Today: 5 Years Free From the Psychiatric Drug Cocktail

Each one of us is called to become that great song that comes out of the silence, and the more we let ourselves down into that great silence the more we become capable of singing that great song. ~ David Steindl-Rast

It’s been five years today since I completed a six year withdrawal process from a large cocktail of psychiatric drugs.

Today is also my 50^th birthday which, frankly, seems much more remarkable to me at this point. Inside I am only aware of eternal youth. Upon having done an informal and small survey, it seems most people feel that way though it’s not talked about much among the adults of our species. That which watches and experiences our lives in these bodies does not age. It’s actually a wonderful thing. So I’m here wondering what comes next in this amazing trajectory which is the life being lived in this body that my parents called Monica.

I get restless with some frequency still at that which I perceive as limitations. My intention for this year is to more deeply surrender and be with what is. I have moments and sometimes hours or days in which this flow comes effortlessly together and at that point what seems to be a constraint largely melts away. Life is wondrous by its very nature, fully fit or not. Healing for me has become focused on becoming one with this flow that I might serve others and the planet and all of life too. This, it has become clear, can happen whether or not my body is functioning the way most people expect their bodies to work. The interesting paradox, of course, is that the more I surrender to this reality the healthier I get in every way.

A thought from Henry Miller I want to include here follows…it is this scenario that leads us to harm ourselves and others in a myriad of unconscious ways:

Every day we slaughter our finest impulses. That is why we get a heartache when we read those lines written by the hand of a master and recognize them as our own, as the tender shoots which we stifled because we lacked the faith to believe in our own powers, our own criterion of truth and beauty. Every man, when he gets quiet, when he becomes desperately honest with himself, is capable of uttering profound truths. We all derive from the same source. There is no mystery about the origin of things. We are all part of creation, all kings, all poets, all musicians; we have only to open up, only to discover what is already there. – Henry Miller

The heavy drugging psychiatry imposes is a method of slaughtering and repressing our finer impulses after a life of doing that just to survive the traumas of our conditioned childhoods. This is how it becomes layered and compounded. Psychiatric drugs are also agents of trauma. Becoming quiet after such insults to our bodies is quite a task. Psychiatric drug withdrawal syndromes leave the autonomic nervous system screaming in ways that are inconceivable to the uninitiated.

I think I will simply mark this day by calling attention to some posts that include some history and bits and pieces of all that I’ve learned during the journey that made this blog happen.

Last year I said goodbye to psychiatry by going to see the doctor who prescribed for me while I was withdrawing. I hadn’t seen him in several years. Because I had become homebound and bedridden he was good enough to prescribe over the phone while I was still withdrawing. I was grateful for that. Many people have no one to support them when they get as ill as I was. Many doctors refuse to cooperate at all in the coming off process. So while this doctor didn’t understand what I was going through and was unhelpful in that regard, he did trust the narrative I chose to give to my experience and he allowed me my autonomy. In my mind that is all it takes to be a decent doctor. There are not many around. Anyway, I’d not seen him for a long time. So when I went to say thank you and goodbye, it was with a sort of ritualistic intent. No more psychiatry for me. It simply took a few years after getting off the drugs to be able to make an appointment with him.

• Goodbye psychiatry
• The final visit to the psychiatrist (part 2 of Goodbye psychiatry)

The below two pieces can serve as a mini history of my personal journey in and away from the psychiatric system.

The aftermath of polypsychopharmacology: my story on Dr. David Healy’s site  –this is the most complete short synopsis of having been grossly over-drugged and my path to drug freedom.

And a mini memoir from a couple of years ago at Mad in America: Everything Matters: a Memoir From Before, During and After Psychiatric Drugs

The healing trip changes day by day and moment by moment — always evolving. My only consistent practice is to respond to the moment now. What I need today may not be what I need tomorrow. My body responds to the weather and the seasons and the cycle of the moon and perhaps one hundred other systems that I’m unaware of. All these cycles interact with each other again and again, day after day, year after year, so that experience is like a kaleidoscope…patterns never repeating the same twice. Change! Change is the only thing we can count on.  I don’t always like it but I am learning to celebrate it.

And these are some posts that underscore how my healing is conceived and practiced. I share it only as my experience. If no day is the same for me in that which I need to support myself, then it’s also clear that no two of us will be exactly alike in our needs.

• Choice and emotion: a short essay with some musing
• Nature vs nurture, biological vs. psychological: how about both/and rather than either/or
• Holding on to beliefs limits our experience of life
• To see a professional or not
• Healing is many things synergistically coming together
• If we were abandoned…
• We are by nature a sensitive species.

These are some of my practices:

• Ecstatic dance (scroll down for list of posts)
• Yoga (scroll down for list of posts)
• Meditation
• Healing the body/mind with the willingness to feel
• My growing herb list: healing with plants

Also this year I did a series of two interviews for Nonduality Talk radio. I hope to do more sharing in this way and hopefully in the real (meat) world (human beings I can actually physically touch) as this life continues to unfold.

And a video I did with Erica Fletcher, graduate student extraordinaire: