Gather With Me My American Cousins Who Are Living With a Mental Health Disability

There may be hard times ahead, but please hear me out, dig in and do your best to find hope and we can get through this together.

Photo by Louis Velazquez on Unsplash

“Though the President is the Commander-In-Chief, Congress is his commander; and God willing, he shall obey. He and his minions shall learn that this is not a government of Kings and Satraps, but a Government of the People, and that Congress is the people.”

-Thaddeus Stevens, 1792-1868

Speech in House of Representatives, January 3, 1867

Well, I suppose I should note here that currently the Republicans control Congress. I have to apologize for my limited knowledge of the American system. I am a Canadian and even have a limited knowledge of our system. I feel a bit reluctant here to say anything about the political situation in America, but at a recent meeting of a group of people with schizophrenia and those who have loved ones with schizophrenia, the sentiment of fear was rife because of all the uncertainty.

I have never really understood much about Trump. I guess I kind of wondered why he was so famous when really he never had so much wealth that he could stand toe to toe with Saudi billionaires or some of the many other families that have had much more wealth than him. I don’t want to insult him and I do respect any system where someone can go from dead broke to billionaire (though somehow Putin was able to do this). I have a strong recollection of a short scene taken from Oprah’s show where she had Trump as a guest, and he was asked if he would ever run for president. He didn’t say no, what he said was, “Things would have to get pretty bad for me to run for president.” He didn’t really go back on his word or anything, but when he did eventually run, simple fact checking showed him to be a liar numerous numerous times.

I worry for my friends in the US. Every time I check my stats, I get notice that people in the US are the largest segment of my readers. It is inconceivable what is currently at risk. I sat down today to try and find something that I could write about to benefit people in the US, but with all the uncertainty, I was given the impression that any good programs or services there are currently in effect in the US, will soon be cut by Elon Musk.

I don’t know if I could talk about what a person in the US should do. Above all, the most important thing is to get your medications. I previously wrote a blog about how people in the US can get medicine despite financial difficulties. As I mentioned, it isn’t such a bad idea to get a prescription from a Doctor (and apparently seeing a Doctor online may not save the cost of the consultation, but it will save on gas and parking.) Take that prescription and have it filled by an online Canadian pharmacy. We have restrictions on profits that big pharmaceutical companies can charge here. I am so much at a loss though to think of people being cut off of social security or involved in mass layoffs, and not even having enough for Canadian prescription prices.

There is something I want to get across though, which I will illustrate with a story from my psychiatric hospital experiences. Once, I was a patient on a secure ward in our local psychiatric hospital and I wasn’t a happy camper. The staff would take any reason they liked to forcibly confine me to the seclusion room where there was nothing but a mattress and a thick, uncomfortable blanket. Most of the time I kicked and screamed and yelled and spewed out any abuse I could to my jailers. This went on for months. Finally one day I came to a realization. This will end. I will get better. I will leave the hospital and I will go home to late nights playing computer games, good coffee, good books, long phone conversations and hour-long hot showers. That was the moment when I beat my jailers at my own game. I love the irony that 20 years later, I was a well-paid employee of the same hospital. Because of this, I want to assure my cousins/friends to the South that Trump will not last forever. He is rapidly losing ground, and he is the oldest president in history. The other day Elon Musk tried to fire 50% of the employees of the education department and was now court-ordered to hire them back. The truth is, no matter how hard he tries, Trump can’t technically break the law or go against the constitution. His rules are subject to congress and the court system.

One thing that I wonder a lot about is how Trump and Musk are trying to say that they need to raise tariffs, and they need to cut people off benefits to balance the budget. I recently watched a video about the national debt, and it opened me up to realizing that debt isn’t necessarily bad. Sure, the US has Trillions in debt, but it is also the world’s largest economy and is nowhere near broke. I hope the following video made by CNBC will help explain all this:

I think what is important though, is not that we need more money (the government can simply print more to pay off debt but the ‘government’ (civil servants) doesn’t want to cause everyone’s cash to be worth a great deal less due to inflation brought on by a lot of new money.

Just as a quick resource, I also wanted to share a website (JAMA) that lists a number of ways to save on medications in the US: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2825161

I of course live with schizoaffective disorder and anxiety. If I were to be cut off benefits and made to pay for my own medications, it would put me in an incredibly precarious position, especially with regards to my mental health, but also with regards to diabetes, acid reflux, and a few other problems. I literally would soon be raving mad and homeless without these medications. I think one of the most important things people should do is not panic. If a good deal of people panic, and start to do things like sell their cars, pawn their jewelry, empty their bank accounts and draw on retirement investments, the markets will only sink further. Consider restructuring. Consider converting savings to something called Money Markets or even just cash for now. When the situation turns around, you will be in a position to return to your investments at bargain prices. I have to admit, since the start of the second Trump administration, I have sold all of my S&P 500 mutual funds I had in a tax-free savings plan. It wasn’t much, but it turned out to be a good idea, the index is really starting to tank and seems to get worse daily. But I am confident that this is a temporary thing. The funds I sold are now mostly in cash or in Canadian funds. It is my intention to patiently wait and then when the economy stabilizes, I want to buy back in to the S&P 500. I have a lot of faith in America, and if you ask the world’s greatest investor Warren Buffett, he will agree with me. One of my closest friends who has an excellent knowledge of investments has told me time and again, you don’t need to time the S&P 500. Over time, with patience, it will always go up in the long term.

I wish I had some simple, workable advice for all those of you who are going to be going through hell with this. If I say, drive Uber for a while until benefits are restored, I think about what it will look like if there are suddenly 10x the Uber cars on the road, and very few customers, not to mention that most people who are on retirement pensions/Social Security benefits not only can rarely afford a car, they are just not in shape for the stressors of driving people around. I wish I could be everywhere to be a part of the following idea, I had something in mind to do, which was for the children of people on Social Security to start a GoFundMe page in collaboration with other caregivers and family members, create a pool of money, and for someone trustworthy to administer the fund to pay rents, find ways to get things like meat and produce directly from farmers to cut costs, to get prescriptions at discounts or in bulk through a willing private pharmacist, and even have a program where a family or couple who have more space than they need can renovate a basement suite for a retired or disabled person to stay at lo-cost or no-cost until things are restored to normalcy. I honestly feel the best way to get through these difficult times is just to work together more.

This might be asking too much, but something I know has helped me cope and accept my difficult financial situation as a disabled person was to embrace the concept of minimalism. This is where you sell or get rid of the bulk of your possessions, and it can be incredibly freeing for a person’s outlook on life. If you have a little over an hour, give the below Netflix documentary on YouTube a view.

Then of course, for anyone who is connected to a church in their community, concerned citizens should meet with church leaders to establish a plan to support and house some of the retired and disabled people who are getting cut off their benefits.

In the end, there is no point in getting angry, no point in resorting to destruction or violence. Your vote, depending on who you are, can be simply to vote with your purchases. Of course, there is also a great deal of power in writing a paper letter to your elected officials. Until tariffs and other restrictions are loosened, consider shopping at thrift stores, they have furniture, appliances, all kinds of clothes. This is something you can benefit from in many ways, regardless of your income. Note that organizations like Goodwill hire people with different types of disabilities in addition to providing great products. Perhaps some of the money you temporarily save doing this (and you can also buy building materials at low cost from places like Habitat for Humanity) could be donated to places that make a difference. We can’t afford to become a society that ignores and by neglect abuses those of us who are most vulnerable. I think even a person with the most modest resources can do a world of good, they can volunteer at senior’s homes. I actually kind of like the concept of making America great again. In my mind it was always great. I even felt so strongly about America that when I was 19 I attempted to join the US Army. I have taken trips to Hawaii and Seattle and Los Angeles, and I loved all the people I met. Incredibly kind, giving, generous, loving people. Funny enough, in my travels, I even stayed at a guy’s massive house who owned a limo service and he had once had Marla Maples and Donald Trump in one of his limousines. He told me Marla was really down to Earth and stayed with him at his place while the Donald decided to go to a Hotel. (this was fall of 1991) I asked him how much money Trump had, and he told me with all the sincerity he could offer, “He’s a millionaire, but he’s broke.” I kind of think that anyone who had the incredible privilege to grow up either in Canada or the United States is a millionaire every time I hear the old Woody Guthrie song, “This land is my land, this land is your land….” (video below by my favourite American, The true Boss. Stay healthy my friends.