Bad medicine

Ugh.  Every time I hear of a suicide or drug overdose, I can't help but think back to conversations with people in the hospitals or outpatient therapy.  I've never touched drugs, even though I've been around them and encouraged by others to partake.  I haven't even smoked weed, even though I've had about a dozen people close to me swear that it would 'cure' my 'mental illness.'   I haven't touched it, but I've been around addiction at several points in my life.  No therapy or prescribed medicine could get those people away from the stuff.  They had/have pain to hide from, and talking about it would be absolutely devastating.

My mind has been to far off places without drugs, and further away places when a prescribed antipsychotic goes awry.  I don't want to complicate that further.  It usually has happened when stress was triggered, like some sort of coping mechanism my body does to kind of take me away from stress.  Now that I have a better handle on things, and much less confusion in my life, I hope I can nip it in the bud before things spiral out of control again.

I learned a lot about addiction and alcoholism from 'peers' that I met under mental health care.  I know that there are good people who get stuck in addiction's turbulence, and that many are incredibly talented individuals who just may be touched by a little fire.  I had a buddy in one hospital, we'll call him Bob, who couldn't get clean.  During some bored down time we drew me a picture.  It was a canoe, in a beautiful natural forested environment on a beautiful lake. There were three people in the canoe, one was me, one was him, and the third was our mutual friend.  Bob watched out for me while I was in that terrible place, like a big brother would.  I think of him every time I pass by the recovery house in my neighborhood and hope he's there.  But my heart breaks because I know he's probably not, and he's in another place far away.

It takes a healing hand to reach out to certain people.  I found many forms of therapy did NOT help me.  Drama Therapy and wacko role playing reverse psychology tricks made me worse.  I need TRUST and REALITY and a safe place to release emotion, not further mind fucks.  There are people who go into psychology for all the wrong reasons, and I'm grateful I've got a good bunch on my side this time.