Here is an excellent website from a very special lady. Please spend time exploring the website, including Laura’s amazing Story. Here’s what Laura has to say:
‘We search, and search, and search for answers to our emotional pain, until we realize they’ve been in us all along – not in psychiatric diagnoses, psychiatric textbooks, pill bottles, or the minds of the doctors we’ve surrendered ourselves to. At least, this has been my experience.
What does it mean to “recover” from Psychiatry? For me, it’s meant healing from the physical, emotional, cognitive, and existential trauma of psychiatric labels and psychotropic drugs, which has taken time, patience, acceptance, and unyielding determination.
Most of all, liberating myself from psychiatric oppression has meant reclaiming my voice – and learning how to trust it – as well as my agency, and my sense of responsibility and accountability as a human being. All of this has been far from easy, but boy, has it been beautiful.
Despite the tremendous struggle it’s been to get off psych drugs and re-enter life as a fully human being, I can say today that I look back on my thirteen years spent as a “Bipolar” patient with gratitude and appreciation, because those experiences of darkness, isolation, marginalization, and hopelessness at the hands of an institution that tried its hardest to “care” for me have taught me many lessons about what a meaningful life is, by showing me what it’s not.
I’ve felt tremendous anger, betrayal, confusion, and fear along the way, as well as sadness and grief, but finding peace with my years in the “mental health” system has been a crucial step – one that certainly didn’t come right away, or without struggle.
This website hosts many of the resources I’ve found helpful throughout my process of awakening and liberation from Psychiatry, for I believe that self-education – and challenging the narratives of those in positions of social, political, and financial power – is critical if one is to make truly informed choices.
You can also find more information about the work I do, and as time unfolds, more of my writing. I plan to build this site into a hub for local grassroots community organizing, especially around creating supports and resources for people coming off psychiatric drugs, so stay tuned for developments on that front.
In the meantime, if you’d like to join a Google group for those looking to start a ‘Coming off Psych Drugs’ mutual support group using the model of our Boston-area group, please email me at ldelano@recoveringfrompsychiatry.com so that I can add you to our group.
You can also find our group introduction, group format, and group resources in the ‘Coming off Psych Drugs’ section of this website.
If you’d like to learn more about me, check out my story here or my blog at the Mad in America website. While you’re there, I highly recommend that you explore the rest of the site – it’s an important resource for those interesting in rethinking psychiatry in the United States and around the world.’
