Notes on This Blog and My Previous Post

I'm not going to post here again concerning psychiatry in the foreseeable future, and I want to dedicate this post to explaining why.

What is the purpose of a blog? To me, a blog distinguishes itself from social media, internet forums, chat rooms, and the like because it is literature. A blog constitutes a body of literature, which can be referred back to for reference. In that sense, while social media, internet forums, etc. are temporal, a blog is timeless. Things do not need to be repeated here; as long as I say something once, I can feel comfortable leaving the topic alone.

I see no reason to continue writing about psychiatry simply because I've already said all I wanted. The last post, "The Problem with Psychiatry in Three Quick Arguments," represents the culmination of my point of view regarding psychiatry. It is as crystalized as it can be. This is precisely how deep the rabbit hole goes; I need dig no further.

Sure, I may feel the need to elaborate, but really all I'll be doing is further sharing the ideas in the previous post. And many posts previous to that one elaborated quite well enough. So while I may see the need to elaborate, I see no need to elaborate here.

There is only one concept which I haven't talked about on this blog, which is the solution to the problem. The solution is simple: three agnosticisms, and three behavior modifications. To wit:

1. Being agnostic about the science.
2. Being agnostic about the diagnosis—it's validity and it's applicability.
3. Being agnostic about the treatment—it's validity and it's applicability.

1. Modifying psychiatrists' behavior of lying.
2. Modifying psychiatrists' behavior of manipulating.
3. Modifying psychiatrists' behavior of using coercive and violent force.

These solutions are implied in all my previous posts. But now, they have been crystalized. The problem is crystalized; the solution is crystalized; there is no need for further discussion here. Whether or not these ideas become accepted is a matter for society to deliberate, and though I certainly see the grave danger posed by psychiatry, and I hope others see it as well, it is not my place to dictate what society will and will not accept.

This is not an "Internet suicide" by any means. An "Internet suicide," for those of you who don't know, refers to when a highly opinionated person joins an Internet group and expects everyone to agree with them, starts a dumb flame war when they learn many people don't, and then concludes their presence on the site with a message, in all caps, saying, "SCREW YOU ALL YOU'RE ALL STUPID I'M NEVER COMING BACK HERE AGAIN." At which point exactly no one seems to care. This post is not that, because a) I never expected anyone to agree with me, b) I don't care if they don't agree with me, c) I'm still going to post on this blog, and d) I'm still going to spread my views about psychiatry, just not here.

So please stick around; though you won't see this particular vein of anti-psychiatric philosophy, you can all look forward to a lot more philosophy and beautiful things.

On the Psychiatrist I Love

I've been visited in dreams by a psychiatrist. She is the perfect psychiatrist.

Not only does she not feel obliged to lie to or manipulate me in any way, but she spontaneously feels compassionate for me. She's willing to give me a hug when I feel upset, because she doesn't feel that compassion is a violation of professional boundaries.

She knows exactly what her drugs do and what they don't do. She knows the science behind them, and because she doesn't have an agenda, I trust what she says.

Once, in the middle of the night, I was shuddering in the fetal position crying out, "I feel so helpless. So powerless." Then she arrived and assured me that, even though she was a psychiatrist, she had my best interests in mind. "I can't trust psychiatrists, they just hurt me. What could you possibly do to help?" I said. "Something along the lines of enlightenment within the very object of pain?" She said, with a wry smile, knowing she'd touched on something I'd told her before about what makes me happy.

I was in tears, so she gave me a hug, then pulled out an eyedropper with liquid. "I'm going to give you something," She said. "What will it do?" I asked. "It's a dynamogen. It will give you power," She said. And I suckled the translucent yellow liquid and fell asleep shortly thereafter.

The first time I met her my reaction was completely spontaneous. I was with a group of people—me, a man with a diagnosis and his friend, and her. The man with the diagnosis demonstrated his diagnosis to the psychiatrist, and she took notes. First, he demonstrated the fact that "mental illness" in itself is a fundamentally creative thing and needn't be medicated. After she scribbled a couple things, he went on to show how freedom and dignity are the most important values for those diagnosed. She jotted a couple of notes and he moved on to the next demonstration.

I had a premonition about it, and I took him aside and told him, "I don't think you should do it. It will send the wrong message." He brushed me off. We went to the roof of the dream-building we were in, and I said, again, "Please don't. This is not the right way to send your message." He ignored me again.

On the roof was a pool, and the man went up to the diving board. Desperate now, I tried to stand in between him and the diving board, but he got around me and dove into the water.

The man did many flips and turns, dancing through the water like ballet. Then he approached an obstacle course, where he was to jump over, then under, then over a set of sail boats, which he did perfectly. Finally he approached the edge of the pool, and the edge of the building, thirty stories up, overlooking the city. Without a second of hesitation, he jumped over the edge and plummeted to his death.

We were all a little shaken, especially the psychiatrist. I looked into her eyes, and they seemed distant. So I wrapped my arms around her. A few seconds later I woke up, with a new archetypal friend and supporter.

This woman is no different than a doctor, psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, or massage therapist. There is no special class for her. She does not exist in a plane above and beyond mere mortals. She doesn't run the show. She is an ally. Every day I make my way through the world, I hope I meet more and more people like her. She's the only psychiatrist I trust right now.

Psychosis as Sexual Pleasure

Psychosis can actually be one of the most pleasurable experiences you can have. All it takes is a little courage and self-confidence. It's really tough to gain courage and self-confidence when your world is literally falling apart around you. But if you carefully approach the other world, and get to know it, become comfortable with it in a safe place, it's really not such a bad place.

The fear, for me anyway, was always losing control. Losing control of my mind and becoming something else. But I've experienced many, many bouts of psychosis, and except for once, I NEVER lost control. At least, not because of the psychosis. I became weird and freaked people out, because I was so paranoid... of the psychosis. I would do anything to try and be absolutely sure I was being "normal." But here's a secret: the more you try to be normal, the less normal you become.

Once I overcame the fear of losing control, the fear of losing my self, I recognized that this radically "other" world was a whole lot of fun. The funnest kind of fun. The demons and spirits trying to attack me suddenly became beautiful Goddesses. The fear and paranoia became wonder. The voices (few as they were, with me) became insight. Think of it this way: if you want a real fantasy world, you'll have to make a radical break with reality. And that can't be anything but scary. But it can also be rewarding.

Make no mistake: I DO have schizophrenia. I've been officially diagnosed, and hospitalized against my will. I know what these feelings are, viscerally. I'm on medications. But I insist: I have come to enjoy them. They are worth experiencing.

In fact, they are more worth experiencing than the medications. I took medications to rid myself of these feelings, and everything became infinitely worse, and I still haven't recovered. Instead of feeling paranoia, I was asleep constantly. I slept as much as 14 hours a day. When a filmmaking project of mine fell through, in the deepest depression, I finally had to make a decision. I decided: psychosis is infinitely better than medication. From now on, I would prefer psychosis to medication every time, and if people didn't like it, too bad for them.

Of course, I'm still on a low dose, but only because it's useful to me not to jump ship to the other world and become lost. I still have a stake in the "real" world. But if the beautiful Goddesses whisk me away for a while, even regularly, people will just have to get used to it. Because having a clear and alert mind, which isn't medicated to the point of sloth, is unquestionably better, even if I lose myself from time to time. I'm sorry, but the doctors have done so much more harm than good. I won't go so far as to say I should never have been medicated. But madness has been enriching and beautiful, while medication has been horrid.

When I Would Vote Republican

Psychiatry is Thought Policing. The Thought Police, especially in public schools, are trying to outlaw emotions and vast territories of free thought. There is nothing positive about psychiatry.

In order to advance their agenda of control and mental slavery, the Thought Police first make school life intolerable, then when any student in any way expresses how intolerable school life is, they use fear tactics to frighten parents into believing their son or daughter has something called a "mental illness" (a thing which they simply made up) and that the kid cannot be trusted to think for themselves. They then encourage every effort to forcibly disallow the child to think for themselves and make authority figures think for them. This, of course, causes the child immense suffering, which they will obviously express, and when they do, it confirms their proposition that they have a "mental illness."

No tactic is too extreme to force the child not to think for themselves. Schools have been known to put children in isolation for hours and not allow them to go to the bathroom. They also torture children with electric shocks to get them to fall in line. If they express suicidality (who wouldn't in such a situation?) they use police force to incarcerate them and deny them all basic rights in a "mental hospital" (prison). Abuse is rampant at these hospitals. While according to the first Amendment, people should be allowed to videotape orderlies at these hospitals, if you try to force them to respect this right, they will violently tackle you to the ground, take away your camera permanently, put you in isolation, not allow you to eat with the other inmates, and put you on a higher dosage of mind-killing medications in order to subdue you.

Parents naturally have a bond for their children. So when they are afraid for them, they take control of the situation. This instinct is twisted and perverted into a sadistic form of mind-control and manipulation by the Thought Police. If you can get a parent to believe that their child has illegal thoughts ("mental illness"), they will use any and all tactics to force the child to think the way they prescribe. They will try to "help," which in essence means torture and traumatize the child into allowing the parent totalitarian mind-control to force out the illegal thoughts.

How do they frighten parents into becoming proxy Thought Police? Consider a publication I found at the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare, entitled "Red Flags in Children's Behavior." What exactly are some of these "red flags?" For adolescents, some include, "drug and alcohol use," "difficulty with relationships," "inattention to appearance or grooming," "risk taking behaviors with little thought of consequences," "extreme sensitivity to rejection or failure," "social isolation." In other words, being a normal adolescent is illegal. In order to satisfy the Thought Police, you must be a completely abnormal teenager--a freak. But of course, if you ever get depressed because you're a freak, that's an illegal thought, and they will bear down on you using every tactic they have in their arsenal.

According to the Thought Police, humanity is illegal. And to punish being human, they will torture you and traumatize you any way they can.

I am a solid Liberal, but the Republicans have a great track record against psychiatry. If Democrats EVER take up the position that we should "help" people with "mental illness," I won't care about the environment, I won't care about gay rights, I won't care about rampant corporate corruption, I won't care about civil liberties, I won't care about domestic spying, I won't care about foreign wars, I won't care about militarizing the police, I won't care about the war on drugs, I won't care about regulation of Wall Street; if Democrats EVER try to "help" people with "mental illness," I WILL vote Republican. Period.

It is imperative that right-thinking people let the world know how we feel about the disgusting anti-human institution of psychiatry and oppose it in any possible way we can.

Why Psychiatry is So Evil

This is the end game for people with psychosis. Dissidents will be silenced, and creative minds will be subdued.

Some Thoughts on an Age of Aquarius Part 4: Psychiatrists

All parts include: Part 1: Ignorance; Part 2: Seduction; Part 3: Compassion; Part 4: Psychiatrists; Part 5: Hacking vs. Lying.

Psychiatrists

In my opinion, psychiatrists are the single biggest threat to any open society in alignment with the principles of openness. They represent a perversion of every principle of openness. (I'm referring to my Principles of Openness.)

1. They appear not to, but they represent an undue extension of authority. They appear not to because anyone, presumably, can become a psychiatrist. And psychiatrists can change careers, move between jobs, etc. The position appears to be open. But. It's open to everyone except the most important person—YOU. YOU cannot become your own psychiatrist. YOU have no authority over what the psychiatrist diagnoses and prescribes. Psychiatrists affect you. But they have no formal accountability to you. By all rights, if you need to change psychiatrists, you should be able to, but all to often, you can't. And in cases where you can, like in Portland Oregon, psychiatrists actively oppose any peer-run psychiatry clinics on the fundamental belief that psychiatric patients should have no say in who gets to treat them.
2. They appear not to, but they represent closing off the ability to participate. Psychiatrists work under the common assumption that they're doing good science. And that their experiments are not a "black box" in any sense. "Black boxes" are strictly forbidden in any open system, and the institution of Western science is such a system. But. There are multiple black boxes in psychiatry. First, there's the black box of the observed. The observer can observe the symptoms, and describe them, but she has no idea what they signify. No psychiatric science ever has been able to describe what symptoms signify beyond subjective and arbitrary labeling, and the ASSUMPTION that this labeling represents a license to take complete control over all aspects of the patient's life. Then, there's the black box of the symptoms themselves. No one has any idea what theoretical basis drives the symptoms and their respective diagnoses. They're just arbitrary labels.
3. They appear not to, but they hold secrets. When you go into a psychiatrists office, since psychiatry is supposed to be a science, and medical, and approved by society, you'd expect no shady secrecy going on in your interactions with psychiatrists. But. Psychiatrists LIE as a normal part of their profession. As much as they may try to convince themselves otherwise, they know that there is no scientific basis for their diagnoses and prescriptions. So if a psychiatrist knows you have depression but no psychosis, and they want to prescribe you an anti-psychotic, they will LIE to the authorities to do so. And if they think you need to be hospitalized but they don't feel they have sufficient evidence to prove you're a danger to yourself or others, they will misrepresent, bullshit, and LIE to get you institutionalized. And most importantly of all, if they feel you don't deserve to know what they're deciding on your behalf, they will LIE to you to keep it secret.

I cannot stress enough how much psychiatry is the antithesis of openness. It is the biggest long-term threat to our democracy. Already, children are being medicated simply because they defy authority. They are being medicated under the pretext of an invented illness because they're bored. THESE are the change-makers, who are being snuffed out due to this travesty of science. And furthermore, since the institution of psychiatry seeks full autonomy in deciding whether to incarcerate or otherwise control people with "mental illness" on a whim, based on their "objective" (read: patently subjective) diagnoses, we can all expect key activists, politicians, and change-makers to be locked up for invented illnesses, just like they do in Russia, if we allow psychiatry any more legal leeway. Republicans already like to say Liberalism is a "mental illness." Surprise surprise. Psychiatry is an illegitimate institution—the product of Western obsession with control and a repressive and arbitrary suppression of the use of psychoactive drugs for psychological (and not psychiatric) purposes.

Structuralism, Psychiatry, and Choice

I was just reading an interesting account of "structuralist" writers. I think this ties into my critique of psychiatry. I believe that the main fault of psychiatry is behaviorism and materialism--the philosophy that nothing can be said about consciousness beyond the material, or beyond the observable. This leads to, among other things, the attitude that if certain behavior changes, the patient's wellbeing changes, because wellbeing is nothing but a set of behaviors. (For example, there was a study which claimed that Olanzapine worked because the decibel level of a psychiatric institution lowered when the patients were given the drug. The idea is, if the measurable behavior of loudness changes, the wellbeing must change too.)

I have just read an account by Dominique Janicaud which clarifies this. Psychiatrists are supposed to be scientists. Scientists are supposed to be structuralists. Structuralism, by itself, according to Janicaud, is not an ideology. It is a methodology.

The implications of this are huge. It means that psychiatrists have nothing moral, and nothing normative, to say about their patients. Nothing whatsoever. Putting a moral taint on schizophrenic behavior (i.e. "you oughtn't to do that") is none of their business. Trying to enforce norms of behavior is similarly none of their business, which means they have no right to call the police, and no right to manipulate, etc. etc. etc.

Take this example. A psychiatrist labels you with schizophrenia. This means, among other things, that you tend to believe things which differ radically from accepted cultural beliefs. So what does this mean? Well, normatively, and morally, it means absolutely nothing. It is a statement of fact, akin to, "You have a wart on your nose." It is not the business of the doctor who points out the wart on your nose to say, "You are ugly because you have a wart on your nose." Or, "You need to get that wart removed." The sole purpose of the doctor is simply to state the fact and give you options for dealing with that fact. Since a psychiatrist is a doctor, he has no right to say, "You need to take Olanzapine in order to stop having delusions." Nor does he have the right to try and manipulate you into taking medications by saying, for example, "You will continue to suffer these problems and alienate yourself until you take my prescriptions."

Nor does the psychiatrist have the right (and this is the most significant point) to say, "Your thoughts are delusions and are therefore wrong." This is an ideological, evaluative statement, not a statement of fact. It reflects a certain philosophical ideology of what constitutes objective reality. But that isn't the proper domain for the scientist qua scientist. The scientist qua scientist is supposed to say things like, "Your thoughts are delusions." But they aren't supposed to say, "Delusions are morally bad." Or even, "Delusions are objectively false." The moment he does such a thing, he is judging your worth as a human being, and stepping beyond the proper role of the doctor.

Doctors make observations, and classify observable aspects of your being. But such classification, although it may come with baggage, says absolutely nothing beyond this domain. There is no reason for someone to feel upset because her thoughts have been classified as "delusions." In fact, since delusions show a marked difference from common beliefs, which are often very morally questionable, delusions may even be valuable. Delusions may make a significant, positive contribution to the marketplace of ideas. The psychiatric labels, including schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, are exactly the same. Schizophrenia or bipolar, therefore, may be a positive thing, and not necessarily something to be eradicated or controlled. In any case, the project of eradication and control of schizophrenia or bipolar disorder is the project of you as a patient, not of the doctor. The doctor may help, but the doctor by no means is supposed to take control. Just because a doctor identifies a wart on your nose doesn't give him the right to eradicate it. That is your responsibility, and your choice.

How to Take Psychotropic Medications

Medications are a great tool for living, and I think, regarding medications, it is important to do two things: a) not reject them entirely, b) not settle into them. By this I mean, you should not insist on ignoring what happens to your brain because of the medications, and you should also not insist that everything is okay because of the medications.

I take Zyprexa, and it helps a great deal. However, when I settle into my medications, I become a complete imbecile. I can barely remember what day of the week it is. I forget to wash my clothes. I go to bed at 9:30 in the evening and wake up at 12 in the afternoon, and then I take an hour nap. It's useless. This is one reason why I insist on being kept at a low dose. On the other hand, when I have in the past rejected my medications, I ended up in the mental hospital.

To deal with schizophrenia, you cannot just take your meds and go about your business. You have to deal both with medications and, occasionally, with symptoms. I think there is a simple reason for this: medications regulate the chemicals in your brain, and that's it. The problem is, delusions aren't chemical imbalances: they're thoughts. If you have the thought, "everyone is out to get me," no medication in the world is going to take that away from you. Consequently, a large number of people continue to have delusions despite the fact that they are on enough medications to kill a horse. On the other hand, I'd be willing to bet that there is a significant number of people who technically have schizophrenia, but they don't settle into delusions, and so the disease doesn't bother them and they don't have to take any medications at all.

I think the bottom line is, diseases, especially mental ones, cannot be cured or controlled by conventional science. The reason is, conventional science labors under a cocktail of delusions that don't really accord with reality. Here are a few of them:

1. There is an objective reality which everyone has access to.
2. Mental phenomena don't exist until you can observe them.
3. Mental phenomena cease to exist when you can no longer observe them.
4. The mind is separate from the body and cannot communicate with the body.

Note that for number 4, in my experience, most mental health professionals tend to think that the mind is separate from the brain and the mind cannot communicate even with the brain, which is, of course, completely ridiculous. Many mental health professionals probably won't admit to thinking this, but that is the underlying assumption when they have the thought, "You are not well until you take your medications," or, "You can try cognitive therapy and physical therapy and so forth, but ultimately, you must take your medications before you feel better."

I agree, most people with schizophrenia who are not taking their medications are indeed not well. But the medications have very little to do with that. In my experience delusions are not created by chemical imbalances. Delusions are created by the subconscious mind. In other words, I have experienced episodes of schizophrenia that haven't bothered me at all. The reason is because I withheld creating delusions. The chemicals in my head led me to think, "The world is ending now." But I withheld having the thought, "The world is ending now." I didn't actively refuse to think the thought, I just withheld having it. Because I withheld having it, I did not get upset, I did not go wide-eyed and start shouting at people, and I did not end up in a mental hospital. And so I believe that for anyone who has schizophrenia, it is indeed possible to live a normal life without taking medications. Unfortunately, I cannot recommend trying it: most people, including myself, cannot fully control their subconscious. If we have an itch, we tend to think, "I have an itch." If we can have an itch without thinking "I have an itch," then it may be a good idea to stop taking medications.

I take my medications. This is because, and this is a key point, I respect my medications. They truly have real benefit. It is extremely important for people with schizophrenia and their family and friends to understand that modern psychotropic medications are very helpful. But even if they were not very helpful, it would still be beneficial to respect the medications. For any medication, someone out there had a very good reason to believe that it would be of benefit, or they wouldn't be selling it. They may be relying on the placebo effect, but the fact that the placebo effect exists proves my point. Furthermore, modern psychotropic medications are not placebos: large teams of highly educated scientists spent years of hard work developing them. So if someone tries to get you to take medications, this person is almost certainly trying to help you out. And so, it is good to respect the medications. But medications are not everything.

Consider this. When we were children, our friends told us, "You should really try doing a flip off of the diving board," and we tried it, and it felt good. (For most of us anyway.) Or, we were the path-breakers, and we decided on our own to do a flip off of the diving board, and it felt good, so we told all our friends how cool it is. I don't think many of us would have done the flip, thought it was the greatest thing in the world, and not have told our friends. Well, when dealing with schizophrenia, the same principle applies. Scientists get people to take medications, and if it works, the good feelings of the people who took the medications back them up when they say, "This medication works." If, on the other hand, everybody who took the medications sincerely believed that it did not work, and someone gave you the medications and said, "I sincerely believe this medication will not work," it probably wouldn't work. This is because, for the most part, if someone takes a medication and sincerely believes it didn't work, it is because it didn't work. But on the other hand, if they believe it works, it is because it works. Unfortunately, many people who have schizophrenia or other mental illnesses are surrounded and constantly attacked by demons, and so it is very difficult to get them to believe, "I really think this will help you." The person will simply think it is another demon trying a clever way to attack him or her. For example, I have heard someone with schizophrenia say, "I don't know if medications are placebos or mind control or what," and this was a person who regularly took medications. I have heard another person who sincerely believed that the medications he was taking actually caused the mental illness. This person was taking about 240 milligrams of Geodon, which is a high dosage, and obviously it didn't help at all.

Now consider this: when you expand a liquid, it sucks up heat. And when you contract it, it spits the heat out. Isn't that bizarre? Who would have thought of that? But someone did indeed think of it, and later somebody else invented the refrigerator. My point is: reality is weird. But even our weird experiences are caused by something, though it is impossible to determine exactly what. So what makes medications effective? What makes some people with schizophrenia successful at dealing with their symptoms, while others are not so successful? I say it is the same thing that causes us to do a flip off the diving board, and the same thing which causes water to suck up and spit out heat: a spontaneous occurrence, a culmination of realizations of scientific truths and efforts made by our friends and other people. It is a real, rock-hard experience of our world, including both medications and absence of them. Spontaneous occurrences require more than just some mythical objective reality outside of our minds. If Michael Faraday didn't actually try expanding then contracting a liquid, the refrigerator would never have been invented. Similarly, if people with schizophrenia don't actively try to control their symptoms, medications will do no good and may actually hurt.

I think it really is dangerous to get in a situation where you think drugs are the reason for your well-being, no matter what those drugs are. Even if you're just taking antibiotics. First of all, diseases will come along no matter what drugs you're on, second of all, many diseases will not be cured no matter what you do, and third of all, there are a great many factors which contribute to a disease or lack of one (not just chemicals and drugs), and many of these factors are mental. For example, if you exercise and maintain a happy, healthy state of mind, you are less likely to get diseases, antibiotics or no. Why should schizophrenia be any different?

I know that mental health professionals, in general, wish for the best. But one of the more pernicious attitudes of mental health professionals is arrogance. It is pernicious because they don't even realize they're doing it. They try to convince people, "You have a mental illness and there's nothing you can do about it, and the things you think are false while the things I think are true." It breaks my heart when I see someone say, "Yesterday I time-traveled to combat my evil twin but someone scratched my brain. However, THIS IS JUST MY DELUSION." That person doesn't believe it's just their delusion; they are just sycophantically sucking up to their mental health professionals. So now they have two problems: schizophrenia, and sycophancy. I say, if you honestly believe you can time-travel, more power to you. It's your experience, not mine, so why is it my business?

Solving the problem of symptoms is a spontaneous marriage of all the right elements, which often indeed include medications. It is like solving any problem: you get an "aha" moment, and then you are able to solve the problem. If we can learn to put out the appropriate effort, guided by our experience and mindfulness, we can solve our problems—schizophrenia included. This is how problems are solved. You don't solve problems by just taking medications.