Today marks 2 years since I was released from Cahill 3, the last time I was on a locked psych unit.

For years, I was constantly in and out of hospitals. Throughout that time I was put on various medications: prozac, geodon, seroquel, zyprexa, depakote, lithium, ativan, klonopin, celexa, zoloft, and too many others to list here.

At times, the medications seemed like it was helping, but what it was really dong was preventing me from getting better. It wasn't until I stopped taking the medications that I started truly improving. It wasn't until I stopped taking the medication that I was able to stay out of the hospital.

Mental problems need a mental solution. Mental "illness" is not like diabetes or cancer. The speculation that mental "diseases" are biologically based is just that — speculation. There is no evidence to back it up, but the idea is treated as gospel. It is more religion than science.

Without the medications obscuring my real issues or slowing my brain down to the point that thinking was a labourious activity, I was able to directly address my problems and I was able to make myself better. I've been out of the hospital for 2 years and I'm sure that if I had continued to take their drugs, I wouldn't be able to say that.

Three days with no caffeine. I've managed to stay relatively wakeful today, even with the oppressive heat. I see that I felt like I need caffeine a lot more than I actually needed caffeine. I don't think I've gone this long without caffeine since high school. Even in the madhouse they'd let us have real coffee in the morning. I doubted if I could do it, but the only real hurdle was that doubt. Yeah, I've had a bit of a headache the last few days, but I've gone through Geodon withdrawal - compared to that, this is a piece of cake.

Found via dkmnow in _psychmedfree_ and antipsychiatry:

People diagnosed with schizophrenia who are not on antipsychotics are more likely to experience recovery than those taking the medication, according to an American study. Over 15 years, schizophrenia patients not on antipsychotics showed more periods of recovery than those taking antipsychotics, states a research paper in last month’s Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease. Researchers reported that, after 10 years, 79% of patients on antipsychotics were psychotic, whereas 23% of those not on medication were psychotic. After 15 years, 65 per cent of patients on antipsychotics were psychotic, whereas only 28% of those not on medication were psychotic. ... The research was part-funded by America’s National Institute of Mental Health. full article

While I don't have schizophrenia, these results do not surprise me after my experiences with Geodon, Zyprexa, Risperdal, and Seroquel. At first I was a believer. I "felt better" when I took them.

Zyprexa was the first with it's horrible weight gain effects. Then came risperdal, then came seroquel, then Geodon. I was given Haldol inpatient a couple times, the only old school antipsychotic I've been on. It wasn't much different than the newer atypicals.

They all made me "feel better" at first. But, what "feeling better" really meant was not thinking. The major side effect of not thinking when you have mental problems is that you can never work through those problems. Working through problems of the mind requires thought, requires figuring out coping mechanisms and how to break old loops.

I definitely wouldn't say I'm perfect at this point, there's still progress I need to make, but I've made so much progress since I broke free of Geodon addiction. Much of what I'm working through now is the damage done by the psych drugs and not the problems I had initially. The point is, I'm able to improve despite my experience on psych drugs not because of it.

I felt well last night neither physically nor mentally. I took 2mg of my old Ativan prescription to put myself to sleep.

OH MY GOD! IT'S A PSYCH MED!!!

Yes, it's a psych med and yes I'm against psych meds. However, my issue with psych meds is living on them. I view living on any mind-altering drug as undesirable, whether that be Seroquel or heroin or alcohol. That does not mean occasional use of a mind altering drug such as Ativan is a bad thing.

Moderation is key. Have a drink on the weekend. Hell, get drunk some weekend. It's not the end of the world. Get drunk every day, that's a problem. When you live your life on alcohol or Zoloft or cocaine or Geodon, whether you are functional or not, you have lost touch with some portion of your core beginning. And when you are in touch with your core being, you can address the core issues that drove you take the drugs in the first place.

There was a point in my life where I would have taken any drug put in front of me. I didn't care how I felt as long as it was different. And I did lots of drugs, from street to psych and in between

I would smoke pot all day every day I could, drink way too much, take crystal and heroin and cocaine, pop klonopin and seroquel and zyprexa and whatever other nasty thing the psych people gave me. The only reason i never became addicted to heroin or cocaine was that I was never able to attain a steady supply and it is only by the grace of God that I am not an alcoholic. Going through geodon withdrawals was enough to make me very thankful I didn't go through that with anything else.

I am glad I moved on from that place, I know many who didn't. Many who couldn't. Many who never will.

When I fall into these troughs like I've been in the last several days, I must keep mindful of how far I've come. Where I was and where I am. I got through that, I can get through this.

I had a terrible time getting off antipsychotics, the withdrawals were so nasty it would have been helpful to be in a rehab clinic for them except rehab clinics don't take patients addicted to antipsychotics.

Sedatives like Ativan or Klonopin can very tempting when experiencing antipsychotic withdrawals, and patients prescribed antipsychotics are often prescribed sedatives as well. However, I found that more often than not sedatives led to a state where I was so tired I was barely able to move but still could not sleep because of the withdrawals. This state was much worse than going through the withdrawals without the sedatives.

I've seen far too many people fall into this sedative trap while withdrawing from antipsychotics and what often ends up happening is they take more and more sedatives until they actually do fall asleep. But by that time they've taken a lot more sedatives than they should have and someone ends up finding them and calling an ambulance. In the emergency room labeled an "attempted suicide", given charcoal, and sent off to a psych hospital where they are readministered antipsychotics. While they attempt to explain to the staff that suicide was not the motivation in taking the sedatives, their explanations are inevitably dismissed. Sometimes they are actually manipulated into thinking they must have meant to kill themselves even though they don't remember wanting to.

My particular battle was with Geodon, but this scenario can play out with users of virtually any antipsychotic drugs including Abilify, Risperdal, Zyprexa, and Seroquel. Breaking antipsychotic addiction is not easy, but being armed with knowledge can help tremendously.

Children represent the fastest growing group of users of a new generation of antipsychotic medications, even though the drugs are not approved for their use and serious safety concerns remain. Between 2001 and 2005, prescriptions for atypical antipsychotic drugs increased by 80% among children and teens, compared with an increase of 46% among adults aged 20 to 44. ... In a study published in the summer of 2004, the researchers reported that prescriptions for atypical antipsychotics doubled among Tennessee children on Medicaid between 1996 and 2001. They further reported that 43% of prescriptions were written for children with ADHD or a related disorder as the primary diagnosis, while just 14% were written for bipolar disorder and 9% for schizophrenia or other psychotic conditions. In a later nationwide study, the researchers concluded that 6 million prescriptions for atypical antipsychotics were written for children between 1995 and 2002. Again the researchers found that a large percentage of the prescriptions were written for children with ADHD as the primary diagnosis. full article

Lets ignore for a moment the devastating side effects of antipsychotics such as diabetes, metabolic disorders, heart problems, tardive dyskinesia, and neuroleptic malignant syndrome. Let's just focus on the intended effects of these drugs. Antipsychotics slow down the brain. They make it harder to think and by doing so make it harder to learn. These children are having their brain fogged at the most important time of their lives for them to be thinking. I can't imagine the damage to the intellectual and emotional development of these kids caused by being on extremely powerful mind altering drugs 24 hours a day. THESE ARE CHILDREN, FOR GOD'S SAKE!

The psychiatrists aren't even attempting to claim these children are psychotic. 43% of the children receiving antipsychotics are diagnosed with ADHD. Antipsychotics have nothing whatsoever to do with the "symptoms" of ADHD. The only reason to give antipsychotics to ADHD-diagnosed children is to sedate them. To keep them drugged so the teachers and parents don't have to deal with them. It is a form of neglect.

These children are going to reach adulthood. Due to the drugs they are being forced to take, many are not going to be able to develop the mental and emotional tools necessary to live and function as adults. Not having learned the skills necessary to hold down jobs, many will become dependant on the very system that abused and drugged them. The psych industry is creating a generation of lifetime customers.

I'm very thankful that I ended up in Massachusetts. If I had instead ended up in an AOT state, I'm sure that I would have been forced to keep taking psychiatric medication. I don't think I would have ever gotten to state I am at now if I were on Geodon or Thorazine or whatever other zombiefying medication they'd want to stuff down my throat. My mind needed to be opened, not closed. Even anti-depressants would have hindered the process I've gone through, as their effect is that of a dissociation from sadness. I needed to address the sadnesses, and not feeling them would have prevented me from doing that.

This process is not over. It will never be over. Every day is still challenging. Every day is still hard. But, the hope I have found shines through the difficulty. The brightness has always been there, I simply couldn't or wouldn't let it in. My shell has been cracked, and through those cracks the light now seeps through.

I'm still not ready to hold down a job. I still have to take things in my day to day life slowly. I need to make sure I do my meditational prayers in order to keep myself mindful throughout each day. I didn't keep mindful Saturday, and had a very bad time towards the evening until I went to sleep. I felt a bit Flowers for Algernon that night, but when I woke up Sunday morning I drank coffee and did my meditations. I was able to move back into the place. It is important that I do not lose the path again. The path I am to walk is path I must take, if for no other reason than there currently is no other path that I can take.

I may not ever be able to hold down a "real job" again; but if that is the way it is to be, it is the way is to be. I trust the winds. I am the way I need to be for me to do and see the things I need to do and see. Just as a whale is not able to see the expanse of the ocean from the sky, a gull is not able to see the depths of the whale's realm. Both experiences are gifts and neither the whale nor the gull is the less for what the other can see.

People often get the wrong impression about me and drugs, and this is for the most part my fault. I talk about drugs a lot. They fascinate me. I'm very very interested in them. But with the amount of talking and writing I do about them, many people walk away thinking that I am shoveling these things into my mouth 24/7. I am not. Drugs interest me as a topic a lot more than they interest me as an activity. I don't make a huge effort to constantly seek them out. I do not feel the need to cultivate a steady supply and have them consistently on hand. I don't want to live my live on any psychoactive drug. Period. That goes equally for acid, marijuana, prozac, alcohol, and geodon. I do not view those who desire to do drugs all the time as inherently inferior in any way to those who don't. I do not dismiss that as a valid lifestyle choice. Even if I had a issue with it, it is not be my place to judge the personal decisions adults make regarding to their own bodies and minds. I, however, tend prefer to be in my natural state the majority of the time. That decision may not be the most healthy for me as my mind has been a very bad place, but deep inside I believe that that bad place is something that I have to learn to deal with directly if I'm going to live.

i can't do it. maybe i need to go on antipsychotics again. i don't want to, but i need to do something. this isn't working. i'm not making it. something needs to change or i'm not going to stay alive very long. i'm pretty damn close to ending it. i can't do this anymore. something needs to change. my brain is not a good place. there are too many painful loops. they rip through me, i can feel them. i need this to end somehow. i don't know how to stop it. i can't find the key. i don't have the deloopifier that most people have. i get trapped instead. i need this to stop. i need to shut out the world. my brain does not adequately filter information. i intake too much and end up with an overflow. i can't take it all in anymore. i need to block it out. block it all out. i don't this anymore. i don't want to think anymore. i don't want to be anymore. give me 240mg of geodon or 600mg of seroquel and let me drown in nothingness.

Maybe it is psych. Maybe I should just load up on addictive benzos and paxil. Maybe I should go back on 240mg of geodon a day. If geodon doesn't cut it, maybe I can go back on the 600mg of seroquel like I was three or four years ago. It makes everything slow and squishy. While I might not be "cured", at least I won't be able to think about not being cured. In fact, I wouldn't have to think at all, just the fog roll in. Alternatively, I could just go down to Park Street and jump in front of a train. Essentially the same effect.

I have been posting simi-regularly again, but I haven't been posting much about what's been going on in my life. So here goes.

I still get twitchy and panicky sometimes, but not near as often as I did last year, which is not near as often as the year before that. So I'm continuing on the path of improvement. I'm still going to therapy, but I'm not sure the aim of it at this point. It's nice to talk about what's going on in my life to an quasi-objective outsider, but there seems to be no direction. A good part of the reason there is no direction is me. I'm not entirely sure where I want to take my life at this point.

I am near or at the point where I could conceivablely work a job again. A steady job would help me incredibly financially. The disability checks are just barely enough to get by on, and leave scant left over for much else. A job would also help me structure my day, my days now drift by in a random fashion with little rhyme or reason.

However, I am extremely discouraged about my chances of actually getting a job, and if I do get one, my chances of keeping it. The job market sucks right now, which is very discouraging, as is the fact that I'd be applying with marks against me. Being a out transsexual carries a lot of discrimination, which I experienced to a very high degree when I was in the job market before. I had a very difficult time finding a jobs, and when I eventually did find jobs they usually paid far less than I should have been making for the work I was doing. Far less than most non-trans folk in a similar profession and at a similar skill level would accept. I fear that the coupling of the discrimination with the fact that I've been out of work for almost 5 years will be a death sentence for my job hunt. The gap in my job history gives employers an easy and valid excuse not to hire me if they are at all uncomfortable with my gender identity.

And after I've gotten a job, it is possible that some symptoms may become problematic again. If I am unable to keep the job, I'll be in a far worse position than if I never tried. By getting a job and failing I will be left with no job and no disability or medical coverage. I could quickly end up on the street, a possibility that seems far to real to me seeing I've been there before.

As an effect of how I view the chips being stacked heavily against me in the job market, I am very dubious about even trying. And the discouragement and resentment I feel from the situation leads me to seek out other reasons the job market isn't where I want to go. Do I really want to end up working at a job whose sole purpose is to make some fat cat a little richer? To line someone random person's pockets? Do I want to go back to facing the annoying issues that generally come up in a work environment strewn with a ton of assholes. I've virtually locked most bigots and right-wing nuts out of my life, do I really want to go back to interacting with them? All in all how can I view it as worth it to fight very hard for something that is going to suck anyway? Money isn't enough of a motivation. Survival would be, but through disability my survival isn't nearly as impaired as it would be with a failed job experiment.

If I'm not going to get a job, I must figure out what I want to do with my life. I want to accomplish something, I just have to accept that it won't be in the traditional definitions of success. Being successful could be simply improving the lives of those around me, which I do to a degree, but I could be doing more. It could also mean participating in political actions, to improve the world in general. Creative work that inspires and touches others is also a valid form of success. Doing volunteer work that helps the local community would also be valid. One thing prevents me from achieving any of these successes in large quantity is something that I can work on: day structure. I need to plan out my day and add regularity to important routines. This is within my reach, I am in a position to move. I have given myself time to orient myself to my new world since I have gotten off my psych meds, and now that I am more familiar with the new landscape it is time to make my move. I need help to do this. I still have the tendency to drift, and I'll need those around me to help me focus. To occasionally ask me "what have you accomplished today"? Help me keep my eye on the prize. With the support of my friends and some difficult changes on my part, I could become a better, more successful person.

'Tis the set of sails and not the gales Which tells us the way to go.      -- Ella Wheeler Wilcox

I need to set my sails.

I don't support the National Association for the Mentally Ill (NAMI). They claim to be a grassroots organization supporting the mentally ill. Sounds good. However, seeing that the majority of the funding for this "grassroots" organization comes from the pharmaceutical industry, one is tempted to look for ulterior motives. One doesn't have to look far. NAMI funnels much of it's drug money into the Treatment Advocacy Center (TAC). TAC has a nasty agenda of removal of many basic civil rights of mentally ill patients by forcing us into court-ordered medication and treatment. They have achieved their goal in a great many states, but thankfully not Massachusetts.

Psychiatry has the potential to help people and some may be benefit from psychiatric medication. However, psychiatric medication carries a great deal of side effect, many of them permanent, damaging, and on the occasionally, fatal. Isn't it the right of a person who has not been convicted of any crime to decide if they want to take medication that will effectively turn them into a zombie and potentially cause permanent neurological damage? I think so.

Furthermore, forced psychiatry only encourages the mentally ill to go underground. In a environment where seeking help can result in losing your civil rights, one is a lot less like to seek help when it is needed.

If I were living in New York right now, I could be forced to remain on my geodon indefinitely. Two psych hospitalizations within 3 years and refusal to take the meds your pdoc thinks is best is all that is need for a court order forcing you into a treatment plan that can include random drug testing and forced relocation to a residential program (with fun things like a curfew). Even if for me that meant only taking geodon, I would be forced to be subjected to risk of tardive dyskinesia (a nasty permanent side effect of antipsychotics that causes repeated uncontrollable muscle movement), potentially fatal heart rhythm irregularities, increased risk of diabetes (I'm already at high risk), and NMS (a rare, but fatal complication of many antipsychotic meds). Given the risks, anyone prescribed this sort of medication should be given the choice of whether or not to take it. I have decided that the risks coupled with the zombie brain prison it endures is not worth it in my case. In Massachusetts, at least, no one can ram their poisons down my throat by force.

My psychiatrist told me geodon didn't cause weight gain. However according to Pfizer's own prescribing information, it does. When she prescribed me 240mg a day of geodon, I questioned the high dose. She told me that it was a pretty standard dose now. But, again, Pfizer's prescribing information states "The safety of doses above 100mg BID [twice a day] has not been systematically evaluated in clinical trials.". Furthermore, when I complained about withdrawals from geodon when I'd miss a dose, she told me Geodon has no withdrawals. She told me that's how I am normally without Geodon. However from my own experience and the experiences of many many others I have now read about online, I know that is complete bullshit. Geodon has severe withdrawals. Here are enough horror stories to make your head spin. And that's only on small message board people are talking in. If I hadn't bought what my psychiatrist was saying, I would have been off of it a long time before I finally quit. I was truly afraid that the withdrawals were just my normal state of being. Furthermore, she insisted that I was wrong about 60mg of Celexa being a "high dose", she insisted that it was a small dose. Low and behold the prescribing information for Celexa not only lists the maximum dose as 60mg, but goes on to state "Although certain patients may require a dose of 60mg/day, the only study pertinent to dose response for effectiveness did not demonstrate an advantage for the 60mg/day dose over the 40mg/day dose; doses above 40mg are therefore not ordinarily recommended". Either my psychiatrist is a liar or an idiot. Either way I have no inclination to see her again. She can shove her meds up her ass.

For the first time in a long time I don't feel like my head is in a fog. I can think clearly again. Sure, I'm still a little twitchy, but even if the slight twitchiness doesn't go away, it's better than feeling like a zombie. I love this free from geodon feeling. I don't want to go back.

i feel much better
the twichies seem to have gone away for now
i'm getting better everyday
i'm very glad i didn't go into the hospital yesterday
they would have very much tried to get me to take my geodon
i feel like a new person
however, i feel like a new person who needs caffeine
time to make some coffee

i've slept most of today
curled up in my bed with my wool coat on
getting cat hair all over it
getting up only to go see my pdoc
she said she isn't mad at me for going off my geodon
but thought i should check myself into the hospital
i told her that i didn't want to go
she said if i changed my mind to have them page her so she could explain what was going on

I've noticed my appetite has gone way down since I've stopped taking my Geodon. This is a good thing.

I think I can do this
I think I can make it
once i get through the withdrawals, i can see where i really am
then i can make a decision whether i want to take any geodon
and if so, how much
but even if it is unpleasant
if i could be able to cope
wouldn't it be better being who i really am
instead of a geodon zombie
if it is too unbearable being who i am, i guess i can go back to geodon and pretend that i don't exist
i don't want to do that, but i guess i might have to
scary
but i'm going to try not to
i'm going to try to exist