Personal Stories

People with “lived experience” tell of their interactions with psychiatry and how it impacted their lives, and of their own paths to recovery.

Grief and Burnout: The Challenge of Staying Out of Psychiatry

11
No matter how many times I scatter, I gather my pieces every time and get down to my garden where souls dwell, waiting to be tended.
against DBT

Trauma Survivors Speak Out Against Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT)

214
Despite the majority of the individuals being sent to DBT having histories of severe childhood trauma, little about DBT treatment is “trauma-informed.”
Joey Marino

The Death of Joey Marino

23
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.

The Note

20
I’ve helped dozens of my students through tough times and suicidal thoughts. But my own child? How do I handle THIS?

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.

I Had No Idea That Gabapentin Could Do This…

88
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.

Dying to Stay Alive: A Ketamine Disaster

39
Ketamine treatment, which was being hailed as a ‘miracle cure’, backfired so spectacularly that it very nearly cost me my life.

2017: My Descent Into Mayhem

6
It’s time to seek out and rescue those pieces of me still trapped in that time and allow them to finally be at peace.

Burnout: How Mental Health Systems Fail Neurodivergent Professionals

18
Many neurodivergent professionals are burning out quietly in a field that prides itself on empathy while treating its providers like machines.

A Psycho-Spiritual Journey

25
The Wellness approach, despite years of deliberate suppression, has survived and proven itself to be highly effective.

Therapy Can Harm Too

58
I’d like to open up a conversation about the role psychologists and social workers play in getting people on psychiatric drugs and ensuring treatment compliance.

Letting Go of Lithium

92
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.
Two women, one looking sadly at the viewer and the other standing out of focus in the background. Magazines and chocolates on the bed. A pink convertible out of focus through the window in the background.

I Am Looking for People I Miss

12
It’s a community of like-minded people; we should stick together. Maybe, hopefully, I will find my hospital friends.
akathisia pain

The Agonizing Nightmare of Drug-Induced Akathisia

87
Take every horrific feeling you’ve ever had in your life, all at once. Now, times them by 200, right in your gut. That is how akathisia pain feels. When I tell doctors I have drug-induced akathisia, and that it's incredibly painful, they do not believe me. They say my pain is a mental health issue, and they have all methodically undermined my credibility in my permanent record.

Escaping The Shackles of Psychiatry: What I’ve Seen and Survived, as Both Doctor and...

100
"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing,” said Edmund Burke. This is as true on...

Dear Psychiatrist – I Survived

38
It took me over 20 years to believe in myself enough to walk away from psychiatry and psych drugs and regain my life. I not only survived, but I am also thriving.

On Not Becoming David Foster Wallace

15
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.

State Hospital Memories: More of My Story

46
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.
spiritual awakening

The Aggressive Suppression of Spiritual Awakening

19
As they handed her hospital pajamas, similar to the orange prison suits you see on TV, she suddenly understood how little these people could help.

What I Wish I’d Asked Dr. Gabor Maté When I Had the Chance

18
Does my complex PTSD, depression and rage go back farther than I think? Back to the womb and my earliest days of life? Is that even possible?

Go Where You Are Watered

8
It is now five years after I had the courage to take hold of my own destiny. To not let people make me feel like I was less-than due to a diagnosis.

Escaping the Hell of Protracted Withdrawal Syndrome

21
I painfully and gradually learned to function with my dysfunctions. Over time, I noticed genuine improvement.
mania

Antidepressant-Induced Mania: When My Mind Became a Literal Hell

19
The amount of anxiety I felt on these medications — and for a couple of years after — was unfathomable. I felt as though I was trapped in an air-tight vat, constantly gasping for breath. And my thoughts were guided by my state of constant worry and panic.

Seeing Mental Illness as a Spiritual Illness

30
I am a simple woman, 47, single mother of two beautiful children, diagnosed bipolar 10 years ago, and I want more from the way...

I Am Carmen and I Have PSSD

10
No one is prepared to have the ability to feel attraction or fall in love taken away from them. I am incapable of what makes humans human: emotions, emotional bonding.