They prefer not to see us as human beings. They WILL not listen to our pleas for mercy or how their precious pills–which grant them status as Real Doctors–have maimed and killed countless millions.
Instead, they chalk up our laments to proof of how hopelessly sick and crazy we are. Blame the iatrogenic damage from their professional treatments on defective genes/brain chemistry. Both assumed rather than proven to exist.
Which made staying in the “mental health” system life under a medical dictatorship. Rather than negotiate I fled.
Joshua–you might be interested in this list of anti-psychiatry principles and demands. It was created by a group of psychiatric survivors calling themselves Anti-Psychiatry Rising.
WE BELIEVE
1. That psychiatry is a tool of social control which enforces conformity to the prevailing social order.
2. That “mental illness” is a semantically absurd concept which falsely conflates the abstraction known as the mind with the physical brain to mislead people into believing they have literal diseases.
3. That the psychiatric system cannot be reformed but must be abolished.
WE DEMAND
1. An end to all forced psychiatric procedures and “treatments,” included but not limited to incarceration, solitary confinement, physical restraints, drugging, and electroshock.
2. An end to all state support for psychiatry, including but not limited to the use of psychiatric testimony in legal proceedings; psychiatric screenings in schools, prisons, and workplaces; licensing of psychiatrists; and the use of public monies to support psychiatric programs or research.
WE ASSERT
And plan to exercise–our right as an oppressed class to fundamental human rights and self-determination.
I’m sorry KateL.
In a similar situation.
On drugs for 25 years. Off for 5.
Feels like I have a moderate case of chronic fatigue syndrome most days. It was worse during withdrawal, but my energy levels are still low. Under 50 but feel at least 75.
Thank you, Antonia. The irony is I went through the system because I hated myself and wanted to become more normal. The experts made me more abnormal than ever and gave me a badge of shame.
Now I come across as a socially awkward but sweet and deep woman in midlife with multiple health issues. The latter puzzle people more than anything else about me. I also think I’ve suffered neurological damage due to extremely poor short term memory and not seeing things around me. (Worse than before I took the pills. Going off helps me appreciate my loss in cognitive function more.)
Maybe follow the Golden Rule? Do unto others as you would have them do unto you?
But running a society based on that premise has never been tried before. And I don’t think there is any law to make people kinder or more compassionate. Any more than there’s a kind of medical treatment. (The legal and medical tyrants trying to enforce morality by brute force are light years from practicing their own rules. No better than self-styled theocrats when it comes down to it.)
Psychiatry hurts people. Not just physically but the soul.
Ironic how the would-be-healers claim that afflicted part does not exist but go on to damage it by assaulting the organ they associate with the soul.
Some old school psychiatrists helped people feel better through talking and listening. But I have found a way to get this help through friends and pastoral counseling.
Just like I can get help for my underactive thyroid, anemia, B12 deficiency without “mental health.” These are physical problems known to cause depression and fatigue.
Hope you had a merry Christmas too, Bippyone.
I guess the psychiatrist who “helped” you did not like feminism.
Julie Greene once told me how psychiatrists decide how normal something is. Do they agree with/do it themselves? If they do, it is healthy and normal.
Existential has different meanings.
It can mean physical–or wiping out all or nearly most of humanity like that cheerful family flick The Road. (Lol)
Or it can mean a profound threat to more than mere corporeal existence. And often of the individual. The existential angst of Franz Kafka’s works for instance.
Psychiatry brought on a profound crisis of the latter with me. It conflicted with my former life philosophy that I was a unique human being who had a soul and free will. Psychiatry told me that, “No. You are just a bunch of random chemicals firing in a skull. And yours aren’t even firing correctly or the chemical balance is off. So you are subhuman at your innermost being.”
And these same Lab Coats whine about stigma. How “It isn’t fair that the mentally ill are discriminated against, scapegoated, and seen as subhuman monsters.” They write books and articles lamenting this.
Then you read between the lines. They really don’t give a rip about those who suffer from the “stigma” they create by their dehumanizing quackery. (Even NAMI owns that the “bio model” is counter productive in changing public perception for the better.) Lab Coats really just are worried about how their “stigma” may bite them when people are too afraid of having their lives and relationships destroyed to “get the help they need.”
That shrink’s yacht won’t pay for itself. Lower stigma folks. Just the right level. Enough to encourage unlimited involuntary “treatments” but not enough to discourage voluntary consumers either.
Been thinking about the Murphy Bill. How in 2017 D.J. Jaffe and Torrey conducted a media blitz ranting about all those “untreated mentally ill mass shooters.” Every other day it seemed some new “mentally ill” mass shooting occurred.
How “safe and effective treatments” were touted as necessary for the greater good. Not necessarily to help the “mentally ill” but for all they might come in contact with because they were such monsters when left untreated. Otherwise they were “almost as safe as regular people.”
Know why I stayed on those drugs that destroyed my ability to think, feel, or live independently for decades? Lots of guilting from places like NAMI. “If you don’t take you’re cocktail you are being selfish. And you might kill someone like Andrea Yates did drowning her children.”
I know the role psych drugs played with Yates and the mass shootings. But the narrative put profits above facts or the health of those trapped in the mental system.
FWIW, Jan, not everyone who reads MIA is a psychiatric survivor. Of course those who have never been on the receiving end of psychiatric abuse do not share our lived experience.
I remember back in 2017 when D.J. Jaffe and “Doc” Torrey were plugging away at the narrative of the mass shootings. With the help of the MSM who relied upon Big pHarma sponsorship.
The reason they called for the passage of Murphy’s Bill? Public health and safety. The “severely mentally ill” had no right to run around at large without their medication because–according to respected doctors such as Torrey, Pies, and countless others–they were putting others at risk.
Yes, they were–nearly all–out of their minds on these “safe, effective treatments” when they committed these mass killings. But the doctors didn’t care to share this because they had a product to promote. The last thing they wanted was to “pill shame” the psychiatric profession by drawing attention to the role SSRI’s play in violent or disinhibited behaviors or the dulling of emotions such as empathy or guilt that can prevent murders.
I believed the lying narrative for years. I believed the medical experts who lied to me and obeyed them. Out of fear of brining grief to my friends/family/innocent bystanders I took my cocktail religiously. I knew it was shortening my life and disabling me. Yet I took it as an act of duty and sacrifice for those around me.
Sadly this sacrifice was not only unnecessary, but the soul killing drugs made me a worse person–not better–to be around. Furthermore, it ruined my ability to care for myself. I’m slightly better, but had to rely on others because the drugs reduced me to a state of childish dependence for a quarter century of my life,
The men and women I looked to for controlling my “illness” did not care about people like me and had no qualms about lying through their teeth or knowingly poisoning us (psychiatric drugs are a “slow kill”) to further their careers and get free cruises and other goodies from Big pHarma.
Since going off mind altering drugs that cause mood swings and rejecting my “bipolar” label I am acting normally again. Learned normal social skills in my forties. Been in the system for 25 years.
Psychiatry drove me crazy. Leaving restored my senses.
“Mental health” exists solely to drive sane people crazy or prevent the crazy from ever returning to reality. Big profits in keeping people insane and helpless.
“You are nothing without me. You can’t make it on your own. You’re not smart enough to care for yourself and no one but a professional–like me–can stand to be around you.”
Shrinks act and talk a lot like domestic abusers.
Dr. Gotzche, thank you for this article.
I loved your book Deadly Medicines and Organized Crime: How Big Pharma has Corrupted Health Care.
Do you think that book played a role in Big Pharma’s concentrated efforts to get you banned–along with Kelly Brogan and others–from Big Tech platforms?
I got around that by relocating. I tell everyone–including my HUD apartment manager–that I get SSI for Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and an eye condition. Both real and iatrogenic in origin.
Feeling well enough to look for work so I won’t have to worry about a reevaluation by the System. I will move back to my parents’ homestead in the near future too.
I wish David–described in the article–had waited another year. It took me two years after tapering off sertraline before I could feel good things again.
In my late forties I experience more carnal desire than I did twenty-five years ago. Everything has been restored emotionally. Maybe cognitively. Though I struggle to organize and don’t know if biology or frontal lobe damage is to blame. But my amygdala is up and running again.
I love music now. And I’ve become an excellent singer at church now that I have heart to put into it. And I know how to maneuver social situations too.
I have read a number of articles about teens and even middle schoolers committing suicide and leaving notes or telling loved ones it was because of the lockdown beforehand. Yet there are no more suicides than usual since March of last year.
Glory be! The suicides for other causes must have dropped. As the writer has noted suicides can also be from political unrest, economic problems, and domestic abuse. Ergo we can assume all three of these factors are no longer the problems they once were.
Thank you, Lancet Psychiatry. I won’t forget this report in the future.
Well said!
Now that I left my old community I’m doing better.
My undrugged personality is nicer and I can understand social cues at last.
My neighbors think I’m only disabled due to my autoimmune disease. (I really have one thanks to 25 years on drugs.) They treat me like a normal human. The whole experience is overwhelmingly sweet.
The “nocebo” effect. What happened to me after 3 weeks on a drug that kept me from sleeping. And a rushed trip to a psych ward where they convinced me it was not the pills but my brain to blame. My new identity as a schizoaffective was born.
Sorry about your experience Ekaterina.
It wasn’t just your chocolate or face creams that were taken. It was your peace of mind and security.
I had a lot of my nicer clothing stolen during a visit years ago. This stuff happens all the time in psych wards.
Years of these figurative slaps in the face led me to flee the System when an opportunity arose.
For that matter did the nurse–who gets a lot more than the pittance her charges have to survive on–DESERVE those things? Does the nurse deserve to rob much poorer people? Does she deserve to rule the most socially vulnerable. Those with no credibility or hope of redress when wronged?
If you’re searching for a bad guy to condemn, please consider those running the place and abusing their positions.
Had to recover from 24 years in the system by hiding in my parents’ back room for a year to withdraw. A remote, rural area.
Every afternoon I lowered my aching, trembling body into bed so I would have the strength to eat dinner. Drug withdrawals. My parents had no idea why I was so horribly ill on a physical level.
I also had to cope with painful thoughts. I can never have a family now. I’m forced to live on less than $10,000 a year. In chronic pain thanks to long term drug damage.
All so some controlling bureaucrat can present himself as a “real doctor” and earn $300,000 a year instead of a piddling $100,000. Sigh.
I have forgiven the individuals responsible. But what they did was wrong.
Drugs don’t stop child abuse.
I used to teach Sunday school and was asked to stop because women found out about my “diagnosis.” So hurtful and unjust.
Maybe people should be judged on the content of their character–what they actually DO–instead of what some quack in a lab coat says after talking to them and looking at files for 10 minutes.
I saw him in an interview with a renowned journalist back in 2017. He was talking about how the “mentally ill” should be psychiatrized since “they will just wind up in institutions otherwise.”
Makes me wonder if he knew how the standard “treatments” work by crippling and removing the labeled from mainstream society and “functional” people. By ruining our ability to function properly and causing us ticks, massive weight gain, and flattened facial expressions to aid in segregation.
Very callous dismissal of human beings. Utilitarian and light years away from compassion.
Not here to bash Jaffe, but point out how this ugly attitude has infected (metaphorically) so many faucets of society. Jaffe is dead, but utilitarianism remains alive and well. Along with the bioreductionist model–which dehumanizes everyone.
The “mentally ill” are viewed as malfunctioning robots (actually read an article in Psychology Today calling someone that because of her unusually cruel behaviors) but everyone else–by default–is just a well functioning robot. Psychiatry dehumanizes us all. Including the “normals.”
Psychology is a branch of the humanities. This should not be viewed as a bad thing.
The sciences are a worthy field. So are the arts, the humanities, and philosophy.
A fish is not a bird. This is not to the detriment of aquatic life.
Sam, what you describe in the second paragraph is a fallacy. Guilt by association.
Similar to linking RW to the Church of Scientology. Though he has no connections nor endorse it in any of his writings.
Do you think that’s why Dr. Pies so freely admits to the “chemical imbalance metaphor” in many articles?
He and his fellow quacks can laugh up their sleeves at everyone else’s gullibility, but also vent their indignation that the public think they’re stupid enough to believe their own BS. And they won’t be called out for it this way.
If a priest thinks your confession warrants kidnapping you, locking you up for days/weeks/months and plying you with psychological torture including the pharmaceutical variety he will go to prison. A shrink will be handsomely rewarded.
Why would he need a list for the “SMI”? Last I heard Biden wanted to abolish the second amendment and remove all guns. Rendering such a list superfluous.
A bit confusing Dr. Caplan. “Mentally ill” and developmentally delayed are not the same thing. As someone with an above average IQ I found being conflated with the second frustrating. Nothing wrong with not being too smart, but I got sick of being lumped in with them all the time. We are NOT all alike. The case workers often hated those like me because they couldn’t handle anyone not significantly below themselves in cognitive abilities. Julie Green often complained to me about similar things.
Glad I’m out of that situation.
But, like the DD people, those labeled “mentally ill” seem to get a great deal of not being held morally accountable. Severe “treatments” rather than overt punishment. But it’s not any better. Especially since they can “treat” or punish you for crimes you may commit in the future.
Mainstream psychiatry is cancer. A blight on the medical field.
The perfect excuse to ignore–not just the patient’s legitimate grief or trauma–but real physical ailments that could be treated or cured but the doctor is too busy to bother with.
The question is not whether psychiatry can be reformed, but whether Western medicine can be reformed. Doctors are so authoritarian now I hate seeing one.
I was repeatedly told in NAMI and day treatment and clubhouse that if I ever went off my “meds” I would either kill myself or someone else or both. Therefore it was my moral obligation to take the drugs even though they made me ill and I realized they would kill me prematurely.
Sad to realize the drugs were making me harder to live with and ruining my ability to perform ADLs and basic hygiene. Years and years of being lied to and about to my nearest and dearest. 🙁
Szasz made the comparison of a kindly, well meaning shrink handing out drugs for unhappiness in the sincere belief it will help people to an 18th century physician using blood letting on cholera sufferers.
Good intentions can kill in medicine if the premise is unfounded.
Psychiatry needs to go the way of leeches and bloodletting. The ideology is cancer to the medical system regardless of sincere, well intentioned people.
Yep. Psychiatry justifies and rationalizes the damage it does to the public by saying “Their genes make them intrinsically different from you. They don’t have thoughts or feelings like real people.”
As they watch the cognitive deterioration caused by their “safe and effective treatments” they sooth their consciences by saying, “They were only fit for asylums. If I hadn’t dumbed and numbed them out these defectives MIGHT have broken the law or even hurt someone.”
I already have read enough of your writings to know you don’t support TAC or involuntary confinements to psych wards David.
I believe you were the one who got Bob Whitaker to research the efficacy of psychiatric drugs weren’t you? We survivors owe you–as well as he–a debt of gratitude.
And, as Peter Breggin says in his videos, we know very little about the human brain too. Mainstream psychiatry would have us believe our brain chemistry consists of only two chemicals. Serotonin and dopamine. To be “tweaked” with those “life saving meds” they hand out like office mints. (At least they won’t force feed you their stale office candy if you decline.)
Hi David. I really appreciate what you are trying to do.
Here’s the problem I see with the concept of Mad Pride and why I find it hard to incorporate into the anti psychiatry/critical psychiatry narrative.
First of all let’s look at the archetypes (AKA “diagnoses”) of “severe mental illnesses.” The two most notorious are “Bipolar” and “Schizophrenia.” I’ll describe them–though I don’t believe in them–as I would Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny.
“Bipolar symptoms” include behaviors like cheating on your partner, petty theft for fun, verbal and even physical abuse, chasing someone with a knife, lying all the time, drowning your children, killing sprees like Ted Bundy, and mass shootings. All these behaviors have been attributed to “bipolar” by psychiatrists respected in their fields.
“Schizophrenic symptoms” include selfish coldness, hating humanity, violent crimes, killing sprees, and (of course) mass shootings.
By calling myself “mentally ill” or owning my designated role I’ll be living down to the reputation forced upon me by uncaring shrinks. If I’m not guilty of any of the behaviors listed above it’s a form of libelous slander to call me by one of the two “SMI” designations.
The LGBT community found acceptance because, after the sixties, people became more accepting of different expressions of sexuality. They have no problem accepting gays because they’re just like everyone else. Law abiding citizens with no reputation for harming others.
But because of its associations with violent crimes and other bad behaviors “severe mental illness” will never be accepted unless those labeled with it advertise the restraints they wear. Usually chemical. I often tried this in my years as a NAMI activist/mascot. “Look. We’re not bad. We aren’t serial killers or violent. We take our meds! Please accept and like us. We’ll be good and always take our meds even if they make us horribly ill, rot our brains, and kill us before age 53.” 🙁
I guess you can attempt to redefine what “severe mental illnesses” are and explain that even without drugs, shocks, confinement we can be law abiding, non violent citizens. But in the end shrinks define what “bipolar” and “schizophrenia” mean.
And as OH has pointed out there are no biomarkers. These are not legitimate illnesses or disabilities like your paralysis is David. The disabilities many of us share were inflicted by psychiatric remedies. Not problems we were born with.
The reason “born this way” won’t work with survivors is people will still avoid us. In fact it’s worse since they write you off as hopeless. NAMI has been trying this for years. Though for much of the time they’ve known it doesn’t work.
It’s especially problematic if you want the right to live drug free. As many here do. Society views the decision of the “severe mentally ill” to go without their “meds” as so dangerously irresponsible as to be criminal. To their way of thinking by going off your cocktail you run the risk of killing loved ones, cheating on your spouse, violently assaulting strangers, or the ever popular mass shooting spree. Not just your life at risk but all you come in contact with.
The ONLY reason I stayed on my cocktail for 23 years was a sense of obligation to all around me. I knew those pills were harming me and making it hard to function cognitively. But doctors I implicitly trusted assured me I would morph into Ms. Hyde without them and I felt it was wrong to take that risk.
But if you can find ways to work around this narrative–that the “severely mentally ill” are not just rude and inconsiderate but dangerous*–more power to you David Oak. I wish you and the Mad Pride movement well, though I respectfully disagree on its efficacy at ending involuntary and inhumane psychiatric treatment.
* We’re usually depicted as dangerous but not quite self aware enough to be evil, like house pets with rabies.
They aren’t Jesus. But they love to play God and take on the role of Messiah.
Only instead of offering themselves up to be crucified, they expect us to allow ourselves to be. Voluntary would be nice–but not essential. Actually that makes us martyrs…or is that unwitting test subjects?
“You need to suck it up. We all have to make sacrifices,” says the doctor making a 7 digit income off those like you, driving his luxury car off to one of his million dollar mansions. After successfully destroying your livelihood, adult independence, ability to feel happy, and all your ability to have ordinary human relationships. Ain’t doctors swell?
My blind obedience and worshipful submission to these unreliable cons playing god, made me a permanent burden to society. And especially the people I cared about.
It wasn’t in the best interest of me as an individual or the collective either. Unless you count morally (but not financially) bankrupt collectives like Big Pharma or the APA. It stinks to struggle with ADLs and only have $700 a month to live on.
I never wanted that lifestyle for myself nor did my parents. We thought I was getting helped by all the “meds” they claimed were keeping me from losing all cognitive skills and becoming violent. Just the opposite.
Now I hope to support myself as a “creative” like many survivors and even the few “consumers” who get off SSI. Struggling to “adult” in my forties when I’m much frailer than most my age. But at least my mind is coming back. My IQ has gone up nearly 20 points.
My dad is pretty angry and sad too. Occasionally he’ll commiserate with me over the life I lost. Mom is okay with my choice to leave “mental health” but insists the drugs used to help me. Claiming I acted weird at one point when I was fully compliant and took them religiously. (She doesn’t see the fallacy here.)
Hmm. The Experts kept telling my fellow “consumers” and me it was imperative to take drugs that crippled us, damaged our health, and sent many of us into a non stop depression. Why? For the greater good of society.
Does that count as individualism? It’s what the “mental health” center preached to us at every session.
“Mental illness” is not a social construct so much as an etiological one.
A phrase which makes no sense when viewed too carefully.
How does “mental illness” differ from neurological or brain illness? is a question to ask. How William Glasser got me to reconsider the hopeless “disease” I’d been repeatedly told I had.
Because they’ve chosen to write off these suffering people as either beyond help or not worth helping. (By help I mean ordinary human help or TLC which you stop receiving once labeled SMI.)
The “medicines” often have the desired effect of turning intelligent but suffering people into docile, childish creatures. Incapable of independent living or any quality of life most adults prefer yet easy to “take care of” or control.
Like severing someone’s spinal cord so they’ll obey the caretaker ordering them to a lifetime of bedrest.
Or cutting off a songbird’s wings and severing the vocal cords so it won’t fly away or annoy its keepers by singing. The songbird is unhappy but what it wants doesn’t matter.
Once I discovered the hoax about the “chemical imbalance” I look back on what I’ve been through with anger.
The drugs which were supposed to prevent cognitive deterioration (according to my doctor) did the opposite.
I frequently beat up on myself for my inability to find gainful employment, have decent human relationships or keep my house clean. Now I can do all the three.
They were forcing us to hobble around with our feet in fetters and ridiculing us for not running laps like they could. (Clubhouse/Day Treatment/NAMI) Disabling us while pretending to help us.
NAMI
National
Advocates for
Munchausens-by-proxy
Iatrogenics
The notion that I was hopelessly insane almost drove me to suicide.
Psychiatrists see only “bipolars” and “schizophrenics.” I see human beings.
Psychiatry exists to make a distinction between the “normals” with full rights as citizens and human beings and the “severely mentally ill” creatures who can be viewed as incompetent idiots (regardless of demonstrated cognitive abilities) or dangerous criminal masterminds (regardless of the content of our character.) Or both. Whichever psychiatrists–and any “normals” who know how to exploit us–find convenient.
Dr. Goetzhe wrote a book comparing Big Pharma to organized crime. And Psychiatry is their right arm. If not merely the right hand side of this underground dystopia.
A big problem is all or almost all the media rely on Big Pharma ad revenue for the magazine or channel to stay afloat.
“Always the patient’s fault.” Should be the motto for the American Psychiatric Association.
I strongly recommend the site Surviving Antidepressants for those who need help coming off and can’t get it. I cold turkeyed off Lamictal since I couldn’t cut the tablets. But I only took it for 13 days after being hospitalized.
Personally I found Abilify was a snap to come off. Went from 20 mg to 15 mg. Then 15-10; 10-7.5; 7.5-5; 5-2.5; 2.5-0. 2 weeks between each gradation. 10 weeks with only a few headaches. But Effexor was another thing altogether. Took me 13 months to come off 150 mg.
No more suicidal thoughts or melt downs since. The pills were holding me back.
I’m more at risk for dying if I contract Covid-19 due to my autoimmune disease caused by years on SSRIs.
Why is it surprising that STIMULANTS which wear the body down by artificially boosting energy levels make kids more prone to infection and poor prognosis from the infection?
Does forcing a child to drink 5 cups of coffee and a 6 pack of Mountain Dew every flu season make them less at risk for infection?
Our opponents would (probably) argue that it’s different because it’s not punishment, but “help.”
Peter Breggin points out how calling random brain damage, pharmaceutical torture (that is a thing) and imprisonment “treatment” instead of punishment enables psychiatrists to treat law abiding citizens worse than convicted felons.
Would D.J. Jaffe have given the cootie treatment and avoided eye contact with some cancer victim he was trying to organize a fund raiser for? Interesting how the pro-psych force can rationalize what they do so easily.
“I have the right to force these drugs on Blanche.” TAC Dude
“Blanche doesn’t like them. She says they upset her stomach and give her terrors. I see her seize on them.” Friend of Blanche
“Blanche is ‘mentally ill’ so if she doesn’t like them that’s just her illness talking. Lol. If she seizes or throws up she’s faking it for attention.” TAC Dude
That’s why I frequently compare psychiatrists to Dr. Farid Fata. He sold lengthy rounds of chemo to people without cancer. Killing some and crippling even more. Because of his gutless professional colleagues he got away with it for a very long time. The whole story makes me despise the medical profession.
His death brings me sorrow. Leukemia is an awful way to go.
Sadly it won’t undo the harmful policies passed through his activism. He was more of an advocate for annoyed family members and psychiatrists who made a killing off crippling and defaming through quack treatments than the “consumers” themselves.
What Briana describes in her encounter with him, his refusal to make eye contact or acknowledge her humanity is what I remember during my 25 years in psychiatry. Numbed and dumbed down as I was, I felt it keenly.
In dehumanizing others they dehumanize themselves.
It’s sobering that Jaffe will never have another chance to make amends to those he–more or less–unwittingly harmed. To undo his TAC policies is up to others.
Rest in peace Jaffe. May Heaven have mercy on your soul.
Thanks.
I don’t consider myself an anti vaxxer though. At least not as far as the basic MMR shots go. Even polio shots are still a good idea.
These shots are highly effective. And the polio one saves children’s lives.
My brother and I had all four as children. But I got my Chicken Pox immunity the old fashioned way.
Dedicating my time to trying to help keep local small businesses afloat. Pam Popper’s gives some tips on how we can do this. I highly recommend looking up her interview with Peter Breggin on YouTube.
A lot of people are desperately afraid they will lose their homes or be unable to scrape enough beans and rice together to feed their children. I visit a cafe near me and promised the owner’s daughter working behind the cash register that if another lockdown takes place I will still get carry out there regularly.
Just thought I’d mention that Pies’s article has been “misplaced.” A computer glitch I’m sure. Not like there was too much traffic from this site to the shrinks’ dirty little secret conflicting with those cute commercials.
I understand where you are coming from. I only wish I shared your optimism. Google “social distancing is permanent” and see all the articles that pop up and read a few.
Big Pharma is making money faster than ever as small businesses are forced to close. Not big chain stores though. This isn’t about preventing infection since more stores mean more distancing. It’s about cronyism and lobbying.
Okay. You want to spend the rest of your life in isolation? Because that’s what all the experts recommend. Utter isolation at home alone for everyone forever.
The only plan out there!
Sounds like a quality life and very healthy too.
Nobody work or see friends or family ever again. Stay locked at home for 50-60 years till you die. WONDERFUL.
Funny how a lifetime of permanent isolation is healthy now. Not like any of us have social needs after all.
This will never end. Get used to permanent house arrest. Years and decades.
The New Normal means you can never have coffee with friends again. I prefer death from this alleged plague myself. The rest of you can enjoy this nightmare dystopia. Funny how I’m the only person who finds it depressing. Crazy me to want friends and fresh air instead of spending the last years of my life locked alone in a room eating beans.
Weird how everyone but me suddenly loves endless isolation, wants it to last forever and enjoys dying alone. Cause you will die even without the Covid. Utterly ALONE IN ISOLATION.
Wish I enjoyed loneliness and hated companionship like the rest of you cranks. Everyone else loves being cut off alone FOREVER.
THIS WILL NEVER EVER END.
Why is Covid death so scary? As the last person with human needs or emotions I wish it or something else would kill me.
Dr. Fauci says we’ll probably never have a vaccine and should never be allowed out of our houses till the virus completely vanishes which he is pretty certain it won’t. Ergo permanent lockdown forever according to the Experts.
Oh yes. The Scientific Ex-Spurts suddenly decided isolating is not only healthy but praiseworthy. If you don’t enjoy it, it’s your fault and they will force drugs on you while forcing even more isolation on you.
Glad I live in the country. Like many labeled SMI I’m no stranger to loneliness. If I avoid thinking about the future I’m okay.
Curious how many other survivors are holding up. Like everyone else is caving in but we’ve already been through this crap. Same old, same old.
I wish these controlling Science Ex-Spurts would experiment on themselves. At least they’re too busy to hunt down every single depressed person now. Easier to escape their notice.
“If someone has committed a heinous crime let them pay their debt to society.”
Well said Caroline. We already have the legal system to punish all of us for law breaking.
But psychiatry has the authority to punish regardless of our behavior. The unquestioned absolute authority to inflict cruel and unusual punishment (without limit) on even the most mild mannered law abiding saints–more sinned against than sinning. Just because some Expert deems them biologically unfit for basic human rights or simple kindness and decency.
Psychiatry punishes the “biologically unfit” for the crime of existing. 🙁
Because of this pseudo science our culture chooses to judge us on the word of some Ex-Spurt Sciencey Dude–who just flipped through old notes without talking to us. Not the content of our character.
After i got labeled I hated myself. Everyone treated me like a monster.
The drugs killed all my ability to experience positive emotions and caused daily seizures. Everyone blamed my desire for suicide on my “illness.”
When they say, “You’re not your illness” it’s pretty laughable. In their eyes all “consumers” are walking diseases.
What scares me far worse than the thought of death itself–or even the deaths of my beloved Boomer parents–is losing touch with our humanity. If I see someone in need who can’t be helped otherwise I’ll gladly expose myself and stay in quarantine later.
It takes time.
I chose to forgive the people who injured me. But it took a long time.
If you don’t want to or feel you can’t I sympathize.
Part of forgiving meant acknowledging the wrongs done me. I’d always been taught nice girls don’t get angry or remember wrongs. My grandma told me we automatically forget bad treatment because girls are naturally sweet–made up of sugar and spice and all things nice. 😛 Nope.
My thoughts exactly Willoweed.
My odd behaviors and personality changes were similar to those of an alcoholic. My mom mentioned this but we never put two and two together.
Took me over twenty years to find stuff online saying the drugs I took were anything but life saving and essential. Or telling how to go off them without melting down. Ages 20 to 44 in psychiatry.
I’m better now.
Made real progress emotionally, cognitively, and finally physically.
I get along with people now. Smiling easily. I shower every day and keep up on household chores. And I am finishing writing projects since the first time in my teens.
I attribute these changes to going off drugs and rejecting the role society assigned me of madwoman.
I’ve heard of kids “inheriting” trauma.
It’s not to be confused with abuse. If anything the mother may strive to protect her children from the horrors she went through. Unfortunately this can backfire however kind and noble the intentions.
For example the children of Holocaust survivors and those who were molested as children.
You can’t fault the parent anymore than you can of unwittingly giving the child a cold. It just happens. The right kind of family therapy might help the parent. Such as Choice Theory by William Glasser. He only counseled adults. If the children acted out he would advise the parents on how to show love while preparing the child for life.
Being told you have an incurable brain disease that will keep you depressed forever is depressing.
Since (many believe) depression exists as a feeling, hopelessness will make the feeling worse. Plus the drugs make you sluggish and apathetic which can also cause “low grade” depression.
Yeah. Fine line between whacking myself over the head for everything that goes wrong and blaming others.
I dated a man also labeled “bipolar” though we had little else in common. One day I realized how we kept apologizing to each other in an excessive, compulsive manner.
“Nobody’s fault, it’s a brain disease” translates to “everything that goes wrong is the fault of the person with the presupposed brain disease.” One of Psychiatry’s paradoxes.
False dilemma. Reminds me of the story of how the disciples asked Jesus, “Did this man sin or did his parents so that he was born blind”?
Neither Mom nor I behaved perfectly through my existential journey into madness. Exacerbated and greatly prolonged courtesy of Big Pharma Psychiatry.
I gladly brought her to NAMI because she kept blaming herself for my weird behaviors under the influence of mind altering drugs and my new diagnostic identity.
Looking back, I’m more upset at how my crazy behaviors impacted my friends and family who stayed with me through the quarter century ordeal. I was a drug addict and none of us even knew.
A remote rural area, over a hundred miles away from a psychiatric hospital or ward. No shrinks here either. And no one knows my history.
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They prefer not to see us as human beings. They WILL not listen to our pleas for mercy or how their precious pills–which grant them status as Real Doctors–have maimed and killed countless millions.
Instead, they chalk up our laments to proof of how hopelessly sick and crazy we are. Blame the iatrogenic damage from their professional treatments on defective genes/brain chemistry. Both assumed rather than proven to exist.
Which made staying in the “mental health” system life under a medical dictatorship. Rather than negotiate I fled.
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Joshua–you might be interested in this list of anti-psychiatry principles and demands. It was created by a group of psychiatric survivors calling themselves Anti-Psychiatry Rising.
WE BELIEVE
1. That psychiatry is a tool of social control which enforces conformity to the prevailing social order.
2. That “mental illness” is a semantically absurd concept which falsely conflates the abstraction known as the mind with the physical brain to mislead people into believing they have literal diseases.
3. That the psychiatric system cannot be reformed but must be abolished.
WE DEMAND
1. An end to all forced psychiatric procedures and “treatments,” included but not limited to incarceration, solitary confinement, physical restraints, drugging, and electroshock.
2. An end to all state support for psychiatry, including but not limited to the use of psychiatric testimony in legal proceedings; psychiatric screenings in schools, prisons, and workplaces; licensing of psychiatrists; and the use of public monies to support psychiatric programs or research.
WE ASSERT
And plan to exercise–our right as an oppressed class to fundamental human rights and self-determination.
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I’m sorry KateL.
In a similar situation.
On drugs for 25 years. Off for 5.
Feels like I have a moderate case of chronic fatigue syndrome most days. It was worse during withdrawal, but my energy levels are still low. Under 50 but feel at least 75.
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Thank you, Antonia. The irony is I went through the system because I hated myself and wanted to become more normal. The experts made me more abnormal than ever and gave me a badge of shame.
Now I come across as a socially awkward but sweet and deep woman in midlife with multiple health issues. The latter puzzle people more than anything else about me. I also think I’ve suffered neurological damage due to extremely poor short term memory and not seeing things around me. (Worse than before I took the pills. Going off helps me appreciate my loss in cognitive function more.)
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Maybe follow the Golden Rule? Do unto others as you would have them do unto you?
But running a society based on that premise has never been tried before. And I don’t think there is any law to make people kinder or more compassionate. Any more than there’s a kind of medical treatment. (The legal and medical tyrants trying to enforce morality by brute force are light years from practicing their own rules. No better than self-styled theocrats when it comes down to it.)
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Yep. Are they really that lacking in awareness of how this harms relationships just like the system’s drugs harm us physically?
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I too am a Christian. I found a deliverance more helpful than years of so-called therapy.
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I find single womanhood doable–as long as I don’t date. Lol
Dating apps stink.
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Thank you, Sam.
Violating the conscience is a form of emotional abuse.
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Psychiatry hurts people. Not just physically but the soul.
Ironic how the would-be-healers claim that afflicted part does not exist but go on to damage it by assaulting the organ they associate with the soul.
Some old school psychiatrists helped people feel better through talking and listening. But I have found a way to get this help through friends and pastoral counseling.
Just like I can get help for my underactive thyroid, anemia, B12 deficiency without “mental health.” These are physical problems known to cause depression and fatigue.
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Psychiatry is a liar. Mental illness is its Big Lie.
The best weapon against any lie is the truth.
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Thanks Rosalee.
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Just like corn syrup for diabetes. Lol
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Hope you had a merry Christmas too, Bippyone.
I guess the psychiatrist who “helped” you did not like feminism.
Julie Greene once told me how psychiatrists decide how normal something is. Do they agree with/do it themselves? If they do, it is healthy and normal.
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Thank you, Rebel.
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Thanks KS.
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Existential has different meanings.
It can mean physical–or wiping out all or nearly most of humanity like that cheerful family flick The Road. (Lol)
Or it can mean a profound threat to more than mere corporeal existence. And often of the individual. The existential angst of Franz Kafka’s works for instance.
Psychiatry brought on a profound crisis of the latter with me. It conflicted with my former life philosophy that I was a unique human being who had a soul and free will. Psychiatry told me that, “No. You are just a bunch of random chemicals firing in a skull. And yours aren’t even firing correctly or the chemical balance is off. So you are subhuman at your innermost being.”
And these same Lab Coats whine about stigma. How “It isn’t fair that the mentally ill are discriminated against, scapegoated, and seen as subhuman monsters.” They write books and articles lamenting this.
Then you read between the lines. They really don’t give a rip about those who suffer from the “stigma” they create by their dehumanizing quackery. (Even NAMI owns that the “bio model” is counter productive in changing public perception for the better.) Lab Coats really just are worried about how their “stigma” may bite them when people are too afraid of having their lives and relationships destroyed to “get the help they need.”
That shrink’s yacht won’t pay for itself. Lower stigma folks. Just the right level. Enough to encourage unlimited involuntary “treatments” but not enough to discourage voluntary consumers either.
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Been thinking about the Murphy Bill. How in 2017 D.J. Jaffe and Torrey conducted a media blitz ranting about all those “untreated mentally ill mass shooters.” Every other day it seemed some new “mentally ill” mass shooting occurred.
How “safe and effective treatments” were touted as necessary for the greater good. Not necessarily to help the “mentally ill” but for all they might come in contact with because they were such monsters when left untreated. Otherwise they were “almost as safe as regular people.”
Know why I stayed on those drugs that destroyed my ability to think, feel, or live independently for decades? Lots of guilting from places like NAMI. “If you don’t take you’re cocktail you are being selfish. And you might kill someone like Andrea Yates did drowning her children.”
I know the role psych drugs played with Yates and the mass shootings. But the narrative put profits above facts or the health of those trapped in the mental system.
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Congressman Tim Murphy loved to use them.
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FWIW, Jan, not everyone who reads MIA is a psychiatric survivor. Of course those who have never been on the receiving end of psychiatric abuse do not share our lived experience.
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Well said.
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I remember back in 2017 when D.J. Jaffe and “Doc” Torrey were plugging away at the narrative of the mass shootings. With the help of the MSM who relied upon Big pHarma sponsorship.
The reason they called for the passage of Murphy’s Bill? Public health and safety. The “severely mentally ill” had no right to run around at large without their medication because–according to respected doctors such as Torrey, Pies, and countless others–they were putting others at risk.
Yes, they were–nearly all–out of their minds on these “safe, effective treatments” when they committed these mass killings. But the doctors didn’t care to share this because they had a product to promote. The last thing they wanted was to “pill shame” the psychiatric profession by drawing attention to the role SSRI’s play in violent or disinhibited behaviors or the dulling of emotions such as empathy or guilt that can prevent murders.
I believed the lying narrative for years. I believed the medical experts who lied to me and obeyed them. Out of fear of brining grief to my friends/family/innocent bystanders I took my cocktail religiously. I knew it was shortening my life and disabling me. Yet I took it as an act of duty and sacrifice for those around me.
Sadly this sacrifice was not only unnecessary, but the soul killing drugs made me a worse person–not better–to be around. Furthermore, it ruined my ability to care for myself. I’m slightly better, but had to rely on others because the drugs reduced me to a state of childish dependence for a quarter century of my life,
The men and women I looked to for controlling my “illness” did not care about people like me and had no qualms about lying through their teeth or knowingly poisoning us (psychiatric drugs are a “slow kill”) to further their careers and get free cruises and other goodies from Big pHarma.
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Since going off mind altering drugs that cause mood swings and rejecting my “bipolar” label I am acting normally again. Learned normal social skills in my forties. Been in the system for 25 years.
Psychiatry drove me crazy. Leaving restored my senses.
“Mental health” exists solely to drive sane people crazy or prevent the crazy from ever returning to reality. Big profits in keeping people insane and helpless.
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“You are nothing without me. You can’t make it on your own. You’re not smart enough to care for yourself and no one but a professional–like me–can stand to be around you.”
Shrinks act and talk a lot like domestic abusers.
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Dr. Gotzche, thank you for this article.
I loved your book Deadly Medicines and Organized Crime: How Big Pharma has Corrupted Health Care.
Do you think that book played a role in Big Pharma’s concentrated efforts to get you banned–along with Kelly Brogan and others–from Big Tech platforms?
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I got around that by relocating. I tell everyone–including my HUD apartment manager–that I get SSI for Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and an eye condition. Both real and iatrogenic in origin.
Feeling well enough to look for work so I won’t have to worry about a reevaluation by the System. I will move back to my parents’ homestead in the near future too.
I wish David–described in the article–had waited another year. It took me two years after tapering off sertraline before I could feel good things again.
In my late forties I experience more carnal desire than I did twenty-five years ago. Everything has been restored emotionally. Maybe cognitively. Though I struggle to organize and don’t know if biology or frontal lobe damage is to blame. But my amygdala is up and running again.
I love music now. And I’ve become an excellent singer at church now that I have heart to put into it. And I know how to maneuver social situations too.
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I have read a number of articles about teens and even middle schoolers committing suicide and leaving notes or telling loved ones it was because of the lockdown beforehand. Yet there are no more suicides than usual since March of last year.
Glory be! The suicides for other causes must have dropped. As the writer has noted suicides can also be from political unrest, economic problems, and domestic abuse. Ergo we can assume all three of these factors are no longer the problems they once were.
Thank you, Lancet Psychiatry. I won’t forget this report in the future.
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Good point.
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Yes. OH frequently has vented this to me in our correspondence.
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Well said!
Now that I left my old community I’m doing better.
My undrugged personality is nicer and I can understand social cues at last.
My neighbors think I’m only disabled due to my autoimmune disease. (I really have one thanks to 25 years on drugs.) They treat me like a normal human. The whole experience is overwhelmingly sweet.
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The “nocebo” effect. What happened to me after 3 weeks on a drug that kept me from sleeping. And a rushed trip to a psych ward where they convinced me it was not the pills but my brain to blame. My new identity as a schizoaffective was born.
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YouTube
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Sorry about your experience Ekaterina.
It wasn’t just your chocolate or face creams that were taken. It was your peace of mind and security.
I had a lot of my nicer clothing stolen during a visit years ago. This stuff happens all the time in psych wards.
Years of these figurative slaps in the face led me to flee the System when an opportunity arose.
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For that matter did the nurse–who gets a lot more than the pittance her charges have to survive on–DESERVE those things? Does the nurse deserve to rob much poorer people? Does she deserve to rule the most socially vulnerable. Those with no credibility or hope of redress when wronged?
If you’re searching for a bad guy to condemn, please consider those running the place and abusing their positions.
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Had to recover from 24 years in the system by hiding in my parents’ back room for a year to withdraw. A remote, rural area.
Every afternoon I lowered my aching, trembling body into bed so I would have the strength to eat dinner. Drug withdrawals. My parents had no idea why I was so horribly ill on a physical level.
I also had to cope with painful thoughts. I can never have a family now. I’m forced to live on less than $10,000 a year. In chronic pain thanks to long term drug damage.
All so some controlling bureaucrat can present himself as a “real doctor” and earn $300,000 a year instead of a piddling $100,000. Sigh.
I have forgiven the individuals responsible. But what they did was wrong.
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Drugs don’t stop child abuse.
I used to teach Sunday school and was asked to stop because women found out about my “diagnosis.” So hurtful and unjust.
Maybe people should be judged on the content of their character–what they actually DO–instead of what some quack in a lab coat says after talking to them and looking at files for 10 minutes.
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I saw him in an interview with a renowned journalist back in 2017. He was talking about how the “mentally ill” should be psychiatrized since “they will just wind up in institutions otherwise.”
Makes me wonder if he knew how the standard “treatments” work by crippling and removing the labeled from mainstream society and “functional” people. By ruining our ability to function properly and causing us ticks, massive weight gain, and flattened facial expressions to aid in segregation.
Very callous dismissal of human beings. Utilitarian and light years away from compassion.
Not here to bash Jaffe, but point out how this ugly attitude has infected (metaphorically) so many faucets of society. Jaffe is dead, but utilitarianism remains alive and well. Along with the bioreductionist model–which dehumanizes everyone.
The “mentally ill” are viewed as malfunctioning robots (actually read an article in Psychology Today calling someone that because of her unusually cruel behaviors) but everyone else–by default–is just a well functioning robot. Psychiatry dehumanizes us all. Including the “normals.”
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Psychology is a branch of the humanities. This should not be viewed as a bad thing.
The sciences are a worthy field. So are the arts, the humanities, and philosophy.
A fish is not a bird. This is not to the detriment of aquatic life.
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Sam, what you describe in the second paragraph is a fallacy. Guilt by association.
Similar to linking RW to the Church of Scientology. Though he has no connections nor endorse it in any of his writings.
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Do you think that’s why Dr. Pies so freely admits to the “chemical imbalance metaphor” in many articles?
He and his fellow quacks can laugh up their sleeves at everyone else’s gullibility, but also vent their indignation that the public think they’re stupid enough to believe their own BS. And they won’t be called out for it this way.
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Dr. Lies! Bwahahaha.
That’s good, Sam.
Psychiatry is really more of a lie than a science.
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I reach out to someone by phone every day.
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If a priest thinks your confession warrants kidnapping you, locking you up for days/weeks/months and plying you with psychological torture including the pharmaceutical variety he will go to prison. A shrink will be handsomely rewarded.
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Like a Gilbert and Sullivan opera where a young man is scheduled for execution as the penalty for threatening suicide.
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Why would he need a list for the “SMI”? Last I heard Biden wanted to abolish the second amendment and remove all guns. Rendering such a list superfluous.
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You got that right. Nobody has the right to kill.
Including doctors in the name of “treatment” or “mercy.”
I too miss Julie.
A lot.
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A bit confusing Dr. Caplan. “Mentally ill” and developmentally delayed are not the same thing. As someone with an above average IQ I found being conflated with the second frustrating. Nothing wrong with not being too smart, but I got sick of being lumped in with them all the time. We are NOT all alike. The case workers often hated those like me because they couldn’t handle anyone not significantly below themselves in cognitive abilities. Julie Green often complained to me about similar things.
Glad I’m out of that situation.
But, like the DD people, those labeled “mentally ill” seem to get a great deal of not being held morally accountable. Severe “treatments” rather than overt punishment. But it’s not any better. Especially since they can “treat” or punish you for crimes you may commit in the future.
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Mainstream psychiatry is cancer. A blight on the medical field.
The perfect excuse to ignore–not just the patient’s legitimate grief or trauma–but real physical ailments that could be treated or cured but the doctor is too busy to bother with.
The question is not whether psychiatry can be reformed, but whether Western medicine can be reformed. Doctors are so authoritarian now I hate seeing one.
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There are a few other situations I’d see a doctor for. A really bad infection that won’t go away for example.
But your comment reminds me that setting a broken leg (or other bone) is the one thing the Christian Science cult allows its members to get help for.
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A lot of people say dumb things thinking they’ll make us feel better but do the opposite.
I remember an old Schwartzenegger picture where he body slams his comic relief and shouts, “Stop trying to cheer me up!!!”
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I was repeatedly told in NAMI and day treatment and clubhouse that if I ever went off my “meds” I would either kill myself or someone else or both. Therefore it was my moral obligation to take the drugs even though they made me ill and I realized they would kill me prematurely.
Sad to realize the drugs were making me harder to live with and ruining my ability to perform ADLs and basic hygiene. Years and years of being lied to and about to my nearest and dearest. 🙁
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Szasz made the comparison of a kindly, well meaning shrink handing out drugs for unhappiness in the sincere belief it will help people to an 18th century physician using blood letting on cholera sufferers.
Good intentions can kill in medicine if the premise is unfounded.
Psychiatry needs to go the way of leeches and bloodletting. The ideology is cancer to the medical system regardless of sincere, well intentioned people.
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Psychiatrists are less moral than meth dealers.
I’m talking about mainstream shrinks respected by the APA establishment. Not outliers or mavericks like Breggin and those who write for MIA.
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Yep. Psychiatry justifies and rationalizes the damage it does to the public by saying “Their genes make them intrinsically different from you. They don’t have thoughts or feelings like real people.”
As they watch the cognitive deterioration caused by their “safe and effective treatments” they sooth their consciences by saying, “They were only fit for asylums. If I hadn’t dumbed and numbed them out these defectives MIGHT have broken the law or even hurt someone.”
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I already have read enough of your writings to know you don’t support TAC or involuntary confinements to psych wards David.
I believe you were the one who got Bob Whitaker to research the efficacy of psychiatric drugs weren’t you? We survivors owe you–as well as he–a debt of gratitude.
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And, as Peter Breggin says in his videos, we know very little about the human brain too. Mainstream psychiatry would have us believe our brain chemistry consists of only two chemicals. Serotonin and dopamine. To be “tweaked” with those “life saving meds” they hand out like office mints. (At least they won’t force feed you their stale office candy if you decline.)
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Hi David. I really appreciate what you are trying to do.
Here’s the problem I see with the concept of Mad Pride and why I find it hard to incorporate into the anti psychiatry/critical psychiatry narrative.
First of all let’s look at the archetypes (AKA “diagnoses”) of “severe mental illnesses.” The two most notorious are “Bipolar” and “Schizophrenia.” I’ll describe them–though I don’t believe in them–as I would Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny.
“Bipolar symptoms” include behaviors like cheating on your partner, petty theft for fun, verbal and even physical abuse, chasing someone with a knife, lying all the time, drowning your children, killing sprees like Ted Bundy, and mass shootings. All these behaviors have been attributed to “bipolar” by psychiatrists respected in their fields.
“Schizophrenic symptoms” include selfish coldness, hating humanity, violent crimes, killing sprees, and (of course) mass shootings.
By calling myself “mentally ill” or owning my designated role I’ll be living down to the reputation forced upon me by uncaring shrinks. If I’m not guilty of any of the behaviors listed above it’s a form of libelous slander to call me by one of the two “SMI” designations.
The LGBT community found acceptance because, after the sixties, people became more accepting of different expressions of sexuality. They have no problem accepting gays because they’re just like everyone else. Law abiding citizens with no reputation for harming others.
But because of its associations with violent crimes and other bad behaviors “severe mental illness” will never be accepted unless those labeled with it advertise the restraints they wear. Usually chemical. I often tried this in my years as a NAMI activist/mascot. “Look. We’re not bad. We aren’t serial killers or violent. We take our meds! Please accept and like us. We’ll be good and always take our meds even if they make us horribly ill, rot our brains, and kill us before age 53.” 🙁
I guess you can attempt to redefine what “severe mental illnesses” are and explain that even without drugs, shocks, confinement we can be law abiding, non violent citizens. But in the end shrinks define what “bipolar” and “schizophrenia” mean.
And as OH has pointed out there are no biomarkers. These are not legitimate illnesses or disabilities like your paralysis is David. The disabilities many of us share were inflicted by psychiatric remedies. Not problems we were born with.
The reason “born this way” won’t work with survivors is people will still avoid us. In fact it’s worse since they write you off as hopeless. NAMI has been trying this for years. Though for much of the time they’ve known it doesn’t work.
It’s especially problematic if you want the right to live drug free. As many here do. Society views the decision of the “severe mentally ill” to go without their “meds” as so dangerously irresponsible as to be criminal. To their way of thinking by going off your cocktail you run the risk of killing loved ones, cheating on your spouse, violently assaulting strangers, or the ever popular mass shooting spree. Not just your life at risk but all you come in contact with.
The ONLY reason I stayed on my cocktail for 23 years was a sense of obligation to all around me. I knew those pills were harming me and making it hard to function cognitively. But doctors I implicitly trusted assured me I would morph into Ms. Hyde without them and I felt it was wrong to take that risk.
But if you can find ways to work around this narrative–that the “severely mentally ill” are not just rude and inconsiderate but dangerous*–more power to you David Oak. I wish you and the Mad Pride movement well, though I respectfully disagree on its efficacy at ending involuntary and inhumane psychiatric treatment.
* We’re usually depicted as dangerous but not quite self aware enough to be evil, like house pets with rabies.
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I continued taking Effexor in gradually tapering doses for well over a year. Hard drug to go off!
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They aren’t Jesus. But they love to play God and take on the role of Messiah.
Only instead of offering themselves up to be crucified, they expect us to allow ourselves to be. Voluntary would be nice–but not essential. Actually that makes us martyrs…or is that unwitting test subjects?
“You need to suck it up. We all have to make sacrifices,” says the doctor making a 7 digit income off those like you, driving his luxury car off to one of his million dollar mansions. After successfully destroying your livelihood, adult independence, ability to feel happy, and all your ability to have ordinary human relationships. Ain’t doctors swell?
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Hugs Aunty!
From across the Pond.
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Lol.
Been off mine for three.
My blind obedience and worshipful submission to these unreliable cons playing god, made me a permanent burden to society. And especially the people I cared about.
It wasn’t in the best interest of me as an individual or the collective either. Unless you count morally (but not financially) bankrupt collectives like Big Pharma or the APA. It stinks to struggle with ADLs and only have $700 a month to live on.
I never wanted that lifestyle for myself nor did my parents. We thought I was getting helped by all the “meds” they claimed were keeping me from losing all cognitive skills and becoming violent. Just the opposite.
Now I hope to support myself as a “creative” like many survivors and even the few “consumers” who get off SSI. Struggling to “adult” in my forties when I’m much frailer than most my age. But at least my mind is coming back. My IQ has gone up nearly 20 points.
My dad is pretty angry and sad too. Occasionally he’ll commiserate with me over the life I lost. Mom is okay with my choice to leave “mental health” but insists the drugs used to help me. Claiming I acted weird at one point when I was fully compliant and took them religiously. (She doesn’t see the fallacy here.)
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Hmm. The Experts kept telling my fellow “consumers” and me it was imperative to take drugs that crippled us, damaged our health, and sent many of us into a non stop depression. Why? For the greater good of society.
Does that count as individualism? It’s what the “mental health” center preached to us at every session.
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“Mental illness” is not a social construct so much as an etiological one.
A phrase which makes no sense when viewed too carefully.
How does “mental illness” differ from neurological or brain illness? is a question to ask. How William Glasser got me to reconsider the hopeless “disease” I’d been repeatedly told I had.
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Because they’ve chosen to write off these suffering people as either beyond help or not worth helping. (By help I mean ordinary human help or TLC which you stop receiving once labeled SMI.)
The “medicines” often have the desired effect of turning intelligent but suffering people into docile, childish creatures. Incapable of independent living or any quality of life most adults prefer yet easy to “take care of” or control.
Like severing someone’s spinal cord so they’ll obey the caretaker ordering them to a lifetime of bedrest.
Or cutting off a songbird’s wings and severing the vocal cords so it won’t fly away or annoy its keepers by singing. The songbird is unhappy but what it wants doesn’t matter.
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Yes. I mustn’t live in the past or might-have-been but what is.
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Once I discovered the hoax about the “chemical imbalance” I look back on what I’ve been through with anger.
The drugs which were supposed to prevent cognitive deterioration (according to my doctor) did the opposite.
I frequently beat up on myself for my inability to find gainful employment, have decent human relationships or keep my house clean. Now I can do all the three.
They were forcing us to hobble around with our feet in fetters and ridiculing us for not running laps like they could. (Clubhouse/Day Treatment/NAMI) Disabling us while pretending to help us.
NAMI
National
Advocates for
Munchausens-by-proxy
Iatrogenics
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The notion that I was hopelessly insane almost drove me to suicide.
Psychiatrists see only “bipolars” and “schizophrenics.” I see human beings.
Psychiatry exists to make a distinction between the “normals” with full rights as citizens and human beings and the “severely mentally ill” creatures who can be viewed as incompetent idiots (regardless of demonstrated cognitive abilities) or dangerous criminal masterminds (regardless of the content of our character.) Or both. Whichever psychiatrists–and any “normals” who know how to exploit us–find convenient.
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I was referring to the article RW critiques.
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Such a poorly written, shoddy piece of “journalism.”
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Dr. Goetzhe wrote a book comparing Big Pharma to organized crime. And Psychiatry is their right arm. If not merely the right hand side of this underground dystopia.
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Well said.
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A big problem is all or almost all the media rely on Big Pharma ad revenue for the magazine or channel to stay afloat.
“Always the patient’s fault.” Should be the motto for the American Psychiatric Association.
I strongly recommend the site Surviving Antidepressants for those who need help coming off and can’t get it. I cold turkeyed off Lamictal since I couldn’t cut the tablets. But I only took it for 13 days after being hospitalized.
Personally I found Abilify was a snap to come off. Went from 20 mg to 15 mg. Then 15-10; 10-7.5; 7.5-5; 5-2.5; 2.5-0. 2 weeks between each gradation. 10 weeks with only a few headaches. But Effexor was another thing altogether. Took me 13 months to come off 150 mg.
No more suicidal thoughts or melt downs since. The pills were holding me back.
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I’m more at risk for dying if I contract Covid-19 due to my autoimmune disease caused by years on SSRIs.
Why is it surprising that STIMULANTS which wear the body down by artificially boosting energy levels make kids more prone to infection and poor prognosis from the infection?
Does forcing a child to drink 5 cups of coffee and a 6 pack of Mountain Dew every flu season make them less at risk for infection?
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I do NOT defend that by any means Oldhead.
Our opponents would (probably) argue that it’s different because it’s not punishment, but “help.”
Peter Breggin points out how calling random brain damage, pharmaceutical torture (that is a thing) and imprisonment “treatment” instead of punishment enables psychiatrists to treat law abiding citizens worse than convicted felons.
Would D.J. Jaffe have given the cootie treatment and avoided eye contact with some cancer victim he was trying to organize a fund raiser for? Interesting how the pro-psych force can rationalize what they do so easily.
“I have the right to force these drugs on Blanche.” TAC Dude
“Blanche doesn’t like them. She says they upset her stomach and give her terrors. I see her seize on them.” Friend of Blanche
“Blanche is ‘mentally ill’ so if she doesn’t like them that’s just her illness talking. Lol. If she seizes or throws up she’s faking it for attention.” TAC Dude
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That’s why I frequently compare psychiatrists to Dr. Farid Fata. He sold lengthy rounds of chemo to people without cancer. Killing some and crippling even more. Because of his gutless professional colleagues he got away with it for a very long time. The whole story makes me despise the medical profession.
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His death brings me sorrow. Leukemia is an awful way to go.
Sadly it won’t undo the harmful policies passed through his activism. He was more of an advocate for annoyed family members and psychiatrists who made a killing off crippling and defaming through quack treatments than the “consumers” themselves.
What Briana describes in her encounter with him, his refusal to make eye contact or acknowledge her humanity is what I remember during my 25 years in psychiatry. Numbed and dumbed down as I was, I felt it keenly.
In dehumanizing others they dehumanize themselves.
It’s sobering that Jaffe will never have another chance to make amends to those he–more or less–unwittingly harmed. To undo his TAC policies is up to others.
Rest in peace Jaffe. May Heaven have mercy on your soul.
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Thanks.
I don’t consider myself an anti vaxxer though. At least not as far as the basic MMR shots go. Even polio shots are still a good idea.
These shots are highly effective. And the polio one saves children’s lives.
My brother and I had all four as children. But I got my Chicken Pox immunity the old fashioned way.
Dedicating my time to trying to help keep local small businesses afloat. Pam Popper’s gives some tips on how we can do this. I highly recommend looking up her interview with Peter Breggin on YouTube.
A lot of people are desperately afraid they will lose their homes or be unable to scrape enough beans and rice together to feed their children. I visit a cafe near me and promised the owner’s daughter working behind the cash register that if another lockdown takes place I will still get carry out there regularly.
She thanked me profusely.
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I agree Steve.
I wish the best for all here.
Have a nice weekend everyone!
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Just thought I’d mention that Pies’s article has been “misplaced.” A computer glitch I’m sure. Not like there was too much traffic from this site to the shrinks’ dirty little secret conflicting with those cute commercials.
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Sorry KateL.
This whole thing is a nightmare.
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KS, so you believe this is temporary?
I understand where you are coming from. I only wish I shared your optimism. Google “social distancing is permanent” and see all the articles that pop up and read a few.
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I’m resigned to dying in the next year or two.
Things are unsustainable. They won’t get better, just worse.
The hope of death in the near future is all that sustains me now. Soon this nightmare apocalypse will be behind me.
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Big Pharma is making money faster than ever as small businesses are forced to close. Not big chain stores though. This isn’t about preventing infection since more stores mean more distancing. It’s about cronyism and lobbying.
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My elderly friend is in isolation and may fall and break her hip. If so I guess they’ll find her body before it decomposes too badly.
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Okay. You want to spend the rest of your life in isolation? Because that’s what all the experts recommend. Utter isolation at home alone for everyone forever.
The only plan out there!
Sounds like a quality life and very healthy too.
Nobody work or see friends or family ever again. Stay locked at home for 50-60 years till you die. WONDERFUL.
Funny how a lifetime of permanent isolation is healthy now. Not like any of us have social needs after all.
This will never end. Get used to permanent house arrest. Years and decades.
The New Normal means you can never have coffee with friends again. I prefer death from this alleged plague myself. The rest of you can enjoy this nightmare dystopia. Funny how I’m the only person who finds it depressing. Crazy me to want friends and fresh air instead of spending the last years of my life locked alone in a room eating beans.
Weird how everyone but me suddenly loves endless isolation, wants it to last forever and enjoys dying alone. Cause you will die even without the Covid. Utterly ALONE IN ISOLATION.
Wish I enjoyed loneliness and hated companionship like the rest of you cranks. Everyone else loves being cut off alone FOREVER.
THIS WILL NEVER EVER END.
Why is Covid death so scary? As the last person with human needs or emotions I wish it or something else would kill me.
Dr. Fauci says we’ll probably never have a vaccine and should never be allowed out of our houses till the virus completely vanishes which he is pretty certain it won’t. Ergo permanent lockdown forever according to the Experts.
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And who ordered the months of social isolation?
Oh yes. The Scientific Ex-Spurts suddenly decided isolating is not only healthy but praiseworthy. If you don’t enjoy it, it’s your fault and they will force drugs on you while forcing even more isolation on you.
Glad I live in the country. Like many labeled SMI I’m no stranger to loneliness. If I avoid thinking about the future I’m okay.
Curious how many other survivors are holding up. Like everyone else is caving in but we’ve already been through this crap. Same old, same old.
I wish these controlling Science Ex-Spurts would experiment on themselves. At least they’re too busy to hunt down every single depressed person now. Easier to escape their notice.
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“If someone has committed a heinous crime let them pay their debt to society.”
Well said Caroline. We already have the legal system to punish all of us for law breaking.
But psychiatry has the authority to punish regardless of our behavior. The unquestioned absolute authority to inflict cruel and unusual punishment (without limit) on even the most mild mannered law abiding saints–more sinned against than sinning. Just because some Expert deems them biologically unfit for basic human rights or simple kindness and decency.
Psychiatry punishes the “biologically unfit” for the crime of existing. 🙁
Because of this pseudo science our culture chooses to judge us on the word of some Ex-Spurt Sciencey Dude–who just flipped through old notes without talking to us. Not the content of our character.
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After i got labeled I hated myself. Everyone treated me like a monster.
The drugs killed all my ability to experience positive emotions and caused daily seizures. Everyone blamed my desire for suicide on my “illness.”
When they say, “You’re not your illness” it’s pretty laughable. In their eyes all “consumers” are walking diseases.
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I will.
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Have a respected medical professional prescribe them. My mistake. And countless others.
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What scares me far worse than the thought of death itself–or even the deaths of my beloved Boomer parents–is losing touch with our humanity. If I see someone in need who can’t be helped otherwise I’ll gladly expose myself and stay in quarantine later.
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It takes time.
I chose to forgive the people who injured me. But it took a long time.
If you don’t want to or feel you can’t I sympathize.
Part of forgiving meant acknowledging the wrongs done me. I’d always been taught nice girls don’t get angry or remember wrongs. My grandma told me we automatically forget bad treatment because girls are naturally sweet–made up of sugar and spice and all things nice. 😛 Nope.
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My thoughts exactly Willoweed.
My odd behaviors and personality changes were similar to those of an alcoholic. My mom mentioned this but we never put two and two together.
Took me over twenty years to find stuff online saying the drugs I took were anything but life saving and essential. Or telling how to go off them without melting down. Ages 20 to 44 in psychiatry.
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I’m better now.
Made real progress emotionally, cognitively, and finally physically.
I get along with people now. Smiling easily. I shower every day and keep up on household chores. And I am finishing writing projects since the first time in my teens.
I attribute these changes to going off drugs and rejecting the role society assigned me of madwoman.
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I’ve heard of kids “inheriting” trauma.
It’s not to be confused with abuse. If anything the mother may strive to protect her children from the horrors she went through. Unfortunately this can backfire however kind and noble the intentions.
For example the children of Holocaust survivors and those who were molested as children.
You can’t fault the parent anymore than you can of unwittingly giving the child a cold. It just happens. The right kind of family therapy might help the parent. Such as Choice Theory by William Glasser. He only counseled adults. If the children acted out he would advise the parents on how to show love while preparing the child for life.
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Being told you have an incurable brain disease that will keep you depressed forever is depressing.
Since (many believe) depression exists as a feeling, hopelessness will make the feeling worse. Plus the drugs make you sluggish and apathetic which can also cause “low grade” depression.
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Bingo!
But I still like this article. Reminds me of when I had no identity aside from “mentally ill.”
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Yeah. Fine line between whacking myself over the head for everything that goes wrong and blaming others.
I dated a man also labeled “bipolar” though we had little else in common. One day I realized how we kept apologizing to each other in an excessive, compulsive manner.
“Nobody’s fault, it’s a brain disease” translates to “everything that goes wrong is the fault of the person with the presupposed brain disease.” One of Psychiatry’s paradoxes.
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False dilemma. Reminds me of the story of how the disciples asked Jesus, “Did this man sin or did his parents so that he was born blind”?
Neither Mom nor I behaved perfectly through my existential journey into madness. Exacerbated and greatly prolonged courtesy of Big Pharma Psychiatry.
I gladly brought her to NAMI because she kept blaming herself for my weird behaviors under the influence of mind altering drugs and my new diagnostic identity.
Looking back, I’m more upset at how my crazy behaviors impacted my friends and family who stayed with me through the quarter century ordeal. I was a drug addict and none of us even knew.
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