Plenty. One of the first tools I was given when I got sober was this: Identify, don’t compare. I did not know what it meant. I had trained my brain to cop to the negative, to look for differences rather than what we have in common. This kind of thinking breeds anger, resentment and intolerance – ingredients for a perfect batch of depression or mania. I convince myself that I am either better than you or not as good as you. I am holier than thou or …

I want the dreams to stop. They are not nightmares. They are bad dreams. Years of therapy have given me an explanation, but no solution. It seems to come down to this: I cannot control my subconscious, which really sucks.

I have these kinds of dreams over and over, year after year.

• I say something that seems innocuous but apparently it is terribly offensive and I get yelled at.
• I am on a ski slope, skiing by myself, trying to hook up with my friends. By the time I get to the bottom of the hill the snow has melted and I am trying to ski on mud. I still can’t find my friends.
• I find myself in a predicament and I jump up into the air, hands over my head like Super Man. I do a few butterfly kicks (I swam butterfly as a kid) and I am off, away from my problem, looking down at it. I fly around, people see me, I go about my business and I am so happy I can fly. Then I fly too high and realize I never learned how to land. I am terrified.
• The classic last-day-of-the-semester dream, I am getting A’s in all my classes, then realize I haven’t gone to a single class or done a single assignment for one class. I can’t find the professor or the lecture hall or even the day and time of the class.
• Sometimes I have nightmares. I wake up trying to scream but all I can muster is some guttural moan and I wake up.

You can read a lot into these dreams. They are kind of no-brainers. I just want them to stop. I have had only two happy dreams that I can remember. One involved me, George Clooney, and the privacy of a tent. In the other I was Lance Armstrong’s girlfriend and he wanted my opinion of his training regimen. Exciting, huh?

I have made so much progress in the last three years of therapy, medication tinkering and sobriety. My life is good, stable and consistent. I can trust myself and my feelings. But I can’t seem to do a damn thing …

I had lunch this week with one of our local judges who volunteers for our drug court. Offenders charged with minor offenses can have their case dismissed if they successfully complete a drug or alcohol treatment program. It is voluntary and this judge believes it is a wonderful program.

It is, with one exception: It treats only substance abuse, which is just one of the mental illnesses that  many of these addicts and alcoholics have. The number one reason for relapse among the dual diagnosed is untreated or improperly treated` depression, bipolar, schizophrenia and other mental illnesses.

When the system cherry picks which mental illness to treat it fails the dual diagnosed addicts and alcoholics who believe it will help them to get clean and sober. When these newly clean and sober addicts and alcoholics get depressed, manic or delusional they grab the only thing they know will give them some relief: drugs and alcohol. They relapse. They can’t understand why they can’t “get it.” They feel like failures. Treatment doesn’t work. Might as well just keep drinking/drugging.

Seven years into my recovery the clouds parted when I was finally diagnosed with depression and bipolar. My life made sense. My drinking and drugging made sense. The diagnoses were not an excuse, but an explanation. We dual diagnosed addicts and alcoholics desperately need that explanation.