Recipes for Disaster: an anarchist cookbook

Try to see your experience as something necessary and natural, as a kind of wake-up call, an opportunity to make positive, fundamental changes in the way you live your life. After all, it takes a total annihilation to find out what is truly indestructible. Ask for what you need. Be honest- Let yourself feel it. You will make it through this.

As a supporter, the most vital tool available to you is empathy. Try to bring yourself back to a time when you were struggling like your friend is struggling now. Remember how it feels to need support. You will need patience, and a clear idea of what you can and cannot do, which you must communicate to your friend.

It can get really hard and really scary; there will be times when you don't know what to do, or if there is anything you can do to help this person you care about so much. Do your support work in a team?this is the best way to preserve your own mental health, and it relieves a lot of pressure. You'll need breaks from the whirlwind, and time for caring for yourself. Meet with the other supporters and check in with each other: update one another on developments, discuss things that need to change. It can really help to be organized about this.

As a supporter, some of your responsibilities might include getting your friend to eat, go outside, get enough sleep, and take care of himself in other simple ways. A person who is living through a breakdown can't be expected to have healthy habits; as healthy habits wiU help him get through this, you might have to be the one to initiate and insist on them, at least in the beginning. If your friend has made cards with advice on how to pull him out of despair, use them. You may need to take the initiative in getting your friend to see his counselor or go to yoga class. If he is on medication, make sure he takes his drugs at regular times each day; if he runs out, you may have to make an appointment with a psychiatrist for him. Approach his family or a friend who's known him for years and ask how they've dealt vvdth situations like this in the past.

if You Are Supporting a Friend

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It is not appropriate for you to try to fix your friend?don't take away his agency like that. He has to fix himself, that's why he's falling apart in the first place. As a supporter, it is your job to create a safe environment for your friend to experience what he needs to, not to make his problems go away.

Try to restrain yourself from judgment. Focus on your empathy, no matter how hard it gets. When things are difficult, remind yourself of your love for this person, of every-thhig he gives you when he is well enough to give. At the same time, be carefiil not to overextend yourself You will do yourself, the person you're supporting, and everyone else in your life a disservice if you take on more than you can handle. The part you play in his well-being should be a gift you give, not a burden you shoulder. Stay open and be honest, with yourself and everyone else, about your needs and limits. Keep the lines of communication open, especially if you're nearing the end of your rope.

Medication This is a very sensitive subject among people deaHng with these problems, particularly those of us who have been through the psychiatric system. Some feel that psychoactive drugs are purely an oppressive tool of the State, others have no doubt they would have killed themselves had they not gone on medication, and are grateful for it; still others reject the idea that they need drugs to maintain mental clarity and emotional stability, while acknowledging the ways drugs have helped them reclaim their lives. It's a complex issue, one best not portrayed in black and white terms.

It's true that psychoactive drugs are the first card drawn by the mental health industry, and often are seen as a suitable replacement for therapy lifestyle changes, and other forms of healing. This is typical of the tendency in Western medicine to treat only symptoms, not addressing the root causes of problems. Many drugs can cause side effects:

Mental Health emotional numbness, liver problems, nausea, insomnia, fatigue. Every individual's re-576 sponse to a given drug is unique.