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Rainbows
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Rainbow Writings and Special Selections by Clover Smith C 2005
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I am a psychiatric survivor, a cured paranoid schizophrenic. Without any initials after my name, I have been selected by PH.Ds to give a presentation for continuing education credits for professionals through St. John’s University in New York City this October.
The title of my presentation is, The Heredity / Environmental Cause, 31 Year Psychiatric Exacerbation, and 6 Month, 12 Step Cure of a Paranoid Schizophrenic.
Welcome World! I am a 31-year Psychiatric Survivor, a 12 Step certified cured Paranoid Schizophrenic. I bring you what I have learned about psychological laws, the inexact science of psychiatry, and why the Self-Help, 12 Step method cures mental illness.
20 years ago I was a certified Paranoid Schizophrenic when I threw away the psychiatric drugs, went to a 12-Step program, and learned how to grow up with the loving care of those who saw me as a person, not the problem. 1
The Hereditary-Environmental causes of mental illness will cover:
1. How physical and psychological needs when met lead to normal growth and when not, lead to partial or arrested development.
2. High Risk factors both hereditary and environmental that produce autistic flight or pro-active fight and superior/inferior codependency.
The Psychiatric Exacerbation of mental illness will cover:
1. Psychiatrists’ use of the superior/inferior codependency.
2. Methods of control: drugs, electric shock, terror, blame, shame.
The Case History will describe:
1. Symptoms and diagnosis of my mental illness throughout a 31 year period.
2. The natural causes and consequences behind the worsening mental illness.
The Psychological re-education will cover:
1. My introduction to the 12 Step program and drug treatment approaches.
2. The difference between attacking the person or fulfilling vital needs in helping the person to become mentally healthy. 2
Can you remember your first time at the ocean? I recall my first experience. It was night. I can still hear the roar of the waters and see the wondrous green fire curling across the tops of waves, feel the wetness of the sand underneath my bare feet and taste and smell the ocean’s salty breath. Memory brings the past sensations to us. But, wait, we are seeing, hearing, feeling, tasting and smelling what is not here! According to psychiatry, we’re having hallucinations, the product of defective brains! But reality is, if our minds could not recollect or create, it is then that we would have defective brains! It is simply that when we have happy memories we are happy; when terror paints the picture we are terrified. 3
In my 31st year of psychiatric maltreatment, I saw psychiatry as a snorting machine rumbling down the street. I was a constantly jerking, toothless bag woman screaming the terror. “‘You should have made sure I was dead! I might kick a dent in your steamroller that rolls over and kills people! You should have checked! I might rise up and become a person!” 4
And tada! Ladies and gentlemen, not through magic but via my midnight-hour find of loving, truthful people with
A 12-step drug detoxification and cognitive healing program and Your willingness to look at reality,
Today I am here before you, a person.
An equally worthy child of man and God, just like you and everyone else. 5
Every human is born a spiritual being with a physical body and creative mind, a child of man and God. Every human is born having four ways to grow up — physically, psychologically, intellectually and spiritually. As with all life, the instinct and purpose of the individual is our physical being calling us to flourish and co-create the specie. To mankind alone is the potential and purpose, the calling of the life force to love and be loved, to transcend from being the conditional loving CHILD OF MAN to being the unconditional loving CHILD OF GOD.
LOVE is the Nurturing Food for Thought, the Power, Law, and Divinity, the Life Force and Creative Presence that comes from God.
Every human is born physically and psychological dependent on others providing the vital needs for body, mind and spirit — a deficiency sickens, even unto death, depending on the degree of lack.
The Human Mind has four DEVELOPMENTAL STAGES and three INNATE NATURES. The inceptive image mind of the newborn and the cognitive concept mind of the young child share the NATURAL CHILD of MAN’s helpless, dependent, passive, naive, powerless, subjective, automatic senses-reactions PHYSICAL NATURE. 6
The natural child’s physical nature automatically harmonizes with others when given love and separates from others with fear or anger when love is lacking.
When feeling love and joy, a chemical imbalance of “feeling good” chemicals pours through the brain and body. When feeling fear or anger, a chemical imbalance of “feeling bad” chemicals pours through the brain and body.
DEPENDING on the ENVIRONMENT, the NATURAL CHILD develops naive, subjective, matter-over-mind, tunnel-vision, GOOD or BAD, cognitive concepts about self and the environment. 7
In the PROCUREMENT STAGE, The POWER of LOVE, a harmonizing communion of touch and laughter between CHILD and OTHERS, empowers UNITY, a sense of belonging, identity, self-acceptance and SELF-LOVE. PROCURING Education in basic physical and psychological TRUTH empowers the growing of mind over matter. The INTELLECTUAL NATURE of the INTERMEDIATE CHILD grows in positive outlook, confidence, proactive problem-solving abilities and recognition of boundaries. The mind develops from subjective to objective, from tunnel-vision cognitive concepts to full-picture cognitive perceptions. The powerless, automatic reactions decrease in frequency as Selected Thoughts and Actions Increase. LOVE Empowers UNITY = SELF- LOVE + Truths = INTELLECTUAL NATURE = Conditional Human LOVE = INTERMEDIATE CHILD.
In the FULFILLED STAGE, GROWING LOVE and TRUTH empower cognitive perception of the FULL PICTURE: UNCONDITIONAL LOVE of SELF and OTHERS. SPIRITUAL ENLIGHTENMENT internalizes DIVINE LOVE and establishes a conscious contact with God, freeing from dependency on human love. Perceiving the DIVINITY in self and others, the human TRANSCENDS to the SPIRITUAL NATURE. The Human ADULT, the SPIRITUAL CHILD of GOD, Objectively discerns the pain behind another’s action and chooses to give back LOVE no matter what is given, chooses to LOVE and SERVE GOD and SELF by Loving and serving OTHERS. SPIRITUAL Enlightenment = Transcending = Conscious Contact WITH GOD = SPIRITUAL NATURE = Actualization = The HUMAN ADULT, the CHILD OF GOD = unconditional love of self and others 8
As darkness is the absence of light, and cold the absence of heat, so fear or anger is the absence of love. The real absence of demonstrated love, believed absence due to differences of temperament, or from physical pain, is the significant cause of mental illness.
Mental Health is the growing process of love.
Mental illness is the nurturing-deficiency alienating disease process of pain, negativity, and defense. It is simply the psychological child’s natural, normal reaction to an unnatural, abnormal environment — partial or arrested psychological development.
Loveless environment = fear = repression = alienation = non-growth deadened head = mental illness.
Humans give what they have been given by either heredity or environment. How one person treats another says a lot about the psychological condition of the treater BUT little about the treatee. Treating one person with deference and another with cruelty is unbalanced. 9
I was born a highly intelligent, passionate, creative, optimistic, steel-willed, idealistic, gentle, sensitive, Perfectionistic Pacifist, one end of the personality scale. Other people with some similar superior characteristics are born perfectionist aggressors, on the other end of the personality scale.
These are high-risk hereditary characteristics for severe mental illness. The Perfectionist Pacifist or Aggressor natural mindset is a rigid Must, Should thinking, black or white, all or nothing, shame, blame, guilt and hierarchy judgment of inferior and superior people. The strong inner rhythm called dyslexia rearranges words, letters, and numbers. With these characteristics, a child, if not met with active, engaging love becomes filled with fear or anger and alienated from self and others.
In the 1920s, physiologist Walter B. Cannon identified the automatic tipping of the flight or fight survival mechanism. In the innate aggressor, anger-fight is internalized, arresting development and defaulting to the delusional role of superior bully. The proactive, grandiosity valuing of oneself by the shaming, blaming and injuring power over others is a highly effective offensive-defensive behavior generally not labeled mental illness.
My environment, one of little time for me by my busy mother, I did not get the message I was loved. My sensitivities in the low genius range and with little verbal or physical abuse, my fear-flight reaction was that of moderate, not severe, “autism.” 10
My brothers and sisters, with less sensibilities and more common sense, adequately adopted the work ethic as being loved, and growing up to be adequate INTELLECTUAL INTERMEDIATE CHILDREN, became pillars of the community.
I was a loveless child looking out at a frightening world. The fear- flight survival mechanism tripped. As naturally as withdrawing my hand from a burning stove, my superior characteristics enabled me to block out the outside world. I buried deep within me the shame that I was not worth loving. I created an “autistic” fantasy world of loving bird, animal, and flower friends, and their love provided the strength for me to walk alone. I quit vomiting. When I had to go into the presence of people, doing my duty of work and school like “I was supposed to,” I stood mute inside myself, a protective numbness surrounding my stiff body.
As my own active self-talk, conscious-aware voice developed, I thought it was the VOICE OF THE WATCHER, GOD, that told me I was a good girl and He loved me. As time passed and I began to have some doubts about me, I heard the voice scold me for not doing things right. 11
I entered my teens; flesh, blood, and bone called to real people. The need of love called to my spiritual potential and purpose. My fantasy flight into an alternative survival world was outgrown. BUT, my psychological development HAD BEEN ARRESTED. I was still a natural psychological child looking out at the world — a helpless, dependent, passive inferior: self-shaming, blaming, injuring and valuing of myself by how I was treated by others — the automatic-senses reaction behavior generally labeled mental illness. “Grandiose superior” and “passive inferior” form a natural controller and victim codependency.
I was socially inept and ignored. With STOICISM my ineffective defense, I waited for the door of love to open and someone to invite me out into the world. My active consciousness VOICE that I thought was the VOICE of GOD, was increasingly savagely berating. I was so ignorant, I did not even know that the person separated from people is separated from God. If the communion were not unconditional LOVE, it was not of GOD. Indeed, as my being here shows, God’s UNCONDITIONAL Love changes a great injury into a BLESSING for self and others.
In stoic, growing grief, I graduated valedictorian of my high school class. I could not bend; I could only break. With grief-stricken, desultory studying, my grades fell to F’s in college. I was 20 years old when my inner resources were exhausted and collapsing from the grief of not being loved, I was committed to psychiatry.
Stoicism = repression = alienation + helpless non-growth deadened head = dread = 2nd degree mental illness. 12
“Oh,” I thought, “psychiatrists are Talking Doctors. They will love me and tell me all about the world so I can be a person just like everyone else!” With rigid “should” optimism, 31 years later, after having been treated as a worthless thing by over a hundred psychiatrists, I was in suicidal and homicidal terror and despair, still searching for the psychiatrist who would see that I was a person.
From the beginning of time, man created a delusional hierarchy of “superior gods” controlling “inferior things,” with terror, torture and killing. Down through time, nations emerged still continuing to use this hierarchy. The Inquisition, Holocaust, and Slavery are some other examples of government-sanctioned inhumanity to man. Psychiatry, however, has no self-limiting boundaries...and that is spine-chilling.
Some people become psychiatrists because they want to help mentally ill people get well. Others because they want to find out how to fix themselves. Many psychiatrist’s, however, practice for the grandiosity of the role. All are taught the delusional superiority over “inferior” beings as their authority for damaging other people’s brains. 13
In experiments conducted in 1962-63, Dr Stanley Milgram found that 65% of people directed by an authority, continued to follow the authority’s dictates, even though the people being directed realized that the electric shock they were inflicting was terrifying to the victim and could be fatal.
Such blind addiction to authority is notable in victims who protect psychiatrists. They say, “Psychiatrists are so nice to me,” as I did. In general, the public goes along with psychiatry, even though aware of the progressively hopeless physically wrecked bodies, the agonized suicides and homicides.
What do the statistics say about psychiatric methods?
Psychiatry’s victims have the highest suicide rate of any group of people in society. Psychiatrists have a higher suicide rate than the general population. One psychiatrist was locked up with me in my last psychiatric prison. “I wanted to learn how to help the mentally ill get well and all I learned was how to destroy them. Doesn't matter if it kills you, the only thing important is that psychiatrists are gods.” He was told, “Your psychiatrist has ordered these medications for you.” He stirred them around with his finger. “I know these pills. This many is enough to kill anyone, and these two, these two taken together can cause a heart attack.” He shrugged, said, “I’m suicidal,” and swallowed the pills. ”Don’t pay any attention to anything he says,” staff told us, “he’s just an inmate like you.” 14
Some other psychiatrists, neither blinded by their own power- craze nor in blind lockstep to authority, such as Dr. Peter Breggin, become teachers of psychological development. They are doctors writing and speaking how medical science repudiates the deadly psychiatric treatments.
The first tenet of the Hippocratic oath is “Do no harm.“ Another
instructs, “To treat in the patient’s best interest and not some third party agenda.” Psychiatry, by intent and practice, is not a healing profession; it is a system for social control using the ancient and inexact science of terror and torture with modern day deadly force of drugs, electricity and knife.
Psychiatry is a revolving door of dehumanizing subjection, explosion, suppression and rebound; it is cause and effect in action. It is the science of the log jam and the pressure cooker. As shown in naturally occurring psychological defense, stoic repressed emotions build past the strength of the stoicism to suppress.
Stoicism = repression = alienation + helpless non-growth deadened head = dread = 2nd degree mental illness.
Psychiatry = severe abnormal environment + severe verbal and physical abuse + electricity, drugs, knife = subjection = alienation + hopeless non-growth usurped-spirit deadened head = terror = 3rd degree mental illness. 15
Humans intending to injure other humans first dehumanize them. In my case, I was locked up and labeled a non-person disease, a “schizophrenic.” From the first I was verbally and physically abused, shamed, blamed, and demoralized: guaranteed deepening negativity, dependency, non-growth, and sickening of the spirit.
I was subjected to getting my brains knocked out with electricity. I came to increasingly confused, wobbly, and terrified after each additional potentially fatal electrocution.
Tada! I escaped after four ElectricConvulsiveTerrors. It was dance night. Just the occupational therapy needed for people to forget they were being killed. I put my hide-out money into my bra. It was December. I put on my woolen dress, bobby socks and saddle shoes. The outside door was unlocked. I lagged behind. I turned and ran, stumbling from my head injury. I escaped the grounds to the highway, was picked up by young people on their way to a dance, and dropped off in a nearby city.
Surviving a horror too horrible to be real, by the next day I was in deep psychological shock with hysterical amnesia. Terror undulated underneath my hysterical laughter. ( DO YOU KNOW? It is this hysteria and laughter that psychiatry touts as relieved mental illness! ) I could faintly remember that I had been locked up by psychiatry and was escaping. I existed in the feeling of not really BEING, of unreality, as if in a NIGHTMARE and doing by ROTE, some horror lurking, waiting... 16
Remember: Electricity, drugs, knife = subjection = alienation + hopeless non-growth usurped-spirit deadened head = terror = 3rd degree mental illness.
Nine years later, the flashbacks started. Thirteen years later, one morning, I woke up. The smell of camphor, the oil they had smeared on my temples so the electrical burns wouldn’t show on the outside surrounded me. I exploded into suicidal and homicidal terror. I was again an inmate of a psychiatric prison.
No longer trusting psychiatrists, I was labeled “paranoid schizophrenic.” Drugs were forced by hypodermic needle, until I became repressed and swallowed the pills. They told me the “meds” were only good for me and could not hurt me in any way. I was told the physical rashes, muscle twisting, and progressive debilitating physical problems were only temporary and necessary to cure me. ( I found out many years later, the drug was phenothiazine — a NEUROTOXIN, a PESTICIDE! )
ADDICTED! All I needed was my DRUGS! The poison pills reduced my thinking to cliché and stoned my emotions. At first, the non-mind seems to help; that is why alcoholics and addicts become alcoholics and addicts. I became an apathetic vegetable, so I was discharged seven months later, my body sick and hard to move.
Remember: Hopeless non-growth usurped-spirit deadened head = terror = 3rd degree mental illness. A year later, I exploded again. Psychiatry’s revolving door revolving. 17
I hated everyone for hating me and wanting me dead; I hated myself most of all for being the worthless thing everyone hated and wanted dead. Tada! Real doctors in real hospitals saved my life from both the damage from psychiatric drugs and my suicide attempts, over and over again. Born very gentle, I never injured anyone else, but four times that I remember, I was a life threat to others, one a child.
Exploding blackout drug rages = subjected vegetable apathy = exploding blackout drug rages = legal or illegal brain targeting drugs = the mandate of alcoholics and addicts = quit using or die.
It was a nightmare, I tried to get the police to help me; it was a nightmare, they always took me back to psychiatry.
Tada! After 10 years of brain-drugging, one morning I woke up; the fog parted; psychiatrists’ drugs were killing me. I called the
psychiatrist. “What do psychiatrists think in their head? My mind is cured when my body is dead?” I slammed the phone down and never swallowed psychiatrists’ drugs again.
I was judged a danger to myself and others and committed to a mental nursing home, a guard at the door 24/ 7. This was the place I was expected to sit out my last days.
Tada! I came from breakfast with food for my mentor, the bug on the window sill, but he was gone. Then I heard his voice calling from the outside, “Follow me.” I wrapped my things in my shawl and approached the front door. “Hey, she thinks she’s leaving,” the guard called to the goon squad and they all laughed. “Look at you,” he said, “you almost can’t walk. I’ll open the door for you and you won’t even make it to the street. Knock real loud so I can let you back in,” he said and they all laughed. I shuffled out the door. He closed it behind me. I was back out on the streets.”
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A terrible yearning lay underneath the recycling apathy and despair. I became catatonic several times.
CLOVER READ Book: Page 316, Last Paragraph, 317, to end.
Recurring Themes of Psychological Tests and Psychiatrists Intake and Discharge Notes: “Intellectual and perceptual functions remain essentially intact and within the Bright Normal range with no significant indications of organic dysfunction...“She is oriented times three, recalls three of three objects in five minutes. Serial 3’s are normal...Her speech is soft, whiny and child-like, and is very halting. She constantly looks around as though confused. Her effect is depressed and hostile. Thoughts are very disorganized with some blocking. There are no frank delusions except for thoughts of people wanting her dead. Her communications are vague. She relates in a childish, dependent, and helpless manner... Recurrent suicidal gestures, chronic paranoid-schizophrenia, lack of ego mastery, cognitive and bizarre (read meaning terrified) sensory experience.”
For thirty-one years psychiatry’s electricity and drugs guaranteed I was hopeless and helpless, guaranteed I could only despair and die. 19
April 19, 1981, I was 51 years old, a physically devastated, powerless, natural psychological child automatically reacting with terror and despair to the cruel environment I was stuck in. I was once again in an emergency room. Tada! A male nurse said, “Go to Alcoholics Anonymous; they teach people how to get well.” I went. I was welcomed. The message was, “You can get well; we will help you. Alcohol and drugs are but symptoms of the disease of fear. Basic is quitting the brain-drugging.” I was no longer suicidal or homicidal after my first meeting for they gave me hope and would help me. I had found my opening door of love.
The first month I went to the meeting room, sat and cried in relief. The next two months, with fellowship, hugs, laughter, talking and tears, I worked through all of my pain except for psychiatry. For psychiatry’s terrors I would need arms available 24 hours a day.
I entered alcohol and drug treatment centers twice where the message was the same as psychiatry’s, “If you were any good you wouldn’t be here.” In the third center, I was welcomed. “You can get well; we will help you.” There, I let the horror of psychiatric memories rise. I screamed unintelligible words. Grief racked my body. Another’s arm around me, lent me courage to keep looking into the terror. Screaming formed into words spewing the wretched stuff from my mind and body. The living waters ran down my face washing my spirit free; only the acceptable, emotion-freed facts of my past remained. Forgiving myself and others, I didn’t have to hate anymore. My capacity to feel that had been filled with terror and despair was now filled with love, joy, and perception of being an equally worthy child of man and God, like everyone else.
Psychological Tests and Discharge Notes: COGNITIVE PERCEPTUAL: All test scores regressed to well within normal ranges. Changes in self-perception and activities towards self, suggest deep surrender and acceptance. EMOTIONAL: As above, all testing normal, very large reduction in depression, guilt, shame, feeling of worthlessness.”
They had given me the gift of my real self, a loving person.
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Our earth is God’s world of unconditional law and order. Physical and psychological laws are universal, changeless, and timeless. There is no change or action without cause and effect. Chaos is a tunnel-vision delusion of the psychological child.
Some of the 12 steps acknowledge the barriers that kept the person from being the person of love that every person really is. Other steps involve removing the barriers.
The first word of the 12 Steps is the magic WORD of “WE.” The POWER magic WORLD of LOVE, UNITY! EQUALITY! SHARING! Through sharing experiences, laughter and tears the person gains a feeling of being accepted and no longer alone.
SELF-EXAMINATION, SELF-KNOWLEDGE: Examining tunnel-vision concepts. Reprocessing the past experience. Working the terror out of the mind and body and letting it go. The insight that seeming chaos is really cause and effect. The insight that with the subjective viewpoint of the psychological child, irresponsibility and reaction were automatic: there is no shame, blame, or guilt. TADA! Cognitive Perception, the full picture. LOVE + UNITY + TRUTH = HEALING: FORGIVENESS OF SELF AND OTHERS = LOVE OF SELF AND OTHERS =
ENLIGHTENMENT, TRANSCENDING, ACTUALIZATION, The Spiritual ADULT, Conscious Awareness of GOD, the CHILD of God. No longer dependent on people for love. A Source of Enlightenment for others. Reflecting UNITY, TRUTH, AND LOVE of GOD. FULFILLMENT: Responsible to God, self and others.
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Until I was 51 years of age, I was consciously aware of looking out at the world, subject to the actions of others. Only in 1981, as I made the change from psychological child to psychological adult, did my perspective change. I became aware of being out IN the world, directed by God’s love, equally worthy, objectively discerning how to be the most useful to God and myself by being the most useful to others. Finally aware of the full picture, I knew I was a child of man and God like everyone else. 22
A problem is solved by focusing on and redeeming the underlying factors and causes. I changed from being the worthless thing that psychiatry told me I was and treated me as being. When treated as if I were a person, in 6 months I became one.
I frequently repeated the Serenity Prayer as it helped ease my worry. “God, Grant me the Serenity to Accept the Things I Cannot Change.” TADA! Suddenly, I realized I was directing my mind! I DID NOT HAVE TO HAVE WHATEVER THOUGHTS CAME TO ME. I COULD DIRECT MY MIND AND CHOOSE MY THOUGHTS! AWESOME, AWESOME KNOWLEDGE! LIFE CHANGING KNOWLEDGE!
The DIFFERENCE DOES MAKE ALL THE DIFFERENCE IN THE WORLD!
Out of this cure, I wrote my autobiography, Escape from Psychiatry. I am Founder and Director of Welcome World, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. We are the Envisonaries. Our Mission: Fulfilling the Human Need of Love: Curing Mental Illness. We use an amended version of AA: Humans Anonymous, 12 Step Program for Anyone.
Now I have some questions and a vision to leave with you. 23
What is focused on is what grows. Psychiatry focuses on the person being the problem. The person’s problems grow into third order effects of suicidal and homicidal terror, despair, hysteria, and paranoia unto death. Mentally healthy humans nurture; healthy relationships are nurturing win-win relationships.
Here are my questions for members of our society.
1. Why does it take all one’s life to be treated by psychiatry and that is paid for by taxpayers, but only 45 days or less are allowed in an alcohol and drug treatment program? One works, one doesn't? In 45 days, many people are not even through the reducing down of the drugs.
2. Does providing the authority position and receiving taxpayers money create a situation where many residential drug treatment centers have been taken over by “superior controllers”? With such persons as directors, they are no longer a healing program.
3. Are you one of the 64% blinded by authority, as in the Milgram experiment? The Texas Medication Algorithm Project is a mental illness screening, drugging initiative by the pharmaceutical industry and then Governor George W. Bush. Now an Executive Order 20020429-2 signed by President George W. Bush, it is called The New Freedom Initiative on Mental Health. Beginning with children, teachers, and pregnant women, the initiative is to screen every person in USA... including YOU. Are you going to wait till they come for you? 24
Do you think I needed to be shocked and drugged to death?
Do you think other people need to be shocked and drugged to death? 25
Envision our country without the government hierarchy system of controllers and throwaway people .
Envision our schools where children are safe from stigmatized labeling and forced brain-targeting drugs; the educational prevention and cure of mental illness a basic part of the curriculum.
Envision every person receiving the real educational and practical help they need; freed from the brain-damaging deadly force of electricity, drugs, and knife; free of violations of constitutional, civil and human rights. 26
Envision the human agony relieved.
Envision, the billions of tax payers’ money saved.
Envision our country freed of psychiatry’s induced violence that runs amok in our homes, schools, streets and businesses.
Envision our world a Welcome World. As funding becomes available, we are planning on opening more VOLUNTARY drop-ins and residential Alcohol and Drug Treatment Centers for Anyone.
Envision becoming an Envisionary and together making our world a Welcome World for all.
A World Free of Mental Illness is a World Free of the Quick Fix Ways that Never Fix: the Dehumanizing Drugs, Terror, Torture, Crime, and War.
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I incredibly survived, a couple of times by escaping from locked wards. I escaped electric shock after four by convincing the staff that I wouldn’t run if I was allowed out to go to a dance and then ran. Another time, by following the instructions of my mentor, a bug on the window sill, I talked the guard at the mental nursing home where I had been committed for being a danger to myself and others to unlock the door and let me out. Born very gentle, controlled by terror, I almost terribly attacked a child but stopped short of physical injury. My attack on an occupational therapist with a long bladed pair of scissors, that I stopped short of hurting, went unnoticed. Real doctors saved my life both from the physical devastation of the drugs and my suicide attempts. And 31 years of dehumanization by psychiatry, I found loving people and the six month, 12 step cure. I wrote my autobiography, Escape from Psychiatry. I am founder and director of Welcome World, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. Fulfilling the Human Need of Love: Curing Mental Illness.
Turning a Life Around: Growing Up From the Dependent-Will Libility of a Psychological Child to the Asset of the Self-Actualizing, Free Willed Psychological Adult.
Fulfilling the Human Potential to Choose Unity, Truth and Love.
Welcome World: Psychiatric Survivors’ Center for 12 Step Life Education & Healing— the Cure of Mental Illness — the Life Nurturing-Deficiency Disease.
Drop-in/Residential, Learning/Earning Thrift Shop & Food Bank
270 Browning Ave, P.O. Box 116, Ignacio, CO 81137-0116
Clover Smith, Executive Director, Psychiatric Escapee/Survivor
12 Step Certified Cured Paranoid Schizophrenic; (970) 563-4433;
The Natural Human: Every human is a spiritual being with a physical body, a child of God and man: body, mind, and spirit. Every human is born with two ways to grow up: physically and psychologically. Every human is born dependent on others to provide their vital physical and psychological needs for growth. Every human is born a psychological child — the child of man — having the instinctive, senses-directed, matter-over-mind, automatic-reaction, dependent/ignorant-will, physical nature. The psychological child automatically reacts with the bliss of bonding and growth when given love and with the pain of anger or fear and separation when love is lacking.
The Cause of Mental Illness: Just as every human sickens even unto death for lack of the vital physical needs, so also, every human sickens even unto death for lack of nurturing with the vital human needs of unity, truth, and love. Mental illness is the fear/flight or anger/fight pain and separation, nurturing-deficiency disease — to the degree of the lack even unto death.
Physical and Psychological Development: As all physical conditions, physical adulthood is autommaticall related to age. Psychological adulthood is depend on nurturing.
The Psychological Adult: When nurtured with unity, truth, and love the psychological child transcends to the nonviolent psychological adult, the child of God, the love-directed, mind-over-matter, free-willed, chosen action, spiritual nature, choosing to love and serve God and self by loving and serving others.
Psychiatry: In healthy relationships, every human is equally worthy of unity, truth, and love nurturing relationships. Psychologically healthy humans nurture. Psychiatry is an imposed superior — anger and contempt of the other — and inferior —fear and contempt of oneself — unhealthy relationship. Psychiatry forces a dependency on brain disabling electricity, drugs, and knife. The human and potential is laid waste. The human progresses to living in agony and dying a premature death from the physical devastation of the maltreatment or suicide.
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Mental Health Screening and Records - Congressional Briefing by AAPS DC Representative, Michael Ostrolenk - 2/8/2005
Good afternoon. I am Michael Ostrolenk with the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons. Prior to becoming a public policy consultant, I was a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist in the State of California. As such, I worked with clients dealing with depression, chronic and life threatening illnesses, those who suffered from sexual abuse, neurological impairments and those who chose to abuse drugs and alcohol to the detriment of their physical and mental well being. So, I am quite familiar with the ‘problems of living’ many of our fellow countrymen face on daily basis. I am also quite familiar with how our government works and even with the best intentions, many if not all government programs end up causing more problems than they attempt to solve. So, when it comes to the issue of federally funds going to the states for their mental health programs in general and mental health screening programs in particular, I have to ask myself three questions. First, is under what authority are the services or funds being provided. Second question is what are the intentions of those who are providing the services or funding and the third is do those receiving the services consent to them.
The first question about the authority of the federal government to be in the mental health business. I have looked at the Constitution, specifically Article 1, Section 8 which clearly defines the authority given to the Congress by our Constitution. I do not see any powers in that section which allows for the federal government to be involved in any way in the mental health of its citizens.
The second question I ask myself is what are the intention of those who are creating, organizing, promoting and funding these types of programs. Since a lot of the focus is on providing mental health screening programs in government schools, I will focus my comments on state schools. The issue of mental health and government schools goes back at least to the 1950’s. Let me quote directly from National Institute for Mental Health which conducted a five year study on the mental health of the nation in the 1950’s. The final document was entitled 'Action for Mental Health.'
“Proposed that school curriculum be designed to bend the student to the realities of society.”
It should be ''designed to promote mental health as an instrument for social progress and as a means of 'altering culture.''
A 1962 NIMH-sponsored report, ''The Role of Schools in Mental Health,'' stated
''Education does not mean teaching people to know.'' It means teaching them to behave as they do not behave.
Let me conclude my inquiry into intentions by quoting from a 1973 Childhood International Education Seminar in Colorado, where Dr. Chester (Psychiatrist) M. Pierce said the following:
''Every child in America is entering school at the age of 5 is mentally ill because he comes to school with certain allegiances to our founding fathers, toward our elected officials, toward his parents, toward a belief in a supernatural being, and toward the sovereignty of this nation as a separate entity. It is up to you as teachers to make all of these sick children well-by creating the international child of the future.''
Now, I do not believe everyone who is involved in this issue, whether the bureaucrats, the intellectuals, or politicians have the intention of transforming our culture through psycho-behavioral indoctrination and pharmaceutical interventions through our schools. Many if not most have good intentions. But good intentions or not, it is not appropriate for the U.S. government which has a monopoly on force to be using its powers to affect the thoughts, feelings or peaceful behaviors of individual citizens.
The third question I have to ask is about consent. Our government should never be in the position of imposing health services on people, and particularly their children, without their permission and against their will. Consent for treatment is one of the most basic tenets of the ethical practice of medicine. It is also foundational for our country. The idea of consent as a basis of the relationship the government should have to the citizens can be found in the Declaration of Independence.
It is good to remember that simply because one believes that a service he or she offers will be beneficial gives you no right to impose it on someone who does not want it. If we involuntarily screen school children for mental health disorders, why not screen members of Congress or the Administration. They are a much greater threat to our lives and liberty than children.
Thank you!
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Special Report
Drug Lobby Second to None
How the pharmaceutical industry gets its way in Washington
By M. Asif Ismail
WASHINGTON, July 7, 2005 — The pharmaceutical and health products industry has spent more than $800 million in federal lobbying and campaign donations at the federal and state levels in the past seven years, a Center for Public Integrity investigation has found. Its lobbying operation, on which it reports spending more than $675 million, is the biggest in the nation. No other industry has spent more money to sway public policy in that period. Its combined political outlays on lobbying and campaign contributions is topped only by the insurance industry.
The drug industry's huge investments in Washington—though meager compared to the profits they make—have paid off handsomely, resulting in a series of favorable laws on Capitol Hill and tens of billions of dollars in additional profits. [See What the Industry Got.] They have also fended off measures aimed at containing prices, like allowing importation of medicines from countries that cap prescription drug prices, which would have dented their profit margins. Pfizer, the world's largest drug company, made a profit of $11.3 billion last year, out of sales of $51 billion.
The industry's multi-faceted influence campaign has also led to a more industry-friendly regulatory policy at the Food and Drug Administration, the agency that approves its products for sale and most directly oversees drug makers. [See FDA: A Shell of its Former Self]
Most of the industry's political spending paid for federal lobbying. Medicine makers hired about 3,000 lobbyists, more than a third of them former federal officials, to advance their interests before the House, the Senate, the FDA, the Department of Health and Human Services, and other executive branch offices.
In 2003 alone, the industry spent nearly $116 million lobbying the government. That was the year that Congress passed, and President George W. Bush signed, the Medicare Modernization Act of 2003, which created a taxpayer-funded prescription drug benefit for senior citizens.
That figure was not anomalous. In 2004, drug makers upped their reported expenditures on lobbyists to $123 million, a record amount for the industry. Of the 1,291 lobbyists who were listed that year as prepresenting pharmaceutical corporations and their trade groups, some 52 percent were former federal officials.
By adding the benefit to Medicare, the government program that provides health insurance to some 41 million people, the industry found a reliable purchaser for its products. Thanks to a provision in the law for which the industry lobbied, government programs like Medicare are barred from negotiating with companies for lower prices.
Critics charge that the prescription drug benefit will transfer wealth from taxpayers, who provide the funding for Medicare, to pharmaceutical firms. According to a study done in October 2003 by Boston University professors Alan Sager and Deborah Socolar, 61 percent of Medicare money spent on prescription drugs will become profit for drug companies. Drug-makers will receive $139 billion in increased profits over eight years, the study predicts. The Medicare prescription drug benefit starts in 2006.
America the lucrative
The U.S. government contributes more money to the development of new drugs—in the form of tax breaks and subsidies—than any other government. Of the 20 largest pharmaceutical corporations, nine are based in the United States. Yet drugs are more expensive in the United States than in any other part of the world, and global drug companies make the bulk of their profits in the United States.
Marketing Maladies
More than a third of pharmaceutical companies' resources go into promotion and marketing.
Company
Marketing costs
Research and Development
Pfizer
$16.90 billion
$7.68 billion
GlaxoSmithKline
$12.93 billion
$5.20 billion
Sanofi-Aventis
$5.59 billion
$9.26 billion
Johnson & Johnson
$15.86 billion
$5.20 billion
Merck
$7.35 billion
$4.01 billion
Novartis
$8.87 billion
$4.21 billion
AstraZeneca
$7.84 billion
$3.80 billion
Hoffman La Roche
$7.24 billion
$4.01 billion
Bristol-Myers Squibb
$6.43 billion
$2.50 billion
Wyeth
$5.80 billion
$2.46 billion
Abbott Labs
$4.92 billion
$1.70 billion
Annually, the industry spends up to $60 billion on drug marketing—nearly twice what it spends on research and development. In 2004, Pfizer spent almost $120 million for media ads for Lipitor, the world's number-one selling prescription drug, while companies promoting erectile dysfunction treatments Viagra, Levitra and Cialis spent $425 million. Direct to consumer advertisement has also grown significantly: from $791 million in 1996 to $3.8 billion in 2004.
Many blame the industry's clout in Congress and with the executive branch for the high price of drugs. While many governments worldwide have regulated drug prices, the industry has been able to block a host of measures aimed at controlling prices in the United States. In the past few years, the industry has mounted an effective, organized campaign against legalizing importation of drugs from Canada.
As the Center reported in January, the industry trade group, Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, hired a former U.S. ambassador to Canada, Gordon Giffin, and his top aide to lobby the Canadian government on the issue. The industry's pressure may be paying off. Last week, Canadian Health Minister Ujjal Dosanjh announced that his government would ban the bulk export of prescription drugs and crack down on Internet pharmacies that sell drugs to Americans.
A spokesman for PhRMA, Jeff Trewitt, told the Center in January that price controls thwart innovation and importation of drugs pose serious health risks.
The top 20 drug corporations and the industry's two trade groups, PhRMA and the Biotechnology Industry Organization, which represents biomedicine companies, disclosed lobbying on more than 1,600 bills between 1998 and 2004. They may have lobbied on far more bills; the Center could only count bills specifically mentioned by the companies and trade groups in their filings. In many cases, lobbyists list issues, like "animal health issues," rather than specific bills. In counting the number of bills, the Center excluded those lobbied on by BIO that relate solely to biotechnology issues, such as genetically engineered foods.
Apart from Congress, the industry lobbied an array of agencies including the Department of Health and Human Services, the Food and Drug Administration and the State Department on dozens of issues. For instance, PhRMA lobbied 33 federal agencies on 39 issues separately identified under the Lobbying Disclosure Act of 1995.
As the Center reported last week, the agencies include the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, which shapes the country's trade agreements with other nations. Since 1998, it has filed 59 lobbying reports concerning the USTR, more than any other lobby or interest.
In recent years, the industry has shown significant power in influencing U.S. trade policy. For example, current drafts of the Dominican Republic-Central American Free Trade Agreement reflect PhRMA's desire to remove price controls on drugs and provide intellectual property protection in proposed member countries. Recently, the USTR, at the behest of the pharmaceutical industry, pressured Guatemala into repealing a recently passed law permitting wider marketing of generic drugs.
Lobbying numbers since 1998
Amount spent on lobbying
$675 million
Lobbyists
3,009
Former officials who registered to lobby
1,014
Former members of Congress who lobbied
75
Bills lobbied
More than 1,600
The top 20 corporations and the trade groups reported spending nearly $478 million on lobbying, or nearly 70 percent of all the money the industry reported. These corporations had roughly 64 percent of the global market share, according to IMS Health, a private consulting company that studies the industry.
Congress is most frequently listed as a target of the industry's lobbying attentions; contacts with the House or Senate are listed on about 5,500 lobby disclosure reports. The Department of Health and Human Services, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the Food and Drug Administration and the Executive Office of the President are other agencies heavily lobbied by the industry.
Like other well connected interests in Washington, pharmaceutical firms look to former insiders to carry their message to Congress and executive branch officials. In May 2003, as the battle over the Medicare legislation was climaxing, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufactures of America, the industry trade group, hired the newly formed lobby shop of Larson Dodd, LLC to join its already formidable army of representatives swarming the hallways of Congress. The hiring of Dave Larson and Quin Dodd by PhRMA—and later by Wyeth and other drug manufactures—was in keeping with the industry's standard operating procedure: employing former officials to lobby on bills sponsored by their ex-bosses.
Larson was a health policy advisor to Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, the chief sponsor of a Medicare bill that, six months later, would become law, with potentially tens of billions of dollars of windfall for the drug companies. Dodd is a former legislative director to Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, the fourth ranking Republican in the upper chamber.
A third of all lobbyists employed by the industry are former federal government employees, including more than 15 former Senators and more than 60 former members of the U.S. House of Representatives. The two trade groups, PhRMA and BIO, are headed by two influential former members of Congress. PhRMA chief Billy Tauzin and BIO president Jim Greenwood were on committees that regulated drug companies and they each sponsored several bills related to the industry.
The Center reviewed the 1,600 plus bills the top 20 drug corporations and PhRMA and BIO lobbied. Sponsors of more than 50 percent of those bills had one or more former staff members representing the industry. A few of the sponsors have gone on to become lobbyists themselves.
Political giving
In addition to hiring former members and their staffs, the industry has also helped keep lawmakers in office by making political contributions. Since the 1998 election cycle, employees of the pharmaceutical and health product industry, their family members and industry political action committees have given $133 million in campaign contributions to candidates running for federal and state offices, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Since 2000, the top drug corporations and their employees and PhRMA gave more than $10 million to 527 organizations, tax-exempt political committees which operate in the grey area between federal and state campaign finance laws.
Nearly $87 million of the contributions went to federal politicians in campaign donations, with almost 69 percent going to Republican candidates. Top recipients of the industry's campaign money include President George W. Bush (upwards of $1.5 million) and members who sit on committees that have jurisdiction over pharmaceutical issues.
In the states, the industry gave more than $46 million to candidates since '98, according to the Institute on Money in State Politics, which tracks campaign finance at the state level.
The Center could not determine the amount drug interests spent on lobbying in states because of the lack of comparable state disclosure requirements for expenditures. But their lobbying, campaign donations and grassroots efforts have taken on an added dimension because many states are threatening the industry's high profit margins in a way the federal government and Congress have been unwilling to do.
With states running into fiscal crises, several governors and legislatures have been exploring ways to contain drug prices. Among the several options that have been considered around the country include allowing seniors and others to legally buy drugs from Canada and other countries.
Though some states have been less amenable to drug industry pressure, the drug industry hasn't given up the fight. For Washington's biggest spending lobby, it's a small investment to make for its continuing prosperity.
Victoria Kreha, Alexander Cohen, Kevin Boettcher and Emily McNeill contributed to this report.
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