Sunday, February 05, 2006

good intentions gone a little awry?

ok. so the past few days i have been feeling relatively crappy. the weather hasn't really helped a great deal. it's getting colder and snow flurries have decorated the landscape off and on. i am longing for sun and warmth and green grass and, basically, something better. maybe it would help if i count the days until the first day of summer? or maybe that would just make me more depressed. *sigh*
anyway, i vegged out on the sofa watching "smart people" tv (i.e. the history channel, discovery channel, a&e, etc.). i watched a show called "grizzly man" on discovery. i thought i'd be watching a story about a legitimate biologist (or some other scientist) who studied wild bears in their natural habitat, but what i ended up watching was the sad mental and behavioral decline of some guy named timothy treadwell. mr. treadwell certainly had honorable intentions, but his obvious mental illness encroached upon his good intentions, not to mention his common sense. it was sad to see his slow, but progressive deterioration on camera. i felt sorry for him and for his family. mr. treadwell's mental demise led to his being mauled and eaten by the very animal he claimed to be so devoted to: a bear. even sadder is the fact that his girlfriend at the time, amie, was also mauled and eaten by the bear. if you want to be crazy (one of mr. treadwell's former lovers stated that he preferred his "highs and lows" to medication and treatment for his diagnosed mental illness) and tempt fate (mr. treadwell, by all accounts crossed not only every line of respect in interactions with these wild animals, but also every line of common sense and caution), i suppose that is everyone's right, but it doesn't make it right.

11 comments:

Lisa said...

I watched this tonight as well. I'd heard of him before, and actually saw him when he was on Letterman, so I already knew he was a little "out there". I found GrizzlyMan to be fascinating and well done, but it was very sad to watch his decline.

Michele sent me!

Unknown said...

Tredwell was bipolar and it's a much more complicated scenario than what you discussed. People who are bipolar and have real manic episodes like Tredwell are often unable to be med compliant and end up in terrible decline. It's important to understand the disease before passing judgement.

Here via Michele.

jac said...

margalit, i could tell that mr treadwell was most likely bipolar by his behaviors. in no way did i pass judgement on him. having worked with persons with psychiatric disorders, having members of my family and friends who have psychiatric disorders, and also struggling with major depression myself, i fully understand the implications and intricities facing the bipolar individual in attaining medication compliance. this situation was not one in which anyone could "make" mr treadwell take medication or seek other forms of treatment for his condition. however, mr. treadwell made a conscious decision to refrain from medication because he felt that he "needed" his highs and lows. now i understand that the side effects of some medications are so uncomfortable that you'd rather do without the medications. it still doesn't make it right for mr treadwell to have broken the boundaries between humans and wild animals. mr treadwell put himself AND the animals that he interacted with in harms way because of his behaviours. it was just very sad.

ribbiticus said...

how very sad indeed. ultimately, he has to live with his decisions.

michele sent me to say hi. :)

Unique Designs from Zazzle said...

i couldn't bear to hear how this ended.

michele sent me

i wonder if he was a bipolar bear

carmilevy said...

I missed the airing but I've read about him previously. Although we might disagree with his choice, the takeaway from this is a lesson to those so afflicted who would choose a similar non-medicated course.

We often learn best from misguided behaviors - and if it scares one sufferer back to his/her meds, then it'll be a good thing.

utenzi said...

My girlfriend was watching that for a while but I pried the remote away from her and distracted her. She gets nightmares from stuff like that and really shouldn't watch shows with mental deterioration or animal maulings.

I was very surprised to see that it was on cable TV so soon after its release to DVD. It got some great reviews but wasn't my cup of tea!

Anonymous said...

I saw part of this. The bear in this show is definetely different than the bud light bear in the superbowl ad!

ninjapoodles said...

We (my med-compliant, stable, bipolar husband and myself) rented it a while back, and were just slack-jawed throughout the whole thing. The grandiose thinking, the lies, etc...we had him pegged as BP 5 minutes in.

Ultimately, to us, it was so ironic that he preached love for and of Nature, when he honestly had no real respect for nature left to its own design--he "loved" the animals, but on HIS terms. He did not respect them for what they were. Remember when the fox took his stupid ball cap?

Anonymous said...

mr tredwell was so full of bear shit his eyes should have been brown. did you see when that bear took a shit and tim put his hand over it and said it came out of her i sure he put is nose up to that pile and said this smells like bear shit what a sad sad man.

Anonymous said...

ok tim tredwell was a sad sad man i read somewere that he had sex with 1 of the bears as if that was not bad anuff it was a male bear what a sick i wish they could have showed that. well tim i wish u well and i hope you never have sex with a bear in your next life.