Against Psychiatry!

Why You Should Oppose The War On The Mind.

Revised first edition October 2005. Second Edition, with revisions, February 2007.

. Contents .

1 Preface

2 A Child

3 A Child Psychiatrist

4 Ritalin = Speed

5 Drugs As Abuse

6 A Chemical Imbalance?

7 More Ritalin

8 A Bright Kid

9 A Political Tool

10 A Broken Brain

11 The Words of Grandma

12 Cellphones and Schizophrenia

13 Their Words on Grandma

14 A Social Tool

15 A Child on Drugs

16 A Child in Therapy

17 The World of Therapists

18 The Library Lady

19 "the heart had stopped beating� "

20 From Ritalin to Prozac

21 Problems With Prozac

22 Patterns in Medical Child Abuse

23 Lofty Goals

24 A Profusion of Drugs

25 A Plea For Help

26 All Locked Up

27 The-Rapist

28 Bloated Bodies

29 Teens Behind Bars

30 The Danger Of Drugs

31 The Battle Of Seattle

32 The Pattern Of Escalating Diagnosis

33 Neuroleptics Cause Brain Damage

34 A Tool Of Patriarchy

35 Clouding Consent

36 Poisoning The Poor

37 The Aftermath

38 Running Away

39 Sanctioned Addictions

40 Psychiatry = Eugenics

41 Life In The Gutter

42 Revolutionaries

43 Nightmare Detox From Benzodiazapams (R.I.P. Mosca Avacado)

44 Emergence

45 Advice For Getting Off Drugs

46 Appendix; Concerns About The Icarus Project

47 Footnotes

.

. 1. Preface

. What follows is some interesting information about how and why the psychiatric industry harms people, disturbing new trends, opposition, inspirations, and calls to action, interspersed with a personal account of how the failed school system of our authoritarian society led to my abuse at the hands of the Psychiatric industry. A story typical of the psychiatric experience. Do not write it off as an unusually negative example. My story is only different because it has a happy ending. Happy because I escaped.

. I would first like to make it clear that I oppose the pseudo scientific concept of "Mental Illness" entirely. Unlike physical illnesses that are biologically based and sometimes have chemical cures, "Mental Illness" is a social construct used to justify abuse for the purpose of social control.

. In this zine I use different language than what you may be familiar with from pro-psychiatric industry propaganda. I use the word prisoner or person or victim instead of "mental patient" or "mental health client", and I avoid the deceptive euphemism "medication" for what is really simply drugs. People have emotions, not "symptoms". People have personalities, not "brain disorders". I am not "lost" or "missing" because I have broken away from psychiatric abuse. I am a Survivor.

. If someone seems "Mentally Ill" perhaps they are suffering from a food allergy, combined with the lasting effects of childhood trauma. Perhaps their spirit is struggling to break free from a stifling corporate job and loveless marriage. Perhaps they are sleep deprived and infected with parasites. Perhaps they are under stress from homelessness and have recently been assaulted. Perhaps they are under the influence of a toxic street or psychiatric drug.

. There are any number of real world causes for emotional pain which in a caring, non-authoritarian society people could receive help for. Instead, however, psychiatry chooses to ignore them all and suppress the person's emotional cry for help with brain damaging drugs. This is rather like giving a person with a broken leg a painkiller to shut them up, while neglecting to set their bone back into place. Unconscionable.

. Actually, the potential negative repercussions of drugging someone with "psych meds" are far more complex and dangerous than this metaphor suggests because psychiatric drugs cause brain damage and their listed "side effects" include the "symptoms" of every imaginable "psychiatric disease", from hyperactivity, to depression, sleeplessness, paranoia, even hallucinations. How many people are then trapped in an endless cycle, being drugged in an attempt to control the distressing effects that the drugs themselves are causing?

. How many people, often with no previous history of "mental illness", perhaps suffering from some legitimate source of grief such as the death of a loved one, will tragically commit suicide due to the confusing and distressing "side effects" of a drug prescribed to them by a psychiatrist to make them "feel better".

. Even in the studies done by the drug companies themselves it is shown that many of these popular drugs actually increase, rather than decrease the risk of suicide. It is no mystery why they do not feature this statistic prominently in their ad campaigns.

. If these drugs can cause "mental illness" in a "normal" person, why would they cure "mental illness" in anyone else? The drug industry wants us to believe that they do, despite all evidence, so they tell us the lie that many people's brains are so drastically different from "normal" that poisoning them with toxic drugs is somehow actually good for them.

. Not long ago, a friend of mine attended an "open discussion" on mental health in the punk/activist scene at an anarchist community center. It was presented by a group called "The Icarus Project". What she found instead was a pro-drug, pro-psychiatry propaganda session. When she tentatively voiced her difference of opinion they tried to silence her by announcing that she was "obviously in need of drugs."

. As she recounted this experience to me later I was aghast. She told me that she had left the anarchist space that day feeling deeply shaken and confused. She also told me that there was currently no one else talking about mental health issues in the punk anarchist scene. Now aware of the need to openly express a dissenting opinion, I began work on this zine. The intention of this zine is to spread far beyond the confines of the DIY punk scene. The information it holds is equally important to anyone.

. I am putting these words on paper to free myself from the exhausting obligation to speak them out over and over again. Feel free to disagree. Believe what you want to believe, but first get all the facts. I simply want to present my experience as a survivor of psychiatric abuse turned radical anti-psychiatry advocate, coupled with some suppressed facts and political analysis. This is a radical challenge to the supremacy of the psychiatric industry. Not a surrender to it.

. 2. A Child

. Until I started school I was raised by my Grandma, a brilliant woman whose unfortunate lifetime of abuse and oppression had caused her to lose touch with reality and become quite paranoid at times. Despite all the obvious drawbacks of being raised by a paranoid, delusional person, in many ways my early childhood with my grandmother was an enriching and joyful time for me. Miraculously, the psychiatric industry had never gotten their hands on her with their brain damaging drugs so instead of being a burned out shell like so many psychiatrically abused schizophrenics she was an extremely articulate and creative person.

. We were constantly engaged in activities that were both fun and educational. She nurtured my curiosity, never treating me in the condescending manner most adults reserve for children. We spent our time reading and cooking and gardening and swimming and drawing, not sitting in front of a television. It never felt like school, but what she was really doing was home schooling me and I was eager to learn.

. Consequentially, by the time I was forced to begin public school I could already read, write and do math at an advanced level. Nothing prepared me for the shock of the public school system.

. I tried to explain to the teacher that I already knew everything they were teaching, and her response was to tell me that I needed to "forget" how to read and write so that I could learn these things years later with the rest of my class. If I didn't do this, she said, I would have no friends.

. I was forced to sit all day and fill out mind numbingly simple worksheets. I was bored, and I had never been bored before. I tried to entertain myself by drawing and reading books hidden inside my desk. The teacher was enraged. I tried to reason with her. I had been raised to look adults in the eye and speak to them as equals. I found the anger and condescension with which my teacher regarded me frightening and confusing.

. When I would go home and tell my grandmother about the way I was being treated in school she would be sympathetic, but because she couldn't do anything constructive like withdraw me from school she would just encourage me to misbehave. Partially she was legitimately disturbed by the way the school was mistreating me, and partially she was jealous of anything that came between us. Mostly though I think she thought it was funny, and I'm sure she had no idea how dangerous the situation truly was or how foolish the advice she gave me then. I began to act up in school just so that I could brag about it later to my grandmother. I had the impression that it was us against them and that I was fighting the good fight.

. Often my grandmother would praise me by comparing me to Calvin, the hero of our favorite comic strip, "Calvin and Hobbes". What neither of us realized was that in the real world, in 1990, child heroes like Calvin were not permitted to exist. They had created a name for us, and that name was ADHD.

. At home with my Mom and Dad stress over my experiences at school was mounting. Singling out my mother as being responsible for sending me there I began to tell her that I hated her. When the school demanded that I be taken to a psychiatrist, my mother, who hated religion, but had faith in her concept of a "rational" and "scientific" psychology, thought it was a great idea.

. 3. A Child Psychiatrist

. I thought he was like the principal of my school because I knew I had been sent here for getting in trouble. Nonetheless I talked a lot, trying to impress him, as I had many friends of my parents, with how articulate I then was. I explained to him that I found school boring, but loved to read.

. He seemed impatient and cut me off abruptly after perhaps 5 minutes. I was sent out to the waiting room while he talked with my mother. I sat there and practiced telling her what an egghead jerk the "doctor" had been. I read "Highlights for Children". I made up a story about a baby chicken. I examined the carpet and watched the clock. These were to be the last undrugged moments of my childhood and in contrast with the toxic fog that was about to engulf me they remain clearly etched in my memory. I was not to wake sober for over a decade.

. When my mom came back to the waiting room I realized with a sinking feeling that something irrevocable had changed. The drive home was silent. My mother looked oddly pleased, satisfied that the school's "doctor" had stuck me with such a popular diagnosis. Paradoxically, she had been horrified some months before when another doctor had suggested that I displayed traits of Autism, and had declined to follow up. This was 1989 after all, and Asperger's syndrome was not yet trendy, but ADHD was already a headline making celebrity.

. That evening my mom told me that I needed "medicine" to make me behave. She handed me a little yellow pill and frightened of the consequences if I didn't accept my "punishment" I quickly swallowed it. Minutes later, with sarcastic false cheer, I reported to her that "The pill must be working because I don't want to say I HATE YOU! right now."

. The whole situation seemed so ridiculous. I was nervous, but somehow everything seemed funny to me and not quite real. I felt like I had drinken too many sodas. I went to bed, but I couldn't sleep. Instead I stayed up all night reading to my stuffed animals.

. The next morning I was exhausted, but on my placemat next to the orange juice was another little yellow pill. That pill was Ritalin. I swallowed it and was filled with energy.

. 4. Ritalin = Speed

. Anyone who has ever used speed is probably familiar with how the first few days of amped up sleeplessness can be fun, but with continued use this high rapidly deteriorates into anxiety, rage, and twitching, at which point even the most hardcore tweakers will generally crash and spend a few days at least sleeping and eating and detoxing, allowing their bodies and minds a chance to recover somewhat before the next chemical binge. Nonetheless, even with these breaks, the tragic toll of chronic speed use is obvious. Formerly healthy, friendly people become hostile and paranoid, their bodies emaciated, their skin covered with scabs from compulsively picking at themselves.

. For the next three years I was to be drugged two and sometimes three times a day with this noxious substance. The Ritalin, Adderal, and Dexedrine commonly prescribed to children have the same pharmacological action as Crystal Meth. The only obvious advantage is that they are not cut with battery acid, and thus will not make your teeth fall out.

. The profit driven medical establishment ignores the destructive effects of the drugs that they are dealing, but they are happy to tell us all about the dangers of the street drugs, because that is their main competition. It is not a matter of two different types of brain drugs, one "good", and one "bad". It is simply a matter of the corporate brand name and the "generic".

. If we want to know about Ritalin, all we have to do is look up speed. We will be told in no uncertain terms that speed is a dangerous, damaging, and deadly drug. It is highly addictive and withdrawal from it is a difficult, painful process. Speed causes permanent damage to the brain and the heart. Because of this permanent neurological damage even former speed users who have managed to stay clean for years frequently suffer from paranoia, compulsions, anxiety, and twitching.

. The effects of speed are supposed to be so harmful to the development of children that even occasional exposure to second hand smoke is grounds to split up a family. Simultaneously, however, the government has recently begun an alarming trend of splitting up families in which the parents have refused to drug their child with Ritalin (or other mind altering drugs) at the schools insistence, calling this "child neglect". If Ritalin is speed and speed is bad for children, then why are millions of children being drugged daily with this dangerous substance "for their own good"?

. 5. Drugs As Abuse

. We have all been told that there is an epidemic of "Drug Abuse" amongst young people. However, if you look at the statistics, there are far more young people being drugged daily by psychiatrists than there are young people with any kind of regular street drug habit. The real epidemic of "Drugs Abuse" is the systematic use of Drugs to Abuse children for the purpose of profit and social control. That is Drug Abuse.

. Just as you can abuse a child by beating them, and that is called "Physical Abuse", you can abuse a child by poisoning them. This is simply one facet of "Psychiatric Abuse". Poisoning a child, no matter what your misguided intentions, always constitutes abuse. It is ironic perhaps that the Psychiatric industry has themselves designated a label, "Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy" for abusive adults who fake an illness in a dependant, often a child. Typically the child will be poisoned, to obtain attention and often financial support for the "caregiver" as they repeatedly present the child for medical treatment. It goes without saying that despite the very clear description of their own behavior and motivations psychiatrists rarely diagnose themselves as examples of this supposedly "rare mental disorder".

. If I were to tell people that from 7 to 10 years of age I had been held down and forced to take speed daily and then described to them how sick it had made me the reaction would be outrage and sympathy. However if I were to tell people that from 7 to 10 years of age I was held down and forced to take Ritalin daily and then described to them how sick it had made me I would be told that Ritalin was harmless, that it helped people, that I should have continued taking it, or perhaps that if Ritalin hadn't been the "right drug" for me I simply needed a different drug.

. 6. A Chemical Imbalance?

. Time and again I would be told that psychiatric drugs "corrected a chemical imbalance" in the brains of people who have been diagnosed with psychiatric disorders. The drugs work, so the story goes in a bizarre circle of rationalization, because the brain is "abnormal", if the brain was "normal", the drug wouldn't work. This is one of the pseudo scientific lies presented to people as fact in the mass market drug industry propaganda.

. But the truth of the matter is there is no test for a "chemical imbalance of the brain". The chemical makeup of the brain is so complex that with the technology we have today there can be no real understanding of how it works, or what a "healthy chemical balance" would even look like. Scientists realize this, so they don't even try to figure it out.

. Instead we are presented with flashy computer generated images (with interpretive color added for dramatic effect) claiming to show structural differences between a "normal brain" and the brains of people who have been diagnosed with a variety of psychiatric "disorders", from ADHD, to Schizophrenia.

. Since all the "abnormal brains" come from victims of psychiatric drugging, which is known to cause brain damage, the only thing that these "studies" prove is that, contrary to industry claims, psychiatric drugs do indeed cause brain damage.

. No one doubts the ability of street drugs to cause brain damage. There is even Anti Street Drug propaganda shown in schools that lines up "normal" brains with those damaged by drugs such as ecstasy or crack. Minus the captions these images are identical to those which claim to show psychiatric disorders. But really what they show is drug damage. A normal person's brain, and another normal person's brain which has been damaged by drugs.

. We are never shown the brain of someone with a psychiatric diagnosis that has not also been a victim of drugging. Why? Because absent the harmful effects of the drugs all people's brains are disappointingly similar.

. This is why, diagnosis or no diagnosis, psychiatric drugs will have the same effect on anyone, whether that is to speed them up, slow them down, inflict pain, or even kill them.

. Ritalin is a good example because it is identical to the street drug Speed, but this analysis applies to the other psychiatric drugs as well, only most of these categories of chemicals effect the brain in such an obviously and immediately unpleasant way that no one would ever think to use them for "recreational" purposes, with the exception of course of benzodiazepines like Valium and Klonopin which have a similar appeal to Heroin and will be discussed later.

. Even if there were a "chemical imbalance" in the brains of certain people diagnosed with psychiatric disorders, giving them drugs would do nothing to solve it. Drug industry propaganda (and the Icarus Project) says that "people with psychiatric disorders need drugs the way diabetics need insulin." But this is a lie. Diabetes is a real physical disease caused by an insulin deficiency. Depression is an emotional problem, not physical, and it is not caused by a Prozac deficiency, nor is Bipolar caused by a Lithium deficiency. The absence of a toxic, foreign substance does not constitute a disorder. That is like saying that sobriety is caused by an alcohol deficiency, and although throughout the years many oppressed and unhappy people have tried to (or in the case of Native Americans, sex slaves, etc. been forced to) "medicate" their sadness with alcohol this can hardly be recommended as a healthy coping strategy.

. The only "chemical imbalances" that we know to occur are the result of adding foreign chemicals to the brain. It is easy to alter the innate chemical balance of someone's brain simply by giving them a drug. But this is _causing_ a chemical imbalance, not "curing" one. Even if there was something unusual about this persons brain chemistry to begin with, throwing their natural balance out of wack does nothing to bring them closer to any outwardly defined norm, and may even cause serious harm.

. In many cases, such as my own, psychiatric drugs cause a person�s thinking and behavior to become obviously less "normal", instead of more "normal". Psychiatric drugs, with their toxic effect on the brain, can create the "symptoms" of every official psychiatric "disorder", from hyperactivity, to depression, to hallucinations. Because of the variability of human reactions to drugs, the government will never be able to achieve it's ultimate goal of creating a docile society of perfect students and workers and soldiers and consumers through large scale psychiatric drugging. There will always be a substantial chunk of the population who will simply freak out when given these drugs.

. Although a lot of the uncertainty has been taken out of what was once considered a "rouge branch of science" through a half century spent mutilating the brains of unfortunate women drawn from the social underclasses, the psychiatric industry is still largely working in the dark. Dosing people with chemicals whose basic effects are not even understood. For this reason, of course, they have to make up a lot of lies to fill in the gaps. If the public suspected just how little psychiatrists actually knew about the human brain they would be horrified. So they come up with pretty stories. The stories are published. Eventually they are accepted as fact.

. If drugging seems to "help" someone it is only because it interferes with the normal functioning of their brain and thus can suppresses their emotional reactions to real world problems (labeled "symptoms"). This is the "best case scenario", and it "works", at least temporarily, in a large percentage of cases. Instead of trying to help a person figure out the root causes of their extreme emotional reactions and deal with them, the person is stupefied, the problem is blamed on their brain and the real problem remains hidden.

. The true causes of what is now labeled "Mental Illness" are actually a wide range of physical and social problems, none of which have anything to do with brain chemistry. Anything from an unfulfilling lifestyle, to food allergies like celiac, to the stifling roles of school and work and binary gender, endocrine problems like hypothyroidism, loneliness, vitamin deficiencies, currant or past experiences of violence and abuse, social oppression, recent drug use, or the types of stress and exhaustion that effects refugees, the homeless and desperately poor people worldwide. Ironically increasing numbers of people are suffering emotional problems due to the abusive "treatments" met out to them by the psychiatric industry itself, often while children.

. All of these problems are legitimate reasons for a person to freak out, and all of these problems have positive solutions, some complex and others very simple. One thing is for sure though, if the suffering person is drugged into submission and told that their problems are the result of a "broken brain" they will not be getting the real help they need for their real world problems. What they will be getting instead is a new problem to layer on top off the old, a psychotropic drug addiction.

. 7. More On Ritalin

. When first ingesting Speed, as with Ritalin, most people will feel quite euphoric initially, thus setting the course for addiction. They will be convinced that the Speed (Ritalin) makes them more organized and productive, while to the outside observer the tweaking person will seem obviously impaired. And while the tweaker might insist on how productive and organized the Speed (Ritalin) has made them, compulsively engaging in pointless activities such as shuffling through mounds of papers or garbage for hours on end, seemingly without tiring, can hardly be seen as an improvement over normal human behavior.

. Except of course to a psychiatrist, a teacher, or a CEO. To them it seems like a miracle. It is such a simple solution to the problem of how to coerce the human spirit into a lifetime of drudgery. If they could just drug all of their schoolchildren and workers with Speed then the helpless little pawns would become eager to spend all their time compulsively engaging in pointless activities such as filling out worksheets.

. Unfortunately it is not as simple as they would like it to be. When the Nazis invented Speed it was intended for short term use. Something to be given to disposable soldiers on the front lines so that they would follow orders and continue to fight without regard to food or sleep or pain, so of course little consideration was given to their futures, it was assumed that most of them would die on the battlefield.

. When Speed is taken for extended periods of time it's destructive nature becomes readily apparent. Although I know of about a handful of people who have been able to sustain regular speed habits or prescriptions to Ritalin for years and years while remaining healthy, and without suffering a total breakdown, these people are the exception to the rule.

. Most people, when drugged consistently with speed, will begin to wear out and deteriorate rapidly, often becoming violent or completely losing touch with reality.

. Even the studies done by the pharmaceutical industry itself admit that Ritalin is only shown to be "helpful" when used for a period of four weeks. After four weeks they are curiously silent about it's effects. Why then is the mass market drug industry propaganda touting Ritalin as a "lifetime treatment" for ADHD? Why is Ritalin being prescribed to children indefinitely?

. The answer is simple, because selling Ritalin, along with all the other psychiatric drugs, is making certain people very wealthy, and because drugging people fits into the new biochemical model for social control in our increasingly authoritarian society.

. The impact of Ritalin on me as a child was devastating. There was nothing unusual about that, and although the negative effects (often dismissed as "side effects") of the Ritalin were more obviously debilitating in me than in most children, they were also far less extreme than the effects Ritalin has on many other children. Namely death from cardiac arrest, or permanent disability from stroke.

. 8. A Bright Kid

. Thanks largely to the home schooling by my grandmother I, unlike many of the young children who are being drugged, could already read and had a well developed sense of myself and my identity. I considered myself to be "a bright kid", not a kid with "a defective brain". Due to my grandmother's constant praise I had a somewhat overblown sense of just how "smart" I really was, but at least it helped to protect me from the psychiatric industry's assault on my sense of self esteem. Although I was scared and confused I was also determined to put up one hell of a fight before I would let them stick me with that label.

. I immediately disputed my initial diagnosis of ADHD with my mother. "How could that doctor even know what was wrong with me? He only talked to me for like five minutes, He didn't examine me or look inside my head. I think he made a mistake. Either that or he's a quack. Plus his head looks like an egg! quack! Quack! eggman!"

. I begged my mom to take me in for a second opinion and I was overjoyed when she relented and made me an appointment with a new doctor, this time a woman. I was told that this doctor would "want to talk to me about my feelings". I was told that she would be like Diana Troy on Star Trek the Next Generation.

. Twacked out on Ritalin I stayed up all night practicing my speech, thanking the new doctor for rescuing me and restoring my honor. Of course by that point the Ritalin had me so twacked out that my behavior looked much more "hyperactive" than it ever had before. I was in no position to make a good case for myself, and in my innocence I didn't realize that one doctor was unlikely to contradict another. They were all already sold, raking in checks from the drug companies.

. That day when the new doctor confirmed my diagnoses as ADHD I was crushed. I demanded to see some "scientific literature" on the subject. She told me I was too young to understand. I had been raised by my Grandma to view myself as equal to adults and in my innocence I didn't realize that society placed adults in a position of authority over me, I didn't understand that most adults would respond violently if their superiority was threatened. I tried to call this doctor out on her condescending attitude and she simply added another label to me "Oppositional Defiance Disorder". Handed me some pamphlets and sent me on my way.

. 9. A Political Tool

. In Iron Curtain Russia 40 million political dissidents were labeled with psychiatric disorders and drugged to disempower and silence them. The same tactic is used in China where hundreds of Falun Gong practitioners still languish in mental institutions. Increasingly this is becoming the policy in America today.

. Some of you may recall a publicized incident a few years ago where a young activist named Alex Asch, while attending the Institute for Social Ecology, was kidnapped and taken to a psychiatric reeducation camp where he was labeled with "Oppositional Defiance Disorder" because of his political activism. Though people involved in established activist circles are rarely so blatantly targeted, other less socially connected anti-authoritarians are greatly at risk. Children have no rights and are thus especially vulnerable. I, the child dissident, was labeled and drugged, the one thing they didn't manage to do was silence me. I survived, intact enough to tell my tale, and now, finally I am writing this book.

. 10. A Broken Brain

. When I got home, shaken, from the awful lady doctor I read the pamphlets she had given me. They were intended for children older than I, but were still written in what seemed to me like insultingly simple language.

. One little boy in the pamphlet said "My brain is broken and the Ritalin is like a Band-Aid for my brain. It helps me think." There were pastel watercolor drawings of medication vials and butterflies. Unfortunately my "problem" at that point was not that I couldn't think well enough, it was that I could think too well. Too well for the authoritarian school system to know what to do with me. I curled up into a ball and cried for hours.

. The answers I had been given thus far seemed like total bullshit, but maybe that was just because I was a kid. Maybe it was some crap like Santa Claus and they saved the real answers for grownups. Desperate to find more logical answers, and still certain that there must be some out there somewhere, I researched ADHD in the most "grown up" material available to me.

. Magazines at my parents' house, popular magazines like Newsweek and TIME. I was bitterly disappointed to discover that they were simply wordier versions of the pamphlet with the butterflies. More medication bottles, more talk of Band-Aids on brains. The magazines were copying pseudo scientific drug industry propaganda word for word out of the drug companies' own pamphlets and calling it "news". I only wish that someone had put a copy of Toxic Psychiatry by Peter Breggin MD in my hands, but these were the days before the internet, and I was only seven years old.

. Still though I found hope in their pages. "Maybe" I thought to myself, "Some kids do have ADHD, but I'm just not one of them, like that kid Dennis who set the kitten on fire, him, but not me, definitely not me." I ripped out many articles that claimed ADHD children were poor readers and had short attention spans, "That's the opposite of me, I'm a great reader, I can read for hours on end." I presented this "evidence" to my parents who were unimpressed. I was told that many children with ADHD could concentrate on things that they loved, but simply not on schoolwork. This confused me. How could simply not liking school be evidence of a Brain Disorder? But that's what all the adults around me were saying.

. 11. The Words Of Grandma

. All of them, that is, except for my grandmother. I will never forget that sunny day, out walking with her in the garden. I said to her "Grandma, the teachers at school told me that I have a brain disorder, and now I have to take pills. Do you think I have a brain disorder? She looked at me tenderly and with a sadness that I didn't yet understand. "No sweetheart, of course not, you are a bright kid, one of the brightest, you don't need their damn pills, there is nothing the matter with your brain, these people are morons, clones, non human and lacking in brains. These monsters conspire to take you away from me. They will change you, take you away, turn you against me. Don't let them change you sweetheart. You are fine just the way that you are."

. As I have said before my grandmother is a person who would be labeled schizophrenic, in her own mixture of great insight and seemingly bizarre symbolic language my grandmother was the last person to "Tell me that I was okay" for a very long time.

. Although she had many paranoid and persecutory thoughts that did not correspond with reality her assessment of this situation was 100% on target. These people were in many ways "non human" (in the sense that they had turned their backs on human rights). They did want to change me, and they did want to take me away. And they did. That was one of the last days I was to spend with my Grandmother unescorted.

. By this point I was seeing two quacks a week. One to sell me the Speed, he refused to even talk to me, objectifying me as a symptom, not a person, by claiming that talking to me would be like "talking to a disease", and the other, ostensibly to "talk about my feelings". This "feelings" doctor worked hard to turn me against my grandmother. telling me again and again that I had been rescued from her and that she had been abusing me (this was somewhat true, but the picture is more complex than that. Although my grandmother did some inappropriate and just plain bizarre things to me nothing she ever did would approach the level of abuse I was to receive from psychiatry. Also my grandmother loved me, which is more than could be said for any doctor)

. Like most people who have been labeled schizophrenic, my grandmother had been subjected to a lifetime of abuse, however, unusually, she had been lucky enough to escape the damage of psychiatric drugging, which would have most likely rendered her incapable of raising me.

. 12. Cellphones and Schizophrenia

. Many people labeled with Schizophrenia as well as some that have been labeled with Bipolar seem to be sensitive to high and low frequency vibrations or radiation that most other folks do not notice, thus presenting a special problem in the modern era with the proliferation of electronic devices and particularly cell phone towers. This is by no means a sign of "mental illness". If anything it is more analogous to having an extremely clear sense of hearing and thus feeling assaulted by noises that other people with their inferior ears are simply oblivious too. Although only a very small percentage of the population is aware of experiencing discomfort from ambient energy it probably is quite unhealthful for the rest of us as well. Of course too much of our economy's infrastructure is dependant on these technologies for them to ever bother investigating the problem. It is easier to just tell the small percentage of people who are consciously effected by it that they are "hallucinating". Especially since this heightened sensitivity is usually paired with other "abnormal" characteristics (or special gifts) such as unique symbolic insights, unusual fashion sense, and other traits that you might as well get burned as a witch for.

. Because our society is so oppressive and frightening sensitive people who are subjected to abuse will often be overwhelmed and reflect back the negativity of the world. However in Indigenous and Prehistorical societies where the ability to hallucinate was exalted and the horrors of the modern world had yet to be unleashed these special people did not become sorrowful or paranoid, instead they became great artists, philosophers, and healers. The best thing we can do to help our often overwhelmed friends and family members is to keep them safe from drugging, affirm their wholeness, help them heal from their various traumas, and allow them to express their special insights without fear of reproach. It is entirely possible to live a pleasurable and productive life even with constant hallucinations.

. 13. Their Words On Grandma

. I was told for the first time that my grandmother was "Mentally Ill" and that I was "Mentally Ill" too because I had "got it from her". I was threatened, both my mom and the doctors threatened me, telling me that if I didn't take my pills I would end up going crazy, just like grandma.

. And Grandma was "crazy", for the first time I was out of her little nest, on my own at school, and I realized that many of the things she had told me, such as that black people were government clones with laser beams, were simply, horribly, completely false. These were important realizations for me to make. It was not right that a child should be subjected to an adult's delusions without other people around to gently straighten them out. Why hadn't my mother been there to do this? Instead the doctors who sought to undermine my self esteem and bend me to their will used my natural confusion over which things my grandmother had said were true and which were false as a tool against me.

. If I said "I don't think there is anything wrong with my brain" They would counter with "Well sure you might say that there is nothing wrong with your brain, that is exactly what your grandmother told you after all, but remember, your grandmother also told you that there was a clone of your mother which is obviously delusional, so you see, you just can't believe anything your grandmother says."

. If I insisted that there was nothing wrong with me they called that "poor insight" and threatened me again with the looming sphere of madness, my grandmother.

. 14. A Social Tool

. Other times while driving through Washington DC with my family my mother would point out homeless people and tell me "That is an unmedicated crazy person, that is what you'll turn in to if you don't take your pills" I began to fantasize about running away to become a homeless person. Anything seemed better than the awful feeling the drugs gave me.

. What I didn't realize at the time was that many of these "crazy" homeless people actually were "medicated" and that this drugging played a large role in their often tragic circumstances. Brain damage from previous incidents of psychiatric abuse had rendered these people traumatized, twitchy, spaced out and thus nearly unemployable. In addition one of the main effects of being dosed with powerful mind numbing drugs such as neuroleptics is complacency. It makes it easier to ignore how awful conditions in your life have become, instead of working to change them.

. This method of "treatment" rules out any kind of positive personal or social change. Instead of helping a homeless person get housing, a clinic will drug them so they don't mind being homeless so much anymore. Apparently it's cheaper.

. People frequently resort to drugs for their numbing quality to allow themselves to engage in behavior that they would resist if sober. Like twacked out hos caught in a viscous cycle. They have to work so that they can stay high, they have to stay high so that they can work. Today we are increasingly a nation of Zoloft lawyers and Prozac cops, but the vicious cycle is the same. What percentage of our society couldn't go to work tomorrow if it weren't for their "meds"? How many people, in every facet of society, are caught living lives that they would reject if they were sober? What would happen if instead of taking drugs and thus "fixing" themselves to fit our increasingly oppressive society they refused drugs and united to fix our damaged society before it's too late?

. The authoritarian psychopharmaceutical government complex does not want us to find out. So increasingly they drug us. They drug our children. Even if it makes some people get very sick it is easy to write this off as "collateral damage" to their grand objective of a joyless, smoothly running, drug fueled, totalitarian reality state.

. 15. A Child On Drugs

. By this point the Ritalin had made me anxious and jittery all the time. I had developed irrational fears, such as a fear of germs, and a fear of rats (when only six months earlier I had been begging for a pet rat) I began to twitch and pick at my skin. In the classroom I would go cross-eyed and start tearing out my hairs. One by one. Eventually I had a bald patch. The other children ridiculed me. Calling me "crazy" and "weird". It was no longer so easy to insist that there was "nothing the matter with me" I looked and felt like shit.

. It was a predictable reaction to chronic speed abuse. But no one told me that. No one told my parents. I sometimes wonder how they managed not to even notice. It seems obvious from looking at family photographs taken around the time. I was deteriorating rapidly. I was no longer a vibrant, self assured little tomboy.

. Predictably the doctors saw this as more proof of my "disease" They increased my dosage of Ritalin. Eventually I was labeled with "Obsessive Compulsive Disorder". When I stopped eating and sleeping altogether I stopped growing and instead began to lose weight and get sick frequently, for which I was treated with many courses of antibiotics.

. I had always been a big, healthy kid. I came from a tall family and thus I towered over most of my classmates. All of the other children I knew who were labeled ADHD and drugged with Ritalin were boys, and they all got to take "drug holidays" during the summer out of concern that the known growth stunting effect of the Ritalin would cause them to be short.

. When I, eager to be off the drugs for even a few weeks and hoping that such an opportunity might allow me to "prove I didn't need them" inquired about why I wasn't going to be allowed to have a "drug holiday" like all the others, I was told that because I was a girl the growth stunting effect of the Ritalin was actually good for me because "no one likes a girl who is too tall". I was crushed.

. During the school year, before lunchtime, me and the other "hyper kids" would be called down to the nurse�s office over the loudspeaker to receive our doses. Thus subjecting us to public humiliation and ridicule by the other children who would taunt us by telling us to "go take our pills"

. I had no friends. I was separated from my grandmother. I wandered alone in the woods and retreated further into my only refuge, books.

. (I wonder sometimes why from the start they couldn't have just allowed me to home school myself. My life would have gone in a completely different direction. No drug damage. No institutionalization. No rape. No running away. No homelessness. No bad sex work experiences. No disfiguring surgeries. I would be a very different person. Instead of having to focus my energy on healing from trauma I could focus my energy on revolution. Is that why they did this to me? To prevent me from becoming an effective revolutionary?)

. 16. A Child In Therapy

. My primary human interactions occurred with various "therapists". Some of them pretended to care about me, but it was never very convincing. It's fine to go to a prostitute for sex, but don't expect love. I was a child. I needed love. Instead what I got was awkward, artificial, yet lopsidedly intimate interactions with adult strangers who were "paid to care".

. Sometimes I would play with toys. Making a giant yellow Ritalin out of Play-doh with a happy face on one side and a sad face on the other to represent the wild mood swings I knew the drug was causing me, but mostly I would sit in a chair across from them and talk, uninterrupted for an hour at a time, the most they would do is nod.

. At first I would try to get them to open up and talk about themselves. Did they have kids? What books did they like? Had they ever been camping? Where did they grow up? Any little personal detail I could have used to establish their humanity and decide if we could be friends was desperately sought after, but they gave me nothing.

. Eventually through their subtle positive and negative feedback I was conditioned to have long winded, one sided conversations, primarily about myself and my feelings, blathering on and on just to fill up the space, never asking any questions, until at last the other person would pull the plug by telling me it was time to leave. This type of negative self centered monologing might have seemed like progress to the "therapists" but in the real world this perversion of my social skills has been a major obstacle that I am only now learning to overcome.

. When I first realized, not long ago, that my frustrating tendency to "monologue" was simply a bad habit picked up in therapy, and not the psychiatric symptom "pressured speech" as certain doctors had later labeled it, I cried tears of relief. Now that I am drug free and out of the clutches of psychiatrists I am finally able to begin the process of healing. Learning how to interact with other people. Basic skills that I was denied as a child.

. Sure I saw behavior therapists. I saw all kinds of "therapists" and psychologists. At one point I was in "therapy" five days a week the way some kids have sports or extracurricular activities. In group therapy I met other psychiatrically abused children, many of whom where also suffering abuse in the foster care system. To increase our sense of isolation we were forbidden from establishing friendships outside of "therapy" but over the years some of us managed to do so anyway. Of all the other psychiatrically abused children I came to know I am only aware of one other who has broken away from this abusive relationship. Much like the tobacco industry the psychiatric industry targets children to establish lifelong customers.

. 17. The World Of Therapists

. Some people may ask me why, in my criticism of psychiatrists, I also seem to lump in psychologists. "Aren't psychologists different?" they may enquire. My answer is that although originally only psychiatrists proscribed drugs, while psychologists were the "therapists", the ones who "talked to you about your feelings." Now, psychologists are increasingly proscribing drugs as well, or at least partnering with a psychiatrist who handles the task. Additionally psychologists are likewise guilty of labeling people with "Genetic Brain Disorders" and are often the ones responsible for forcing or coercing someone into a mental institution.

. I took a course in psychology from the University of Phoenix. Devoid of it's inherently abusive pseudo medical application, the field of psychology mainly represents a mishmash of mythology and modern white male philosophical insights. Objectifying human emotion the same way that Anthropology objectifies Indigenous cultures, by pretending to take a "scientific" stance.

. Over the past hundred years, psychology and psychiatry were competing philosophies in many ways. However, today, Psychiatry, with it�s foundation in Eugenics and it�s profitable drug treatments, clearly reins triumphant. Psychology has chosen to sublimate it�s differences, and to seek survival by blending it�s dishonest social/emotional theories about �mental health� with the blatantly fabricated biological theories promoted as fact by the psychiatric industry.

. If this commingling of psychology/psychiatry were simply regarded as a religion, which it is for many people including my family, instead of being adopted by the government as a "scientific" rational for drugging people and stripping them of their human rights, it would probably be socially harmless and enjoy a limited appeal similar to the cult of Scientology (which opposes psychiatry, probably because they are too similar, and runs a good anti-psychiatry museum in LA), however this is not the case.

. I recognize, however, that there are some psychologists who have a legitimate desire to help others, or at least they started out that way, just as a person may become a cop out of an honest desire to stop violence in his community. But just like a cop, or a marine, or a prison guard is forced into oppressing others as part of their job requirement, so are the workers in the "mental health" industry, be they psychologists, psychiatrists, social workers, counselors, orderlies, or nurses.

. In some cases a psychologist or a psychiatrist can establish a private practice and have a great deal of liberty with regard to how they choose to treat their clients. Some refuse to prescribe drugs, and help people get off of drugs. Some choose not to push drugs on anyone, but take a harm reduction approach and will proscribe drugs if the client demands them. These therapists sometimes even choose to come down off of the pseudo medical pedestal far enough to deal with clients as individuals, instead of labeling them with disorders. However, therapists that choose not to function as cogs in the psychiatric system may still have other problems that make them harmful, and in any case, they are hard to find, and they are typically only available to the very rich because public clinics and even private insurance companies are essentially owned by the pharmaceutical industry.

. The vast majority of psychologists and psychiatrists will simply choose to follow the trail of candy laid for them by the pharmaceutical industry. It is easier and more profitable to be a drug dealer than to actually try and help people deal with their problems. In the extremely hierarchical psychiatric industry, nurses and orderlies and other �support staff� have no such chance for autonomy. Working as cogs in a larger system, they have no real chance to deviate from the proscribed course to offer alternative support, or even to prevent abuses.

. I actually have several friends in this field. I view their participation in the abuses of the psychopharmaceutical complex as morally reprehensible. But then again I also have friends who do other morally reprehensible things for money. Such as drug dealers who have killed people.

. In talking to them about their jobs (and trying to persuade them to quit) I have heard again and again of their stated desire to "help people" and usually also of their frustration at their inability to "help" the people they see at work. Often they feel conflicted over the moral implications of their job, but like most Americans whose jobs are morally questionable, they have learned to tune these feelings out. Some of them are on psychiatric drugs themselves, a typical example of "cycles of abuse" where the abused becomes the abuser.

. If I am asked "Is there any kind of therapy that actually helps?" I would, perhaps surprisingly, say "Yes", but not if it is tied into a system (such as a �mental health� clinic) that pushes disempowering and stigmatizing labels or dangerous and addictive drugs. Separate from that inherently abusive psychiatric industry context, �good� therapy is theoretically possible, but many entrenched obstacles still exist. One major problem with the relationship between the "therapist" and the "client" or the "priest" and the "confessor" is the same. The problem is the separation, the hierarchy, and the fact that these are seen as two mutually exclusive roles.

. This inherent power imbalance in the relationship is an egg from which springs a leviathan of potential abuse. A therapist tells his client that he, personally, has no problems of his own, and thus he is the only one capable of solving his client�s problems. A priest tells his confessor that he, personally, has no sins of his own and thus is the only one capable of absolving his confessor�s sins.

. In actuality they are both human and thus they both have problems. If they threw away the labels, and were honest with themselves and each other, and forged a relationship based on mutual aid and respect, then they would discover that they are both capable of helping one another.

. These mutually beneficial relationships based on healing from trauma and figuring out positive coping strategies to deal with our difficult world are clearly superior to one-sided relationships with paid professionals, and they are definitely possible, but not within the inherently oppressive realm of psychiatry. Try going on a trip to the beach. It goes without saying (or at least it should) that when trying to help someone with their problems you refrain from labeling them with a "brain disorder", or charging them money.

. What about charging money? Can that ever be okay, well�?

. When I worked as an escort, I always tried to give my clients enriching experiences. Many times clients came to me clearly in need of human connection, emotional support, or aid in processing issues regarding gender and sexuality. I provided this, for a fee. Our interactions were intimate, but for my own feeling of safety, I maintained boundaries that included limited roles of client and escort. I am not sure how this makes me different from a therapist, except that I was in no way remotely connected to the psychiatric industry. I had no power to tell any of these guys that they were �mentally ill� and if I had, they probably wouldn�t have believed me.

. I do not feel that it was wrong to get paid for these services, or, theoretically, to pay for them myself. If I had not become disfigured, I would have probably continued doing this work for a while longer. Philosophically I am anti-capitalist. Comodification hurts and alienates, but that does not mean that one must always give away everything for free. Unfortunately, unless we have some type of permaculture self-sufficiency going, we all still need money to survive. As long as you are providing someone with services that they want, and not harming them, there is nothing inherently wrong with getting paid to listen, or to fuck. It can feel like a good deed. After having worked as an escort, instead of simply having hustled for the occasional thrill or necessity as a teen, I am much more open in theory to the concept of a �helping professional�, such as a therapist.

. I think that best-case scenario, therapists and sex workers have the potential to be essentially the same. They are both providing people with personal services, thus they both have the ability to traumatize someone, help them heal, teach new skills, or simply serve as a release or �dumping ground� for pent up energy. The main difference is the social context. Our society looks down on sex workers, and has criminalized prostitution, leaving most sexworkers vulnerable to discrimination, oppression, abuse, and even murder. Therapists, on the other hand, who provide similarly personal services, are looked up too, legally protected, and given the status of doctors (who are practically deified). I always tried to be an honest ho. I would like to see more honest therapists, therapists who realize that they are hos providing a personal service, and not doctors diagnosing diseases. Stepping down from the high perch of pseudo medical �expertise� may make their jobs a bit scarier, but this is the only way for them to really be able to help their clients. If they can manage to maintain some humility, and avoid the power trip influence of the psychiatric industry, then maybe therapists can actually do some good, like so many hos do. Still, it is important to realize that the services provided by these �helping professionals� are one-sided relationships, and should not be used as a replacement for friendships or community based on mutual support.

. 18. The Library Lady

. In those years my parents must have spent a fortune, but, far from helping me each of these "therapists" seemed mainly interested in reinforcing the notion that I had a "brain disorder" and helping themselves to my parents money.

. Concerned about my unladylike tendency to get in fights with children who tormented me at school I was sent to a behavioral therapist who forced me to listen to relaxation tapes at night with subliminal messages telling me to "turn into a turtle" when attacked. Basically to roll up into a ball on the ground. Let me tell you, this "skill" has been less than helpful in my time as a street kid.

. Of course drugging someone makes them much easier to manipulate in seemingly bizarre ways. That's why so many cults use drugs as part of their indoctrination process, to mentally break a person down. I now view psychiatry as a vast, dangerous drug cult with government support, but at the time such thoughts were heresy. They had finally "broken" me to the point where I would not risk a direct criticism of their irrational and abusive methods. Instead I developed an obsession with science fiction themes of brainwashing.

. The only adult in my world at that point who was the least bit subversive was the library lady. Partially out of snobbery and partially in defiance of being labeled with "a defective brain" I had cultivated an identity for myself as something of a misunderstood, suffering intellectual. I was always accessorized with a book. After I had exhausted all of the "children's" and "young adult's" sections and plowed my way through the entire Encyclopedia Britannica, she provided me with copies of 1984 by George Orwell and Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. I credit these books with saving my life. Where hope had been nearly extinguished I found new faith. I recognized my own predicament in these nightmarish dystopian tales.

. This was the reawakening of my revolutionary consciousness. Though it would suffer setbacks along the way when I was institutionalized and assaulted with more powerful drugs, this political understanding of my oppression, even as I was powerless against it, was the only thing that got me through. Fortunately, this time, I was wise enough not to share my realizations with the "doctors". Instead I filled up our sessions with entertaining lies about my classmates.

. 19. "the heart had stopped beating�"

. Then one day, shortly after my dosage of Ritalin had been raised again for no apparent reason I suffered a cardiac arrhythmia. Oh, I'd had chest pains before, caused by drug induced muscle spasms. But this was something far different.

. I lost consciousness. In the hospital I was told that I was a "very sick little girl". I had a bad heart. I could die at any moment. I had a genetic heart disorder called "Prolonged Q-T syndrome". I could drop dead at any moment. It could happen at any moment. It could happen when I was sleeping and I would never wake up. It could happen while I was swimming. My heart could just stop and I would drown. Maybe I shouldn't spend so much time alone. After all my heart could stop at any moment and there would be no one there to help me. I needed help. I needed a lot of help. I needed more doctors, and new medicine for my heart. I was a very sick little girl with a bad brain and bad eyes and a bad heart. Just about everything about me was bad apparently. It was genetic.

. They sent me home with a proscription for Attilinol and the conviction that I was not long for this earth. I became even more withdrawn and sickly. Where had that curious, athletic kid gone?

. Every two weeks I would have to go to the hospital and get a machine hooked up to my body to monitor my heart. I had to wear it for 48 hours. I even had to wear it to school. It had a bulbous black plastic body with a single blinking red eye that frightened me all night long. It had eight tentacles made out of wires with cold itching suckers on the end, these were attached to my chest and I wasn't allowed to take showers. When kids at school taunted me about my "box" which was impossible to hide under ordinary clothing I lifted my shirt showing them the whole tangle of wires. This prompted the cruel nickname "Octopus Girl".

. In addition to likely physical damage, the pattern of medical abuse I was subjected to as a child has had far reaching emotional consequences, which have themselves laid the foundation for further physical damage. Although I have managed to liberate myself from the grip of psychiatry, and protect my brain from further harm, I have definitely been left with a tendency toward a sort of �medical addiction� that has not served me well. Many abuse survivors continue to repeatedly endanger themselves by seeking care or resolution in similar situations to the original sources of their trauma. I believe in free will, and I take accountability for my actions. We all have coping strategies, some work better than others do. Still, when looking back at my childhood, it seems clear to me that these unnecessary and traumatic medical experiences started me down the long dark road that led to unnecessary surgeries resulting in physical disfigurement.

. Since one of the listed "Side Effects" of Ritalin is "Possible Cardiac Arrhythmia" I can only assume that the doctors knew it was the Ritalin which had nearly killed me. Willingly withheld this information from me. Decided that the supposed benefit in terms of calm behavior and increased scholastic achievement (although Ritalin had actually done the opposite for me) was worth the very high risk of killing me after a first cardiac arrhythmia. Cooked up the diagnosis of a "genetic heart defect" to place the blame squarely away from themselves and their "wonder drugs" and then sealed off the deal with a proscription for a heart drug just so they could sleep at night.

. Well, I'm not dead *Applause* but I very well could have been, simply one more casualty amongst the thousands who are killed every year by toxic drugs prescribed for emotional problems.

. The more reading I do, the more I realize how likely it is that I have permanent heart damage. So if I die of a heart attack at an early age you'll know why. This happens all the time, don't let them tell you anything different.

. Eventually I was taken off the Ritalin, I still don't know why. Shortly thereafter I was informed of the spontaneous remission of my "genetic heart defect". I heard them announce that I was "cured" as if they were personally responsible. It was explained to me that sometimes a "genetic heart defect" just up and goes away with the same sincerity usually applied when telling a child that their beloved doggie has gone to live on a farm, instead of the truth, that doggie is dead and the grownups are lying. Only in this case it wasn't a doggie they were lying about. It was me.

. 20. From Ritalin to Prozac

. Too relieved at the news of my "cure" to be overly skeptical, I began what could have been a fresh start for me. Off Ritalin. Drug free. Unfortunately, within one week of taking me off of the Ritalin, before I had even had a chance to fully withdraw from the drug, I was given a brand new label. "Depression and Anxiety Disorder" (looks suspiciously like speed withdrawal) and a new drug to go along with it. Prozac. I was 10 years old. Each chapter of my childhood can be measured out by what drug I was on at the time. From birth through Six I was clean. Seven through Ten were the Ritalin years. Eleven through Fourteen belonged to Prozac.

. In many ways this was an obvious improvement. At least I was finally free of the dreaded Ritalin. My heartbeat returned to normal. At first at least the effect of Prozac on my mind was far less pronounced and distressing than the Ritalin had been, but this was seen merely as proof of the efficacy of Prozac in treating my "biochemical imbalance", not a thought was given to the fact that this was the first time anyone had seen me off Ritalin in nearly four years.

. Had they given me an opportunity to detox from drugs entirely at that point I'm sure my miraculous turn around would have been that much more dramatic. As it were I felt as if a long illness had finally passed. I was so relieved to be free from the hellish effects of the Ritalin which they had long ago convinced me were permanent symptoms of my "disorder". I was no longer too agitated to sleep at night. Still, don't get the impression that none of the Ritalin damage was permanent. Some of it was. Like many ex-tweakers I still to this day suffer from a compulsion to pick at my skin. I am fighting it now as I write this sentence. Ritalin, in no uncertain terms, is highly toxic, and for many people it is a highly damaging drug.

. Shortly before being taken off of the Ritalin I had been seriously threatened with institutionalization. The three and a half year forced speed binge had left this child sobbing and writhing on the floor. Now merely two weeks later I was calm and lucid and for the first time in years able to make friends. There was little wonder why, at last I was eating and sleeping again.

. I began to win scholastic awards. Instead of admitting their terrible mistake in prescribing me Ritalin for all of those years, the doctors simply trumpeted my case as yet another "victory for Prozac". As is the typical experience of someone being manipulated by psychiatrists, I was never given credit for any achievements I made. Instead my efforts were chalked up to the "positive effects" of the drugs. If anything negative were to happen, however, the blame was placed squarely on my brain and it's "disorder", though of course I would be reassured that I was "helpless" in the matter.

. Convincing someone that they are "helpless" to control their own lives is hardly therapeutic. Because the psychiatric victim is never given credit for their own willpower and constructive actions, I always make sure to tell people who insist to me that they have "gotten well" because of a drug the truth of the matter, which is that they have "gotten well" in spite of a drug, which is no easy task.

. People who are encouraged and allowed to learn to overcome their problems or learn to persevere in spite of them, without being drugged, will feel a great sense of pride in their achievements, unfortunately this vital learning experience is being denied to more and more people.

. The doctors motivation seems obvious to me now. If they had allowed me to go drug free and this had "cured" me, it would have shown that their drugs were the cause of my "mental illness" all along. I would have been better off, but a huge hole would have been blown in their psychiatric dogma. They would have been vulnerable to a lawsuit. Not that my parents would be likely to sue, as exemplified by pro psychiatric industry family groups such as NAMI many people find the role of the blameless, suffering parent of a sick child to be quite satisfying.

. 21. Problems With Prozac

. In addition to causing skin rashes, constipation, and frequent dizzy spells, all of which became a part of my daily life on Prozac, reducing my quality of life from what it should have been. SSRIs (Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors) such as Prozac, cause a dramatic increase in impulsive, injurious behavior. Everything from the disassociated, agitated, and irrational urge to cut one's self (which I experienced myself many times), to actual suicide and extreme acts of violence. Many of the people who have killed themselves suddenly after going on these drugs have had no previous incidence of suicidality. For people with a prior history, the connection may be more difficult to prove, but the numbers are compelling, and I have personally known at least three people who have died this way. The world is a less rich place without them. The greed of the psychiatric industry is immense. Recent studies, which have prompted widely publicized lawsuits, show that the suicide risk for adolescents doubles when they are given SSRIs. Many SSRIs now carry a Black Box warning from the FDA.

. Many of the shocking mass murders you've probably read about over the past decade and a half have also been linked to their use. All across America people on SSRIs are killing themselves. Mothers are killing their children, Teens are killing their classmates. Professionals are killing their coworkers. I am a big believer in free will. I do not believe in �the insanity defense�. We are all responsible for our actions. I do not make the claim that a person who commits murder (or suicide), while on these drugs, or otherwise in an altered state of consciousness, is completely incapable of exercising free will. However, having personally experienced the intense irrational violent impulses caused by these drugs, which I can only compare to demonic possession, I am certain that they are a causative agent in murder and suicide. The artificial intensity of these impulses is incomprehensible to someone who has not experienced it. This artificial intensity of violent impulses, often attributed to illegal drugs such as crack or PCP, is much more frequently demonstrated with SSRIs. In my experience it can clearly compromise free will.

. Additionally studies indicate that by temporarily boosting serotonin levels, SSRIs may cause "down regulation", a long term reduction in serotonin production that persists even if the drugs are discontinued. This is similar to the sort of brain damage experienced by folks who've done too much ecstasy.

. Like many psychiatric drugs, Prozac is known as a drug with a high incidence of what are euphemistically referred to as "sexual side effects". Meaning that part of it's toxic effect on the body is to cause impotence, make orgasm impossible, and even, as it were in my case, cause total numbness of the entire genital region.

. Psychiatrists are supposed to warn people of this effect when they sell them these drugs. However, since I was still a child my own developing sexuality was ignored and I was never informed of this. As I grew into adolescence and I still couldn't feel anything "down there" I tried masturbation and eventually I began to take every opportunity I could get to experiment sexually. Still I could feel nothing. It was obvious to me that something was wrong. This special part of my body that I had been told would bring me so much pleasure had no sensation at all. It felt like all the nerve endings were dead. Like it was made from rubber.

. I became preoccupied with my genital numbness, it was a major source of stress and shame in my life. It was practically all I ever talked about in "therapy" But never once did any of these "doctors" even suggest that the Prozac they were drugging me with might be to blame. Instead I was told that "Many women never have orgasms and this is perfectly normal." But I had no adult sexual history to reflect on, so I never even knew what "normal" for me would feel like.

. I was horrified. I felt cheated. But I was still convinced that there had to be a solution. Staying home sick from school I used my family's new internet connection to search for information.

. 22. Patterns of Medical Child Abuse

. Finding an article about a boy who had been genitally mutilated and raised as a girl by doctors as an experiment raised red flags. After all I felt like I was a boy. My doctors were always trying to get me to act more like "a girl". My childhood had been horribly dominated by doctors. Examining me. Often sending me to the hospital. Giving me drugs without a good explanation. It seemed like many of these doctors had objectified me to the point of seeing me as a science project instead of a human. I had even been studied for an article about "ADHD in the Female Child" something which was apparently considered unusual. I felt deeply violated by these doctors. Like they had taken something away from me and I wasn't sure exactly what.

. All these things seemed to lead to one conclusion. That I was a male child who had been genitally mutilated as an infant. Perhaps the drugs they were giving me were actually female hormones! If my genitals were made of scar tissue that would certainly explain why they had no feeling. I was horrified, but it made sense to me at the time.

. Although I now know with certainty that I was not genitally mutilated as a child I don't feel that this was a strange conclusion for me to come to at the time given my isolated situation. I was only 13 years old. Now I know that I am thankfully intact, genitally at least. But this experience left me with a profound empathy toward survivors of childhood genital mutilation.

. As a fellow survivor of childhood medical abuse, inflicted for "our own good" and without our consent in an attempt to "normalize" "conditions" which are simply a part of our human diversity, I feel that the political challenges faced by the intersex movement and the psychiatric survivors movement are somewhat linked.

. 23. Lofty Goals

. If only I had known then what I know now! I was so confused. No one would give me straight answers about anything. I often wish I could write a letter, or more like a book of information and support and send it back in time to myself when I was younger. Perhaps that's what this zine is, and perhaps without going back in time I can help some of today's frightened, drugged young people to find their freedom. That would be really awesome. In fact it's one of my main goals in life.

. When I was 14 years old one of my main goals in life was to go to college. All throughout my miserable childhood, whenever I would complain to my parents about how boring and stifling school was, I would be reassured in no uncertain terms that as soon as I got to college I would find an intellectual, artistic haven full of kindred spirits who would cherish my articulate and witty contributions as we engaged in joyful debate about a variety of fascinating subjects from forensic entomology to the works of the French symbolist poets. It would be everything I loved. I would fit in there just fine. I would find my niche. Find my place. Be right at home. I would flourish. I would make lots of new friends. My professors would love me. I would do just fine. Indeed.

. This is the wholly inaccurate picture that was painted for me of college. It described a kind of heaven, if only I could get through the purgatory of high school with good enough grades.

. Had I ever made it to college I would have been sorely disappointed by the competitive, artificial, fishbowl slumber party for rich kids that it actually is. However, due to the bizarre and irresponsible behavior of my new psychiatrist that was not to be the case. In fact, I was never to make it past the 9th grade, and most of the rest of my life before I ran away and became homeless was to be spent as a prisoner in a mental institution.

. 24. A Profusion Of Drugs

. I started 9th grade at a high school in the next town over from mine because I wanted to attend their International Baccalaureate program that I thought was sure to get me into an Ivy League college. Because the school bus didn't go to my neighborhood I had to walk 5 miles to and from school every day along a busy highway facing constant frightening harassment from perverted motorists. At this point in my life I had already been sexually assaulted numerous times by strangers. One of my assailants, Bradley Simms, was actually caught by the police, and I was made to feel humiliated when I had to testify against him in court. Despite these experiences, my �therapists� never seemed to make the connection between the assaults and my mounting sense of fear, anger, and body hatred. I was never offered any real support for the trauma I was experiencing. I was never exposed to any information about self-defense, surviving abuse, or feminism. Instead they would treat my emotional reactions to this real world abuse as nebulous �psychiatric symptoms� originating in my own brain. I became increasingly sensitive to street harassment, and would frequently start to panic and disassociate when a guy simply honked his horn. This made my walks home from school absolutely torturous. By the time I got home I was so exhausted that I found it nearly impossible to complete the piles and piles of homework expected of students enrolled in the IB program. When I complained of stress my psychiatrist gave me a different drug.

. It was around that time that I decided to abandon my "goth drag queen" look. Cut my hair, and start dressing more like a normal boy. I knew that my parents would freak out and that my classmates would not react well, of course my psychiatrists would simply regard it as yet another "symptom", but it was something that I had to do. At first it made me very happy. Except at school, where everyone already knew me, I was soon easily able to pass as male in public. Seemingly at random my psychiatrist again changed my drugs.

. Kids at school began to physically attack me, calling me names, slamming me into walls, spitting on me. I couldn't dress out for gym. My anxiety mounted. My psychiatrist yet again changed my drugs. Again and again and again he switched me from drug to drug to drug. Everything was blurry. One drug caused stomach pains so severe that I was rushed to a hospital with a suspected burst appendix, another caused a severe rash, another caused me to go into seizures. Blacking out and falling on the floor. I was rushed to the hospital and stuck in a long metal tube for repeated MRIs and CAT scans. I was so frightened that I peed on myself. Before the results came in (normal) a doctor casually mentioned to me that I might have a brain tumor.

. Over the course of about two months I was put on about ten different drugs. One after another. My emotions were being jerked about like a kite in a hurricane. I was overwhelmed. I felt raw and chewed on. I missed many days of school in the hospital or at doctors appointments, my performance suffered. I was failing out of the IB program.

. 25. A Plea For Help

. My teachers called me in and told me that my poor performance was destroying my chances of getting into a good college. If I had known then what I know now about how stupid college really is I wouldn't have cared much, but at 14 years of age college was my primary hope and dream for the future. When the teachers told me that with the "stain on my records" of my failing grades for the quarter my Ivy League dream had been aborted I was totally crushed.

. At home I begged my mother to help me put my life on pause. In the fog of the drugs it felt like my life was spinning out of control. Although I was highly disoriented, I knew that it had to be the drugs that were making me feel this way. Unfortunately, like most victims of psychiatric abuse, I had been kept completely ignorant about the addictive nature of the drugs that I was on. With no knowledge of expected withdrawals, I simply stopped taking them.

. I sat down with my parents and told them I needed to get off the drugs and find a new school where no one knew me and I would be able to attend as a boy. I suggested that maybe we could find a private school that would let me do makeup work for the first semester, so that way we could save my record and I could still go to college. If only they had listened to me!

. 26. Locked Up

. I started sobbing. I told them that I refused to go back to my high school or take any more drugs and that I needed a break to sort things out.

. My mother got a far away look on her face. She got up and made a phone call. She called my uncle, a psychiatrist who has done a spectacular job of messing up his own kids. He advised her to have me locked up.

. I tried to run out the door. My father tackled me. I was carried out to the car. It was almost midnight. It was dark and wet and cold outside. I was driven to a Mental Institution. I tried to talk my way out of it, but the admitting staff ignored what I had to say. My mother had told them I was suicidal.

. The night nurse on the adolescent ward kept me up until three in the morning filling out paperwork. He asked me if I thought I was smarter than he was. I said, "I don't know, I haven't known you that long, but probably yes." I saw him write down �narcissistic personality disorder�.

. Much to my delight I passed as male the whole time and was assigned a room in the boy�s wing for the remainder of the night. The next morning, when my "deception" came to be known, "resocializing" me into an "appropriate" female gender role became a priority on my "treatment plan."

. Twice daily I was rated on how convincingly I was able to pull off an "appropriate" female appearance. Considering that all I had to wear were a series of sterile blue hospital smocks (the clothes I came in with were dirty and deemed "to boyish") I wasn't clear on exactly what I was actually being graded on.

. 27. The-Rapist

. I snuck a look at my file. "Still trying to look like a man as much as possible." Dr. Lane had written. Eventually he got frustrated with my lack of progress so he started raping me.

. Although he was a psychiatrist and not a gynecologist, none of the other staff members seemed to object to him repeatedly taking me downstairs to the gynecology room to "examine" me.

. Across the hall from the gynecology room was the electroshock room where I would sometimes see catatonic victims being rolled in and out. I always waited for the lights to flicker, but they never did. The hospital must have had a backup generator or something.

. The second time that Dr. Lane tried to put his hands on me I started screaming "Stop! Rape!" I rolled away from him and went running out the door. I ran down the hall, desperately looking for an exit, but I found none. The other prisoners were cleared out of the TV room as two giant football player sized orderlies came lunging after me. I ducked and dodged. I threw tables and chairs. I was high on adrenaline, "at least this way if they kill me I'll go to Valhalla", I thought.

. I could hear the other inmates cheering on the excitement while the loudspeakers blared an alert. Finally the orderlies managed to tackle me and wrestle me to the ground. They pulled my blue elastic waisted smock up to my chest and slapped my bare ass. "Rape!" I screamed as they injected me with a huge needle full of neuroleptics. As they lifted me and I was carried into the "Quiet Room" I deliberately pissed myself. Trying to get as much of it on their uniforms as possible. It was the only weapon I had left.

. They dropped me on the floor and quickly slammed the door. A sound proof chamber with no windows or furniture. Only a bright flickering florescent light and a tiny blinking red light next to a black disk on the ceiling that I knew must be a camera.

. The drug they had injected me with was quickly paralyzing my body. Remembering hearing how victims of concussions should struggle to stay awake lest they lapse into a coma I desperately paced around the room as quickly as I could, stamping my feet to try and shake them out of numbness. Finally my body was all pins and needles. I fell hard on the floor in my piss soaked smock. I could no longer stand or move my arms and legs independently. All I could do was writhe sluggishly across the floor and it required excruciating effort. Still I writhed. I writhed defiantly in front of their camera. Eventually I was paralyzed. I could not move nor scarcely breathe. I tried to scream but no sound came out. I was terrified of suffocating. I couldn't tell if my eyes were open or closed. My body had become a prison within a prison. I realized that the word "Therapist" spelled out "The-Rapist". At some point, maybe more than once I was reinjected. I didn't feel it this time. I couldn't feel anything. The light never went off. I never went to sleep. They left me in there for three days.

. Believe me when I tell you I've been a prisoner of war. Believe me when I tell you it's a war against the mind. Do not tell me I am suffering from "Post Traumatic Stress Disorder." There is no "disorder" here. Only the righteous anger of a survivor.

. As far as Dr. Lane was concerned the new "treatment" was a great success. Constantly dosing me with smaller quantities of Neuroleptics (the category of drug that had been used to paralyze me in the Quiet Room) had made me into a much more compliant rape victim. With my new proscription for Zyprexa I could barely walk or talk. It was a struggle to move and to think. It felt as if my blood had been replaced with molasses.

. They quickly learned that injections were the way to go for this feisty little number. They knew if they gave me pills I'd just hide them in my cheek and spit them out again when nobody was looking.

. How could they tell I had spat out my pills? Well it was pretty obvious for them I guess because my "symptoms" would come back, "symptoms" like claiming that my "human rights" were being violated and demanding to see a lawyer.

. I guess they all got a chuckle over that one. After all, what attorney would listen to anything an underage mental patient would have to say? Not my mother. That was for sure. When she came to visit me I struggled to tell her through drug induced slurred speech about the abuse I was being subjected to. Unfortunately Dr. Lane was there to reassure them in his syrupy southern drawl that "Mental patients lie all the time, they'll say anything to try an weasel their way out, now you rest assured that your sweet pretty little daughter is in strong capable hands." As my parents waved goodbye and left me there with my abusers I was crushed. I realized that I could no longer love them.

. Dr. Lane must have felt like the luckiest rapist in the whole wide world to have landed a job as a psychiatrist in the adolescent ward of a mental institution. He had a whole captive harem of young girls there to serve his every desire, and no one would ever believe anything they said, because they were all "crazy" so he could do whatever he wanted. I quietly seethed with hatred for him. I felt like I could read his mind. I knew that I couldn't be the only one he was fucking, I had his whole little system figured out in my head and I would lie there thinking about it for hours and fantasizing about murdering him.

. If he wanted to fuck a girl who was nearly comatose all he had to do was order to have her dose of neuroleptics (called "anti-psychotics") increased. He loved the short term effects of the neuroleptics, how he could use them to make any girl docile. He was less fond, however, of the long term effects of the neuroleptics. Something about the grossly obese, twitching, drooling, balding patients in the adult ward just failed to turn him on. Although some of them had been �favorites" of his when they first came under his care as feisty young adolescents, he could scarcely bear to look at them now. He privately wished that all of his women would just kill themselves before they got so fat and ugly.

. 28. Bloated Bodies

. Rapidly on the drugs I began to gain weight. Ballooning from 130 to nearly 200 lbs. Even doped up as I was this was of great concern to me. The drugs changed my body in other unpleasant ways as well. Setting in motion a tragic chain of events that will haunt me for the rest of my life, my breasts became painfully swollen and I began lactating. I felt bloated and disgusting. The institution had a gym which certain patients where permitted to use, but presumably because it was "unfeminine", I was barred from this activity. I had always been a physically active person and I couldn't stand being forced to be sedentary. I tried to reason with them but it was no use.

. Many psychiatric drugs disrupt the endocrine system, causing fatigue and weight gain as well as bizarre seeming problems such as lactation or breast growth in males. Often, over time, victims (especially those on "anti-psychotics" or lithium) will experience permanent endocrine damage, kidney failure, extreme obesity, diabetes or hypothyroidism. Long term Lithium users often end up on kidney dialysis, and Zyprexa has recently been publicly implicated in causing an epidemic of diabetes, a fact that the profit driven psychiatric/pharmaceutical complex had managed to keep suppressed for years.

. They labeled as "Anorexia" my concern over a rapid 60 pound weight gain and my comments on the poor nutritional value of the food we were given (endless mac-n-cheese and chocolate pudding) I was no longer allowed to piss or shit without a nurse watching me. The drugs had also caused me to start lactating and I never stopped (not until I got my boobs cut off anyway) It was really humiliating. I tried doing pushups and sit-ups in my room when I thought no one was watching, but they caught me and again I was shot up with drugs to keep my body paralyzed. I hadn't seen the blue sky or felt the sun on my face or breathed a breath of fresh air for a long time.

. For a while a college student would come and pretend to be my friend. She kept promising that she would look at my chart for me (we were not allowed to see our own charts), and tell me the names of the drugs they had me on. She kept promising that she would get me permission to go outside in the exercise yard. She did neither. Then she was gone. Class requirement fulfilled. She was not my friend.

. 29. Teens Behind Bars

. The other captives were a disappointing lot as well. Like long term prison inmates, with little chance of parole and nothing welcoming waiting for them in the outside world, the residents of the adolescent ward were left with no better option than to adapt themselves to the stifling environment. Just like the kids at school most of them were content with the token economy. Degrading themselves to gain levels to be proud of, eager for privileges like watching TV. Secure in their identity as "Mentally Ill". They would rat each other out for imagined infractions to win cookies from the nurses. What else could they have done to pass the time?

. I hooked up with one girl who was labeled with "Borderline Personality Disorder", (that is how she introduced herself to me) just to say I did it. We were both on the drugs so neither of us could feel anything. She kept saying that I reminded her of Angelina Jolie's character in the movie "Girl, Interrupted", but I had already been locked up when that movie came out so I hadn't seen it. Later when I finally did I lost my crush on Angelina Jolie. I fucking hate mental patient exploitation cinema, like it's sexy or something. The only good movie that has ever been made about a mental institution is "One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest", a movie that could never be made today. The sad thing is that people who see that movie now think that things have changed and that mental institutions aren't bad like that any more. But the truth is that mental institutions will be bad as long as they exist. They are a carryover from the eugenics politics that created the Nazi concentration camps.

. There was one boy I liked named Nick. He was a pot dealer with his identity firmly placed in the outside world. He listened to blackmetal, but they wouldn't let him bring any of his music into lockup. One night he hung himself with shoelaces and died. I saw his body being wheeled through the hallway that morning. "What had they done to him to make him kill himself?" I wondered. As far as I knew he had been thrown in there for weed. He didn't seem crazy at all to me. Maybe they had raped him too?

. Even without the sexual abuse, which is common but not universal, the standard conditions inside a mental institution, which may be misleadingly labeled as a "drug treatment" or "detox" center, constitute psychiatric abuse. Prisoners are routinely held against their will, tied down, drugged, shocked with electricity, and even surgically mutilated with "psychosurgery" (the new name for lobotomy) leaving them in a permanent state of severe mental retardation.

. Mental Institutions are drab, colorless places. Devoid of nature. Often even devoid of windows. They are the exact opposite of the type of creative, empowering, comforting environment that an emotionally injured person requires for healing. I would lie on my thin rubber mattress and stare out the one inch slit we had for a window. I could see the branch of an oak tree. It was the only magical thing left in my world and I cherished it.

. 30. The Danger Of Drugs

. Oftentimes previously "mentally healthy" young people, bored with the seemingly limited options within our authoritarian society, will experiment excessively with "recreational" drugs. Especially drugs such as E, LSD, PCP, 2CB, 2CI, DXM, and Ketamine or uppers such as coke or tweak which all have a profound toxic destabilizing effect on the brain. They will become overwhelmed by the drug experience, suffering wild mood swings and continuing to hallucinate long after the effects of the drugs were "supposed to" wear off. If these people are given enough time, perhaps as long as a year or so, it is my experience that their minds will eventually return more or less to normal, hopefully having learned something from their often nightmarish experiences.

. It is perfectly possible (and common in the days before psychiatry) for a "normal" person to go through a single "psychotic episode", in which they seem completely submerged in an altered state of hallucinations and delusions, which can be drug induced or innate, and then return to normal in their own due time, never to experience such an episode again for the rest of their lives. In fact in some cultures this was an expected part of coming of age.

. Unfortunately today many of these young people are never given the chance to return to normal or to come of age. Instead their seemingly irrational behavior is labeled as "schizophrenia" by psychiatrists who may or may not be aware of the precipitating drug binge.

. The psychiatrists will then load these vulnerable kids down with toxic neuroleptic drugs. Trapping them in a hell inside their own mind. Many will forget that they are feeling the way they feel due to the effect of drugs they've ingested. They will be told they have "a genetic chemical imbalance of the brain" and that the problem is permanent. They may even forget the drug experience entirely. All they will be aware of, through the fog, is that they have suddenly "gone crazy". Tragically they will often attempt suicide. This was the fate of my previously normal (though hard partying) cousin. Numbed by psychiatric drugs he slit his own throat.

. This is one of the reasons I caution people against the use of drugs, especially psychedelics, dissasociatives, and uppers. Until we live in a society where it is safe to be seen as a "crazy" person, why take a drug that will make you seem "crazy"?

. In indigenous and pre-civilization cultures the ability to hallucinate was cherished as a supernatural gift. People who would now be labeled "Mentally Ill" and abused, were instead celebrated. In a society such as this the use of psychedelic drugs makes sense, but not here, not now. Indeed, in society as it is today I don't recommend that anyone, ever, ingest a psychoactive substance. Though I realize that this is not a realistic goal for everyone.

. Some people seem to enjoy smoking pot and others find herbs such as Saint John�s Wort, or Skull Cap, or Kava, or Passionflower, or Valerian to be helpful. I like fresh Lemon Balm tea, which is not stupefying, unlike some previously mentioned herbs, so I doubt it could have any toxic effects similar to psych meds, which some of those �stronger� herbs may. Some people would claim that Lemon Balm does nothing, but I read that it was active against herpes, and it tastes so good! It�s traditional old European use was for banishing demons, so I tend to put some trust in that as well. Also, I would be a hypocrite if I didn't admit my occasional use of heroin, which is the only drug, unlike any psych med, which in my experience, can totally �nullify my life� without making me feel stupid or frightened for days afterward, however, it is frequently tainted with poisons (including psych meds!), and typically full of infection causing bacteria too, so there goes that one� Isn�t it better to be clean and sober? I think so, but I do believe in Harm Reduction (which, unfortunately has in practice been increasingly co-opted by psychiatry, just like the abstinence oriented 12 step groups) and I am not Straight Edge, as some have suggested. Still, the blindly pro psychedelic (and yet anti certain other illegal substances?) logic that I have encountered (especially in Rainbow, and to a lesser extent in Faerie culture) concerns me, especially with it�s total disregard and ignorance of the dangers posed by the psychiatric system, and the psychiatric drugs.

. Be aware that Timothy Leary was a high ranking CIA official, and the record shows (just look at the failures of the 60s) that doing drugs interferes with, and does not facilitate, spiritual growth and revolutionary activity. The government knows this, and that is why they were responsible for promoting drugs in the 60s counterculture. Before "psychedelic� drugs were popularized in the late 60s, CIA and military psychiatrists had already used them in over a decade of cruel experiments on mental patients. Many of their primitive "Brain Washing" experiments employed the use of "psychiatric" techniques, such as electroshock, with "psychedelic" drugs such as LSD to achieve total destruction of the human identity.

. 31. The Battle of Seattle

. Meanwhile, one day in the TV room I saw footage of Anarchists rioting in Seattle. I was filled with excitement and hope. I imagined the Anarchists on the TV screen coming to rescue me from my prison. Break down the walls with their crowbars. Dance in the streets...

. What I didn't realize at the time was what a bunch of hypocrites many anarchists are. Most of them will at least give lip service to the concept of prison abolition, an easy stance to take for a privileged white kid with no personal ties to prisoners or workers in the prison system, but you can forget trying to talk to them about psychiatric abolition. Disappointingly many of them are actually pro-psychiatry, despite psychiatry's history as a tool of oppression and future as the defacto biochemical method for social control in the emerging authoritarian reality state. Keeping pace with the opinions of mainstream propaganda fed society, the overall direction in the "anarchist" scene is increasingly pro psychiatry and groups like The Icarus Project are taking it even further in that direction. Still, at that time I did not know these things. I had never even met an Anarchist. As I imagined them smashing through the walls of my prison like they smashed through the windows on TV, I resolved that if I could ever escape this hell I would become an Anarchist and fight for revolution.

. 32. The Pattern Of Escalating Diagnosis

. Eventually I got so fat that Dr. Lane lost interest in me. I was assigned a new doctor. He told me that Dr. Lane had diagnosed me with "Bipolar Disorder" and recommended that I be placed in "a residential facility" indefinitely as I posed a constant threat to myself and others and would never be capable of living "unassisted".

. I call this "The Pattern of Escalating Diagnosis" and in the experience of my peers, other young psychiatric survivors, it is all too common. Like the old woman who swallowed a fly and then goes on to swallow a spider, a rat, a cat, and a dog, the "Pattern of Escalating diagnosis" will typically start when an healthy, active child will be diagnosed with ADHD and drugged with Ritalin. The parents will be told "She has a problem, but she'll be all right." Once the Ritalin has sufficiently twacked her out her diagnosis will be "upgraded" to a "more serious" adult psychiatric disorder such as "Anxiety" or "Depression". She will be drugged with something like Prozac or Zoloft which will trigger a mania, at which point the poor little critter's diagnosis will be cemented as "Bipolar" or "Schizophrenic" and she will be heavily drugged with Lithium or Neuroleptics of some sort. Her parents will be told to write her off as a "hopeless case" and too often they will.

. Often they have been brainwashed by propaganda from groups such as NAMI (the national alliance for the mentally ill) a psychiatric industry front publication which tries to absolve families of all "guilt" for the condition of their "mentally ill" children, even in cases of child abuse, while simultaneously promoting forced drugs, electroshock, institutionalization, and even lobotomy as "treatments. Their rallying cry, visible on posters nationwide, is "It's no ones fault, it's a Brain Disorder!"

. Strangely few parents ever question why under the care of psychiatrists who initially told them that their child was simply "hyperactive" and still had a bright future, the child has instead rapidly deteriorated into a chronic mental patient who bares little resemblance to the sparkling child of just several years before. They will sigh to themselves, secure in the knowledge that "it's all genetic" and they are powerless to do anything to help or harm the situation. Thus absolved of all their guilt, they hand responsibility for their children over to the pharmaceutical industry.

. This has been the experience of many psychiatric survivors of my generation (as well as those still trapped). The psychiatric industry continues to target younger and younger victims, while many older psychiatric survivors were not labeled or drugged until they had reached adulthood. The psychiatric industry is continuing to increase it�s partnership with the government to attack children and teens through mandatory �mental health� screenings in schools, such as Teen Screen. Thanks to programs such as �Zero to Three�, which is promoting the new concept of �Infant Mental Health�, babies are now receiving labels, such as Bi-Polar Disorder, that were previously reserved for adults. These vulnerable young brains and tiny undeveloped bodies are then subjected to assault with psychiatric drugs, undoubtedly causing lasting developmental harm.

. 33. Neuroleptics Cause Brain Damage

. Fortunately I decided to swallow my pride and play the game as best as I could. I would do anything it took to convince them that I could be set free. Eventually some of my restrictions were dropped. I was allowed to have books.

. I was horrified to discover that I had become practically illiterate. I simply couldn't make sense of all the little squiggles which I knew were supposed to be words. For someone whose main pleasure, coping strategy, educational tool, and source of pride since early childhood had been my advanced reading ability I was crushed. This was the first clear indication to me that I had suffered significant brain damage due to the toxic effect of their drugs.

. Neuroleptics, such as Zyprexa and Thorazine and Haldol, so named to indicate their neurotoxic effect, chemically destroy the neural pathways between the front and back of the brain. Over time this results in the profound brain shrinkage that is known as a "chemical lobotomy" in honor of the brain destroying psychosurgery which this class of drugs effects approximate. They are by far the most damaging commonly prescribed psych drugs. They cause well established, permanent, and often dramatic brain damage.

. They are commonly referred to as "antipsychotic" drugs, but they have no proven ability to reduce someone's hallucinations or delusions, only to impair their ability to communicate about these distressing problems.

. When neuroleptics were first invented, the claims about their usefulness were not so lofty as they are today. Their main selling point was as a replacement for straight jackets, it was not until much more recently that they began to say these drugs actually possessed the power to "treat" specific symptoms. Although the basic formula for most types of psychiatric drugs has changed little in the past half century, the drug industry continues to package them with new names and new advertised purposes. It sells them as if they are recent, cutting edge inventions, when really these are just the same old, toxic, stupefying psych drugs that they've been proscribing for years. The only thing new is the packaging. Frequently, when it comes to the neuroleptics, they are still being given in institutional settings as a form of social control. When given in high doses they produce a paralysis known as "chemical restraints" which psychiatrists find useful in oppressing freedom loving prisoners.

. Recently I finally got access to a small portion of the files chronicling the psychiatric abuse that was inflicted on me when I was younger. Reading through these papers has been painful, but necessary. I had been trying to get my hands on them for years. Although my psychiatrist neglected to record certain aspects of my "treatment plan" into these forms, such as how many times he sexually assaulted me, other records kept are surprisingly telling. A particularly tragic sequence is the folder of intelligence tests. From 12 to 16 I lost a significant portion of my IQ, which clearly demonstrates the brain damage inflicted on me by their drugs.

. Here is an excerpt, (while I was locked up and heavily drugged an educational counselor from outside the hospital came and gave me this test, the scores are significantly lower than previous test results, it describes my reactions while they are in the process of poisoning my brain, ***** out is my birth name.)

. "�When she was initially introduced to the examiner she complained of considerable fatigue. She spoke with somewhat slurred speech. She dragged her feet and curled her shoulders and complained of a stomach ache. In the initial part of the session, ***** explained that she was worried about whether or not she was competent to participate in the educational evaluation. She was concerned that she was not well and that her medications were altering her ability to think clearly� She thinks she has difficulty with aspects of rote memory, which impact on math and spelling. Periodically during the session, ***** again expressed concerns about her functioning. At one point she was almost tearful, but was then able to regroup and work with the test materials. Throughout the session she was eager to perform to the best of her ability. She frequently wanted to know how she was doing with the test materials. Overall, the test results appear to be an accurate reflection of her currant level of functioning�"

. What they did to me was inexcusable. But still, in terms of the potential for brain damage caused by these drugs I got off relatively easy. People who've been drugged with Neuroleptics for many years suffer much more severe damage, often resulting in a global deterioration of mental functioning known as "Tardive Dementia" which resembles lobotomy or mental retardation. More than 60% of victims will develop Tardive Dyskinesia, a permanent condition of often severe, painful and disabling spasms and tics. (See Toxic Psychiatry, p.74)

. The stereotypical "twitchy" behavior of a "crazy" person, often an older homeless person, is in fact not a symptom of any psychiatric disorder, but simply evidence of the harm that was inflicted upon them at some point in their life by psychiatrists. Testing shows that most people who have been drugged with neuroleptics also exhibit persistent cognitive impairments. Yet the pharmaceutical industry insists that these drugs are safe and even gives them to children.

. 34. A Tool Of Patriarchy

. In fact, often children attempting to report child abuse or adults attempting to flee an abusive relationship will be forcibly drugged and institutionalized. Psychiatrists will rarely bother to investigate a report of domestic violence or sexual abuse. Instead psychiatry sides with the abusive family, or the notoriously abusive foster care system, to silence the victim and continue their abuse. Abusive families and the inherently abusive psychiatric industry make a powerful alliance that is hard for a frightened survivor to escape.

. When survivors of rape and battering and other abuse express their natural emotional reaction to such traumas they are told that they have a "genetic chemical imbalance in their brain." We are taught, as a society, to never express a "negative" emotion, no matter how justified, because to do so is a sign of "disorder". Anyone not conforming to a rigid, narrow definition of "normality" is presumed to have a "brain disorder". And unlike someone with a lung disorder, or a liver disorder, or a heart disorder, this means, according to the laws of our country, that the sufferer is no longer afforded freedom of choice.

. 35. Clouding Consent

. This is one of the main reasons why I am a psychiatric abolitionist. Although I am dubious of the benefits of many pharmaceutical drugs, I am not some Christian Scientist or primitivist who is opposed to all modern medicine. Physical diseases that effect the organs of the body are a real thing. Brain disorders are a real thing, and real medicine is concerned with trying to cure these actual brain disorders, there are seizure disorders such as Landau Kleffner Syndrome, and degenerative conditions such as Alzheimer�s, and Parkinson�s, all of these disorders are indicated by a marked and unambiguous physical (not psychological or emotional or social) dysfunction within the brain.

. Psychiatry, however, labels healthy brains with disorders that do not exist, and then induces brain dysfunction similar to legitimate brain disorders by attacking the brain with their damaging �treatments�. Also, the social context of psychiatry is unique. In other branches of "medicine" people are allowed to make their own choices to take substances which effect their body and which may have risks and benefits, such as Advil, or hormones, or protease inhibitors. I recognize clear patters of abuse in the medical/pharmaceutical industry�s treatment of trannies and people living with HIV/AIDS, but the context is different. In Psychiatry, people are FORCED to take drugs that alter the mind. Then since a drugged person�s thoughts become cloudy, the issue of consent is no longer clear.

. How many people have signed the papers agreeing to electroshock or lobotomy while so heavily drugged that they did not realize what they were doing? The tactic is the same as a predator who slips his victims the date rape drug. Though some of the same abusive patterns can exist to a lesser extent in other branches of medicine (the primary source of education and income for all doctors has become the pharmaceutical industry) the level of inherent corruption involved in drugging people senseless sets psychiatry apart. Psychiatry operates with a blatant and publicly approved disregard for informed consent. People labeled with "mental illness" are regularly forced into "medical treatment" against their will, they can be used as guinea pigs in even riskier human experiments. That is of course unless they can afford to buy their way out of it with social privilege.

. 36. Poisoning The Poor

. Right now in Philadelphia they are testing a "brain control implant" on homeless people. Once placed under the skin it cannot be removed and it delivers high doses of neuroleptics continuously for up to a year. A UC Berkeley study showed that blacks were given three times the dose of neuroleptic drugs as were whites when admitted to the emergency room with �psychotic symptoms�. The pharmaceutical industry has also reported that they are working hand in hand with the military to develop a large-scale aerosol neuroleptic grenade to be used for "crowd control" against "rioters" and at protests. Inmates in prisons and public mental institutions (almost by definition low income, mostly people of color) are frequently used as guinea pigs for experimental drugs and experimental drug applications.

. Most recent proposals by local governments to "eliminate homelessness" are based on the assumption that all homeless people are "mentally ill" and rely on forced incarceration in cleverly disguised psychiatric institutions as a way to "provide housing" for them. Submitting to psychiatric drugging is already a prerequisite for homeless people to receive basic services such as showers and meals in many locations. And as cities gentrify, many public assistance programs have been slashed, so more and more poor people are pressured into accepting a psychiatric diagnosis simply to obtain meager SSI payments or housing through programs that mandate participants receive �mental health treatment�. Some people feel confident in their ability to work the system for the resources they need without putting themselves in situations that cross their boundaries, but the potential for abuse is significant. In cities such as San Francisco and Portland, many young trannies and queers who end up homeless and displaced due to abuse and discrimination are forced into psychiatrically abusive housing/treatment programs just to get off of the streets.

. These �supportive housing� programs engage in deep doublethink, promoting the concept of �dual diagnosis�. This means that participants are 1. Labeled as �mentally ill�, and 2. Their use of street drugs is a labeled as an additional �disease�. So then �Recovery� is basically defined as switching from street drugs to psychiatric drugs. If a person decided that they wanted to get clean off of all drugs, including psychiatric drugs, and live drug free, this would be considered a �Relapse�. The person would then either be forcibly drugged, and possibly locked up, or else, they would be kicked out into the streets again, and lose whatever support they may have been receiving. I personally know a girl who refused to take neuroleptics (which had caused her a lot of terrible side effects, including dramatic weight gain), and thus was not only kicked out of her housing program, but also lost a college scholarship this way.

. Supposedly it is unconstitutional to hold someone in "preventative detention". That is to imprison someone charged with no crime, simply because you think they "might do something later". However, anywhere in the country, if someone thinks that you might be, "a danger to yourself or others", regardless of whether or not you have actually done anything illegal, you can be imprisoned in a psychiatric facility. And over the past few years things have taken a turn for the worse. Now, primarily as a tool to illegally incarcerate the very poor, many states are passing laws allowing people to be imprisoned even if they are NOT considered to be "a danger to themselves or others". All that is required is the recommendation of a psychiatrist.

. More and more children are labeled "Mentally Ill" by the school system and barred from attending school undrugged, while families (primarily low income) are being charged with child neglect for refusing to drug their children. Parents are actually being denied custody for the refusal to drug their children. The government is literally stealing children from families so that they can give them drugs. Frequently children in foster care are used in studies of experimental drugs, and foster parents receive a higher stipend for children labeled with psychiatric disorders, so in addition to a desire to silence allegations of physical and sexual abuse, foster parents also have a financial incentive to subject kids to psychiatric abuse. Right now studies are being done in Philadelphia and New York, funded by proponents of the "Bell Curve" (a theory that claims a scientific basis for the lie that blacks are less intelligent than whites) to see if "high risk inner city youth" are less likely to become "violent young adults" if they are dosed with psychiatric drugs starting in childhood. A program known as �Zero to Three�, which promotes the frightening concept of �Infant Mental Health� has recently become responsible for the government�s Early Head Start program, an �enriching� day care program for poor children. This puts countless babies from low-income families at great risk of psychiatric drugging and labeling before they are even able to talk.

. Many drop in centers for homeless youth have also been known (in my personal experience) to recruit homeless youth for experimental studies. Potent, toxic psychiatric drugs are pushed on young people who are overwhelmed trying to cope with the stress of survival on the streets, the exhaustion that comes from survival sex or eating out of trashcans and sleeping under bridges, the trauma of the painful past they so often ran away from (which increasingly includes psychiatric abuse). These kids do not have "brain disorders". Illegal drug use does not constitute a �mental illness�, it is a coping strategy, you could argue that it is not a good one, but it is a coping strategy none the less. So is running away, neglecting personal hygiene, joining a gang, sexual promiscuity, over eating, under eating, cutting yourself, tattooing your face, screaming loud in public, carrying a stuffed animal, lying a lot, and changing your name anytime you feel like it. These are not �symptoms� of �psychiatric disorders�, and surviving abuse doesn�t make you �mentally ill�. It makes you a survivor. Psychiatric labeling is a form of oppression. It is a race issue, a class issue, an ageism issue, and a patriarchy issue. But most "liberals" and "progressives" (and apparently also "anarchists") support these eugenics projects under the umbrella title of "community mental health care."

. 37. The Aftermath

. I couldn't even begin to cope with the sorrow over my lasting cognitive impairments while I was in that awful prison. So I did my best not to think about it and instead to concentrate on acting cheerful, submissive, feminine, obedient, and thankful. I knew that the sooner I could get off those awful drugs the more of my brain would remain intact in the long run. It was a good incentive.

. Fortunately my new psychiatrist changed my drugs and took me off the neuroleptic Zyprexa. He kept me on the Neurontin (an anti seizure drug necessitated by the seizure provoking effects of some of my earlier drugs) and the Zoloft (an SSRI like Prozac), and he loaded me up on Klonopin (an extremely addictive benzodiazapam that gets you really fucking high) So there was still plenty of stuff wrong with this potent pharmacological cocktail. But nonetheless it was far better than the horribly brain injuring effects of the neuroleptic Zyprexa I had been on before so I felt a lot better. Mostly due to the addition of the Klonopin (though I didn't realize it at the time) I just felt high all the time.

. Before I knew it (time was a bit blurry for me then) this new psychiatrist was complementing me on how improved I was, and of course newly freed from my neuroleptic straightjacket I was feeling a great sense of freedom.

. Finally I was released into a day treatment program, though apparently this was more due to my folks running out of cash than anything else. I rode the short bus to attend a school for ED (Emotionally Disturbed) youngsters, many of whom seemed to be simply physically disabled. There were also quite a few autistic kids languishing there, and it was clear to me that most of their unresponsive behavior was due to the massive doses of neuroleptics I saw them receiving. Although I didn't realize it at the time, many folks on the autistic spectrum are primarily suffering from Celiac Disease. (An allergy to dairy and gluten containing grains such as wheat, rye, oats, and barley). Over the past several years, throughout my own process of healing, I have met other young adults with a history of psychiatric abuse, who were labeled with autism as children, and as children had extreme difficulties with verbal communicate, and other problems, but who have discovered that, so long as they follow the correct diet and stay off of drugs, that these problems are greatly reduced, although they still proudly identify themselves as people on the autistic spectrum. But the psychiatric industry doesn't want you to know that. The psychiatric industry does everything it can to keep us ignorant of real solutions. We were all heavily drugged and we didn't have any real schoolwork, all we did was sit in a room all day for babysitting purposes. There was a class called "Life Skills" that focused on teaching us the basics of personal grooming.

. My parents informed me that they had spent my college fund on keeping me incarcerated after the insurance ran out, but what did it matter? I could no longer read, do times tables, remember any of my friends names or even do my alphabet. My dreams had been crushed along with my intellect. I experienced an overwhelming sense of loss.

. 38. Running Away

. I started to run away to the nearest big city, Washington DC, to hang out with crackheads and smoke weed under bridges. Dupont Circle (before the full on gentrification) was the place to be. I made a few friends, mostly other misfit queer psychiatrically abused youth. We were all nihilistic, getting drunk at straightedge punk shows, setting fires and breaking windows, fucking under bridges, in late night diner bathrooms, behind the bushes in the park. They at least mostly accepted me as a boy.

. I tried to hang out with the local anarchist scene, but understandably I was rejected time and time again. I seemed really crazy. The Klonopin made me fearless and I could break the law without batting an eyelash (it is interesting how the moral tune out of psychiatric drugs can facilitate crime). I slept in an abandoned building for the first time. I ate out of the trash for the first time. I had sex for money for the first time. I rediscovered my love of shoplifting. I stopped bathing and combing my hair. I was having a great time. I made the mistake of going home to get some supplies.

. My mom had me locked up again. This time she called the cops on me. They broke down my bedroom door. They hogtied me and dragged me down the stairs. I was thrown in the back of a police cruiser while my mom stood back and wrung her hands. The mental institution was a different one than where I had been before. I was put in four point restraints when I first got there for reason unknown (perhaps because I had arrived hogtied?) This was excruciating but somehow I managed to fake calm and fortunately this time they did not hold me long, nor did they give me any paralyzing neuroleptic drugs. Due to nothing more than luck it seems I was downgraded into day treatment almost immediately.

. When I was released I was suitably frightened. Today I am fortunate enough to have established a relatively healthy and supportive relationship with my family, but as a teenager, with no legal rights, I would have most likely never escaped psychiatric abuse if I had not run away from home. I knew that until I turned 18 I would not be safe around my family. They could destroy me. I had to run away for real. I knew I couldn't afford to get caught even once. I headed for California. In San Francisco I plunged headlong into street culture.

. 39. Sanctioned Addictions

. Initially my plan had been to meet up with my Californian pen pal, get off psych drugs and "have a sexchange" (something I had heard was easiest done in San Francisco) So San Francisco is where I ended up. Well things didn't work out with the pen pal and the tranny clinic told me I was too young (and too crazy seeming) for hormones, so that just left me with my initial goal of getting myself off the brain drugs.

. It had been 10 years since I had breathed a sober breath and part of me still half believed all the lies I'd been fed about having a "Brain Disorder". Can I say I was terrified? I had no one to turn to for advice or support and I was still too mentally scrambled to do much meaningful research on my own.

. All the well meaning people (and this might have been you) who I asked for help reflexively and authoritatively ordered me to stay on the drugs, lest something terrible happen. It was as if I had voiced a desire to stop eating or to stop breathing air, rather than a desire to stop taking toxic drugs. Could nobody think for themselves?

. It didn't seem fair to me at the time that if I had been trying to stop taking street drugs people would have applauded my decision, (think AA/NA meetings, which to a certain extent still provide people with mutual support separate from the psychiatric system, but have been increasingly co-opted by the psychiatric industry with the advent of �dual diagnosis� groups that actively promote psychiatric drugs, and consider going off of these drugs to be a form of �relapse�), and simply because the drugs I was trying to get clean off of were pharmaceutical it was interpreted as being a self-destructive act on my part.

. What I didn't realize at the time is that society doesn't really encourage anyone to break out of any addiction ever, because addicted people, no matter what they are addicted too, are easy to control. Society simply prefers for it's addicts to be strung out on pharmaceuticals because they are easier to regulate, and that way all of the money goes to the American Pharmaceutical Industry (top government donors) instead of some Muslim poppy growing cartel.

. As I watched my junkie friends get proscribed Celexa and my alcoholic friends get prescribed Effexor when they went in to try and get help to break away from drug addiction I realized just how much society has invested in maintaining addictive cycles.

. My own addictive cycle was to continue for quite some time. Repeatedly I would attempt a cold turkey withdrawal from my drugs and repeatedly I would get sick from withdrawals. Many brave people have attempted to quit taking psych drugs, only to be betrayed by their "friends" who will insist to them that the painful and distressing withdrawal symptoms they are experiencing, which may last for more than a year, are actually the "symptoms" of the victim's "brain disorder" resurfacing, and that if they don't continue to drug themselves forever, that they will feel that sick forever.

. Many people simply don't know that psych drugs are addictive substances and have withdrawals, just like street drugs do. Doctors rarely inform their patients that the drugs they prescribe will cause the person to get "strung out". Fortunately I knew lots of street addicts who were perpetually running out of drugs or trying to kick so witnessing their drug induced struggles clued me in to the source of my own pain.

. Time and time again I would get so sick from withdrawals that I would use street drugs to numb the pain until I could get a public clinic to refill my bottles of the nasty pharmaceutical shit. (Like leaving any abusive relationship making a final break with psychiatry may take several attempts) The clinic doctors were eager to refill my scripts, and they never asked me for any money. For the sake of social control psychiatric drugging of the poor is generally well funded. If I had presented with a real physical illness instead, or simply needed dental work for instance their response would have been much less enthusiastic. There is a limit to charity it seems.

. But labeling and drugging oppressed people is one of the primary functions of psychiatry. Describing the anger or sorrow resulting from social injustice or abuse as a "symptom" of a "brain disorder" puts the blame squarely on the victim. It is the easiest way to disempower someone who might otherwise revolt.

. 40. Psychiatry = Eugenics

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