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Disclaimer: NEVER cold turkey a medication. Consult your doctor and
do your own independent research when starting or discontinuing a
medication.
Today I present to you this young, smart and
beautiful lady, Laura Delano. I identify a lot with her story,
especially her struggles with perfection and growing up feeling that one
is only worthy due to one's accomplishments but not in the struggles,
not in the lows. Laura's story is inspiring since she was able to
graduate Harvard University while in the midst of her struggle with
psychiatric drugs. Today she is free from meds and reclaiming her true
self and her ability to feel the whole set of emotions that makes us
human. She is a contributor to the "Mad in America" (MIA) blog (www.madinamerica.com) and has published many articles and given many talks about freeing herself from psychiatry.
Laura was diagnosed as bipolar at a young age and was prescribed
psychiatric drugs to treat her condition, drugs that worsen long-term
outcomes as supported by studies referenced in this article (https://www.madinamerica.com/…/polypharmacybipolar-disorder/):
"In the pre-drug era, bipolar patients were usually asymptomatic
between episodes; 85% returned to their usual occupations; and they
showed no signs of long-term cognitive decline. Today, bipolar patients
are much more symptomatic; only about one-third return to their usual
occupations; and they become cognitively impaired over the long term."
Furthermore, there is ample scientific and anecdotal evidence that
psychiatric drugs also precipitate mania in people who have never shown
bipolar symptoms before being medicated. As described in MIA's blog https://www.madinamerica.com/…/antidepressant-induced-mania/:
"Although the "latent bipolar disorder" is psychiatry's usual
explanation for these episodes, one occasionally encounters
acknowledgement that the antidepressant was the primary causative
factor, and in practice, the two conflicting theories exist side by
side.
1-The manic/hypomanic episode was caused by the antidepressant drugs.
2-The episode was caused by the underlying latent bipolar disorder.
Theory 2 is more popular in psychiatric practice, and is routinely told to those clients who experience this kind of mood switching. Up till now it has been difficult to challenge theory 2, because it is essentially unassailable. One can't prove or disprove the existence of something that is inherently latent.
But recently some evidence has been published that favors theory 1: that the manic/hypomanic episodes stem primarily from the antidepressant drugs..."
1-The manic/hypomanic episode was caused by the antidepressant drugs.
2-The episode was caused by the underlying latent bipolar disorder.
Theory 2 is more popular in psychiatric practice, and is routinely told to those clients who experience this kind of mood switching. Up till now it has been difficult to challenge theory 2, because it is essentially unassailable. One can't prove or disprove the existence of something that is inherently latent.
But recently some evidence has been published that favors theory 1: that the manic/hypomanic episodes stem primarily from the antidepressant drugs..."
Not only that,
there's a multitude of anecdotes of bipolar symptoms going away
completely after psych drug discontinuation (especially after a slow and
careful taper off the drugs). Bipolar symptoms upon psychiatric drug
use are really a result of brain damage caused by the medications
instead of the uncovering of a latent condition. The journal articles
described in the above links and the work of Dr. Peter Breggin (http://breggin.com/books/) and others support this assertion.
=====================================================================================================
Laura's story can be found on her blog at:
http://recoveringfrompsychiatry.com/…/on-waking-up-from-th…/
and her Youtube videos like:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZlGEopFOWD4
"On Waking Up From the “American Dream”
“These enviable youngsters appear to be the winners in the race we have made of childhood. But the reality is very different, as I have witnessed in many of my own students and heard from the hundreds of young people whom I have spoken with on campuses or who have written to me over the last few years. Our system of elite education manufactures young people who are smart and talented and driven, yes, but also anxious, timid, and lost, with little intellectual curiosity and a stunted sense of purpose: trapped in a bubble of privilege, heading meekly in the same direction, great at what they’re doing but with no idea why they’re doing it.”
–William Deresiewicz, Don’t Send Your Kids to the Ivy League
The New Republic
July 21st, 2014
....................................................
Throughout my life, I’ve had access to privilege, especially in regards to my education, which included a lifetime of private schooling followed by matriculation at Harvard University. I resonate a great deal with what this author has to say, and indeed, in the deep reflection and exploration I’ve done during these years of post-Psychiatry life, I’ve come to understand that my first crisis at the age of thirteen—the crisis that would get me psychiatrized and sent into the depths of the “mental health” system for fourteen years—was, in fact, a spiritual and existential one tied very much to the issues this author puts forth. Of course, I never had the chance to make sense of it in this way at the time; to see that my profound suffering and emptiness and desperate searching was, in fact, a meaningful and incredibly important quest I was embarking upon to make sense of a world that I didn’t feel I belonged in, a world that didn’t make sense to me.
=====================================================================================================
Laura's story can be found on her blog at:
http://recoveringfrompsychiatry.com/…/on-waking-up-from-th…/
and her Youtube videos like:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZlGEopFOWD4
"On Waking Up From the “American Dream”
“These enviable youngsters appear to be the winners in the race we have made of childhood. But the reality is very different, as I have witnessed in many of my own students and heard from the hundreds of young people whom I have spoken with on campuses or who have written to me over the last few years. Our system of elite education manufactures young people who are smart and talented and driven, yes, but also anxious, timid, and lost, with little intellectual curiosity and a stunted sense of purpose: trapped in a bubble of privilege, heading meekly in the same direction, great at what they’re doing but with no idea why they’re doing it.”
–William Deresiewicz, Don’t Send Your Kids to the Ivy League
The New Republic
July 21st, 2014
....................................................
Throughout my life, I’ve had access to privilege, especially in regards to my education, which included a lifetime of private schooling followed by matriculation at Harvard University. I resonate a great deal with what this author has to say, and indeed, in the deep reflection and exploration I’ve done during these years of post-Psychiatry life, I’ve come to understand that my first crisis at the age of thirteen—the crisis that would get me psychiatrized and sent into the depths of the “mental health” system for fourteen years—was, in fact, a spiritual and existential one tied very much to the issues this author puts forth. Of course, I never had the chance to make sense of it in this way at the time; to see that my profound suffering and emptiness and desperate searching was, in fact, a meaningful and incredibly important quest I was embarking upon to make sense of a world that I didn’t feel I belonged in, a world that didn’t make sense to me.
No, I never
had this chance, as my pain was quickly labeled “Bipolar” and I was
thrown on Depakote and Prozac in a matter of fifty minutes by a
psychiatrist I’d never before met. Only now am I circling back to those
deep and meaningful questions that emerged back then—questions about who
I am (and am not), and about what it means to even ask that question.
About what it means to be human, to be authentic, to belong, to feel
worthy of being alive. About how one finds a way to fit into a world
that so often doesn’t make sense, and so often is alienating, scary,
traumatic, and painful.
I grew up in an environment that taught
me my worth as a person was directly tied to my grades, my athletic
performance, my list of extra-curricular activities, and my SAT scores.
That if I wasn’t the best, I was the worst. That if I wasn’t perfect, I
was a failure. It wasn’t a lesson taught to me by any particular
individual or institution (and I should add that I feel no blame in my
heart towards anyone specific for this), but rather one steeped into
every facet of the world around me, one that seemed to pulsate in the
very air my peers and I breathed. At thirteen and in all my
psychiatrized years to follow, I never had the chance to step back and
process what this all meant, and whether these were values I wanted to
hold onto, and I continued through high school and on to Harvard in this
existential limbo, simply because I saw no other way.
I would
arrive in Harvard Square without a shred of self-worth beyond that which
I felt from my grades, my athletic accomplishments, and the rest of my
college application. And the message that I was “mentally
ill”—defective, abnormal, different, broken—would only serve to deepen
my sense of emptiness and self-alienation beneath my list of
“achievements,” leading me to place more and more dependence on these
“achievements” to make me feel OK. Of course, the more psychotropic
drugs I was put on and the more psychiatric labels I acquired as time
moved on, the more these “achievements” fell apart, leaving me with
absolutely nothing to hold onto. It makes complete sense to me that this
trajectory of the so-called “American Dream” led me to one place and
one place alone: three hundred pills, a bottle of wine, and a suicide
note.
I should say that I have deep gratitude and appreciation
for the countless resources, opportunities, and access points I’ve been
afforded throughout my life and especially in these last few years since
coming off of psychiatric drugs and leaving behind psychiatric labels.
Indeed, this privilege has, I believe, played a large part in giving me
the gift of psychiatric liberation. My life today is full of meaning
and purpose, of pain and joy and anguish and connection and fear and
love and passion, and this is a fact I savor daily. Today, I am fully
human. Today, I belong.
What I struggle with, however, is
knowing that this same liberating privilege was also, in many ways, my
enslaver in the first place. I’ll leave the reader to Mr. Deresiewicz’
article to get a better sense of what I mean, because it does more
justice to this notion than I ever could. Indeed, I hope his message
reaches people far and wide, because it is of the utmost importance for
our society—especially our young people, the ones who are stepping onto
the field and into the classroom and onto the stage for the first times
in their lives, prepped for initiation into a blinders-on life of
performance and achievement and accomplishment and perfection. Prepped
for pursuit of the so-called “American Dream,” whose funnel is, of
course, our Educational Industrial Complex.
It took me nearly
thirty years—and fourteen years of psychiatric imprisonment—to connect
with the powerful message articulated by Mr. Deresiewicz, which I’ve
done by deprogramming myself from this “Dream” and discovering that I
was born a worthy human. Today, I realize that the values and lessons
that truly matter to me—those of truth and justice and equality and
compassion and authentic connection and integrity and commitment and
unconditional love—have nothing to do with grades on a paper, or the
number of awards won, or the length of a list of achievements. They
have nothing to do with the name of your college—or whether you even
went to college— or the number of letters you acquire behind your name.
These values are learned in life lived with feet on the ground, with
the cultivation of a critical and ever-questioning mind, and through the
nurturing of a human spirit in symbiosis with this oppressive and
beautiful world, amongst one’s fellows, inherently worthy.
Thank you, Mr. Deresiewicz, for getting this message out there. I stand in solidarity with you."
--Laura
--Laura
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