From Socialist to Survivalist
I still have my Canadian citizenship even though I have been married to an American for 15 years and have two “halfer” children, all of whom I drag up north every summer to visit family. As a Canadian I spent most of my life expecting the Government to take care of my essentials (and non-essentials) if I were ever in need or want. After an accident on Government land I had all my outrageous medical needs completely covered. (One aside for those in favor of socialized medicine – real medical emergencies can be expensive and therefore a burden on the system so if you are too young, too old or too damaged to contribute to that system via work and taxes then it is encouraged to medicate you “comfortably” to death. But remember, it is for the best of the larger system and if you complain too hard, well you’re just not nice and therefore anti-Canadian. Canadians are nothing if not nice and will usually accept the verdict with a quiet smile and a “So sorry”. If one doesn’t want to go down quietly, one goes down to the States to pay for “extra” treatment and life. This is how I ended up in the States and met my husband.) Like many brides I was completely unprepared for marriage and a different country made it even more challenging. It is not really true that Canadian’s are just unarmed Americans with health care. There are other cultural differences as well. As an exchange student I had been exposed to the Rodney King riots in 1992 and thought, “Oh my gosh, these Americans are violent crazies. Who would ever want to actually live here?” Yes, we have riots in Canada as well but they are generally down played and the participants are rarely armed.
The first 10 years I spent in true American fashion, accruing useless stuff, huge debts and kids. Moving to California five years ago was a real wake up call. Apparently we didn’t have enough stuff, debt, elective surgery or medication for me to be fully acclimatized to this culture. I even had a raging Vicodin addiction as a result of medicating problems away after my accident 15 years before. Living in California just made it so much more affordable and fun. I didn’t realize there was a legal limit to how much Vicodin you could take. Leaving the Disneyland state 18 months later we had large amounts of useless stuff, huge debt, and a grocery list of medications for everything from depression and pain to the hiccups. That’s when my liver started failing, apparently we had to make some changes. Around this time my husband heard about Dave Ramsey – the "cash only, debt free" guy. So I went out and bought all his books (on credit of course!) It was a long road but we were eventually getting on the same page and started getting rid of our debt. I mention this because we could never have started towards self sufficiency and being preppers and planners with the massive debt behind us. Ramsey enabled us to head towards becoming debt free so we could accumulate practical, real stuff with no creditors coming after us. This was a totally new concept for me. We have tweaked his “Emergency Fund” ideas though in order to include beans, bullets and Band-Aids. Our idea of the Emergency Fund has definitely changed over the last few years. After we started having problems with my liver my Nutritionist said, “We’ve got to get you off of all this stuff. Besides, when the crash comes, you probably won’t be able to get any of it anyway.” I was stunned. I looked at my hubby thinking who is this crazy, gun toting, the end of the world is coming freak. It turns out; happily, he was all of the above. (We use "freak" as a term of endearment in our family and have enjoyed being labeled as such by those who just don’t get it.) So, for the sake of my body and sanity, I slowly started detoxing off of all the crud my body thought it needed but couldn’t process. This was a tough time on our family, especially since we had started home schooling while living in the People's Republic of Kalifornia (PRK). It is not always possible to get off all medications but limiting it to only truly necessary meds is a huge benefit when prepping your personal pharmacy. Fortunately, I was able to get off of all my meds after about eight months. August 24, 2010 Copyright © 2010 SurvivalBlog
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