My society is suicidal

My society is suicidal

It drinks itself stupid

Bashes its lungs with cigarettes.

It wants to die, not I.

Society is pashing itself

As it’s bashing itself.

Society holds itself down

And calls its lover a bitch.

Society is mostly misogynist.

Society is a prostitute

That doesn’t use protection

Writhing in pain with infections

While aborting its 1000^th foetus.

I don’t have any choice

About my society invading me.

It is an animal that cannot

Be kept at bay by Buddhism,

Pesticides, or cleaning.

Society needs beauty

But it thinks it can manufacture it,

It thinks it can mine it,

It thinks it can buy it.

Society wants to be strong,

But it also wants to be ill

In hope it can get compassion.

Society wants to fuck me up the arse

And force me to say I enjoy it,

But I tell it to go away.

My society doesn’t like hard work,

It would rather swallow tranquilisers

And be a laboratory animal.

I want to be healthy

But my society forces unhealthy things into me

Falsely labelling them as ‘good’ and ‘helpful’,

‘Healthy’ and ‘necessary.’

I am very angry at my society

Because it has violated my body repeatedly,

Then accused me of being insane and complaining.

My society is insane. It eats chemical shit that isn’t food

Then expects me to do the same.

My society is hypnotised by propaganda.

I am at war with its regime.

My society wants to die,

Obviously, it is suicidal

And in need of some kind of help.

My society evicts those who ask for help

And asks other societies to do something

About people who ask for help.

My society thinks people who ask for help

With shelter and food are a problem,

Even when they say they’ll work hard

To repay those who help them.

My society fucks me up

Then tells me I’m wrong and weird.

My society is a slave-driver of mothers,

My society rapes its own children.

That’s my society.

Chewing gum on the pavement

And a gun stuck in my face.

I should probably try to get

To a safer place than this,

Where my ideas exist more

Than this place where society is its own looming death.

My society bashes me, but rarely pashes me.

It says that that is my fault, not society’s,

That I need to be more commercial,

More like others who’ve been successful,

That there’s nothing new worth anything,

Because society prefers the retro, the proven,

The tried and true, antique glossed anew.

Society says I shouldn’t resent it,

Yet it resents giving

Odd people like me anything.

Society says that I’m bludging.

Society says I suck it dry.

Society, it seems would rather

That I die, than pay a living wage for my work

In developing ways to help it.

Society says that I’m a radical

That needs to be ruled out.

Society doesn’t even know me,

But it knows it doesn’t like me.

Society won’t give me a change,

It’d rather play reruns

Of Woody Allen movies

And upset survivors of child abuse.

My society won’t even acknowledge

That I’ve been harmed by psychiatry,

Let alone allow me to say that

On a public broadcast program.

My society is very interested in money,

But it makes suicidal investments

In ideas that have had their day.

My society has an unhealthy interest

In aiding and abetting crime,

Then glorifying it in books and movies.

My society wants to endanger itself.

My society is a sadomasochist.

My society wants to suicide.

My society doesn’t include me

In its pact, because

I don’t want to live fast

Die young and make an etcetera.

My society says I won’t be successful

If I don’t follow in its footsteps.

But I don’t want to follow dysfunction,

So I go in a different direction.

My society wants me to pay entry

Then it bars me from entering.

My society says I’m a jealous gripe

And an ego-head better off dead.

My society would not mourn me

If I were to suicide.

My society would want to dissect my brain

For evidence of a faulty gene,

Faulty neurotransmitters, or something like what

They found in the tortured rats

Who society induced my ‘condition’ in.

My society has one condition

And many exceptions to that rule,

With loopholes to get past a fool

Like me who sticks to laws as rule,

Except when they violate the rights

Of people they’re claiming to protect.

My society likes to pick on me,

Then it eats its own snot

And demands I eat it too!

My society thinks I should take

The blame for my ‘illness’

But I don’t think I have an illness,

Rather it’s society’s ills that

Cause me unrest and put me in crisis.

Society has its regime

And I am revolting to it.

I want to love my society

But it pushes me away

Saying, ‘You’d better not stalk me.’

I’d like society to be more

Interested in what I think and say,

But society wants to remain ignorant,

Turns its back and ignores me.

It says I don’t try hard enough

To get its attention.

Then it says I try too hard

And that makes me annoying.

Society won’t let me win,

Society thinks I’m nothing but

A bad impression

My society wants to kill me,

So I don’t make it think about its problems,

About it being wrong, thereby inducing suicidal thoughts.

Yet my society claims to be peace-keeping.

Society says it doesn’t want to die out,

Yet it smokes purposefully

To slowly kill itself.

My society is addicted to causing

Its own death, but it says it doesn’t want

To suicide, not really, it just does sort of likes harming itself.

My society wants to fuck me up

So it feels better about itself,

So I’m as fucked up as it is.

My society wants to scream for its mother,

Then blame her for birthing it.

My society wants to yell at me

And is annoyed when I don’t yell,

Accuses me of making it look like a bully,

When really it’s a suicidal wreck I should

Have more empathy for, apparently.

Then my society finds another reason

To punch me in the nose

When I say I don’t like drugs.

My society thinks drugs are cool.

My society thinks drugs are pop culture

And that popping pills equates to pop art,

As if swallowing is an artistic act.

My society is heavily drugged

 

But I don’t know how good my society is,

I take it for granted,

I’m spoilt rotten.

I don’t know how bad some societies are!

 

I don’t want to think about

How I’m fucked up the arse I am

By my society anymore.

I want society to stop perpetuating

Its abuse of me when it lords over me.

My society thinks it’s regal

And that I’m up myself.

My society thinks it is a cut above the rest.

My society likes to be a gangster’s gun

Shooting into a crowd.

I think my society is aiming at me,

But it doesn’t even know me,

Or want to know what I’ve done,

Where I’ve been and what I’m up to.

My society turns the gun on itself

And threatens suicide

If I don’t follow its command.

 

But I don’t know how good my society is,

I take it for granted,

I’m spoilt rotten.

I don’t know how bad some societies are!

 

My society wants to be Helen of Troy,

Then complains about the attention

That it sought out, when it advertised

Itself as ‘The face that launches a thousand ships.’

My society is stale old theatre farts

That expects to get more funding.

My society tries to pretend

That it has never threatened me.

My society wants to say that I am a liar.

My society doesn’t know that it’s lying.

My society wants to die and go to Heaven,

It wants to escape the Hell of itself.

My society thinks it’s my superior.

My society enjoys substance abuse

And thinks I’m uncool not to do so,

That I should get with it and just try it

And realise it’s not as bad as I think,

That it’ll make me better, make me fit in.

My society won’t give me a role

Because I won’t smoke backstage with it.

My society is slowly killing itself

And expects me to join it.

My society says I should stop resenting it.

My society would like to kill itself

And there’s nothing I can do to stop it.

 

But I don’t know how good my society is,

I take it for granted,

I’m spoilt rotten.

I don’t know how bad some societies are!

 

I’m laughing at my society.

I feel superior to my society.

My society is the delusional  underdog

That has to be cautious

And wary of its direction.

It’s the one that’s suicidal, not me.

My society once tried to accuse me

Of things that it had done,

But I’m no longer under its thumb

And if it expects me to play dumb

While it talks rubbish,

It’ll soon learn to stop

Digging its own grave.

I know society is suicidal,

But it should at least behave

Civilly to those who are

Trying to help it through its crisis.

But my society isn’t happy,

It wants to dye its hair

Until the hair snaps off at the roots.

My society hates its own scent and wants to hide its smell

By putting toxic chemicals under its arm pits

That give allergies and asthma attacks.

My society doesn’t like anything natural,

Wants to remove all its body hair so it

Feels like newborn baby skin.

My society thinks I’m weird

To not want to feel like a baby.

 

But I don’t know how good my society is,

I take it for granted,

I’m spoilt rotten.

I don’t know how bad some societies are!

 

It is hard when your society

Has done something horrible

To you and they still

Want to argue that it’s justified.

It’s hard to love your people

That went along with your society.

It’s really hard to love them totally.

I mean, you can’t, can you?

Not without lying to yourself

That they will back you up

If you were attacked again,

Which they won’t

And you know that.

But you have to love them,

Because they’re your family,

They’re your society

And that abuse that they ignored

Was too widely condoned

By even people you wanted to be friends with.

It’s hard that, looking at them

And what they’ve done by condoning,

Ignoring, or being too frightened to speak up against.

My society is so guilty,

It’s horrible, so horrible.

They’d rather have the abuses continue

Than admit to their wrong doings.

I so want to love my society,

But it’s hard, knowing

The horrible things they’ve done.

I look in the face of my society

And see that enemy lurking.

It’s scary that it’s there

In something I’d otherwise

Want to praise and adore.

It’s a shock to realise

That my society is so against me.

That it thinks I should be tortured.

It is scary when I hear of it being agreed upon

On radio, documented on television

And proliferated in books.

My body ices in fear,

That’s what my society does to me.

Scary don’t you think,

The way my society wants to kill itself?

 

But I don’t know how good my society is,

I take it for granted,

I’m spoilt rotten.

I don’t know how bad some societies are!

 

Nay, it is very, very scary that my society

Has swallowed propaganda for so long.

It bloats with its fill

Unable to think of possibility

That challenges the horror,

Unable to think of the horror,

For what it actually is.

Subdued and hypnotised,

My society heil psychiatry

And call for more screenings of youth,

More tests of youths and marching orders,

To find anomalies in them and root them out,

Force on them sterilising pills so they won’t breed,

And won’t be able to complain because they’re so tranquilised.

My society wants to become a race,

A supreme race of psychiatrists.

My society knows no one wants to protest against

What can be diagnose and dehumanise them

And make them out to be a potential criminal

That must be monitored and managed

And is unfit to be heard

In the clairvoyant psych court

That aims to prove a future violation

That a person might just commit.

In my society, no one wants that life sentence,

Which my society’s superstitious inflict,

When they back up psychiatry

With their supremacist’s law.

Strangely, most abide by society’s superstitious.

See, my society wants mind control, like Jonestown,

Heaven’s Gate and Solar Temple.

My society wants people who will,

Do as they are ordered and die on command.

My society wants to die under its own control,

Ordering itself into oblivion of following its following.

 

But I don’t know how good my society is,

I take it for granted,

I’m spoilt rotten.

I don’t know how bad some societies are!

 

I have a major beef with my society.

For over forty years my society has been

Arguing against what I do,

Trying to get me to sign its suicide pact.

Now I’m finally taking issue

And telling my society that I’ve had enough

Of its polluting fashions

It’s been policing me with.

I’ve had enough of its attempts

To make me feel small.

I’ve had enough of its thick

Doorless brick walls!

But society is the one with the gun

And if it points that thing at me

I guess I’ll want to save my life

By doing exactly as I am told.

Society would like to live

Without ever having to suffer,

But it thinks it needs to cause

Suffering to stop suffering.

My society is an abusive relationship

That I can’t get out of.

My society wants to use me,

Then treat me like a dirty tissue.

My society is the cross between

A baby, a stationary motor car

And a domestic outburst.

My society isn’t going to exist anymore,

As it once did. It will evolve eventually,

When people stop think that society's suicidal urges

Are something to be venerated and followed.

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Talking about anger turned inward, grief and voices

Those who have read some of my blog, will recognise I do carry a fair whack of anger about certain issues relevant to the mental health system as it currently is. I put all that aside, when I think about love, when I listen to another’s poetry, and, when I’m at work.

                There are definite systems that allow us to exist, while getting us to focus on building things like recovery, hope for the future, alternatives, as well as established, recognised workable therapies. My work place fits well with my ideology, my training as a Transpersonal Art Therapist and also makes my writing and editing diploma relevant. It also makes me think beyond the wrecking-ball, towards building. It is a workplace, that I’m very happy to be in. One of the few work places that see my lived-experience as a skill and insight, rather than a problem.

                I’m delivering a talk, with a colleague, on: Anger turned inward, grief and voices. This topic is something I’ve been working on since January, but have thought a lot about before.

A memoir of mine, Naked ladies, looks at how grief and anger denied and suppressed can lead to voices and unusual belief systems that end up with hospitalisations and psychiatric labels. It also shows how anger and grief can be intertwined. I have, developed my ideas a lot further, though, since writing this action based memoir. I also have a lot better coping strategies.

I’ll mostly be talking about established ways of coping and paradigms of thinking towards being all you're meant to be. There is a lot new material, but it’s not something I’ve done on my own, it’s something I’ve developed alongside many others who have similar experiences. This talk is relevant to health professionals, social workers, carers, as well as voice-hearers and those who want to understand unusual percipience, their own thoughts, theories of mind etc

Bookings are essential and can be made HERE on the Voices Vic website. The talk will be an all day session, held on Wednesday 24th of July 2013 at 211 Chapel Street, Prahran.

Protecting normal people like you, from people like me...

Activist poetry doesn't always have a place in the Melbourne poetry scene, particularly if you're talking psychiatric abuse. The audience tend to not listen and hear anger only. So, I rarely perform this style poetry in venues.

The ODDie poetry night was an exception, it was all about activism.
           These two poems I’m performing are about that shushed voice and the inability of society to listen, when activists speak, to anything but their memory of cruel propaganda campaigns.

 

The first poem, 'I've been trigger' talks about the idea of psychiatric abuse being justified because of the belief that 'but, they're violent, aren't they?' which is said about any marginalised group that governments wish to crush, or use in a way that infringes on standard human rights. Also the unjustifiable fear of symbolism and creativity, that is attempting to put OUTRAGE into peaceful means of protest, that ends up being called 'wrong' and 'ill' by psychiatrists.

The second poem, 'Unshushable' is a shortened version of this poem. It speaks for itself, or it should. 'We're already LOUD because we have every right to be allowed!'

ODD is a support group for activists, that ran the ODDie night. The ODD group are reclaiming of the term that diagnoses youth for their ability to recognise the need to defy abusive authorities.

Oppositional, disobedient, disordered, but with good reason!

Our outrage has been ignored and hushed for too long. Psychiatric survivors should be allowed to have a voice and psychiatric abuse should not be allowed!

Appreciate though, how difficult talking about this abuse is, because of where society is at, and because of what we’ve been through.

awareness is everything!

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Negotiating the psych depot

If you are sectioned under the Mental Health Act, then you will be put on the depot injection, for refusing drug treatment, or complaining too much about the drug treatment, or generally seeming like you are not fully brainwashed into thinking you need the drugs to stay out of crisis. 

Contrary to what most people think, you don't just get sectioned just for harming yourself or threatening another, you can also be sectioned because you 'seem to be mentally ill' and therefore in the psychiatrist's mind are 'at risk of harm.'

The depot injection will damage the nerve endings over time, merely because of the needle jabbing action. The neuroleptic drugs? Well they cause your muscles to stiffen and feel restless and twitch, blur your sight so you can't read, shut down your neurotransmitters so you can learn much, or have much of a conversation with anyone etc... What are the drugs supposed to do? Make you manageable like you're some kind of cattle, or rather fruit-fly, that can't be talked to.

You can be forced to take the depot forever. It's horrible. That's when many suicide. They feel like they have no hope of escaping the pain of the psychiatric drugs and no support in the world for the person they want to be.

People are compliant with the long-acting fortnightly jab, because if they don't turn up to get it, they'll be hospitalised, put on higher doses and things will feel even worse.

The whole act looks benign, to many people. But they're not thinking of how this drug harms the person. Those who think it's benign are also not thinking of how the person is denied their opinion, as well as freedom from torturous acts, such as assault in the second degree.

People who pretends to be okay with the depot, are pretending to be okay with something very, very horrible, they really, really don't want happening. Think of the worst crimes committed on a person's body over a long period of time and the psychiatric depot inject is akin to that. Impossible, that feeling of impossible escape from a society that condemns you for thinking outside their range of understood sense, a society that picks on you when you grieve... then sends you to a psychiatrist... a society that should be better.

 

 

Negotiating the psych depot means you have to appear compliant, agree with the psychiatrist, but make well-informed queries into whether the dose could be lowered. Bring along documents that show how high doses can cause the horrible effects you feel. Cite references to psychiatrists who say that lower doses are best. But never, never quote psychiatrists that don't agree with forced drugging.

 

 

Negotiating your way out of the life-sentence depot does mean acting compliant. I've found myself somewhat brain-washed after that process, into thinking I do need to take the tablets to stay within consensual reality, believing that... Plus, last time that happened I also really felt door-matted and it's been a slow process to even get myself to not look like something people have an impulse to kick. I mean, I was thoroughly kicking myself, because I'd had that psychiatrist looking at me all year with a face of disgust, during the horrid 15 minutes I had to spend each fortnight with him. I perpetuated his prejudice of me. I'd had him telling me all the things that was wrong with me, disabling everything I did, belittling my existence, shaming me for speaking out against psychiatry in the past. I had to sit there with him and allow him to beat me up, before I took it in the arse. Anyway, over now. You can get off the depot. It just takes thinking and acting authentically enthused by the drugs ability to 'help' you, but recognition that some 'side-effects' of the neuroleptics mean the psychiatrist is legally mandated to change them or lower them, if you insist enough.