Commentary on what’s now known as “The Gilbert 23.”

I was with my friend today and we were discussing how to deal with mosquitoes. I told him I couldn’t bear to put up paper that would trap these creatures, because they’d go through the worst torturous death. I don’t have any real desire to kill them, only to send them the message to not bite me nor bother me with their whining. I might get pissed and think of killing one when I hear that “Waaaaaah,” but for whatever reason, I don’t have the heart to do so.

I came home and learned this: Twenty-three dogs died in an Arizona boarding kennel. From what I read in the reports, I see that the dogs were crowded into a hot, outdoor pen, confined, and deprived of food and water. At first, 20 died, two more died later I guess, and another escaped but was found dead. The kennel owners tried to cover it all up. They got caught. I have no clue why then, they ended up escaping the law. Now, a petition has come out. Thousands have signed.

I cried when I heard this, in fact, I bawled. I thought of the torture those dogs went through. I thought of the owners of those 23 dogs. Whether they were families with children, elderly folks, couples, or single people, they all loved their pets and most likely never imagined something like this could happen.

I am reminded of the Holocaust for whatever reason. The victims were confined and deprived of basic needs such as food and water. Many asked, “What god would allow this to happen?”

What god would allow the genocide of people with “mental illness” labels? What god would allow mass imprisonment, scorn and hatred, bloody massacres of those with labels by police, and atrocities such as theft of dignity, forced treatment/brainwashing, drugs they dare to call “medications,” and a multiplicity of other tortures?

Where are the tears for these thousands, or millions of human beings? Where’s the outrage over ruined lives, divided families, destroyed careers, homelessness, poverty, unemployment, crime, suicide, and addiction caused by “mental health care”?

It happens to your neighbor, your cousin, you best friend. Why are we standing by watching? Even cheering as another becomes victim of “treatment”?

As humans who are supposedly granted the power to reason, we now know there are no bad dogs. If a dog is aggressive, we hope an experienced handler with the best of intentions will show that dog that the world isn’t so scary and mean after all.

There are no canine psychopaths. As for humans, there are no psychopaths among us. We have a psychopathic system, with the medical regime coupled hand-in-hand with the law, all based on corporate greed.

I hope we can all work to halt the genocide. I think it’s an outrage.

Yes, “light therapy” works! Better than any pill!

I got this in my e-mail. I know people who have used “light boxes” and they say it really helps.

The change to daylight saving time in the fall confirms what many of us have been noticing for the last few months – our days are getting shorter, wetter and colder. For some of us with Seasonal Affective Disorder or SAD this is a very tough time of the year.

If we have SAD or the milder version called the Winter Blues, our energy level has begun to diminish, our mood is lower and that grey cloud outside might seem to follow us everywhere we go. As we get less exposure to sunlight our risk of depression increases. This biological process is amplified by our holiday preparations, shopping, financial concerns, family relationship issues and the like.

What can we do to counter the effects of SAD and the related year-end holiday issues? The good news is that there is much you can do to alleviate this problem.

Light Therapy is very effective for treating SAD and the Winter Blues. It helps 70 to 80% of the people who use it – more than for just about anything else you can do to treat depression.

What is Light Therapy? It’s getting exposure to light that is as bright as sunlight, early in the day usually with the help of a Light Therapy “Box” (appliance).

To use light therapy you put a light box off to the side or above you while you read or work on your computer. The light shines on your face – you don’t look directly at it. You do this for about 30 minutes first thing in the morning and it can really perk you up – usually in a few days to a couple of weeks.

While this works well for people with Major Depressive Disorder, if you have Bipolar Disorder or any eye problems you should check with your doctor first. Light Therapy, like antidepressants, can trigger mania, hypomania or mixed states in people with Bipolar Disorder. Likewise, light therapy can create problems for people who have eye issues.

NOTE FROM ME: I don’t believe in SAD. I think everyone slows down in winter. We’re supposed to! It comes from evolution. We need  to conserve energy because it’s cold out. Some gain weight in winter. Guess why? Because your body wants to be warm. You slow down because your body needs to conserve energy to keep itself warm and working efficiently. I do know that some are more affected by light changes than others. But why call this a disorder? There’s nothing “disordered” about it.

I do light therapy myself. I reduce light a few hours before bedtime. I use a minimal amount of artificial light at night. I wear amber glasses to block out blue light if I have to use artificial light. I even use candlelight rather than an artificial light that has more blue light in it.

I sleep much better and this “cure” has worked better than any sleeping pill I’ve ever taken.

It’s all about retraining your body to know, “It’s time to sleep.” We spend so much time in artificial light and this confuses our bodies into thinking they should stay awake. You can get programmed all wrong and end up rather frustrated, going from doctor to doctor and trying cures that cause more harm than good.

I know when it all started. It was triggered by abuse. I went to a “hospital” to get help for trauma I’d experienced in another hospital. But with all the artificial light and no sunlight at all during the day, my body got rather messed up with its schedule. What followed was over three years of the worst case of insomnia I’ve ever heard of.

My shrink terrorized me, calling me manic when I wasn’t. She tried one pill after another and none worked. She had stopped listening and I asked myself what the  heck was going on with her.

Now, I get plenty of sunlight during the day. I mean going right out into the sun. In the Northern Hemisphere, even in winter, the sun shines just fine. The snow will amplify sunlight and you can even get a sunburn in winter. Keep your eyes open cuz that’s how your body knows, “It’s time to be awake.”

Do expect to be feeling a little less energy in winter, the blues, or even feeling downright depressed. Guess what? You are human.

Alcott revisited

I remember my first time at Alcott. I remember a staff person came into my room one day and asked me how things were going. All at once, I burst into tears, saying, “I hate those kids.” She was rather shocked, and asked me why. I told her, “Because all they do is gossip. They gather in clusters and whisper like a bunch of junior high kids. I am old enough to be their mother or grandmother and I don’t belong here. This place is for children and I am not one.”

After a time, the staff recognized that what the kids were doing was harmful to those that were left out of the childish gossip and whispering. They got us all together, and asked the whisperers to stop.

The kids didn’t stop. The staff did the same thing again, another lecture. This time, they said if the cruel gossip didn’t stop, they’d listen on to all our conversations and monitor us.

This is a chronic problem wherever immature teens are gathered. It’s my understanding that the problem persists to this day at Alcott and was never solved.  I know other older people who have been sent to Alcott who tell me the same thing, that some kids are okay, but many are  cruel. They leave certain patients out of their childish clique, and those left out are targets of gossip.  Older patients have told me they were called “Grandma” and laughed at.

I have no clue why I ended up being friends with any of those kids outside of Alcott. But I had it in my head that since they also had eating disorders, maybe it would be okay to be in a “group” with them on Facebook. Didn’t we have something in common? I felt that since I had no family of my own, I would think of them as family. This was a big major mistake on my part to think that any of them had grown up.

Nothing was any different. The gossip is just as cruel outside as in. If not, worse, because the Facebook venue encourages cruelty.

I do have friends who have a history of being in mental places, just like me.  Sure we “compare notes.” Who wouldn’t?  We might recommend a particular place or recommend against it, or discuss various ways to deal with certain problems, such as “the holidays.”  In my note-comparing, I’ve heard all sorts of stories from people.

Here’s one: I’ve had friends, a number of people I know, who complained that a doctor “diagnosed” them based on talking to them for five  minutes. They said it was demeaning. They said, “How can this person declare I am [bipolar, or whatever] if this person is barely listening? I felt insulted.”

I wonder, though. It seems the immature kids I met online who were at Alcott seem to do just the same thing as a form of cruel gossip. These are kids I don’t know, have never corresponded with nor spoken to nor messaged with.  They are so mean that they decided to “diagnose” me based on one Facebook post. They are gossipy and cagey about it. They think they are so hip and cool to use shrink terminology. I’m not impressed at all. I know better than to “diagnose” anyone, cuz I know just how harmful diagnosis is.

Of course, all kids go through their “pretend shrink” phase. I went through it briefly in high school but decided that game wasn’t for me.

The cruel gossip goes on and on. I think those kids, if they love their “treatment” so much, should go right back to Alcott and continue their petty social life there. After all, that’s the main reason most continue to get readmitted. I think it would make them happy for all the pals to be together. Don’t they say they miss each other so much?

Those kids have all the Alcott patients as Facebook friends. In fact, the only friends they have are former Alcott patients. Ever notice how they keep ending up back there? They just won’t grow up.  If they want in-person contact, all they have to do is make themselves sick, and get admitted. Then, of course, it’s party time all over again.

I wish I never had been put there. But then again, going to Alcott made me realize just how NOT to go about things. I learned how NOT to get well. I learned that this is a place where reasonable adults pick up childish habits, and become immature themselves. The bad habits are hard to shake. Meanwhile, while these kids have great fun together gossiping away, the Walden money-making racket milks their insurance dry. Very few seem aware of the larger picture.

I don’t blame the staff for being frustrated, nor do I blame the more mature patients for being totally disgusted. Forced care doesn’t work, and never will. In fact, if it’s forced, it’s not care.

Example of typical bullying

I know others in the Movement have gotten trolls. This one is typical of the kind of shit I get. Personal attacks:

Sharon:

“You say that your mother has dementia… and then you say that all psych labeling is harmful. Which is it?

When will you become demented? The best place for you will be a facility for the elderly, right?

Are you actually getting money from your family while complaining that they are terrible and have “abandoned” you? You could absolutely get a job bagging groceries in Watertown. Or working at a gas station as a cashier. You choose not to. You actually think low-level jobs are beneath you! LOL! YOU refuse to work. You’re a dishonest freeloader.

You’re fooling yourself if you think that anyone in real life–yes, even in Uruguay–finds you respectable.

You are delusional in being proud of SELF-PUBLISHING your writing. You are unaccomplished.
You are a drain on the system. You USER. You used so many services that truly mentally ill, suffering, honest people could have received and been helped by.”

***

This is the typical attitude. I wonder who “Sharon” really is. It really could be anyone, some asshole on Facebook who has never met me…Clearly this attitude is typical of those wishing to discredit everything i say and invalidate my experience. Anyway, posts like this are reflective of ignorance. The IP address this person is writing from is in France, but I bet it’s a fake IP.

Dementia isn’t a psych label, it’s neurological, meaning that the person’s brain cells have deteriorated, and can be seen on a scientific test done by a neurologist. It’s not a psychiatric condition, even though psychiatry insists on “treating” it.

Actually, the best place for people who have dementia is with their families. Those facilities for the elderly are  a huge money-making racket. It breaks my heart that my mom has to live the rest of her days behind locked doors.  I’d take care of my mom myself if I dared to go back to the USA.

Money isn’t love. My brother lived an hour’s drive away and refused to see me for decades. I was left out of family gatherings such as graduations and holidays. My other brother rarely saw me even though I knew he’d came to Boston and spent days there.  I spent every birthday alone. If that’s not being abandoned by your brothers, I don’t know what is.

I self-published my first book but my second was published by a publisher who publishes only a small percentage of the manuscripts that are sent to him.

I think the folks here in Uruguay can speak for themselves and this “Sharon” really has no clue. Has he/she ever been here? Doubtful.

He/she quoted my brother, saying I’m a “drain on the system.”  Was he/she even aware that these were his exact words to me?

So which is it? So-called “mentally ill” or not? This “Sharon,” in his/her last paragraph, states that I am not mentally ill but others are.   He/she also stated I was “delusional.” So which is it?

This is typical of the bullying I get online.

I can hardly wait to read this one to my REAL friends, cuz they’re gonna laugh their butts off.

 

Psych labeling is ALWAYS harmful

So the stupid idiotic conversation continues. By friends of my friend, who probably has no clue it’s happening. I was accused of “Cluster B.” Oh wow, another diagnosis I guess. Someone trying to sound cool and hip.  When really, I’ve never met this person nor spoken to her on the phone or online and she’s not a Facebook friend. That’s how fast people are giving out diagnoses these days. I highly doubt my friend sees me as “sick” at all.

So this is getting extreme. I’ve posted the following:

“We don’t need any more online shrinks. No matter how much you claim to know, to give someone a psych diagnosis, no matter how fancy, is extremely harmful. To diagnose online without even having a face-to-face conversation with that person, or simply judging based on rumors or a person’s “online presence” is extremely unprofessional and harmful. It reflects gross ignorance.”

Then, I posted this:

“I am a person who was harmed by psychiatric diagnosis. Many times, a person might casually label a person with a psych diagnosis without realizing it. However, these remarks are usually done as a way of being dismissive or cruel, or to get away with bad behavior. Ever notice that? Say you go to your boss to complain about unsanitary working conditions. What if your boss said, “You’re just oversensitive.” The boss is excusing his negligence. What if, at the doctor’s, the nurse takes your blood pressure and makes a rude remark about your weight. What if you complained to the doctor and in response he said, “Aren’t you bit paranoid? My nurse is always polite. That couldn’t have happened.” He has, in effect, called you incompetent when in fact, he needs to straighten out his employees. If you see it this way, you realize all psychiatric diagnoses are harmful.”

And this:

“At first, my parents loved when the doctor said, “Julie has bipolar disorder.” I remember their response clearly. My mom threw her hands in the air and said, “Yay!” They’d read about these “brain diseases” and now they were happy because the doctor, in one DIAGNOSIS, told them that if I was sad or moody, it couldn’t possibly have anything to do with childhood abuse from a non-family member that happened to me right under their noses. No, it was my faulty brain. I bought into the diagnosis, too. My dad is now dead and my mom has dementia. I suppose they never figured out that maybe they should have stepped in and stopped the abuse instead of encouraging it. Maybe realizing this would have been too painful for them. (PS: It doesn’t harm me to discuss this nor am I “upset” nor “falling apart” just to mention it. Hardly. Just trying to make a point.)”

I’m totally sick of it all.

Why hack? If a site is that “bad,” why not go through the courts to have it taken down?

Because they’re cowards.

If you don’t like a site, tough. If a site does something illegal, such as copyright infringement, THEN why not go through legal means to have the site taken down?

There are plenty of newpaper articles that I might not like. I stop reading them. Ir I write a comment on the article or a letter to the Editor.  If I am at the gym and the TV up above the treadmills is showing something grossly offensive (such as condoning violence to women) then I might suggest to the gym owner to change the channel. Or if it’s an individual TV, turn the damn thing off myself. There are preachers who preach offensive stuff and politicians who make blunders.

There’s nothing wrong with talking about your personal experience. I am me and you are you. If this is my experience and I am writing honestly, what I am doing is within the law. I won’t stop blowing the whistle and what I say is legal because it’s my own experience. This is a person al blog, not a money making racket. I’m not selling snake oil. So lay off.

I believe since this has occurred someone must feel threatened by me. How cool.  You do wrong, someone’s gonna talk. You can’t stop that blogger legally so you resort to hacking. It’s just plain immature. If I had been lying, you’d have gone through legal means by now. But you can’t.

All that residual bullying is ALL from the USA.

I’ve asked myself why this happens. A handful of others in the Movement have told me that they, too, get trolls and bullying. What’s going on here?

A friend of mine (okay, I’ve never met him) says that people are doing this to me because my existence challenges their core beliefs. They feel frightened that a person would stop “treatment” and then end up better off. They are scared because they’ve been inundated with lies and they cling to their “treatment” cuz it’s all they’ve got.

Of course, he’s right. That’s all I had, too. My whole world was therapy, groups, one crisis after another, taking pills, and going to appointments. I’d end up in hospitals all the time and wonder why.

I see others in this situation. Going back again and again to their beloved hospitals. It’s in these hospitals where they find community. Maybe they don’t have any other place to go to be loved.

A “staff talk” isn’t love.  Someday, those kids will realize this. Someday, they’ll realize that you don’t get better behind locked doors. You’ll never find peace with yourself or your body if it’s forced on you.

Imagine being forced to go to a yoga class and hating it. It’s not gonna provide much benefit then, right? Cuz it’s forced. Food tastes terrible while every bite you eat has to get approval from staff. You don’t learn to eat that way.

You learn if you have to to survive. As if your life depended on it. Cuz take away the rescuers, and you’ll find that you rescue yourself far better than “staff” ever did.

Do you really want a life of group after group? Do you want a life of endless appointments? That means no chance of employment, going to school, or having real friends. Cuz all your pals are treatment pals or “staff,” and staff are paid to be nice to you. Or not so nice.

I know it’s very hard to hear what I am saying. Twenty years ago I would have told 56-year-old me that she didn’t know what she was talking about. I would have gotten mad, or even hurt.  I would have tried to convince 56-year-old me, who now knows better, that I had a permanent disabling disorder and I’d die without psychiatric medications and “therapy.” I had a therapist tell me the same thing, “Without treatment, you’ll die.” In fact, I remember quoting her here in my blog. That must have been 2009.

She was one of the decent therapists. However she happened to be wrong on that one. Just cuz someone is nice doesn’t mean they are always right.

Take that leap. Do it. Believe in possibility.

What a mean thing to say to a person….

I posted the following on my friend’s timeline:

“Hello [name withheld], this is my Christmas gift to you. I guess you don’t want to be friends anymore. I thought I was gonna fall apart over it but I guess I respect you too much to do so. Recently I realized that just cuz someone doesn’t want to be friends doesn’t mean it’s a disaster. Nor does it mean that person was never my friend. In fact, I value our time together very much. Even though you chose to not speak to me anymore. I suppose I will never learn the reason. I guess you decided you had no interest in staying friends and that was that. Some folks do that all the time, make a switcheroo just to change things up a bit. I respect whichever you choose. Julie and Puzzle”

I posted this on my friend’s timeline rather than in a private message because I believe in transparancy. In an entirely separate situation I had a horrible experience recently with private messaging. I even asked the person to call me (I have a USA number) and this was refused. You say one wrong thing in a PM and you’ve blown it for good. I hate stupid arguments. If you say it publicly, you’ve got accountability.

Meanwhile, my friend contacted me and said to call me, that she in fact had no intentions of ending our relationship. We spoke for a while yesterday. We get along fine and there’s never been any problem between us. I’d say she ran into a bit of misfortune recently, the kind of bad luck that can happen to anyone. So she’s been busy with that.

So today I made the mistake of going on  Facebook. I saw this on my friend’s timeline under what I wrote, written by a complete stranger:

“Friends with [name withheld], What a horrible thing to post a person’s time line!”

Yep, this person, who doesn’t even know me and has never spoken to me, drew attention to my post, that is, tagged all my friend’s friends and said that about me. I have never met this woman and I’m sure I never will.

Dang. Why did I go on Facebook? Why do I even bother? I go on for a few secs and already I get insulted.

I ain’t saying nothing to that friend of my friend. Nothing. You don’t argue with someone who says something that mean. I suppose my friend’s friends can think what they want. I’ve stopped caring.

 

 

 

 

 

Drug company payoffs

Oh, I can’t resist. Bravo to ProPublica for exposing the assholes getting rich just by prescribing drugs. I am so tempted to look up every single doctor I ever saw. ProPublica has expanded their list and now there are lots more listings. Take a look:

http://projects.propublica.org/docdollars/

Your own doctor may not be listed, but look for the hospital where he/she works. Also, if he/she has worked on research projects or published papers, do a search on the other doctors involved in the study or the papers.

Look up Massachusetts General Hospital. Funded by AstraZeneca and Pfizer. Your tax dollars fund Medicare and Medicaid. Do you really want your tax dollars funding Mass General, a place that is bribed to prescribe Seroquel and Zyprexa? All their research is biased and you can’t believe any of it. Dr. Pearson worked with a group of psychiatrists to “prove” that various psych meds were “safe” to take during pregnancy. I would highly distrust this study since most likely it was in fact drug company funded. No wonder MGH is sparkly clean. All that drug company money helps them to keep the place looking pleasing to people. Oh no, they couldn’t possibly be a criminal racket.  And because of this, babies are damaged and women die. Oh, but they didn’t matter, did they?  What’s the loss of human life anyway? Money and reputation matter more.

Now that I see how much MGH was funded by AstraZeneca, it kinda explains why Dr. Pearson was so insistent that I was “happy” on Seroquel. Was she blind and deaf? Maybe the dollar signs were blocking her eyesight. I remember her asking leading questions and whenever I said I was doing okay or well while on Seroquel, she’d write that down. If I complained, she wouldn’t write it down, but tell me this was a “symptom” or was my imagination.

I guess the scale doesn’t lie, eh? The scale provides measurable data. Your doctor sure doesn’t.

“The weight gain is fine and you look okay. You need to accept your body.”

At nearly 200 pounds? I’m only five foot one….

She told me to diet and exercise. Okay, blame the patient for the drug reaction. I’ll never forget when she said that.

“You only feel fat.” No, the scale said I was overweight. The max (according to the charts) for someone my height is 132. How is being at 200 “just a feeling”?

She tried to push me onto Latuda in 2013. Why? I never had schiz. So that would have been off-label. Off label prescribing is legal in the USA. Wikipedia states the following: “Up to one-fifth of all drugs are prescribed off-label and amongst psychiatric drugs, off-label use rises to 31%.“

Even Wikipedia tells us that drug companies do their own (biased) studies searching for more off-label uses for their drugs. Sell more, make more profit.

The newer antipsychotics are not any safer than the older ones. The difference is bucks. Guess who profits from your drugs?

A year of Risperdal, according to the drug company, “Will cost the patient less than $3,000 a year.” Well? Who pays? Medicare Part D, Medicaid, and other public drug assistance is funded by YOUR TAX DOLLARS. So taxpayers are paying to shorten innocent people’s lives and keep them sick. Do you really want to pay for this? Risperdal causes violent behavior.

Do you know some better uses for $3,000? That will pay a deposit on an apartment. It’ll pay back school loan debt or pay just to get a homeless person off the street. Guess how many families can be fed on $3,000? It’ll pay for more than lentils and beans. That $3,000 could go toward paying for food stamps instead of for drugging people. Imagine that. Less starvation, happier people. That was about 1/3 of what I got in a year from the US of A government, who paid me to stay sick.

So I looked up the masterminder at Mount Auburn Hospital who ordered that I be abused. Of course, Pearson had talked to him (according to my records, but most likely it was only traded voicemails). This was the hospitalist Bibek Kiorala, who was taken to rather expensive lunches a few times by the drug company reps.

Know how I used to say the director of Walden sold out? He, too, took bribes from Pfizer and Astra Zeneca. Nice expensive lunches. Do you think I am surprised? I guess he abandoned his nutritional approach in favor of forced “care” and coverup. Very sad.

Go ahead, if you dare. Look up that doctor you worship so much, and look up his/her “hospital” to see what a profitmaking racket the USA healthcare has turned into.

I suppose I shouldn’t blog so much

Cuz the more I blog, the more I get cyberbullied. It’s tiring. I wonder why they do it. I know famous people get bullied by hired people to perhaps try to drive them to suicide. I suppose we’ll never know if famous people who suicided were in fact cyberbullied to death. However, lately the bullies have laid off. I guess they are giving up cuz I am not dead yet. They’re not particularly smart. I’ve mentioned this to others who get bullied online because they speak out. It wears on you, but really, if you are being cyberbullied just ignore it and don’t let them stop you from doing all the wonderful things you do.