The good doctor

The doctor who led me to this point a year ago by cold-turkeying me off meds prematurely, wrote me a letter during that time. This must have been written a day or two into the cold-turkey before I started getting psychotic. This is just a small excerpt explaining to me why she took me off the drugs rapidly and in the end disastrously for me:

You stopped the medications this week, because the level of total damage done to you over the years reached a point that you could no longer tolerate any more toxicity and still survive. The medications had led you to a point where they left you in poor health, and their numbing effect was no longer strong enough to mask your underlying disease.  You had to stop the medications, because there was no way to win anymore.  The medications had failed you, as they logically would for everyone, because toxins can’t truly heal.

I just looked at some of my correspondence with her for the first time last night. It was way to traumatic to process at the time. I remember thinking I was going to die—really believing it and now I see clearly that she was pretty explicit in telling me that she believed the same thing. I could not, in her mind continue taking the meds and still survive. She says it, plain as day there. And the tragedy is it’s pure fiction that she created in her imagination. It was not based on any tests she’d taken.

I reinstated the meds she recklessly cold-turkeyed me from and I’m still alive a whole 10 months or so later. What a crock pot she was.

I’m angry again. Really angry today. Sick as hell again and taking stock of the past. I may have been an idiot in many ways to trust her but those of us who go to people like her are generally grossly vulnerable, sick as hell and desperate. She almost killed me by taking me off those meds too quickly but led me to believe if I reinstated the drugs, which I truly needed to, I would die from the drugs. Jesus. I had shut out all that shit. I have lots more letters where that came from I haven’t gotten around to reading.

Just imagine what the last 48 hours of that cold-turkey was like. I honestly believed I was going to die one way or the other. My husband could no longer take care of me because I needed 24 hour care as I was psychotic from the cold-turkey withdrawal. I knew I would end up in the hospital solely because he couldn’t take care of me and I wasn’t about to take him down with me too. There I would inevitably be put on drugs that would kill me and my soul would die too.

I figured out the alternative was to go to my traditional doc and get good ol’ psych drugs to knock me out. I only needed them a few days. I was then back to withdrawing properly and slowly. But before I got there I thought my life was over.

Back to what she wrote — the last two sentences of what she writes in the above excerpt are true, but how you go about getting off those toxins makes all the difference. And this woman is a psychiatrist too. A radical one perhaps, but one who is just as deluded as anyone else who tends to carry that degree. Deluded in a different way.

Healing is an up and down journey to say the least. The light is indeed at the end of the tunnel, no doubt, but shit, the end as is often said by those who withdraw from large cocktails is the hardest. I am having very good days too, but the last three I dipped back into horrible pain again. Three days spent mostly in the fetal position with my back and arms in pain. It was gone for about a month, but it revisited me.

Soon, the toxins will be gone. I must have faith that my body will begin a real journey of healing at that point.

Oh and by the way this above doctor is very highly regarded in alternative and orthomolecular circles. That is why I trust no one anymore. I trust my gut alone (guided by tons of research) at this point (and frankly it’s proven wrong many times too, but at least I’m responsible then) and approach everyone with great skepticism. Once you’ve been screwed by all variety of medical professionals, traditional and alternative your only choice is to truly take matters into your own hands. I still work with two doctors, whom I like very much, but they listen to me and trust me and we are partners. They know they don’t really know anything and I like it that way. Beware of docs who make promises or tell you it’s always this or that way and who demand “compliance.”

The doctor who wrote the above letter later told me in another email I could come back and work with her but only if I had complete faith in her. That’s rather laughable. You would have hoped she might have learned something. But no, unfortunately, it’s always us who learn, rather than the docs who continue on their self-deluded path of healing the infirm who are unlucky enough to find them.

*if it’s not obvious, I’m aware this is a rant and I’m simply blowing off steam. It is only an honoring of my process, not a place I intend to stay.