I was born highly intelligent, idealistic, passionate, creative, gentle, sensitive, and steel-willed. These are the high risk, innate characteristics of the optimistic, ecstatic, perfectionist-pacifist child who, not knowing any better, aptly rejects a world of neglectful, hostile people as not good enough. These are the very superior characteristics that not only enabled me to shut out the world of people and create a fantasy world of loving, animated friends, but also, provided the strength to walk alone…and therefore survive. I was born on a farm, the third of seven children. Mama was always busy working. My older brother and sister hung on both sides of Mama and Mama held the new baby in her lap, so there was no place for me. The grief that Mama did not love me and animals were hurt and killed seeped into me. I vomited. I went to school. One recess the teacher told me I had to leave third base and go out in the field so her pet could be third baseman. I threw coal cinders in her face and she hit me many times. That evening I attempted to go live with God who loves everyone by eating roadside flowers that a neighbor child ate and got to go to live with God in heaven, but God didn’t want me.

As naturally as removing a hand from a burning stove, I withdrew from the world of people too hostile to survive and created my own perfect world of love and beauty that I could not live without. I buried deep within me the unspeakable, deadly secret that I was bad and not worth loving. Rabbits and chipmunks and squirrels played around me, listened to me, talked to me and told me I was a good little girl and God loved me. I quit vomiting.

When I had to go into the presence of people, doing my duty like I was supposed to, I stood inside myself, a protective numbness surrounding my stiff body. God who told me I was a good little girl and He loved me, progressively quit telling me I was a good little girl, increasingly parceled out minced praise when I did something right and progressively became THE WATCHER heaping condemnation and shame when I did something wrong.

I entered my teens. Flesh, bones, and blood called its instinctive union with flesh, bones and blood. I turned my eyes from my outgrown world of animated woods and looked toward the world of people the way it was supposed to be, shining with my overlay of love and beauty that I could not live without….I stood behind the see-through shield, shyly smiling with my bonds wrapped tightly around my stiff body. I waited for one of the perfect people to notice me, smile, take my hand, and take me out into the magic happiness of the world­­, like they were supposed to.

I pressed my face against the barrier that separated me from the outside world….Full of desire I was left alone in growing shame and grief….Stoically, I waited for the door of love to open and invite me out into the world.

I graduated high school valadictorian and was failing college. At 20 years of age, collapsing from the grief of not being loved, I was committed to a psychoprison. Psychiatry labeled me a non-person and inflicted ElectricConvulsiveTorture. Reeling from my head injury, I escaped after 4 inhumane assaults. Just as after any disaster too horrible to be real, I had hysterical amnesia from the horror of getting my brains knocked out with electricity. In deep psychological shock, terror undulated underneath my hysterical laughter. One morning, 13 years later, engulfed in flashbacks of the smell of camphor, the oil they had smeared on my temples so the burn would not show on the outside, I exploded into suicidal and homicidal terror and despair.

I was committed to another psychoprison. Brain disabling drugs were injected until I swallowed the pills. They told me the drugs were only good for me, could not hurt me in any way, all physical effects were only temporary and necessary to make me well, and I had to keep taking them until I was. After 7 months, I was discharged, my brain functioning in vegetable apathy, my body sickened and difficult to move. Controlled by terrorists, whenever anyone asked, I said, “Oh, yes, psychiatry treats me so nice; the drugs are so good.”

Psychiatry’s drugs, like illegal drugs, stoned my emotions, stupefied my thoughts, and usurped my psyche. The chemical lid, plugging off any release to the outside and locking in the heating-up terror of loosing myself, set me sizzling in the violence and despair building, drug pressure cooker. I was no longer collapsing from the grief of being neglected and not being loved; I was one of psychiatry’s non-person, pill taking, worthless things. About a year later the drug cycles began, the ambiguous apathy exploding into hopeless, helpless, suicidal and homicidal terror and despair, sometimes blackout, sometimes not, drug rages. I have scars on my body and no idea how acquired. Persecuted by psychiatry, my “schizophrenic” label changed to “paranoid schizophrenic.”

Some people being tortured and killed by psychiatry do kill others; more kill themselves to escape the hopeless agony; most are killed by the drugs. Born a very gentle person, I managed to not injure anyone else, although, four times that I remember, I was a potential life threat to others, one a child. Over and over, screaming ambulances, some that I never heard, real doctors in emergency rooms, some that I never saw, in real hospitals, intensive care units, and operating rooms saved my life from both my suicide attempts and the drug damage.

One morning, 12 drug years later, engulfed in sickness, I called the current psychiatrist and yelled, “What do psychiatrists think in their head? My mind is cured when my body is dead!” I slammed the phone down and never swallowed their pills again; I had taken the first step toward wellness. Luckily, I was taken to a real hospital with the cold-turkey psychiatric drug withdrawal of grand-mal seizures and delirium jerkings, my condition listed as grave.

After 31 psychiatric holocaust years, some 50 commitments, over 7 years locked up, and around one million dollars of taxpayer’s money wasted, I was mentally, physically, and emotionally devastated, incredibly still alive. A male nurse in an emergency room said, “Go to Alcoholics Anonymous; they teach people how to get well there.” I went. “You can get well; we will help you,” are the most beautiful words a dying person can ever hear. I was no longer suicidal and homicidal after my first meeting for they gave me hope and would help me. They treated me with love, truth, and unity; they provided the involvement and empowerment needed to help myself. They taught me self-examination, self-knowledge, self-healing, and self-discipline. They gave me the priceless gift of a loving relationship with myself, people, and God. In 6 months I had grown from a senses-driven, automatic-reaction, terror-controlled, psychological child into a spirit-enriching, choosing actions, love/truth/unity-willed, psychological adult. From the physical oriented child of man, I was reborn into the spiritual oriented child of God choosing to love and serve God by loving and serving others as myself. Fulfilling the human potential.

I wrote my autobiography, ESCAPE FROM PSYCHIATRY. I founded and am director of Welcome World, a Self-Help, Drop-In/Residential, Cognitive Healing, Learning/Service,for the Psychologically Wounded; One of the Replacement Programs for Self-Hurt, Dehumanizing Psychiatry.