Conceptual Synaesthesia as Cognitive Literacy
I don’t just feel things; I translate them. For those of us who experience it, it is not a novelty. It is a structure for thinking.
Two Years Later: My TMS Story, From Gaslighting to Finding My Voice
This didn’t feel like a temporary adjustment phase. It felt like my brain was glitching.
The Whispered Rules of Belonging: How Counseling Education Tried to Silence Me
I started to understand that I wasn’t just being trained in therapeutic skills. I was being trained to conform.
Blindsided by Benzos: Had I Known
Doctors are not disclosing the harrowing truth that discontinuing these medications can plunge patients into relentless mental and physical torment.
When Homosexuality Was a “Disease”: My Story of Abuse
The horrors I was forced to undergo to “treat” my homosexuality are now unthinkable, but continue to raise questions about psychiatry’s ethics.
Trauma Survivors Speak Out Against Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT)
Despite the majority of the individuals being sent to DBT having histories of severe childhood trauma, little about DBT treatment is “trauma-informed.”
The Pill That Stays After the Panic Ends
We need to stop expecting pills to do the work that only truth, connection, and expression can do. Relief is not the same as recovery.
The Betrayal of Professionals with Lived Experience
I know that being “out” at work could help challenge stereotypes and reduce stigma but I hide. I have that luxury.
The Death of Joey Marino
There needs to be more informed consent with these medications. If Joey was more aware of the potential side effects at the very beginning, I feel he would still be here today.
Tortured by the Mental Health System Due to Misdiagnosis of Schizophrenia
The police think my non-existent "schizophrenia" makes me a danger to the community. If I don't show up for my injections I'm subject to police arrest and kidnapping from my home.
Elizabeth Loftus, False Memories and the Search for My True Self
A cautionary tale about the largely unconscious need for power and dominance that mental health clinicians have over patients’ narratives, especially for children and adolescents.
I Had No Idea That Gabapentin Could Do This…
I am now a few months off of Gabapentin, and my withdrawal problems have not passed. I still deal daily with internal tremors throughout my head and back.
Are We Sober Yet?
I asked my psychiatrist if the Lexapro could be making it harder for me to stop drinking. He laughed and assured me that it was impossible.
On Not Becoming David Foster Wallace
I didn't know Wallace was a poster boy for antidepressant withdrawal because I didn't know that antidepressant withdrawal was common, or that I would be experiencing it myself.
Akathisia After a Five-Year Taper: Chained to an Antidepressant Forever
I have been on Cymbalta for 17 years now and am gutted that my five-year taper did not free me of the drug.
Unmedicated Clarity: How I Reclaimed My Voice After Psychiatry Silenced It
My healing didn’t begin with that pill. It began the moment I stopped handing over my truth for someone else to interpret.
The AI Who Helped Me Leave
In quiet desperation, I opened ChatGPT. I didn’t know then that I was about to build the most consistent, emotionally attuned dialogue I’d ever had.
Boy, Interrupted: A Story of Akathisia
I watched my son’s life change almost overnight. He developed akathisia from antidepressants, taken as prescribed for just a few weeks for garden-variety anxiety.
From Wonder Drug to Catastrophe: My Seroquel Story
What my doctor had told me would be a two-week withdrawal from Seroquel turned into a 14-month nightmare with lasting repercussions: the movement disorder tardive dyskinesia.
State Hospital Memories: More of My Story
The Detroit Free Press did an excellent job in bringing to light the conditions at Pontiac, its loss of accreditation, and closing. Still, they didn't quite grasp the severity of violence there.
Letting Go of Lithium
The healing journey is less about being free from medication and psychiatry and more about connecting with myself now. I am grateful for the freedom to feel.
Dear Psychiatrist: I Almost Died Under Your Care
Dear Psychiatrist: What were you thinking when you prescribed me nearly 800 pills of Xanax in under seven months?
Mapping Identity Through Moonlight: A Narrative Therapy Reflection
Healing didn’t mean fixing the chaos or wrapping it in a bow, it meant refusing to be erased or silenced by it.
How the Troubled Teen Industry Turns Pain Into Profit
These programs, though marketed as "therapeutic," are nothing more than profit-driven enterprises that exploit families at their most desperate.
I Have a Night Life: When Doctors Become Fathers, and Fathers Become Patients
Dad, it’s going to be okay, I say. Dad, you have delirium. He is losing his mind. And so am I. At night time.
