500 FOLLOWERS, 5 WEEKS: ANYONE CAN STEEMIT (Part 3)

SteemIt is an amazing social media platform! It seems like I just started this journey yesterday - but I have learned SO MUCH in such a short period of time. I mean, I'm still trying to get my intro story out and I've already got 500 followers! I believe this bodes well for the future of our community. While learning about SteemIt & cryptocurrencies requires real effort on the part of any individual who is new to the concepts, the fact remains that if I can learn how to do it, then any Average Joe out there should be able to have at least some success. This makes me feel proud to be able to call myself a "Steemian."

If you're new to my story, please be sure to read the first two parts - otherwise you'll be missing some important information.
Part 1: https://steemit.com/introduce/@bi5h0p/3-weeks-300-followers-anyone-can-steemit-part-1
Part 2: https://steemit.com/introduce/@bi5h0p/3-weeks-300-followers-anyone-can-steemit-part-2

The first steps of my journey back to health were, by far, the hardest. I was supposed to be "successful" in life: get a degree, get married, buy a house, have kids, etc... Coming to terms with a 60-year sentence, the fact that I had a mental illness, and the complete change in the expected trajectory of my life - it took about 2 or 3 years just to wrap my head around it. Now, here I was in the same exact building where Jack Nicholson starred in the film, "One Flew Over The Cukoos Nest." This was my new home, until I was 80-years-old. I was locked up in the Maximum Security ward with an interesting cast of other characters (to say the least). This was NOT a nice place to be. I could tell you stories of crazy things I've seen people do that you wouldn't believe: I saw violence, suicides - I even saw a guy cut off his own junk!!! But, just when you thought you'd seen it all, someone or something crazier would come along and blow my mind all over again.

To make a long story shorter, I was given the opportunity to go from Maximum Security to a "Treatment Ward." I then began the long and difficult task of becoming more "self-aware." This included taking medications, participating in behavioral therapy, going to classes & groups, individual pshycho-therapy, etc, etc, etc.

I completed the Anger Management classes 9 times. By the last time, they made me teach the class. I took every class they had - many, many times over. Classes about behavior, criminal thinking, medications, addictions, abuse of every kind, how to live healthy, how to eat & sleep right. If you can come up with an idea of what you think someone in a state hospital would do for therapy - I completed it. Then, after the "new school of thought" came in from the Universities a decade later, and the entire treatment model changed - I took all of those classes all over again. New names for the therapies - same old stuff. If you have ever been to a 12-step program, let's just say that I did my 4th step (admitted to myself & to another person the exact nature of my wrongs) on the end of a polygraph. I've taken 4 polygraphs - passed them all. That's not such a great thing, to be honest - you dump all of the skeletons out of your closet - ALL OF THEM - then you sift through the bones. It was necessary for the state to not only verify that all of my secrets were disclosed, but that I could demonstrate the ability to change the very makeup of my character. This is no easy task. It takes years.

The "mental illness" part of the problems, for me, took about 5 years to properly address. I took several different meds, several at a time, and experienced periods of time where I was walking around unable to even carry on a conversation with anyone for more than 3 sentences. That wasn't fun. I was lucky enough to get a really top-notch doctor - my family flew up the Head of Psychiatric Research at UCSD Medical Center. The guy graduated top of his class from an Ivy-League school. He did his evaluation, gave me the right pill, and that was it - my life was completely changed after that. My mental illness was successfully treated by the right medication. Most people with a mental illness don't want to admit it, don't want to take their meds, like to skate the line between crazy & sane. NOT ME. That's a very dangerous place for me. I used to love excitement - now I love boring. I'm not really the type of person to ever feel "bored," but it's much preferable to living an exciting life.

Then, there was the little issue of sexual addiction. It's really like any other addiction: over time, it changes the physiology of your brain - it changes the actual physical structure of your brain. The good thing is this: our brains can change - physically. It takes a lot of effort, thought, and changing of behavior - but it IS possible, over time, with steady and direct effort, to change the physicality of your own brain. This is WHY I say that it IS possible for someone to heal from a mental-illness. It is also why so few people are able to. It is difficult, and it requires life-long, continuing effort to avoid slipping backwards into old behavior patterns. I'm 25 years into my treatment today - and I still go to groups and therapy sessions at least twice a week - and I still take some medications.

But, this is not the entire picture. In order to change myself from a person of "anti-social" or "criminal" character into someone who was different, someone who actually deserved to be given a second chance, I had to change my entire system of values & underlying beleifs. Also, not an easy task. I worked at this for 13 & 1/2 years from inside the state hospital. To this day, I continue to examine my values & beliefs. I will continue to do so until the day I die. I began from a pretty simple place, with 2 basic guidelines as to what was valuable. In evaluating what was valuable, I asked myself, "What will hold it's value over time - even for eternity?" "What will ALWAYS be valuable?" Two things:

1. The Word of God. The Bible.
2. The Souls of Men. People. Human Life.

With those two values foremost in my mind, I began the reshaping of my character. I still have a long ways to go.

I was finally granted a "conditional release" from the state hospital after 13 & 1/2 years. Some people have suggested to me that it was not a fair situation to me - I shouldn't have had to be locked up for so long. Others have suggested that I should never have been allowed to get out. Whatever your opinion is, I look at it this way: I had a 60-year sentence. I didn't lose 13 years - I got 47 years given back to me. It's possible for that to change, if I don't continue to do well in the community. But, I've been out for over 10 years now. It took me several years just to re-adjust to the idea of, "freedom." You get used to being ordered around, people telling you what to do all of the time - when to get up, when to eat, when to exercise, when to take a shower, when to go to classes, when to take your medications. I had to re-learn how to make decisions for myself, in a less stuctured environment. I had become, "institutionalized." I did all that I could to resist becoming that way, but it's inevitably going to have an effect on even the most strong-willed people.

While I have not yet achieved what most Americans would call, "great success," in terms of materialism - I have achieved great success in other ways: self-mastery. I was reading a Bible the other day and came across a Proverb:

"A man who rules himself is greater than he who conquers a city."

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