Outside of the lives of those of us who have experienced it, it is little known what a life of poverty and “mental illness” can do to a person. After experiencing terrible credit-card debt with an insufficient income, I began taking antidepressants after a suicide attempt. After eight years on Zoloft, my psychiatrist switched me to Lexapro, which made me psychotic. This got me committed to a mental hospital, where I was forced to take psychiatric drugs against my will and where I began receiving SSI Disability, which pays below the poverty line. Such experiences of “mental illness” and financial hardship lead to lives of isolation in many ways.
I haven’t been able to go out to dinner with the few friends that I do have for years because of my financial situation. All I do, for the most part, is go to the grocery store and to the psychiatric clinic and try to write something worth reading. This is long before the coronavirus appeared.
Psychiatric drugs are believed to shorten people’s life span by 15 to 25 years. Antipsychotics are considered especially dangerous. I have taken antipsychotics for almost a decade. I have always worried about my elderly parents dying. My older sister died when she was nine-and-a-half and I was seven, so I have long known how precarious life is. These new fears people are experiencing about losing loved ones and their own mortality are not new to me.
People’s newfound anxiety and depression, which can result from isolation, are common among the poor in America, especially those of us who have had the misfortune of falling into the grip of the mental health industry. The recent $2 trillion-dollar federal bailout offers financial benefits only to taxpayers and newly unemployed workers. The very poor, often those of us who have been entangled in the mental health industry, get nothing. Big corporations felt needy and wanted financial help. They got it. Why not, instead, get them to take antidepressants and therapy as I was told to do when I first started having significant financial problems? This pandemic, and the bailout package, have been predicted to widen America’s already stark wealth divide.
As for spiritual crises, newly alienated Christians have a community to return to when this is all over. The mainstream churches that I have experienced mostly cater to the middle and greater classes. They are not a source of comfort and community for people who do not fit in.
One thing I know from my experiences with the mental health industry is that it is the last place people should look to in dealing with this pandemic. Anyone experiencing financial hardship should be helped financially. The fact that that isn’t happening speaks to the disordered values of our country. This pandemic is making known both good and ugly truths about who people really are.
Some people becoming newly acquainted with life online and through their phones are having difficulty adjusting. For psychiatric survivors, this is often one of the few resources we have ever had. We who have internet access and a phone are the lucky ones. Many poor “mentally ill” people have no such luxuries. The very poor, “mentally ill” or not, have no such thing.
The rich, the middle-class, and people with lively communities—normal people—have long had lives filled with personal meaning. One of the worst things that the mental health industry has largely done to me and has long wanted to do to an even greater extent, is to rob so much of my life of meaning. I have been entangled with the industry for nearly two decades, and those decades have been largely wasted. Instead of meaning, the industry gives people psychiatric drugs, therapy, and a role as a mental patient. It is within that framework that you are expected to merely exist.
As I have been so suppressed and oppressed by the psychiatric drugs, my role as a life-long mental patient, and financial difficulties, I have long tried to find meaning in little things. A little volunteer work for the truly destitute. Helping my parents. Through prayer and faith. And now, with my writing.
Now that I am finally, gradually, starting to come off of psychiatric drugs with the hope of a better life, I face a daunting task. How do you begin a life when you are older? So many lost opportunities. Decades that can never be brought back to life. People who experience only temporary hardship as a result of the coronavirus are the lucky ones.
I have, to some extent, become accustomed to isolation. I like to read and write despite nearly two decades of psychiatric drug use. There are others who have been caught up in psychiatric treatment who are not even so fortunate. I have a friend who has long been enmeshed with the mental health industry. She used to be a voracious reader, but no longer has the attention span to do such things. This is likely because of psychiatric treatment.
There is such shame and social punishment around experiencing extreme states of mind and being given a psychiatric label that is itself profoundly isolating. This is a kind of isolation that people who are merely practicing social distancing will probably never know.
Caroline, thank you for this piece.
There is a lot of similarity between virus and psychiatry.
Psychiatry robbed you a chunk of your life, but just to let you know that many people
look back and realize a piece of their life could have been written in a different way.
I too can look back and I used to, but I also am glad to have made the discoveries.
The discovery of how easily we can be misled, lied to, and how we can live that lie.
You were misled, but could only find that out through witness, or else we would be promoting the lie.
We are ALL part of change, it’s a natural way of things. Sometimes the lessons suck.
Report comment
Thank you for your kind words. Yes, I suppose we have all learned important lessons. My hope is that our knowledge will eventually enter into the mainstream.
Report comment
Hi Caroline.
I am less lonely practicing social distancing than I was in certain situations. Like being surrounded by people who regard me as an ogre. AKA severely mentally ill.
You can be very alone in a crowd.
Psychiatry robbed my life of meaning too. Here’s a link to check out. Copy and paste if you can’t click. https://lookingupliving.wordpress.com/2019/08/21/the-cult/
I want to read your book. Nobody in mainstream churches I have attended knows the truth about the “chemical imbalances” or how psychiatric drugs really work. Or even how they test you for a “severe mental illness.”
People are being maimed, segregated,, forced to live in poverty and dying young. They could know–if they cared to. 🙁
Report comment
Thank you so much for your kind and empathetic words. Your story is wonderful, but I am so very sorry for all that you have endured. I would most definitely like the opportunity to truly educate Christians about what a huge scam psychiatry is. Too many fall for it. I have read many Christian articles about “How should the church minister to the mentally ill?” As if we are somehow a subset of humanity. I am hoping with my book to articulate a more human approach to all people, an approach that I see as being more in line with Jesus.
Report comment
How should the church minister to the mentally ill?
There’s a guy round the corner from me who is building this huge boat. I walk past him every day and he keeps banging on about how I should get down on my knees and worship the one true God, blah blah blah. He also reckons it’s going to rain for forty days and nights waaaaa It’s Australia Mate, are you totally nuts?
So anyway, I’ve arranged to have him spiked with benzos and were going to have the cops drag him off to a mental institution and have him ‘treated’ with some dribble therapy.
I’d tell you more but I need to check the weather and see if it’s going to be good for golf on Sunday lol
Report comment
Don’t forget the guy who lives all alone in the outback. He wears nothing but a poncho from a square of tent canvas with a leather strap holding it together. Eats nothing but insects and honey he finds in the wild.
Every now and then he wanders into town yelling, “Repent!”
We don’t need to manipulate King Herod into cutting his head off anymore. Thanks to the miracles of modern medicine we can make this prophet as good as dead. Locked up forever and silenced.
Report comment
Sometimes Rachel777 only a song will do 🙂
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QrY9eHkXTa4
Report comment
Hi boans,
I have read and enjoyed many of your comments on this website. You are quite right about how the church deals with the “mentally ill.” Churches are lacking in so many areas, and personally, I do not feel that everyone needs to believe in any kind of a God. So many people have been harmed by churches too, and “Christians.” I feel very strongly that people who feel the need to force their faith on others have some kind of a serious problem. Why isn’t it enough to believe what you believe without needing others to do the same? It can be even worse within churches where there is such strong pressure to conformity. Conformity to what, exactly? Does everyone need to be alike? Isn’t it our uniqueness and our diversity that is humanity’s strength?
And I am so sorry for all that you have been through with the “mental health” industry.
Report comment
Hi Caroline
“I feel very strongly that people who feel the need to force their faith on others have some kind of a serious problem. Why isn’t it enough to believe what you believe without needing others to do the same?”
This is so true of the religion of psychiatry. It reminds me of the experiment with the two men who thought they were Jesus. Putting two or more psychiatrists in a room and they still don’t see that one of them must be wrong lol.
My feelings are that I am no more than a Messenger and a Warner. It’s not up to me to force you to do anything, but the consequences of failing to heed the warnings are serious.
I know those of my faith are constantly reminded of the consequences of negligence, fraud and slander (back biting), the pillars of psychiatric gaslighting. And sure, I’d like the punishments to be delivered immediately, but I need to hold onto the promise that has been made to me that it will happen in His time, not mine. But it will happen, of that i’m sure.
The stick and the snake is to me a warning regarding imposters. Their ‘tricks’ swallowed up by the real thing. “God heals, the doctor just collects the fees” and takes credit for someone elses work. Is it any wonder they think they ARE Jesus casting out the demons into swine?
The joke might be on me, but the delusions are firmly theirs. Anyhow, I must get out of this rain 🙂
Report comment
Those who need to convince others to agree with their beliefs clearly are lacking real conviction in what they say they believe in. If you really feel certain something is true, the fact that someone else doesn’t agree with you is of very limited importance!
Report comment
True Steve, as long as your not imposing those beliefs on others through force. Ie disagreeing with someone does not require setting them up to be subjected to torture and kidnapping disguised as medicine Though I know one clinic here that provides this service for a very inexpensive fee.
Might I just add that what has been done to me can not be undone. My intent has always been to expose these individuals who are subjecting some very vulnerable people to vicious abuses. And they are receiving protection in that abuse, from the likes of the Operations Manager who fuking destroys anyone who complains regarding their ‘service’.
Okay, if you wish to call me insane, thats fine. Its also independent of what I am asserting. And here’s the kicker, they investigated my claim and found …….? And rather than have the truth known they have fuking destroyed me and my family, and enabled further abuses by these emboldened organised criminals. And it is known that they KNEW this was what they were doing.
So what about the people who have been harmed since? Will they accept responsibility for the damage and deaths that have occurred as a result of their cover ups? No, in fact they double down and cover up their poor cover up, and learn what not to do in future.
And I just feel so bad about being ‘disabled’ in not being able to help those people who are still being harmed by these criminals. And I watch good people turn away rather than point out to the Emperor that he is naked. They disgust me yes, but that also isn’t related to the facts.
Nine years to sort this out? Maybe, if the pile of bodies is large, then their is a lot of work to be done to conceal the truth, and ensure that justice is not served. One would need to be really careful not to get caught concealing the evidence right?
I can not tell you how it felt to hear from ‘patients’ about the abuses being dished out by this Operations Manager and how they were not being heard. I, in my foolishness thought I would be listened to. Only as much as they needed to know how to fuking destroy me is all. Lure with bait (formal investigation will surely reveal my truth?) and then strike with chaos ( exploit his phobias, destroy his family and friendships with slander and fraud etc).
Hands up those who support these measures to maintain the reputation of the good people at the hospital? oh well, we didn’t know that was what they were doing. I have told you and you chose to conceal the truth. A band aid over a skin cancer is not a cure.
And of course once you know that the people responsible and with a duty to act are in on the ‘game’, it becomes quite disheartening. Some day someone is going to actually look at what I have from the Chief Psychiatrist and the Minister and realise what it actually means. They knew and were derelict in their duty to protect. Not that it matters when they can rewrite the law to suit their purposes, and not need Parliaments approval for that. Sounds insane? I agree, but are you prepared to look? Because the police turn anyone with proof of crimes committed by these people away with claims they dont have a copy of the Criminal Code and “it might be best I don’t know about that”. And so it spreads………..
Imagine how that Community Nurse feels. He tortures and kidnaps someone, uses police to assist in those crimes, and then has public officers conceal his crimes and tell him ‘naughty naughty, don’t do it too often or we will all look bad’. Of course we can soften the blow for the public by calling the torture ‘treatment’ and the kidnapping ‘referral’ as has been done by our current Minister who likes to slander anyone who doesn’t agree with his spin on the truth. He is concealing criminal acts by suggesting anyone who is a victim requires ‘treatment’, thus enabling the use of State sanctioned torture in our locked wards.
This along with his dismantling of the legal requirements for reporting of prescriptions for Dexies to allow doctors to conceal their drug dealing one begins to wonder who has him in their pockets, and why?
Report comment
Hi boans,
I definitely agree with you about the “religion” of psychiatry, more like a cult. As it is not rooted in legitimate science, what else can it be called? If it weren’t for the use of force, intimidation, and political power, where would mainstream psychiatry be today? So many have been deceived and forced into psychiatry with sometimes disastrous results. I like to think that God can bring good even out of bad. If Jesus were alive in America today, he probably wouldn’t be crucified, but locked up and drugged for having delusions of grandeur and persecution.
Report comment
Psychiatry serves as a religion for western liberals who consider themselves too sophisticated and enlightened to allow any recognition of spirituality. It provides a mythology via which they can participate in human bonding of sorts without fearing that they will be called “irrational,” because after all it’s “science.” 🙂
Thanks for the article.
And Steve, what’s with all the italics?
Report comment
“If the real Jesus Christ were to stand up today
He’d be gunned down cold by the CIA”
Matt Johnson The The Armageddon Days Are Here (Again).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lel0PzhU6Pk
We’re not alone.
Report comment
The CIA doesn’t gun people down so much these days. They have accidents, diseases, or mysteriously disappear.
Report comment
Antipsychotics and other psychotropic drugs increased your chance of getting pneumonia by 2-3.5 times. They increase respiratory disease an death. Reports are people taking these drugs are getting hit harder by the Coronavirus. The drugs will kill even more people with help from a virus.
Report comment
I was aware that antipsychotics could cause respiratory problems, but did not know the specifics. I do certainly hope for the healing of all who get the coronavirus, and I continually pray for an end to the pandemic.
Report comment
And because they are “mentally ill” and “defective” they will be given low priority as far as medical treatment goes. Along with the elderly.
At least that’s what my brother reports from his home in Massachusetts. As far as the elderly goes. Though that usually includes the disabled.
I am disabled. At first it was a GI issue and symptoms of an autoimmune disease. Now I am experiencing symptoms associated with conditions like MS. Pretty scary. And they’re the long term effects of psychiatric drugs. I have no doubt of that. Nor do I doubt that any doctor will deny this ugly truth.
Makes me skeptical about this Covid 19 thing altogether, knowing that doctors lie whenever convenient. Could this be a ploy by Big Pharma to make billions with a vaccine with little real value? I am sure the disease is real, it’s very contagious, and kills people. But I also think the mortality rates are inflated. How much I have no idea.
I recommend practicing social distancing as they advise. But, because of my experiences with the medical system, I am very skeptical of anything that receives this much publicity on television. Especially a lot of experts–in politics and showmanship more than medicine–spouting off SCIENCE STUFF.
Dr. Fauci and other high ranking, celebrity shock docs have been found making faulty predictions of mortality rates–if not deliberately skewing the numbers. Incompetence at best.
He also has made some stupid statements about how unless the infection rate from the virus falls to 0 we can not end the lockdown for anyone.
Fauci claims we should all stay locked up for at least a year. Homelessness and starvation don’t exist in his Reality it seems. Finally his medical brethren and the Big Pharma messiahs will provide our salvation in vaccine form.
Of course once the vaccine comes out, any infections or deaths from Covid 19 in the vaccinated won’t count. Just like all the times you catch the flu after getting vaccinated at work. Or get depressed on an SSRI.
No vaccine is 100% effective. Especially regarding as far as viruses go. But that doesn’t matter because the AMA and Big Pharma will be Heroes and cash in on the illusion of security.
Just like shrinks who claim to save the world from the mythical monsters they create.
Actually fortune telling and sooth saying fall into the realm of mysticism. Not science. So beware of doctors giving numbers to hypothetical scenarios with high levels of assurance.
Like the movie 101 Cloverfield Lane we have no choice but to trust those claiming to help us. For now.
(And if you see the movie, you’ll know that while John Goodman is the bad guy there really is something out there. So please keep social distancing. And wash your hands.)
Report comment
I have been social distancing and washing my hands, as recommended, and I have begun wearing a mask, as recently recommended, in case I have it, so that I do not give it to anyone. I think you are wise to be weary of the medical profession and pharmaceutical industry as a whole. With my cocktail of psychiatric medications, I developed very high cholesterol, so my doctor put me on Lipitor, a statin. For two years, I became too afraid to drive at night. My Dad kept wanting me to get off of statins, but I wouldn’t, because I thought I wasn’t having any side effects. I finally googled it, and found out that Lipitor can impair night vision, so I quit taking it immediately. I have driven at night a few times since then, but am still very nervous about it.
I am so sorry about all of you iatrogenic harm from psychiatric drugs. I too have many health problems that I did not have before. One of the problems that most bothers me is my lack of energy. I am hoping that once I am completely off of medication, that my energy can return.
Report comment
Well Rachel, I know for sure that a few high ranking people sick with the virus, will get preferred care.
People with health issues or those deemed too wretched will absolutely not get the care.
The medical system is as crooked as psychiatry now.
I know that we have a virus. We also had a Spanish flu. What is happening in response to this virus is new.
And I think the response of the people, how easy they are to control will be etched in their gate keepers memories, and become another habit.
The gate keepers will ask for more and more rights to control.
I doubt this is a good new normal. I worry about the young ones, the kindergarten kids, what message are they getting? Parents are not aware that the young ones listen. No kid understands this new law.
I don’t think it’s a conspiracy, I think people just unconsciously and subconsciously end up using negative events to help themselves. But the deal is, when gatekeepers create new ways of living for people, not just the vulnerable remain vulnerable.
Report comment
I wish I had time to go through whether the Euthanasia Act could be used to finish someone off with the virus. From what was discussed in the newspapers it would certainly be possible. And of course anyone who has been the subject of psychiatric ‘care’ knows all about ‘informed consent’. That’s something the doctor keeps with his pet unicorn.
Report comment
“I think people just unconsciously and subconsciously end up using negative events to help themselves.” Given the well known quote by Rahm Emanuel, “You never let a serious crisis go to waste. And what I mean by that it’s an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before.”
I’m pretty certain that some people also consciously utilize crises to perpetrate acts, which benefit themselves, at the detriment of the majority. And if more than one person is involved in such opportunistic behavior, it would technically be considered a “conspiracy,” given the definition of conspiracy.
So those who claim conspiracies never happen are stupid, conspiracies happen all the time. For goodness sakes, there would be no such thing as class action lawsuits, if corporations didn’t regularly, systemically “conspire” against people.
Report comment
I found it interesting that the ability to conspire was opened up by labelling one person ‘patient’ in a scenario involving a hospital and family members of the ‘identified patient’.
Things that would be considered serious criminal offences all of a sudden become lawful. Imagine a situation where you could get together with a group of people and sit and plan to ‘spike’ someones drink with benzos, then armed with pistols snatch the person out of their bed, and take them to a shed where you can plug them into an electric socket in the wall until they admit that they are ‘sick’.
Then consider what is being done to people we call ‘mental patients’. Change that status and the Chief Psychiatrist and Law Enforcement see it as being somehow different. We, on the other hand observing the conduct from ‘inside’ see it as what it is. The claims of ‘needle rape’, ‘assault’ etc dismissed by those with a “sophisticated knowledge of the law”. Much like the Jews saw themselves as humans despite the loopholes created by the National Socialists to allow ‘delousing’. Move along, the complaint box is outside the showers, lodge your complaint there.
Positively fascinating that they see themselves as doing good work, despite the rather stomach turning nature of their ‘medicine’.
Report comment
“This pandemic is making known both good and ugly truths about who people really are.”
I couldn’t agree more Caroline. I do wonder though if we are looking at TWO pandemics? One related to a virus, and the second related to the fear created via the media and politicians surrounding that virus?
For example, when 9/11 happened there was a real threat and then the imaginary fear surrounding that threat exploited by those in positions to do so?
Terrorists, virus ….. what matters is how the fear is managed and exploited. The Power of Nightmares. The mental health industry gearing up for a flood of new ‘cases’.
“The rich, the middle-class, and people with lively communities—normal people—have long had lives filled with personal meaning.”
Can’t say I agree with this though. But i’d rather be the person who saves a child from being run over by a Porsche, than the person who owns it. The good deeds go with me into the hole in the ground, the Porsche won’t fit.
Good luck on your journey.
Report comment
Exactly some of us live in social isolation hard not to say welcome t o my world everyone… I do not go out go on holiday,go to dinner, travel how sad….and I have done that for the right reasons… And do I miss any of that superficial rubbish . No I don’t …
Report comment
I am glad to hear that you are doing well, in spite of social isolation, and that you do not miss any of that rubbish.
Report comment
Hi Caroline,
Psychiatric Drugs are certainly not good for a person’s health and I thought I would never get off them, but I did.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4118946/
I’m enjoying the isolation of the Corona Virus at the moment, I’m trying to get back into running in the park, and the temperature is 25 degrees Celsius today in London.
I know lots of people who redesigned their lives after
long breaks and very long breaks and in advancing years.
Even today I find the ignorance around psychiatric drugs, “diagnosis” and “Mental Health” really frustrating.
Thanks for the great Article.
Report comment
I am glad that you are enjoying the isolation. Thank you for your encouragement about the possibility of redesigning my life. I like to think that things may get better. I like to hope.
I am so happy that you enjoyed my article. Thank you.
Report comment
Caroline,
I really appreciate and relate to your article. I was trapped in the MH system for 25 years and at one point on a cocktail of more than 10 different ‘psycho’tropics, simply because I was depressed after surviving childhood sexual abuse and trafficking.
I am now off all of their toxic crap, and my brain is functioning much better. Slowly I am building a life.
Thank you for sharing your story.
Report comment
LaDonna,
I am so glad that you appreciate and relate to my article. I am also happy to hear that you are building a life. Your story gives me hope, that I too may one day be able to build a life, especially once through with all of these medications.
I had also suffered many difficulties, including sexual trauma, that probably helped me lean into the direction of the mental health industry. They present themselves as healers, and that was what I was expecting and hoping for. I hope that more psychiatric survivor stories can come out to warn people about the dangers of entering into the system.
Report comment
I completely agree.
Report comment
I don’t blame you. The system is extremely convincing. I’m even almost taken in myself when I watch the ‘caring promotions’ on television.
Report comment
Thank you, Fiachra, for your kind and empathetic words. I greatly appreciate not being blamed for what happened to me. I totally agree that it is extremely convincing–seemingly benign offers of “help, understanding, compassion,” etc.
Report comment
I wish there was a “like” button on this website… so many great comments and articles.
Report comment
You must be used to Facebook — a good habit to break.
Report comment
Thanks for sharing your story, Caroline. And I agree, those of us who’ve had the misfortune of dealing with the “mental health” system have been taught not to trust in doctors, and have been taught to be more critical of the current systems. Thus we do tend to choose our friends carefully and prefer to work independently.
I’m an artist who already works from home, so the current “crisis” hasn’t affected me too much, other than my mom’s retirement community is on lock down, and my children are studying and working from home. But, hey, art is great therapy, so I probably should do a Covid19 piece, based upon all this mainstream media “terror, terror, terror.”
Right now, however, I’m working on a ‘Moving Forward, But Not Without Both Tears of Joy and Sadness’ piece, after largely finishing my anti-psychiatry/anti-child abuse artwork. Artwork of which the “mental health” workers are terrified. Since my work paints a picture of the “mental health” workers, and the religions who bought into their systemic child abuse covering up system, by “too truthfully” depicting their systemic, child abusing and child abuse covering up crimes.
https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2019/01/23/18820633.php?fbclid=IwAR2-cgZPcEvbz7yFqMuUwneIuaqGleGiOzackY4N2sPeVXolwmEga5iKxdo
https://www.madinamerica.com/2016/04/heal-for-life/
https://books.google.com/books?id=xI01AlxH1uAC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false
I hope some day both the “mental health” workers and the mainstream religions, who bought into the psychologists’ and psychiatrists’ BS DSM “bible,” will choose to repent, and get out of the multibillion dollar business, primarily of covering up child abuse. Which is the actual primary function, by DSM design, of today’s scientifically “invalid” “mental health” industry.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/your-child-does-not-have-bipolar-disorder/201402/dsm-5-and-child-neglect-and-abuse-1
https://www.nimh.nih.gov/about/directors/thomas-insel/blog/2013/transforming-diagnosis.shtml
God bless, and I hope you are able to escape the “mental health” system some day. I’m glad it has not destroyed your creative talents, I had to escape. But do know a drug withdrawal induced super sensitivity manic psychosis wasn’t detrimental to me, other than my idiot husband thought it meant I should be hospitalized because we hadn’t been forewarned about such things, by the doctors who weaned me off the drugs. The drug withdrawal induced manic psychosis functioned as my born again experience which, as a Christian, was fine with me. But this does mean drug withdrawal issues may not be bad in your case either, especially since you’ve been forewarned about such. God bless, and thanks for sharing your story.
Report comment
Hi Someone Else,
Thank you for your kind words. Sometimes I think that creative, sensitive people, especially those of us who have experienced trauma, are more likely to get sucked into the mental health industry, as we can recognize that not all is well with the world, or even ourselves.
I am so happy to hear that you have been able to work creatively during this pandemic. Excellent Q and A about Freud and the terrible emotional violence that has been done to survivors of abuse by those who were supposed to help them. I hadn’t really known how widespread the cover-up was.
I am aware of the potential dangers of withdrawing form psychiatric drugs, but the alternative–taking them for life–is probably worse. I always worry a great deal about withdrawal psychosis every time I go down in dose. So far, so good. I hope I will be able to successfully come off of all drugs.
God bless you too, and thank you for the work you are doing.
Report comment
Would you mind posting a link to your art website Someone Else?
I used to paint before psychiatry. I used to sew clothes I designed for myself and be very creative.
Now I’m writing more and painting again.
Report comment
Psychiatry decimated your life, no question. But, little things matter to EVERYONE. Who wouldn’t appreciate a sound sleep? A deep breath? A moment when you’re valued by another human being? And, Mad people, especially, must cherish those times. Our post-psychiatry lives are built upon them.
Report comment
Yes. What I have found.
Report comment
Hi J,
Thank you for your comment. I quite agree that little things are important to everyone. I guess I am hoping to bring meaning out of my experiences and research. It’s like a story I once read about a formerly homeless woman who ended up getting a low-wage job in food service at a sports stadium. She would take the perfectly good leftovers and distribute them to the homeless. She never forgot her experiences and tried to bring good out of what she learned.
Report comment
From little things Big things grow.
That was the story of Vincent Lingiari
But this is the story of something much more
How power and privilege can not move a people
Who know where they stand and stand in the law
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_ndC07C2qw
Brings tears to my eyes every time I hear the song. Someone without a cinder in Hells chance of winning, starts a movement that has changed this Nation.
The clue to it all is in that last line I believe. We need to know where we stand and stand in the law. At present ‘we’ are being denied access to the law as a result OF the law. This should present a crisis, and yet this is being ignored by those who are benefiting from the ‘lawlessness’.
Whilst I had a ‘big man’ look at my case, and then make a decision to throw me under another bus (“i’ve got insurance” as a result of looking and not wanting to see), I feel certain at some point a good person will stand up and eventually say “this is wrong”.
That will I believe come from a ‘little thing’, and someone with courage and conviction.
Report comment
Let’s hope that will eventually be the case. I read a story about a pharmacist who was filling many prescriptions for opiods (spelling?), who became fed up, and eventually refused to fill anymore, because he or she knew that they were simply killing people. He or she either quit, or was fired because of it. That kind of willingness to make personal sacrifices for the sake of people’s genuine well being can have a real impact.
Report comment
Thank you so much for expressing so clearly and so well what I haven’t been able to find all of the words for. I admit listening to everyone complain because they have to stay in their homes for a short time seems pathetic, selfish and self. Indulgent considering all the disabled people who are often confined for years.
Report comment
Thank you for your kinds words, Tashi. I am so glad that you found my article helpful.
Report comment
Good news for the very poor in the US! I just found out that I had gotten some bad information, or someone changed the rules. In any case, people on SSI Disability, and the homeless CAN get the $1,200 stimulus check. Here’s the link: https://www.irs.gov/coronavirus/non-filers-enter-payment-info-here Unfortunately, it is likely that many of the homeless and very poor will not have the resources to file for and receive the payments, but for the some of us, it is indeed a great blessing.
Report comment