I've been med-free for almost a year and a half now. At age 36, this feels like a big deal in many ways since during the last twenty or so years I've been on every Eli Lilly concoction, twice. Let me be clear---I am no Tom Cruise crusader. I think meds have their place. Right now---for me---their place is not in my bathroom cabinet or in my bloodstream. However---I have in the past been helped over the hump by mood stabilizers and antidepressants. I am of the firm opinion that either vilifying or deifying meds is a huge mistake. They are one tool in the kit, one piece of the puzzle.

I think we can and sometimes should wave all the flags we want and beat all the drums we need to in order to get heard. Advocacy and education are crucial. But I personally have found that putting the flag down and surrendering to my own drumbeat are far more effective routes to mental wellness for me. Everybody has a different soup of DNA. Some have the chemical and nutritional path down pat...most of us still struggle with these issues in regards to how our moods swing and fling us between the enlightened heights of either creative genius or darkest depths of black despair. Language and perspective are often limiting with this gift or affliction. Some days it is more the former---other days, the latter. Most of the time for most of us, it resembles something in the middle.

We need to continue to rewrite our own mind stories...are we the identified patient in our tribe, village or family? Or are we the sensitive souls who know that the emperor is not wearing intricately embroidered finery...but is buck nekkid for all the world to see? Are we the grain of sand in the oyster? Or are we just people who've left the so-called main-stream to enter the ocean beyond---with all of its terrifying and wondrous possibilities? When we truly ask these questions excavating our own spirits and hearts for the answers--the mind will follow. Meds are not the problem or the solution. Big pharma is not the saviour or the enemy. The answers lie in that deeper place---at the bottom of the ocean floor and we have to be willing to take deep breaths and dive down to meet them.

From the author of "Lipstick and Thongs in  the Loony Bin" www.lipstickandthongbook.com