I have another appointment today. For a whole half hour, which is a lifetime in Doctor Land. It's like Candy Land, only the candies are different. Sorry - my sarcasm with the medical world knows no bounds. None. I have to pass a mental health assessment today. This raises the question again,
"If I am on drugs that can alter your personality, WHY are my answers regarding my mental health all you need to treat me?"
I'm sure this will involve another lovely paper quiz probably one that I've done before. I don't know how far to "comply" with the standard operating procedure here, and how much to challenge it. Not much today. I only have five days of medication left. I can't tell you how much I hate sounding like an addict. He has to write a prescription, so I have to be nice. And mentally stable.
I'm making friends from all over the world, in rehab, as one friend affectionately calls it. An online forum community where anyone on anything can just chat about what they're dealing with. It's alarming how many of these people are Christians. A majority, I'd say. Scriptures are a part of their profile, things they're clinging to.
"He shall give sleep to His beloved - Psalm 127:2" one woman chants to herself desperately as she roams her house at night, wanting nothing more than to take a sleeping pill and escape into a blissful unawareness that most of us take for granted when our heads hit the pillow every night. She just wants to sleep.
During withdrawal, my counselor was awake for 17 days. She quit cold turkey, in a rehab facility, and never closed her eyes for more than five minutes without waking up to pace again. She watched THREE cycles of heroin addicts suffer through withdrawal and leave rehab before her withdrawals ended. The staff said they'd never seen such torture and after that didn't allow anyone to detox cold turkey at their facility. They had to do it at a hospital, they were so sure she would die from it.
I think my question today is, "Why am I finding more Christians in 'rehab' than anyone else?"
Is it that they are who are strong enough to decide to kick the medicine bottles as opposed to just resigning themselves to a lifetime of pill bottles? I really doubt it. It's a nice answer, but probably not the true one.
In processing this all, I think the worst betrayal comes in WHEN this happened. It was incredibly difficult for me to tell Dr.X that I wasn't feeling okay. It was hard to call work and say that I was too worried about Bella to both work and worry. I needed time. That's not acceptable in our culture anymore. We of the Braun genetic line could teach courses on not being weak. We are tough. We can do it ourselves, or figure it out if we can't.
I wasn't tough enough to do both. That wasn't a sickness, it was a fact. Life came at me and I took it a little bit harder than even I expected. I took it harder than some people would have - but that's not a sickness either. That's me. I'm emotional. I'm learning not to care that other people thought I took it "too" hard. Walk in my shoes and then give me your opinion on that. Until you have heard the words "Something is wrong with your child" you don't know what that will do to you. No clue whatsoever. This has been HARD on us, and I'm okay with that. Peter said after the one day we went to the psychiatrist together, "It was therapy enough to hear someone say it mattered, and that it matters still." I couldn't agree more.
Instead of believing that, I believed that it made me sick. I believed that being so worried for my daughter was an actual chemical imbalance in my brain. This is astounding to me. How did I get there? I believe with all my heart that pharmaceutical companies are out to manipulate healthy people into believing they are not. If that sounds like a conspiracy theory, then I suppose it is, until you see the following quote to Forbes Magazine by former head of Merck (HUGE Pharmaceutical Company):
"It has long been my dream to make drugs for healthy people, so that my company can sell to everyone"
Thirty years later, a staggering number of us have responded to the ads we see on television and bought into the lies. There are a huge number of grief disorders now being put forward as actual sickness. I can't tell you how many people I chat with daily in 'rehab' say that they were put on antidepressants after someone they loved died. Why can't we just be sad? I have a friends who have lost babies, and the common thread is that they are expected to "get over it" so quickly. It wasn't even a baby yet, it wasn't meant to be. Maybe it was disabled and so God was really just being nice to you. Becky wrote recently that it never stops hurting to think about her dad. It still feels like someone should come in and re-write her story. One day, Someone will. Until then, we are allowing people to label our weaknesses as sicknesses.
20% of children under five are being treated with some sort of behavioral drug. They have a host of illnesses. ADHD. Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. Oppositional Defiance Disorder. They're being medicated for it. With medications that NOBODY knows the long term side effects for.
My counselor took her Masters degree while under the influence of anti-depressants, pain meds, and sleeping pills. She completed everything except her final exam, which she planned to take in a different city after she moved. Randomly, or maybe not, she went to rehab before she took the tests. Once she was medication free, she went to take her tests and literally did not remember one single thing. Courses she had aced were gone from her memory. Her brain did not care that her drugs said Rx on them and were peddled by the television and a doctor instead of by a slimeball behind a dumpster with a baggie in his hand. Her brain lost the ability to store information while on "medication".
I wonder if 20% of kids one day will be sitting in high-rise offices, have great lives, kick their 'behavioral aids', and forget how to read? It's not a silly thing to worry about. Nor is the very likely decrease we will see in about 10-20 years in all forms of art. Artistic kids are more likely to be put on medication when they're young, but the same medications make them unable to create. It suppresses that exact part of their brain.
Now we're not just letting people tell us we're sick when we're sad, we're letting them tell us we're sick when we don't happen to be the kind of four year olds that can sit in a classroom for 6 straight hours, five days a week. I can take one look at Bella and tell you that she is going to be that kid. She wasn't made for stillness. I'm sure we'll teach her to be still sometimes, but she's a creature of action, and I love that about her. But she isn't sick, and I will NEVER give her a behavior altering drug on the basis of a sickness that no doctor can prove exists.
But I did let them do it to Bella's mommy. Worry for Bella became Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD - I even get my own acronym). When all we did was give her medicine and Peter's schedule didn't allow him to do it on a regular basis, I needed to give it to her myself. I spent SO MUCH TIME thinking about her medication, because I had to. Because it had to be taken at a specific time, and it had to be kept cold and on and on and on. It was easier to cope if I just did it. I could remember. But that meant that I had Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and a medication to go with it.
My little girl is up. Tomorrow night I will give her her last dose of medication. Friday, I will not put a syringe in her mouth. Not one time. I just sterilized about fifteen syringes, and just realized I can put them all away. I only need three more. Oh the healing that floods every corner of my body and mind when I think of that. When I look at her beautiful little face. I am not weak. I'm a mom. I am more blessed than I have any right not be, and am happier than I've been in about 18 months, and that's what I'll be telling my doctor in a half hour.
"If I am on drugs that can alter your personality, WHY are my answers regarding my mental health all you need to treat me?"
I'm sure this will involve another lovely paper quiz probably one that I've done before. I don't know how far to "comply" with the standard operating procedure here, and how much to challenge it. Not much today. I only have five days of medication left. I can't tell you how much I hate sounding like an addict. He has to write a prescription, so I have to be nice. And mentally stable.
I'm making friends from all over the world, in rehab, as one friend affectionately calls it. An online forum community where anyone on anything can just chat about what they're dealing with. It's alarming how many of these people are Christians. A majority, I'd say. Scriptures are a part of their profile, things they're clinging to.
"He shall give sleep to His beloved - Psalm 127:2" one woman chants to herself desperately as she roams her house at night, wanting nothing more than to take a sleeping pill and escape into a blissful unawareness that most of us take for granted when our heads hit the pillow every night. She just wants to sleep.
During withdrawal, my counselor was awake for 17 days. She quit cold turkey, in a rehab facility, and never closed her eyes for more than five minutes without waking up to pace again. She watched THREE cycles of heroin addicts suffer through withdrawal and leave rehab before her withdrawals ended. The staff said they'd never seen such torture and after that didn't allow anyone to detox cold turkey at their facility. They had to do it at a hospital, they were so sure she would die from it.
I think my question today is, "Why am I finding more Christians in 'rehab' than anyone else?"
Is it that they are who are strong enough to decide to kick the medicine bottles as opposed to just resigning themselves to a lifetime of pill bottles? I really doubt it. It's a nice answer, but probably not the true one.
In processing this all, I think the worst betrayal comes in WHEN this happened. It was incredibly difficult for me to tell Dr.X that I wasn't feeling okay. It was hard to call work and say that I was too worried about Bella to both work and worry. I needed time. That's not acceptable in our culture anymore. We of the Braun genetic line could teach courses on not being weak. We are tough. We can do it ourselves, or figure it out if we can't.
I wasn't tough enough to do both. That wasn't a sickness, it was a fact. Life came at me and I took it a little bit harder than even I expected. I took it harder than some people would have - but that's not a sickness either. That's me. I'm emotional. I'm learning not to care that other people thought I took it "too" hard. Walk in my shoes and then give me your opinion on that. Until you have heard the words "Something is wrong with your child" you don't know what that will do to you. No clue whatsoever. This has been HARD on us, and I'm okay with that. Peter said after the one day we went to the psychiatrist together, "It was therapy enough to hear someone say it mattered, and that it matters still." I couldn't agree more.
Instead of believing that, I believed that it made me sick. I believed that being so worried for my daughter was an actual chemical imbalance in my brain. This is astounding to me. How did I get there? I believe with all my heart that pharmaceutical companies are out to manipulate healthy people into believing they are not. If that sounds like a conspiracy theory, then I suppose it is, until you see the following quote to Forbes Magazine by former head of Merck (HUGE Pharmaceutical Company):
"It has long been my dream to make drugs for healthy people, so that my company can sell to everyone"
Thirty years later, a staggering number of us have responded to the ads we see on television and bought into the lies. There are a huge number of grief disorders now being put forward as actual sickness. I can't tell you how many people I chat with daily in 'rehab' say that they were put on antidepressants after someone they loved died. Why can't we just be sad? I have a friends who have lost babies, and the common thread is that they are expected to "get over it" so quickly. It wasn't even a baby yet, it wasn't meant to be. Maybe it was disabled and so God was really just being nice to you. Becky wrote recently that it never stops hurting to think about her dad. It still feels like someone should come in and re-write her story. One day, Someone will. Until then, we are allowing people to label our weaknesses as sicknesses.
20% of children under five are being treated with some sort of behavioral drug. They have a host of illnesses. ADHD. Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. Oppositional Defiance Disorder. They're being medicated for it. With medications that NOBODY knows the long term side effects for.
My counselor took her Masters degree while under the influence of anti-depressants, pain meds, and sleeping pills. She completed everything except her final exam, which she planned to take in a different city after she moved. Randomly, or maybe not, she went to rehab before she took the tests. Once she was medication free, she went to take her tests and literally did not remember one single thing. Courses she had aced were gone from her memory. Her brain did not care that her drugs said Rx on them and were peddled by the television and a doctor instead of by a slimeball behind a dumpster with a baggie in his hand. Her brain lost the ability to store information while on "medication".
I wonder if 20% of kids one day will be sitting in high-rise offices, have great lives, kick their 'behavioral aids', and forget how to read? It's not a silly thing to worry about. Nor is the very likely decrease we will see in about 10-20 years in all forms of art. Artistic kids are more likely to be put on medication when they're young, but the same medications make them unable to create. It suppresses that exact part of their brain.
Now we're not just letting people tell us we're sick when we're sad, we're letting them tell us we're sick when we don't happen to be the kind of four year olds that can sit in a classroom for 6 straight hours, five days a week. I can take one look at Bella and tell you that she is going to be that kid. She wasn't made for stillness. I'm sure we'll teach her to be still sometimes, but she's a creature of action, and I love that about her. But she isn't sick, and I will NEVER give her a behavior altering drug on the basis of a sickness that no doctor can prove exists.
But I did let them do it to Bella's mommy. Worry for Bella became Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD - I even get my own acronym). When all we did was give her medicine and Peter's schedule didn't allow him to do it on a regular basis, I needed to give it to her myself. I spent SO MUCH TIME thinking about her medication, because I had to. Because it had to be taken at a specific time, and it had to be kept cold and on and on and on. It was easier to cope if I just did it. I could remember. But that meant that I had Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and a medication to go with it.
My little girl is up. Tomorrow night I will give her her last dose of medication. Friday, I will not put a syringe in her mouth. Not one time. I just sterilized about fifteen syringes, and just realized I can put them all away. I only need three more. Oh the healing that floods every corner of my body and mind when I think of that. When I look at her beautiful little face. I am not weak. I'm a mom. I am more blessed than I have any right not be, and am happier than I've been in about 18 months, and that's what I'll be telling my doctor in a half hour.
6:01 PM
He's AMAZING!!
Oh my goodness, what an incredible answer to prayer. He listened to me. He asked me intelligent questions, like, "Isn't that what any mom would have felt?" He seemed shocked that I was on medication at all. He has a VERY slow taper program that I'm allowed to follow at my own pace. He made certain that I knew I was never to start Zoloft again because the risks of Serotonin Syndrome are way too high.
He said he thought it was crazy how people needed a medical label and a medication for every little thing. He wrote a prescription to last me for the rest of my taper. I finish on Mother's Day :)
HUGE burden off my shoulders. Huge. I almost hugged him. I told him that it meant more than he could know to be called normal, which probably sounded crazy, but he laughed and we scoffed together at lame BC wimps who can't deal with rain (it was on the news the other night that it causes depression and people should be allowed an extra day off work to deal with all the rain in winter) who really need to try starting a car in -40 and driving to work.
I love him. He's my new favorite person. I wish I could have him over for dinner.
9:44 AM
yay yay yay! What else is there to say! I'm so happy for you!
12:18 PM
Yayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy! :D So glad that you found a good doctor.
8:00 AM
Love you Mel :) Just starting to get back into blogging, and looking through my bookmarks and the links on the side of my blog, and am starting to read other's blogs again too, and I've been reading yours (backwards) and am glad you found a good doctor, and am glad you're off everything, and glad you all made it through. As for your question re: why you find so many Christians... here's one link I found interesting http://www.drugawareness.org/articles/spirituality-and-sorcery
My parents had borrowed, not too long ago, a whole video series on this topic but I didn't have the chance to watch it... I have a dependence on Advil and muscle relaxants to deal with my shoulder and neck pain, and so one morning I was talking with my parents and they were filling me in on some of this, and some of the revelations they've had over their conditions and medications. My dad had asthma-like stuff and used a puffer several times a day sometimes for years, till God finally called him on it, and revealed that my dad had un-repented of fears in his life, and that was causing his asthma. He repented of those fears and hasn't used a puffer for a couple months now... the asthma is gone. I probably am carrying around fears, stress, burdens, etc... that "weigh down" my shoulders and neck, plus just basic bad posture, and I use the painkillers and muscle relaxants to deal with the issues instead of finding out their root cause and dealing with it... Our society is all about cover-up/disquise, deal with the fruit, not the root, and we get suckered into it. Glad you fought your way free. I'm still working on my dependence. *Hugs* Again, love ya!