Hey, reader. How are you doing? Do you know how to be crazy? I have a ton of practice. My life’s work could be summarized: explaining how to be crazy in a way that benefits us all.
Recently I joined a group on social media for psychosis and schizophrenia. You know my diagnosis is under the schizophrenia umbrella. In this group, I read posts from sad anonymous people complaining about their relative’s wild behavior asking, is this psychosis? What should I do?
Almost everyone is like– “They need to be hospitalized. They need medication, and then they have a chance to come out functional. This is an illness. The bad behavior isn’t them– it’s their illness.”
human needs
Yikes! I feel really sad when I hear the chorus say that sedating the fuck out of people is the only way. There are so many options! Illnesses are managed with
- food
- movement
- change of sleep
- change of stress
- massage
- energy work
- prayer / ritual / limpia
- herbs
- supplements
- change of environment
- music
- dance
- art
There have been people for millions of years. Pharmaceutical pills are new on the scene. Medicalization is modern.
It’s so much faster to sedate and silence people, than to look at actual human needs and heal.
Hospital is jail, and outcomes after hospitalization are poor. There’s a fast road (sedation) and a slow road (facing actual needs). These days, I’m grateful to be on the slow road.
pills
But I can see how you’d want a pill, especially if you’re trying to do capitalism. Facing reality, like how we really feel and what has happened to us, is hard work.
Or it’s four or five pills, often. The three pills you’re prescribed originally, and then a pill to counteract what one of the pills is doing as a side effect, and a bonus pill for another problem.
Just this morning I was crying about how much work it is to be be crazy. I was in the kitchen crying to Ming.
“It’s so much work,” I said. “I don’t want to do it anymore.”
What life could I have led, if my ACE scored had been 2 instead of 9? Or if my genes had been different, or if culture had given me what I need.
making our own paths
What’s your goal? How do you want your family member to be? They don’t know how to be crazy yet in an ok way. It takes time to find a way of being that works for us, when culture doesn’t offer many ways.
The possibilities are so narrow. We have to make our own paths.
“I wasn’t taught how to do that,” is the response I get, when I talk about loving myself unconditionally, being happy in a fat body, disabled dance, and other new ideas. Yeah, I wasn’t taught how to do that either. Culture is failing, and we need to make new options. How to be crazy is a creative process. The work is on us.
Fortunately, creativity is something many of us crazy people are good at. Let’s make new paths together. That’s what radical mental health is for. We can build a culture which is for people as we are, not as capitalism asks us to be.
US culture doesn’t know what to do with people who are here for something besides making money.
content warning: harm to psychiatric survivors
I love crazy people. Yes, some of us have been locked away and hidden, sterilized, electro-shocked, killed. Also, some have been considered holy people and consulted for our intelligence and skills. Some have been burned at the stake– some artists, some nurtured.
Cultures do all sorts of things with us. But I’m glad I quit the bipolar cocktail to see who I was under the sedation. Yes, it’s ok to take meds, like it’s ok to work for a living, watch tv, drink or use drugs, go to bed, and start over the next day. It’s ok to do the normal thing.
I’m an artist to face reality, including facing the actual problems. Meds never stopped my voices. If they had actually worked for me, I might be a very different person today. I often guess I might have become a lawyer.
But the world didn’t need another lawyer–it needed this Strawberry. Grateful to be here, telling the truth, crazy as I am.
how to be crazy
The best way I know how to be crazy is with friends. I appreciate the people who love me for who I am and support me respectfully.
With your love, I feel strong and ready to do the work my ancestors put me here for. Thank you to everyone who builds community.
