Folks this is what I call a heart to heart or a little chat. I came home last night with two psychiatric medications that they added to the three I am already taking and started reading those papers that come with them. I should never have learned to read. My new psychiatric medications are not suppose to be taken with some of the medications I am now taking both for my psychiatric and my physical problems. It says so right on those papers. Now the little trust I had is even more eroded.

We need to go back a few years. The first psych med I was ever given was Thorazine. I was given it while in the Army and after our morning medications they would take us outside for morning exercise. The hot Georgia sun and the Thorazine would make me break out in nice red spots. It had other unwanted effects also. During those months on that Army psych unit I certainly did not build any trust in psychiatric medications or psychiatry for that matter. The year was 1968.

A few years ago a person working with my son said that he was the only person he had ever known that could make the words “mental health professional” sound like a cuss word. How did my son get to that point? Why has my trust eroded?

I live in a beautiful old home on 15 acres in Glen Alpine, NC. I have a wonderful wife who loves me. I have a great family and my wife’s family has made me most welcome. I go to the Glen Alpine United Methodist Church where the folks have bent over backwards to make me feel at home. Why then do I still feel like I do not belong anywhere? Why do I not trust anyone?

When you struggle daily with a serious mental illness it erodes your confidence in yourself and it cuts into your trust of others. As you age and you face the normal physical problems of that along with those caused by the drugs you have taken over the years for your psychiatric illness your confidence slips some more. Add childhood sexual abuse and trust becomes almost impossible.

A few years ago they started asking about sexual abuse, but the funny thing is they did not fund any programs if you answered yes. I guess they just wanted to ask the question. Voyeurism is a disease and as far as I am concerned if you only ask the question without any help to offer you are simply a voyeur. It takes more than a pill to help folks who have been abused and we seem to have trouble even funding the pill part much less the long term therapy that it takes to truly be helpful to those of us who were sexually abused as kids. There are other kinds of abuse and I am not ignoring them. I simply am using childhood sexual abuse because I know about it firsthand .

The point of this heart to heart is simple. I have soul work to do. No pill will give me back what was taken away in the barn by my abuser. No pill will restore what the years of the stigma of mental illness has done to my soul. I have soul work to do that no pill can do.

You can reach me directly at [email protected]

HOMEPAGE: http:// www.geocities.com/eecoop_2000/ed.html