VOL 46 ISSUE 2: The Mental Health Issue

VOL 46 ISSUE 2 OCT. 11, 2016

The Mental Health Issue

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VOLUME 46 ISSUE 2 - TUESDAY, OCTOBER 11, 2016

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The Plant Newspaper Dawson College 2C.10 3040 Rue Sherbrooke O, Montréal, QC H3Z 1A4 contact@theplantnewspaper.com Copyright 2016

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Editor in Chief

Athina Khalid

Managing Editor

Julia Crowly

Copy Editor

Chloe Wong-Mersereau

News Editors

Samantha Dagres & Camron Heshmati Calderón

Arts & Culture Editor

Hannah Gold-Apel

Art Editor

Alexandra Khalimonova

Voices Editor

Maud Belair

Science Editor

Sabina Elkins

Sports Editor

Joey Roselli

letter from the edito r Lil Sprouts, October 10th is World Mental Health Day. Although it seems like every day is an observance of something or another (there are approximately 13 best friend days per year, according to my Instagram feed), Mental Health Day is a particularly important one to talk about.

Mental health issues, such as depression, anxiety, personality disorders, and addiction (the list is varied and lengthy), are often dismissed and ignored. They’re hard to talk about, especially since mental health problems are often taken less seriously than physical health problems. But increasingly, people are discussing mental health; even corporations are participating, as exemplified in Bell “Let’s Talk Day,” which encourages conversations about mental health on social media. This growing normalization of open discussions that recognize the reality of living with mental illness is an important step forward in reducing and eliminating much of the stigma that surrounds and exacerbates mental health.

With our October issue, we hope to encourage this discussion. By talking about mental health, we can connect with others who have lived similar experiences and realize that it’s more of a shared experience than it seems. Hopefully, this conversation can be more than just a conversation; hopefully, it allows our society to be more accepting of individuals suffering from mental illness and to create better mechanisms that allow them to better cope with the state of their mental health.

Best, Athina Khalid

Editor in Chief, 2016-2017

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Curiosities Editor

Gaby Drummond-Dupuis

Cover Artist

Vienna Pouliot

  Contributors Rachel Schleifer  Victor Tardif Alexander Lutchman 

Photographer

Jeremy Allen

Amilya Di Iorio Decker Heba Klein Kristen Payne Natalie Coochey Meaghan Chiovitti Victoria Mastrocola Noah Geffroyd Christina Guluzian Sabrina Daley

The Plant is an editorially autonomous student paper. All opinions expressed in The Plant do not necessarily belong to The Plant, but are those of individuals. All content submitted to The Plant or its staff belongs to the paper. We reserve the right to reject or edit all submissions for brevity, taste and legality. The Plant welcomes typed and signed letters to the editor under 400 words.

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EDITORS: Samantha Dagres & Camron Heshmati Calderón news@theplantnewspaper.com

Canada in Crisis

The Shortcomings of Our Mental Healthcare System Victor Tardif Contributor Jaedra Winter, a 17-year old from Manitoba, committed suicide on June 19th, 2015.

She had previously attempted to take her life numerous times and had sought mental health support. The help, however, wasn’t there, as she tragically pointed out in her suicide note.

The lack of accessibility to concrete mental health services that could have prevented Jaedra’s death is staggering: the Health Science Centre’s Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Inpatient Services where she had sought help after one of her suicide attempts sent her back home after less than a week, without any follow-up care. The family were the only ones left with the responsibility of making sure she was alright. Jaedra was far from the only one waiting for help: the waiting lists for those

quality services are interminable. Jaedra’s story is a tragic case in point of the inaccessibility of Canada’s mental health services.

In 2015, Quebec minister of health, Gaétan Barette, pledged to improve mental health services with a five-year plan that sought to improve access to such services.

The pledge involves an addition of $70 million in funding and is mainly directed towards youth counselling. This is a welcome step forward, especially in Quebec, where suicide rates are high.

Quebec’s Ministry of Health estimates that one Quebecer out of five will be personally affected by mental illness. Furthermore, up to fifteen percent of Quebec residents suffer from depression at some point in their lives, according to the Institut universitaire en santé mentale de Montréal.

This most certainly explains the high rates of suicide, especially within the province. Each year, around a thousand Quebecers commit suicide, which means that around two or three take

their lives every day, according to the Association québécoise de prevention du suicide (AQPS).

This demonstrates that current services, especially in our province, are simply insufficient when it comes to helping people who suffer from mental disorders.

Of course, the problem extends across the nation. The Canadian Mental Health Association measures that twenty percent of Canadians will at some point in their lives suffer from some form of mental illness.

The World Health Organization (WHO) calculates that out of 100,000 Canadians, 15 commit suicide, which means more than 1000 per year. The problem is even more egregious when it comes to historically oppressed First Nations communities.

The indigenous community in Canada is seriously lacking in access to adequate healthcare services, especially when it comes to mental health. This partly explains why First Nations teens and young adults commit suicide at a

rate five times higher than their non-indigenous counterparts, according to a Canadian Institute of Health study released in 2000. The gravity of the mental health crisis was recently brought to the fore when Attawapiskat, a northern Cree community, declared a state of emergency in April over a string of suicides.

According to the CBC, the community of about 2000 residents saw a total of 101 people of all ages attempt to kill themselves since September of 2015.

The Trudeau government, in collaboration with First Nations leaders, intends to negotiate a new health accord that better tends to the needs of indigenous Canadians in particular. Before the new health accord is settled, the government announced $69 million in new funding for indigenous mental health services, to tackle the crucial needs in that community.

Successful models of public mental health services can be found in comparable Western na-

tions, like Germany, the UK, and Denmark, where citizens suffering from mental illness have access to effective services provided by strong medical institutions specialized in the matter that are able to fluidly reintegrate into society those afflected by mental illness.

For the Mental Health Commission of Canada’s president Louise Bradley, Canada, compared to other members of the G7, has the weakest plan when it comes to tackling mental health issues.

Mental illness also affects the nation’s pocketbook, with Canada’s mental health problem costs amounting to nearly $51 billion per year, owing to high unemployment rates among those with untreated mental health issues, according to the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH).

The problems are evident and solutions are needed. The government has to make solving Canada’s mental health crisis a national priority.

Journeys

New Support for Indigenous Students at Dawson Rachel Schleifer Contributor There has long been a recognized need for better support and more welcoming environments for First Nations, Métis and Inuit students at the post-secondary level. Educational institutions are essential to promoting the prosperity of indigenous communities. A few days ago, I sat down with Michelle Smith, a cinema and communications teacher at Dawson, as well as the program coordinator of Journeys. She is one of the many hard-working teachers who has dedicated her time and effort to creating a transitional support program for indigenous students at the college.

Journeys, which was only created this semester, is a one-year program set up to provide students with a supportive and culturally relevant learning space.

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The Truth and Reconciliation Commission Report, released a year and a half ago, came out with a set of recommendations related to the education and support of indigenous youth. Propelled by these recommendations and by the needs of the students, an indigenous education council was recently set up in collaboration with the First Peoples Center and members of the community. The council is comprised of faculty and staff from Dawson, a student representative, as well as representatives from indigenous school boards, including Kahnawake Survival School and adult education center, the Cree school board, and the Kativik school board. The representatives comprising this council were key in the creation of Journeys, as the program was guided by needs and interests of the community.

Students enrolled in the Journeys program have four required courses: English, French, Human-

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ities, and Learning Strategies.

They can take additional classes according to their interests or as prerequisites in their respective discipline. All of the courses are connected in theme and content, and have been modified based on the concerns of indigenous students. The interconnectivity of the program fosters an integrated approach to learning with emphasis on social, cultural, and academic support.

Before Journeys was set up, there had been research done based on the challenges that indigenous students face at the post-secondary level. One of the challenges outlined was the French requirement at the college level. Smith explained that “some students find it hard to come to an institution and be obliged to learn French, when they cannot even learn or focus on their own language.” Of course, this is not the case for every student, with some finding it difficult, while others

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expressed that they had no need for it. Journeys responds to these concerns while working within the framework they were given.

One-on-one assessments were coordinated to ensure that students were being put in the appropriate French level.

A key component of working with a diverse group of students involves the recognition of people’s cultural backgrounds. “We are drawing from indigenous pedagogies: a sense of respect and responsibility are aspects that are brought into the classroom and shared with one another,” Smith said.

Despite Smith being the only indigenous professor involved in the program, teachers and students alike are hopeful about the positive effects of Journeys on the well-being of historically oppressed indigenous students.

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Resources: Dawson’s First People’s Initiative Visit 2D.0 for more information.

Concordia Aboriginal Student Resource Centre SGW Campus, H-641 (514) 848-2424 x 7327 Concordia.ca/students/aboriginals.html Support and programs for First Nations, and Inuit students Indigenous Resource Portal at McGill indigenousnetwork.mcgill.ca A source of information about Indigenous-focused student groups, on-campus events, and off-campus resources. Browse a calendar of upcoming events, get involved with Indigenous-related research, and find resources on education, health, and other topics.

Native Friendship Centre 2001 Saint-Laurent St. (514) 499-1854 nfcm.org / itcy.nfcm.org

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VOL. 46 ISSUE 2 - OCT. 11, 2016

EDITORS: Samantha Dagres & Camron Heshmati Calderón news@theplantnewspaper.com

Feeling Yourself

Porn is Quite The Handful Alexander Lutchman Contributor In a 2007 study conducted by the University of Alberta, 429 students between the ages 13 and 14 were surveyed; 35% of male respondents confessed that they watched pornographic videos “too many times to count”. That seems quite low, considering the number of stereotypes surrounding pubescent boys and what they do alone in their bedrooms. Based on student testimony and research data, many of these stereotypes may be distastefully true. It is no secret that we are in the golden age of porn. Everyone with an Internet connection and half an hour until their mother gets home could tell you that. Unfortunately, beyond this understanding, not much is known in regards to porn.

Neither sex nor porn addiction are listed as diagnosable conditions in the DSM-V (the Amer-

ican Psychiatric Association’s classification tool), regardless of adverse effects being linked to both of these behaviours. Despite this lack of acknowledgement from the professional community, many researchers have noted that behaviours associated with this “addiction” are generally similar to those observed in drug addicts.

The behaviours related to the overuse of porn can range from simply seeking out new types of pornography to trying the (sometimes) dangerous real-life sexual encounters typically sought out by sex addicts. Pornography addiction seems to be a modern iteration of sex addiction, and its high level of accessibility on the Internet is mostly to blame.

It is well known that young boys are the most likely to visit pornographic sites. In 2015, 31% of Canadian Pornhub visitors were aged 18-24; only 23% of these visitors were female—one percentage point below the worldwide average.

Zero Protection

According to an anonymous female Dawson student, she believes that women watch less pornography: “[because] it just feels weird, you’re watching other people do this super intimate thing.

A lot of girls don’t get turned on by porn; it’s entirely staged.”

Other female students, only a few with attitudes to the contrary, echoed this sentiment. Another female student claimed to watch porn more frequently than others, and when asked why, she replied, “my imagination sucks.”

Male students generally answered this question differently.

The majority of them claimed that they simply did it because they had time on their hands.

According to the handful of male Dawson students asked, the video does not need to meet specific requirements, they would enjoy “just whatever, I guess.”

Not much could take this group of students out of the moment, save for a strange occurrence: the Backyardigans theme song

blaring in the background will do the trick, according to one student. This laissez-faire attitude may account for why men tend to consume more pornography than their female counterparts.

This may account for some of the more “exotic” searches found on Pornhub. When comparing the two genders, the most searched for term by women is “lesbian”, while the most common male phrase is “step mom”.

Some of the fastest growing phrases are also gender specific: “fuck me daddy”, for example, was searched by women 219% more times in 2015 than 2014.

Pornhub, a Montreal company, is the most visited porn website, as well as the 62nd most visited site globally according to Alexa, a commercial provider of web data and analytics. Canada ranks 4th in terms of the website’s traffic, with an average visit lasting 9 minutes and 27 seconds in 2015; Canadians lasted on average 4 seconds longer than in 2014.

According to Dr. Laurie Betito, a sex therapist, this amount of time spent visiting the website “indicates that most people are not ‘addicted’ in a way that they spend all of their time on porn, or doing little else with their time.”

Even if the site is visited daily, the average person spends a mere hour and six minutes of viewing weekly, hardly long enough for it to be considered an addiction.

There is much debate around whether or not to classify the consumption of porn as a simple compulsion or an actual addiction. Although there are many who consider viewing porn as a detriment to society, arguments mirror those who believe that heavy metal or video games cause violence. Since pornography became widely available in the 90’s, whether or not you watch porn, it’s here to stay.

Dawson College Lacks a Sexual Assault Policy Amilya Di Iorio Decker Contributor Three Law, Society and Justice students are still awaiting a response from the Dawson College Governing Board after sending 500 signatures urging them to implement a policy against sexual assault at Dawson.

Dawson is one of the many schools in North America that do not have a policy against sexual violence. “Can you believe it’s 2016 and we don’t have [a sexual assault] policy in place?” said Lazzara.

Pamela Lazzara, Giuliana D’Orazio and Sara Sadegi, three students currently in their third semester in Law, Society and Justice at Dawson created a petition to implement a sexual assault policy at the school as a project for their Intro to Politics class. “The goal [of the policy] was to protect victims,” said Sadegi.

Sharon Hunter, a Senior

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Communications Advisor at Concordia University, stated that Concordia only adopted a new policy on sexual violence in May of 2016. This policy will provide support to the survivors after an

of power, “but there is none for sexual assault specifically,” added D’Orazio.

After speaking with the Director of External Affairs at the Dawson Student Union (DSU), the

“We were the ones controlling the movement of the petition in order to get all the signatures and then it was in the hands of the DSU, who would have to present it [to the board]. We had no further

incident occured in 2015. Currently, Dawson only has a policy to dissuade violence, discrimination, harassment and the abuse

three activists needed to collect 500 signatures (5% of the school’s student body) then send them to the DSU to implement the policy.

control after that,” stated Sadegi. After only two days time, they filled up all 500 spaces.

Sarah Beer, a Sociology teach-

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er at Dawson who was a part of International Women’s Week says, “I’m aware that the It Happens Here project (a committee to raise awareness about sexual assault) is making efforts to enforce some policy surrounding this issue, though without on-campus housing, the issues are slightly different than at other college campuses.” Beer said that since Dawson does not have students living under their protection, the policies for safety are implemented differently than schools that do provide housing like John Abbott, McGill and Concordia.

Since the end of April, Lazzara, D’Orazio and Sadegi have not yet received a response from the DSU on where the sexual assault policy stands. However, the students are not giving up. Lazzara said, “For these 10 thousand students in this school, this [policy] is really important. This could be one simple step that might convince other colleges to implement a sexual assault policy.”

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EDITOR: Hannah Gold-Apel artsandculture@theplantnewspaper.com

VOL. 46 ISSUE 2 - OCT. 11, 2016

Recovering from Mental Illness with Art One Artist’s Journey to Recovery Heba Klein Contributor When you first hear of people who are treated for mental illness, you probably imagine the typical long chair with a funny-looking therapist that takes notes on everything their patient says. You might think of a group of people in a circle talking about their problems. Those events do happen sometimes, and can be effective, but there is another method that heals better for some: art. I got the chance to talk to a Dawson student, who wishes to remain anonymous, about her journey through depression, and how art was a form of therapy for her to express her struggles.

Out of all mediums, she picked to exercise “SoulCollage.”

It’s a form of therapy where you use collage to form an emotionally significant piece. Seena B. Frost created the concept, and the whole purpose of this practice is to discover yourself through images and reflection.

was just too deep in my thoughts to function and do anything, and it wasn’t a secret to anyone that I was off the rails,” the interviewee explains, “so she sat down next to me and suggested I try doing SoulCollage.”

Her first piece is called “Drowned Petals” (as seen on page 7). She recalls how she could’ve made a collage representing anything, but something

deep inside of her was haunting her: her depression. She had recently been diagnosed with severe depression and anxiety, and it was coming out during her creative process.

Going to therapy wasn’t something easy for her to do: “I had to sit down and admit that yes, I have several problems, and all these emotions drowning me were so overwhelming I couldn’t

“I had to let all these emotions out in order to breathe.”

“Back in high school, I was in art class and my teacher got tired of me doing nothing serious. I

do anything but break down,” she says. “I had to let all these emotions out in order to breathe, and I had all this pressure on me that was practically driving me insane.”

She thus came up with the idea of doing self-portraits during her time of recovery.

“Drowned Petals” represents her in the middle of pure agony: she was drowning and in a fight against herself and her inner demons. “It’s pretty dark. It’s hard for me to go back in this exact moment during the creative process; I have healed, but it’s still a battle every day. Even if you are better day by day, you still have depression. It’s not raining, but it’s still cloudy,” she says.

The artist found SoulCollage to be the most helpful form of therapy: “I was pissed off, exhausted and everyone was telling me to be positive, to change my thoughts and meditate and do stupid things like this. Don’t get me wrong, meditation did help me, but it’s not the same thing.

Something was wrong inside and green tea wasn’t going to cut it,” she explains. “This helped me grow even more. I was like okay, now that you’re somehow better and not drowning, you are just simply stable. You are living with it. You try to be happier every day and even if it’s just baby steps, it’s

still steps.”

Unfortunately, depression isn’t uncommon. One in five Canadians will suffer from it throughout their life, which represents 8.5 million people (and that figure doesn’t include those who aren’t diagnosed and suffer in silence).

She, however, was lucky to have a good support system and to have found her path in art. “It was one of the most liberating things, seeing the final piece and just letting my guard down for a second. I’ve only made a few pieces, but those pieces of artwork were created when I was in a dark period, and they helped me heal.”

Today, she doesn’t do collages anymore. She doesn’t feel the need to pursue this artistic path.

To cope with her mental illness, she blasts music and keeps a journal where she occasionally does little collages on half a page. “My inspiration mainly came from my pain, but I am much better now.

I have hard days where I doodle a little bit, cut pictures and compose a mental image, but those days are rare. I believe that if I managed to do it, to rise above and get better, anyone can do it.”

You can learn more about SoulCollage on their website: www.SoulCollage.com

Colouring for College Kids Dawson Library Implements Therapeutic Colouring Table Kristen Payne Contributor The Dawson Library is taking steps to calm down its stressedout students. Going unnoticed by many students is a table to the left of the library entrance, where students often wait in line for express printing. On this table, Dawson has supplied students with small mandalas to colour, as well as pencil crayons to use.

Second year Arts and Culture

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student Arielle Asseraf says, “The mandalas in the library calm me down because for three minutes I can focus on colouring in the lines instead of how many assignments I have to do.”

Colouring may seem like a pastime from our childhoods; it was something that all of us did when we were younger. However, it is widely becoming something to do as teenagers and adults as well. Over the past year, adult colouring books have established their place in the mainstream,

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and rightfully so, since they tote a plethora of health benefits.

While colouring itself cannot be classified as “therapy,” it does aid many people in focusing and reducing their anxieties and stress. Focus is a huge problem that students have, and problems with focusing can also be symptoms of anxiety and stress.

According to neuropsychologist Dr. Stan Rodski, “Colouring allows us to switch off our brains from other thoughts and focus on the moment.” When students

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take the time out of their day to colour, it can benefit the rest of their very busy lives.

Colouring allows us to calm down, something that students sometimes forget to do. The school library is where students go during some of the most hectic parts of their schedule, and Dawson is giving us an outlet to release those emotions and allow us to do even better on our work.

No matter what our fields of study, students will always have work to do, and the majority of

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us will have moments where we no longer think we can handle it.

While Dawson can’t do anything about our workload, they have given us a medium to express ourselves and release these emotions, even if it’s just for a few minutes.

So next time you go to the library and feel like you can’t carry on with your assignments or studying, relax, pick up a mandala, and enjoy. We’ve also included a mandala for you to colour on page 11.

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visual arts

6 YOU KNOW WHAT WE ARE:

The Stigma of Mental Illness

by Natalie Coochey

Disappearing Act

By Alexandra Khalimonova

To a Stranger of the Metro Anonymous

I fear my eyes will drift from side to side, Your urban patience both stresses and invites.

When gazes do cross, alas no worlds collide: Still, like unsought caresses I prize your sights; Sights I now catch but on windows like ice, Sights I can only shy away from.

Indeed, a distant frown ought to suffice: Likewise, are both our stops not soon to come?

Perhaps a pencil, words will better reach: In fact, in those alone my thought confides, And strangers leer at greetings oft; in speech We tire ourselves with things proper besides.

To reach you time and space would have to blur; I touch, I feel, I know only this paper.

Panic Attack

by Meaghan Chiovitti & Victoria Mastrocola In / Out / In / Out I don't know when everything got this Bad. Of course, I know my own timeline, But I cannot fathom How everything came to be.

I was not always like this, Or was I? I don't remember it so, But that's the thing about remembering, It can never truly capture What really happened.

I can't remember Not being trapped in a room Of people trying to kill me.

They all extend their hands towards me, But it is a waste.

I am a waste of space, But I cannot vacate the space

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They wish to occupy.

In / Out / In / Out All I see is blood.

Dripping, Dropping, Flooding my lungs.

I cannot breathe.

My chest is tight, Filled with the Breaths I am too scared to take.

My life is at stake.

What others don't realize is I am drowning in The Red Sea, Except The Red Sea is Located where My brain used to be.

In / Out / In / Out I do not deserve to be here, Among the hands of Those who attempt to love me.

I am as dirty And as worthless As the bloody trash Surrounding me.

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Why would anyone attempt to love A broken skull?

Why would anyone attempt to love A broken soul?

In / Out / In / Out I cannot tell if this blood is coming from His hands Or mine.

I cannot find A way to escape.

There are no doors in this room of Zombies, Obsessed with my flesh, But I am far too depressed to Speak up Anyways.

Even if I wanted to, Who would listen to a Crazy girl?

"Sure, The monsters underneath the bed are real.

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Sure, You're being attacked at Every Waking Moment.

Isn't that a little self-centered to think?

Aren't you just over exaggerating?"

In / Out / In / Out My bed sheets are wet.

It is from my own sweat.

I get restless When I get less rest, But nobody really notices.

Or at least, Nobody really understands.

No matter how many Hands Reach out towards me, They cannot fill my mind with the Love they wish to When it only comes across as Meaningless sympathy.

My mind is a

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Glass bowl, Overflowing with Worries, Dripping down my shoulders, And into your fingertips.

In / Out / In / Out These hands, This commotion, It is all too much for me.

Everything Is just too much for me.

These people are all trying to kill me, But I am no longer sure If I wish to stop them.

After all, What is the point In trudging through life, If all I will do is Continue to suffer?

What is the point of Existing If we are all meant to Die? In. / Out. / In. / Out.

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See “Recovering from Mental Illness with Art� on page 5

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EDITOR: Maud Belair voices@theplantnewspaper.com

VOL. 46 ISSUE 2 - OCT. 11, 2016

Drugs, the Ego, and Revelation Noah Geffroyd Contributor

Seeing as this month’s issue is focusing on mental health at Dawson, I thought it would be good to talk about something that wasn’t specific to one group of people, something that anyone who reads this article can relate to as much as the next person: ego.

What is ego then? Well, it’s hard as hell to wrap it up in a pretty little package with a bow on top, partially because of how vast it is and partially because it’s quite abstract.

To me, the best way to look at ego is through the lens of intention. We have two kinds of intentions: those that are inherently good—those of what I like to call your true self (or your soul, for lack of a better word), and those that are not inherently good— those of the ego. The intentions of the ego, in the words written in A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle (2006), are those of “self-enhancement, of a desire for more and a strengthening of one’s conceptual identity, one’s self-image.” Tolle also claims, “the unconscious compulsion to enhance one’s identity through association with an object is built into the very structure of the egoic mind.”

The object here doesn’t necessarily need to be an object per se.

It can be a feeling, a situation, an opinion, etc. The focal point of this is the act of identifying with something that is either outside of you or that comes from within you, instead of just being you.

This is the delusion created by the ego.

There are two things in particular that need to be said about ego. First, our definition of it is deeply flawed. Second, ego is something that should be understood as a shared affliction amongst all human beings, and that instead of using it as something to divide people, it should be used as something to unify them in one shared mission to differentiate the good from the bad within ourselves.

The common interpretation of ego is cockiness, overt self-interest and often an insufferably pretentious human being; this article views ego differently.

What’s missing in the common view of ego is that, like everything

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else in life, there are two sides to the coin of self-obsession. Therefore, the behaviour itself can be either positive or negative. The ego uses feelings evoked when focusing intensely on the positive sides of yourself, concentrating the gratification gained in the act, as a powerful stimulant that brings you closer to a God that resembles you all too closely. It does the same with the feelings that are born from the realization of your flaws, making with them a powerful depressant to drown you in loathing, intoxicated by your sorrows.

And what to do with these feelings then? This is where the behaviours come in; the feelings are the causal element of them.

I get a bit poetic and I tend to make things seem intense. But ego doesn’t only function in extremes; it functions everywhere in between. Ego can manifest itself in infinite varieties, the simple reason being that there are infinite ways in which a person can be. This makes it hard to give a “textbook example”, so to say, of a causal relationship between the feelings I mentioned before, and the manifestations upon which we form our judgement of the individual and of ego. The manifestation of the ego is a mix of the stimulant and the depressant, and depending on the natural inclination of the individual, one will dominate the other in the battle they wage on each other. Furthermore, the personality of the individual will dictate the behaviours taken up in accordance with these feelings that derive from the ego.

Simply put: the outwards expression of one’s ego is a mix of behaviours adopted to justify and make righteous the act of swallowing (or refusing to swallow) the bitter truth of a flawed self, and of behaviours rooted in the acknowledgement and inflation of one’s objectively positive qualities being used to divert attention from the latter mentioned act.

To help clarify all of this, I caught up with a close friend of mine who fought a battle of his own with ego. His struggle involved hard drugs, and a breaking down of his life that he previously didn’t think possible.

Name?

Josiah Miller.

Age? Seventeen.

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Occupation?

Musician; Dawson student.

What was your drug of choice?

Speed.

How would you define or describe ego?

Oh, that’s a hard question. I would describe an ego as--well, look, I would describe an ego as pride, but I think that that’s a really subjective answer. I guess I don’t really understand what that word means now that you’re asking me to give you a definition, to be completely honest.

every human being, then yeah I would say that it made up about fifty percent of where a lot of the substance abuse came from, and throughout my time with it, that number changed.

If that was fifty percent, then what was the rest made up of ?

I guess if ego is fifty, then another good chunk was a lot of emotional issues which yeah, can be tied to ego, but really just a lot of stuff that hurt deep down, things I didn’t know how to deal with.

Then there was boredom, which

Has how you perceived it changed over time?

I feel like it was always changing.

When I think of the ego, I don’t really look at it as a word, but more so as what it is to me, and I’m not saying that that’s a proper way to go about it, but that’s just always how it’s been in my life. I think an ego is, at a certain point, something that I tried to exterminate, and at other points something that I didn’t really think existed. I’ve only realized all of this recently with my coming off the drugs, so I’m still trying to piece these definitions together.

Do you agree that ego was the cause of all of this [mess with addiction]?

Yeah, definitely. If we’re talking about the self-interested, image-making/craving, individualizing thing that lives inside of

made up a small percent of it, but often boredom was just an excuse I used. Essentially, the other half of this number would differ as time passed.

Were the things that hurt deep down a cause of the kind of ego you had and have?

Yeah, I definitely think that they are and were correlated.

So what were your biggest negatives and how did they shape your ego?

Um, okay, well the big ones were attention-seeking, loneliness--those are definitely the two major ones. Never wanting to be depressed and being scared of that possibility was always a big factor, a reason to be high all the time.

Give me an example then.

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For example: take loneliness. When you were at your worst, what kind of behaviours did loneliness cause?

High or not high?

Both.

Not high: it caused getting high.

High—well most of the time, it was just more drugs until I couldn’t really feel it. A good part of it also was surrounding myself with people that I didn’t feel as good as I wish I did about them; putting myself into situations where I wasn’t physically alone, but inside I still was you know?

On that note then, give me a brief history of your taking drugs, and how did your relationship with them evolve?

I started off as a curious sixth grader. Up until then I was living with my mom who had just beaten breast cancer, and I had a real shit relationship with my dad. I was always surrounded by drinkers, smokers and people who did drugs, and it intrigued me. Once I tried all of the above, I started to go wild over how cool it all was. Not like aesthetically, but how something could totally alter the world you live in. Then flash forward to the end of Sec 4: I had just experienced my first heartbreak, and that really contributed to my relationship with the stuff.

My ego picked up force here, in that I wanted to be a man now.

I remember telling myself on my way to school some mornings that I never wanted to feel this shitty about anything ever again.

Then I started snorting Vyvanse to keep me up for exams, then that summer I tried real Speed and was popping Adderall on a daily basis in summer school— needless to say, the Vyvanse didn’t do enough for me to pass. Then I started doing the harder stuff more frequently and I was really buggin’ out. At one point I had a serious breakdown in front of my mother—screaming, scratching my chest and all that—and got sent off to this Christian retreat thing full of nuns for three days.

I came back, told my mom I was fine, and started selling and using a lot. That carried out throughout the whole year. At this point my curiosity had been replaced by a dependency. After switching schools, and having one or two falling outs with the stuff, now I’m here: squeaky-clean.

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voices

9 VOL. 46 ISSUE 2 - OCT. 11, 2016

EDITOR: Maud Belair voices@theplantnewspaper.com Who were you before the drugs?

Happy, funny guy. Pretty intense and crazy, talks a lot, really likes music and also makes music and uh, smart but unmotivated...and I’d like to say decent looking. And that’s important, actually. A huge thing here was self-image and insecurities.

What caused your ego to evolve to a point where hard drugs were an issue? Heartbreak?

Yeah, that was definitely a cause.

The music that I make and listen to, also, is rap and I started to sort of assimilate everything that that industry supports; I believed that’s what my self-image should revolve around. That correlated and worked well with not being hurt by a fucking girl, you know?

Like, ‘fuck bitches’ was just too easy of a cop-out.

When would you say was the jumping-off point to the really bad period of this whole adventure?

I would say that it was the end of sec 4 when I was doing Vyvanse.

I always had an addictive personality, and my friends were right in telling me to watch myself, but I didn’t get it at the time.

Okay, now to focus in a little more here, how would you describe yourself at the low point?

Honestly, someone who was really, really cool, and like, awesome, and who you can really, really get into for the period of a movie, you know? It’s okay to see someone like that in a movie, that’s how I felt, but it’s not okay for someone to actually live like that. It’s not the most detailed answer, but if you understand it, you’ll really get where I was it mentally. *At this point, we reminisced solemnly.* So what characterized this point in time? What was life like for you at the bottom?

It was actually pretty fucking scary sometimes. Scary, but comfortable to me, because to me once I started doing drugs, I committed to it. I didn’t think that this was gonna be a short period of time, like I was saying that it would, but I knew that was about to be—fuck, I thought that it was about to be the rest of my life, man. It felt very dark and the world felt very small, you know? It felt like it was easy to understand what was going on, but not in the right way. It was easy to understand what was going on because

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you’ve made a really dumb situation around yourself. I feel like when I was at the lowest point, it was horrible, but it was okay, to me.

What role was your ego playing in all of this then?

Like I said, I committed to it, I was my ego. I couldn’t see my ego and myself as two different things; at that point we were really one. I didn’t believe I was anything else, because that was one of the times I didn’t really believe an ego existed, I thought that I was me and that was okay.

And what were your other vices? How important were they in comparison to speed?

There was definitely sex, girls, stealing - money while I was super high; it felt as though I could sell as many drugs as I wanted to, but in reality I was just doing them… would you consider manipulation a vice?

Yeah, of course.

Then yeah, that too. I was always able to get my way.

What pushed you over the edge after being in this state for so long, and what made you change?

I was really just jealous of people who could get up in the morning and function. I realized that I couldn’t do that anymore.

In terms of my ego and drugs though, I did a lot of drugs and I realized that I hurt a lot of people, and I was this person that could hurt so many people. I’d say that my ego came in and allowed me to hurt a lot of people when I was high, and I realized that the drugs enhanced my ego.

What was the point of all of this? Was it avoidable?

Nah, for sure not avoidable. It’s just what I wanted to figure out, and the point in all of it was to figure it out, you know?

Did you find what you were looking for?

Yeah, I definitely did. I’m not curious anymore; I think I get it.

You know, of course I still have these days where I still think of how great life was on speed, but I can’t picture my life in the future being good on it. I can’t picture myself starting to do speed tomorrow and it going well, and that’s why I think it’s okay that I miss it. If I didn’t have this experience to the fullest, I would still look back at it and miss it.

Do you think you could’ve

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gone on living like that— both in regards to lifestyle and to the dominance of your ego?

Nah, everything would’ve just gotten really bad. If I kept on living like that--I could’ve, but who knows, maybe I would’ve just become a crack addict at a certain point. Where it just gets to a point where you can’t ask yourself these questions about the ego, and the drug usage is just on another level. I guess I would’ve ended up getting to that point: where both of them ended up becoming so big that they would no longer clash.

How would you describe your relationship with your ego now? Better? Worse?

I would say better. I don’t even think about it anymore, which to me is perfectly fine because that’s all I used to think about, I just didn’t know it. I don’t think about the same poisonous shit anymore, and that doesn’t mean the relationship doesn’t exist, just not nearly in the same way.

What were the biggest changes in your surroundings as you started to move forward, and what sort of effect did they have on you?

I lost a lot of people, but I don’t wanna blame that on sobering up, I wanna blame it on sobering up too late. I guess you could say that I realized how many people I didn’t have around me, so I lost those people, but I may never have really had them. Also, the people who are still there have become even closer with me; the relationships have become so genuine. I feel like some people took less of an interest in me, and there’s a bunch of things to say about that, but nothing relevant. I also had a lot less interest in most things.

What can you do now that you couldn’t do before?

Oh my god! I can do push-ups, I can eat, like, three meals a day, I can sleep, like, twelve hours a night. I can function. I often times, though, think about the things that I can’t do now. Not in the sense that I can’t get high anymore, but more as in I still have a very hard time sitting down and reading a book -- my attention span is still fucked. Hopefully if you were to ask me this question in a few months though, these are things I’ll be able to say I can do again.

And that’s driving you, you

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think?

Yeah, definitely.

Any wise words that you wanna leave off on, buddy?

Well, take some wisdom about drugs from me at my worst: the days on them make the days off them worth having.

His story is wild, unimaginable to most. It seems distant, in that the notion of being caught up in something like Josiah’s experience is something that no right-minded person like you or I would do.

But is it really that foreign? No, it’s not.

The thing that pushed Josiah into his addiction and his low point is the same thing that could push you or me into a similar behaviour. The difference doesn’t lie in the root, it lies in the outcome.

This allows an individual to take someone like Josiah and view him as an anomaly, rather than viewing his experience as a human one.

I think that instead of labelling and distancing ourselves from experiences like Josiah’s, the ego can be used as a tool to unify people—something that can bring a person scarily close to a kind of freedom within themselves that can almost be defined as divine.

One of the greatest lies our ego tells usus is that our demons are all different and that believing and acting on it is what makes an ego stronger. Our struggles shouldn’t be seen as hideous secrets that we hide away, nor should they be made things for us to prance around and be made

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righteous of for the sake of showing people how different we are.

There ought be an acknowledgement of the fact that inside every one of us exists a thing of unrefined evil that acts on ourselves and those around us. And we ought acknowledge that the ego is okay, if not kind of beautiful.

How could this be beautiful?

Because like everything in life, there are two sides to a coin.

Once we realize that each of us has a force of evil that we battle with, we can start to realize the indescribable goodness that lives alongside it. At that point, we could all experience true unity, together in a struggle that we all face: the one with ourselves.

Why go through all of this trouble? Would it not be so much easier to just hate? Well, in breaking through the problems that linger in the world around you, and that project themselves into your spirit, you can always be reminded that the life you take at face value is infinitely more complex, and that that there is far more beneath the surface than you could’ve ever imagined. To me, this seems a lot more fulfilling than hating. What do you think?

If this topic interested you, and you want to learn more about it, check out A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle. It’s a great, easy read, that gave me a bunch of insight and sparked my interest in the topic.

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science & spo rts VOL. 46 ISSUE 2 - OCT. 11, 2016

EDITORS: Sabina Elkins & Joey Roselli science@theplantnewspaper.com; sports@theplantnewspaper.com

New Tricks for an Old Drug Ketamine as an Antidepressant Christina Guluzian Contributor Ketamine, also known as the Special K drug, has recently become huge in the media for its breakthrough as an antidepressant. However, this drug has a dark past. Originally, ketamine was used on American soldiers fighting in Vietnam because of its anaesthetic properties. Users often experience a dissociative state and feel a separation of their body and mind. It was first synthesized by Calvin Stevens at Parke David Laboratories. And in 1999, because of continued abuse, the drug became a class C drug.

Due to its colorless and odourless, nature it was used often as a date rape drug as well as recreationally in the party scene.

A study done in Montreal 2002 asked its subjects, ones who frequented rave parties, if they had ever taken ketamine. Of the 210 respondents, 13.5% said they had

taken ketamine and 34.5% of them said they had done so in the past 30 days. Due to its reputation as a party drug, scientists have had a hard time breaking the stigma around a drug that could have potentially life saving effects for people suffering from depression.

Ketamine is vastly different from other antidepressants on the market today like Prozac, Paxil, or Cymbalta, which all focus on serotonin receptors. Instead, ketamine affects the levels of the neurotransmitter glutamate, specifically NMDA (N-methyl-D-aspartate receptor), and works to inhibit their action. Conventional antidepressants fail 40% of their users and take weeks to start working. Ketamine, on the other hand, can be administered through an IV and the effects can be felt after two hours due to its rapid change of our levels synaptic proteins.

For this reason, ketamine can be an effective and fast acting tool for depressed patients who have cases of acute suicidality.

On a molecular level, NMDA is a channel for calcium ions.

When the channel is open its two molecules, glycine and glutamate, are bound, and this is when the receptor is considered “active,”m eaning, electrical signals from the brain can be transferred to the spinal chord. Ketamine is a “non-competitive antagonist” of NMDA, which means that when it binds to the channel it closes, inhibiting Ca+2 from entering.

This is what creates the dissociative side effect of the drug.

In short, ketamine affects our brains in ways that are totally different from normal antidepressants. Scientists are still unsure of how exactly this drug is able to work so quickly as an antidepressant. Nevertheless, ketamine clinics have begun to pop up all around the US. In Canada, ketamine has remained a schedule I narcotic since 2005, which means that any potential user needs a prescription to get access to it.

For many people suffering from depression, bipolar disorder, migraines, anxiety, and a variety of other mental health issues, ketamine could be a solution to

the problem that so many other antidepressants have failed to fix.

With a silent suicide epidemic on the rise, perhaps ketamine’s medical breakthrough will be able to

shadow its bad reputation and allow the drug to help people in need.

to have a piece of it. It surely fired the boys in blue (Dawson soccer wears their blue uniform for road games), giving them a jumpstart to take an early lead in the game, which is obviously a spot where they wanted to be.

While Dawson’s attack and midfield kept penetrating the other half of the field, starting goalkeeper and team captain Anthony Sciola, who wears #1, kept his players, most certainly his defenders, on their toes in order to not feel at ease. Sciola, perhaps one of the most emblematic goalkeepers at Dawson College, considering the fact that he won the M.V.P award after his first season, along with head coach Alessandro Salvoni, kept shouting formal tactics and traditional motivation-

al mantras from the sidelines and Dawson’s goal to sustain the momentum.

It was then ten minutes later that Rougas doubled the lead making it 2-0 for our mighty Blues. But Dawson knew that there was still 60 minutes left to play, which is plenty of soccer and plenty of goals to be scored. The glory didn’t get to Rougas’ head nor did it to his teammates.

Once halftime rolled in, the Blues were still on a high note, feeling anxious to play the second half, assuming they’d go in dominating the remainder of the game just as they did in the first. To keep his camaraderie calm, focused, and subtle he had no choice but to do as he always does, which is to simply talk to them. “Keep do-

ing what you’re doing. Try to keep the ball more [in our possession] because every time we’re kicking the ball up, [towards their goal] they win it in the air and counterattack us. Next goal is important for both teams so stay focused.”

Fortunately, the Blues managed to do what their coach wanted them to. The only downside to this game was the fact that Sciola and his teammates couldn’t manage to pick up a clean sheet because the Nomades found a way to bury a goal in the 68th minute.

That was the wake up call for the Blues, who thought they’d leave with a guaranteed shutout.

The Blues must keep on winning their games in order to finish in the top six and for a chance to win the playoffs.

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Blues Still Alive

On Top of Their Game Joey Roselli Sports Editor The Dawson Blues Men’s soccer team came home victorious after beating the Montmorency Nomades 2-1 last Friday, September 30th. Konstantinos Rougas, the RSEQ’s second top goal scorer, with six goals in six games, was the hero that night, scoring both of the goals. While Dawson was sitting in eighth place on Friday —three points behind Montmorency— they knew that that was a game to win in order to get three points and leap to sixth place to be tied with Montmorency. It marked the midpoint of the season (fifth game), meaning the season is coming an end, but the

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playoffs are approaching.

At that time (September 30th), they remained in a position that didn’t qualify for the playoff round. Of the nine teams currently in the RSEQ’s Division 1 Men’s soccer league, only the top six qualify for the playoffs.

The third placed team will play against the sixth placed team, and the fourth placed team will play versus the third placed team in the quarterfinals, while the top two seeds automatically advance to the semi-finals awaiting the winners of each of the other two games.

Now back to the game. Rougas opened up the scoring at the 20th minute with a blast from the top of the crease giving no chance for the Nomades’ goalie

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curiosities

VOL. 46 ISSUE 2 - OCT. 11, 2016

EDITOR: Gaby Drummond-Dupuis curiosities@theplantnewspaper.com

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