The last time I did an anniversary post was 8 years ago. It's my birthday too. I was born on this day. So it's been my anniversary and my birthday for 16 years. I'm drug injured and seriously so. I've never regretted coming off psych drugs.
It seems that a lot of peoples most common trauma response is *freeze*. Americans feel helpless. Learned helplessness might also be considered a trauma freeze response. The first action one must take is to become aware of the potential for freezing. Once you recognize it you can start listening to the freeze and responding to your own body and how it wants/needs to unfreeze. It's critical that we all learn to unfreeze now. Look/feel within and follow your heart. Your heart knows the way out of freeze. Your journey out of freeze will be your own. Trust/feel your body and respond. Get creative. It's within us all. The body is the only way back to humanity.
This is how to use the site Many people still ask me for my “protocols.” The message I communicate for healing is that we are all different and our paths are also, therefore, going to be endlessly diverse. I share my experience, not so that it may be copied, but so that the reader can get a sense of process.
A corrupt world is built brick by brick by individual acts of shame and silence. Can we break the silence that protects misconduct even while it means being exposed ourselves? Psychiatry and the mental health system are failing, but they are also just sets of human relationships, relationships we are also part of. ...
In healing chronic illness with many acute, chronic pains I’ve seen that dissociation is not simply psychological but profoundly physiological too… The process of getting chronically ill included layers of ever deepening dissociation from the body creating multiple broad spectrum illnesses…a dissociated body/mind cannot meaningfully take care of itself.
I woke up to two EMTs standing at the foot of my bed. My mother stood beside them. They told me kindly and respectfully that if I went willingly there would be no police involvement. I quietly obliged. They walked with me out of my bedroom, down the stairs, through the garage, and into the back of the ambulance. They told me to lie down on the stretcher. Next came the straps. The straps were a formality, they said. Standard procedure. … [click on title for the rest of the post]
"You may find it remarkable that I am classifying therapists with sorcerers. There is a fine line between the Healer who heals and the one who, due to ignorance, may cause harm. In working with patients, I have found that archaic language and images are the best means of relating to the spirit or the unconscious. Referring to an ignorant therapist as a "practitioner of iatrogenic illness" would evoke little feeling in the patient and there would be no affective connection to the healer/therapist. Therefore, I use the word sorcerer in order to make the point about the seriousness of some of the actions taken by therapists towards patients. This affective connection is crucial to the task of allowing the soul to open to the process of healing." - Eduardo Duran, Healing the Soul Wound
Update 2026: This post was written about three years into the six year withdrawal process. I was seeing a doctor who claimed to understand withdrawal who really did not know what she was doing. It was one of many forays into trusting doctors who would ultimately harm me. I finally learned, many years later and in fits and starts, that I wasn't going to be helped in an direct sort of way by any sort of health professional. The few good folks I met knew that they could only support me and held the mystery of the injuries with me. Anyone who claimed to know what to do proved dangerous.
Stephen Morgan has died. Here is the Facebook Announcement from Intentional Peer Support He was a rare individual, loved by everyone who knew him. A beautiful light gone from this plane too soon I've never forgotten the first time I met him. He came to my home in Asheville at the beginning of all the beautiful connections made among those in the mad movement online. He was 26. He literally shone like a light. His face is etched in my memory when I opened the door and saw him for the first time and he felt like my brother. He shared eight articles that he wrote here on Beyond Meds. In his memory I ask that if you've not read them before, please do. And if you have read them, you might just find that they're wonderful a second time around. I felt honored at the time that he would want me to share his work. And now I'm so glad that I have this small body of his beauty kept here in the archives. the collection is below:
that's right. I also wouldn't be alive if I hadn't been the voice of Beyond Meds...an early, now prototype, of all the relentless chatter out there. It's weird because it brought so much chaos as well. And I've had many tell me the words I shared altered their lives for the better. My entire life is paradoxical and I also know without my incessant need to **speak it** I would not be alive.
There’s nothing wrong with desire. It is however a form of seeking. In acceptance of the eternal now there’s only what is happening. *** When in flow nothing need be pursued. *** Honest and clear desire pursued is not just about self gratification but more importantly the fulfillment of physiological need. We are a well... Continue Reading →
By Vanessa Krasinski (short video included) Did you know that wanting freedom used to be classified as a mental disorder? In 1851, Samuel Cartwright, US physician and slave owner, coined the term Drapetomania, a so-called mental disorder known as ‘runaway slave syndrome.’ It wasn’t a mental illness. This diagnosis was a tool to codify in criminalized resistance. While Drapetomania is no longer a medical diagnosis, the underlying pattern hasn’t changed. The pattern: control through language — erase context, deny legitimacy, protect the oppressor. Yesterday it was “disease”, today it’s “domestic terrorism.” Today, those who dissent risk being pathologist and criminalized by those in power. But they’ve always tried to rename resistance. Don’t let them define your terms. Resistance — actions big and small — are a courageous path toward freedom. Keep going.
the last thing to come when one is healing from trauma is a thick skin...it does, finally come, however. it does. really it's not thick at all. it's porous and everything becomes clear and thus it's easier to move around the chaos and muck. clarity doesn't get rid of the muck! ...
I am healing the tardive dyskinesia, which for me, as a result of sustained, long-term mindful attention is clearly an infestation of muliple micro-organisms acting in concert via a highly complex biofilm. ... To call this monster within me a biofilm is highly problematic since most people don’t know what biofilm is and those who do imagine that anything referred to as a film must not be particularly significant. Instead, in truth, it is “biofilm” of some sort that is at the root of all illness. In my experience the TD colonizes every cell in the body, however and is far more complex than what anyone seems to understand. In tardive dyskinesia, these systems of micro-organism architecture that are being organized becomes a snaking, moving, morphing entity that slowly takes over the entire body. It defies the laws of physics as we currently understand them.
The immediate met with integrity takes care of all one can do. ....
In these times feel good stuff from brilliant poets really need to be challenged. I mean I love Rilke and agree with him in an absolute way, but when you get into a fascist reality controlling your government and world you need to consider all contexts.... I saw this on someone's timeline:
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