Archive for » October 17th, 2009«

Please stop hurting me.  I promise I’ll be good.

It’s what I scream at random moments throughout the day.  I feel like a Tourette’s sufferer.  I’ve dealt with it for some time, so I’ve learned to disguise it, but not completely, not wholly.  People still notice.  And it just won’t stop.  I just want it to stop.

I don’t want to be sick anymore.  Is that so much to ask: to be able to do the things that most people do without the problems that most people don’t have?  I mean, really: how many people end a perfectly calm Saturday of watching movies with the sense that their head and heart are in a vacuum, that their life is shit, and that death would be mercy?  If there were so many, wouldn’t movies be all about that?  Wouldn’t every movie talk about the struggle of a depressive instead of this comedic series of misunderstanding bullshit?!

I’m getting angry about being sick all the time.  Why can’t I just have a good day?  God-fucking-damn it!  I’m going to scream.

And then nothing will be better.  Nothing is ever better.  God.  The hopelessness.  It’s consuming.

Please.  Just some relief.  Someone.  Something.  The meds only dull the pain.  I can still feel it there.  Always.  Always.

While the following statement of resignation from the APA by an apparently respected psychiatrist, a Dr. Mosher, doesn’t shock me, the fact that doctors within the field see what patients have been talking about for years—the legal drug dealing happening in doctors’ offices across the nation—gave me a sense of validation.  It’s true, and we aren’t crazy for thinking, s/he doesn’t care.

Luckily, I’ve finally found a doctor that listens to me, that doesn’t peddle drugs, and that honestly cares about how I feel and how I’m reacting to the medication she prescribes.  But it’s as I said: I’m lucky.

I’m sure anyone who has had to go through the American behavioral health system will appreciate the following, and perhaps some of my international readers will, also.  Just read this first paragraph:

After nearly three decades as a member it is with a mixture of pleasure and disappointment that I submit this letter of resignation from the American Psychiatric Association. The major reason for this action is my belief that I am actually resigning from the American Psychopharmacological Association. Luckily, the organization’s true identity requires no change in the acronym.

The rest of the letter is here.

Disgusting, isn’t it?!  Capitalism.  American Psychopharmaceutical Association.  It’d be funny if it wasn’t real.