my therapist, my case worker, and my psychiatrist all want me to go to rehab.
am i in rehab? no.
am i going to rehab? no.
have i been forced into rehab? no.
have i been coerced into rehab? no.
have i been subtly encouraged to go into rehab? no.
would that sort of thing work on me? evidently, no.
why am i not going to rehab? i don't want to.
in january of this year, i was almost brought into a psych. ward as a 5150. notice how i said almost. why wasn't i, ultimately? because i didn't want to go and i more or less hustled my way out of it. what were the circumstances leading up to this? during a session w/ my therapist, i was in a mixed state where i expressed suicidal ideation, was incredibly agitated and confrontational (almost picked a fight w/ one of the cops), and my therapist, concerned, told her supervisor, who in turn told the director of the clinic, who in turn called the police. i was questioned, searched, detained for about two hours, and yet i still didn't end up going to the psych. ward. why do you think that is?
you see, antipsychiatry community, i'm going to use your own libertarian logic to make my point here. when it comes to mental illness (would you feel better if i scare-quoted that?) or, "extreme states of mind" as some of you put it, after the general scoffs and mockery have subsided, you tell people to pony up and stop relying on psychiatry and medication to "cure" their problems. in other words, "take responsibility!" (by the way, this "the meds don't cure, so you shouldn't rely on them" fallacy is quite common, but the premise doesn't hold: no psychiatrist or therapist worth his or her salt is going to say that medication is a panacea; in some instances, medication, in combination w/ psychotherapy, has been shown to be most effective in treating some instances of mental illness.) curiously, this logic is never applied to the victims of psychiatry-- no, it's always the psychiatrist's, the therapist's the medication's, etc. fault. however, as illustrated above, everyone's experience isn't the same. and if you really dislike the care you're receiving, then leave. cut it loose. last week, when i was getting lectured at by my jackhole caseworker about using and drinking, i simply fucking walked out. done and done. it was that easy. of course, if you're on medication and it's fucking you up, quitting isn't nearly as simple, but this is why it's imperative that you research whatever drug you decide to take. it's a given that your psychiatrist is going to hustle you, so it's paramount that you, er, "take responsibility!" and thoroughly research whatever medication you're prescribed. and if you don't want to take any medication, then don't. i'm sorry, but who's forcing you to? yes, some therapists will not conduct sessions w/ you if you're manic or in a mixed state or psychotic, and may thus require you to take a mood stabilizer, but can you blame them? how is it possible to talk to someone if they're not paying attention to anything you're saying? or if they're constantly argumentative and confrontational or all around difficult? i'm surprised my therapist never transferred me to someone else because i've given her a lot of shit and she's had to put up w/ a lot of shenanigans from me, but she's still there. and she told me she never once even considered transferring me to someone else. that's a testament to her commitment and to her professionalism-- the least i could do is meet her half way.
if you've been fucked over by a mental health professional, i fucking feel for you. seriously. i've been there. and if that professional has a history of abusing clients, he should lose his license fucking yesterday. but to brand all mental health professionals as malevolent is grossly unfair to those who do what they do because they truly give a shit. and to claim that mental illness isn't real is severely irresponsible. think about it. who really wants to enforce the concept of "normalcy"? who first told you there was something "wrong" w/ you? was it a psychiatrist? i'm willing to bet that it wasn't. i'm willing to bet that, if you really thought about it, it was probably a family member or a friend who first said this to you. the truth is, psychiatry exists because society has a vested interest in a standard of behavior and expects its inhabitants to conform to that standard. demonizing psychiatry without looking at the bigger picture will not get to the source of the problem. it's like complaining about how immoral or shallow or "weird" hollywood is while completely ignoring the fact that hollywood is in business because people like you and me line its coffers. no doubt there are shit psychiatrists and there's little doubt that many of them are in the pocket of "big pharma," but the concepts of mental illness, normalcy, etc. exist because we as a society want them to. so the next time you feel like pinning the whole of the world's problems on someone, spread the wealth a little and consider your friends, your family, your neighbors-- any and everyone who has a vested interested in keeping you in line. and while you're at it, why don't you consider how you expect people to conform to certain standards of your own, as well.
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5 comments:
First visit, here via furious seasons. It's good to see someone else challenge these vicious motherfuckers, they're too much of an elephant in the room. I used to let them go unchallenged, out of pity I suppose, but they're authoritarians, Bush's wingnuts, psychobigots and stigmatizers, they deserve just this sort of pushback.
And yah, the scare quotes kill me every time.
hey, fp. good to hear from you. i've visited your blog before and i've seen you at furious seasons and you always struck me as one of the most reasonable voices at fs (which, okay, granted, isn't saying much, i realize, but still). i've been debating whether or not to write about this, b/c it's something that's extremely important to me, but it seems as if there's too much bullshit surrounding the issue, particularly online, so i've heretofore resisted opening my yap b/c i figured it was pointless. and i particularly did not want to get involved at fs, but that comment was just too much for me to ignore. also, i'm not entirely comfortable w/ telling people about my diagnoses, but i'm slowly beginning to accept that it's not my problem if people are uncomfortable w/ it. and yeah, the anti-psych crowd seem to be some of the most stigmatizing people out there. are you familiar w/ the psychetruth crowd at youtube?
Yeah, I live in the same city as Dr. John Breeding and I work as a reporter at the capitol so I see him all the time, testifying before committees. I think he is a pretty good egg, for a hardcore antipsychiatry type. He is a psychologist and works with people as a clinician, and has written some good books and online articles. I've talked to Breeding a lot in email too and he is a nice, peaceful, honest person who doesn't mess with your head. What scares me a little is the force and driven urgency in his message, and the rigid adherence to his beliefs and almost invasive way he inflicts them onto the world. But he does connect with his audience and I think what he's saying is important and overall I agree with his positions.
What frustrates me is how the same shit keeps being said and hammered hard, and it's like, um, yeah, I get it, and furthermore I resent it when someone tries to school me in their theories rather than respecting my ability to figure things out on my own. And we can spend the rest of our lives in our heads this way, trying to evaluate how well others agree with our righteous selves, or we can, you know, get to work and help change the system. But that means working within the psychiatric establishment and engaging with the leaders and it's going to take compromising with them and settling for what we know to be shit and if we can't have the pony fuck you. So what is the antipsychiatry activism all about, if not vanity and endless wanking?
I don't think Breeding is a wanker, but he stands out as one of the good ones, except for the unseemly ties to Scientology, which is a whole nother rant.
I forgot to ask, what you think of the psych truth crowd? I'm only familiar with Dr. Breeding.
i have mixed feelings on breeding. i agree w/ a lot of what he says, but there are some holes in some of his arguments. i couldn't agree w/ him more on medicating kids, though. you're right: he has this really rigid way of seeing things, but that's true for all of the psychetruth/anti-psychiatry people. and i wonder if they (the psychetruth crowd) are all a part of some loose organization or what? i know they're based in austin. (btw, i used to live in houston- never made it to austin, though, unfortunately.) some of the psychetruth videos are interesting (usually the ones on sex), some are obnoxious (the ones about how DRUGS ARE, LIKE, BAD, M'KAY? and the "you have to go on a diet and eat right or you're going to D I E or, worse, get fat!" finger-pointing ones) and some are unintentionally hilarious, e.g., the ones featuring a chiropractor talking about mental health. why a chiropractor thinks he's qualified to talk about that is beyond me, but hey, whatever. and i love the irony of a youtube channel devoted to exposing psychiatry for the quackery that it is having in its ranks a chiropractor. in general, though, the fact that they claim to have The Truth on almost anything under the sun is a blood-red flag. claiming to have The Truth on anything is an awfully big claim to back up.
anyway, my mixed feelings on breeding also stem from the fact that, like you said, he does seem like one of the few genuinely empathic people out there, it comes through in his videos, but there's a stridency there, too. and like i said, there are holes in his arguments. fuck, and as far as scientology goes, i find it amazing that the anti-psych crowd is mum on *that* whole mess. some of them try to distance themselves from scientology, but you can't deny anti-psychiatry's ties to it. and breeding is always name-dropping szasz which drives me up the fucking wall. szasz is a libertarian and his political ideologies completely color his stance on psychiatry and mental illness. this ties into something breeding said (it's in one of his videos) about psychiatry having a political agenda- well, no shit, but so does anti-psychiatry. and so? but no, we can't point *that* out now, can we? also, breeding mentions peter breggin a lot, who is, at best, a bit of a tool.
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