I don’t think my life is getting any easier as I heal (which can really be a drag sometimes) BUT…I just love life more and more and more…truly life is good.
Healing from brain injury incurred by psych drugs — I’m not only healing drug injury but also the injury of having been thrown away by society. Everyone labeled with mental illness is a throw away…our role in the human family simply not recognized. … together we can rise above the egregious & dangerous message of worthlessness
“Stigma” is created by a system that values people so little that the only means of “caring” for such folks is neurotoxic drugs that maim…
The disabling and deadly nature of psych meds are denied — so when we come for help from the injuries we’re told it’s in our heads…
very convenient to blame the crazy since we’ve already been labeled mentally ill…convenient and criminal both…it’s a lie
and then when we speak of what’s happened we make people uncomfortable because most people really do not want to deal with reality…
We, however, are stuck with dealing with reality in a way most people never need to face it. Hallelujah, because there was freedom in that for me. Unfortunately not everyone, by a long shot, manages to emancipate themselves…I am one of the privileged few. I now work with the hope that we can help one another find similar freedom, well being and our proper place in society… we are important members who are needed for healing the entire community of human beings. As things stand now we’ve been severed from the family.
together we can rise above the egregious and dangerous message of worthlessness
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*it is potentially dangerous to come off medications without careful planning. Please be sure to be well educated before undertaking any sort of discontinuation of medications. If your MD agrees to help you do so, do not assume they know how to do it well even if they claim to have experience. They are generally not trained in discontinuation and may not know how to recognize withdrawal issues. A lot of withdrawal issues are misdiagnosed to be psychiatric problems. This is why it’s good to educate oneself and find a doctor who is willing to learn with you as your partner in care. Really all doctors should always be willing to do this as we are all individuals and need to be treated as such. See: Psychiatric drug withdrawal and protracted withdrawal syndrome round-up
It’s become clear to me that whenever it’s possible that it’s helpful for folks who’ve not begun withdrawal and have the time to consider a carefully thought out plan to attempt to bring greater well-being to your body before starting the withdrawal. That means learning how to profoundly nourish your body/mind and spirit prior to beginning a withdrawal. For suggestions on how to go about doing that check the drop-down menus on this blog for ideas. Anything that helps you learn how to live well can be part of your plan. That plan will look different for everyone as we learn to follow our hearts and find our own unique paths in the world. Things to begin considering are diet, exercise and movement, meditation/contemplation etc. Paying attention to all these things as you do them helps too. The body will start letting us know what it needs as we learn to pay attention.
For a multitude of ideas about how to create a life filled with safe alternatives to psychiatric drugs visit the drop-down menus at the top of this page.
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I feel compelled to respond to BlurTheLInes post. I’m not sure survivors are indicating that, “everyone had A+ fantastic life before they started taking any medication. Everything was so peachy and perfect that the psych drugs were a complete accident.” I found that belittling. We realized life is full of ups and downs that’s normal, we however didn’t expect a life of complete misery, brain damage and exploitation and hell either as an alternative.
True, but so many in survivor community are so quick to blame everything on psychiatric drugs, that there is hardly any talk about any possible problems they were facing prior to taking psychiatric drugs. So, all I am left to read is the accounts of these anonymous folks and their struggles with psychiatric drugs and coming off of them, without having any idea what their life was like before the psychiatric drugs and what root causes and type of thinking led them to psychiatric drugs in the first place. Of course, nobody expects such dire consequences from taking psychiatric drugs, but usually there are reasons why people take them in the first place, and those reasons are often very rarely talked about. But i do believe that in order to be whole again, one has to transcend blaming psychiatric drugs and see what part of themselves were already traumatized prior to taking those agents, and what can be done to help ourselves. Because, once a person stops or attempts to stop psychiatric drug, not only will they have to deal with dangerous and debilitating withdrawal symptoms, but the roots of the trauma will be lifted up from the subconscious with such ferocity, that tending to these painful feelings is a crucial element in managing a psych drug withdrawal. Which is yet another reason to carefully consider everything before starting to withdraw from psychiatric medications.
Thanks. Cognitive dissonance is a really difficult issue to deal with when it come to psych meds, at least in my case. I was never really sure if they help or not and sort of begrudgingly went the psych med route, hoping they would help. One helped for a long time, but years later, it masked the problems another one was causing. And I can’t even say that taking the 1st psych med was necessarily a bad idea. But it may have played a role in letting my guard down, not realizing if one med worked, there was absolutely no guarantee that others would at all, or even a guarantee that the 1st one would continue to work after a certain period of time. I think it really comes down to being as educated as we can be about psych meds, and having as much information at our disposal as possible. Thanks for providing so much insight into this, because, people who chose to speak up about these full and openly are far and few, and I admire each and every one of them tremendously.