Paint jobs

I would love one day to see,

A psychiatric hospital

Painted up

As nicely

As Captain Cook’s Cottage gets

On the anniversary

Of the British invasion.

 

My body feels the attacks,

The utter fear of being

Knocked down, in such pain,

Unable to communicate

Or stay awake.

The memory locks me

Like an animal on a road

With headlights in its eyes.

I wait for such validation,

But who would do such a dare?

 

For psych survivors,
The fear is too great,

Of being locked up and tortured,

Without a habeas corpus.

We keep within the law

And still get done in.

So, how much worse would it be

If we did some graffiti?

We’d be too easy

For the labs to target

As a perpetual animal for their profits

Painted up as ‘unruly’ and ‘sick’

Needing to be ‘managed’,

White-gaffa on our mouths,

Ropes around our internal organs,

To keep our emotions numb,

Our thoughts quiet and scared.

Media shlock and other perceptions

chhhhhssssnnnnnnnnnfffffffffffffffffffffffffssss
ssssssssssttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttssssssss
Listen
asssttttttttttttttttcchchchchchchchchchchchsssss
ttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttcccccccccsssssss
what???????????ssssssssssssssschhhhhhhhhhc
huh// huh//huh////? sssssssssssssssschhhhhhhhhhtttt
Dat were me eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
Ta huh ta huh okay okay okay okay
Not that again.
too much too much too much too much
Misinterpretation shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
Film. Acuity of method. Round about. Hurt flash into
Those that think that... that perpetuate that tttttttttttt
SHhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhtttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttt
But not that, not that not that, not that but access.

Sound poetry. With a hyperlink to a documentary film I'm in, recently out.
Oh, and you just thought I was going bananas eh?
I'm an artist, not a court room case! And if you really are a judge, lose your prejudice, and reserve your judgements and harsh sentences for your job!
So I can get back to my sound poetry.

Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh cchchcaha haha hhahahah
Beings, book, beings second happenings and things
Expressions outside the range of understood sense
And getting into expressing the feeling, the sensory,
the society sense, my percipience of that I pick up,
Add up, look up, get, don't quite get, want to question,
Toss and turn at, worry I've stepped over a boundary,
Crash and burn the crap thrown at me, hurt, but,
Hardening, sshhhhhshshshtttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttt
Watching hours of YouTube comedy when work,
work work is nagging to be done, but the back of
My mind is saying, no way, there is no way I want
You to think of anything but the laugh for a while.
But I look up 'stand up comedy' and it's all men. So,
I look up, 'Stand up comedy women' and men are
Sprinkled in, not that I mind men's comedy,
it's just that for the moment I've had enough of listening
to their dick opinions that cunt me
And why they get the focus when I'm looking for women.
Too serious, too angry, too hurt, get away from it
And CHCHCHsssssssssssstttttttttttttttttttt out hhhhap.
You don't know what you do, society, society, society,
That echoes within where verbal abuse bruises
To shuttersssssssssssssssssssssssttttttttttttttttttttttttttputt
Putt out eventually. I know it will eventually. These things
Must run out of their false esteem grime sheeeeeeeeeeem.
Whatever you do, don't post it. They'll think you are
um... you know, not gnawing the maul, like most glue.
Wha? I'm fine with myself, with everyone else
Just sometimes, what to say what's on my mind
Without thinking about how you might perceive it,
How you might think me wrong, weird, crazy, eeediot!
See lllllllllllllllllllllllllllllleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
Sssssssssssssssssssssssssounnnnnnnnnnnndddssssss
as AM sleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeppsssssss. You know I need to be out side the range of your sense
to get my sense of humour back and stop beating you
Over the head with my angry little blogging flogging grrr
Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr, you
should know that............ heee hah ha h a h hahah ha ha!

Laugh, laugh at that time I was dragged off screaming
people did, but they didn't realise, they did not realise,
that psychiatry is horrific, or they did and were glad
it was not them being taken in... 
the memory of what they did overbearing,
the emotional memory
is a bear, or lion eating my face off... as bad as that,
and then people have the gall to tell me I'm lying!
I fear the pain of what psychiatry has done to me,
As much as I fear the pain of some animal eating
My face off... and that's my perception, so,
make it funny, make me laugh that off, drag it out into a routine, make me beam that you've done a triple twist
on my painful memory, so that psychiatry
will stop their regime that threatens and harms
and never ever understands art or laughter, just diagnoses it.
The emotional memory hurts me when it gets triggered.
Yes, emotions, they hurt somewhat, but the pain,
The pain is my body saying: see this thing that happened,
Do something about it so society doesn't perpetuate it,
So they get it. People won't get that it's as bad to you,
As being mauled by hungry animals that just think
Of you as sustenance, except maybe in a picture... or
except maybe someone who's understanding
like your beautiful lover. Talk, make sounds, nonsense
even, until the consensual sense is thrashed out.
How to communicate with them, them, them, that cage
And hate my livid wrecking ball on their psychiatrist.
I'm talking stuff, but I'm far away from being lost
In alienation, far away from being lost in parallel
nightmare thinking, because I'm connecting, thinking,
getting stuff. And if I only get the sense of communication,
the sense of adding up sensory intake, that percipience, 
into sound expression, at the start
that should be okay; if it's only a scribbly image to start
that's okay, because, no one is ever perfectly clear
and succinct to everybody. Product is not there straight away for everyone. Besides, there is always someone
who is looking though their tints and veils
And Ned Kelly mask logos to fit you into them,
To say, yeah but... me, identify with my iconography!
Even if you find them unfitting and aahhhhhhhh
Shhhhhhhhhhfttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttt
Goooooooooooooooooooow awaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahy
they expect you to be the, because they think that they
they are the cream and when you say you don't eat
cream, that it's too rich, too sickening, they say,
don't you get the metaphor? and that's when I'm thinking
okay creamy pie endless factor in lies pill popper sty,
you talk metaphors, I think you're into poetry
so you might be into listening to the white noise hssssss
ssssssssssssssssssttttttttttttttttchcccccchchhhhhhhwr
rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrry you
feminismmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
of sound sense sound sense sense censor reason
seeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.

 

 

‘The patient is always wrong,’ is that what’s taught at medical school?

I was talking recently about the current climate of denial still occurring in mental health and how, in the past, when I have suffered detrimental effects of psychiatric drugs, I have been still forced to take them.

                A psychiatric nurse at the talk wanted to dismiss the brain damage, caused by neuroleptics, and concurrent memory loss as ‘aging.’  I’m only forty! Besides, I felt the harm being caused to me. I felt the ongoing pain while taking the drugs. And I felt the very gradual recovery from those horrific damaging effects the neuroleptics caused, as well as what hasn’t recovered. Besides, it is well-known the drugs do this. It is even on the drug’s website.

                Then a psychiatrist issued a poor excuse rather than a question. Instead of apologising for the harm caused by his colleagues, he leapt to their defence and accused, ‘Patients don’t really know what’s going on, so it’s hard to tell if their complaints are valid.’

                In front of me he wanted to excuse the way he, most obviously, systematically invalidated his patient’s complaints about medications, made invalid the truth and left them wondering what truth is exactly. So many psychiatrists I’ve been forced to be patient to, agree with, submit to… it’s horrible this is crazy-making denial.

                I offered a concrete example of when I saw a GP for a broken finger, which I knew was broken, because I’d heard it snap, plus I’d had broken bones before, so I recognised the kind of pain associated with a break, just as I recognise the effects of neuroleptics after being force intermittently over a 14 year period to take them.

                The GP told me, ‘It’s only a sprain.’

                I was eighteen and I believed him. It took me another month before a work colleague insisted I go to hospital to get it x-rayed. And that proved it was broken, but it had started to mend so there was no way to set the bones in their right place. As a result I have a permanently gammy finger.

                It’s one thing to come to a doctor with something wrong and be denied the appropriate treatment you wish to have, it’s quite another thing to be dragged to a doctor and be physically harmed by forced treatment that causes your bones to become brittle. (Yes, osteoporosis is an effect of neuroleptics listed on drug websites. They stop a women’s menstrual cycle.)

                Refusal to take, ‘required medication’ should be understood better.

First of all, why is medication, ‘required’ when counselling, psychology or art therapy has not been tried? Why is it required when the patient is in no way violent? Why is it required when the patient knows from previous doses that they have suffered horribly on it?

When smoking was allowed in pubs around Australia, I developed an immune related allergy to second-hand tobacco smoke. People would deny and deny the validity of this. They would try to say I was imagining that my face swelled up and my eyes itched so like I wanted to remove them. I was lucky that a doctor, a GP, affirmed that this was a common reaction to tobacco smoke.

People don’t want to see themselves as a perpetrator of harmful actions, even if they are, because they then see themselves as a victim of accusation and so they quickly attempt to rescue themselves and end up accusing the victim of being the perpetrator.

It is extremely hard to get a doctor to affirm the harm caused by neuroleptics because they don’t want to end up transferred and thus be victimised. Humane psychiatrist Peter Breggin explains it does not make him popular amongst his colleagues, when he tells the truth about the harm psychiatrists cause on a regular basis to their patients. He is then accused of causing harm to his profession.

This  denial of what is clearly happening could be easily confirmed by looking at the offending drug’s website and finding that yes, what the patient is describing is a known effect of the medication that’s been prescribed for ‘treatment.’

Psychiatrists have not been sued in Australia for LSD tests in the 70s (patients were often given over a hundred tabs.) Psychiatrists have not been sued in Australia, for forcing drugs that cause diabetes, for causing Tardive Dyskinesia in so many of their patients. They have not been sued for causing osteoporosis, or epilepsy, memory-loss, for traumatising, for prescribing drugs that cause a person to feel so unwell they suicide, for causing chronic fatigue and nausea so a person is unable to work. For giving drugs that cause a person’s sight to blur so they can no longer study, then dismissing this effect of the drug as ‘psychosomatic,’ when it is listed on the drug’s website. Psychiatrists and other mental health professionals have not been sued for giving advice that is harmful, the number one offender being, ‘take your medication.’ Psychiatric drugs are harmful, so that is really dangerous advice to give anyone, particularly if you are a mental health professional.

Causing harm to others, is not okay. When a doctor causes harm, that doctor is not practising medicine, they are conducting experiments. When a patient says they don’t want to take harmful drugs because of the side-effects are too horrible and the doctor forces those drugs on the patient, this is torture. Psychiatric drugs are extremely painful physically and mentally, causing anguish over a long period, for 24 hours of the day, every day of the week, every week of the month, every month of the year, for how many years a psychiatrist keeps a patient on a treatment order.

Psychiatric drugs also cause permanent damage, which is often visible to others, particularly when the nervous system gets damaged, or memory becomes impaired.

Psychiatric drugs are extremely unsafe, harmful measures and to force such things on 20 per cent of our population is one of the ugliest regimes that has continued into the millennium. It is the total opposite of the terms it uses to advertise and advise. Psychiatry is not about ‘care’ and ‘health’ it is about abuse and control.

When I worked as a shop assistant from a young age, I was told a golden rule: ‘The customer is always right.’

Patients are customers. People become unwilling customers of psychiatry once they’ve experienced it, however, they still are, in a perverted way, customers. The psychiatrist is receiving money for the patients seen.

I think all doctors need to be retrained to realise, ‘The patient is always right.’

That’s probably a hard one to swallow for a psychiatrist who is used to dictating. It’s like saying, ‘Take a dose of your own medicine.’ Which psychiatrists won’t do.

If a Court Judge were to dismiss every case as invalid because the thinking was, ‘The witnesses don’t really understand legal matters, so it’s hard to tell if their complaints are valid,’ that would be really wrong. However, since there are lawyers representing each side of the cases in court the judges have interpreters.

Do patients, who have committed no crime, need to bring along medical interpreters to see their psychiatrists, so they are not condemned? Would that enable a person some respect?

Well, maybe, but those interpreters must not be desensitised by their training. They must be people schooled in medicine who still hold close the ethics to not cause harm. They must also be people who do not dehumanise and are not easily bribed.

If I was to propose changes, it would be that all doctors have to undergo new ethics training, to understand where their previous training and intern mentoring was horrifically wrong.

If they won’t, or are training-resistant and keep committing harm, then they have to retire from their profession.

Something like that would make sense and hopefully address and resolve the notion, that, ‘The patient is always wrong,’ which doctors seem to hold as an axiom.

Don’t pooh-pooh psychiatric abuse and condemn like Freud eventually did with his patients who talked about how his colleagues and esteemed friends had raped them when they were children. Don’t do that same thing the church and schools have done to cover up child abuse, which the population condemns. Protecting, ‘your own’ when they’ve caused harm, is denial of justice. That is not okay. It is not right. It is really, really, wrong to cover up and deny abuse.

The dehumanisation of those with a psychiatric diagnose and the following societal ignorance, blame and acceptance of the torture caused by psychiatric practises, is truly one of the most stupid and horrific government approved regimes. It is stupid because the internet enables the information about the effects of these drugs to be freely available. The internet also allows brave individuals with a conscience, knowledge or experience to speak up. For those with experience, like me, to speak I need support and at the moment I have that. Having someone who loves me enough to fight tooth and nail to make certain psychiatry will never harm me again, is a wonderful relief to my psyche. I can remain calm and say what needs to be said without freaking out that if I say something too edgy the bastards will come and get me and I’ll be the living-dead again, unable to think, work or play.

Forced-drugging and ECT needs to be stopped immediately (though for safety from withdrawal effects, all medications needs to be tapered slowly.) Peer-support groups can be set up to combat those suffering from the abuses of psychiatry. People may also wish to have trauma therapy related to their psychiatric abuse. At the moment, with such a widespread denial of psychiatric abuse, I would only go to a therapist who understood, or had lived-experience of psychiatric abuse. I wouldn’t want to be in therapy all vulnerable and opening up and have some shmuck who denied the validity of my experience and blamed me, like so many ignorant prejudiced people do.

People really need to get their facts straight and stop their stupidity. Backing up psychiatric practices that cause harm, is aiding and abetting. So stop it. You will be held accountable for your actions.

click here to purchase and look at other NACI T-shirts, pillows and other merch

I go to a lot of Melbourne poetry events and usually read my comic poetry. And, while I get laughs and a good response to this I’ve noticed there are ‘serious poets’ who think I haven’t got anything to say that might make them think, that I’m not doing anything daring, that I’m flippant... I’ve noticed this particularly with slam poets. They’re a pretty serious lot and yes it is becoming a genre, you can pick current slam poetry by its rhythm, tone, angle and length. Slam poets are into activism and human  as well as animal rights and good on them. But, I learnt a while ago that if I’m to get up there and say what my fight is about and the prejudice I’m against, people seem to take a step back and cast me into the bin with nonsense things. In other words, I may as well be doing comic poetry, because at least then, I know I’ll have made the fuckers who want pure entertainment laugh. At least some portion of the audience will be satisfied.

So here it is, my slam poem:

The psychiatric slam-it bin

I don’t want to talk about

This stuff anymore.

I’m wrong, I’m wrong,

I’m so very wrong…

To ever mention

Things on my mind.

My mind, that lost the plot

And got a blast of indifference

In a set up treatment plan

That shut me down,

And brainwashed me into

Continual self-hate stupidity

As I felt my brain switch off

During those doses and doses

That made me dose

And wish it was all over.

I could see no light

When they insisted I’d have to

Take it forever, their medicine

That stuff that made me sick.

I had to agree and be agreeable

To their treatment of me.

Thank them and tell them they're lovely.

But I shouldn’t mention this

Because I’m wrong, so wrong…

I know that’s what some psychiatrists think

And demand I agree

Or else I’m meeting criteria

In section 73 involving electricity

To my, ‘treatment resistant’ body.

My period flows immediately

And doesn’t appear again while I’m addled

By their medical treatments.

I couldn’t get pregnant if I wanted to

On their doses of neuroleptic drugs.

They give ECT to those expecting

Because they don’t want to give

The foetus too many harmful chemicals

That they think are okay to give me.

A few doses of electricity

Are less likely to hurt the baby

Apparently, yes apparently

'It’s quite a peaceful procedure,'

The psych nurse assures me.

'And what can you do

When someone hears voices

That are telling them to harm?

If they kill themselves

Then they will also kill their baby!

What can you do

But forcefully cause their temples

To sting with electric shocks

That make them forget they’re pregnant

And hopefully make them docile

As a cute little pup?'

I listen to the psych nurse

Giving his lecture

I hear a psychologist concede

With his beliefs that don’t

Match well with lived-experience

Of those who rage and complain

That they never want ECT again.

And I hear a command voice

That says, ‘Kill the fucker dead!

He’s advocating torture,

The prejudiced ugly smuck.

See that electrical chord

Plugged in for high voltage?

Cut it in half and take

The live wire to his ugly mouth

And ask him how at peace

He is with feeling that!’

My teeth grit with memories

I bite down the old threats

Onto the insides of my cheeks.

Freaks we are to them.

Those who label us ‘mentally ill’,

Tell us to be good little patients

And keep swallowing their pills

Or they’ll have to drag us in

And stick pricks in our behinds,

Full of the stuff they say is good for us.

It stops us from thinking,

It stops us from creating,

Our anger is squashed,

Our protest is dismissed.

We have to comply,

We have to be

Agreeable to their treatment

Or else, you see.

Medication has its effects…

Can’t really do work on it,

Can’t really talk on it,

Never can drink on it,

Can’t really drive on it,

Can’t get a job on it,

Can’t really read on it,

Can’t remember much on it,

Can’t enjoy sex on it,

Certainly can’t have a baby on it.

There have been cases when

People have gone full term

All dosed up to the fish-eyed stare.

Babies don’t like it though,

Ugly chemicals, really ugly…

Forced on those mothers

Like they’ve been forced on me.

Of course I’m wrong. I’m wrong

I’m so, so wrong… they say.

Society knows they are right.

They make the laws that do

What they think does good.

Tiny little pricks and tiny little pills…

It’s only chemicals in milligrams,

And I’m the one who is the fool.

It’s nothing, it’s ethically sound,

These psychiatric forced treatments.

Sometimes there’s side-effects,

It’s just something on the side,

But if you weigh up the imbalance

Who is listening to who?

‘I mean surely it is better

To drug than to talk things through!

I can’t be bothered with them,

They don’t make sense, that’s the issue.

And surely it is better to have someone

Who is disabled and depressed

Than running around manically undressed?

Because that’s what those sort do,

These mentally ill and who knows

If their neurotransmitters weren’t

Shut down to near zero

By our wonderful medicines,

They may turn psycho killer

As you know these people do.’

That’s not exactly what the lecturer says,

But it’s there in a hint and tone.

I can sense his bleeding heart prejudice

And his promotion of those

Who give him a stance and sponsorship.

And as long as society agrees to his tune,

His volume will be turned up to ruin us all.

The abusive laws will be maintained,

That police those who won’t ever commit crimes,

But have breached the law

By appearing, ‘mentally ill’

Which is enough criteria

For any psychiatric bin

That encloses us within.

I don’t want to go on about it

Or people will start to accuse me

Of being in need of psychiatric intervention.

And that I’m wrong, so very wrong…

Anyway, most people don’t want to know

About the abuse of the abused

Whose coping mechanisms lead to diagnosis.

They don’t want to understand.

They just want to know there is control

Over those who seem strange and give them fear.

They don’t want the unknown to be free,

Unpoliced with its scary possibilities.

Psychiatrists can show prejudice, no problem.

Complain too much about what they do and people can

Pick up the phone and make that call

That’ll have us incarcerated for nothing at all

And on those shut-it-up-shut-it-down drugs

Forced into strait-jackets by a society that could

Be better, if they thought a little more

About what really is happening,

What people with experience are saying,

Instead of keeping up their delusional beliefs

That there’s nothing that can be done

With a person in a waking-dream,

An altered state of consciousness

With unusual sensory experiences,

Except to drug and electrocute them.

That’s seriously unimaginative thuggery!

Of course though I’m wrong,

I’m so wrong and those who

Think I’m wrong are a totalitarian right.

Yep righteous upstanding citizens

Who don’t want to be bothered

Listening to all this, ‘upsetting propaganda

That deprecates psychiatric practice.’

Yep I’m a bitter x-mental patient,

A sick woman dampening pharmaceutical optimism.

I’m riddled with some apparent disease

They intend to find microbial cause for!

I should never be listened to,

Because I got diagnosed schizophrenic

And once you’ve got that, it’s there for life.

When propagating science argues against me

Of course it’s me that’s unbalanced,

Not science, society or the law.

I’m making up stupid conspiracies.

I should keep my bloody mouth shut

Like I did when I was under their order,

Or they might just decide

To lay down their outrageous ‘health acts’

That debilitate and contaminate

And make me fucking irate!

Psychiatric rubbish is something

That needs to be put in the bin,

And people who have been tortured by them

Need society to be listening

And recognising the changes that need implementing.

Chipmunka… publishing first-hand experiences

Chipmunka has just recently published a memoir of mine called, Naked ladies about two psychotic episodes following the death of my father. It’s in ebook at this stage, but will be in paperback in a few months’ time. http://chipmunkapublishing.co.uk/shop/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=2264

 

            So wonderful it is to find a publisher that wants first-hand experiences of people diagnosed with psychiatric conditions. In Australia, people have some fears regarding attempting to understand people who have delved into the symbolic world of waking-dreams. They seem to worry that it might somehow ‘get them’ too. That the schizophrenia ‘disease’ is contagious by hypnotic suggestions of art from these 'deranged' people.

I studied Professional Writing and Editing at Melbourne’s RMIT University. I got into this course on the strength of something I’d written when I was 22, before I’d experienced what psychosis meant. I knew somehow that what I was writing at age 32, wasn’t going to fit with consensual reality. And, it didn’t.

            I had burning things to say, but I had to think about how to say them, so that the public could be able to read them. Tutors and students really helped me get to this point. I really got a lot out of my time at RMIT.  I realised there is so much ignorance around what happens in psychiatric facilities. There was so much prejudice and that belief that there is no market for is regarded as a ‘dirty tissue.’

            In Naked ladies I was able to take raw material I wrote while in an episode and write it in a way that can be comprehended. This book allows people to understand how I was able to be lured into the fantasy world of waking-dreams that lead to waking-nightmares, not just once, but again, with the same science-fiction themes.

            If you want to understand what it is like to hear voices, or have other sensory ‘hallucinations’ and strange ‘delusional’ belief systems, this book takes you through my journey of this. It’s a fast-paced book. Lots of things happen all at once. Very much what psychiatrists would term, ‘mania’, ‘paranoia’, ‘conspiracy theories’, ‘florid psychosis’, and ‘positive symptoms of schizophrenia.’ There are also breaks in between the ‘psychotic episodes’, where I resume a ‘normal state of being.’

The book also includes illustrations and paintings I did at the time, but it is a decent sized book. I like books to be at least 70,000 words, when they’re not poetry books or novellas.

I hope Australia will start publishing more first-hand experiences about altered states of consciousness that get labelled ‘diseased’ by psychiatrists. There is a growing market for these books. It is peer support. And books like this help people realise that people with lived-experience are not ‘consumers’ and ‘useless eaters’, we are people who have had unusual experiences. These experiences are our coping mechanisms. Yes they are flawed, but how nightmarish they become has to do with how these symbolic manifestations are treated by society. Treat unusual experiences with fear and prejudice and psychiatric torture and what does society expect will happen? A cure? Apparently that is the current belief… But that is not the truth of what’s happening. The truth will be found in books by those who have experienced psychiatric conditions first-hand.

Chipmunka has just recently published a memoir of mine called, Naked ladies about two psychotic episodes following the death of my father. It’s in ebook at this stage, but will be in paperback in a few months’ time. http://chipmunkapublishing.co.uk/shop/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=2264