Michael Peterson dead...

[gabsouy]

tommy p is still doing what hes done for 40 years..

[jimmy]

tommy p is still doing what hes done for 40 years..

Being an unmitigated cnut?

[daryl]

Sometimes ... Nicholas ... you make a lot of sense out of the insensible.

One of MP's favourite sayings was ... you're all mad ... having met a few of his cohorts ... I would probably concur with his analogy ... and yes ... he had little to no chance ... those cards were dealt very early in life ... but my god he could surf ... just another example of those freaks who's candle burns bright but briefly ... maybe thats the price one has to pay ... you know ... go down to the crossroads ... the devil is in the detail.

And so endeth todays lesson from captain cheeseball.

[daryl]

Although an interesting article I must say that was the first thing I noticed when I read it was the absence of any reference to his heavy drug use. Medical research strongly suggests that drugs such as pot exacerbate various psychoses.

How well would MP have surfed had he been diagnosed early
Would he have surfed at all

There is also medical research that suggests drug use particularly pot among people with mental illness is a way of self medicating the illness. Im definitely no drug advocate but there is no evidence either way. Plenty of people with mental illness who never touched drugs.

[Yuke Hunt]

Sometimes ... Nicholas ... you make a lot of sense out of the insensible.

One of MP's favourite sayings was ... you're all mad ... having met a few of his cohorts ... I would probably concur with his analogy ... and yes ... he had little to no chance ... those cards were dealt very early in life ... but my god he could surf ... just another example of those freaks who's candle burns bright but briefly ... maybe thats the price one has to pay ... you know ... go down to the crossroads ... the devil is in the detail.

And so endeth todays lesson from captain cheeseball.

You wear a cravat don't you ... a beret and a cravat ... and are extremely jealous of the natural aloofness of siamese cats ... back on your bike numb-nuts.

[collnarra]

Hi NC,

I didn't mention his illicit drug use for a number of reasons. Many people with serious mental illness self medicate, as one poster points out. Whether he would have, or would not have had, psychotic episodes due to illicit drug use is, in the end, moot. He did have those episodes but, as Dougherty's book points out, he was also largely clean for the last part of his life. From what I gather, apart from the occasional illicit joint, he didn't use the hard stuff anymore.

I know the (legal) drugs have saved my life, but there's a heavy penalty to pay for using them. And that, in the end, is the point I was trying to make. The fact is people with SMI generally die 20 years early. That's what happened to MP, and that is what will happen to many of us. It's a bargain with the devil.

and, as I mentioned earlier in this thread: you can battle serious mental illness mental illness, but you will never, ever win.

josh

[Beanpole]

While people can discuss the reasons for people like MP going the way he did the reality is that there were a pile of people floating around in the same stew who weren't famous, couldn't surf that well, with relatively stable family backgrounds who screwed up just as big. I can think of quite a few people who ended up in various institutions as well as quite a few who didn't make it at all.