Watching mental illness and not knowing what to do
77What is mental illness all about?
In
my life I have lived with and watched a lot of what is termed mental
illness. I suffer from depression myself, although nowhere as badly as
I did when I was in my teens, twenties and thirties, and as a much
younger man I suffered from anxiety states and drug addiction as
well.The drugs I was prescribed didn't cure my problem but actually
made it worse and I was addicted to Valium (Diazepam) for nearly seven
years.
I have, and had - I use the past tense because many people I knew died or took their own lives - many friends who have been diagnosed as mentally ill and have spent a great deal of my time with such people, including the longest relationship I ever had with a woman called Janice, who died a couple of years ago following years of psychiatric drugs to which she became addicted.
In this article I am going to share some of my personal experiences and tell you a bit about some of the people I have known. I will use first names only so as those spoken of are not identified.
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Mental illness
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Peter
Scientology's campaign against psychiatry
.In my opinion the factor that all share is that the people are/ were sensitive individuals who at some point in their lives had been subjected to extreme trauma or abuse, mental or physical or both. Their "illness" is a response to what has happened to them.
When I was in the Church of Scientology I remember that L Ron Hubbard said that what you should not do is harm people even more when they had already been hurt. Scientology fights very hard against what it sees as wrong in psychiatry and the treatments dished out which range from psychiatric medication, ECT (electro shock therapy) and at the most extreme level lobotomy. All of these treatments harm the people who are already harmed.
The Citizen's Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) is a branch of Scientology that campaigns against psychiatry and the drugs and brutal treatments used. Scientologists are very concerned about the widespread use of Prozac and Ritalin. Lisa-Marie Presley is one Scientology celebrity that has been very active in this field of campaigning.
I am not claiming that I know where the answer lies but I do know it is not a matter of making the person even more ill. The film One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest spells it out loud.
Psychiatrists and psychologists are actually some of the medical people who turned me against the health industry and gave me a strong distrust in doctors and I suppose for that I should be grateful to these people.
My first girlfriend Mandy had a terrible relationship with her mother and they used to fight verbally and physically. When I used to call around the mother would often start verbally abusing Mandy and one time she hit her mother and I got banned from the house for not preventing this. In my mind Mandy was defending herself as her mother had started the fight.
I was 18 and my girlfriend Mandy was 16 and we had both been recreational drug users although at that point I was able to quit most of my use because I was happy just to be with her. Mandy used to inhale solvents - Lady Esquire shoe conditioner to be precise - and once her mother caught her on the stuff and called the authorities. I had just called to see Mandy having finished work and got to go to Whitchurch the local mental hospital with her where we were taken.
I had never met a "mental doctor" before but was disgusted by the behaviour of Dr Kellam and he was a senior doctor for mental health in Cardiff. This man called me in to interrogate and threaten me even though I was there as a friend of Mandy's. He began talking about a guy called Lee that Mandy and me both knew, who was known in Cardiff at the time as a junkie with severe problems and who often overdosed and was seen around town usually in a terrible state.
"You know Lee?" the doctor said, "well, I see you as being a lot like him and let me tell you that when he ends up here we give him a bottle of downers in the hopes he will do us all a favour and finish himself off."
I almost could not believe what I was hearing!
I asked if I could have a drink of water and was told that I couldn't. I was also told that because Mandy was under 18 a court order could be placed on her. The whole tone of this doctor was threatening, and I was there not as anyone who was ill or anyone who had been caught using drugs but simply as the boyfriend of another person. His words about Lee I have never forgotten. This was my introduction to the world of psychiatrists and psychologists.
By a strange and for me sick twist of fate, several years later I was to run into Dr Kellam again. This was after I had been an outpatient myself at Heath Hospital where I had been sent following having been discovered by my parents to have a drug addiction problem when I had thrown a fit because I had run out of barbiturates. The time in question though, I was not receiving any medical treatment but was there with my current girlfriend Janice, who was in another room being seen by a Dr Taylor.
I had been asked to wait in the corridor and was sat down doing so. Dr Kellam came down the corridor and on spotting me did all he could to convince me I had come to see him. "I am a doctor and I know why you are here," he was claiming and completely ignoring what I was saying.
Eventually, sick of arguing with the man who would not acept my point of view at all, I burst into the room where Janice was talking to Dr Kellam's colleague and I said: "Dr Taylor, sorry for bursting in like this but can you please tell your colleague that you are seeing Janice and I was asked to wait outside?" He did so and I had proved my point, and it was at that point I realised the doctors were as crazy as the patients!
I had met Janice a year or so before this and had been living with her. She was an artist and a brilliant one at that but she had a history of mental problems and had been in hospital following a failed suicide attempt. When I met her she was convinced that her brain was damaged and she was also frequently very depressed and paranoid. She also used to say that her bone growth was getting bigger and bigger and she was becoming very masculine looking. This made little sense as she was a stunningly beautiful woman.
I had been very ill myself and didn't at the time see it as any reason why our relationship couldn't work. I believed in the power of love but I had to see that sometimes it simply isn't enough and that mental illness can possess its victim so badly that no one knows what to do.
I was with Janice for over three years, which is and was my longest relationship ever but it started to fall apart badly after she gave birth to our son. Janice was OK in the hospital but after she came out after a matter of days she became one of the most unreachable people I have ever known when she started suffering some strange form of post-natal psychosis.
We did have at that time, a GP, a midwife, a health visitor and a psychiatric social worker (due to Janice's past history) and these medical official people used to call at the house we were renting rooms in. Janice said they hadn't called to see the baby but to pry into her affairs and pick on her because she was a woman. She resented these people coming around.
Eventually she started acting very abnormally and then entered a state of mental strangeness that I didn't understand and had never seen before. I was stressed to the maximum trying to look after the baby and attend to Janice and my ideas about love and marriage and happy families were totally ruined.
Janice stopped talking and doing other normal stuff like eating and drinking. She would spend most of her time lying down twirling her hands around or making a shape by pointing one lot of fingertips against the other whilst staring into space. If you could get any words from her at all she would say: "I am making an emblem."
It would take me maybe an hour or more just to get her to sip a drink or to respond at all. At one point I took her to the bathroom and ran a bath but was soon to find out this was a terrible idea. I had left Janice in the bathroom and gone downstairs but as the time went on I got complaints from other tenants of the house who were unable to get in the bathroom. Eventually I had to break the door down and I will never forget seeing Janice standing naked next to the bath which had by then gone cold, and all she was doing was waving her hands around.
Another day in desperation, I had called the local GP because I was at my wits end. A doctor arrived and, again I will never forget this, he asked Janice what she was doing, as she stared at the ceiling and revolved her hands.
"I am looking at God and all of the angels," she responded. The doctor gave her an injection of Largactil and wrote a prescription, and whilst I didn't approve of such drugs I was glad to see her actually go to sleep, which was something she had also not been doing.
Finally, after a week or so of not eating and hardly speaking and hardly moving apart from twirling her hands around, Janice suddenly walked into the kitchen at the back of the house. She went straight to the fridge and started stuffing food in a ravenous way. As she did this she snarled at me and said: "I am worshipping a higher power that you cannot understand."
It was like a scene from a horror movie and she looked like she was possessed by some evil force. After cramming more food into her mouth. she added that she was leaving and she did so. There was nothing I could do to stop her and I must admit that having seen how she was acting I felt scared of the "higher power" whatever it was.
I was devastated by the whole experience and also had to come to terms with being a single parent. The next I heard about Janice was that she had been sectioned in London after screaming at cars in Kensington.
Her mother eventually managed to get her out and Janice had produced a series of bizarre drawings of people looking like clockwork men or robots. She later told me that this was what people looked like.
I can see this as not a sign of insanity but an accurate portrayal of the true state of many humans. This is where I can see that many people who are thought of as crazy are actually just perceiving the world on a different level of awareness. Unfortunately it doesn't allow them to operate well in this system, which is perhaps even more mad when we look at the real state of society and the world at large.
Before all this happened I had also witnessed my friend Peter, who was commonly known as Piss-off Pete, descend into a state of mental strangeness whereby he became less ane less able to function and more and more difficult to communicate with.
Pete was actually a brilliant guitarist and multi-instrumentalist and with his good looks at an earlier point had no problem in attracting some of the prettiest girls in Cardiff. But Pete became increasingly homosexual in his orientation whilst at the same time acting out a bizarre version of David Bowie's Ziggy Stardust and cross-dressing.
Pete said he was in love with David Bowie and Marc Bolan and Brian Eno. He sent letters to Lama Sogyal Rimpoche and HM the Queen and some of these letters were totally bizarre and entitled such things as a "Doctrine to cause world peace."
If he spoke at all he might talk about "thetans" from Scientology or claim that he was a "fragile Ladytron from Sirius" or tell people to "meditate upon the causes of corruption."
Often instead of speaking in any conventional manner he would tap on the top of his head with his fingertips whilst saying in a monotone camp voice: "neural damage," and "Tsssk tsssk - stellar intelligence."
This is actually what he once said to a clerk behind the counter at a Social Security office having been called there after they had stopped his benefit. I happen to know this because I had accompanied him there as my good deed for the day.
The counter assistant didn't know what to make of any of it and was glad to talk to me. I tried explaining my friend wasn't well because he hadn't had his money and had had nothing to live on. The Social Security clerk said they simply needed to verify the details of Pete's claim and if I could bring in or send in his rent book all would be well.
Naively I agreed only to later find that Pete hadn't actually paid any rent to his landlord for two years and that the landlord had gone to Australia. I asked what had happened to the money and Pete eventually scrawled in block capitals across the rent book: PSYCHOPATHS STOLE THE RENT SAVINGS."
Shortly after this he was taken into Whitchurch where he was first diagnosed as a mute and later as schizophrenic. Pete became the subject matter of CJ Stone's Last of the Hippies in which the author sought to find out what had happened to Peter.
Others I have known with mental illness include Keith who suffered from narcolepsy and schizophrenia and Tony who was also diagnosed as a schizophrenic.
Keith, who was a squatter when I first knew him, had the standard schizophrenic problem of voices in his head which he claimed never gave him any peace. He used to stay at my house and at one point walked right across Cardiff barefoot in the winter having thrown his boots away. He said he had been given a message to deliver to the world and had to take it to some people in Essex and he set off hitch-hiking to pass this message on.
Keith used to spend a lot of his sickness benefit on buying books on the occult and New Age subjects but he frequently used to lapse into sleep whilst looking at them, which looked like a very bad advert for the power of the material the books contained. Keith was once taken into hospital, he told me, for walking across the roofs of cars in a busy city centre street.
Tony called himself Merlin Starr and wrote books that were never published of occult material including detailed geometric designs and text to do with the Kaballah. He claimed the work was channeled to him by the angel Raziel. He nearly starved himself to death at one point and was taken into the Heath hospital where he claimed that Buddha had visited him. After many years of taking psychiatric drugs, as well as drinking a lot and not eating properly at some points in his life, Tony died young.
So did Nick, who used to say he was Jesus and the Alpha and Omega or King Arthur. The police once called at my house looking for him after he had absconded from the hospital.
Nick wrote some songs and played guitar but, like i said, he died young too. One of his songs went: "Fucking crazy people with fucking crazy cars and their fucking crazy relationships that cause grief and scars..."
CCHR
- School shootings Antidepressants Depression & Psychiatrists - Citizens Commission on Human Right
CCHR's homepage, about psychiatry, school shootings, mental health and human rights - Citizens Commission on Human Rights - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
MadJanice.com
- Janice Esther Mary Pugsley
A TRIBUTE SITE DEDICATED TO THE MEMORY OF JANICE
CJ Stone on hubpages
- CJStone on HubPages
Hello. If you are a writer you are welcome here. It's a weird compulsion we share. In my life nothing was ever quite real until it was written...
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Bard, it takes a lot of guts and self pride to talk about something like this. Be strong man, you are still alive and kicking. Dont let the depression pull you down. I know its easy to say it, but life is tough, I got friend excactly like yo described, tke one da a time bro...
Excellent Hub.
My opinion is that a lot of so called "mentaly ill" people, just perceive the world on another level of reality. So often is also case that people have "just" hormonal imbalance and get dyagnose of some "mental illness".
Drugs do not heal, they just surpress symptomes, even worse, they create new symptomes and new disordes.
Simple natural ways, and a little bit of love can do bigger miracles in healing, then any of cruel psychiatric methods.
Thumbs up!
Bard,
Thank you for sharing such a personal story. You are a very strong and special person to have been able to be there for your friends during their toughest times. There are very, very few people like you. The average person usually just gives up and advocates for the person to get sedated through meds.
Have you ever tried <a href="http://www.mymeditationgarden.com/benefits-of-medi">meditation</a>? I've read studies where meditation has been really beneficial in helping out depression. Meditation vs Medication.... I'll take meditation any day.
I wish you the very best in your journey of life. Admire your strenght, loyalty, and courage and wish you the very best in the rest of your journey in this world.
I've never been depressed myself but my mother experienced depression a lot, so i have witnessed the effects of it. My father brought in doctors and I have to say, they made the situation worse and not better.
I was surprised just how ignorant the Psychiatrists <!-- /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-parent:""; margin:0in; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";} @page Section1 {size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in; mso-header-margin:.5in; mso-footer-margin:.5in; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;} --> were, they seem to treat my mother like a criminal, as if it was a crime to be depressed. Their only solution was to give my mother drugs and when my mother refused to take them, they put a lot of pressure on her to do so, without any regard to her feelings or freewill.
I can see why they use drugs, it is a lot cheaper and a lot less effort. It is far more easy to give a person drugs than to directly try and understand a depressed person. The fact that the drugs don't work, doesn't seem to be a problem.
My advice to anyone who has depression is to keep away from doctors, unless you have a lot of money to pay them, and get the 'talking thearapies'. Then you might get the proper treatment, but if you don't have the money, then they have no interest in you.
I agree that meditation is a great help in helping people, and these many 'self-help' books are a big help as well.
I once lived with a woman who was a depressive, and i wasn't no help to her because i would sympathise with her and would get dragged down until i was depressed myself. So in the end i had to get out for the sake of my own mental health. I have since learnt that you cannot help people who are depressed if you end up becoming depressed yourself. You have to keep your spirits up and be understanding of their problems without getting dragged down by them. Which is not easy to do, more so if you love the person who is depressed.
This is where 'self help' books are a big help. I have learnt a lot about positive thinking over the years and leant the power of my own mind. If people where learnt more about mind power then there would be far less incidences of depression in our society.
Hi Steve, I thought your reader would like to see my version of the Piss Off Pete story, from Last of the Hippies: http://www.cjstone.co.uk/Books/Last%20of%20the%20h
Thank you, Gypsy Willow, Men Are Dorks, Tajana-Mihaela, Sonia, William and Chris for your comments!
William, I agree with you in all you say about the doctors, the drugs and how depressed people pull others down, and would add that this also applies to other forms of mental illness as I have found out. If you live with someone who is paranoid and listen to them every day talking about how the world and people are out to get them eventually some of it starts to rub off on you!
Like I said I don't know what the answers are but I do know that making people worse with drugs, ECT etc is not the way to go and is why I agree with the Scientology views on this. I have had to watch alternative therapies fail miserably - Janice had chakric healing that accomplished nothing, she also tried herbal tranquilisers like Valerian but said they didn't work. That is why she ended up taking the precribed meds - stelazine and imipramine and others.
I do not get anywhere near as bad as I used to when I was younger but my life continues to give me problems that are sure to depress me and I acknowledge that I exhibit clinical symptoms of a depressive. However, I would rather deal with it myself than ever go to any doctors again. I was not helped by these people when I did back in the 70s and I do not see much evidence of friends being helped either unless you class addiction to some medication that allows them to cope with the modern system to varying degrees better than without the meds.
Thanks for the link, Chris!
Sorry, I have read your comment that alternative therapies sometimes do not help, what is true, as an alternative healer I can tell you exactly why:
chakric healing is not sufficient method of healing, for many people. If certain organs do not work well for many years, they cannot get improved and healed with simple opening the chakras. It works for people who do not have too big health problems, not for really ill ones. Chakra healing is just small part of energetic healing. People with low level of energy need healing - bioenergy- almost every day.
For healing the nerves, it takes at least 6 MONTHS of any alternative therapy to show the permanent results.
Energetic healing is not enough, people often need simple things as vitamins B (do not help immediately), mineral salts (kali phos, mag phos, iron phos, calcium etc) or minerals as Zinc and Iron in addition to energetic healing.
So often people who have "mental illness" have hormonal imbalance of any of important endocrine glands ( as thyroid, adrenal, disbalance of sexual hormones etc). This cannot be healed with chakra opening and Valeriana, in most cases. Valeriana is very helpful for people with mild neurosis, not for something worse then that.There are other, specific remedies for that problems. Hormonal imbalance is horrible experience, I also passed through that - in the moments of imbalance, mind is not normal, just cannot be. I needed many years to discover what was wrong with me, but I was listening only my inner voice, not asking the help from psychiatrists.
In the process of healing, very big problem is also facing and healing past traumatic experiences, which created illness. Person who accepts alternative healing has to be ready to be actively involved in transformation of her/his traumas.
Some people are fighters and they do not give up easily, and they just say when they get dyagnose : "Bullshit, I am not more mad then the others, I will find my own way how to balance myself, f..k the doctor´s opinion!". On the contrary, some people are frightened and accept the dyagnose and believe that they are really crazy. If someone thinks about him/herself as crazy (the proof is dyagnose, written down on many papers), there is no alternative healer who can convice the person in opposite, at least not quickly.
Healing is the process, very often long one. Some people are very cooperative, the others just give up and literally embrass their illness.
ABOUT JANICE:
Postpartum depression is very difficult experience for many women: IT IS SIGN OF MAJOR HORMONAL IMBALANCE - ALWAYS; not madness. All hormonal levels raise up when women is pregnant, and SUDDENLY DROP DOWN WHEN SHE GIVES THE BIRTH - result is mental confusion. In addition to overal endocrine imbalance, THYROID GLAND very often becomes hyperactive during the pregnancy and I KNOW MANY WOMEN WHO HAVE MAJOR mental/emotional problems afterwards, due to the imbalanced work of thyroid. In the history of humanity, so many people finished in mental institution, just because of hypo or hyperactive thyroid, just imagine when other endocrine glands also become imbalanced.
During the pregnancy, baby is using all minerals and vitamins from the mother)s body, so after giving the birth - mother stays literally empthy, if she is not well prepared. Simple lack of Iron can cause mental disorder, not to mention the other minerals and/or vitamins.
Hormonal and vitamin/mineral emptyness and imbalance - believe me result as mental disorder.
It is big shame that people are not better informed about that.
In majority of my helth-Hubs I am writting about that specific problem - because I learned lessons of body chemistry on my own skin plus I am using these methods while healing the others - and they work.
I hope I gave you some answeres....
I hve walked in your shoes a bit. Stay positive. You can live a normal life with a mental illness.
Thanks for all that great information, Tatjana! I was not saying that alternative remedies don't work because I use them myself and I know they do but that they didn't work for Janice and I have known other people with serious mental disorders who also have not benefited from such therapies. What is particulary sad about such people is that neither conventional or alternative works but they often settle for the conventional because it gets results to some degree. It doesn't cure the problem but it cuts out the symptoms. I agree with you completely that many therapies need a lot of time to work and that is something the modern world and health system does not allow for which, of course, is why the conventional medicine keeps its hold over people. Eg someone with insomnia or very bad anxiety takes valerian and notices no effect but they take a psychiatric drug and it knocks them out. Or someone is in physical pain and finds no immediate relief with an alternative method so they turn to a pharmaceutical painkiller. People want quick results and people who are suffering badly, mentally or physically just want the pain to go away. This also causes many to self medicate with illegal and legal drugs because they find relief even if only on a temporary basis.
What William Bond says is also right that "talking therapies" can be a great help but you need money to pay for such counselling otherwise you get a doctor whose answer is give the patient some drug. Often they simply don't know what to do.
Also from my experience the mental illness doctors who work as professionals often have major problems themselves. I remember the guy who put me on Valium used to chainsmoke in his consultation room and outside it was not allowed.
I agree with you about those who accept the label they have been given as a sufferer from some form of mental illness and then hang on to it. Many enjoy benefits they get like sickness and disability benefits.
It is a huge subject and everyone is different, which is something modern medicine often fails to acknowledge.
hang in there somehow brother...i hardly know what to say...I have lost many beautiful people in my life also...I wish I could offer solutions...I have also witnessed the barbarous, unfeeling "care" administered by so called educated and able "healers"...2 b honest, I have always felt that we dwell upon the largest open air asylum in the universe....some people become aware of this and are overwhelmed by that knowledge and consequent feeling of hopelessness, regardless of treatment...
I suppose the first step towards solutions is recognizing the problems...caring and empathy are at least a cool comfort for a fevered brow...
I am at a loss 4 words here...I laud your courage in writing and sharing this hub...and offer a prayer on your behalf for u and yours..
peace
Thanks for posting, fortunerep! I try to stay positive but it's often very hard due to circumstances beyond my control like in my current problem of having lost a job I loved. As for a "normal life" I don't think I have ever known one although that is of no worry to me anymore!
Thanks too, John! The hub is more about others I have known and how the world of medicine and society at large failed them rather than me. I am OK - I battle along and do not ever get in the terrible states I used to in my twenties. I look after my own health and if it fails me then I have only myself to blame.
write on my good man...
I very much agree with you - for some people. there is just no help, because they do no have enugh time - or faith in their own powers, to explore by themselves what would be the most appropriate way of healing for them, and healing performed by the others - altough is the best possible investment, is not chip. It is sad to me as well.
I had also have the cases where people had enough money for one remedy (or they had money, but they did not want to invest it in more then one remedy) and they would need at least 5 or 7 of them - and energetic treatments and counselling as well - to improve their health.
So I have started to choose the people, who are able or willing to pay their healing, because such people have the best perspective if they have faith in themselves and healer. I used to volunteer for people who did not have (or said that do not have) money for healing - but this is not good way either, because they start to depend on healer`s energy, what is not OK - I had to stop to do that, because there was not adequate results - I was completely exchausted, they were better - but on my energy, and not completely healed, of course.
From the another point of view, some people are in very bad condition and they just need few words - recently I (spiritual energy in me) healed one woman in London from depression with one e-mail.
Some meditation groups, or spiritual ones very often perform free healings, but this also is not for everybody.
Healing with drugs is very difficult choise - while somebody is on strong meds - alternative healing cannot help - at least not enough. To me is also very difficult to see people to whom is obviously not possible to help, because of various reasons, but, I had to learn to keep the focus on that ones whose conscious and subconscious desicion is to achieve health in this life.
Obviously, SOME PEOPLE DO NOT HAVE HEALTH AS A LIFE-GOAL they learn lessons of their lives through the deseases, and I needed a lot of time to accept that. I am also learning from these people, every life-lesson is valuable.
I appreciate your Hub, very, very much....Thank you for writting it and wish you all the best !
This Hub was sad and moving. I am afraid in the case of Janice and Pete it may have been demon possession, particularly in the former. We want a biological answer to everything but we are more than biology.
I appreciate your writing and transparency. I encourage you to write more.
Bard, check this hub out, it correlates with yours, Hope it is of any help Mate.
"recently I (spiritual energy in me) healed one woman in London from depression with one e-mail." That is so brilliant!
Question I often wonder about: David Icke knows a lot about alternative therapies and can count very many healers and psychics, alternative practitioners etc among his friends and contacts and yet after all these years he is still suffering terrible arthritis, which as he recently wrote about in relation to his visit to India has caused him to need a collapsable stool because he cannot easily sit on the ground. He had to abandon his football career all those years ago because of the disease and yet now after all he has discovered and all these years he is still made to suffer from arthritic pain. Why would you think that is?
Thanks Men Are Dorks and James!
Men Are Dorks, I just checked out the hub you recommended and good advice as it is it doesn't answer what to do with people who have been depressives or manic depressives for very many years. I know one guy who once was a successful radio DJ but he lost that job many years ago due to his manic depression and since then he has been on the sick and accepts that he has to take lithium. He is not the only person I know like this. I knew one guy who was a brilliant musician who told me his illness had ruined his life and he had spent most of it in mental hospitals. Basically if he stopped taking his meds he would end up getting sectioned again.
James, yes, I have often considered demonic possession as a reality in such cases, although it does not explain where the demons go after major tranquilisers are administered.
I once saw a demonic exorcism on video carried out by a priest on a young woman and it really reminded me of how I saw Janice when she came in the kitchen that time I described.
I came upon information in Scientology that interested me in this area where Hubbard talks about "entities" and "demon circuits." In the works of David Icke and others I find possession by reptilians and astral/other dimensional entities which are obviously the same order of beings as demons. I have never been able to understand not only why such beings lose their hold on a patient who is dosed with psychiatric drugs or why such beings should leave the body of a person due to the words and actions of a priest. I have also spent the night in a haunted house that had exorcisms carried out by both a spiritualist church and Christian one and both failed to remove the spirit said to be either Elvis Presley or a soldier. Whatever it was it went and didn't cause me any harm and the family who originally communicated with it and said it was Elvis said that he had gone to their new house. I have a hub on it. These mysteries I can never find satisfactory answers for!
Steve I can empathise completely here. I have suffered depression for most of my life, and had a few "strange mental episodes" brought on by pharmaceutical drug therapy. I have been diagnosed with several conflicting disorders by several doctors and even been diagnosed as "normal" by another, so I dont trust any of them. I think that hearing voices is a normal part of stress and spiritual growth, and can understand where your partner and friends were at completely since I have had periods when my perception and awareness of different realities has kicked in. In my research, I have discovered that these "episodes" coincide with planetary alignments and phenomena that causes energy shifts which I am sensitive to. I am also an artist, and thru many many years of trying to get to the bottom of my "issues'' (since I suffered a huge amount of trauma during my childhood and early teens) I have realised that i am in fact as "normal" as anyone else, and a whole lot better since I stopped seeking "expert medical help".I do have some down periods, but nowhere near the severity or frequency that I used to have them. I do not hold with modern psychiatry, since the lot of it is based on the 100 year old ramblings of a sex obsessed messed up cocaine addict (Freud) and prefer to counsel people based on spiritual and practical matters with a healthy dose of commonsense in order to help them through their issues, in my role as a healer. Diet and Lifestyle play a huge factor in mental health and spiritual growth, and I have met so many people who could not be helped by medical science, but can be helped through common sense, love and compassion. My own father took his life when I was very young, after being treated for schizophrenia and manic depression on a coctail of powerful drugs, which made him worse and it ultimately ended in tragedy. The doctors I have met havn't the first clue what they are talking about, the phychiatrists really do not get what mental health is about and see the mind as an array of neurons and chemical imbalances rather than seeing that the drugs they prescribe are doing more damage than harm. And as for ECT, well, I was in a hospital many many years ago, and there was one lady there about my age, who I discovered to have a son. She's given birth to this child very young in her early teens, and the pregnancy was the result of abuse from her own father. this poor lady who frequently had outbursts and tried to commit suicide many times, had been diagnosed as a beyond help shizophrenic and had regular ECT to keep her under control. It does not take a genius to work out that this poor woman had been so damaged that she hid inside her own mind to escape the terrible things which had happened to her, and she was still being punished for it. I had heard that she had attacked her father, and was considered "dangerous". Its this sort of "understanding" from the medical profession which makes us no better of today than the days of Bedlam. Thank you for sharing this with us here. I know how much it takes to be open about mental health problems, since its a hurdle I have had to overcome myself.
Thanks for all your feedback, Lou! I totally agree with you on this bit: "the phychiatrists really do not get what mental health is about and see the mind as an array of neurons and chemical imbalances rather than seeing that the drugs they prescribe are doing more damage than harm."
I used to have long arguments with the guy I saw many years ago mostly about the nature of reality and what I felt versus what he claimed I should do and it was not good for either of us although of course it was good for his bank balance! lol I also saw a doctor who wanted me to have ECT and I stormed out of the hospital and refused to see him again. In my life I have had problems and arguments nearly every time I have had to see medical people so it is not surprising I gave up on them all and I wonder how so many people do not end up feeling like me about it!
Guys, I don understand how a person can get so depressed, what causes it, what does it feel like and what do you experience whilst in or under or suffering depression.
sound stupid, I know...
ROFLMAO— (I always wanted to use that acronym and so now I have!) Elvis!!!!??? OMG
I guarantee you it was not Elvis. A Christian can exorcize a demon if they are powerful in their faith. Jesus exorcized demons hundreds of times and told us we could do the same. That it does not work every time is commented on by Jesus as well. This kind of power only comes through obedience to the teachings; faith that the power will work; and invoking the Name of Jesus.
I think the drugs work because the doped up person cannot respond to the demon's commands under the influence of some chemicals.
I am a borderline, depressive with one rather destructive habit that I am sucessfully beating at the moment... Anyway, I am so sorry you've had such a bitter experience with treatment.
I have blessed with an AMAZING therapist. I know it doesn't always happen that way, also from exprience. Being picky is important! I have had to remember this is about me - not them. But it has worked out. Luckily.
Anyway - I wish you the best on your own path to wellness.
"men are dorks" - feel blessed. not stupid:) i'm serious...
Men Are Dorks, in my case I have experienced long spells of crying and when I was in my twenties sometimes this would happen in a public place because I couldn't hold it back, also a feeling of worthlessness, that nothing you try and do is worth doing, feelings of intense failure, feelings of wanting to stay asleep, not wanting to do anything or see anyone, no ambition or drive, feelings of isolation whereby although you can see beauty in the world and happiness in others it has no effect on you, feeling cursed and tormented, feeling as if good things and happiness are for others but not for you, and feeling suicidal. I have experienced all the above.
Sarah, I am well, thank you! Perhaps I don't sound it but as I have said before this hub is primarily about what I have seen in my life personally and for others I have known well as friends and loved ones. I happen to have a lot of friends who are depressives. I have had a lot of friends who are classed as schizophrenic. I do believe that people with such problems tend to group together anyway because they can sense a bond and know the others at least partially understand how they feel. My very bad times were long ago and made worse by my drug and alcohol consumption and a long period addicted to Valium. I got over all that long ago. Nowadays I am able to get things done and do a job even when I am feeling very down. When I was young this was not the case at all. Of course I can see parts of myself that could be vastly improved on but I don't get upset about this. I know what I am like, I know my limitations and I can accept them. In many ways I have the advantage of not needing a lot of things that most people say they need and things I thought I needed when I was younger.
Well, Bard, the human body is very sensitive and needs a lot of care. For body everything is stressful - even very positive happenings.
Many people who meditate believe that they will be healed with spiritual energy only, what is not true - so often this is not sufficient. Body also needs minerals, vitamins, hormones (phitohormones or homeopathic hormones would be the best) - especially if person leads intensive life.
I used to do tests on plants - plants also need minerals, good soil, sun, water, and human love (bioenergy) to improve. Is the factor of good soil and minerals is missing - no improvement. Without sun - no improvement.
My cats were weak and moody if they did not eat for the certain period the food with sufficient quantitiy of minerals and vitamins - bioenergy and crystalotherapy helped them a bit, but minerals did the miracle and real healing. Animals also go out and adore to be on Sun.
The same is with human body: we need it all: Sun, water, minerals, vitamins, nature and it? beauty and power, positive happenings in the life, love, spiritual energies, personal success, good quality food - in order to be healthy. In 40ties we all start to loose resources of hormones - we need to activate them or replace them again.
David Icke lost a lot ot personal energy, while inspiring the others -part of healing arthritis is healing parathyroid glands - and thyroid as well. And he is in the age when he needs alternative hormonal replacement therapy (phytohormones or homeopathic hormones) - and a lot of rest. For someone who was very active is difficult to accept that aging brings some new problems which can be healed on different ways then before. Football also helped to the body to loose many other nessessary body ingredients as hyaluronic acid, etc. This should be replaced.
Very many alternative healers (as well as doctors) still do not understand importance of hormones, but also person who experience lack of hormones cannot perceive it (it was my case as well), because symptomes very often much differ from expected ones - and it is something like "shame" to admit that body is not so young as it used to be, he, he.
In the process of healing - we also learn a lot. I also learned a lot through my own problems. David Icke will find the way how to heal himself, sooner or later, he just needs a little bit more time....
Altough I am a healer, I aslo have my own health problems, sometimes: and I am learning a lot through them - afterwards, when I experence problem on my own skin, I can more easily and succesfully help the others....It makes sense, I hope.
Tatjana, that all makes excellent sense to me! I always take supplements and I also make sure my cat has wild grass of types she needs - she will not accept commercial cat grass. If she has wild grass with a full range of minerals she is well. I need sun - in winter deprived of it I tend to have to fight against SAD and I tend to get eczema but when I get plenty of sunlight it goes away! Plants I note always grow much better in soil from the ground than packaged composts, again because natural soil has the whole range they need. The food we get is mostly deficient in minerals and nutrients so of course our bodies are not at their best.
One of the first things I learned in Scientology many years back in the 80s that vastly improved my health, and that no doctor had ever told me, was the value of minerals and vitamins.
Re David, yes, you are right - he gets hardly any rest and works flat-out most days. He has admitted in the past to be physically and mentally worn out and has had to take breaks from touring. At present and last year he has resumed world touring again and is doing 6 and 7 hour lecture presentations motivated as he is in getting info out to as many as possible! He has visted over 40 countries researching and lecturing. He has also been subjected over the last few years to the stress of long court battles over the rights to his own work!
...just to add something: body starts to grow in the uterus of mother. If mother is not completely healthy and does not have extra amounts of minerals and vitamins, and life-energy as well, baby from the beginning of life does not have enough of life-energy, hormones, vitamins, minerals...it is much more difficult to replace them later one, and many various mental and physical problems can occur - during the whole life-time.
Preparing the Hub about that subject (the title will be connected with Infertility)...
Scientology is great, as I can see from your example.
P.S: He, he, David Icke will be OK, as soon as he accept that he also needs to slow down. (That was my life-lesson as well)....
I benefited from Scientology although I also became disillusioned with it and gave up my studies and involvement in it long ago. However, some of what I learned I apply still.
My son, who is now 29, ended up with a serious illness around the age of 12 when he developed epilepsy and he has had very many major fits and has been on a lot of medication ever since the illness started, and although I don't agree with drug treatments I know that if he doesn't take them he is sure to have seizures. He sometimes does anyway.
I hope you are right about David!
Very sorry to hear about your son. I hope he will find one day natural ways to keep himself balanced - what IS possible.
I am also aware that for some people is much better to take some medicines than nothing at all.
Many spiritual groups like to exaggerate and create illusion - that is the reason I like to be guest everywhere, but not to be member of any of such group. I like my free will.....
Thank you again, Tatjana!
My personal belief is that he was damaged by a multiple vaccination I was bullied into allowing him have when he was little and I have regretted since but I cannot undo the past although I can strengthen my belief and ways of dealing with life in the now and I have been someone who says no to vaccinations for many years.
On the subject of spiritual groups and religions too, as a much younger person I went through a lot of getting involved with many of these and joining as a member some like the Gurdjieff work and Scientology. I was also involved with the Hare Krishnas and spent a year with the Jehovah's Witnesses at the other extreme in variation of religious beliefs. I also joined a druid order years back to which technically I still belong but I don't feel I have any need for gurus, cults, religions or group memberships any more.
Well, each person chooses scenario of the life before the birth...as well as challenges with which will have to cope. This is also fact.
Parents do influence their children a lot, the best way they can help is to send love to their children, and perceive them as healed, successful and happy. Since my Mum is doing that, my life is much easier - altough we do not live together. With sending me just good vibes, (instead of worrying), I feel great support, what was not case before.
We can change the past as well, altough not completely: we can change our attitude towards it, we can send love and light into the periods when we did so called "mistakes" in the past - this also influence our material reality now and the future as well, and the future of our dearest ones.
......
By being part of any spiritual group, we can learn a lot - but we always pay the price. This is the price which obviously needs to be payed for learning certain knowledges....
I agree with you totally about us all choosing our lives and challenges ahead in a life before incarnation and have had direct experience of knowing that.
With regard to my son he stopped listening to a lot of what I had to say or Janice when he became a teenager and went to a different school and started hanging out with teenagers of his own age. He chose to listen to his peers rather than me and there wasn't a lot I could do about it under the circumstances.
On the subject of happiness he has been able to be happy for far more of his life than either Janice or I had managed, which is all the more incredible because he lives with a serious handicap!
Thanks for your comments, badcompany! Yes, Valium produced some nightmare panic attack experiences, inability to cope with anything and suicidal feelings for me when I was quitting it worse than barbiturates I had been addicted to when I was younger. I got off chainsmoking easily but Valium took me a long time and the only way I did it was by cutting down gradually and also substituting alcohol ( not recommended but it was what I did) and finally when I had got off it I joined Scientology and quit smoking too. I then had 4 years in which I didn't touch alcohol either. I have taken a lot of drugs in my life legal and illegal and would say the one that caused me the most problems for the longest time was Valium and I can fully sympathise with anyone on it and how hard it is getting off it! Having done it I said to myself don't ever take any prescription tranquilisers or sedatives or antidepressants or any of their other crap again and I've been lucky by being able to stick with my decision.
I could not disagree with the dangerous statements in this hub more completely. Teaching people that psychopharmacology is bad for them is a sure way to have more suicides and hospitalizations on your hands. I have been hospitalized three times (I am schizophrenic), and it was the medication, not the setting that balanced me out every time, such a statement makes a lot more sense if you've ever been inside such a facility. Mental illness is a chemical imbalance, just as diabetes is an inbalance in sugars, and resorting to blaming other people, or referring to medications in the same breath as lobotomies is disingenous and and very, very scary.
Hi, Adam, I have a friend who was diagnosed as shizoprenic and was few times in mental hospital, where they "succesfully" calmed her down with medications. Which she needed to take for more then 15 years... But guess what - after so many years of taking various pills, she was sent to endocrinologist who discovered thyroid imbalance and excess of testosterone as a cause of her so called "shizopreny" : after that she did not need to take medications for shyzopreny any more, because dyagnose was wrong. 5-6 years passed from that, she is healing herself on completely different way and she is blossoming now: mentaly, emotionaly - because she has hope in her life again.
If she was from the beginning checked by endocrinologist, instead put on pills and given the label of "mentaly ill person" , she would be healthy long time ago and her life would be more happy for sure.
This is only one example: there are many similar I know.
Adam, I have pointed out that I know people who settle for taking their medication or have had medication forced on them but they would prefer not to, and, as I have pointed out, I know one guy who stops taking his medication and then ends up sectioned again. Basically he is in a trap and knows it! I used to be in a trap and I got out of it but it was very very hard work and I was in it because I found originally that the drugs took away my pain and stress!
I do not know anyone really cured by using these drugs because the drugs like all others at best suppress symptoms of what is wrong. If you wish to agree with those who say that these substances are beneficial and take these drugs that is entirely up to you but I am stating my views here. I know other people who would agree with you and they take their medication, as I have already pointed out. I write based on my experience and evidence I have seen.
The tranquilisers like Valium are by medical advice only supposed to be used for a short term but they get used for many years because they are addictive and because the health system such as it is does not have the time to spend treating people any other way. Patients want relief from problems - drugs provide a quick answer but not necessarily a cure!
Tatjana, thank you very much for your helpful response to Adam's feedback! Your reply shows what can be done if time is spent finding out what is really wrong with an individual who is suffering.
hi bard
I too have depression and post truamatic stress disorder caused by many truamatic experiances. In 1993 my god son died suddenly on his 3rd birthday from a fit, this left me very shaken as his mother was accussed of child neglect and had to battle to prove her innocense, a year later I became very ill with crohns disease after a very bad bout of gastric flu and lost my youth work job, then i had a miscarriage and developed depression, as i was battling this, my best friend then died of liver cancer and i developed early signs of cancer of the uterous - thankfully this cleared with bio feedback and alternative therapies, but then i developed ME and ovarian cysts and became underweight and too tired to do much, and my memory was affected. in this time I met a wonderful healer and wiccan and we fell in love, we were together 8 weeks when he was sudeenly killed in a rta.. my world fell apart and it took me from 1997 to 1999 to pick myself out of a very dark and strange place, in this time my father developed parkinsons and i became his carer, then i met a wonderful friend rich, who was schizophrenic, and jewish and very into magic and healing, we had wonderful times and he spurred me on to run my moot which helped me to heal, then I got meningitis and this left me with spinal osteoarthritis and concentration problems which i have to this day. in 2002 i was taken into hospital with one of my bowl flare ups and while in rich was murdered in a discrimination attack at his flat - someone broke into his sheltered flat and chocked him to death - i have never gotten over this, the person or persons were never found - on that day I lost my brother. Shortly after this another friend with mental illness was abducted, raped and strangled by a fellow patient she had been in hospital with, and a close friend with paranoia accussed me of plotting to kill him and threatened to burn down my dads home - i had to get an injunction taken out to keep him away from the house, and he ended up been sectioned as a danger to himself and others.
through all this my depression became slowly worse, plus the stress of caring for my father who by then also had dementia, and i developed severe insommnia through always been on alert for dads needs, and panic attacks - if i was away from home for a day id start to panic, even though dad had my mum helping him and my aunt.
eventually the dss stopped my disability allowance, and i was plunged into a very deep anxiety state and my gp diagnosed acute anxiety disorder, depression and stress - it took me 12 months to get my money reinstated by which time my left had fallen apart as my mother had developed terminal cancer and my father had been taken from me by social services and placed into care while i was caring for my mother.
I was alone in all of this, and last may my father suddenly died after the gp insulted me and told me i was panicing over nothing when i kept going into the surgery to tell them my father was ill, eventually they went to see him but ignored my plees to get him to hospital, infact one gp turned to me and said i was just blowing things out of proportion due to my anxiety - 6 hours later my father was dead - screaming due to pressure on the brain from heart failure. I have never forgotten and cannot forgive.
After this I had to nurse my mother until she died in my arms last october - and that night haunts me as her liver and stomach heamoraged as she died - and i get ptsd flashbacks. the hospice doctor was horrid and didnt have much time for me, and ten minutes after my mother had died they took her body away and hushered me into rooms to sign papers then virtually kicked me out of the hospice into the morning - i was angry as i had not been allowed to sit with her body and wash her and do the things that are right - it was like a conveyor belt of death, mechanical, cold.
5 weeks after this, i had to turn off my aunts life support on her 80th birthday after she lapsed into a coma and her lungs stopped working causing her brain to die, and someone i had trusted as a friend stole from me, and then accussed me of killing my aunt - the stress caused my osteoarthritis to flare and i landed in hospital for 6 weeks and now i am more disabled due to nerve damage and discs colapsing.
after this i was left to fend for myself, no support from family or bereavment care, and i plunged into dependance on my morphine and diazipam and cannabis and brandy - the only way I could kill the nightmares and flashbacks was to get stoned or drunk, then my old ex who has a personality disorder and is learning disabled due to dispraxia came to help me, and to this day still helps me when he is not in his 'nasty angry at the voices' head. I am still alone and isolated, still have ptsd and flashbacks and very dark black days when all i do is stay at home. Ive kicked the diazipam (by myself) as it was making me ill i was having chest pain and my weight galloped, and Ive kicked the cannabis (making me paranoid), I still get slightly drunk some nights (2 brandys and im out) to kill the flashbacks, and to help me sleep due to the pain im always in both with my spine and gut, and also with the depression due to the flashbacks, the flashbacks are now worse, and i recognised i may be heading for a breakdown if i don't start to care for myself, hense its good to write. I take strength from my time as a buddhist and toist, as i meditate and read my books by the dali lama, or i take myself out into the woods or on my adapted pushbike to a cafe. I find sitting in the cafe with a coffee watching life go by very theraputic.
i have lost friends, and lost my support locally as people don't know what its like to have ptsd and depression along with a degenerative illness. im still on the morphine as with out it im in too much pain to move about, as the spinal problem affects my arms and legs and lungs and bowl.
its good to be able to share this with you bard and everyone else, as i seldom have anyone i can open upto, im accussed of moaning and whinging and told to pull myself together, usually by people who have never switched off a life support, had a friend murdered, their lover killed, or watched their parents die in pain, i hope all this makes me stronger. I know it has made me wiser as a person and as a pagan, and to value life and people above all esle - im hoping i can find my way out of the dark times in order to help others - and I want to move away and start again away from the place that holds all the painful memories.
well done for speaking out bard, it takes guts, respect you for this blog posting of yours and it feels so good to share my own black dog with you.
Jacky, I know about your illnesses and know you have had a lot of really terrible things happening in your life but I didn't realise how many nightmare realities you have had to suffer or all the details you have shared here! Why is it some people go through so much suffering I do not know. I have been looking into the Law of Attraction again recently but I cannot believe or accept that people are attracting all these nightmare experiences. I am just thinking now of a woman I had a brief relationship with years back - she had just come out of hospital when I met her after having had her legs badly burned by the abusive man she lived with who tipped lighter fluid all over them and set it alight. She had also been treated for liver disease and had serious drug problems. She had lost her children years back after they were taken into care following another relationship in which she was beaten about by the father who was a biker. Anyway she told me she never goes to see her parents and family because she never has any good news she can tell them so there is no point. She said she was coming back to me but never did and I heard she had gone back to the brute who had burned her. I was left asking myself why? The lives of some people are so filled with torment than most people cannot understand how these things can go on, and not in some thirdworld poverty stricken country but in Britain today! I am still trying to understand these things.
I think moving away and starting again sounds like a good idea for you, Jacky! I moved away because I had had enough after 25 years of trying to make a go of things in Cardiff and failing. Thank you for sharing what you wanted to say!
Wow. How did I miss this hub? This must be therapy night for me. Well it is now 5 am and I never sleep so I should say therapy day. I had confessed on another hub that I was a cutter. I was very moved by your story. I have been declared mentally ill. Although I don't believe everything a psychiatrist says. They have had me on every kind of medication, sometimes taking over 20 pills a day. 5 or 6 pills 3 times a day. I have been committed several times to the mental ward. The last time, they weren't going to release me, ever. Thank goodness for my social worker that came to my house weekly to check on me. She intervened and somehow got me released. I don't take their medicines anymore. I was already a drug addict and alcoholic by the age of 17. I certainly didn't need more drugs. I have lived a very traumatic life, starting from a small child and I self medicated to relieve the emotional pain and the horrible feelings of despair and hopelessness. I feel everything far too deep. I feel all of the injustice that people suffer. Somehow I take it on. I feel the abuses suffered by animals and I feel the pain and suffering of the poor, homeless and downtrodden. I am told that it is part of my illness, but I cannot escape it. This causes me many bouts of depression and anxiety. I have been carried out on stretchers thinking that I am having a heart attack when it is merely an anxiety attack. Even now, I am worried sick for your commenter Jacky. Do you know her? Is she ok? Her comment was left 10 months ago. She is suffering terribly and I need to know if she is alright. Thank you for sharing your story and I'm sure I will regret all of my confessions tomorrow, or today, whichever it is.
Hi Lisa! Thank you for sharing here! I am in touch with Jacky whose problems have continued and in fact she was in hospital just before Xmas and seriously ill. This is her site:
http://www.facebook.com/people/Willow-Jacky/672926/profile.php?id=672926886
Thank you Bard for the info. I hope she doesnt mind me contacting her. But I must risk it.
Please do! I am sure she would be glad to hear from you!
I found your article really interesting. Thanks for sharing. Voted up.
Thank you!
Gypsy Willow Level 5 Commenter 3 years ago
I realise I am lucky in my life not to have to deal with this myself. Hope the rest of your life goes smoothly.