10-6-2021: Day 1
The day the world witnessed the ‘Ring of Fire’ eclipse, the day before the Euro’s finally kicks off, and the day the ‘Euro’ banger war greased across the news columns – I am planting a symbolic expeditionary flag in the cracked-up wilderness ground of mental health recovery.
Fifteen years ago, almost to the day, I was arrested, jailed, sectioned, and medicated in UK state institutions for hearing voices, having extraordinary visions, and inked on the forehead with the lifelong ‘acute schizo-affective disorder’ label.
So, I’m calling this ‘D-Day’ or ‘Day 1’ in a very personal freedom campaign: to rip-up the rule book on modern psychiatry’s ‘lifetime diagnosis’ human cattle branding; to clean myself up from the anti-psychotic medication I have been hooked on for fifteen years; and to reclaim a sovereign state of mental, physical and human ‘wellness’ for myself in this changing society.
13-6-2021: Day 4
Last night, popping the convenient silver foil packaging of the 7.5mg pills of Olanzapine I am chemically hooked on, as a recovering schizophrenic in all but label, I spared a fleeting thought for Colonel Eli Lily.
Lily was the founding father of the multinational drugs corporation ‘Eli Lily’ and stands on the shoulders of global pill rattling movers and shakers, as the Colonel Sanders of Big Pharma.
Lily was a pharmaceutical chemist and veteran of the American Civil War, a Swedish immigrant who fought for the Union, and after the War became the first president of the company worth a cool $24.5 billion dollars in today’s world-wide drugs trade.
Olanzapine is one brand of the Big Pharma Colonel and another is Prozac – the choice of pill for millions of depressed Gen X’ers – which still hasn’t been withdrawn from the market despite a long association with suicidal ideation. The Colonel marches on in the global market, and I’m nowhere nearer cold turkey, but watch this space.
17-6-2021: Day 7
The rain has been torrential, after the mercury thermometers peaked near 30 degrees earlier this week. Outside, the smell of warm rain on the concrete patio lingers on the nose, and the garden is lit up green and lush. Last night dream is swamping my thoughts, and a thick head of pharmaceutical brain waste is damping down my morning routine like a toxic wet towel.
As the rain cascades down, and the wind blows through the leafy trees on the window horizon, I try to fathom the dream blazing like wildfire through my mind. I was attempting to catch a deadly yellow-orange snake with a pair of BBQ tongs and place it inside a supermarket carrier bag. So far, so scary.
A snake in a dream represents a hidden threat, but also change, transformation and a new life chapter. And I wonder whether the deadly snake is a psychological marker thrown down for weaning off these meds.