When Will We Wake? Reflections on Suicide and Psychotropic Medications

Beatrice Birch
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Suicide is now the 10th leading cause of death in the United States. While antidepressants and other mind-altering psychotropic medications are supposedĀ to decrease symptoms, they often have the opposite effect and are known to increase suicidal thoughts and actions for people from all walks of life and all ages. The impact suicide has on the lives of family members, friends, co-workers and the community is devastating. The loss of human potential is enormous.

In Christopher Fryā€™s play, A Sleep of Prisoners, he writes: ā€œThank God our time is now when wrong comes up to face us everywhere, never to leave us till we take the longest stride of soul men ever took. Affairs are now soul sizeā€¦ it takes so many thousand years to wake, but will you wake for pityā€™s sake?ā€

I have met too many young, thoughtful, sensitive and intelligent people who hated being medicated by the psychotropic medications. They were not aware that there was a choice, and, being told they would have to be on these drugs the rest of their lives, they chose suicide. They were not prepared to live in a fog of pain, disconnected from insightful thinking, heartfelt feeling and creative initiatives: the essential qualities of being human.

Not many people know that indeed there is a choice. There are legitimate ways to work through, understand and digest the debilitating and traumatic challenges that come with simply being human. But one needs to be proactive, humble and willing to break old patterns including unhelpful self images.

With the best of intentions and in trust, individuals and parents seek professional advice when wrestling with life challenges for themselves or for their children. Of course there are exceptions, but typically, due to insurance restrictions and ā€˜big pharmaā€™ prioritizing profits, within a few minutes and without really being listened to or offered supportive, empowering alternatives, struggling individuals are stigmatized with a mental health disorder, told the chemistry in their brain is out of balance and given a psychotropic medication which they will be dependent upon for the rest of their lives.

Wouldnā€™t we all agree that human beings are dynamic and complicated? One honest psychiatrist stated: ā€œ…You think we understand the brain? It is more complicated than the universe!ā€ Isnā€™t it time we look deeper? Some experience that the state of the soul, the seat of our emotions and habits which is influenced by life situations, actually informs the brain. Could it be that the medications are actually what significantly disrupt the chemistry in the brain which naturally is flexible and forgiving?

For some people, these addictive medications keep us in the victim mold. They disconnect us from life challenges which need to be dealt with in order for us to continue to grow and to evolve. Challenges are opportunities for growth, they are not meant to hold us down!

Looking through the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders), one would imagine that simply being human is an illness. For example: if you mourn the loss of a loved one for over a certain amount of time, you may be labeled as depressed and then put on medicationā€¦ so that you will no longer feel. Why? Donā€™t we, men and women, all have tear ducts? Tears are a reflection of the soul breathing out, of letting go. Imagine how it would be if we could be reassured that we will cry for as long as we need to, and when we have worked through the loss and the need is no longer there, we will simply stop crying. Perhaps we could choose to see tears asĀ enablersĀ that assist the soulā€™s recovery and digesting process.

As human beings we are creators, but, at times, we certainly can feel like victims. In my experience, we more or less consciously seek out challenges which stretch us to go beyond ā€˜our boxā€™. We are surrounded by, and certainly history is filled with, inspiring individuals who have made their way through unenviable and unbelievable hardship guided by the resilience of their Spirit.

A remarkable English doctor colleague referred to ā€œus doctorsā€ as ā€œthe pushers.ā€ Look at all the people addicted to pain pills, sleeping pills and other medications. Any addictive substance we take disempowers us at the expense of cultivating our own inner strength.

The subliminal message is: ā€œYou are a victim of life circumstancesā€¦ and you need me or this pill to fix you.ā€ Well, this fixing is not working! We are not machines! These psychotropic medications are turning too many of us into zombies. We are experiencing an addiction epidemic. Opioids, alcohol, sugar, and the prescribing of mind-altering psychotropic medications are causing chaos in our society. The spiritual essence of the human being is being eclipsed.

Iā€™m reminded of Henry David Thoreauā€™s quote, ā€œThe mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.ā€ Ask anyone wrestling under the influence of their medications how they feel. When we do not feel, then incredibly awful things can happen.

What are we doing to our people? Never before in the history of the world have so many people been so intensively medicated, via both legal and illegal drugs, as they are in the U.S. today. The United States accounts for about 4.4% of the global population and yet consumes more than 30% of the prescription opiate drugs in the world. Some estimate U.S. prescription opiate consumption to be as much as 80% of global demand.

What life have we created for our youth? Are we listening to them and helping them to connect with their divine, creative, resilient Self? How else will they develop the confidence to take on the challenges life presents?

An elderly, wise friend stated once: ā€œWhat sensitive, thoughtful person today would not be depressed?ā€ We have so much to transform. We have schools which are like prisons where our children do not thrive. Our prison system is punitive and has little belief or interest in transformation. We can feel paralyzed by the overwhelming challenges all around us, but the secret, I believe, is to get involved with whatever you feel needs transforming, find your colleagues and try as best you can to ā€˜walk the talkā€™. Remember, you never know when you might save a life simply by taking the time to be interested and to listen with your heart.

Please do not underestimate your efforts and your positive thoughtsā€¦ they are more powerful than you might imagine.

I want to believe that those struggling individuals for whom life became unbearable under the influence of medication cocktails have not died in vain. I have chosen to see their action as both a sacrifice and statement to all of us: ā€œWhen will you wake, for pityā€™s sake?ā€

Will we remember that a human being has a body, soul and spirit with an innate wisdom and, despite challenges, is always in the process of healing? Will we take the time to listen and support rather than shut up and medicate? Will we allow people to feel and work through challenges which belong to them? Can we be motivated and catalyzed to bring deep and lasting change enhancing what is respectfully humane?

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57 COMMENTS

  1. Interesting article.
    Unfortunately, and much as I would like it, they can’t yet find a hard and fast link between antipsychotics and suicide, or even between antidepressants and suicide except at dose changes. Don’t worry, psychiatry hasn’t nobbled me, I look everywhere for the link I think is there, and it was nearly there in carol couplands study, but not quite. I want this link nailed, maybe if the drug companies properly released their trial data it will become obvious.

    What we can insist on is honesty, now. So things like “you cannot recover without meds” and “it’s sadly a biochemical imbalance that the drugs correct” (verbatim quotations) stops right now. Next time a psychiatrist says that, anyone who is reading, ask for the evidence in print.

    • The studies are conducted mainly by drug companies and members of the psychiatric establishment. Would they even conduct such a study? And, if the results were unfavorable, would they publish them?

      James Holmes–the Batman movie shooter–murdered a bunch of people because he had been told he was incurably insane or “bipolar.” Of course mass murder was his (bad) choice. Suicide wasn’t dramatic enough for him perhaps.

      Since rejecting my own label I’m no longer suicidal. But when I was told my life was over at 20–no one could ever love me and I might never have a job, that I would have to take massive quantities of Haldol that made me seize and unable to enjoy anything…I wanted to die.

      Glad I resisted the urge. 25 years later I’m free.

    • I liked this blog, it nicely synopsizes what all of us here on MiA know is the truth about psychiatry. And the “mental health professionals” absolutely do still need to “wake up.” I’m working on a “Wake Up” painting right now, and will be putting it on coffee cups soon. In the hopes we can all work together to help wake up the sleeping masses, including our highly deluded “mental health professionals,” via the arts and direct to consumer fine art printing. Which hopefully might some day become mass marketing of our legitimate societal concerns. Thanks for speaking the truth, Beatrice.

      By the way, ConcernedCarer, I think the reality of akathisia is compelling evidence of harm, that results in suicides. And akethesia is created with the antipsychotics and antidepressants. In addition to anticholinergic toxidrome poisoning, which is also created with antipsychotics and/or antidepressants.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxidrome

      I mean, isn’t it only logical to believe that now that we have the medical proof that the antidepressants and antipsychotics make people “mad as a hatter”/ crazy likely to cause suicides? Especially when this known form of medical poisoning is always misdiagnosed, and fraudulently claimed to be a “lifelong, incurable, genetic illness,” because this known form of psychiatric drug induced crazy making poisoning, isn’t even listed in the DSM?

    • “Unfortunately, and much as I would like it, they canā€™t yet find a hard and fast link between antipsychotics and suicide, or even between antidepressants and suicide except at dose changes.”

      Crikey, I’m wondering why we bother. If CC – who must read all the information on akathisia – doesn’t get it what hope for getting the wider public to grasp it ?

      I’ll try once more….’hard and fast link’ = using pharmacogenetics to prove a person is toxic (akathisia/toxic psychosis). It seems the coroners make sure this doesn’t happen and the GP’s/ psychiatrists get away with it.

      Pharmacogenetics made easy:

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rskJYrQjy2c

      Kerry O’Malley: Community Treatment Orders and the Mental Health Tribunal and the use of pharmacogenetics to get her free of forced drugging:

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_ceMPjJyVY

      Adverse Reactions to Psychiatric Drugs: Yolande Lucire MBBS, Peter Breggin MD:

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IEoSs6Yo0DA

      • You bother because you are getting your point across, and I’ve got the point believe me, antidepressants will forever scare the cripes out of me based on experience. I also have enough evidence for my own conclusion, based on R Whitaker, P Goetzche and their sources. But, just as one example, Joanna Moncrieff seems unconvinced, and to convince more mainstream psychiatrists of anything it needs to be unequivocal proof battered into the frontal cortex from close range lol.

        I am starting to wonder if hardline biospychiatrists are reformable in the slightest. Their gloomy over-labelling and attribution of scientific failure to “treatment resistance” leaves little room for any optimism in the fact that only people get can themselves to a better place.

        Thats why I think you have to point out the dishonesty and get comprehensive informed consent and thereby enable people to reject bio psychiatry if they so wish.

        • CC – If a person has spent decades prescribing SSRI’s and just doesn’t think they do much – when in fact a science (pharmacogenetics) pretty much proves a specific percentage of a given community will not be able to metabolise the drugs correctly and therefore will become toxic – to actually face up to what they have done maywell be just too much for them come to terms with. They are also incentivised by being very well paid and – as it were – protected by the state. One might come to the conclusion that they are protecting their careers and their fellow prescribers/enforcers of neurotoxins. It’s just too appaling for them to do otherwise, so they continue and will continue until they are stopped.

          BUT would you agree it is vital THEY are MADE to come to terms with what they have done ? At worst this is utter extreme brain horror that has violently killed. Don’t be fooled by the word critical, in this context it really means hypocritical.

          • “THEY are MADE to come to terms with what they have done ? ”
            Its a good point you make StreetPhoto. I can’t begin to put myself in the mindset of those whose lives have been wrecked by psych drugs. I think I might just have dodged a bullet, but I’m still angry and sad. I do see the evidence of this damage all the time.

            For me we first of all have to try to rescue the future. But I totally understand those that want accountability for knowingly damaging patients. I hope none of that comes across the wrong way.

          • Streetphotobeing: “Donā€™t be fooled by the word critical, in this context it really means hypocritical.”

            Too true! All psychiatrists are mainstream psychiatrists, and they know well enough not stray too far from the party line, now more than ever in light of how Peter Gotzsche was targeted. Just listen to him…

            “If you get some influence, and if some people think that you have too much influence, you are a target all of the year round.”

            https://youtu.be/G2mFHHWyTrc?t=2835

        • to convince more mainstream psychiatrists of anything it needs to be unequivocal proof battered into the frontal cortex from close range lol

          And why on earth would you waste your time trying to convince psychiatrists to change, other than under threat of prosecution?

          • To try and make care better, more evidence based, honest and less damaging? For others as well as you and your family.

            If you aren’t trying to convince mainstream psychiatry to change, what are you actually trying to do?

            If – if – your aim is somehow to get psychiatry abolished and replaced by something else, how else would you achieve that without hard evidence?

            There is a substantial growing body of what you might call circumstantial evidence around suicide, as well as the whiff of a cover up and possible mechanisms, but I just don’t think it’s yet the smoking gun. What I’ve seen are ever ingenious ways of defending drugs so it’s a battle that constantly requires more and better ammunition.

          • If ā€“ if ā€“ your aim is somehow to get psychiatry abolished and replaced by something else

            Not replaced by something else, no. As for “evidence,” the proof is in the pudding.

          • @ConcernedCarer: “To try and make care better, more evidence based, honest and less damaging?”

            But Psychiatry is not evidence-based science, it is simply a hoax. You already know this, you said it yourself on Mad in the UK when you referenced the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale “The Emperor’s New Clothes”. How does the tale end? Not with everyone seeing the light and laughing, but with the naked Emperor saying “The Procession Must Go On!” – which it does…

            “And the lords of the bedchamber took greater pains than ever, to appear holding up a train, although, in reality, there was no train to hold.”

            Psychiatry is a hoax, psychiatrists have a vested interest in staying loyal to the hoax – they are the lords of the bedchamber taking great pains to hold up the non-existent train.

          • Any evidence–even the “hard” kind–is suppressed by the propaganda machine controlled by Pharma-Psychiatry. It’s hard to say neuroleptics cause OR prevent suicide.

            We’re dealing with what MIGHT have been. Not what actually has happened or is happening.

            But neuroleptics do make life unbearable. They motivated me to contemplate suicide, but I decided it was immoral. That’s what saved my life. Not the devil drugs!

          • @Auntie: Trust old Auntie to tell me off for being inconsistent!
            Look, we both agree that large sections of psychiatry are terminally off the rails, and I will never stop telling them that – directly. I will openly tell them that, no you cannot medicate someones thoughts and that no, Mirtazapine is probably not a safe drug for those at risk, that 0.30 is a very small number, and that yes, you can and should be able to recover on psychotherapy alone – especially if that is your wish.

            One day biopsychiatry, so sadly deluded, may be replaced by something else. But for now, to help ourselves and others, we work on aiding their retreat. So I’m all for battering away about the grotesque lack of informed consent, breached human rights under MHA, long term damage of antipsychotics, lack of respect, compassion and choice.

            He’s got no clothes but he is still the emperor and as is well known, you cannot shake someone out of a delusion overnight.

          • You don’t argue with evil emperors, you organize to overthrow them.

            And would you please stop saying “biopsychiatry”? Psychiatry is psychiatry, the rest is just p.r.

        • I’m sorry if you find me so annoying oldhead, I really am!
          I am quite new to this area, for most of life I didn’t know what on earth mental “illness” was and whether psychiatry even still existed. Well I am in at the deep end now – I’m aghast and up in arms at the biggest medical scam the world has ever seen, and feel nothing but compassion and sorrow for those that over decades have been so damaged, so cynically.

          As you have detected, I am for reform, not abolition. If we were starting again, maybe you wouldn’t have psychiatry at all. But I don’t have many decades left and we aren’t going to get rid of psychiatry quickly. We can get choice and informed consent, and enable people to choose for themselves whether they want to go the drug and biobabble route. I think I am just incrementalist, and you are big bang. I am for dismantling the strings holding this illusion up one by one.

          I think in the UK we already have some progress. A parliamentary committee is looking at the out of control epidemic of antidepressant prescribing and the statistics are looking more and more ridiculous. The new Mental Health Act is giving new powers to the patient and signalling the beginning of the end for Community Treatment Orders. There is a recognition that patients should be able to have choices in treatment with the right to refuse.

          So I’m going to continue prattling on about the total BS and pressure that psychiatrists put on vulnerable people to take these experimental and largely useless drugs. So keep the volume on full, I think people are starting to listen. Did you see that Sir Robin Murray, legendary schizophrenia researcher, as well as having a bit of a volte-face about the causes of psychosis, as he now prefers to call it, also called for psychiatrists to read Mad In America? I don’t think anything like that’s happened before.

          • Reform, eh? Is that more restrictions and human rights violations, or less? Legislators, in their eagerness to pass forced treatment laws, restrict human behavior, and curtail civil liberties, think they are for reform, too. When it comes to deprivation of liberty, and other human rights violations, I kind of think we need to go whole hog (i.e. abolish them). In other words, although a lesser wrong is better than a more serious wrong, a lesser wrong is still a wrong, and something that I would like to see corrected, not excused. Reform is an excuse for harm, that is all, the only argument, if the argument is reformist, concerns the matter of level or degree of harm perpetuated. Abolish harm, and then you’re talking.

          • I’m an abolitionist, but I see where you’re coming from CC.

            You’re wrongfully imprisoned for a crime you haven’t committed. Should you ask for more humane treatment at the hands of the jailers? Or hold out for being released? A lot of us circumnavigate the system by escaping.

            It’s hard persuading people the drugs don’t work–that is helping otherwise dangerous lunatics to lead happy, productive lives. Or that the “diagnoses” are themselves the stigmata branded on innocent citizens by self appointed moral judges/priests/prophets. Aka shrinks.

            On the other hand if people find out about sexual abuse, physical abuse, or starvation and other deprivations forced on the imprisoned they will sometimes speak out against it. Many pro psychiatry friends agree when I tell them rape is common in psych settings.

    • The mantra of the survivor community may as well be: “Recovery begins with NON-COMPLIANCE!”….
      The LIES of the pseudoscience drug racket and means of social control known as “psychiatry” destroyed what should have been the best 20+ years of my life. I will NEVER go back. The past 20+ years psych-free just keep getting better. Even though I keep getting older and grayer!
      About so-called “anti-depressants”, I was on both of the supposed “anti-depressants” Zoloft and Wellbutrin, for over a year each, while working with a licensed clinical psychologist, and a friendly General Practitioner Family doctor to write the scripts. Big waste of time and money. The ONLY real “effect”, or side-effect, that I noticed was I found myself just generally thinking about the broad topic of “suicide” more often. I was never anywhere near “suicidal”, only that I would think about it more than I did before, or have since. Working through a lot of childhood abuse issues, and my own stupid mistakes was the big key to my recovery. It’s when I learned to look at *RELATIONSHIPS*, and began to understand family dynamics, that things began to click. To the extent that I ever really was “suicidal”, the ABUSE and NEGLECT of the whole “mental illness system” is what made me despair and contemplate suicide. No “double-blind”, “placebo-controlled” “study” could ever prove that to me. But, *ALL* of the mass-casualty school shooters who then committed suicide, were on psych drugs. I dare you to find one that wasn’t, and let the exception prove the rule….

      • Yes. Thoreau once said his biggest life regret was that he had behaved so well. My biggest regret is trusting and obeying my doctors. I despise not just psychiatry but legitimate medical professionals now. They know this is going on but are fine with people being maimed and killed. Shame on the medical profession!

  2. Interesting. I’ve taken to what is perhaps a natural course of acceptance bred through loss, hurt and bereavement for the lost lives of my CPS cohorts.

    Nowadays I see walking the journey with death and dying slightly differently. To accept one’s death and then to live accordingly relieves one of expectations and false truths perhaps.

    There is the inherent right of the individual to opt-out and we must honor that separate in how it will effect you, others. That is our right.

    Thanks,

    Jen

  3. When I attempted Suicide twice in the early 1980s while in a state of Acute Akathisia, I had no choice whatsoever.

    I practically broke into the Psychiatric Unit at Galway, Southern Ireland in 1984 – because I was in danger of attempting to kill myself for a third time (in a state of acute akathisia).

    When I tried to come of the drugs (that I had refused to begin with in 1980) I found I couldn’t, because my brain had been Broken through drug exposure.

    But I successfully withdrew eventually through a careful drug taper and an “Epiphany” in 1984. And my Suicide Attempts, my Hospitalizations, and my Psychiatrc Disability ended.

    My “Epiphany” involved recognising the dynamic of my Anxiety, and that I could do something about it.

    In the “Power of the Now” Eckhart Tolle describes his own enlightenment (and freedom from anxiety and depression) in very simple and understandable terms.

    This wisdom can be found inexpensively in many different spiritual pathways, in a wait and see manner.

      • I have noticed that, too. “Chicago Med” also shows people magically coming around within seconds or minutes of an injection, and also asserts that they can determine if someone is a “sociopath” by looking at a brain scan, which is, of course, utter blather.

        On the other hand, “New Amsterdam” ran a show where a kid’s difficulties were proven to be severely exacerbated by a school psychiatrist putting him on antipsychotics and completely ignoring the context of his distress. The hospital psychiatrist took on the school psych and assumed some personal risk to his job in order to prove that bullying and the loss of his dad were the real issues for this kid and start him on the path of feeling heard and cared about. I wrote the network to let them know how much I appreciated their raising this issue in such a clear manner. It gave me a little hope!

        • One thing I like about most Law and Order episodes, they don’t always wind things up with “the schizophrenic did it.”

          Of course as many here would agree, categorizing someone as permanently “schizophrenic” is itself problematic and dehumanizing. As angry as I am about NAMI influencing Ron Howard to insert a pro drug message in A Beautiful Mind (not to mention they fudged on many important facts) it was refreshing to see a sympathetic portrayal of someone written off as “crazy” and hopeless.

          When I found later that John Nash recovered because he did not take drugs for more than a few months I was ticked!

        • The hospital psychiatrist took on the school psych and assumed some personal risk to his job in order to prove that bullying and the loss of his dad were the real issues for this kid and start him on the path of feeling heard and cared about.

          See, the good psychiatrist makes everything ok in the end, yay for the good psychiatrist! šŸ™‚

          Isn’t this sort of like the film Mississippi Burning, where the FBI agents turn out to be the heroes of the Civil Rights Movement (presumably before moving on to assassinate MLK)?

          • According to Viktor Frankl, some of the folks running the concentration camp took compassion on him. Not all antebellum slave owners were Simon Legree. This still doesn’t justify the corrupt systems.

          • I know what you’re saying. My comment was not to suggest that New Amsterdam “got it right,” but my utter surprise at the very fact they brought up the possibility that the drug might be the problem and that communicating with compassion might be the solution. It is quite a contrast to the idea that brain scans can predict “sociopathic” behavior, or that the reason people are being violent is because they are “off their meds.”

            Of course, the psychiatrist is totally unrealistic – they don’t much exist in the real world. But the show DID show a psychiatrist doing evil due to laziness and making excuses based on “lack of resources” – very real representations of what happens in most situations involving psychiatry or other “mental health” systems (not to mention the school system itself).

        • okay, who remembers the show Mental? It only lasted for one season, I suspect because the main protagonist (psychiatrist) treated his patients like people who were capable of participating in their own care, and he resisted the use of drugs and force. I thought his unorthodox approaches were fantastic but apparently there is not enough drama for the appetites of the American public when people are depicted as being treated humanely and then responding positively to humane and caring approaches. What a sad state of affairs.

          • A lot of people not involved in the MI System confuse psychiatrists with psychologists. They’re mentally frozen in the 1960’s.

            I have a hard time explaining to the (lucky) uninitiated that the two are totally different. Shrinks often make small talk but it’s no more relevant to the course of action they take than a kidney specialist’s would be. On the other hand, the kidney specialist who started randomly prescribing drugs and surgeries without running tests would be viewed with suspicion.

          • I suspect because the main protagonist (psychiatrist) treated his patients like people who were capable of participating in their own care, and he resisted the use of drugs and force.

            People probably considered that too wildly unbelievable and unrealistic to accept, even as a melodramatic fantasy.

  5. I like the article, too, but I wish that it could also talk about challenges of people being severely harmed by prescribed benzodiazepine tranquilizers and the brave souls who are trying to become free of these chemicals while enduring the suffering that is incredibly horrific. No, these people are not zombies. They feel such strong emotions through the process of reaching towards living a chemical-free life, yet an outside observer (often a doctor) just looks at them as just a “bit depressed” and a “bit agitated”. I wish the doctors actually listened and understood that people can feel so horribly overstimulated on the inside from the med withdrawal, while appearing more calm on the outside. The inner world can be far more searing and volcanic than any doctor or a psychiatrist is even mentally capable of imagining.

      • Lupus, MS, Fibromyalgia, CFS/ME Dysautonomia/POTS, Lyme, and yes, those in drug withdrawal, the invisible disability community would really like people to stop asking ā€œwhatā€™s wrong with you anyway?ā€ Itā€™s a regular challenge with a service dog now because I am nearly daily asked by well meaning people who I am training my dog for and I get looks of shock whe I say she is for me. My favorite response Iā€™ve ever seen to ā€œBut you donā€™t look sickā€ is ā€œAnd you donā€™t look like an idiot but I guess things even out.ā€

        • I have a lot of those symptoms. I still can’t work after 15 months drug free. So I tell folks who inquire I suffer from CFS. Way less stigma there than any mental labels. And honestly I no longer have the “symptoms” of my so-called life long mental disorders since tapering off the drugs and rejecting my label. The cocktail was causing my mood swings, my label gave me a reputation to live down to, and my self loathing (insight) led me to act the role of madwoman.

        • Fibro, Autoimmune, CFS/ME, POTS, dysautonomia, chronic pain – can all be caused by drug withdrawal.

          Rachel, I did the CFS thing, too. Or Fibro. “Oh, I’m sorry” folks would say. Much easier than explaining how doctors ruined me. I’m healed, but not nearly as functional as “normals.”

          And how often I bite my tongue when I see my friends, family, community subjecting themselves to “treatment” (of any kind).

          • Most of my problems are caused by candida. If I can cure this horrible infection plaguing me since I began the taper in March of 2016 I will feel much better and be able to work 20-25 hours a week from home. Enough to afford my own place in Indiana. No more HUD slums or sponging off relatives. šŸ™‚

  6. “As human beings we are creators, but, at times, we certainly can feel like victims. In my experience, we more or less consciously seek out challenges which stretch us to go beyond ā€˜our boxā€™. We are surrounded by, and certainly history is filled with, inspiring individuals who have made their way through unenviable and unbelievable hardship guided by the resilience of their Spirit.”

    Yes, and so to know our spirit is to know our truth, unfolding from moment to moment, and that is our own personal GPS in life.

  7. “Not many people know that indeed there is a choice. There are legitimate ways to work through, understand and digest the debilitating and traumatic challenges that come with simply being human. But one needs to be proactive, humble and willing to break old patterns including unhelpful self images.”

    Please don’t trade psychiatric propaganda for psychological industry propaganda, they’re equally smacking with abusive victim blaming. People are more than willing to be “proactive, humble, and willing to break old patterns”. Psychiatrists are predators who actively take advantage of coming across falsely as if they were a form of “help” in exactly this manner. You are complicit in blaming psych victims for injuries, drugging, explotation, etc. We aren’t victims of the psych industry because we were too “weak” to want to better our lives through action. We are victims of the psych industry because the violent quacks lied to us and said that getting addicted to their poisons, blindly believing their ideology, and getting locked up in their prisons was equivalent to bettering our lives through taking action.

    • Yes Survivingthesystem.

      See your shrink to adjust your poisons every 3 months. (Always upping the dose. Never lowering it.)

      Go to Preschool for Grown-Ups (AKA day treatment or clubhouse) 3 times a week for lectures on how messed up you are and how you BETTER TAKE your “MEDS.”

      Once or twice a month a fruitless visit with a therapist. Some want to help and get frustrated. Telling folks how broken and hopeless they are and filling them with neurotoxins.

      But the psycho-therapist is a tool of the system. Questioning orders can get you fired. Better yell at the consumed for not trying hard enough–if you know they’re poison compliant.

      Like asking someone to run laps with a ball and chain under the belief these devices help them walk upright. Stupid stuff!