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Travels Through Psychiatry

Psych Memes I Made

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- December 22, 2021

I created all these memes over the last couple of years. Please feel free to save/share any.

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Tangled Up in Points of View

- May 22, 2025

Mental illness, places it occupies, are messy and raw and if you tried to firsthand report, jumping in gonzo journalism style, you’d be confused about where to start and how to get an opening and where to end. You’d be shut down. Patients are protective, especially if they’ve been around, and back, and around again. Like me. The only order in going into psychiatric hospitals is what they don’t let you have. The only way to know what other patients think and how their lives are is to be locked in a ward with them. But it’s still elusive. There’s a lot of chaos there and hidden emotions. I’d believe I knew the patterns in mental illness and had concrete answers when it was impossible to make such formulations. Conclusions about mental illness can’t be drawn with certainty, even after sharing experiences from all walks of life with people in all kinds of mixed states and dissociated parts and degrees of willingness to participate in treatment. ...

Life Beside Mental Illness

- February 08, 2025

self-portraits from 1980 My first psych hospitalization lasted two months. I was 17 years old. My psychiatrist discharged me in February, and I caught up on all my schoolwork by April so I could graduate with my class. That fall, I enrolled at a university but freaked out on day one and left. Instead, I went on a job search. The first opening I saw, in the want ads of the newspaper, specified doing lab work, night shift, call this number if interested. I was and I called. I wanted to stay busy, not to deny my mental illness or make a misguided attempt to avoid it, but because I had the desire to live my life. In this blog post, my aim is to show that mental illness hasn't blunted my life, hasn't numbed me to the flavor and variety in living, but is an interruption. The stops and starts don't prevent me from getting back on the horse. I illustrate how mental illness operates side by side with having a "regular" life. I offer the example of my start in treatment...

On My Travels through Psychiatry

- April 21, 2025

I’ve met people and I’ve learned from them as I faced sudden withdrawal from years of being overmedicated, and as I rejected psychiatry very angrily, and as I gradually transitioned into taking up psychiatric treatment again. I’m at a certain point. I know a great deal about being a psych patient, the harms and the helps therein, and a fair amount about critical psychiatry. But I don’t know all of the personal experiences and nuance and I never will. I continuously pursue clarity regardless. I’ve been reading blog posts and articles and listening to podcasts over the past few years, all dealing with aspects of diagnosis and treatment and how patients operate within and outside of frameworks. Along with that, I post on social media and engage in discussions. I do my own writing. I think long and hard and roll ideas around when my mind can focus. For years, due to meds issues and lack of adequate help with my problems, I couldn’t stay with reading a book. Now I can. I’ve recently r...

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How I Became, and Unbecame, a Psych Patient

- March 08, 2022

Early on, I was about 13, hormones kicking in, when family issue upon family issue invaded without knocking, slinking around the corners, under the rug, behind furniture in the secrecy of things we all know about, but we don’t talk about. I was on the edge of entering adulthood, desperately needing guidance that was lacking, so I set out to fill my own aching void. It was the 1970’s, with the popularity of Sybil, the drama of a young woman with multiple personalities embraced into integrating by such a caring psychiatrist, and Lisa and David, disturbed young people so attentively observed in some ward, and I Never Promised You a Rose Garden, a tempting tale of a woman grasped from the bizarre world of schizophrenia. These portrayals resonated with me as so much better than my life as a quiet good girl, ignored in the shadows. I desired that attention I’d never get, not in the midst of generational and current family trauma, and I was compelled to read and watch these storie...

This Psych Unit is My Prison

- September 02, 2021

I have a lot to say in this post, so it will go on a bit longer than my usual posts. Indeed, I did end up in a psych unit again, this time for 3 weeks, same psych unit as July, same psychiatrist in charge of me. Yes, I do mean in charge of me, but before I get started on that, I’ll provide some of the back story. I’ve been in psychiatric treatment on and off, mostly on, since 1980. At times treatment was outright abusive, such as strapping me to a bed, often coercive, and usually a process of psychiatrists prescribing this, then that, then stopping that and trying this and adding this and then these, or even insisting I have ECT. My psych hospitalizations total around 60, with 28 of those from 2016-2019 when the psychiatrist had me on up to 8 psych meds at once. And then in August 2019, she stopped 5 meds cold. After recovering from severe withdrawal, I left psychiatric treatment and stopped the remaining 3 drugs. Due to ongoing withdrawal sickness, I stayed mostly isolated at ...

Yes, I’m Seeing a Psychiatrist Again

- March 21, 2023

After over 3 years off psychiatric medications, letting my body clear them, coming to terms with my hurt and anger over that last psychiatric stopping 5 meds without taper, and working on my issues in isolation, free of irritation from others’ interference, I came to realizations. My mind is definitely clearer (7 different meds daily clouded everything) and I’ve learned so much more about my personal issues through writing and art. I’ve also tightened up my finances, providing more of a sense of independence. This is all good, helps me tremendously, but it’s not enough. I still experience too many lows tinged with suicidal thoughts, resistance to stepping out of my apartment (or off my sofa most days), mired in life’s pointlessness and drudgery. And then there’s the flip side. When I do get moving, I’m propelled into some sense of never stopping, sure I have all the answers, and happy like I’m high, flitting from one thing to the next, whirling about until I drop back into exha...

So Has My Mental Health Actually Improved Off All Psych Meds?

- June 29, 2021

I've been off all meds for about 18 months now, and generally I'm better mentally in many obvious ways. For instance, I no longer self-injure, something I'd felt compelled to do almost monthly when I was on quetiapine, lithium, benztropine, gabapentin, desvenlafaxine, Vivitrol depo, naltrexone, pramipexole, and levothyroxine (yes, the last two were for adverse effects). And my moods can still elevate and then dip, but not in such extreme ways as they did for my years on so many meds. My days aren't always productive and I still feel ill too often and yet I care for my basic needs, and did care also for my cat Iris very well until she died last week. And there I thought I would face insurmountable crisis, a test of how together I really was as I stared into a dark chasm of losing my constant companion, the little being who'd lived with me for 8 years and stayed close by my side through all of the horrid parts of meds withdrawal. I was convinced I only wanted to st...

Quieting the Disorder of Bipolar

- August 29, 2023

Once my med for bipolar kicked in and started improving my mood, of course I was excited. I immediately increased my activity level and imagined that, before I knew it, I’d be working again, out socializing regularly, and exercising as vigorously as I did 15 years ago. No, that’s now how it’s unfolding. I have added activities, like cooking and attending an art club. I can read books again and create new art. All of that is great, but my energy is limited, and the initial med-assisted burst has evened out. I’m grateful for this. My past pattern was always to grab periods of my mood lifting and launch into a flurry of action. Inevitably, I’d fall into exhaustion and despair because this is not sustainable. The feeling of that is harsh. By that, I mean I’d deeply criticize myself as a failure. There I’d been, all the chances in the world for success, and again I’d blown it. I’d truly only failed at realizing that bipolar causes me to roll through cycles of ups and downs. Prev...

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Travels Through Psychiatry

Psych Memes I Made

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Tangled Up in Points of View

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