Blog

Fawning, saying yes sir, or shining it on is such an important skill in enduring life, especially during a break from reality. It is a skill I struggled with during times of mental health crisis prior to my break. Indeed, I have had to get pretty good at this fawning skill to survive. Prior to […]

 was to love from my heart to help out & take part all i ever wanted  was to not be alone not be on my own all i ever wanted  was to be fed and make sure no one goes hungry all i ever wanted  was to be clothed of my nakedness to cover & […]

It’s been nearly twenty years since I came out of a two-year break from reality. I am no longer faced with the prospect of homeless and unable to find work. I have a career, a marriage and a sense of stability. But in other ways I am just starting to realize how fragmented and dissociated […]

If you’ve ever wondered how Holden Caulfield turned out, you’ll want to meet our guest Timothy Dreby (pen name Clyde Dee). Six years into a clinical career, anonymous mental health worker Clyde Dee starts work in a notorious housing project in Seattle. Navigating a fractured system, he finds himself mysteriously compelled to break the codes […]

In a personal story I am currently working on for publication in Mad in America, I am starting to realize the impact of the 2015 release of my award-winning memoir: Fighting for Freedom in America: Memoir of a “Schizophrenia” and Mainstream Cultural Delusions. Six year later I am still dealing with a sense of alienation that preoccupies me. I […]

I am writing to alert my community and tell them to WAKE UP. I am coming out of hibernation! I have always been grateful to my community of readers and want to thank you for supporting me. But I admit my emails have been personal amblings and links to my blogs. First, they were monthly […]

I have come to believe that one can learn more about on the ground social realities from personal stories than the news media or researched academic books. In fact, one could take this argument farther and suggest sometimes true reality may be more hidden in fiction or comedic insights than it is in the cultural […]

When a person has a break from reality, others often feel a sense of urgency. Most people think that if this does not get treated with antipsychotic medication immediately, grave and progressive brain damage will ensue. Friends and loved ones may fear that this is the beginning of degenerative process that will leave the person […]

Maintaining a sense of community support is precious when you struggle a history of exile. In my life words like “schizophrenia” and “anorexia” mixed with periods of institutional incarceration have resulted in alienation, trauma, and exile. It’s been twenty years since my most recent incarceration for “schizophrenia” and it remains very hard to find community […]

When I came out of hospital, after my first psychotic episode in 1996, aged 27, I felt compelled to write about my experiences. I used to have romantic notions of madness, was the first sentence of what, I didn’t realise at the time, would become My Beautiful Psychosis. Reading it now, it doesn’t sound like […]