Recipes for Disaster: an anarchist cookbook

I believe medication is a potent tool to be used when appropriate and then discarded when no longer needed. The thing is, you have to work on healing if you ever want to get o£Fmedication. I've been told repeatedly by therapists and psychiatrists that I am like a diabetic in that my brain doesn't produce certain chemicals 1 need to survive, so if I stop taking my medication the result will be the same as for a diabetic who stops taking in-sului: I will die. Now that I have met people (including a diabetic, by the way!) who have used nutrition and a conscious lifestyle to regulate their various chemical imbalances, 1 know that it is possible to live without my drugs, and am developing a program to end my dependence upon them.

No one is entirely sure how most psychoactive drugs work. Psychiatrists will tell you, . for example, that some regulate the levels of serotonin in your brain; how, they don't know. One thing I can tell you from personal experience is that the drugs called SSRIs {Selective Serotonin Re-uptake Inhibitors) are bad news. Tliey have a way of deadening people, whitewashing their emotions, drastically altering their personalities. Their effects are very hard to predict. A few of the most common SSRIs are Prozac, Celexa, Zoloft, Effexor, Lexapro, and Paxil (which has a page-long hst of side effects and withdrawal symptoms, including "electric-feeling shocks throughout the body" and "scratching sounds within one's head"). Keep in mind that almost every name-brand drug also has at least one generic version, so if you're being prescribed medication be sure to ask your doctor if the drug is an SSRI. If it is, ask for something else.

Wellbutrin has worked really well for me when I've needed it. It's not an SSRI and it doesn't numb me or sap my energy the way Prozac did. I liken it to a pair of water wings: it keeps me afloat just enough to prevent me from drowning, and I have to do the rest of tiie work on my own. If I'm taking my medication, 1 don't have to worry that I'm going to collapse on the floor thinking the walls are closing in on me, or hear voices in my ^^^^^^ ^g^,^^ head telling me to kill my lover, or become consumed by a delusional panic, certain that 377

at any moment I'm going to die and anyone who touches me will die too. It took feeling things like that every day for a few weeks for me to agree to go back on my medication, just to stabilize. It was one of the best decisions I ever made. It came from a place of self-preservation, the closest I could get to self-esteem.

I've been on Wellbutrin for a little over a year now, and have experienced no side effects. I still get depressed, I still feel all ray emotions. The difference is that instead of focusing all my energy on desperately keeping myself alive, I can step back, just a litde bit, and allow myself to live.

So how do anarchists with no money get prescription drugs? I can think of a few ways. The first is to ask a trusted supporter who has a job that provides health insurance if she vrill help you hoodwink a psychiatrist. Get to know the details of her coverage and make sure the company will pay for psychoactive drugs before you do anything else. You'll need to know how much the deductible is (how much your agent will have to pay the doctor or pharmacist before the insurance company picks up the bill), and have this money available. Send your agent, insurance card in hand, to a psychiatrist or psychopharmacologist to report that she has been having problems. For all intents and purposes, she will be impersonating you. Coach your agent in advance about what kinds of problems you are having, including how much sleep you've been getting, how your moods have been fluctuating, what emotions you've been feeling, what you've been eating and how much, how you've been behaving socially, how well you've been able to concentrate, how you've been performing in a work environment, and how long this has been going on. You need a pretty specific set of circumstances to pull this off; it may sound far-fetched, but I know it can work because it's what I do to get my medicine.

Another idea is to get on Medicaid, or whatever pubUc health plan is available in your

Mental Health ^^^^^' assuming any are. You might be able to get help at a free clinic or community

378 mental health center. If none of these resources are available to you, public hospitals

have psychiatric walk-in clinics and emergency rooms (see Health Care, pg. 275), and some have crisis teams who will send a social worker or psychiatrist to your home.