"Listening To Madness" -- Coverage in Newsweek Magazine

I just got the following email from Charles Barber, author of "Comfortably Numb: How Psychiatry Is Medicating a Nation" and past guest on Madness Radio. Thanks Charles!

A very sympathetic piece. congrats -- well-deserved recognition. And of the 100 odd interviews i did about my book, yours was one of the 4 best and most satisfying.

I read an article on MSN this morning about Mad Pride and did a name search which led to your recovery story. A part in your story really grabbed me at the gut level because it seemed eerily familiar to an experience from my own life. After a bout with postpartum depression in 1992 (which spiraled due to multiple stressors into what I feel now was postpartum psychosis), I lost a job with an environmental consulting firm. I was prescribed Prozac at that time which contributed to mania and anxiety and was then prescribed Buspar to help with the anxiety. A few years later and Rx free, I began taking Cylert, thinking I might have ADHD (since I had been diagnosed with it as a child) and after an extended period of taking too much of it in an attempt to deal with too many stressors, I experienced a psychotic episode ("transient psychosis", the side effect of long-term overdosing), which landed me in a lock-down mental hospital. Had I not filed an appeal to the facility's additional 90-day hold (once the original 72 hour hold expired) and gained my release, I do believe the facility would have continued slapping holds on me until the money ran out. Parts of your story sounded very close to home. That particular hospital had quite a scam going to keep people in in order to get the available state and federal dollars available for "special cases", aside from the MediCal fraud that was also going on. I will never forget the things I observed. I have struggled with depression in the past, extreme highs and lows, paranoia, crippling anxiety and other symptoms which, had I been open about them, could have landed me even more diagnoses and labels. I have worked very hard to get through school to earn a BS in Human Development and Family Sciences, Gerontology from OSU while single parenting two kids and also working. I take no meds now. Yeah, I know I am different, that I think differently and outside the norm but I'm not mentally ill--I am intelligent and gifted and wonderful--like you. I applaud the work you're doing Will. I appreciate your struggle.

These reflections (reactions) were triggered by the "Listening to Madness" article, much of my unfolding with The Icarus Project, support of friends to listen to my authentic self (light pouring from my chest) even though it scared them senseless at times and still does, among all the other crucial paradigm-shifting experiences in my life:

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I have a dream that one day this nation will wake up and witness "the mentally ill" as healer, revering them for being the few left who can still step outside their door and feel anything at all amidst a society of people who've anesthetized themselves to the dehumanizing existence of industrialization, mass living, suburban detachment, productivity, consumerism, materialism, monoculture, and high-tech civilization.

(This was triggered by an article written by Bruce Levine as well as a Madness Radio interview with Bruce Levine and Will, found here - http://madnessradio.net/madness-radio-2006-10-04-bruce-levine-commonsens..., also by another madness radio interview with Robert Whitaker, found here - http://madnessradio.net/madness-radio-sane-medication-policy-robert-whit...)

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The people who experience dimensions of reality that get slammed with the label of "mental illness" are visionaries and healers. Except they have been silenced by psychiatry and western ways of understanding the world and human experience. We need our visionaries and healers MORE THAN ANYTHING right now. Whoever wants to put down their socially/culturally constructed barriers to understand more. Connect with me. (triggered by TIP (The Icarus Project) , found here http://theicarusproject.net/ AND triggered by all my soaking up of Bonfire-Madigan, an interview between Will Hall and B-Mad found here, http://madnessradio.net/madness-radio-2007-07-25-bonfire-madigan-visiona..., you can also go here to let her feed your soul, this is her website she is launching a new brilliant oh so yummy CD, www.bonfiremadigan.com)

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SCHIZOTYPAL DISORDER, personality disorder that looks like a need for social isolation, odd behavior and thinking, & often unconventional beliefs...WOW...Uh oh! How dare you think differently! How dare you not work within our system, you sorcerer(ess). F- you, we're not disordered. You are. Just think about it for a sec, sweet LOVE, or I mean American culture and society---We LOVE you, but you don't LOVE US---

(This was triggered by a precious facebook friend/acquaintence through a social overlap of friends, who I never talked to but- she read these quotes, wrote me her story and asked for where I got my inspiration- as you can see a lot the source is TIP and Madness Radio and Will Hall and B-Mad)

^^^
P.S. I have never been diagnosed OR medicated for an extensive period of time with anything. I have been in an adolescent psych ward. I think I was there for two weeks. Time gets warped when your tapping into your visionary states. I see myself and everyone around me as healer. We're all healers, did you know that? ALSO, my psychiatrist is a wizard for never diminishing me with labels or numbing me with psych drugs. He is my savior in a lot of ways. Shout out to Fred Davis of Seattle, Washington. My hero and spirit guide in human form. His website here, you will fall in love with him: http://frederickbdavis.com/Welcome.htm

All is full of love and healing. Only!

Mad Pride,
LaLa

I wanted to say this Newsweek article is really good. Will, you are so brave to be so out there in public like this as I also know that to do so in today’s atmosphere of bio psychiatry, A.C.T. teams and forced drugging is taking a dangerous stance with your dangerous gift and can be very risky on a personal level. I still believe that if more of us can manage to take the chance that things will change despite the system’s resistance to it. I even believe there will be less people experiencing psychosis in the first place if there is LESS pressure applied to them, which is often, in my opinion, causing the problem the system is trying to ‘cure.’
It is the public that needs to hear another side of the same kind of experience so that the stilted perspective they get on it now will not be accepted unquestioned.
The emotional connection you made to the writer of the piece, so that she could see the SIMILARITY between 'us' and 'them' is a very important one. More important I believe than most people understand. I am aiming at something similar here in my own locale in Canada, as much of what gets psychiatrized in one person is routinely ‘overlooked’ or seen as ‘normal’ in those who are not psychiatrized. Yet the public for the most part does not even NOTICE this. It needs to be pointed out and you are very good at doing that in a way that gets accepted and heard.
You were among the first people to connect to me personally when I got on line in 2002, or 3, for the first time, and my respect for you has grown since then also. These connections provided me with a sense of community I did not have concretely and I am sure such feelings of similar experience with others did much to speed up my own recovery process. I would say you are likely one of my all time favourites among the ‘mad’ (not counting myself of course!)
Keep talking Will. Things are changing.