“If you get rid of pain before you have answered its questions, you get rid of the self along with it.”
—Lewis Hyde, Alcohol and Poetry: John Berryman and the Booze Talking, 1975.

People come to mental health professionals in pain—the pain of anxiety, depression, substance abuse, inattention, and a variety of other mental pains. Psychiatric “treatment” routinely is directed at getting rid of these pains as quickly as possible so that an individual can “function.”

In this sense, we should be grateful that psychiatric treatment has been such a failure, a reality that has now even been acknowledged by some in the mainstream media including the New York Times, which concluded in 2021: “Almost every measure of our collective mental health—rates of suicide, anxiety, depression, addiction deaths, psychiatric prescription use—went the wrong direction, even as access to services expanded greatly.”

Had psychiatric treatment been more successful in getting rid of pain before its questions were answered, the struggle for authentic self and a healing culture could well have been lost; as it is, those of us who care about such are only losing the struggle, but we have not been completely defeated.

Psychiatry’s Damage to the Authentic Self and a Healing-System Culture

Despite establishment psychiatry’s protestations otherwise, the vast majority of psychiatric patients will tell you that their psychiatrist had no interest in the idea that their pains posed valuable questions. The vast majority of psychiatrists provide only “medication management” and refuse to acknowledge that all they do with their “treatments” is numb pain; and most psychiatrists are clueless as to what is meant by a healing culture and how they damage it. The tiny minority of psychiatrists who allow themselves to feel these professional pains are the tiny minority of psychiatrists who become dissident psychiatrists—or quit.

What questions does our mental pain ask? It often asks questions about the lack of love, freedom, power, creativity, or meaning in our lives—questioning us as to whether we are deceiving ourselves about their presence, and questioning us about our failure to act on the truth of their absence. All our mental pains, large and small, ask questions that can lead to other questions.

Our pain of inattention may be asking: Am I being coerced to attend to something that I have no intrinsic interest in? Is that coercion causing the pain of resentment and rage? Is that pain so overwhelming that it makes me want to depress my entire being so as not to feel? Do alcohol and other drugs help me not feel my being? Does depressing my pain cause me to have no energy to pay attention? Does my lack of attention cause the pain of anxiety over the possibility of not being able to survive?

By answering questions that pain asks, one can rediscover one’s true self. One may discover that one’s authentic self actually values inattention to that which one doesn’t really care about; values not hanging around people who coerce attention; values people who love one’s authentic self; values not spending life depressing one’s being to shut down pain; values being whole and paying attention to what one truly care about; and values the pain that compelled questions that allowed rediscovery of one’s true self.

Many of us—not just the poets whom Lewis Hyde discusses in his 1975 essay, “Alcohol and Poetry: John Berryman and the Booze Talking”—have pain over the nature of our current civilization. Hyde, echoing other widely read public intellectuals in that era such as Lewis Mumford and Erich Fromm, tells us that money and technology have become our “dominant models” for security and liveliness, and have created a false sense of human power. Societal authorities told us that we could control technology, but of course many of us feel enslaved by it. Furthermore, this focus on the power of technology and money, Hyde points out, “has become so inflated as to impoverish other forms of power. . . . A civilization based on [technology and money] puts people out of touch with their creative powers.”

The pain of a dehumanizing civilization filters down to individual lives, directly and indirectly resulting in our pains over the lack of love, freedom, power, creativity, and meaning—pains that get people to see mental health professionals. And so it is tragic when mental health professionals pathologize such pains.

The quote “If you get rid of pain before you have answered its questions, you get rid of the self along with it” is often misattributed to Carl Jung because Jung shared this sentiment. Jung did say, “There is no coming to consciousness without pain” (Contributions to Analytical Psychology, 1928). Also sharing this sentiment was Ivan Illich, who I discussed in 2024 (“The Clinical, Social, and Cultural Harm of an Iatrogenic Psychiatry”).

Hyde’s 1975 essay was heavily influenced by Illich’s then new book Medical Nemesis, especially with respect to Illich’s ideas about culture as a healing system. Hyde notes:

“Illich speaks of ‘the health-granting wholeness of culture’. . . . The Native American tribes are a good example: they called their whole system of knowledge and teaching ‘the medicine,’ not just the things that the shaman might do in an emergency. As a member of the tribe it was your privilege to walk daily inside of the healing air.

“A culture faces and interprets pain, deviance and death. It endows them with meaning; it illuminates how they are a part of the whole and thereby makes them tolerable. We do not become trapped in them because the culture continually leads out of pain and death and back into life.”

How does psychiatry, which desperately attempts to be a part of what Hyde calls “medical civilization,” kill culture as a healing system? Hyde, echoing Illich, tells us that in contrast to a healing-system culture: “Medical civilization reacts in the opposite way: it tries to attack, remove and kill these things. With this the citizen becomes separated from his own healing and interpretive powers, and he and the culture begin to pull apart and wither, like plants pulled from the soil until both become dust.”

Psychiatry’s Drug Dishonesties: Sins Against the Authentic Self and a Healing-System Culture

Psychiatry’s dishonesties about their drugs’ effectiveness and adverse effects are well known to Mad in America readers. However, psychiatry’s duplicity about the nature of their drugs has perhaps created a more profound sin for self and culture.

Psychiatric drugs are psychotropic or psychoactive drugs, which means they are chemicals that act on the central nervous system’s neurotransmitters and alter brain function to affect emotions, thoughts, and perceptions. Alcohol is a psychotropic drug, as are psychiatry’s so-called antidepressants, so-called antipsychotics; and so-called mood stabilizers. There is much hypocrisy about psychotropic drugs with respect to some being labeled as medications while others are labeled negatively.

It is a rare psychiatrist such as Joanna Moncrieff who is truthful about the nature of these drugs (see her “Models of Drug Action,” 2013), and for her truth telling, she has been vilified by establishment psychiatry. Moncrieff tells us that rather than correcting an abnormal brain state, psychiatric drugs “induce an abnormal or altered state. . . . modify the way the brain functions and by doing so produce alterations in thinking, feeling and behavior. Psychoactive drugs exert their effects in anyone who takes them regardless of whether or not they have a mental condition.”

Neither Moncrieff nor any other prominent psychiatric drug critic I’m aware of are anti-drug, as she makes clear that “the psychoactive effects produced by some drugs can be useful therapeutically in some situations.” So, if individuals are so agitated that they fear they have lost control over their behavior, are incapable of any dialogue, and only want to reduce their agitation, then a calming psychotropic drug, at least temporarily, can be humane.

In the 1970s, when Big Pharma was not in control of societal narratives about psychotropic drugs, there were more attempts at honesty about them, and Lewis Hyde’s 1975 “Alcohol and Poetry: John Berryman and the Booze Talking” is a thought-provoking essay about both the allure and dangers of alcohol and other psychotropic drugs. He begins by reminding us:

“Alcohol has always played a role in American letters. Those of our writers who have tangled with it include Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Malcolm Lowry, Hart Crane, Jack London and Eugene O’Neill, to name a few. Four of the six Americans who have won the Nobel Prize for literature were alcoholic.”

Hyde then quotes Carl Jung from his correspondence with one of the founders of Alcoholic Anonymous, Bill Wilson. Jung told Wilson that he believed the “craving for alcohol was the equivalent, on a low level, of the spiritual thirst of our being for wholeness . . . . You see, ‘alcohol’ in Latin is spiritus, and one uses the same word for the highest religious experience as well as for the most depraving poison.”

For Hyde, “a spirit is something larger than the self, and . . . it has the power to change you. It alters your Gestalt, your whole mode of perception and action.” Not only alcohol but psychedelic drugs such as LSD can be what he calls “spirit-helpers” because, while they are not agents of maturation, “They do have power: they can show the novice in a crude way the possibility of a different life.”

The allure of chemical spirit-helpers is their induced change of consciousness, but genuine spiritual seekers ultimately desire this experience without the help of the chemical because they intuitively know that “especially in this civilization,” as Hyde points out, the risk of the chemical is that you will “stay with the material spirit . . . stay at its level . . . [and ] not grow.” Hyde concludes that for a person who becomes an alcoholic, “the drug is no longer a spirit in the sense I have used, or if it is, it’s a death spirit, pulling him down into itself.”

“Alcohol has many uses,” Hyde notes, “It is a relaxant and social spirit; it has always been used as a ceremonial spirit; it is a medicinal, a sedative hypnotic and an anesthetic.” However, alcohol, in today’s world, is not labeled as an anesthetic, which is a term now primarily reserved for those drugs that are used during surgery to shut down pain sensations. Neither are any FDA approved psychiatric drugs labeled as anesthetics. Ketamine, which is officially a “dissociative anesthetic,” is not FDA approved for any psychiatric use but is currently used “off-label” for these conditions. Ketamine enthusiasts, attempting to take advantage of the current allure of psychedelic drugs, will routinely call it a psychedelic rather than its official designation as a dissociative anesthetic.

By Hyde’s definition of anesthetic, one can label all psychotropic drugs, including alcohol and psychiatric drugs, as anesthetics. One of his most thought-provoking points, at least for me, is about the word anesthetic:

“‘Anesthetic’ does not just mean a thing that reduces sensation. The word means ‘without-aesthetic,’ that is, without the ability to sense creatively. The aesthetic power, which every human has, is the power which forms meaningful configurations out of all we sense and feel. More than that, it makes configurations which are themselves lively and creative, things which, like art, begin to exist separately from their creator and give meaning and energy back to all of us. If this power were not free and active a human being would die, just as he would die if he lost the power to digest his food.”

Many poets, other writers, musicians, and other artists would agree with Hyde that some psychotropic drugs such as alcohol and LSD and even heroin, at least initially, can be “spirit helpers” that showed them, as Hyde put it, “in a crude way the possibility of a different life”; however, with regular usage, turned them “more and more into the drug and its demands,” and so became a “death spirit.”

The major psychotropic drugs used by psychiatry—so-called antidepressants such as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors and serotonin-norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors; so-called antipsychotics including first-generation typicals and second-generation atypicals; so-called mood stabilizers which include anticonvulsants; and so-called anti-anxiety drugs which include benzodiazepines—are also, by Hyde’s definition, anesthetics. However, unlike alcohol, LSD, or heroin, I have never heard an artist or anybody else describe their Prozac, Cymbalta, Thorazine, Zyprexa, Depakote, or Ativan as a “spirit helper.”

So, why are psychiatric drugs so prominent in our current civilization? The most obvious but by no means the only reason is that psychiatry’s drugs make psychiatry’s partners in Big Pharma very wealthy. However, there are other reasons why psychiatry and societal authorities favor these drugs. While psychiatric drugs have obvious long-term physical dangers for many individuals, their short-term dangerous consequences are less obvious to society than that of a drunk driver, a heroin overdose, or a psychedelic bad trip. Most importantly for societal authorities who wish to maintain the societal status quo, psychiatry’s drugs do not threaten them precisely because they, unlike some other psychotropics, do not help people see “in a crude way the possibility of a different life.” Psychiatric psychotropic drugs are the perfect drugs to douse out the flames of rebellion.

Hyde concludes that, “The widespread use of alcohol and other central nervous system anesthetics is directly linked to a decline in culture. The wider their use, the harder it becomes to preserve, renew and invigorate the wisdom that a culture should hold. . . . It is a sign that the culture has lost its health-granting cohesion.” He offers the example of Native American cultures:

“Here were cultures rich in spiritual life and healing power. The Indian, cut off from the sources of his own spiritual strength by the European tribes and unwilling to adopt the gods of his oppressors, was left with an empty spiritual space, and too often the spirit of alcohol moved in to fill it. The Europeans were all too happy at this and often shipped the liquor into the dying Indian villages.”

U.S. society has ignored the pain of what it has done to Native Americans, and perhaps the karma for so doing has been to create a dehumanizing civilization for U.S. society in which the spirit of not only alcohol but other anesthetics have moved in. Most Americans are living—or more accurately surviving—only with the aid of anesthetics, which include not only chemical ones but non-chemical ones as well.

The 2024 National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) examined the use of psychiatric drugs among U.S. adults, and reported that 19.3% of adults took them in the past 12 months. And the U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMSHA) reported that among Americans 12 and older, 58.3% used tobacco, vaped nicotine, used alcohol, or used an illicit drug in the past month. While cannabis remains illegal under U.S. federal law, by 2024, because of its legalization in many states, there were already 15,000 cannabis dispensaries in the U.S., and it was reported that 42% of people who say they’ve used cannabis in the past month state that they do so daily or near daily.

Along with psychotropic drugs, many more Americans are using non-chemical anesthetics, a major one being so-called “social media.” Pew Research Center’s poll “Americans Social Media Use 2025” found that approximately half of U.S. adults report visiting YouTube and Facebook at least once a day, 37% reporting visiting Facebook several times a day, and 33% who say the same of YouTube. For many Americans, and much of the rest of the world, looking at a phone, laptop, television, or other screen is their major non-sleeping activity, and while all of this screen viewing may not qualify as an anesthetic, much of it does.

To dull the pain of their dehumanizing civilization, Americans are offered a wide array of anesthetics. The U.S.A.—the United States Anesthetized—can be defined by its widespread use of anesthetics which, as Hyde puts it, is directly linked to a decline in a healing-system culture, and “a sign that the culture has lost its health-granting cohesion.”

While psychiatry is not the only spoke in the societal anesthetic wheel, it is a major one that not only damages the ability to find one’s authentic self but also damages the capacity of a society to have a healing-system culture.

70 COMMENTS

  1. i am diagnosed with severe schizophrenia – it is a literal impossible Hell trying to live with it all in an unmedicated state – & the symptomatology of the illness / disease is very real. It is very much a real illness. Granted that probably only 0.1% or less of the Global Population suffer with a severe presentation of the illness. It is not known what it’s causes & best treatments are – however it is likely a whole person condition & involves mind, body, soul, spirit & the environment – biology, psychology, sociology & spirituality, & should be addressed as such, as should all illness. That doesn’t mean denying it exists or denying any of the areas effected.

    i’m all for a transformed society / system & transformed / reformed mental health system. However, i think it does involve a lot of nuance. i think that there is a danger of throwing the baby out with the bath water in relation to the treatment of the small percentage of people that suffer severe & enduring mental illness.

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    • It’s a literal impossible hell for people forcibly treated with potent debilitating anti-psychotic neurotoxins and brain-destroying electroshock. The numerous harrowing accounts featured on this website belie your claim.
      Or do you discount these victims’ experiences with the mental health system?

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        • Marc, kindly substantiate your claim. What are the credible sources of your information?
          Are the millions of schoolchildren treated with drugs for so-called learning disorders being helped or slowly poisoned?
          Are nursing home residents treated with drug cocktails and ECT being helped or sedated for the convenience of the staff?

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          • There are many mainstream mental health forums with millions of people stating how they have been / are helped by psychiatry, a diagnosis & medication – this area is highly controversial. i can see all sides to it all. To deny that there isn’t a deep controversy & many people on all sides of the anti / critical / pro / alternative psychiatry / pharma debate is being disingenuous.

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          • I have more than one friend that is now brain damaged with uncontrollable body movements from taking anti-depressants for nearly their entire adult life. A couple of my female friends were taking such high doses of these drugs that they could not walk straight and would appear intoxicated on walks we took for exercise. I recall walking with one of these women down a two lane road and being truly afraid she would be hit by traffic. I made sure I walked on the outside (near the traffic) because she would seem semi-delirious from high doses of anti-depressants and sleeping pills (all prescribed medications). She would regularly talk about repeatedly asking her doctor to up her dosage. Another friend now must take drugs to control her body movements while still taking the antidepressant that gave her brain damage causing the body movements. These are otherwise intelligent, educated women. In the case of the women friends I’ve known hooked on these drugs, the cause was/is not mental illness. They originally were sold on the advertising campaigns. They have created a culture that undermines our ability to validate ourselves for their own profit. It is nefarious. The pharmaceutical industry profits from creating a narrative that robs people of their ability to validate their own emotions and experiences. It then replaces healthy self-validation with a drug.

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    • Hello Mark,
      Here’s a link: https://youtu.be/a1cK_vok5MU?si=M_1VSSRDU5XUFvXc

      Please keep an open mind but not so open your brains fall out.
      What was going on in your life, outside and deep inside you, below your surface thoughts, prior to when you first got a psych label? What ever it was, was overwhelming and your very being, your human spirit, had a “reaction” – not a disease, not a disorder, not a malfunction, not a breakdown. Please don’t assume that it will last forever.
      Your whole body has intelligence.
      You have the mind of your head, the mind of your heart, the mind of your gut, the mind of your genitals, every cell of your body has a mind of its own – whether we like it or not!

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      • People’s conditions & experiences are individual. i don’t think that that there was anything that wrong with most people now coming into contact with mental health services? i do think that SMI is very real & does effect some people, & i think that ‘self help’ only goes so far for those cases.

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        • Marc, you claim there are numerous mainstream forums that accept the concept of severe psychopathology, but as usual you have failed to cite them.
          If such forums do exist, my question to you would be how many of them purport to be objective and credible, but are actually paid-off shills for the psychiatric guild, pharmaceutical companies, and ECT device manufacturers, all of whom profit from the unproved hypothesis that brain disease, faulty neural circuits, hormonal imbalances, or genetic defects give rise to the DSM’s hundreds of arbitrarily concocted disorders.
          You yourself admitted in a recent post that institutional corruption is ubiquitous. The mental health system is certainly no exception in this regard; Peter Goesch, Bruce E. Levine, Joanna Moncrieff, and Robert Whitaker, among others, have exposed its widespread fraud, collusion, and cover-ups.
          If you have cogent evidence to the contrary to refute their findings, I’m still waiting to hear it.

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        • Hi Marc,
          Here’s a link: Wisdom of Psychosis.
          https://substack.com/@annekesips

          Please take extra care of yourself. What you’re experiencing won’t go away overnight. You don’t have to understand the complexity of it all or find words for it all. I had the same label
          back in 1989. It was all so very trying and I had to pace myself for the duration. I had three gauges that I focused on: my thinking, my physical sensations and my emotions. The psych terminology distorted, confused, rudely interrupted, invaded, violated, and distracted me from focusing on myself, my experience, my viewpoint, my history, my thoughts, my dignity, my character, my concentration, and my validity of being. Best to you Marc!

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          • Thanks Bill – i am very familiar with all the different areas & arguments all this goes into – i have accepted my schizophrenia diagnosis & medication.

            i have catalogued a lot of things here –

            https://healingsanctuary.proboards.com/

            i see everything as integral & differential.

            Integral – from an integrated mind, body, soul, spirit & environment perspective.

            Differential – that some things are more mental illness, some things are more spiritual crisis / emergency / emergence & that some things are both a mental illness with spiritual – Shamanic / Mystical & Magickal Elements.

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  3. Not the Wheel of Fortune but of Forged Fate perhaps Bruce? All the many layers of history and elements of individual human life . I think Frank L Baum in his series a Dr Humbug and pills? Many thinkers and writers touch on this. Bradbury and his television screens around the room in Fahrenheit .
    I am thinking fuse box versus circuit box and the pathways of healing fused or broken . We had some and some groups better than others and then it kept on morphing from elements of power and control.
    One would like in The Shoes of the Fisherman where the pope walks away from everything in the Vatican to gain world peace something line that . Or a reimagined framework for healthcare and crisis. Tumor boards as part of everyday healthcare . Grand and not so grand rounds in communities and neighborhoods . Centers like The Gathering Place or Gilda’s Club or Gigi’s Playhouse or 4 H clubs for all ( many old abd current options) ages just a new way of community and care. Money and power don’t want this but perhaps done folks like Chris Collins and his work can help support along with others. A new country for at. Perhaps a pertains president who moves state by state. A new city for Congress. A peripatetic SCOTUS. DC more of a museum and history and science place and new state.
    Just having new efforts just helps with stress you know a decent plan of action that is actually followed.

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  5. …yes, but, if, cosmically speaking, we all always have precisely the experience most helpful for the evolution of our consciousness, or of our Consciousness, or of Consciousness, and if the very human condition itself thus far has to been to remain lost in thought, as Eckhart Tolle also has made clear, then we are still left with nowhere and no time from which to enter Zen (or The Now, or The Kingdom of God/the Father/Heaven/the Heavens/the Skies/Spaciousness/Awareness or the realm of formless consciousness than right here, right now, at any moment/s we choose and/or have learned TO choose – right?

    And all the sufferings caused by psycho pharmacologists and others to themselves and to the rest of us have been essential to that Evolution – right?

    When accused by Christians or others of having “free will” I try to defend myself by assuring them that, this far, at least, I have not been able to imagine dousing myself in gasoline and setting myself ablaze without screaming, not thinking of a white horse on command not to, sitting for ten minutes without thinking while remaining wide awake, thinking I have lost my wallet yet again without wincing or or or keeping my sense of humor intact for longer than….it is challenged enough.

    So, please, don’t put it all on me.

    And now to play that (white, ? spirit horse) song/video, “Don’t Out it All on Me,” by Fleet Foxes and Noah Cyrus, and then Mary Chapin Carpenter’s “I take My Chances,”

    “But I never learned nothing from playing it safe
    I say fate should not tempt me…” even if I HAVE always learned from every experience precisely whatever Fate chose to teach me.

    https://youtube.com/shorts/gWc7hOv_TE8?is=cvyg7dyUWcPG-ely

    Much love and heartfelt thanks for yet another superb Levine essay!

    “God” rest ye merry!

    Tom.

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  7. Fabulous analysis Bruce. I have used a few spirit helpers in my life and they have helped me understand the madness both inside me and all around me, as well as helped me glimpse a world that is sacred and glistening. Using them everyday is a serious concern that not only takes you down the death spiral but makes the madness worse. Psychoanalysis can be a very useful practice if done well. Much of it is nonsense and part of the problem. Similarly with philosophy, political action and the arts. I thank our lucky stars for insights from those who traveled these paths and emerged more alive and ready to change direction when necessary. Leave the madness behind and embrace the unfathomable unknown.

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  8. “Neither Moncrieff nor any other prominent psychiatric drug critic I’m aware of are anti-drug, as she makes clear that “the psychoactive effects produced by some drugs can be useful therapeutically in some situations.” So, if individuals are so agitated that they fear they have lost control over their behavior, are incapable of any dialogue, and only want to reduce their agitation, then a calming psychotropic drug, at least temporarily, can be humane.”

    I really disagree and it is totally based on witnessing what actually happens. I’ve been in the belly of the beast.

    This amounts to part of the smoothing over of the violence of psychiatry.

    ‘at least temporarily’

    You see it doesn’t just stop there at temporarily. It’s the beginning of making it worse.

    IT MAKES IT WORSE .

    Whether it’s a benzo, ketamine or morely likely neuroleptic injection.

    I watched this happen so many times.

    Hope that is clear. If it is not:

    https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/nhs-mental-health-deaths-black-country-trust-hallam-street-b2857602.html

    You need to stop being comfortable by thinking it’s can be useful therapeutically.

    As said It’s the beginning of making it worse.

    You need to start thinking about doing something that is the beginning of genuinely improving matters. Not using neurotoxins in a panic with an out of control patient which continues the cycle of abuse.

    Did the patient have an ssri that induced a carbs craving that included craving for alcohol, did they become dependent because of that and end up with violent mood swings and horrendous anxiety.

    Is holding them down and injecting them really going to help in the long term or worsen their trauma even kill them?

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    • The unloved, (some), become the unwashed. Turning up at emergency departments on a regular basis for a moment of human warmth, a sandwich, and a cup of tea.

      This was costing a fortune and was also not a good look for the hospitals.

      So in recent times, such people might get a litre of intravenous fluid if deemed necessary, and possibly a drink of water, and are then sent back out onto the streets. This business model has reduced their numbers from turning up for that connection and warmth – human or sweet tea.

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  9. “culture has lost its health-granting cohesion”

    CULTURE HAS GAINED ITS WEALTH-GRANTING COHESION. Wealth is health.

    It is interesting to hear the voice of a psychiatrist who in their prime, wrote psychiatric reports – often via school referrals (off the record) to parents, for young school children, that would see them drugged with psychiatric medications, for a diagnosis of ADD/ADHD.

    To make part of one’s livelihood by charging possibly thousands of dollars for a report, that sees a child drugged, the parent get financial assistance, and the school receive financial gains, while little accommodations are provided to or for the actual child, – what would this be called? To be one of a couple of reliable go-to doctors in a given area, with the guarantee that a “favourable ” report will be written. Is this part if the spiritual process of healing?

    Many now live in chaos and mayhem and poverty. Where is the follow-up and research on these now adults? Are they the ones living with addictions and mental disorders? In Australia. In America. Or elsewhere?

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  10. Against the Current.
    https://youtu.be/BrIO1ZXmBK0?si=1P5CkQqc43n2R7cV

    How We Say Hello. Keynote Speaker.
    https://youtu.be/YZQiihDC__E?si=YC-x3QtuX1JieYJ8

    Contesting and Challenging the Culture.
    https://youtu.be/Lm1bTyxDTAo?si=FD4Giq1UUlQBDmrD

    https://youtu.be/jBeELhA9HsU?si=9bLGx6pw_DF5uFSp

    Context Matters
    https://youtu.be/bTVurQg4keI?si=kvrtNjv9Kg11NSQs

    We Shall Remain.
    https://youtu.be/Gs0iwY6YjSk?si=FxXw-s3kIzWzn951

    Warrior.
    https://youtu.be/N-DbzNFFAtg?si=Em1bMGjTZoRrS0_Y

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  13. Poetic and lyrical, this essay gets to the root of how we perceive and treat psychic pain in contemporary society. As Peter points out, our focus on treating that pain primarily with medications is missing the boat. It underscores an unsettling irony: a system that so falls short defines suffering as a biological brain disorder, yet when treatment fails, the failure is placed on the patient.

    As a former medical advertising writer, I’ve watched the pharmaceutical industry and psychiatry help steer us in this direction over the past 40 years. We need to rethink both the problem and the solution, making room for the cultural, psychological, and spiritual meaning of our suffering. Mad in America, and essays like this, give me hope that we can move in a new direction.

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  14. The term “mental illness” is a misnomer. Please delete it from your vocabulary. I am not and never have been a “patient.”

    I have been repeatedly victimized and verbally beaten down by the copywriting “linguisticide” of the incessant promotional assaults of the distracting and fraudulent “Biomedical Model” fairy tale narrative and permanently physically damaged by overuse of their synthetic chemical products. Beware.

    Here’s a recent article titled “On the nature of mental illness.”
    You’ll need a Translator app.

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  17. People speak of body, mind, soul and spirit.

    I believe that if we could define these and agree on our deductions, we would/will probably all be enlightened and the rift between our minds and the remainder of our psyches will have been healed for once and for all, for good and for getting better faster than words can express – don’t you?!

    God rest ye merry, readers, all:
    Let nothing you dismay!

    Much love, and then lots more, galore!

    Tom.

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    • Hello Tom,
      A couple of months ago I started hearing about “Embodiment.”
      The “Western” concept of the ‘duality’ of mind and body is a mistake.
      Embodiment entails concentration/focus/awareness/listening to what’s going on below our necks in the present moment.. Nobody ever mentioned that in my life. All I heard was “Use your Head. Think. Get your head screwed on straight. Get your act together.’

      “The lights were on but nobody was home.” HA HA HA!!!
      Not really! I grew up, unaware, with the following “unwritten house rules;”

      Don’t talk, trust, feel, think, listen to yourself, ask for guidance or help. All those are reactionary based and I unknowingly carried those conditioned and ingrained repressive habits of “numbing out” into life outside the family.

      A recovery issue for some people is learning new ways of living, thinking and communicating with oneself and others.

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  18. Marc Cheminas, in reply to my latest post you commented: “None of them have proved that mental illness doesn’t exist.” This is in reference to those whom you label deniers, anti-psychiatry zealots.
    Actually, the burden of proof here rests with those who claim that certain emotional and cognitive states can rightly be characterized and classified as discrete types of brain pathology.
    If I assert, for example, that unicorns really exist, it’s MY obligation to substantiate this claim with physical evidence, not with fanciful tales from ancient mythology. Skeptics do NOT have to accept anyone’s belief at face value.
    This analogy holds true for psychiatric dogma, which also functions as a mythology operating with with pretentious deceptive pseudo-scientific jargon. If psychiatry lays claim to being a full-fledged branch of medicine, its practitioners need to demonstrate the genuine, not imaginary, biological foundation of their belief system.
    So then, give us concrete, verifiable evidence that neuroses, psychoses, ADHD, schizophrenia, and the hundreds of other hypothetical disorders enumerated in the DSM have a physical, not metaphorical origin.
    Lastly, in regard to your statement that only a few extremists like Szasz deny the existence of mental illness, the validity of a particular contention does not depend on a numerical count of the people who accept it. The fact that the great majority of psychiatrists, psychologists, and other would-be “specialists” use the DSM for convenience and insurance billing purposes does not establish its nosological credibility. This only proves their intellectual bankruptcy, mercenary motivation, and desire for professional legitimacy and prestige.

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    • i am predominantly concerned with schizophrenia – which has been proven to be a brain condition –

      Extensive research and imaging studies

      Schizophrenia is indeed a brain disease, as evidenced by extensive research and imaging studies. The disorder is characterized by measurable changes in brain structure, neurotransmitter activity, and genetic underpinnings. These changes include a reduction in gray matter volume, enlarged ventricles, and altered neurotransmitter signaling. The most consistent structural finding is a reduction in gray matter, which is a tissue that contains the brain’s nerve cell bodies and does most of the heavy cognitive lifting. This reduction is not static and is progressive, particularly in the early stages of the illness. The biological changes interact heavily with environmental factors, and not everyone with schizophrenia shows the same pattern of brain abnormalities. However, these findings provide strong evidence that schizophrenia is a real and measurable brain disorder.
      scienceinsights.org
      +5

      Is Schizophrenia a Brain Disease? What Science Shows

      March 21, 2026

      Schizophrenia is classified as a chronic brain disorder by the American Psychiatric Association, and decades of imaging, genetic, and molecular research support that classification. People with schizophrenia show measurable differences in brain structure, brain chemistry, and the way brain regions communicate with each other. That said, the picture is more nuanced than a simple “yes.” No blood test or brain scan can diagnose it, the biological changes interact heavily with environmental factors, and not everyone with schizophrenia shows the same pattern of brain abnormalities.

      Google –

      Google – proof that schizophrenia is a brain disease

      & do your own research.

      i am satisfied with the available scientific evidence that schizophrenia has a significant biological component. However i conceed, as psychiatry does to the Quarter / Third Severity Recovery Statistic.

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      • Your comments don’t support what you just said. Besides which, two people can be “diagnosed with schizophrenia” and have nothing in common with each other. Japan and other places are talking about dropping the concept altogether. There is no way something that is that diverse can be “caused” by one thing. Is there a biological component? No doubt. But that doesn’t make the diagnostic criteria any less subjective and misleading.

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      • Marc, is there universal scientific and medical consensus on what constitutes “normal” versus “pathological” brain functioning and where the precise limits between the two can reliably be determined?
        Were the brains of mystics like Emanuel Swedenborg, Father Pio, and William Blake, or of psychics like Edgar Cayce, or of visionaries such as Nicola Tesla fully sound according to the APA’s subjective criteria? Were those criteria developed and verified through rigorous testing and experimentation under laboratory conditions, or merely adopted by majority vote, as is customary for the DSM’s nosological categories?
        Has neuroscience attained a degree of infallibility whereby it can ALWAYS pass authoritative judgment on such complex, still contentious matters?
        All this smacks of dogmatic scientism. which in my view runs counter to genuine open-ended science.

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        • LOL Joel – There is no universal scientific and medical consensus on anything – all our knowledge is constantly evolving.

          i do think that psychiatric / pharma appraoches have become too widespread. i favour a more integral / holistic approach to all health & social issues. However i do think that there is madness & sanity; & spectrums inbetween – & i do think that there are biological, psychological, environmental & what can be considered to be soul / spiritual / transperonsonal areas that it all goes into. i think that there is a case for a judicious use of psychiatry / pharma – psychiatric hospitals & front end services for more severe / extreme cases of mental illness. My argument has been to more fully integrate comprehensive ‘alternative’ recovery / healing approaches into mainstream services / society – & i see that as the sanest option & approach at this stage.

          After spending around a year in total in high security psychiatric units, being 8 years in severe / florid psychosis & seeing & discussing all these areas with some of the most severely mentally ill – i’m not going to deny the existence of mental illness – the philosophical validity of the main psychiatric diagnostic aietiology & the valid role that psychiatry / pharma has in treating it all. However, yes, psychiatry / pharma is in need of major reform.

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          • Hi Marc, You don’t sound narrow minded. I do think your sounding somewhat rigid. Please
            listen to this conversation at least twice because it’s a detailed and complex discussion of “altered states” that people have been going through and experiencing
            for thousands of years all over the globe. Please listen to the pitfalls of “labels” their cautioning people about.

            Insane Medicine. The Treatment Trap.
            The Core of Critical Psychiatry.
            Trans Cultural Literature on Psychiatry.

            https://youtu.be/ibdyBMRDZGs?si=gC51jZijXMFf2VTM

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          • Marc, you affirm the “philosophical validity” of the DSM’s diagnostic categories.
            I’m not sure what you mean by the word “philosophical” in this context, but the hundreds of categories you accept were not established through scientific methods but concocted on the basis of decisions made by panels consisting of APA members, most of whom have lucrative ties with drug companies that have been penalized for deceptive advertising of their products and for outright fraud.
            So I’ll repeat the question I posed in a previous post: Why do you place trust in the integrity of a corrupt and intellectually bankrupt mental health system and in the value of coercive hospitals (detention centers) that poison, electroshock, and otherwise mistreat untold numbers of people?
            There are many works that expose this unconscionable situation; to start with, read Robert Whitaker’s “Anatomy of an Epidemic” and the articles on Bruce E. Levine’s website;.

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          • i have read / studied those 2 authors & also read hundreds of books on mental health from all perspectives. i don’t stay in silos / echo chambers – & i see no reason to take any specific anti / critical / pro / alternative side / camp in all this.

            i agree with you & that psychiatry & the mental health system is in need of major reforms. It still stands however; as i have said before – that certainly in the case of the psychoses / neuroses & personality disorders; they have always existed & been catalogued, observed & treated throughout the entirety of human history – the only things that changes is biological / psychogenic / environmental & sociological / spiritual & integral understandings, modalities, paradigms & treatments. & yes – i think that we need to move from a primary biomedical approach to mental health to a comprehensive integral one –

            Integrate a judicious use of front end services / biomedical / clinical psychiatry with open dialogue / depth psychology / healing homes – with comprehensive integrated / integral health / welfare / social care services & systems.

            With a shift away from neoliberal Capitalism more towards a Global Socialist / Green Model & Approach & Global Regenerative Culture

            https://healingsanctuary.proboards.com/board/52/project-plan-associated-documents

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      • Marc, it’s your incessant claim (based on the APA’s allegedly sound research and objective findings) that schizophrenia can justifiably be classified as a chronic brain disease with at least a partly genetic etiology.
        Let me remind you that the T-4 Nazi eugenic program proceeded from the very same concept of defective heredity, hence its mass extermination of mental patients, including schizophrenics, deemed to be incurably ill. Yet the rate of schizophrenia in Germany did NOT appreciably decline appreciably when this program was terminated after WW II.
        It’s also worth recalling that the APA’s leadership spoke favorably of sterilization of severely disturbed individuals back in the early 1940s, within living memory (Jeffrey Masson and Peter Breggin have both written about this topic).
        I view the APA’s current biomedical paradigm (which has led to the adoption of brain-disabling treatments on a worldwide scale) as a continuation of discredited eugenic hypotheses.
        Why do you believe in the integrity of a system that has such a sordid history of deception and abuse and profits from its admitted financial connections with the pharmaceutical industry?

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        • i have studied history at great depth & collected & read well over 1 thousand books on history / current affairs, psychology, psychiatry & sociology / science / spirituality & comparative religion & other subjects.

          i am fully aware of what happend in the build up to WW2 with American & UK Eugenics & then the German Holocaust (which i think was a trial run for Global Fascism) – & the same things have been happenning again, increasingly over the past 50 years & especially since the 2008 financial crash – we are seeing increasing Global Austerity / War / Fascism & Ecological / Civilizational Collapse. The next 25 years i think will be catastrophic & very dark times. i said that all this would happen in 1990, & i was right.

          In the UK right wing Tory / Conservative Austerity Policies have lead to the direct premature deaths of between 250 thousand & 5 million people. Few seem to care – the USA / Europe & other countries have seen similar trends.

          https://healingsanctuary.proboards.com/thread/3929/stop-genocide-state-democide?page=1

          What did i / do i expereince with what i consider to be psychosis / schizophrenia, what caused it all & what is the nature of the condition / illness? imo it has been / is a combination of biopsychosocial-spriitual factors. i would have liked more of the psychological / social / spiritual elements to have been better addressed earlier on by psychiatry / society & the mental health & social care systems, however i also think that there is a biology to my condition that i would have probably needed medication to help treat regardless of anything else. i do think my own specific illness is in part a genetic brain developmental, functional & structural condition – best managed with medication, psychotherapy & general health, welfare & social support, & that is borne out from the avaible medical & scientific evidence.

          For me the issue is not about the validity of my mental illness / schizophrenia or mental health conditions / illness & difficulties in general – my concerns are with the wider society / system & general treatment of all health & social / disability & mental health issues, & of course it all needs to be a lot better – However better treatment i don’t think will come about by denying the existence of mental illnesses & trying to abolish psychiatry / pharma.

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          • Marc, there’s nothing to be gained from continued verbal jousting with you on the existence of mental illness and on the self-serving myths, fallacies, and lies of psychiatry.
            If you think it’s appropriate to define one’s identity with a DSM label and to assuage emotional distress by ingesting neurotoxins, I’m not going to waste any more time and energy in countering your opinion. Szasz, Masson, Levine, Whitaker, Hickey, and other courageous critics of the mental health system have addressed these matters, and numerous accounts on the MIA website by victims of psychiatric incompetence and abuse substantiate their critique.

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          • Hi Marc,
            Sounds to me like you’re expressing and focused on the long standing and deeply ingrained narrative of the “controversial” speculative “on the fence” perspective banter/discussion.
            Regardless of the words you use, what you’re experiencing, what you’re going through, is not going to be linear and may be perplexing at times. Best to you.

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          • I dunno how you feel about this, Marc, but I’d be interested to know, if you feel inclined to show, please:

            I was thinking that if only I can get me eccentrically placed as far as possible towards one pole ( the one to the right, the God filled one) of the “autistic” (a.k.a. the gormless-gormful) spectrum as to be functioning at my social optimal (so that wild birds, animals and fish can resist approaching and interacting with me and everyone I meet immediately falls head-over-heels in love with me and I with them m and we all burst into helpless laughter together, you know), I shall probably the also be at the right extreme of all the other spectra – paranoid schizophrenic, anxious-depressed, ADHD, OCD et cetera?

            Much love.

            Many and heartfelt thanks!

            Tom.

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  19. Accurate Recognition, Acknowledgement, Tribute & Gratitude.

    Psychiatry & Big Pharma: Exposed. 1hr 50 minutes.
    https://youtu.be/-Nd40Uy6tbQ?si=j-H0cmmZXAEe6nir

    5 video playlist – Paula Caplan. PhD.
    https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLUeQb3pncqSe4ou-oL35gkPPibKT1JDUE&si=IdlZjqoT8HTA3yB8

    Why Psychiatry is doing more harm than good. 33 min.
    https://youtu.be/Xe169g03OX8?si=Xzx08bOjKAkpZ6kv

    Summary of Cracked. 22min.
    https://youtu.be/sR2DBlVCg-w?si=X3qV0aCXAFdtyseb

    I’m with Her.
    https://youtu.be/a1cK_vok5MU?si=n5qMCBaGN_vq5BF1

    Inner Compass Initiative.
    https://www.theinnercompass.org/

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  22. I’ve been following the comments about schizophrenia and medication. Isn’t it OK to disagree? Many of us are speaking from lived experience, and there may be something to learn from each other, even when our experiences differ.

    It seems hard to make room for different views—whether we favor psychiatry’s biomedical model or believe there is no such thing as mental illness. I keep coming back to the toolbox idea: medication, psychological therapies, social support, spiritual approaches. Patients, families, and caregivers need to know the pros and cons, how to weigh their options, and what questions to ask.

    Maybe it’s my advertising background, but I’m interested in which ideas reach everyday people—and stick. While critics of psychiatry and even some traditionalists may consider the biomedical model old news, but that doesn’t mean the public has moved on. What appeals to me about Joanna Moncrieff’s work and the Mad in America community is encouraging people to reconsider what they have been told and help them question authority.

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  23. 3.) Inner compass Initiative. Comprehensive. Peers.
    https://www.theinnercompass.org/

    No one has to rely solely on conventional social service agencies.
    No one has to go thru all this alone.

    The best decisions are well informed decisions.

    Sometimes I didn’t know if what I was experiencing was a “symptom” or reality. That was scary but honest! I “let go” of trying to figure it out and went on with my day. I decided to start tapering and these peer groups helped all along. All that is behind me now.

    tribute. https://youtu.be/ddwVm4N-sAQ?si=OeCTpXBGDx_iL4xp

    The psych drugs also caused me several permanent and painful complications. Psych is unregulated. They don’t adhere or abide by “DO NO HARM” or “INFORMED CONSENT.”

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  25. Here’s a thought:
    “When we pathologize our selves we validate the idea that we’re not supposed to have adverse reactions to oppression.”
    The adverse reactions are appropriate, to be expected, they go with the territory, par for the course…we’re not robots, made of steel…

    https://spectaculaurthoughts.substack.com/p/suicidal-ideation-as-a-protective?r=96qgeu&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web

    The LABELS. “Don’t buy into their reality of you. Hold on to your own truth.” Dr. Jacqui Dillon.

    We sometimes have to suspend our judgements until we have the information needed to arrive at an accurate recognition of what has happened to us.

    Here’s a quote from a documentary “The Doctrine of Discovery:”

    “We believe that facing the truth is a necessary part of the healing process.”
    We can’t rush it, can’t force it. Intellectual perseverance requires us to focus on our own truth, our selves, for as long as it takes.

    Here’s quote from the Dedication page of the second edition of “Critical Thinking” by Richard Paul and Linda Elder:

    “To all those innocent persons and creatures who suffer cruelty and injustice due to the weak-sense critical thinking that still dominates human life and the use of power in human societies.”

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      • Hello N L,
        I appreciate your comment.
        It’s vital to Challenging & contest the Fraudulent Cult of pathologizing and medicalizing human suffering.

        Regarding when people use the phrase “agree to disagree:” It’ full of fish! Please use a search bar and get clear on it. Same for when people say “I’m sorry you feel that way.” It’s full of fish!

        When we pathologize ourselves we validate the “Biomedical Model” ideology that we’re not supposed to have normal and natural adverse reactionary effects to oppression.

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  27. Marc (Cheminas), you wrote, on October 22, 2026 at 7:02 am ET, USA?):

    “Not sure what you are trying to say Tom? Can you explain it all a bit more Please? Thanks.”

    If we have all “sinned,” even the supposed saints amongst us, then we have all been and all are “sinners,” you may agree?

    If we are all “neurodiverse,” then neurotypical and neurodiverse are nonsense terms, you may agree?

    If nobody speaks without some accent, then everybody speaks with some accent, you may agree?

    If, decades ago, Temple grandin had already so transformed the way fiolks understood animals and handled livestock that more than half the meat-packing plants in N. America had adopted new designs in line with her insights – not to speak of the breakthroughs she provided into how people like her saw our worlds, would you agree that saying she suffered from a mental (or even a brain) disorder known as autism, would you agree that “autistic disorder” might be an odd term, or a misnomer?

    If we see autistic patterns of thought/behavior as lying on a spectrum, or spectra, and if any such supposed or real spectrum/continuum has no identified or identifiable lines of demarcation, be they verbal/nonverbal or otherwise, nor any clearly identified or identifiable beginning or ending, so that every human beings lies – or moves up and/or down, right and/or left along them…?

    Does the same not apply to any other supposed spectrum of human behavioral patterns/experiences – and once upon a time called temperaments or dispositions or character traits etc?)

    If spirit has any meaning, everything is spiritual and we are indeed immortal spirits sharing human experiences, human emotions, human dramas, human love, and there is no true healing other than spiritual healing, the rest being a mere musical chairs of swapping one neurosis/chronic pain/stress-induced/psychosomatic condition for another as our egos/demons move the furniture but never exit.

    You may laugh to read that I truly believe that I suffered some nine months of prenatal depression (or anxiety-depression or anxiety-depression, for how can one be depressed without being anxious about it and vice-versa?), and 49 years of postpartum depression and that, as soon as that cleared “miraculously” in one evening, two days after briefly meeting an Irish healer, my (mostly loving) family and my (estranged) wife insisted on having me locked up and forcibly drugged:

    Is not a patron my lord, one who looks with unconcern on a man struggling for life in the water, and, when he has reached ground, encumbers him with help?”

    ― Samuel Johnson.

    “Pain-receptors” do not exist: “…for there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so,” as Shakepeare understood.

    “Mental disorders” and “personality disorders” do not exist, either, except as figments of folk’s imaginations: Left to their own hypervigilant, ever-fearful devices, our minds are sickly things, endlessly looking for and identifying problems, problems and potential problems so that there is no peace OF mind but only FROM mind:

    “The human condition: lost in thought.” – Eckhart Tolle in “Stillness Speaks.”

    Permanent peace (from mind) arises only from the healing of our split psyches, the ending of egos and so of sufferings, and so from the ending of our relationships with ourselves, as Tolle also makes clear.

    Obviously, I could write lots and lots more, but this may suffice for now, Marc?

    And, if you prefer to communicate privately, by email or by phone or both, I am at [email protected]

    Thank YOU!

    Wishing everyone Zen, probably,

    Tom.

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    • Tom – yes i understand where you are coming from & all the arguments from all camps & perspectives. However, you could say that physical illness doesn’t exist by making the same arguments, & abolish all science / medicine, & this is where i think it goes too far.

      i suffered 8 years in very severe / florid psychosis – if i don’t take the medication i go into catatonic / florid psychosis. i think i do have a brain condition. Without the schizophrenia diagnosis & an acknowledgment that i have a serious illness i won’t get social security / welfare / benefit payments & will be on the streets, psyhcotic & then dead, as has happened to so many others.

      Yes there are spiritual elelments to everything – however; so too are there biological, psychological, environmental elements as well.

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      • Marc, heartfelt thanks, indeed.

        It seems to me that you may very well be absolutely be 100% (plus?!) right and that a brain “malfunction” or condition or disorder or disease or affliction or or or…may very well have given rise to all your “florid” and horrid signs and symptoms of that disease or disorder or multiple diseases/disorders…for that MATTER!

        And what are called signs and symptoms of “schizoaffective disorder” may arise (more frequently than in other subsets of guns with) in folks with mellitus mellitus, too, I believe.

        Brain/nervous system “malfunctions” due to deficiency of magnesium may very well, I suspect, be involved in many or most cases of what is called postpartum depression and postpartum psychosis, too.

        And, now you mentioned it, many actual physical afflictions may clear up promptly when stressors involved are addressed/healed.

        But this in no way proves that one can have a disease or disorder of thinking, of emoting, of behaving or of being – any more that one can have “metal health” because we like how the steel we made performs, don’t you agree?

        Tons of love and if heartfelt and of soulfelt thanks!

        Tom.

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