For Marilyn

"Don't Ever Think That You Can't Change the Past and the Future" - Kate Bush

Those of you who are close to me know that a giant part of my journey over the last six months has been dealing with overwhelming, traumatic grief over the loss of a young friend I’ll call Marilyn. I am not using her name to protect her privacy. She died at age 24. She would have turned 25 on March 14.

It could be said that Marilyn died by suicide, but I do not think that is quite correct. There are two things I have learned since her death that make me think it is much more complicated. First, the hospital made serious medical errors that are obvious to anyone who knows the series of events and has knowledge in the field in which I specialize. The other is that she was dealing with serious problems with medications. She was on several medications for several diagnoses, and she had talked with me many times about problems with them, especially with going through a medication change.

She was also profoundly isolated. She lived far away so I was not able to be with her. I wish I had been.

Those of you who know me or even have been reading me for awhile know that I am a survivor of serious medical trauma, some of which I’ve written about, most of which I haven’t (as in yeah, it gets WAY worse than this.) I have endured an event in a hospital that meets the legal definition of sexual assault and years later I was almost killed by a series of medical errors that were predictable and preventable. I spent years trying to research and write on medical trauma, wanting to do my PhD research on it, only to discover that sure enough, the PhD program I was in at an entirely healthcare oriented university was not all that interested in research on what’s wrong with the healthcare system. I spent years in harm reduction trying to advocate for people who use substances, particularly alcohol, particularly women, mostly through HAMS.

Through all of this, mostly since 2013 when the beginning of the serious trauma occurred, I had taken various psychiatric medications. I would say that my list of adverse reactions to psych meds is longer than my list of ex boyfriends except that I’ve dated a lot (never was married, remember!). I desperately sought trauma treatment but could not find any that I could afford and eventually gave up. The only thing that has worked for me, until recently, has been hardcore Zen meditation in the context of a sangha and teacher, and yoga, plus a pretty rigorous exercise/diet/sleep regimen that most people don’t understand why it’s so important but to me it’s really life and death. Soon I will be publishing an article in Filter about the new trauma treatment I am finally finding success with, and I hope to get the word out far and wide to all who are suffering. (Hint: it isn’t psychedelics! Though I support those for any who wish to use them!)

I went for almost a year with no psychiatric medications whatsoever, and that was the time of greatest peace and prosperity in my mind I’ve had since before I started the meds. Various people, including those in positions of authority over me, have attempted to push me to take psych meds, and I have refused. I strongly support the right of any who wish to take medication or “drugs” to take them. But I also stand with Stanton Peele, Mad in America, and many others in believing that psych meds are over prescribed and dangerously mixed, especially for those who suffer from substance use disorders and/or trauma.

Every day it seems I meet one more person who was diagnosed with this or that and shot up with meds at a time when they were either in acute substance use crisis or acute trauma or both. Then there are the many people who live with the side effects of meds that show no efficacy in clinical trials and may or may not make them feel better. Again, I strongly believe that some small percentage of the population need medication and that anyone who wants it should get it.

AND I STRONGLY BELIEVE IN MAT FOR OUD!!! That’s Medication Assisted Treatment for Opioid Use Disorder, for y’all who aren’t in the harm reduction world. Yet again, I think people should make their own choices. Many will choose the gold standard. Some will make other choices. Informed choices. Did anyone but me read the Belmont report? Please comment if you get that joke without looking it up. Somebody please.

But as I think back on my own experience, and on Marilyn’s death, and the experience of countless others, I am more and more convinced that the over medicating of America is just about as bad as the Diseasing of America. I am far from the first person to have observed that it seems unlikely that so many people are walking around with fundamentally broken brains.

What is broken is the system. Many parts of one big system. A healthcare system in which doctors and other practitioners still use words like “resistant” to describe a patient who doesn’t want to take a medication, and who either don’t have the time or knowledge to offer alternatives to medication. A system where non-drug interventions are unaffordable for so many of us because therapy isn’t covered by insurance or isn’t covered well and therapists gotta eat and feed their cats too so they have to charge rates that people like me and most of us can’t afford. Then there’s the SUD treatment industry and I won’t get started.

But there’s another part of the system that is even more broken, that you can’t medicate away. You can’t give a pill for poverty. You can’t write a script for isolation. You can’t take a medication that liberates you from authoritarian governments or employers. And I strongly suspect that a lot of those meds that are meant to help really do more to just quiet people down, or rather shut them up. It’s hard to plan an effective, peaceful revolution if you’re drugged out on Seroquel, fighting weight gain from Abilify, numbed out on any number of other things, or desperately searching the streets because you’ve been kicked off your pain meds that chronic pain sufferers really need.

It has been noted, by those close to me, that I express a great deal of rage. I’ve had multiple concussions, and this makes rage worse. But I think the situation merits quite a bit of rage, and I’m glad I have a therapist who is a goddess at listening to the language of anger and helping me channel it productively. I’m also fortunate to have a few close advisors who are good at, as Lord Tyrion would say, suggesting an alternative plan. Perhaps it is just as well that I don’t have literal dragons. Though they would make a very effective way to skip local traffic jams.

I am very excited that in my new freedom as a full-time journalist, ghostwriter and content creator, I am finally able to write what I believe, work for only causes I truly believe in, and join some amazing harm reduction warriors yet again in the fight for a better world.

But the grief will never go away. She shouldn’t have died. I don’t think she meant to die. I had so many dreams of what we would do together. It never occurred to me that I would never even see her in person.

She is gone, but there are many yet to save. And a whole new world to be built.

It’s not the only thing I want to change… there’s so much I want to do and I want to live long enough to do it. But her memory both haunts and inspires me.

Perhaps we can’t change the past, but by reframing it we open up the possibility of changing the future.

Rest in power, my friend. At least rest. Those of us you left behind so sad will do what you would have wanted us to do: fight on.