Fall 2008 was probably one of the lowest points in my life. I came to Adelphi University as a freshman and I was struggling with an eating disorder, and feelings of depression. I was also extremely ostracized from my classmates as I was a theatre major and studying in a field that encourages competition and ego. I have seen a slew of psychiatrists and they all diagnosed me with different things, without really listening to me. I went to the Student Counseling Center to experience basically the same thing except a lot worse. Of course I thought: “This time I will have clarity, this time I will have the right diagnosis and the right medication. The right doctor.” There was this psychiatrist, let’s call him Dr. X with whom I scheduled an appointment.

Within two minutes of seeing me Dr. X already started prescribing pills. I was on Zoloft and he had told me to just stop taking Zoloft all together, without weaning off of it. He suddenly prescribed me Topomax which is a “mood stabilizer” he had said in his obnoxious accented voice. So after one day of being Zoloft free, I went to the pharmacy and discovered that my Topomax was not there. The doctor had not authorized it with my insurance company. I was too far gone at that point to care. At that point I was looking for a solution and I trusted just anybody. God forbid I actually trusted the doctor to help the sick person.

Within the two days of starting the Topomax, I ended up in the hospital after a suicide attempt during a weekend home in Connecticut. I do not even know how the almighty Student Counseling Center found out about it, but they did. I took a week off from school. I was obviously hurting and needing to talk to somebody, so I called Carol Phelan, director of the Student Counseling Center. I had trusted her before, when I was vulnerable, so I thought it would help. She said she would not talk to me any longer unless I signed a contract, through email which would give my file over to the Dean of Student Affairs Jeff Kessler. Of course I bought into that. Even typing this now, makes me grow warmer with hurt, thinking of how conniving and how cold she was to do that, when I trusted her. If lying to and manipulating someone is not maltreatment I do not know what is.

So before I knew it, I had “meetings” with Kessler and “Doctor” X and all of these people. To make a long story short I was told I would meet with him to “discuss my future plans” There was definitely no discussing, because within two seconds of seeing me -before even hearing my voice- he said he was kicking me out of the school. They called it “emergency withdrawal”. Wow, I thought who is doing the withdrawing, and how did this Dean suddenly get the power to decide my fate? Dr. X was an amusing player in this as well. He suddenly started spouting off everything I told him in our sessions. Wow, I guess the whole doctor patient confidentiality thing is a fallacy now, I thought. Then he got up and said he had “another engagement” to go to, and said he wished me “well”. I want to spit at him just thinking about it. They all talked about how they wanted what is best for me and they want me to be “safe” I just looked at “Dean” X and said: “You don’t want blood on your hands.” I have been told by many people that I should not have said that but I don’t regret it one bit. Those people, those three, ridiculous, ignorant people, do not care one bit about me. Nor can I even begin to know one bit about me or what I went through. They do not care if I walk off this campus right now and take a chainsaw to my wrists; just as long as I don’t do it on their campus. They do not want to be a liability. They do not care about my safety, or my well being, they only care about their own. I was not a face or a person to those people, I am just a student, just an abundance of tuition money that they can easily get rid of, and I am sure that they were thrilled to. Getting rid of me was as easy as pushing a button to them. I also find it quite convenient that they waited a week after the tuition refund deadline to “withdraw” me.

I was allowed to go back in Spring 2009 if I was evaluated by an “At Risk” committee. At Risk? I am not a bad kid. I have never been a bad kid. I am just a person who has gone through difficult times in their life just like everyone does. That is scary to them. (Maybe it’s just TOO human for them). I decided to go for it, because I deserve to be in school having my own life.  That took a lot of swallowing of my pride. The At Risk committee is a group of faculty members evaluating whether or not I am “well”. It’s kind of funny, how easy it was to outsmart a bunch of college professors.  By the grace of the almighty Dean Kessler, I came back to school. I had to be under a contract, which was the most preposterous looking thing I have ever seen. I had to agree to be in therapy and have a “safety plan” and a bunch of fallacies. To me it is just their way of wielding their power over me, even though it is meaningless. I also learned a little something about, Topomax. It is an anti-convulsive medication. It is for people with epilepsy. And you are not supposed to just suddenly take it. It sounds horrible, but what I am discovering is that I am one of the lucky ones.

Since writing the first draft of this essay, I’ve discovered many friends of mine who have also come into contact with Adelphi’s student counseling center. Their stories include being pressured into “voluntary commitment”, being prescribed appetite increasers and weekly weigh ins in front of Dr. X  to “cure” their anorexia, being called the cops on them to be taken away in an ambulance when saying something that didn’t sound “safe”.

We live in fear of people like me and my fellow survivors. We don’t get supported in our looking for help nor do we get a listening ear. We get sent away in an ambulance, or prescribed something, or kicked out of school. But we are still here and these issues, even though they remain unaddressed, are not going away. I am very fortunate however, that I was able to find the tools I needed to overcome my problems.

I want to thank you for giving me the opportunity to write about this experience. Now I can look back at this story and put a name to it. It is oppression and the players in the story were the oppressors. I am a psychiatric survivor. When asked at the 5-5 protest who I was and what I was studying in school for the first time I was able to say proudly “I am a theatre major at Adelphi University. The same school that tried to kick me out. They haven’t succeeded yet.”

Original Article

When I was diagnosed bipolar i was around 20 and I lived in the ‘poor me’ mode for long- long enough to not expect anything better, with marriages breaking, no career in sight, socially ostracized, marginalized and without friends for long parts of my life. And the only one thing that I kept holding in my hands was my instrument, and the belief that I was an artist.

Today I am finally one, including having recently performed in my first overseas concert. Through all the storms that wreaked through my life i did two things- one was sticking to music and the other was continued studying no matter what. At last that point has been reached, nearly two decades later, that my writing is now being published in peer-reviewed journals, including about my own self, am a social scientist who researches in mental health, a musician who works in mental health, and of course a dog woman.

I am sharing one song of mine here
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lo7220KtpRw

This is a sample of the sort of music I composed when I was in severe depressions. It says that “alas, another draft of some wind of pain descends upon me, and wherever i look another reason to weep comes my way”

I am one of the biggest examples of someone who used her music very mindfully to bring about her own inner and then outer transformations. And I do believe that everyone can accomplish that- this is the fundamental premise on which my current research in social construction of mental health is rested. It was music for me, it maybe something else for you.

Just find a reason to connect with yourself, your deeper- soul side and then whenever there is too much of turmoil in the world around, recede there. Of course my own research and story is so big i cannot squeeze it here, but i just want to say that each one who reads this is capable of recovery and reclaiming themself; once they decide. Never underestimate yourself. And this comes from someone who has walked the entire length of the labyrinth.

Best wishes to all of you and happy trapezing- for that is what it is, as long as you learn to enjoy and not lose balance.

Recently I came out - not as gay, though the response might have been somewhat similar - but as a non-compliant non-service user.

I quickly realised that I no longer fell into any of the pre-existing categories. To be fair, the occasion I chose to issue my heretical statement was amongst many of my friends and acquaintances who were very supportive, though worried about the ramifications on other impressionable and still compliant individuals.

Shouldn’t I be more careful in case I presented as a dangerous role model? Wasn’t I worried that others might try coming off their meds with disasterous consequences? I do try not to evangelise, because each individual should be allowed to work out his/her own toute to salvation. That might be religion; it might be medication; it might be some form of CBT: whatever works for them. But I refuse to recant (note the religious analogies). I might as well have been denying the existence of God in front of the Spanish Inquisition!

Only nowadays those with “insight” are all psychiatrist-fearing as opposed to God-fearing. My diagnosis twelve years ago was “bipolar”, though responding to the presenting symptoms, if I’d been the psychiatrist, I’d have gone for “Schizophrenic” - that is, if I’d seen any point whatsoever in attaching a label. Now that I have subsumed my psychotic experiences into my new identity, I’m quite content to be, “This is me, warts and all: take me or leave me!”

I was dealing with a thyroid problem and on meds for it. I went to work and felt dizzy, so I called my sister who said go to a hospital and ask to see every doctor there . Instead, I went to my doctor and he said I was having a reaction to my thyroid meds. He said he’s seen this happen. He said don’t go to a psychiatrist they wouldn’t understand the thyroid problem. I also had pressure on my chest . After having a migraine headache in addition, I went to the hospital. They asked me if I wanted to stay the night. I thought to monitor my heart, so I signed papers to be admitted. I didn’t read what I signed as I would have needed a lawyer to understand it.

They walked me up to a mental ward where I realized that was not the real hospital. They drugged me with cocktails - I never used drugs previously so these were really hard on me. After staying a month, I went home. I was in the process of getting a divorce, but my husband then thought what a good idea it was to keep drugging me to continue his abuse. So he would hit me then quickly call the police and tell them I was a danger. No questions asked, and pepper sprayed out of a shower, I found several cops watching me get dressed. Only one didn’t look. This repeated itself for years until my divorce was completed. Our funds were frozen and it was about ten years of abuse. I went through cancer treatment with all this turmoil and moved. I found police and sheriffs sitting in front of my new house in their cars and on many occasions they would get me and take me to the hospital, for using the internet and doing civic activities they frowned on like a petition to override a gov veto, or posting mind freedom info in the library. People I don’t know would say we don’t want you here. I was quiet and kept to myself wanting only peace after such a terrible drug divorce experience.

For years, I was watched by police. It wasn’t until I got a case manager from the hospital that they stopped bothering me, but now I have to see her for my monthly check up by her to give the outpatient her approval. and she does, but it is annoying and an invasion of my privacy . I do well until all the checking up starts then I get a PTSD attack and have to start my recovery all over. It took me eight months to get over the trauma of the in patient treatments the last time .

Recently I was invited on public radio to talk about mental health reform. The guests were a revered doctor, a lobbyist and me. The host introduced me as an “ex-mental patient” and I didn’t even flinch. It’s become part of my livelihood to talk about what madness feels like and what is left when the madness is over. But a few of my friends called me on the phone sounding unhappy that I would be described in such a way. It seems that the words” mental patient” bring images of hospital gowns and electroshock eyes, a land of no-return.

It’s uncomfortable. I don’t love talking about such things, but I can’t stand hiding even more than that. My boyfriend points out that even Tony Soprano had a shrink. The human condition is an emotional one.

There was a time in my life, while living in a yellow farmhouse on a thin country road, that I tried to lift a black demon from my chest, but he just kept pressing down. When I pushed up he pushed me back down and hard, with a strength that was supernatural.  I had tears streaming down my face and I begged the white winged angel in the doorway to envelope me and he did. The scene was something I’d seen Mexican paintings, the little black devil that comes for a soul when one lies dying. Except I really wasn’t dying and I really wasn’t dreaming. I was trying to sleep in my bed next to my boyfriend and if he were awake he wouldn’t see what I saw. All he would only see my struggling and crying.

I keep this story with all the other stories that no one wants to hear. If I meet you when I am well then you don’t need to know all details.  If I meet you and I am low then you would know better than to ask.

What I’ve cobbled together as an adult life is inspired by this. Make myself a fairy tale life and step into it.  A little tin roofed house in the country with paper flowers covering the dining room walls, crinolines under skirts, 2 wild, blond children, a white cat, a hedgehog, some homemade raw chocolate ice cream and Edith Piaf records. If I must weep I’d rather weep here.

These days I do everything that I know brings health and move away from everything that is crazy-making (most especially the skipping record in my head).  There is yoga and there is self-love and there is the time I make for friends. There is my absolute belief that life is no longer cruel when we leave this body. Nothing is fair but nothing is permanent and while we are here we have to accept all that comes to us. Also I give myself absolute permission to be miserable until I’m bored with it.

As a job I talk about mental health: how to improve services, what it means to be sane in an insane world, how I get by and what inspires me. I know that people get well. I know women who have spent long stretches in the hospital and now hold positions of power and keep their families together. I know people you would never accuse of being crazy who’ve heard voices and overdosed on pills. It is my work to get these people in front of students of social work and psych nursing so they can tell their stories.

It seems like the last taboo, the thing one just does not speak about. And for whatever reason, I can’t shut my mouth.

TJ Eyster

I am not ashamed of what I am.. OR what western medicine THOUGHT I was for 17 years, and how I suffered through it. I kept fighting. I kept believing there was a deeper truth, something that remained hidden. Turns out? I was right. Thank you Annie Lennox. Thank you Ross Frankel, Michael Hagar, Jason Jenn, Barbara Eyster, and William Eyster and Marianne Williamson, and Sister Morticia, and Josh Harrell and Josh Ketcherside and Camaron Rogers & Missy Prysak.

Check out my experimental performance singing piece, set to Annie Lennox Songs, about Western Medicine, Pills & psychiatric diagnoses

This is a musical performance by my friend Wyatt. He talks about being locked up in a hospital after his suicide attempt. He sings about the pains of his life, trying to end it all, and then surviving through it.
You can find more of his music here. - Aki

And I stared in the darkest corners just for fun, I took acid and confronted my own sanity and won, I sparked smoke signals with a broken shaving razor blade. And I spray painted “smash the state” on a corporate chain and “fuck patriarchy” on a wall I pass by every day when I’m driving to work in the morning. And I get a little more excited each new day, a little more nostalgic every time somebody moves away, a little older each time my address changes. And I still get freaked out when I remember that the father of my sisters is the man that beat my mother and my heart breaks for her and all of those times I heard her screaming.

And I saw something staring from across the parking lot, I took pictures of my wooden ceiling fan because I thought someone was sending me a message through its orientation. And I found out secrets that I wasn’t meant to know and I feel guilty that I know you were molested but you’re so inspiring to me and I wish I could thank you. And I don’t worry anymore whether or not I am insane, I know that we’ve all got the same hearts and just slightly different brains so why am I so scared to tell my male friends that I love them. And I tried to be the pink ranger but my father he forbid it, I cried every day in school and he just wanted me to quit it, I still have the letter he wrote to me after I tried to kill myself.

I get a little more excited each new day, a little more nostalgic every time somebody moves away, a little older each time my address changes. And I love every single moment I’m alive and I want to give you every single second til I die. I’m learning to believe that I am capable of being loved.

Original Article

Natalie Cermak

Original Article

Mary Maddock

While I was slowly dying from toxic, mind-altering, addictive drugs I was not aware that they were the real cause of my problems. I was prepared to do foolish things because I was severely cognitively and emotionally impaired by extremely long term multi-drug use. I continued to do this for such a long time because I lived in FEAR. I was afraid that I would be worse if I stopped my daily poisonous dose.

One of the main reasons I because drug-free was because Jim became AWARE. He promised to support me and never to send me to a psychiatric oppressive prison again. Then I felt I had the courage to ‘feel the fear and do it anyway!’

While I was on drugs, I was so miserable I cannot believe now how I endured the life I lived then. Another reason for my freedom was I discovered MindFreedom International, WNUSP, ENUSP and other great organizations. Then I discovered that many other people were like me and they had become drug free too. I also discovered outstanding true professionals who spoke out courageously and understood that I was indeed a prescribed drug addict who believed the non scientific ,chemical imbalance theory which was the cause of all the real, adverse effects I was experiencing on my daily dosage.

Hindsight has taught me that it was also very difficult withdrawing and becoming drug-free but the suffering I endured on drugs was torturous and much, much more horrendous! Now that I have got over the withdrawal effects my life is FANTASTIC! THANKS! to all the many people who supported me in making the most important life choice to become drug-free and still support and encourage me today! My New Year’s wish is I hope others will find the support and courage to do the same!

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Original Article

David Bates

Its been 31 years and counting, since my first experience of psychosis was labeled as schizophrenia within 15 minutes - an all-too-quick reaction that left me bewildered and re-traumatized by the subsequent heavy-handed use and sole reliance on psychotropic medications. The ruddy-faced 30-something psychiatrist never did find the time for an empathic human communication during our 3 year relationship. His self-soothing reliance on preconceived notions always stood like an implacable wall between us.

I can remember wondering how this guy came across in social gatherings as he often stared at the carpet during our 30-minute, keep-taking-the-pills, prescription encounter. Over a 20-year experience with the “medical model” of a disease-like illness, only one psychiatrist was interested in creating a human relationship not based on a perception of superior status.

After 20 years of failing the medication compliance test (I am one of the estimated 30-40% of individuals who receive no benefit from continuing drug use to provide mood stability), I found myself continuing with a growing pattern of managing crisis periods with self-medication. Sleeping pills for manic energy periods, exercise, diet and pleasure stimulus for the depressions of my labeled Bipolar Disorder type 1, which does best describe my observable cyclic patterns of behavior.

My first episode of mania does fit the classic descriptions of an early adulthood onset, as the challenge of seeking diverse relationships beyond the nuclear family rise to the fore of our support needs.

In 2003, after 23 years of struggling to define my experience within the confines of my objectifying mind, I began a process of self-discovery, beginning by training to become a therapist (counselor).

That year was the start of a slow journey of inner discovery, in which I found an increasing awareness of the futility of labels, or simple word-metaphors, in trying to articulate life experience. All my learned words for describing my experience of madness, my narrative language of a life story, never seem to capture its essential nature. How do I interpret the inner experience of mad states of mind, or its unusual behaviors using my learned vocabulary of object-like description. How can I apply an objective logic to an inner-reality, which is overwhelmingly chemical in nature, using these metaphors of description evolved to paint word pictures of an external world?

My psychiatrists spoke of a chemical imbalance, although floundering when asked to describe how that happens: they said words like dopamine, serotonin and now they speak about neuropeptides. Yet, like me, they say these words very quickly with no sense of what those words mean on a felt level of our existence, they say these words as if describing parts or pieces of our internal reality. Despite the common sense view of the body/brain though, it surely is nothing like an elaborate clock in there, yet we tend to take these object like interpretations of our experience completely for granted. “That’s just the way life is?”

31 years on from that first experience of psychosis. I am finding an increasing awareness of its stimulation on an unspeakable felt level of my unconscious autonomic nervous system, through which the vast majority of human behavior is mediated. Feeling the way my nervous system organizes my body movement and stimulates my mind, enabled an awareness that now sees me manage manic excitement without any medication at all, not even sleeping pills.

Education into the latest research on the neurobiology of human development led me into an awareness of whole body/brain feedback interactions, even though I started my search believing I would educate myself about my brain. The myopic view of the brain alone affecting emotional responses is becoming increasingly redundant amongst the top neurobiological researchers into human development. Unfortunately, the mainstream view is based on the needs of mental health care management and its logistics, not the empirical reality of any mental health condition. It is sad that debate tends to be reactive and revolve around mainstream psychiatry’s view of illness, while there is mounting evidence of natural cause for these unusual behavioral responses, all pointing towards our experience as very much part of the human condition.

Even sadder is the ignorance about new understandings and application of systems theories and there implication for early life development and altered states of experience. Such a theory also holds a looming possibility of a scientific revelation to our spiritual connections with the wider cosmos from which our human consciousness emerges.

These days I’m finding an increasing marriage between my unspeakable felt experience (my body) and my labeling mind, with its slow laborious “what was that?” attempts to interpret the reality of my life. These days I’ve uncovered the energies that stimulated a life of dissociation, of rational, intellectualizing labels for my experience.

These days there is a great life and the rediscovery of a boyish sense of wonder, after giving up dependency on psychiatric labels to interpret my experience as if I’m some parts like a fancy clock, and not a living breathing organic, whole creature we metaphorically label human.

“What’s in a name, a label, a metaphor, whats it trying to interpret, to articulate?”

Be happy, be well, be whole.

Original Article