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.

“Maybe You Need Meds”: From Passive Patient to Finding My Voice

19
I made journaling non-negotiable. I started sitting in nature and running trails. I practiced being present and prioritized sleep. These things are often seen as what you do if your problems aren’t really that bad. But to me, these are the things I do to save myself every day.
Little Porcupine Goes to the Psych Ward

Little Porcupine Goes to the Psych Ward

25
I was so anxious about having to raise three boys alone that I felt I was going insane. So I thought of going to see a psychiatrist. I was looking for Carl Jung. Instead I found a system where they give you pills, whether you need them or not.

Anesthetized

18
At times I dream about meeting those doctors, and telling them how wrong they were when they told me I would always be a very sick person, needing medication my whole life.
hospital pills

Catching My Breath After A Panicked Journey

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$24,000 later and no one knew what was wrong with me. They sent me home with a bag of pills. After being in the hospital, I developed a fear and mistrust of doctors. My general practitioner suggested antidepressants. More pills. It was all they could recommend. I wouldn’t take them. My anxiety worsened. I was obsessed with the idea that if I slept, I would die. So, I stayed awake as much as I could. For an entire year, this was how I lived.

The Mountain Man

25
Self-acceptance is a very human experience, and a necessary one in the pursuit of personal happiness. In my experience, the mental health field does an abysmal job of addressing this truth.

Why I Fight for Trauma-Informed Systems

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I am not sure what was worse: being abused growing up while my community documented—then ignored—my torment, or being attacked for going public with my story.

In Search of Reason: My Path to Antipsychiatry

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I realized that nobody would be able to help me if I didn't help myself. Simply because society wants a cheap, technical solution that will leave me in a state of dependency and frustration for the rest of my life.

A Caregiver’s Story- And How I Became an Addict

21
In 1994, my nineteen-year old daughter, Cristina, was diagnosed with chronic myelogenous leukemia (CML). It was a diagnosis that came totally out of the blue and as a complete shock. Soon after she was diagnosed, it became clear that I wasn’t going to be able to sleep because of the tremendous stress, so I asked the very kind doctor who diagnosed Cristina if he could give me a prescription for something that would help me sleep. He agreed, and so began my “relationship” with Xanax. I had never taken anything like that before and didn’t know anything about it. All I knew was that as my daughter’s primary caregiver, I needed sleep in order to fight to keep her alive.

Take a Flyer Off a Wall: Six Hours in the Hole

25
Once your body enters a police car or an ambulance, it doesn’t matter what labels you carry or what the apparent “symptoms” are. It doesn’t matter if you even have any label at all. The moment you acquire a mental illness is when someone who doesn’t like you decides that you have one.

Behind Every Label

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In my case, an uninformed diagnosis resulted in a near lifetime of mistreatment and misunderstanding. How does one account for such a significant error? Having my diagnosis changed has felt very liberating, but it hasn’t much reduced the effect of the stigma I’ve internalized.

My Lived Experience Helps Others Heal: Working with Families on the Path to Recovery

4
If one person is struggling, everyone in the family is struggling. Families need support.

From Labeled to Healer: A Road Less Traveled

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We have let down our children (and ourselves) by losing touch with parental intuition and handing their care over to professionals at the first sign of a problem.

Bipolar by Definition?

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Real quick, as I’m sure you’ve heard my story before: “Medication-induced mania.” Primary care writes prescription for antidepressant to alleviate simple stress. Pill causes...
love soul mate

How “Schizophrenia” Helped Me Find My Soul Mate

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Dating someone when you have a history of “schizophrenia” is very hard. I figured that if people left me for something as common as depression, anyone hearing my story of psychosis would give me an immediate boot. My initial efforts were awkward and lacked discretion — into each date I’d burst, willing to commit for an eternity with unconditional love.
the word "drugs" in a bear trap

Drugs? Thank You, I’ll Pass

22
 If I ever lose my mind again, I hope that psychiatrists in charge of my care will grant me but one wish. Please do not force me to take drugs that fill me full of fear.
road

Enjoying the Road Less Traveled

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The people that my son and I continued to consult with over the years didn't talk of mental illness as a brain disease, a chemical imbalance, or a problem with one's genes. Depending on the therapy, they spoke in terms of restoring life force energy, changing cellular vibration, learning to listen and understand, and building a self.

To Live and (Almost) Die in L.A.: A Survivor’s Tale

44
After 25 years of chronic emergency, 22 mental hospitalizations, a stint at a “community mental health center,” 13 years in a "board & care," repeated withdrawals from addictions to legal drugs, and a 12-year marriage, I plan to live every last breath out as a survivor, an advocate, and an artist.

The Key to the Psych Unit

6
I was toeing a very precarious line working in a psychiatric hospital. I knew how tenuous my perceived sanity was.
suzuki book zen buddhism

Searching for Zen and Finding a Cow

26
If I had a clinical problem, why was something as ancient and simple as meditation helping me? And if normal positive human habits could be so profoundly useful, why the heck was the field marketing pills and “clinical” coping mechanisms to me instead? This frustration helped me jump ship from the medical mindset and hop into the world of humanity.

Oceans of Energy: What Paranoia Reveals About Interconnection

36
The psychotic and the mystic swim in the same water. But why do some swim, and some drown?
mental health transformation

A Secret No Longer

19
My psychiatrist/therapist was able to give me a true understanding into what addiction and psychosis really are and how they can be treated with little or no medication. I still struggle, but I have been able to manage my symptoms with the help of ACT therapy, exercise, "forest bathing," storytelling, music and art. I am now able to feel a sense of peaceful fulfillment, and that is all anyone can really ask for.

Coercion in Care

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To this day I do not know how I found my way back. I think it might’ve had something to do with willpower, as I was NOT going to lose myself. I was NOT going to end up like those people who were living indefinitely in the hospital—those “chronic schizophrenics”, as they say. I was going to find my way back, back to myself.

Mental Health Liberation and Spirituality: Ex-Psychiatric Inmates Share Their Thoughts

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What I want to share with you, dear readers, is how spiritual experiences like mine have been reflected in so many people’s stories of being labeled with psychotic disorders.

Children Are Vulnerable Cogs in the Psychiatric Machine

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My guardian decided to seek out “professional” advice about how to diminish my “outbursts.” I was perceived as a problem that needed to be extinguished into a compliant state.

Patient or Prisoner? My Hospital Experience

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We need to come up with a plan that destigmatizes mental health issues for all races, including respectful and non-punitive treatment in in-patient settings.