What Else Can Go Wrong?

It seems like every year, I have a new problem to add to my list. Seems like bulimia is next.

I was doing good for a while. Then, for the past couple weeks, I have resorted to once or twice a week. I came home Friday night and did it. I just did it an hour ago. And I am furious and disgusted at myself. I wish I could bitch slap myself across the face.

What am I gaining out of it? Destroying my teeth? Worsening my self-esteem issues, which before even starting this crap, I didn't think could get any worse than they already are? Fucking up everything in my body? No wonder I can't go to the bathroom and my period isn't coming regularly. I have always believed I will die of cancer from somewhere in the digestive system one day. If I keep this up, I will for sure.

The worst part of all this? Destroying my teeth bothers me more than any of the above mentioned. Sure, cancer of the digestive organs is scary, but considering death has priority over many things in life, I can't even say this upsets me too much.

I was listening to Soul Asylum's "Runaway Train" earlier and listening to this line earlier felt like a punch to the gut:

can you help me remember how to smile?
make it somehow all seem worthwhile
how on earth did i get so jaded?

If serotonin and other neurotransmitters are truly the whole reason behind mental illness....how can such a small thing create such a nightmare? It cannot be treated on my own. "Normal" people's solutions make everything worse (e.g. medication). Look at Wellbutrin. It was supposed to be making me better. Instead, it made me violentally suicidal. And who realized that it was what was behind my breakdown? Not the doctors! Me! I had to take myself off the drug! Psychosurgery might help, but god forbid should a psychiatrist allow a patient to actually have something other than medication. Why should they? Come on- someone has to pay for their Lexuses and Jaguars!

The world of psychiatry can pat themselves on the back and talk of how far the field of mental health care has come since the barbaric days of locking people up for stupid reasons like being gay or whatever and the days of insulin shock therapy and lobotomies with ice picks, but I don't think it has come far at all. It may have changed, but that does not mean it is any better! Change is not always a good thing, for cripes sake. Look at Band-Aids. Everyone had to go and change them to make them less "ouchie" when being ripped off because God forbid should the almighty child feel some frigging pain. Children cannot get hurt or feel pain nowadays, mind you. They are absolutely not allowed to trip and fall and scrape their knees or bang a shin or elbow or anything.

Nowadays, all the field of psychiatry is about making money. Psychiatrists make more money the less they keep you in the office. How is the med doing, alrighty then, come back in next week provided your annual limit of 20 visits isn't up and here is a prescription for this med and this med and this med, now go about your merry way and make sure you pay the receptionist your co-pay, which will generally run about five times your normal specialist co-pay rate.

I have been through this topic so many frigging times and the amount of anger I feel towards the field of psychiatry every time I discuss it intensifies.

I read an article last year about one of our local state hospitals and it was just awful what goes on in there. Just knowing what STILL continues to go on in state hospitals in this day and age ALONE is enough proof that mental ill care is still just as bad as it was in the early to mid 20th century. It's barbaric. Nasty staff, sexual assault on patients, violence. The place I was in was an oh-la-la private hospital and the staff was nasty enough. I can only imagine what the staff in a state run facility is like. Probably the 3-11 shift at the place I was in amplified. Oh man, that was a nasty bunch of nurses and psych techs. Funny thing is, the entire adult ward had trouble with that shift, so a few days before I was released, we all filed grievences against the entire 3-11 shift. A few weeks later, I was looking in one of my sister's nursing magazines and there was an ad for that hellhole, hiring for- surprise- the 3 to 11 shift. Our complaints must have been successful.

I was watching a show one night on the treatment of the mentally ill and was informed that the largest psychiatric hospital is a fucking prison. Not figuratively. Literally.

Why can I not find even one thing to give me a reason to want to stay on this earth?