Are You Woke or Sleep Deprived?

Natural disasters and the current political climate (also a disaster) killed my muse for a while. My motivation for this piece came while vacationing. The Dove® advertisement blew up the internet and I had a revelation: some (not all) people striving to stay woke are sleep deprived. Symptoms of sleep deprivation include problems with thinking clearly, irritability, impulsivity, physical illness, and delusions in extreme cases. Sleep deprivation is also used as a torturous interogation method. How did I get that from the Dove® ad? Simple, everything that deals with race isn't racist or derogatory. Unfortunately, America is in the midst of a physical and mental beat down. PTSD (Post Trump Stress Disorder) is real. People are hypervigilant because injustice is running rampant. Some lash out about things unnecessarily and lose sight of the real issues at hand. For example, a peaceful protest against police brutality turned NFL Boycott which evolved into a FDT (insert title of YG song here) demonstration. Ironically on the afternoon of the NFL anti-Trump demonstration, I witnessed a white cop beating up a white man unjustifiably. I didn't record it, it didn't go viral. Why? Because we have become a society overly exposed to trauma. I wonder how many people recording and posting such videos actually report the incidents to the appropriate entities as I did? Side note: they have yet to follow up with me, are they overrun with complaints or just negligent? Yes, we need to know when and where it's happening, but constant saturation with live images and audio etches pictures in our minds that we can't forget. Such images cause us to view the world with tunnel vision, only seeing a narrow scope of the big picture. And they stress us the hell out.

I recently saw a post insinuating that the commonality between four women disrespected by that clown residing on Pennsylvania Ave was their blackness. True, but we haven't seen him disregard women in general? Again, everything isn't racial. Some people are just flat out rude.  I participate in a "professional" discussion group online where people often complain about their interactions with other employees and they throw out the race card like it's the big joker in a spades game. Often race has nothing to do with it, but lenses have become so cloudy that alternate facts (legitimately) aren't entertained.

Apparently staying woke for some involves posting random facts about natural healing and an illuminati-like conspiracy by the medical establishment to poison black people with medications and vaccinations. As a healthcare provider, I didn't get the memo. We recommend the same vaccinations for everyone in a population regardless of race or gender. But don't get them, just sit back in awe when we have outbreaks of things such as whooping cough. How many people remember thinking that Prince couldn't have died from the flu, despite it happening to people every year? An insider secret about natural supplements/homeopathic medications: many pharmaceuticals were made to mimic their effects just with a higher rate of predictability, which limits the potential for unsafe dosing. Simply stated, we know that natural meds may work but the concentrations aren't really regulated. Think of it like a garden: you might use good soil and grow really good vegetables, whereas your next door neighbor's harvest may be kinda scrawny in comparison. The extract from your neighbor's plants may not be as potent as yours, so 10 mg of one isn't the same as 10 mg of the other. And natural supplements affect the same chemicals in your body as pharmaceuticals, so there's still the potential for the same types of side effects. Take for example St. John's Wort, an herb used to treat depression. If someone has bipolar disorder it can make them manic, just like taking a prescription anti-depressant can. Lastly, a word on lisinopril (and the other meds like it). Angioedema isn't a side effect exclusive to it, and it doesn't just happen to black people. But instead of focusing on a medication being bad for black people, how about looking at the big picture? We prescribe the medication to treat high blood pressure and to protect kidney functioning for people with diabetes. Hmm, perhaps people should focus on preventing those conditions to the extent possible so they won't need to take Lisinopril?

I end this with a recommendation for the sleep deprived. In the words of Erick Sermon:  "if you're tired, then go take a nap".