psst.... don't tell anyone but my real name is Patti. lol.

Debate isn't permitted so I'm not concerned about starting anything by sharing my views.

I'll expand with a bit of history.... I took meds for a while at one point in my journey through mental unwellness. Reluctantly but I relented to take meds to get through the crisis but I got off them again when the worst passed and I was able to find alternatives. I had a bad reaction not to the meds but to the medical system and the doctors who are too quick to prescribe and too busy to know enough about the meds for me to put my health in their hands. The hassle with the process..... time spent sitting in doctor's office while dealing with the anxiety/panic from being there at all. Time spent reminding doctors why I was there. Time spent giving my history again and having new labels added and new scripts to match. Increased my anxiety and made it harder not easier to cope with my everydays. Add the cost of meds and there's another reason I went looking for alternatives. The scripts my doc prescribed for me as my basic cocktail comes at a $600/month price tag. I don't have that kind of money to give to meds and no insurance to cover it for me. My best therapy is to work less not more. That's a lot of extra work that I'd have to be doing to pay for the meds. It was like working to pay for meds. If I didn't have to work so much I wouldn't need so many meds. I opted to cut back my work and stay away from meds.

On the other side of the coin is my 'spiritual' (as opposed to religious) conviction that psych medications are in themselves a negative energy. They desensitize me and separate me from myself. I don't like how they make me feel. I feel poisoned and totally out of touch with myself.

My illness goes in cycles. I can have weeks at a time where I feel totally 'normal'. No negative talk impacting my thoughts, no anxiety limiting my activities, no nausia restricting my eating, no rapid eye/leg/brain activity keeping me awake. No crazy ideas or crazy energies. No suicidal ideations, no hopelessness, no sense of uselessness or worthlessness, no symptoms to medicate.

These periods of 'resession' may only last for a day or two or may go weeks at a time but they are enough to make me want to know that when they happen it is me. Not the meds. It is 100% Patti. I need that. I need to know its me not the pills that is talking, doing, thinking, being okay with the world and myself. If only for a day its a treat. If for a week or so its a blessing. If it could go a lifetime it would be the miracle I pray every day to exerience.

It has been a long time between 'resessions' for me. Haven't felt as well as I do right now for many months and it was many months before then so they are few and far between that I enjoy these respites from the usual struggles. But for me they are worth the wait and worth the struggle.

In the meantime I benefit everyday from becoming more disciplined with my prayers, meditations, nutrition, fitness, thinking and behavioural patterns. I face every symptom with prayer and holistic wellness therapy. I live by the medicine wheel where I learn to practise balance and harmony. I transcend into spirit to cope with and heal my physical realities.

I am a spiritual being having a human experience. I can centre my physical pain until I don't feel the pain anymore. I can mentally travel to the source of the physical pain and take it apart in my mind. I can centre my mental anquish until I don't feel anquished anymore. In spirit I can overcome anything my physical form wrestles with. I'm disciplining and centring myself into a state of greater and greater wellness.

Some call it 'hokky' I call it my spiritual journey to physical and mental wellness. Holistic medicine led by spiritual enlightenment and faith in what I know but can not see.