Letting Go: Of Psychiatric Medications

This week, I write as inspired by a blog post I read by James Edgar Skye @ The Bipolar Collaborative Mental Health Blog (apologies for the lack of tech savvy to link to the blog here). The question posed was “To Be or Not To Be Medicine Free.” This question, and the conversation it created made me think of my own journey with psychiatric medications, one I’ve been on for the last 30 years.

At age fourteen, I began experiencing severe insomnia and symptoms of depression, and was scared of what was happening to me. I didn’t want to eat, I couldn’t sleep through the night, I was a mess, and the psychiatrist I was taken to not only seemed to have compassion for my situation but seemed to know what to do to help me. She put me on medication, and shortly thereafter, my symptoms did sort of magically resolve. I suddenly seemed to want to eat again, and life, people and my mother’s grief didn’t seem to bother me too much anymore. I guessed that this was what it was to be “happy” and “normal” and that my brain just was born with an imbalance I would need to correct to be able to feel this way. I was grateful at the time.

Also shortly thereafter, I met my first boyfriend who strongly suggested to me that I didn’t need these medications, that the story that there was something wrong with my brain was a lie. At that young age and madly in love, I went with his suggestion and started coming off the meds. However, he was far from being medicine free, if we count heavy use of marijuana and alcohol, and I quickly substituted these medicines for the pharmaceutical ones. This seemed to work brilliantly…until he was killed.

I was in the relationship with him just long enough to have most of the medication taper off in my system, so when this happened, it was really not the best timing! I was unimagineably vulnerable and quaking from the emptiness I felt at this loss. Marijuana and alcohol couldn’t touch this pain, and I began experiencing symptoms again, including wanting to die.

This of course, landed me in my first psychiatric facility, where I was again placed on meds to deal with the overwhelming rushes of emotion and life experience I was going through. Yet like marijuana and alcohol, the medications couldn’t even attempt to help me through this pain, and I spiraled even deeper down into depression.

Enter in psych facility number two, where I was now someone with an eating disorder, not just depression, and that complicated my medication needs. While in this facility, all sorts of cocktails were administered, trying to help me get to “normal.” All sorts of iatrogenic illness were experienced as a result of this testing, but eventually Prozac was the one that seemed to be the magic pill. It did seem to help, but over and over again I found myself spiraling into the depths, where medication could not help me, and only where inpatient treatment seemed to.

I went through this cycle over and over again and eventually almost died…this experience woke me up to “really wanting to get better,” which looked like taking my meds and enrolling myself in schooling to become a therapist. Having a goal seemed to help me stay stable, strangely, and I had much hope in me. Shortly thereafter I began dating another man, and I hid the fact that I was on medication from him, not sure what he would think, fearing he may try to talk me out of it like my previous boyfriend had. This medication seemed to have saved my life, and I wasn’t about to let anyone get in the way of that. Yet one day whilst foolin’ around, I remember him putting his hand in my back pocket where for some reason I had my little blue and white pill for the day. He pulled it out and looked in shock at it. I remember feeling so many confused feelings–shame for needing to be on meds, fear that he’d think I was only capable of relating while medicated, and also fiercely protective of what the meds seemed to have done for my life. We were luckily able to have a deep heart-to-heart that day, and I was able to voice my need for this assistance. He was not thrilled, but wanted to fully support me and he did not try to persuade me.

Fast forward to five years into our relationship, where I had begun Master’s level training in transpersonal psychology and was being introduced to some pretty radical ideas. One of which was the concept that there was nothing wrong with me! In my exposure to these ideas, as well as some shamanic communities I was involved in, I began learning about how incredibly common it was to experience not only severe traumas/upbringing but also psychiatric symptoms as initiation into becoming a healer. Again, I was incredibly bonded to the idea that this medication I was taking had saved my life, but these people and ideas began a whole new course of self-examination for me. They made me wonder about my need for medication, at how it may have been very necessary for me at one time, but that it may not be necessary now. Talk of “building necessary emotional strength” and the ability to tolerate vast fluctuations that may be experienced by a sensitive person on this planet…made me wonder if I may indeed be ready to not have to need this medication anymore.

I did decide to experiment with that idea. That there was nothing wrong with me, that I was just incredibly sensitive and that my symptoms were sacred. That I could learn to learn from and grow with them. I quit taking the meds, and I also quit drinking alcohol, caffeine, smoking pot. I wanted to feel, for the first time in a long time, what it felt like to be completely “me,” and whether I could weather the storms that may result from being me. Shortly after making this decision I realized I wasn’t happy in the relationship I was in with this person, nor the job or home I was living in. I chose to see this unhappiness as a sign that something needed to change, not that something was terribly wrong with me. I chose to honor the symptoms.

I left him. I moved. I immersed myself in shamanic teachings. It was incredibly nourishing to be using these previously shame-based symptoms as my friend, my guides. I, of course, had a tight community and teachers to show me how to do this, which I am grateful. With their support, the experience of trusting and letting myself go through the wide intensity of things I was feeling, this experience had a home that was valued and where it could be talked about in a way that supported my value in the world, just as I was.

I started receiving dreams and visions to leave my job and life behind, to travel and “vision quest” to find my next step in life. Again I was incredibly buoyed by my community to explore this as a strong possibility, that somehow something larger than myself was guiding me. I decided to do it, and found myself moving to the jungles of Hawaii where I would have the chance to see if my beliefs and new way of being really could stand up in a place where I didn’t have such strong support.

I want to tell you that it did. I want to tell you that my urgings and dreams and self-guidance led me to green fields and rainbows, but the truth is it didn’t. Where I was “led” was deep into the caverns of my shadow, to the source of my depression, into a nihilistic daemonic energy at my core. I began feeling hate for my species, began losing my appetite, became homeless, jobless, and hopeless. I was crushed by feelings of being let down, disillusioned, abandoned by this “larger force” that I had felt was guiding me.

Yet, for some reason, I wanted to continue the experiment, to believe that I didn’t need medication. For some reason I wanted to keep believing, no matter what, that there was nothing wrong with me, and that maybe, just maybe I WAS being guided, into deeper and deeper layers of learning about my sacred journey and sacred contribution on the planet, that I was going through an intense initiation. I wrestled with this pessimistic, suicidal, existentialist, nihilist energy inside of me to hold that positive idea strongly. I began learning what it was like to “hold the tension between the opposites”, allowing for both the optimistic, self-supportive part of me to thrive next to the one that cursed all that existed. I moved many times, slept on couches, existed marginally in retreat center volunteer positions, trying, hoping, holding this light up for myself. I almost gave up many times under the weight of the intensity of unexplainable despair, nausea, insanity that would come over me. Often, I wondered if I was crazy, just rationalizing, whether I was putting myself through a tormented illusion where if I were to just take meds life would be so much easier. But I couldn’t. Partially because I had spent so much time in the experiment, believing in the possible sacredness to give up now. But partially due to something I cannot explain. Somehow, I kept going, without medication.

I began learning about family constellation work, ancestral wounding, epigenetics, the hero/ine’s journey, somatic healing, depth psychology and things started to get better. I started seeing how my unexplainable symptoms may have deep and wide roots that actually didn’t have much to do with my being “fucked up” but rather had to do with serious, long-standing trauma of my ancestors, of my species of our planet. I started having a new way of working on these symptoms that wasn’t about what was wrong with me, but was rather about being in service to healing the age-old wounds of my family, of our species itself. I journeyed deep within myself and sat with the keening, wrathful, dark sister and brother within me and listened to them. I built altars to them, honoring them, as well as the positive energies that supported me. I began finding a new tribe of people who also had spent time in the vast desert of tolerating these intense emotions and life experience, trusting in the sacredness of it all, and who were finding similar purpose to it all.

This is where I stand now, and can say I have been severely stretched in my capacity to hold shattering emotional energy by my choice to go on this journey with myself. I am glad I did this, and have finally hit a place where I do not feel the depth of despair and insanity I once wrestled with so badly. I do feel sadness, I do feel emptiness, I do feel lost often, but these feelings are understood by me as having much wider sources than myself, and this helps. I still haven’t had a successful long-term relationship since being off medication, mostly due to the complete overwhelm of anxiety and confusion that arises in that process. I am working on that.

Yet regardless I have found a sort of peace with it all. I hope that the work I have and continue to do has contributed to this state of peace I have at this time in my life, but who really knows. I often wonder what I would be like if I were to start taking medication again, or were I to have taken it during this journey I put myself on. But I don’t really spend much time there. I am much more interested in what lies ahead as I explore this concept that my symptoms, and perhaps many people’s symptoms, are sacred. That they are sacred messengers leading to evolution, if the carrier can survive the thrashing, maddening, isolating storms they require the person to go through. I am fascinated by this possibility, that there is nothing wrong with us, that there is medicine in the struggle, our bodies and psyches screaming at us to pay attention to wake up before we annihilate ourselves.

These are big concepts, and sweeping statements, I am aware. These are statements and ideas that have been with me for a long time, that have kept me going, almost as if I were doing a doctoral thesis experiment on my own life. I kept them secret in fear of the stigma of having been on medications. I also felt that sharing these thoughts might seem like I am saying that taking medications is “wrong”. By all means I do not think my journey is for everyone, I have also learned in my travels that each person has their own exploration to do, and this goes with medication.

Medication DID save my life, at a time when I really needed it, and I don’t think anyone should forgo this assistance if it is what is needed. I also don’t mean to say that I’m better than anyone, or “farther along” than anyone that is taking medication since I no longer am. Experiencing things that require one to consider medication is such a powerful and harrowing decision. I can’t say whether or not what I am going through is anything like what others are going through, I cannot assume the depth and intensity of their symptoms and whether the choice to be medication-free is best for them. I think it was just my journey to explore this path and see if I could survive it, at best be transformed by it.

I did, and was, and it is from this place that I share my story with you. Whether you are called to take this path of experimenting without medication or not, I believe in you. I believe in me. I believe we are all doing our best to survive in this incredibly complex and insane culture we are living in, in these incredibly complex and sensate bodies we are living in.

I hope that we are all on sacred journeys, exploring what’s best for us, learning and finding ways to thrive and create and express with each other how to make it through, but I really can’t say I know for sure. All I can do I is believe in my own wonderings, choose or not to explore them, and praise whatever for the ride.

Thanks so much for reading, and thanks to James Edgar Skye for the inspiration. https://wordpress.com/read/feeds/89079353/posts/2339697761

How Heavy Metal Saved My Ass, Pt. 2

Rite of Passage

Victim of Changes–Judas Priest

Continuing on the theme of how heavy metal served as a major assist to me is the topic of rites of passage–or rather how absent such intentional rites of passages are in western culture and how metal met that need for me. Driver’s licenses, the ability to vote, smoke, drink, and graduation from various levels of education form the bulk of a young person’s transition ceremonies in our country. Later on, its marriage, promotions, divorce, and of course the big one of death of loved ones and oneself. Yet none of these “ceremonies” really focus on consciously, intentionally, helping a person realize that they are leaving one state of life and going into another. Its a byproduct if anything of the action.

For me, as mentioned in Part One, attending that first concert was one of the first events where I became aware that I was no longer “that” and was now “this”–I was no longer a quiet child playing in the forest, the child who meshed with whatever was happening, or who tolerated and swallowed the toxicity of my family home–I was now a “metalhead,” and one who would express what I felt.

In many earth-based cultures, youth are encouraged to embark on a group or solo activity known generally as a Vision Quest. Part of this quest is intended to help them move from the state of youth to adulthood, as well as for them to start to forge a relationship with Spirit and what Spirit wants for them to do with their lives. It is also quite intense, often brutal, in ripping young ones away from their parents, or requiring grueling challenges for the individual to survive. Many times it was literally life or death–if you survive, you become an adult, and if not, well you’re just dead.

There are generally three stages in a Vision Quest: severance, threshold and incorporation. Going to that concert was like this quest, in that I ignored my mother’s warnings and went anyway (severance), then merged with a group of helpers into the unknown realms (threshold crossing into unknown), and finally as a result of experiencing the complete vibrancy of mosh pits, communality, crowd-mind-body-merge-cheering-and-screaming-as-one, I returned back home with a completely different way of wanting to be and show up as in the world.

It is not as intense each time, but I’d have to say that every concert I go to is in its own way a mini rite of passage for me. Even though the terrain is pretty familiar by now, it never fails that some intense learning experience will happen for me during these concerts, some awareness or understanding comes through. I always seem to enter a concert one way and emerge with a totally new understanding of something. Sometimes it is experiencing myself sob uncontrollably at the beauty of seeing thousands thrash it out in the pit, the tribalness of it all. Sometimes its losing a shoe in the middle of a raucous crowd and having to dive into the possibility of serious injury to retrieve it, to come out realizing my strength and the brother/sisterhood that helped (or provided resistance) in my forging of a stronger self. Sometimes I’m not sure what it is that’s changed, but I know for sure something has.

Identity

Breaking The Law–Judas Priest

I’ve never been a particularly willful person, evanescent if anything would describe me. I just kind of floated along in my youth, melted in, hung out in the periphery. I never really had a sense of being a certain way, wanting to represent myself as a certain style, etc. I remember much of my clothing in my youth came from my mother’s housekeeping clients, they’d give her bags of hand-me-downs and I’d delight in trying whatever came to me. Albeit this did not make me popular or the least bit cool, just kind of strange. When I found myself in therapy as a result of severe insomnia, I was given a label of “someone with depression,” so in a sense that was my first identity. Not long after when I stumbled into an eating disorder, I found yet another identity. Yet both of these were rooted in being someone with a disorder, not an incredibly encouraging thing to represent in the world.

Which is where heavy metal came in. The first time I started going to shows and being in the crowd with other fans, I felt for the first time a resonance with a way of being that was based on strength. It was based on something to be proud of, something to connect with others about that wasn’t rooted in sickness. It also had somewhat of a specific dress/look code that I found I really resonated with too–this was where I found that I really liked costumery that focused on dark matters, and it was totally exciting and fun to figure out ways I would present myself at each concert. The range of expression here was sort of limited to darkness and sexuality, but at the time these were areas I really hadn’t been able to represent with my clothing or looks, and at concerts it was like a free-for-all for me to do this experimentation.

Tribe

Can I Play With Madness–Iron Maiden

Tribe is a closely related topic, and I’ve touched on it a little in this conversation. As a young child it was almost as if I didn’t really find most people interesting enough to want to connect with, or I found them confusing and overwhelming to be around–so I spent most of my time in nature or with animals. Especially as I started to have these intense and stigmatized experiences of depression, losing a loved one, Anorexia–the typical teen human didn’t really have much to contribute in relating with me except either fear, pity or some type of judgement. Yet in the songs of my favorite bands, I heard my experience mirrored. What they were singing about was what I was going through.

Oddly though, after the loss of my boyfriend and his tribe of metallers, it was difficult finding actual individuals I could relate with about the music, as I wasn’t particularly interested in partying, having sex, etc. I was pretty shy, traumatized and still pretty overwhelmed by the expectations of the social scene, so rarely knew how to make connections. Yet I knew that if these people liked this music, they could on some level relate with me, and that felt comforting despite my inability to make individual contact. A sense of “tribe” for me was felt more archetypally and with the bands themselves, and was what kept me attending concerts solo for decades. I am now only recently finding individuals that relate to my journey, want to discuss the depth, meaning and sacredness they feel in the music. It also feels like more bands are also starting to approach these themes more openly and I’m curious to see where the genre continues to evolve.

Regardless, over the course of my life, without this music and the reflections it gave me I’m not quite sure how I would have survived. In a world that would label my “symptoms” and feelings as a diagnosis, heavy metal seemed to tell me that what I was going through was completely human, logical even. That of course I was angry, of course I was depressed, of course I was confused or felt lost or what have you–as a result of living in our society, or going through traumas, having terrifying premonitory dreams/visions, or dealing with uncontrollable mind/body manifestations–that it was NORMAL to feel as I did. It also seemed kind of “cool” to be insane in the world of metal (again, we’re talking as a concept, not that the average concert goer really wants to stand next to or talk with someone that’s batshit crazy). Nevertheless, this way of seeing things, and myself, was a lifesaver.

In closing, I’m not sure how many more associations will come forward to share about heavy metal’s life-saving qualities, but I will share more as they come. I know there’s something in my head about how heavy metal gave me a place to explore my fascination with all things occult, we’ll see if words come to describe that!

If you’ve made it to the end of this post, thanks for reading. I’d love to hear how metal saved your ass, if it has.

How Heavy Metal Saved My Ass, Pt. 1

One of the scenes from my upcoming memoir, Food Memories, is a recounting of my very first “morning after” a heavy metal concert. It was 1991, and with my first boyfriend and his rag-tag gang of partying friends, we had just experienced seeing Iron Maiden and Anthrax at the glorious Cow Palace in Oakland. To them, it was just another metal show and excuse to get wasted, but to me it was an introduction into a world that would change me forever. I had never seen anything like this full-on sensory spectacle, and didn’t quite know what I was feeling that following morning. In fact, it has taken me many years to understand the full power of what I felt that night, and the cascading awarenesses it unleashed in my life. I’m still grasping for words when it comes to why Heavy Metal brings up so much energy in me, but I will try to describe these things for you to the best of my ability.

Sexuality

Bring Your Daughter To The Slaughter–Iron Maiden

You Shook Me All Night Long–AC/DC

I grew up as an only child in the house of a single mother, and one who swore off intimacy, sex and relationship with other humans after divorcing my father when I was a wee child. I didn’t know it, but I was basically raised in a substrate that lacked any kind of modelling for what sexuality or relationships were. I wasn’t told they were wrong, it just was something that wasn’t there. I think I must’ve somehow felt that there was something wrong or to be avoided if my own mother swore these things off completely. Something very wrong.

Regardless of what I thought at that time, being introduced to the world of heavy metal music gave me a window into understanding this strange and unusual activity that other humans seemed to ache for, to feel was necessary. Suddenly, along with my first sexual experience with my boyfriend at the time, I began to see how incredibly repressed of an environment I was being raised in, as well as the culture at large and its confused messages about sexuality. Albeit not the most balanced view of this experience, with its orgies and sex, drugs and rock n’ roll, heavy metal still gave me this sense that I was being invited into an incredibly vital yet forbidden experience, and that to go into these realms was not only okay, but despite its challenges could be…should be…worth pursuing. It also helped that my mother was completely suspicious of this boyfriend and the world he was introducing me to…to a teenager beginning to individuate, this is a golden reason to dive headfirst into such experiences.

Anger and Grief

Fade To Black–Metallica

Cemetery Gates & Walk–Pantera

Yet another scene from my book describes the aftermath of losing said boyfriend to death, the numbing haze felt, as well as uncontrollable waves of rage and grief that overcame me as a result of this loss. I was not new to expressions of anger, or grief–my mother wielded them nightly in her emotionally abusive drunkenness. Yet it was always a state that was apologized for, or more often, just not mentioned despite the intensity unleashed. I was kind of expected to just forget these things happened, and certainly was not encouraged to express these emotions around her.

I really dove deeply into the less playful forms of heavy metal after this experience of loss and again it opened up new awarenesses. Heavy metal really is such a vast genre, and there was a constant unveiling of more and more “heavy” matters in my relationship with it. Beyond the innocent songs speaking of partying and fast-living, I started finding and being attracted to sounds and vibrations of bands covering issues such as murder, death, hate, suicide, depression and the like. Without actually saying so much, the energy of the music resonated with my life and what I was dealing with, it gave voice to things I was thinking that not many of my peers could relate to. It opened up my eyes to seeing large masses of people screaming, moshing, raging, of hearing and witnessing famous bands chanting lyrics that allowed these energies to come forward with no shame. To me, especially as I grew older, the whole experience of mosh pits and being a part of thousands of people screaming felt like an extremely sacred ritual going down. I kept getting this feeling that these concerts were some sort of ritual created by something larger than life to allow people a channel of release when their lives and culture may have been preventing them from doing so. The bands and words and the ability to go to these concerts provided me a place to do a lot of release during those hard years, I’m not sure where I would be now if not for these ceremonial-like portals. In these places, expressing and feeling almost everything was okay.

Hospitals and Institutions

Madhouse–Anthrax

Welcome Home (Sanitarium)–Metallica

A huge part of my book focuses on my experiences with “disordered eating,” and the journeys this took me on, including a fabulous tour of locked psychiatric facilities, hospitals and group homes for the “delinquent.” At the time, and still to this day, I have walked with these experiences in a very secretive way…fearing judgment were anyone to know I’d experienced these things. Yet despite my lack of sharing verbally with others about these experiences, heavy metal was again a saving grace for me, helping me feel not so alone in these occurrences. In the words of many of my favorite bands’ songs, I found myself and my experience mirrored, they were actually talking about what I was feeling and going through! Not many people I met in the crowds could actually relate to being locked up in a psych ward, but these bands somehow could. It was weird being so passionate about the content of the music but not being able to actually find individuals in the scene who could do anything more than wax admiringly for the crazy experiences of their heroes. But I…I could listen to these bands sing, and sing along with them, and know that I actually did go through this completely crazy experience, and that at least I had them to relate to. Along with a mirroring, some of the bands portrayed these experiences with a sense of humor, helping me further to hold my journey with a sense of tricksterish lightness if I could. Insanity and its environs began to hold both frustration and a sort of lone dog mystique as I immersed myself in the sounds of these songs, often quoting existential themes and quotes. I didn’t exactly want the life I was living, in fact I felt pulled into it by some massive undertow I couldn’t control, but since I was there, this music helped me feel like somehow I was living a sort of novel dream. A “normal” high-school-college-and-get-married trajectory it was not.

So there are a few of my thoughts on the benefits of this music to my life, especially the hard times. I will continue with more thoughts in upcoming posts, but in the meantime, if you’re interested in the topic, here’s an article for you: https://thesmartset.com/the-positive-psychology-of-metal-music/ and a highly encouraged watch: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metal:_A_Headbanger%27s_Journey.

Thoughts and reflections encouraged :}

The Positive Psychology of Metal Music

Who I Am and Why I’m Here

Well there’s an interesting question…one I’ve been trying to answer my whole life.  Who am I?  Why am I here?  Yet for the sake of this blog post, I won’t bore you with philosophy and existential blabber.  That’s for later :}

As far as blogging goes, who I am and why I am here is a bit easier to answer.  Why I am here is perhaps the easier of the two, and that’s to share about my writing/publishing process of my upcoming memoir, Food Memories.  I wanted a place to practice sharing more about this experience, to practice sharing more in general about my story, as it has been something I’ve kept to myself for so many years.  To share this memoir is a big step for me, to not only share with close friends and family about my struggles with an eating disorder and depression–but to share this with the public…gah!  So I’m greasing my wheels here just to see what happens–to open myself up to be seen, supported and critiqued (if necessary, geesh people).

As far as who I am as a blogger, that would be relatively new, naïve and curious.  I’m also pretty tech useless, so pardon the appearance of and arrangement of things around here. I aim to interact regularly with others through blogging weekly and commenting on other’s posts, if I can figure out the damn technology to do so (I’ve had challenges even getting the like button to work for me on your pages, aha!).  I like dark humor, have a soft spot in my heart for all things fantasy and heavy metal, and find being in nature and dabbling in the occult necessary tools for survival.

So that’s a little about me, I look forward to reading you too :}