A stamp of inhumanity

Are there any alternatives? That was my first question as a 15 year old being labeled with Schizophrenia. I know I had issues, some of them were made worse through the treatment I received.

I was dehumanized. I was patronized by the label itself. It is human language that defines us, that gives meaning to our thought patterns. The only support the system itself seems to offer is medication. People listen, but with plastic smiles and false sympathy. They do not understand. They write diagnoses and define us based on our human flaws. Whether it's hearing things, thinking inappropriately, or believing you saw the face of God and being told it wasn't real.

We define our experiences as a collective. We are making ourselves sicker through this labeling and defining ourselves based on these expectations. People are pattern makers, but there is something intrinsically woven through out our existence. It is the way we think. I can't talk about psychotic symptoms because I do not have them, whether or not the medication actually has made them go away is questionable. And the question needs to be asked, not told.

I am just a normal human being, and I define my experiences based on what I feel, see, think, and hear. But being fifteen and isolated for refusing medications is similar to brainwashing. Imagine long-term confinement, being locked up in a scary place with mean people who see you as an animal needing to be tamed. Imagine trying to explain yourself to a doctor who only thinks in black and white. It is wrong. Not only the labels are wrong, but the way society views the misfit with a voice. I didn't start hearing voices until I was put on Geodon, the doctors misinterpreted and sometimes exaggerated my conversations just to seem to say, this label makes sense. But these were not the people who I should have been talking to. They know less about the human experience because they are driven by a false world drained of color. Plastic and obscure definitions that have nothing to say about my experience.

Schizophrenia is a stamp of inhumanity, and a sad story to tell about the desperate ones who want out. The ones who are forced to endure the cruelty of being conformed, stripped of their rights, hospitalized and given long term "treatment" when all they need is compassion and a chance to succeed. We're not schizophrenics. And we're not soldiers. And we're not tools. And we're not going to bow down to this hypocrisy that is destroying our world. Have we gone too far? Has the world gone cold and cruel? We wonder why the world is such a dangerous and scary place, well people made it that way. The only way we can change the world, is to start feeling what we truly feel. I may be medicated, but I don't feel much anymore. I may be normal, but I have experienced so much crazyness at the hand of others that I have carved my rational depth through sources way beyond that of "mental health" systems. I have integrity and I am not afraid of that. Being congratulated on my success in college is dehumanizing when it's because I am "schizo"... and not expected to succeed.

If you or friends have been diagnosed with schizophrenia, the best thing you can do is never give up on yourself.