Personal Stories

The essay from Mad In America Sept 2021 “Ending The Silence Around Psychedelic Therapy Abuse”, read by Will Hall:

Michael Pollan’s hugely influential new book on psychedelic medicine, How to Change Your Mind, is overly enthusiastic and largely uncritical. All the new hype and questionable science about miracle treatments as the next wave of cures for mental disorders leaves out huge risks, including the risk of therapy abuse…

Also check the companion essay with more detail about my personal experience with psychedelic therapists Aharon Grossbard and Francoise Bourzat of the Center for Consciousness Medicine at www.medium.com/@willhall, with updates and links at the end of that essay.

What if we just started having conversations about how to help each other through hard times? And took the time needed to really have discussions and hear the experiences of mad people? Erick Fabris is a psychiatric survivor activist and organizer based in Toronto Canada, and was part of the West End Survivors in Toronto that set up the first Mad Pride event in Canada, For ten years he worked with a patient’s council advising one of the country’s biggest hospitals, the Center for Addiction and Mental Health Care CAMH. Erick is the author of Tranquil Prisons: Chemical Incarceration Under Community Treatment Orders, a searing indictment of forced psychiatric drugging in the community. He is the founder of Crazy Talks and Mad Stories, a creative community event in Toronto, and is researching with the Mad Canada Shadow Report Group. (Alternate 58 minute version here.)

https://www.erickfabris.com/crazytalks/  https://madcanada.wixsite.com/shadowreport

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What does a life dedicated to love and freedom look like? Laura-Marie River Victor Peace Nopales joins co-hosts Jacks McNamara and Will Hall to explore the most important questions of all — by way of dreams, peace activism, and living in community. Laura-Marie is a queer traveler, maker of zines, radical mental health-er, fat liberation-er, queer liberation-er, and autistic liberation-er, and co-creator of Disabled Resilience Permaculture. (Alternate 58 min version here.)

Laura-Marie’s sites:
www.listeningtothenoiseuntilitmakessense.com
www.ilikeyourstims.com
www.instagram.com/xtrikeslutsx
https://www.facebook.com/listeningtothenoiseuntilitmakessense
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3gDcxFhXldzUWozp26ykGg
https://soundcloud.com/robotmad

Las Vegas Radical Mental Health Collective:
https://lvrmhc.org

Jacks’ website: https://jacksmcnamara.net

And check out Jacks’ awesome podcast So Many Wings! https://somanywings.org

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Just in time for the holidays, a chapter from Outside Mental Health: Voices and Visions of Madness: “Christmas Vacation in the Schizophrenia Factory,” a personal account from Will Hall from a visit back to visit his family for Christmas, first published in 2015.

(Everything is better now.)

You can purchase Outside Mental Health at your favorite independent bookseller or other retailer, and download a free ebook version at www.outsidementalhealth.com.

Can survivors be therapists – and even better at it? Jacks McNamara – poet, trauma healing coach, and co-founder of The Icarus Project – joins Will Hall to discuss the calling to became a therapist/counselor/coach inspired by their own struggles and survivor mutual aid. What makes a “good therapist”? Is mutual aid and friendship enough or do we need professional healers? How does sharing your trauma and oppression with clients affect working as a therapist? What about licensing and credentials – can they get in the way of truly helping people? And is a therapist at heart a wounded healer?

Jacks McNamara is a genderqueer poet, parent, artist, activist, educator, performer, and somatic healing practitioner based on the Tewa land called O’ga P’ogeh, also known today as Santa Fe, New Mexico. Jacks is a Lambda literary fellow, and their first book of poetry, Inbetweenland, was released by Deviant Type Press in 2013. Co-author of Navigating the Space Between Brilliance and Madness, Jacks is a neuro-creative psychiatric survivor who has toured the US and Canada offering workshops and performances. Jacks is the co-founder of The Icarus Project, now the Fireweed Collective, offering mental health education and mutual aid through a Healing Justice lens. Jacks is the subject of the poetic documentary film Crooked Beauty. Also check out Jacks’ previous interview on Madness Radio!

www.jacksmcnamara.net
www.madnessradio.net/madness-radio-queer-poetry-inbetweenland-jacks-mcnamara/
www.madinamerica.com/2012/06/crooked-beauty/
www.instagram.com/jacksmcnamara/

Nedra Deadwyler of Atlanta Georgia’s Civil Bikes interviews Madness Radio’s Will Hall about bicycles, mental health, and human liberation, for the KBOO FM Bicycle Show.

https://www.nedradeadwylerconsulting.com/

http://www.civilbikes.com/

Jay Mahler was one of the originators of the psychiatric survivors movement in the 1960s, joining protests with the Free Speech Movement at the University of California Berkeley- the beginnings of protest against the US war in Vietnam – and then dedicating his life to ending forced treatment and protecting psychiatric patient rights. He was a much loved leader in the movement with extensive impact on the lives of everyone involved in survivor / peer / consumer mental health advocacy, in the San Francisco Bay Area and beyond. Jay passed away this May and will be dearly missed, he was a really genuine kindhearted man who touched everyone who knew him. Thanks to Dina Tyler for co-hosting this recent interview with Jay.

Pool of Consumer Champions https://www.pocc.org

Peers.net-Jay Mahler

Remembering Jay Mahler | Michael Cornwall

www.nyaprs.org/

nyaprs.org part 2

In this guest podcast, Jason Wright of Oddball Magazine sits down with Madness Radio host Will Hall, author of the Harm Reduction Guide to Coming Off Psychiatric Drugs, to discuss mental health abolition, harm reduction, democratic socialism, and more in a far ranging conversation. You may have noticed the world is falling apart, time to think big and outside! (And seriously consider vitamin D supplementation). Check out Jason’s work and the community at Oddball Magazine here:
https://oddballmagazine.com/

At the Madness Radio book launch a few years ago writer and poet Susie Meserve read her creative nonfiction essay “A Little Crazy,” included in the anthology Show Me All Your Scars: True Stories of Living With Mental Illness and featuring an intimate (and not entirely flattering) portrait of her boyfriend at the time in 2004 – “schizophrenic” Will Hall.

https://susiemeserve.com

https://www.creativenonfiction.org/books/show-me-all-your-scars

Madness Radio book launch on YouTube

Outside Mental Health: Voices and Visions of Madness book site

Jyl Ion hears voices, but she refuses to view these non-ordinary experiences as a sign of mental illness. Instead Jyl came off 16 years of multiple toxic medications, talks to her ancestor spirits and has reclaimed access to unsanctioned knowledge. She struggled through the aftermath of sexual violence and was bedridden for two years of illness withdrawing from psychiatric meds – and now emerges as a strong survivor. Today Jyl has turned her voice hearing and her traumatic past into gifts, and works professionally as a forensic medium helping law enforcement solve missing persons cases. Her new book of poetry is called Soft Out Spoken. 58 min version

https://jylanais.com/

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Do bipolar and psychosis have a healing potential blocked by suppression, medications, and avoidance? What if we could help people safely and intentionally explore, express, and understand these frightening states? Can breathwork ceremonies open the doors of perception like psychedelics — but without the drugs or risks? Are journeys into altered states too dangerous for people with madness  – or just need to be tailored to individual needs?

Sean Blackwell had an overwhelming emotional crisis diagnosed as bipolar that emerged into a spiritual awakening that enriched his life. Today he facilitates and researches breathwork groups: intense focused breathing with blindfolds and music to discover the healing potential at the root of psychiatric crisis. His book and YouTube channel is Bipolar or Waking up. You can also listen to part two of the interview here. 58 min version

https://www.bipolarawakenings.com
https://www.youtube.com/user/bipolarorwakingup https://internationalintegrators.org/nita-gage

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After taking the psychedelic drug ayahuasca Martha Elisabeth went into an extended altered state diagnosed as psychotic. Her terrifying ordeal ignited a spiritual initiation that eventually brought gifts of awakening, insight, and compassion. How did Martha emerge from her ecstatic journey through a mythic, archetypal world to become an advocate and teacher? What lessons can we learn about the dangers — and potentials — of psychedelics and of altered states of consciousness labeled “madness”? Today she is a mental health case worker in the UK National Health Service, co-director of an interdisciplinary research team, and voice for more humane and spiritual treatments for madness.

What does it mean to be called “crazy” in a crazy world? Listen to the free audiobook of the Preface to Outside Mental Health: Voices and Visions of Madness, written and read by Will Hall.

Outside Mental Health: Voices and Visions of Madness reveals the human side of mental illness. Based on ten years of Madness Radio interviews, more than 60 voices of psychiatric patients, scientists, journalists, doctors, activists, and artists create a vital new conversation about empowering the human spirit. Outside Mental Health invites us to rethink what we know about bipolar, psychosis, schizophrenia, depression, medications, and mental illness in society.

More info about the book here: www.outsidementalhealth.com

Download the chapter here: http://bit.ly/bookpreface 

Voice hearers, mystics, visionaries, and mad people are found throughout the scriptures of Judaism. What does Jewish theology have to teach us about madness and psychiatric diagnosis? How can modern Judaism show the way to new responses to extreme and altered states, in our communities and ourselves? Caroline Mazel-Carlton is a survivor of psychiatric crisis diagnosed as psychosis, Director of Training at the Wildflower Alliance – Western Massachusetts Recovery Learning Community, Hearing Voiced and Alternatives to Suicide support group facilitator/trainer, and part of the Jewish Renewal movement studying to be a rabbi.www.westernmassrlc.org/ https://aleph.org/

http://www.santacruz.com/news/busting_the_mental_illness_myths.html
https://www.facebook.com/2ndStoryRespite/
www.youtube.com/watch?v=GtjP2nn6Nss
www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7_q3F5bNyk
www.youtube.com/watch?v=ctoziyxsZwE&authuser=0
www.psychosissummit.com/copy-of-charles-heriot-maitland