Tag Archives: Men’s Health

Letter to Someone Considering Suicide

10 Thursday Mar 2022

Posted by in Addiction, Alcohol, Alcoholics Anonymous, Alcoholism, Depression, Health, Men's Health, Mental Health, Poetic Blog, Recovery, Suicide, Women's Health

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Suicidal2

by Bill Watkins, formerly suicidal
3/10/2022

Dedicated to the memory of Robin Williams

***

I would have told Robin just to sleep.  Stop trying to breathe.  Stop doing stuff and thinking you have to do stuff.

What suicidal people sometimes forget is the glory of the “mini-deaths” cleverly built into this life: sleep.  The complete cessation of activity.  The suicidal want to stop, want all thinking to stop, so… STOP!

Complications arise with drug and alcohol addiction.  Next to that, or maybe the same thing, is a bedevilment of negative thinking, insane thoughts—which any human being is capable of thinking from time to time.

There is a snowball forming, and suicidal people might start to believe the lies they are telling themselves that all would be better, if they were dead.  If they took an action to stop the heart and stop breathing… for good.

I was a victim of a suicidal depression that lasted about three or four years.  Parts of it are cloudy still, but I can now sum it all up as:  Alcoholism.

I started drinking Dad’s last sip of bourbon when I was five.  I started drinking the flammable, volatile, toxic liquid on my own with friends by the age of twelve.  I was blacking out on the substance by thirteen.

The above facts were not of interest to the multiple doctors I saw for depression at the end of the last millennium.  They saw and heard some symptoms, started to prescribe me drugs.  One of those doctors is now a recovering alcoholic, but because they missed my obvious alcoholism I sometimes think all of them were either alcoholic, drug addicted or just plain incompetent in the field of mental health.

I forgive them.  Alcoholism is “cunning, baffling and powerful,” to quote Alcoholics Anonymous—a powerful, tough, formidable foe.  I don’t blame anyone for my alcoholism and subsequent suicidal depression, but have come out of it to celebrate twenty years of consecutive sober days to distrust Western medicine in some areas.

They and all of us are fallible!

To the person who is at the time of reading this letter considering suicide, I say: “I love you. Thinking of suicide is a normal response to pain, when the pain builds and builds and sustains over a long time.  Love and accept yourself in this moment, but if you have a place to sleep that is warm and sheltered, be grateful for it and ‘die’ the mini-death that is sleep.  Stop trying so hard to breathe.  Slow down.  Do nothing.

“Do nothing for as long as it takes, with no time limit.  Based on my experience, the good rest and permission to stop will after time become a meditation or dream that makes you want to ‘go’ again.  You might get a vision that is positive.

“As far as managing life through a suicidal depression, stop doing that. Get out a piece of paper after your rest, and write down one or two things you want to do.  Eventually a bucket list (since you’ve been craving death anyway) of passions and activities.  Today, of course, you can only manage one or two of those things.

“Do them.  Love yourself for this one day.  That’s the only day that matters and exists.  If something makes you smile (that is not harmful to anyone, drugs or alcohol), note that and do it.   Repeat it, and follow that bliss throughout your day.  Your day is now your life!

“Note stuff in life we can’t control, like results or the future.  Let them go.  Maybe even consider prayer to a power greater than yourself.  Call it whatever you want to call it.  Just know you’re not in control of everything, and if you let yourself go… if you stop trying so hard and just rest… you’ll find the world continues to spin, and I do believe based on my own experience that positive thoughts and dreams are within us all…

If we wait for them.”

Circumcised

01 Tuesday Mar 2022

Posted by in Circumcision, Health, Men's Health, Poem, Poetic Blog, Poetry

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baby crying1

I’m glad they had me—
it’s been nice…
But why did they cut me—
Why am I circumcised?

In the first weeks of life:
Sexually abused. Molested—
Strapped to a table,
masturbated and sliced—

Despite my cries…
Despite my cries…
All because of a bible verse that lies—
Masturbated and sliced—

Newborn and hardly alive.

“Then what?” says I, from the
haze that dissipates with every sober hour…
I learned some sports
(while my damaged penis tried to heal).

I learned to drink a flammable
liquid on stolen land.
(“what’s the deal?”)

How could I learn to love?
Shyness when it mattered,
hurt I avoided life’s realities,
even good ones.

I imagined and abused myself,
found my way to pornography
seeking comfort for lost foreskin.

Unprotected, un-lubricated,
Seeking manual stimulation at
the point a normal, intact man
would come, satisfied.

All because the bible lied.

Infant Circumcision is Child Abuse

09 Wednesday Sep 2020

Posted by in Circumcision, Health, Intactivism, Men's Health, Poetic Blog

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Mad1

-by Bill Watkins 9/9/2020

***

I was reading Jay J. Jackson’s new book, Circumcision Scar (Hookona Books 2020), and it occurred to me I related to the author in ways I wish I did not.  In Chapter Two, Jay discusses his “Circumcision Awakening” at age twenty, when with his first intimate partner he realized what had happened to him against his will as a baby…

“My boyfriend said that he’d run into this issue before…”

They were talking about Jay’s apparent erectile dysfunction, coming to the fore at the same time he was learning for once the reason his penis was different than his uncircumcised father’s and his uncircumcised boyfriend’s.  That boyfriend attributed Jay’s “inability to perform” to “having no foreskin,”  then went on to explain, according to Jay, that his “glans [penis head] had been desensitized over time through the day to day friction it was exposed to…”

All of which ringing a sad, loud bell within myself as a victim and survivor of unconsenting genital mutilation when I was a baby.  I was reminded of a girlfriend telling me once that I was the first circumcised man she had been with, and also that I was the first man she had made love to who didn’t hold an erection for the entirety of love-making from first arousal to orgasm.

Like Jay I was an athlete growing up and exposed to much movement and friction “down there.”  And unfortunately, like Jay, I had trouble with sex, love, and found my way into a dark, unmanageable depression including prevalent suicidal thoughts—and eventually two drug overdoses.  Throw in drinking alcohol on Dad’s lap young, then with friends by twelve years old, blacking out on the substance by thirteen, and you have a good picture. 

The start of recovery at Betty Ford Center, four years of Al-Anon twelve step work, then admission of my alcoholism and my last conscious drink of that substance on March 6th, 2002—and you have a better picture.  Recovery didn’t give me instant success at love, and I was a virgin until thirty-three years of age, seven shy of that Steve Carell comedy on the subject!  A total mess, for me starting with the first abuse:

The violent removal of a body part obviously and firmly attached to my penis, obviously and firmly for a reason—whether you lean toward Darwin or God’s evolution of our species.  The penis foreskin isn’t falling off, barely there, or needing detachment from Mom like the umbilical chord.  It’s there to protect, lubricate, cover and help the penis do its job over our lifespans, praise God (or Darwin) for the miracle of our natural advantages!

But not for me.  Not for Jay.  Not for about forty percent of the world’s men, according to the National Center for Biotechnology (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4772313/).  Who or what is leading this mass, bloody exodus of protective penis skin?  Jews?  Muslims?  Christian doctors with Jewish/Old Testament bible sympathies?  Confusion itself?  The Devil?  I’m laughing now, which is better than crying in my girlfriend’s lap.  The world’s women might wonder why their man can’t keep it hard for them…

The world’s women and inquiring men too, might wonder:  Why is Viagra so popular?  Why all the surging erectile dysfunction and medication to supposedly handle the issue?  Well, I’m for logic and for simplest solutions…  Perhaps it’s time to point out the very obvious problem rolled up at the end of our noses, in front of all our often shy faces:  God or Evolution put a protective covering over the sensitive tip of male genitalia – with the female stuff our great baby-maker, and even a really fun time if used properly!

Maybe we should leave the foreskin where it is until a boy becomes a man of consenting age.  If that young man wants to join a religion and carving off part of the penis is part of the joining—so be it.  Until then, join me in denouncing unconsenting genital mutilation as a human rights violation.  Join me in questioning an ancient but questionable practice that has circumcised men with the courage to speak speaking.  Regretting.  Hoping for change, if not for us, for the next generation!

(Circumcision and Erectile Dysfunction Survey: https://es.surveymonkey.com/r/353NNX9)

We Can Rise

14 Friday Dec 2018

Posted by in God, Health, Men's Health, Poem, Poems, Poesia, Poetic Blog, Poetry, Spiritual

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The seed wars to become a flower.
Democracy lies—calls people power.

Songs rhyme, the words nothing compared
to truth itself.  You pause, pray,

Give strength clean away, turn it over
We can rise.  With a god of your own
understanding, we can rise, the mystic
reason for the four seasons calling
in the night, dreams the funeral of
ignorance, chopping off parts of a penis

while our infants cry; listening to the
devil, the easy way, “What did the white
coat say?”

***

Great native spirit, aboriginal ESP, a poem
scribbled into sand by Vikings or Celtic
sages, Romeo and Juliet giving English
reasons like seeds to sprout and spread
like a wildfire of color across a northern
California coastal hill.

“God” is the name itself for some, the
goal heaven, and for it we rise.

We can overcome the worst, from ashes
bloom again, seven deadly sins trying to
burrow into holes made before we make
first decisions.

The cliff upon which we walk is forged
to challenge, the echoes of forefathers
and foreskins causing blood to pour out
in lines, the prayer a call of the realistic,

the humble are true when they admit they
cannot without divine help reach the
golden crest that is Peace of Mind.

We can rise.

But we must first admit we fell, ring the
bell that we’ve been to hell.

God, forgive us, let’s mobilize with every
breath to make amends for friends like
wind forgotten with circumcised sips
of flammable liquid passed down from
generation to generation,

Friends in armor, friends who gave
us warmth and farming techniques,
helped us survive winters before
we cast them out at gunpoint, claimed
to found a nation already here.

I’m a white man living on stolen land,
littered concrete and asphalt, helicopters
screaming war while anyone standing
high enough for peace is shot down from
Gandhi to Jack to Martin to Bobby to Oscar
to John of the Beatles, the evil wind
soaring never changed.

We can rise, the minority report flourishing
at times, enough to give us hope
like a birdie between double bogies,

We can rise.

With an ounce of truth told into the
hurricane of lies, we can turn the evil
ship around, apologize.

Admit we raped, pillaged and stole,
see the humanity we are—naked
and part of the earth.

Don’t ever snip earth worn naturally
by children, mutilate a baby against
God’s will.

The baby’s cry is God’s protest; stop
cutting, start listening.  Get out of your
car, join me on the walk to Heaven.

Man Hate

30 Wednesday May 2018

Posted by in Blog, Blogs, Poem, Poems, Poetic Blog, Poetry, Relationships, Resentment, Sex, Sexism, Women

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I didn’t hurt you, it wasn’t me.

Somehow, it’s lost on the resentful
the current circumstance, all a dance
of holding on or letting go.

We cannot let go until we admit
the problem, accept it, and take
an appropriate action based on
whatever code of morality or
ethics that tickles you peaceful.

***

I did not hurt you, specifically, I tell
her online.

I hurt me and about 15 girls growing
up because I failed to tell them
I loved them.

Too scared.  Too proud, I hurt them
and me at the same time—

it was an alcoholic thing.

Freud said drunks can’t express love,
and, well—I’m a drunk.

But it wasn’t me, I wasn’t the one
who made you specifically mad,
and yet I feel like I did—my point of
view, my quoting the bible,
which you call misogynistic.

Yikes, I have a lot to learn, you
know there’s always another side
of something—

But it wasn’t me, I mean—even if
I used the offending bible phrase,
my intention was good, not bad.

My stuff hangs down, makes sperm,
it’s a wild show of swirl and girls
in the head, trying to manage sex
with mutilated genital parts from
an operation I did not consent to
called “circumcision.”

Abused at birth, then growing up
with no talks on love, but plenty
of alcohol drinking and sports.

But I do not blame you for this;
you are a woman online, we hardly
know each other, but I’m sure if
patient, we would find we were
both fallible human beings, trying
to get along on this side of the dirt
before the stars and God conspire
with age to take us away, bodies
useless as our spirit soars forever.

Men Abused from Birth; Any Surprise We Abuse Women?

16 Thursday Nov 2017

Posted by in Blog, Circumcision, Health, Intactivism, Men's Health, Sex, Sexuality, Womanizing

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Tools of Abuse -- Circumcision

-by Bill Watkins 11/16/2017

***

It’s tempting to throw stones at all the men being called out for inappropriate sexual behavior toward women, and even young girls.  I wanted to illuminate why that may not be a wise course of action; in fact, a blind judgment of male-perpetrated sexual harassment fails to look at and solve some of the root problems that lead to bad behavior by men.

1. Circumcision – Our First Abuse

We men are born with a cover on our penis.  God, if you use that concept, our “Creator” (evolution if you want) put a safety hood on our members to protect the most sensitive part of our body, the reproductive unit, the great human populator.  Certain religionists and other ancients thought it was a good idea to SNIP THIS COVER OFF OUR MALE INFANTS.

Shock1

2. Alcoholism and Lack of Talk – The Second Abuse

We are not honest.  We “protect” children from sex talk, avoid the topic—then expect them to get it from school or TV.  What boys often get from school and TV is porn and “sex as competition,” where groping and “scoring” with females is touted over such a wonderful biblical tradition as:

Rejoicing with the Wife of Our Youth.

Solomon through Proverbs 5:18 and Malachi 2:15 emphasize the glory of monogamy, loyalty and commitment to the first girl God gives a boy to love.  The first love is blessed and special.  And yet in our American society we scoff at first crushes, avoid talks with boys that “love is good,” and show them a poor example by divorcing and philandering around from flower to flower.

Little boys confirm the competition aspect of sex bragged about on the playground, think that scoring “chicks” is preferable to loving one woman forever.  Alcoholism plays into this, as it is a disease that plagues our abilities to be honest and communicate love.  (Freud)

3. So off you go, Little Man!!!

“Enjoy your unprotected, hood-stripped, extra-sensitive penis, go out without advice and with our example of divorce and womanizing, alcoholism—AND TREAT WOMEN RIGHT!!!”

***

Not happening.  And no wonder.

LET’S STOP ABUSING OUR BOYS, STRIPPING THEM OF PENIS PROTECTION, TALK TO THEM ABOUT SEX, BUT FIRST GO BACK TO GODLY, GOOD PRINCIPLES LIKE BEING LOYAL AND TRUE TO THE “WIFE OF OUR YOUTHS.”  The first step to end abuse is to do what we are doing:  out the truth, talk about the problem.

But then:  Throw a stone?

No.  Let us recover together, go back, pick up the pieces, apologize to our wives, re-think drinking flammable liquids that divert us from God’s will—and teach our children, first by example—that love is precious and sacred, that sex is great with the right partner in the right way.  Then speak to them…

“Your mother and I love you, son, and show that first by loving each other.  Second, we want to be available to your every question or concern.  What?  You are in love with Anne in third grade?… Son, that is so wonderful.  Consider telling her in some way.  Write her a card.  Give her a flower.  We are so proud of you.  And thank God for our instincts to love!”