Some of us have been on the front lines figuring out this stuff years before anyone was publicly acknowledging it. I am sharing this info and collection in response to the two recent @nytimes articles.
Healing to me does not mean returning to what one was before something went wrong. Wholeness does not necessarily mean normal. And even the word recovery is problematic because, frankly, I don't want what I had before. Who wants to go backwards anyway?
"How did this happen? You're the most resourced person I know. " That was one of my friend's response when they heard about what happened to me in December when I ended up in the ICU with the precipitous sodium drop (hyponatremia) that almost killed me. It happened after I took a pharmaceutical for 3 days -- the first pharmaceutical I've taken since I came off a massive cocktail of psych drugs 8 years ago. The above quoted question and sentence keeps coming back to me since, I too, have had my own version of that inquiry within.
I see in retrospect that some core, vital part of me was always there during the drugged years, learning and remembering much that would help me in these years of coming off meds and now being med free. I no longer believe that I “lost” my life to drugs. This is, as Mary Oliver, puts it, my "one wild and precious life."
while the healing process may sometimes be radical and even violent as well as time consuming, ultimately when we've healed, we've also transformed in profound ways. Indeed, this is becoming my experience. …
Everything Matters 