I have been making zines for 24 years. It's my joy, and I usually have a zine in the works. The most important thing in my life is love--the second-most important is my writing. Functionally ill is my primary zine. Issue one describes what depression, mania, and the voices are like for me. It details a visit to a county clinic, a psychiatric evaluation over the phone, and my intake appointment at the mental health clinic. Issue two includes the essay "problems with mental illness" about mental illness as a concept and as a construction. I tell all about my first psychiatrist appointment, my first support group meeting, and medication. It ends with a poem about suicide called "don't make me say the title." Issue three is smaller. I give updates about what's happened since issues one and two, and touch on subjects like identifying and control. I offer a transcription of my voices. I talk about DBT, Somatherapy, and The Icarus Project. Issue four is about seeing a new therapist: what she's like, how we interact, what works for me, and what doesn't. Themes are how we present ourselves, communication, trust, and therapy's efficacy. Issue five is about being rediagnosed with schizoaffective disorder. Other topics include trying to get Medi-Cal, bureaucracy, and what my anxiety feels like. Issue six is about the logistics of care. Topics include losing services, cost of medication, the quest for refills, and running into a former psychiatrist at the grocery store. Issue seven is about my mental health taking a dive, going back on Abilify, and what radical mental health means to me. I talk in detail about a crisis and about the shame associated with suicidal ideation. 20 quarter-sized pages including covers, text heavy Issue eight includes an account of going to the dentist, a snippet of conversation, an offensive joke, and an interview with my best friend Arrow about her madness. 16 quarter-sized pages including covers, text heavy Issue nine is about an incident with a knife-wielder at my apartment complex, a SF Icarus Project meeting, two LGBTQ mental health reducing disparities project advisory group meetings, Disability Capitol Action Day, identifying as psychiatrically disabled, and losing services. 20 quarter-sized pages including covers, text heavy Issue ten is about using the word crazy, what mad love means to me, how my crazy manifests, and how I feel about my best friend Arrow's self-harm. 24 quarter-sized pages including covers, text heavy Issue eleven is about identifying, what my crazy is like, coping strategies, support styles, mental health advocacy groups, and why I want to get off medication. 24 quarter-sized pages including covers, text heavy Issue twelve is about being seen as crazy, my parents, trauma, two bad therapists, psych drugs, and voices. It starts with an essay about identifying and includes a life story with mental health as a lens. Issue 13 is the interview issue. I interview four friends with various types of crazy. They talk about mind control, BDSM, automatic behavior, activism, the Icarus Project, queerness, zines, PTSD, psychiatry, and more. Issue 14 is about my new therapist--her methods, how I feel about her, core beliefs, psychiatry fads. It's about Ming's OCD and how it affects our lives. It's about spirituality and mental health, what I go to church for. It's about getting rediagnosed with schizoaffective disorder--how that happened and how that affects the way I see myself. And it's about anger management, anger management class, rating things on a scale of one to ten, framing problems, and intentionality. Issue 15 is about therapy, art therapy, goals, locus of control, and losing my best friend. Issue 16 is about applying for SSI and SSDI, my "mental exam," long intakes, crazy performance, being pushed, and services. Issue 17 is about therapy, rapid cycling, body image, disability, dreams.
Nuclear weapons testing has been conducted worldwide on lands taken from indigenous people. In the case of the Nevada Test Site, the land legally belongs to the Western Shoshone Nation by the Treaty of Ruby Valley (1863). Nuclear weapons despoil delicate ecosystems held sacred by those with the least political power, and declared expendable by those with the most. More than a thousand atomic weapons have been detonated at the Nevada Test Site making it the most bombed place on the planet. We come to the desert to engage the destruction of violence with the constructive nonviolence. We seek reconnection with each other and the earth, by understanding and taking responsibility for the consequences of our actions. Since the birth of NDE in 1982, thousands of people have come to our retreats and conferences to learn about the related issues of nuclear testing and gathered at the edge of Test Site for vigil, religious services, and nonviolent civil disobedience. NDE’s organizing seeks to honor all of God’s creation and the Beloved Community as we bear witness to sixty years of nuclear destruction. While the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and the Non-proliferation Treaty have been resounding victories for our movement toward nuclear abolition, the United States is currently spending more American tax dollars on the nuclear weapons’ program than at any point during the Cold War. The Department of Energy has admitted the legacy of nuclear testing has left four tons of plutonium (the single most carcinogenic substance known to humans) in the desert soil. Now the government seeks to expand the repository capacity at the Test Site for highly radioactive materials. When we consider that all of this devastating reality resides up the road from Las Vegas, the fastest growing city in the nation, our call to action is deeply clarified. Our Newsletter: Desert Voices: http://www.nevadadesertexperience.org/lit/recent.htm Our Blog: http://www.sacredpeacewalk.blogspot.com Our Facebook group: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=94587418032 Our Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Nevada-Desert-Experience/181196401895114 Our Twitter: http://twitter.com/NVDesertExp Our YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/user/NDENevada