Tag: Human Rights
Launching the Beyond ‘Anatomy’ Forum
When I first read Anatomy of an Epidemic in 2010, something inside of me ignited. I had no idea that such a sensation was...
Chapter Twenty-Seven: Reignition
Silent hours unfolded as I devoured the words, a symphonic consciousness crescendoing as door after door of new awareness opened inside of me. It...
Risk Management vs. Dignity of Risk
What does “risk” really mean? Is it something to be afraid of and avoided at all costs, or something to be embraced?
On Recovering from Psychiatric Labels and Psychotropic Medications: An ‘Occupy APA’...
To Readers: I've decided to sway, briefly, from my traditional story-telling style on this blog in order to post my short speech from this...
Chapter Twenty-Six: Reaching the End, and Making a Start
A deep blue blanketing of 1AM sky envelops my car as I sit in my parents’ driveway in February 2010, pondering my next, last...
The Illegality of Forced Drugging and Electroshock
Court ordered psychiatric drugging and electroshock is illegal when measured against the constitutional requirements for forcing someone to ingest drugs, or be subjected to...
Chapter Twenty-Five: “Paranoid Android”
It is Christmas Eve of 2008. I am leaning against the kitchen counter of an old friend’s house, arms tucked tightly across my stomach,...
Chapter Twenty-Four: Off the Meds and Out of My Mind
During my first few days on the locked psychiatric unit of the hospital on the hill in early December 2008, I counted the passing...
Chapter Twenty-Three: On the Locked Unit, Locked in Myself
As we made our way out of Boston and to the psychiatric hospital on the hill, I watched the ‘normal’ world— the world beyond the Plexiglas rear window of the ambulance I was strapped into— drift past me into the distance.
On Creative Maladjustment and Rethinking Psychiatry
On this day January 16 2012, we commemorate the life and work of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and as such, many thoughts are...
Chapter Twenty-Two: To the Hospital on the Hill
Bright, white light pours into my eyes, which have opened themselves slowly. I clench them closed again, hoping to push the light out. For...
Chapter Twenty-One: Countdown to Surrender
COUNTDOWN- THREE DAYS
It is mid-morning on Wednesday, November 26th, 2008. I am staring at a computer screen in my cubicle, one among many at...
Chapter Twenty: Russian Roulette
After I left my research position on the acute inpatient psychiatric unit of a Boston hospital towards the end of 2006, my life started...
Chapter Nineteen: Playing the Part
In the months following my five-year high school reunion in the summer of 2006, I drifted about in a sea of indistinguishable days. Amidst...
Chapter Eighteen: Sentenced to Life
A few weeks after my college graduation in the summer of 2006, my five-year high school reunion was upon me. I had expended a...
Chapter Seventeen: Commencing to Self-Destruct
While my fellow ‘Class of 2006’ graduates celebrated with embraces and high-fives on Commencement Day, jumping excitedly into group photos with caps and gowns,...
Chapter Sixteen: Inside a House of Cards
Dazed and confused, I was discharged from ‘The Haven’ in September of 2004 and entered an intensive outpatient day program (IOP) on the grounds...
Chapter Fifteen: A Haven from Self
A Note to the Reader: Thorough searches of my memory reserves have failed to provide me with a complete and detailed account of my...
Chapter Fourteen: Crossing the Threshold
Although the drive to the psychiatric hospital in White Plains, New York, in September 2004 was a mere fifteen minutes from home, the trip...
Chapter Thirteen: In the Muck and The Mire
There I was on my first night of Outward Bound, lying under the big Texas sky in a little town called Redford, amidst waxy...
Chapter Twelve: A Gift of Desperation
By January of my junior year in college, I had reached my first true emotional bottom. Though surrounded by people on a daily basis...
Chapter Eleven: Teetering on the Edge
Frantic, fearful, and desperate to get my life together, I returned to Cambridge in the middle of August to move into my off-campus apartment....
Chapter Ten: A ‘Victim of Circumstance’
Upon arriving home at the end of sophomore year in college, which had been devoted to hyper-control and a carefully maintained, entirely black-and-white existence,...
Chapter Nine: Is It Me Or My Meds?
Subtly and insidiously, my medications, once merely inert composites of chemicals, acquired an agency of their own and took center stage in my life...
Chapter Eight: “Forget Happiness . . . I’ve Got Control”
At no moment in my childhood-- whether in those weekday hours after school spent exploring the woods with my dog, or on the early...
