Un - entitled
The motive behind my writing is purely the part of it that is experiential and therapeutic in the learning I get as it gets read.
They say “the writing transforms the writer…” and I should say that is an incredible understatement.
I just watched a great “Channeling Erik” on YouTube, if you haven’t ever checked them out, it is this retired Dr. Mom channeling with her deceased Bi - Polar son (Eric) via various Psychic Mediums. They are wonderful, very intelligent in their discourse, and have served as the conduit in seeing eye to eye on many various topics for my wife and I. That is that we agree on most things.
The thing that I want to persuade people most to understand is that the NATURE OF MENTAL ILLNESS is as succinctly external as it is internal.
Diagnosis can serve as both harmful and helpful…
More than 75% of Americans (where I live) will be diagnosed in their lifetime due to a tragic or traumatic event.
When I was 12, my parents started abusing me. It got worse until I was 15. Then they were only parents if they fucking felt like it, or were going to experience negative feedback if they didn’t do something.
At 16 I began to explore alcohol, marijuana, and hallucinogenics.
Alcohol is a relaxant, and one of the most powerful things used commonly to treat your mood. Marijuana was precribed to me later in life for my mental illness. Last but not least, just today I read a CNN article showing a growing trend in treating depression with psilocybin mushrooms, with up to 8 times the effectiveness of the commonly prescribed modern pharmaceuticals.
At 18, I was kicked out of my house. I had no job to hold me over, no place to fall back on, and was told not to come home anymore.
My girlfriend hooked me up with a $400/mo room at a local bookie’s house. Late one night, on shrooms, scared of the surroundings at “Perry’s”, I flipped out and ran down the street yelling like I was captain of the football team leading the laps.
The cops came. When he accosted me, I was in the neighbors backyard. They put false charges on me claiming I had “Felony Assault”(ed) the cop. I confessed to my mushrooms, gave them a false lead on the dealer, and copped a plea. Rehab and 6 months recovery home instead of up to 10 years in prison.
My family now had in their possession the weapon to “CONTROL” me for the rest of my life: RECOVERY.
I was labeled an ADDICT, and they spread the word as much as they could when in need of boosting their own ego by claiming not to be at fault for my struggles.
YET NO AMOUNT OF RECOVERY would change their attitude.
Winter of the following year came, and I needed help. I ended up living in the garage of a friends house where a group of us gathered every night for years. This was because the family I came to believe in, now said “NEVER COME HERE…”
Here is the part I need you people to know. This is when my symptoms took charge. It was from the stuff around me, the familial abuse, the community uproar, the youthful estrangement, and having no one to turn to.
Our genes are not set in stone. They evolve and are altered as we are throughout our lives via our family, friends, consumption, activities and experiences.
At that point I was naked against the world. My symptoms paralyzed me and I began, as I would again and again not rising above, but being dragged under.
The words “mentally ill” are a weapon, as are the terms “addict” and “alcoholic” when used to thumbscrew someone to the system. The system abuses people in this way, as do hundreds of thousands of the hypocrites who wish to point the finger in a “compassionate way”.
In this life of modern technology, space exploration, Artificial Intelligence, mystical miracles, engineering triumphs, biological blueprinting and all of their cross sections meeting place, who should tell any woman, man, or even child who has the right to their minds?
NO ONE.
I have my life. Extraordinarily complacent on the monetary angle, but imminently rich in fertile growth spiritually and even now in my own little family here in San Diego.
Do what makes you happy. That is what should have been done to begin with for me, I am a middle aged man of 43 here now who is realizing at a very common age to realize that my parents and siblings of old aren’t ever going to change, and it ain’t worth it.
Now what I have to face is being the absent Dad to a 16 year old kid who hates me, kept from me his whole life. That one worries me.
So anyway, hope this made sense. Needed to write it down for myself, really.
Be Well!
Joel
