Right or Wrong? The most complicated of all questions.

[notomorrowtoday]

For the people who have had great struggles in their mid-lives, after 5-10 years do you feel that it helped you? Also, if you had to take medication, do you feel that that helped you?
The question relates to my mother, who I see now as far stronger than ever(having life threatening mental stress and taking medication for probably the best/worst of one year(medication alone), which happened 7 years ago). I still feel it is better to run away from inevitable problems than to fight them and become almost destroyed, what do you think, or what did happen to you?
i have had no life threatenting problems as my mother has(I cannot find any wood to touch, which scares me), so i cannot truely judge or understand but i am extremely eager to hear others struggles and triumphs, and failures.
I do talk to her about it to show her that i do not consider it as something that did affect me, but i want to help/understand her more, even though she is far more life wise than me, i believe as a result of her struggles.

i understand that there are others that could not recuperate and i bet, what ever i can imagine and more there is a person out there to show it, but please tell me your experiences, recoveries, failures and triumphs. I dont really know if i wanted to ask a question or explain myself (i only respect being reall so have to try to be it myself) but i REALLY do want to hear responses either way, so please talk to me, the internet is a great place to say things you do not want to say, just as i have seriously just learnt.

do you think im wrong in saying that people care too much for their lives, worry too much that is?....for myself, i want to experience it all, pain, happiness, numbness, is it not just society that cares and us that follow, may sound like coming from a teenager but the more you know about the way the world works the more you realize how fake it is and it eats you and rips you aprt

 

[Apotheosis]

Hi, & welcome to the site; thanks for the post. You raise some interesting points.

These things, to my understanding, are highly individual & complex. Everyone is different in some ways.

My own story - at 17 I suffered a very severe psychosis, sectioned for 4 months & heavily drugged. Was that the best reaction to my state? I don't think it was. It was treatment against my will, & I think that the way I was reacted to made my problems worse; a lot worse. That time I left hospital & came off all meds, & tried a med free recovery alone. At 21 I was in psych hospital again, & back on drugs, discharged - & came off all meds again. That pattern repeated. Eventually I couldn't get off the drugs that they kept putting/forcing me on.

I think that there should be choice. Fair enough if people find meds helpful. What about those that want to try med free recoveries, & don't find meds that helpful? What about those that are willing to try alternative methods of recovery; such as depth psychology & working through their difficulties in far more holistic ways? They don't have much of a choice, if any choice at all - the system operates on meds & nothings - & that is very wrong as far as I am concerned.

Granted that many embrace the bio-medical model, & say that they find meds helpful. Even in their cases, would not more comprehensive social support, & psychological help still be of benefit?

At it's core - orthodox psychiatry & the bio-medical model is totally incompatible with any genuine & deep recovery - it is incapable of either seeing these issues in any genuinely therapeutic way, or seeing any healing potential or mechanism. It pathologises everything. Is that 'right'? ~ for me, it is one of the severest injustices in the world today.

I firmly think that had I been given some kind of opportunity for a fuller recovery; that I could have made much better progress, & maybe not be dependant on meds today.

I used to use alcohol & street drugs; (11-28) from the age of 17; I knew that it was a problem, & I wanted to stop the drugs, & do something to address these issues. Again ~ where is the help? There is very little. It took until I was 28 to start to address the addiction issues, & get clean, & I might add, with no help from any orthodox services - they didn't help with any of those issues.

What is the result of 17 years of active addiction, 20 years of MH issues, & living in 'Western Civilisation'? - Social isolation & exclusion, drug (medication) dependency, & no proper psychological help or social support.

As I said; I think that things are highly complex. As time has gone on, I don't see the things that I have been through as having singular or simple causes; there are social, inter-personal, biological, emotional, psychological, & spiritual factors in all this, as well as issues around trauma, & stress.

As time has gone on; I have had to separate out as much as possible; all of these multiple issues & factors.

From the perspective of my own life; leaving aside social assumptions & expectations. Measured from where I have come from & what I have been through - then my life is an immense success - 8 years in recovery from addiction/alcoholism, living independently, on a very low dose of one med, with one of the most severe mental health conditions that you can be labelled with. I live a reasonably full life, all things considered. & I do very well.

From societies perspective however ~ I am a leper.

I have had to get some kind of acceptance over the way things are, & over things that I can do nothing about. Lest I be consumed with anger over the injustices of it all. I have to continue to work through my resentments, & anger at how things have been, & with how I have been treated. & I have a lot more acceptance today than I ever have had. I have had to get acceptance around the way the psychiatric system & society operates, & accept that I have been made dependant on a med.

None of this is easy - some days I feel overwhelmed by it all - & see psychiatry, society, general attitudes, the general treatment of the 'mentally ill', & the way things are; for what they are - a steaming pile of shit.

 

[jamesdean]

I have to say apotheosis you summed it all up beautifully "a pile of shit" I'm actually going to make acomplaint to the ombudsmen now just quite honestly because of this pile of shit,see if someone else might be interseted because I have been sat in recovery for around two years n I seen a video by one of thecommisoners who buy these mh services saying how they want to get people into recovery, I'm sorry that I dont know how to do the next thing I would love it tojust be able to go yeah dealt with. Fuck um!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[Apotheosis]

It makes me laugh all this new emphasis on recovery from orthodox services. The bio-medical orthodox psychiatric model is, to my understanding; incompatible with genuine recovery.

Yes, fuck em.