Dear sue,

AMEN!

That’s the grayest statement I have read of yours. I haven’t been reading this list very long, but, so far I have seen you write some absolute condemnations of the system and the people in it.

My experience has been so mixed with the system of care that I find the absolute condemnation that that I have read so far on this NO-LIST hard to want to be a part of even though I feel this is of course where my heart and soul is.

I have had negative dehumanizing experiences in the system. I have also gained immeasurable help from particular psychiatrists and therapists and yes medication, too. Well, the medication part, the jury is still out on. That’s a topic I’m sore on right now. But, I do not throw it out without consideration .. Robert Whitacker notwithstanding. I know there are huge profits and many unwanted side affects sometimes. There is also much alleviation of human suffering and agony as well. I know you must know that.

If it weren’t for caring dedicated mental health professionals I would be dead or worse.

This psychic pain and suffering that I experience is not a made up thing either. It is not a ‘myth’ as in Myth of Mental Illness. It is a real, tangible, life altering occurrence that has affected my life since early childhood. Granted the environment is an aggravating irritant to it, but there is an it that is a part of me that is mad all of its own accord. A part that has a life of its own and doesn’t seem to respond to medication, therapy, friendship, self-help, or the NO-LIST.

This is where I come full circle and say hurray for your poem THE GAPS.

It’s only human to try to alleviate some of the pain and suffering and try to feel less of it and more like what it seems others are feeling and are being able to do. It’s so seductive to want be ‘normal’ and not be burdened with this otherness of feelings and behavior or lack thereof. It’s alluring to think, and one is encouraged to believe, that the effects one feels when one takes a pill that it is relieving the nightmare and imbuing one with energy. Maybe these things are happening.

But, what about the sleepless nights, the endless drive to be active, and the constant appetite for food? Trade offs, one is told. These negative effects may wear off in time. Try another drug. It may not have those negative effects. It has other negative effects. What to do? What to do?

Neither choice is acceptable.

“To be or not to be. Whether ’tis nobler ..” Perhaps that is the question. To you, on the NO perhaps ’tis nobler to go without meds. Is that what I’m hearing. Somehow those of us who choose to try meds are not purist enough or natural enough or dedicated enough to the cause or in another civil rights movement, “black enough,” for your cause to be acceptable to you.

That’s how I and others, who take meds feel around people who are so against medication, feel. You say you are for choice and yet it is only for the right choice you mean. The right choice being not to take meds or else suffer the stigma of condemnation and ostracization.

Not to mention forced treatment. Oops I said it. The forbidden. The Taboo. No force. Ever. Well. One time a dear friend of mine was trying to kill herself by jumping out of a window and I chose sit on her rather than let her do that. Is that forced treatment? Well, then I believe in forced treatment. I don’t believe in letting someone kill themselves if I can stop them long enough for them to reconsider. Now, have I stigmatized myself further with the NO-LIST. Or should I say will I suffer discrimination from the NO.

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I would like to hear from any one else out there who feels similar to me on some of these issues if there is anyone else out there. I feel pretty alone with these views.

Lynne Stewart

On Mon, 9 Jun 2003 16:26:57 -0400 Sue Poole writes:

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