medication

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What Do Government Employees Do?


There are three levels of government; federal, state, and local.  I am going to focus on the federal level as that is where my experience of 30 years is, 11 years on active duty in the Army and another 19 years for the Department of Transportation.  The group of employees I am addressing are the civil service workers, not the political appointees.

Every member of the military is a government employee and I do not think that needs any explanation.  But behind them, in the Department of Defense, are tens of thousands of civilian employees who support them.  This sort of employee exists in every federal agency.  They are managers, engineers, lawyers, inspectors, researchers, office assistants and a host of other jobs.  The overwhelming majority of federal lawyers spend little to no time in the court room.  Theirs is the world of assuring that the various activities of the particular agency they work for are proper and legal.  They are the overseers of contracts, employment activities, interagency agreements, agreements with the private sector, and anywhere else their agency’s business takes them.  One of the largest portion of the Defense Department’s civilian employees are support services.  These are people assist in the development and fielding of equipment that our troops must use.  They are engineers, inspectors, supply experts, logistics experts, etc.

There are at least two places that the entire American public relies upon on a daily basis.  All food and medications are inspected by employees of the Department of Agriculture.  Because of this we have the safest food supply in the world, and this includes our water supply.  Everyday there are inspectors who go around checking to see that the food entering our stores meets certain federally mandated qualities.  They make sure the medications we buy at the drug store, not just prescription medications but over-the-counter as well, also meet certain high standards.  In this our country is also second to none.  When epidemic possible diseases are detected it is the federal government in the form of its employees who are on the front lines figuring out what those diseases are exactly and what we can do about them.

Every time you get in any sort of vehicle on any public road the standards for those roads and the vehicles that cover them, are set by the federal government.  Government inspectors are constantly inspecting large trucks and the roads they travel over.  In this same vein, all of aviation falls under the purview of the federal government.  The regulations that cover every commercial aircraft, and their inspections, are federal mandates.  So strict are these mandates that if the same standard we used on our private cars, a large portion of the public could not afford to own the vehicle.  The federal government maintains a database of every aircraft in the air today, of every pilot, of every commercial airline regardless of the sort of business they do, and holds each to a very strict level of standards.  It takes a lot of people, government employees, to complete such work.

One of the false notions that people have about government employees is that they have it easy and do not do much work.  I can assure you that at the federal level, at least, nothing could be further from the truth.  Most government workers work in excess of 40 hours of work but most do not get overtime pay for their efforts.  Furthermore, government employees pay 50% of the medical insurance, pay into their retirement, and pay social security medicare taxes as well.

The federal government employs approximately 2.5 million people full-time, and another 250,000 part-time.  If there is fault to be found in these numbers, that is looking to reduce those numbers, people must consider from which department the reductions are going to come.  If, for example, people do not understand what the Department of the Interior does and want reductions to start there, they need to know that all National Parks come under the Interior and it is those people you are looking to reduce.  Anyone who works at a military research facility is part of Defense.  And so it goes.

You may think you do not know any federal employees, but chances are you do.  But even if you do not, you count on their existence for your personal happiness and safety.   Most government employees are very well-educated and dedicated people who work hard and turn in a full day’s work.

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Fear, Panic Attacks, and Other Adventures


This morning I was reading one of James Patterson’s latest murder mysteries, “Kill Alex Cross.”  He is one of my favorite authors.  In the middle of reading something came to mind totally unrelated to what I was reading.  My mind seems to have that tendency, and I have never been able to explain it except to say, I am just a little weird.

Anyway, in the middle of reading I remembered being very sich when I was small.  I do not remember exactly how old I was at the time but I would guess I was no more than six or seven, but maybe younger.  I remember getting very sick, having a high temperature.  But I also remember hallucinating.  I would feel like my fingers had become very thick and that would scare me to death.  My mother used to say I drank too much cough medicine, Vicks Formula 44 which at the time had codeine in it, and that caused me to hallucinate.  I do not remember ever doing that but it is possible.  The thing is, I know for fact that the two incidents are not related because I remember waking up sick in the middle of the night and then hallucinating.

Many years later, when I was in the army in Italy, I would drink a lot at parties I gave.  One day a guy told me I could get a great high out of taking too many sea sick pills.  One day when I did that in the middle of speeding my brains out I got extremely paranoid and had a panic attack.  I was fortunate that at the party there was a physician who examined me and talked me down.  He told me to see him the next day, which I did, at which time he made me promise him that I would never again take those pills.  I kept my promise.  It was his duty to report me to my commanding officer, which he did not do, and I knew better than to abuse his gift.  That was the last time I ever did such a thing.

Again, years later, I had another panic attack.  And a year after that another, and then they started coming with increased regularity.  In the early 1980s medicine was not well equipped to deal with anxiety and panic.  They prescribed Valium, and then when it came into being, xanax.  Unfortunately those medicines only treat the symptoms and not the cause.  I went through a series of antidepressants that were also supposed to deal with anxiety.  First there was Trofanil, then an MAOI, then Welbutron, Prozac, and now Effexor.   The Effexorf, while seemingly very effective, has totally killed off a very important side of the human experience.  The ability to have anything close to a normal sex life is an impossibility.  The libido is strong but the body refuses.

The panic attacks actually disappeared entirely for well over a decade only to re-emerge with a vengeance.  I return to therapy to deal with them but it was ineffective.  The therapist commended me on my total honesty with her but conceded that we had reached a point where continued therapy was of very limited value.  But the anxiety and panic have not yet gone away.

Through many years of introspection I have discovered that most of my fears, if not all, are based in one of two things.  First, my hiding things that greatly embarrass me causes distress.  That part I have entirely dealt with having related every single thing I have ever done that causes me pain.  The other part is talking about those things that scare me.  Intellectually I know that fear happens in the absence of knowledge and I have done my best to become knowledgeable about all things that scare me.  For example, as a child I had an intense fear of the dark which followed me into my adult life.  I have to admit that there is still some of that today but it is far less than it once was.

I am a bit clautrophobic although elevators I find to be particularly troubling.  But that is the only fear I am aware of that I still have these days.  And yet, I still have anxiety attacks, often, and panic attacks occasionally.  Such things are always fear based and yet I cannot get to the base of what is triggering me.  I am frustrated!  I never know when an anxiety attack begins if it will end in a panic attack.  That means my prognosis, barring my discovering what is at the base of all this, is I will live out my years forever fending against the next anxiety attack, the next panic attack.

Ironically, I think of my life these days as generally being really good.  I am never depressed nor do I go a day without feeling grateful for so many things and people in my life.  I know I am not alone it this struggle although sometimes it feels that way.  Even though I am always entirely honest with my psychiatrist, I feel resistance from her in helping me with proper levels of medication.  But even so, there are other physicians, friends who are physicians, who I can rely upon to give me really good advice.