What was emerging now was different than anything I had experienced prior.

I had just gotten support from relationships I had built over the past year at the Quaker meeting-for-worship.

Maybe my situation at work had been getting whispered about among my friends. Maybe my spirit was exuding a sense of desperation. Either way, I’d felt safer under the spell of the service, the last bit of community support I would experience for years.

When the service was over I’d checked in. A year-long friend gave me a deep hug with just a little more boob than I was comfortable with.

“I guess I am learning that it’s not safe to talk about what’s going on at the Morrison to anyone,” I told my slightly newer friend.

The Morrison was the notorious Section 8 housing project where I worked setting up social services for disabled residents. The deal was, homeless and disabled could get off the streets and into affordable housing, but they had to live in crime ridden contexts. Many good Seattle folk were concerned this just wasn’t good enough. As a result, there were frequent news articles written about the project.

“Well, I guess you know I will be holding you in the light,” said my newer friend who was so genuine I knew he was not an informer. He could be a life-long friend, I thought as I fingered the phone-number-paper-scrap in my pocket. I had obtained the number from a female just before the service.

But alas, I was ready to lay down my life to rectify injustice of what I’d seen at the Morrison. I was directly responsible for three recent news articles articulating the neglect. Maybe it was just a matter of time until they figured out it was me.

Now, here in this adjacent coffee house, it was as if I had just walked into a sting operation.

Having just gotten barked at by this addict with bulging veins when I had tried to use the bathroom he was occupying. I sat waiting with urgent need to pee, watching this father with his son.

The father was hefty and awkward, and his son was this with-it Seattle youth who looked adoring.

In fact, this father looked like a hometown acquaintance. I had just last night heard that this acquaintance had been found with a bullet in his head in his shed. Just last night, my oldest friend had told me the story when I contacted him. I had contacted him in hopes for his assessment of the level of danger I was experiencing.

“Just don’t let that happen to you!” my friend had said concerned.

Now it occurred to me that my oldest friend and I were basically saying this “suicide” sounded like a mob hit. Was it possible that the FBI sent a look-alike because they were tapping my phone?

Now this familiar looking man goes to the bathroom and pounds on the door. I see the addict emerge and fire an insult at him just as he had done to me. But the man, unlike me, was waiting for him. He barked right back. It was as if he were punching the addict in the gut. Still, no one was going to get in that bathroom! But the father walked away and was respected by his son.

Was this scene really staged by an arm of the government that trying to get me to change my Quaker values? I had a sense that I was meant to see this interaction! Was I being brainwashed into taking people out?

I did want justice; but violently taking people out and putting the wrong people in jail was more the work of the local law enforcement! It wasn’t what I was about.

My mind skipped. The night before I’d asked my mother if I had ever been sexually abused. I’d brought up some memories and had suspicions with a menacing tone.

I was believing that I was traumatized, not a mental case like my therapist had been telling me for the past seven years.

It was true, I once suffered from an eating disorder that almost killed me. It was also true I was extremely shy and had some disassociated memories. But still I had nothing direct to prove I was experiencing PTSD. Instead I carried the diagnosis of a schizotypal personality disorder. That meant when people picked on me I was paranoid.

When I finally left the coffee house, I drove north past my apartment, to the discount theater where I caught the afternoon showing of Me, Myself, and Irene. As the movie progressed, I remained astonished by the coincidences. Jim Carey had to suppress a secreted abuse. He had to raise his wife’s kids alone. Everyone around him mocked him. It was like that for me too. That was what my life had been like.

Now, as I watched the film for the second day in a row, I wondered about the role of the FBI following him. It was ironic that they were using his psychiatric profile to pin blame. Meanwhile to protect Rene Zellweger from the abusive ex-boyfriend who is controlling the FBI, Jim Carey has got to go through a caper to cure himself. I sensed that this is what I was getting ready to go through!

I knew there was alarming abuse going on at the Morrison. There were the secret files the management company held. There was a world of undercover informers and intelligence. These were the real muddy waters that infect those corridors of housing for the disabled, the backwards, the board and care homes, the jails, the prisons, and the inner-cities. I wasn’t accepting those: “now, that sounds like your paranoia!”— words my therapist frequently sang at me.

Since I stopped taking my medication a few weeks ago, I was starting to better see through the limited lies of the mental health establishment.

Back when this movie first came out, I choose not to see it because of the criticisms of the AMA! Now, I was meant to see this film when I did. I concentrated hard on the details guided by a higher power. More and more, the film seemed to be about me!

Earlier that week while at the Morrison, a resident had given me a great compliment about my work. “But I just want to say,” he added, “one time we had a worker like you who came and fought for the clients, but then he lost his job. He had to come down here and live as a resident himself. I just don’t want that to happen to you!”

As the movie finished, I felt at risk. I felt compelled to figure out the truth!

Later that night I made more phone calls in the bunker of my room just as I had done the night previous. Eventually, I called by best college friend who was fifteen years older than me and whose first career was that of a drug dealer. I called him believing that I was selected for this high-profile job by people who knew I would take it. People who knew me so well they knew what I’d do before I did it.

Indeed, it had been a strange shock to all involved that the power-brokers had selected the contract proposed by our agency. Now that I was getting wise, maybe I was becoming a threat.

My best friend always had delusions of grandeur that were associated with his bipolar disorder. He had this thing when he got manic. He sounded like he was connected to the mafia. He had shown me so many great mobster movies and was always seemed to use them to teach.

But now he replies in blunt tone “If you ever betray me, Tim, you need to know that I do have the power to harm you and I will use it if I have to.”

My mind sped through all the coincidences that had caused me to form this strong connection with my college friend. Was it true that it was all as it seemed? He often called himself a dry drunk. Maybe that meant he was still in the mafia.

Within twenty minutes I packed my car with the fundamentals and I took off. I would not live under this threat the rest of my life!

When I left Seattle that evening, I stayed in this state of emergency for two years. It wouldn’t be until many months after I returned to taking medication that the crisis dissipated.

On my way to Canada, I got stopped by police separated from my car. I was tracked for three days until I was remanded into a three-month psychiatric hospitalization in Montana State Hospital.

Once discharged, I got off the streets by getting a job but ran out of my discharge supply of medication. When I was told not to return to my job, I still had to pay rent! Despite intensive local efforts, the only job I could get was an arranged job at an Italian Delicatessen. To get the job, I had to move to the bay area.

To this day I still believe the job involved a mob connection. I know this sounds unlikely to many. It’s true that half of my evidence was faulty. But still a lot of it turns out to add up.

I also think I was correct about trauma and the mental health system during those tense days I was going through spiritual emergence almost eighteen years ago. I still work in the mental health system amidst great trauma and exploitation. I cannot maintain living in the murky waters of this modern-day fiasco we call the mental health system without using the medication I was started on twenty-five years ago.

I now pay mortgage on my own house, but still have no desire to do what it takes to be included in the false sense of community support I had back in Seattle. I wash my hands in the muddy waters of the mental health system.

It may be true I work hard; but I make money while my brothers and sisters remain warehoused and in dire circumstances. I sometimes think my ability to see all the angles and oppression is not really a disability. But I take my medication despite all the side effects to tolerate the abuse I see.

The post Spiritual Emergence in the Muddy Waters of the Mental Health System appeared first on Redefining "Psychosis".

By Corinita Reyes

In the war on drugs, the real targets have not been drugs themselves but on those who live a life in which drugs are ever present. Drugs prove to be a persistent issue in low income neighborhoods, specifically those who have an ethnically diverse makeup. The fact that those affected most by the war on drugs are thought of as “minorities” is no coincidence, it would seem rehab is a privilege reserved only for white affluent people, the rest are sent to prison to serve time for something that is seen as a treatable issue in the medical world. It is hardly a crime to develop diabetes or depression, so why do we treat a mental illness as a crime? It is imperative that we as a country explore how the war on drugs affects low income people of color (POC), its relationship on how mental illness affects low income people of color and why the war on drugs is simply not working. We need to replace the current war with a more sustainable system that supports our citizens, rather than punishes.

The war on Drugs has proven to be unhelpful because it is a continuing cycle which targets drug addicts.  In the article “Drug Addicts As a Victim: A Link to Explore” by Laura M. Nunes and Ana Sani, they write “It is not uncommon in the illegal drug market to find that the individual selling the product, being in possession of large sums of money, is also intoxicated.” (3) This shows that the drug dealer and the drug addict are one in the same.  Those who are not drug dealers are still in possession and can end up in prison system.  Once in the prison system, they may incur trauma from violence, sexual violence or from isolation that only makes any sort of mental illness they had prior more intense.  Upon being released, they now face new barriers from acquiring legal employment to being unable to qualify for public assistance and housing thanks to background checks.  Now as they are back to illegal activities such as drug dealing in order to make money, these activities make a neighborhood less safe, “Also, by dint of their lifestyle the drug addict will tend to have much less protection, especially in the form of formal protection from the social control system, for fear that their deviant activity is discovered by the authorities.” (Nunes et al, 4) It is safer for these individuals to deal with violence themselves than reach out to authorities in fear of being arrested.  Outside of the US, some of the most dangerous people in the world are the ones who are supplying the drugs to the streets of America.  In the article “Winding Down the War on Drugs: Reevaluating Global Drug Policy” by Maria McFarland Sanchez-Moreno, they say “Governments around the world have poured billions of dollars into combating drugs…to pursue, conduct surveillance on, kill, prosecute, extradite, and imprison kingpins and low-level dealers, in source and destination countries alike.” (1) This shows how The US is not alone in these failing tactics against drugs, yet the problem persists not only on our streets, but globally.  All of this is evidence that the war on drugs in conjunction with the prison system is a cycle that perpetuates violence and drug use.

The war on drugs has caused a lot of destruction in its wake for families, communities, children and adults.  Those affected by the war on drugs are mostly low income POC and this brings us to the question of why.  In the article “And Examination of the Self-Medication Hypothesis via Treatment Completion” by Erin Crawford, Matthew T. Huss and Lacey Lagoni.  It’s brought up that “…use of illicit drugs, other than Marijuana, increase with unmet need for health care.” (2) This is important because low income POC often have trouble affording the cost of visiting a family doctor regularly, let alone a mental health care provider such as a therapist or psychiatrist.  On top of the financial barrier, many in these communities face a stigma in which mental health diagnosis and care are thought to be solely a problem for middle/upper class white people. These issues are brought up in the article “Disparities and the Social Determinants of Mental Health and Addictions: Opportunities for a Multifaceted Social Work Response” by Elizabeth A Bowen et. al, they write “…many members of stigmatized and disenfranchised minority groups tend to have worse health than their more advantaged counterparts” (1) this is important to keep in mind because it disproportionately affects POC living in poverty. This is damaging to these communities, because as stated in the article “Poverty and Mental Health: How Do Low Income Adults and Children Fare in Psychotherapy?” By Stacey Kaltman, Jeanne Miranda and Catherine DeCarlo Santiago, “The rates of poverty are higher among ethnic minority adults and families, with 27.4% of African Americans, 26.6% of Hispanic/Latinos, 27.0% of American Indian/Alaskan Natives, and 12.1% of Asians living in poverty compares with 9.9% of non-Hispanic whites…These numbers are troubling because poverty is associated with poor health and wellbeing for children and adults alike.” When looking at these numbers, it’s important to keep in mind that mental illness directly correlates to income, which in turn correlates to ethnic background.  People living in low income and especially inner-city communities are more likely to experience trauma and stress due to money struggles, work struggles, frequent moving, violence ranging from domestic to violence out in the community and discrimination.  As a result of this trauma, issues such as aggression, difficulty with school, drug use and trouble concentrating can arise; these issues can impede upward mobility.  When this type of violence in a community is normalized, there is no one to talk to and one of the main treatments for PTSD is simply working through the trauma by way of talking, writing, creating or various other therapies.  Some symptoms of PTSD can be depression and anxiety, both of which as easily treatable with various medications readily available on the market.

        The big issue with getting treatment is that is trial in error, both in regards to medication and the mental health providers who write prescriptions. Just because a doctor or psychiatrist has gone to medical school and earned a doctorate does not automatically mean they are a good doctor or the right doctor for any given individual.  When getting diagnosed and receiving treatment for mental illness, it requires a relationship built on trust and mutual respect between a patient and a provider. For PTSD, the main treatment is simply seeing a therapist weekly.  When a patient is able to see a therapist weekly, they build a relationship and a foundation of trust which helps with diagnosing what is wrong with a person and helps them to open up and explore what traumatic events may have been overlooked and dismissed because it has become normalized in a community. Unfortunately this kind of treatment requires a team of professionals from a therapist, to a psychiatrist, to a regular family doctor, all of whom ideally are seen on a regular basis.  For many living in poverty, this is just not feasible as the majority of their health care comes from clinics where it is almost impossible to build a relationship and have a routine checkup with the same physician every time.  This is exactly where these issues go overlooked and dismissed as just a part of life because these physicians have heavy loads of patients who all experience similar levels of trauma. It’s difficult for the physician to spend too much time assisting a patient with navigating the confusing system that is mental health care, let alone for them to talk to a patient often enough to diagnose them with a mental illness that would call for a referral.

These problems left untreated help to fuel the war on drugs in that these people end up getting incarcerated due to the trauma they are living with in their daily lives.  Once they are released from prison, it is difficult or impossible for these people to find jobs or even places that will rent to them.  They have the choice of going hungry and being unable to support their family, or dealing drugs.  Drug dealers are not the problem, they are simply the symptom of a problematic symbiotic relationship between the war on drugs and the prison industrial complex.  The prison industrial complex serves as a catalyst for an increasing mental health crisis in America as they have become a replacement for psychiatric hospitals. There are many realities within a prison that can create mental illness such as violence, sexual assault, and solitary confinement. Once someone starts dealing drugs, it’s inevitable that there will be police intervention eventually, and the cycles continues.  Those who are paying customers are consuming because they are missing hope and love in their life.  When living in a community where a large portion of the population is in and out of jail and another large portion of the population is dying of drug overdose and yet another large portion of the population is dying of violence running rampant due to the war on drugs, one can only wonder how anyone would not end up with a mental illness as a result of trauma.

When considering addiction, we must keep in mind these copious amounts of trauma that affect those living in poverty. Addicts are not criminals, they are victims and should be treated as such.  We need to offer them support and safe spaces where they can heal and begin their recovery.  They need to stop experiencing violence in their homes and streets which is directly tied to the war on drugs. There are feasible solutions to these difficult issues in America if we only approach it differently. By considering drug addiction yet another illness that is present in low income communities, we need to focus on improving the mental health of our citizens. This would begin by shifting the money spent on the war on drugs over to funding for mental health care centers, specifically in low income and urban communities. This would include the tax money spent on drug task forces, militarized policing, and incarceration of those in possession of drugs. In these mental health centers, it is important that the staff reflects the ethnic makeup of the communities they reside in as best as possible, so as not to alienate patients. Some of the services these centers would provide might range from individual therapy, psychiatric care, support groups, after school programs, and addiction rehabilitation. They would be less like a hospital and more like a place for the community to come support one another and be supported by mental health professionals.

This alone will not get rid of the violence that comes with drugs, that is more related to the war on drugs itself. First, with the mental health centers in effect, we will need to shift these urban battlefields back into communities. All drugs will be decriminalized and there will be facilities where people can use and exchange needles safely and takes drugs while under the supervision of health professionals. At these facilities, there will be social workers who are specifically trained in handling drug addiction. These social workers can help any patients who want to get help by referring them to rehab and other services at the mental health center. These social workers will serve as a bridge between the two and will be familiar with the staff at the mental health center and assist with scheduling and meeting doctors, as these simple tasks can be the difference between someone with mental illness getting help or being too overwhelmed to pursue help on their own. Once someone who was once addicted has completed the rehab program, there will be either government funded jobs or a stipend program to help get recovering addicts back to work and rebuilding their life. To be responsible about legalizing all drugs and creating these mental health centers, there will be a part of the funding for these centers that goes to a media campaign promoting the centers and public service announcements that explore the effects of drugs such as meth and cocaine. Drugs classified as psychedelic drugs will be legalized for medical use and study. These will be available through a psychiatrist for a therapy session in which you are accompanied by a psychiatric professional in order to explore repressed memories and have an in depth therapy session.  Micro-dosed LSD can likely be prescribed by a psychiatrist for depression. Both of these methods would be studied in depth before being available to the public, and legalization would be a way to open this door. Cannabis will be legalized for medicinal use ranging from seizure medication to depression. The taxes collected from all legalized drugs would go right back into paying for the studies and the anti-drug campaign.

By offering mental health and income solutions to the community, the need for drugs will begin to diminish and those who are still addicted will not be criminalized, resulting in a safer, healthier community for all. If the war on drugs is not working as it is, who benefits from not trying out a new system? It only causes further damage to low income communities if we continue as we have been.  As of right now, the U.S. is taking a regressive approach to drug use which has proved unfruitful time and again. If we can only help our citizens, we can improve the wellbeing of our country. If a government is not there to support its citizens, it has failed.

Works Cited

Bowen, Elizabeth A. And Quenette L. Walton. “Disparities and the Social Determinants of Mental Health and Addictions: Opportunities for a Multi-faceted Social Work Response.” Health & Social Work, vol. 40, no. 3, Aug. 2015, pp. e59-e65. EBSCOhost

Lagoni, Lacey, et al.  “An Examination of the Self-Medication Hypothesis via Treatment Completion.” Addiction Research & Theory, vol. 19, no. 5, Oct. 2011, pp 416-426.  EBSCOhost, doi:10.3109/16066359.2010.525332

Nunes, Laura M and Sani, Ana  “The Drug Addict As a Victim: A Link to Explore” Journal of Drug Addiction, Education and Eradication Volume 11, Number 3-4 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.

Sanchez-Moreno, Maria McFarland “Winding Down the War on Drugs: reevaluating Global Drug Policy” Harvard International review

Santiago, Catherine Decarlo, et al. “Poverty and Mental Health: How Do Low-Income Adults and Children Fare in Psychotherapy?.” Journal of Clinical Psychology, vol. 69, no. 2, Feb. 2013, pp. 115-126.  EBSCOhost, doi:10.1002/jclp.21951

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