Today I begin the return to med free living!!!!

I've become embroiled in a discussion about how psychiatry is being utilized within the prison system as an additional means of punishment under the guise of 'penal reform'. No doubt psychiatry is inherently punitive when it functions in this capacity as partner to the judicial apparatus. But this is to say nothing of those innocents who find themselves incarcerated and punished in psychiatric prisons (euphemistically referred to as 'hospitals') without even having broken any laws. (This actually means the vast majority of psychiatric 'patients'.)

Several years back, the City of Toronto initiated a 'pilot project' where a male psychiatric nurse would be teamed up with a plainclothes cop on patrol in the city's east downtown.

To be honest, the concept of 'recovery' is being turned into just another buzzword from the 'mental health' industry. In reality, the only 'recovery' the system appears to promote or perceive as possible is within the context of the existing medical model, through aggressive lifelong tinkering with peoples' brain chemistry or genetic makeup, and with diagnosed people still expected to occupy the same narrow, oppressive social niche as has been the case all along.

it's more obvious every day that this society is not working.

It angers me beyond all imagination that psychiatric incarceration, police brutality, forced drugging and complete negation of our humanity or worth is the best our supposedly 'enlightened' society can offer to distressed people.

i wanted me first blog entry to be more philosophical...but...right now i'm just fucking pissed off