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.

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.

Principles of Openness

A while ago I did some philosophical grunt work trying to nail down what it means to be "open" in the style of Occupy, open source software, the Internet, etc. Here's a paraphrase:

Everything should be open. Including all societies, groups, corporations, governments, etc.

What does it mean to be open?

• No undue extensions of authority
• Everyone has a chance to participate
• Nothing of substance is secret

What is an "undue extension of authority?" Any authority which violates the principles of open authority. Here are those principles:

• Either the authority must change,
• or the people in authority must change.
• And when a change is made, the choice must not be limited in any way.

What does this mean? It means that if you create a position of authority, like say, logo designer, it must be a temporary position. If it is an office like the presidency, not a temporary position but permanent, the person who fulfills that office must change. There must be some kind of formal mechanism for ensuring that change does occur when needed, for instance term limits, or votes of no confidence, etc.

In substance, if someone wants to be in a position of authority, that person must be allowed a reasonable pathway to do so. If the position of authority rules out anyone arbitrarily, that is an undue extension of authority and violates the principles of openness.

What does this rule out? It rules out monarchy, because the person in authority (i.e. the president) does not change frequently. Rather, he's allowed to serve for as long as he wants without any change.

It also rules out nepotism or the "revolving door" for congresspeople, because when a congressperson is hired as a lobbyist in return for policies of deregulation, for instance, that position of lobbyist is not open to anyone—it is offered specifically to the congressperson. Ideally, the position of lobbyist should be open to any person or group, so that all people get their voices heard in congress.

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.

Conventionally Ultimate

Edit: This experience has actually happened to me. Every two weeks, on the dot, I experienced extremely ultimate physical pain while I slept, beginning at my incarceration in the mental hospital, and lasting several months. Eventually it faded, but there is no possible way in human existence to experience more physical pain. It was as though every nerve ending of my body which had the capability of feeling pain was fed overwhelming supplies of the molecule responsible for pain. The dreams only reemerged once, recently. In the recent case, I was on a reality television show, and the pain was accompanied by the words "Medication Alert" on the screen. I felt the pain coming on, and the usual hopeless inevitability, but this time, I was saved by the unexpected presence of a Dharma teaching. Please be human. Please oppose psychiatry.

Question: Is there such a thing as ultimate pain?

Answer: Yes, I think so — in a sense. Pain is a concept like everything else, and thus can exist in pure form in an entropic environment.

Question: What about in another universal formation that allows for more of similar elements?

Answer: Yes, that too would be ultimate. They're both ultimate in relation to their constructs.

Student: It's like for one man something is ultimate, while for another man something else is ultimate.

Answer(er): Yes, sort of. Except, concepts only make sense in regards to their universal formations, so the idea of "ultimate" is really the same in both cases — there is no hierarchy.