"Hey kids, want some drugs? They will make you feel good."

You probably get a mental image of a thugged-out guy standing outside of an elementary school trying to sell his crack to children. It's sad, this does happen.

What is even sadder, is a trusted member of the medical community pushing drugs on children who really only need counseling.

I have written a couple of times about this adolescent psychiatrist I was referred to after my mom died. She is absolutely 100% guilty of this behaviour.

I was curious to see if she was still in practice or if any lawsuits had come up concerning her so I googled her name.

I found a few listings so it appears that yes, she is still in practice. I have no idea how for I can't imagine that she only treated me with no regard to my mental health, but she is there.

I almost spit out my drink when I read her new title:

Lena, Dr. S. M.
Pediatrician and Adolescent Medicine Specialist, Clinic For Adolescents

Oh NO SHIT. I suppose she's finally caved and made it clear that she makes a LOT of money off the pharmaceutical companies to push her hardcore mind-altering drugs on children. At least, that is what I am reading from that description.

Really I think she should call herself DR. S&M "I'llfuckyourbraingood" Lena.

I saw a listing for her on a site called weblocal. It's a site for listing local businesses, stores and services. I noticed that someone had taken the time to write a review of their experience with Dr. S M Lena.

Here is the link:

CLICK HERE

The review is at the bottom...sounds eerily familiar does it not?

Sometimes the people you should be able to trust, those who have taken the Hippocratic Oath for fucks sake, who have sworn to practice ethical medicine are not to be trusted at all. Please research drugs and their side effects before blindly taking them and hoping they will cure everything. For that is what this doctor promotes and I think it's sick and unforgivable.

You might as well send your child to the local crack dealer because that is about as much help as you will get from this bitch.

Stop..the tingling already!!

Sometimes I feel like this.

Click on link above but you may not want the sound too loud..? heh.

I blame that on antidepressants. More specifically the SSRI variety.
After my mom died I was pretty fucked up. I'm sure anyone would be, having discovered their only parent dead from suicide. DUH. I was put on SSRIs at the age of 14, one year after my mother's death.

I was angry, upset, confused. I felt guilty about the whole situation. The night she died, I was downstairs in the basement after having snuck in a boy *gasp* who lived too far away to walk at the time, so I offered for him to come and sneak into my place and have the basement bed. I got home after the party, went upstairs to where the bedrooms were and knocked on mom's door and said "Hey, I am home." It was around midnight and I was 13..Not cool but whatever. Teens do stupid things all of the time. Her words were "Ok."

Those were the last words we spoke to each other.

I went back downstairs to the basement where the boy was and he asked if I would stay down there with him. I was feeling rather rebellious and I said yes. I was still a virgin and remained one after that night.

Somewhere around 2am (according to the coroner's report) my mother fell out of her computer chair and onto the floor, she then proceeded to choke on her own vomit. Sleeping pills, booze and depression don't mix apparently. Who knew? If only I had slept upstairs in my room, maybe I could have saved her.

The next morning I woke up, walked the boy to the store and then walked home. It was getting late and there was no sound from my mother's room, her door was still locked and I figured she was passed out cold from a hangover. It would not have been the first time. I took a hanger and poked it into her door-handle lock around noon. I figured I had had enough of her boozy behaviour and it was time to get up and be a mother. I was instantly changed forever when I opened the door and found her lying on the floor as I described above.

At first it was disbelief but I knew in the back of my mind that things were not right. She was blue and stiff. I tried to wake her up but I knew that was not going to happen. I went downstairs to grab the phone and called my Nanna. I told her that mom was dead, she didn't really understand me because I was in hysterics and so she called 911 for me. I didn't bother because I knew they couldn't do anything.

I was in my house alone with my dead mom and finally the police arrived. I answered the door and let them in. They went upstairs to check out the situation. It was pretty grim I suppose, because as I was standing at the bottom of the stairs I could hear one of them say that "She is a goner." One cop noticed this as proceeded to lead me outside of my place. "Where's your father?" "I don't know, I am not allowed to see him." "Oh, well, hopefully your family will show up soon." Yeah, hopefully.

Until then I stood on my front doorstep, surrounded by ambulance, police and fire workers and of course, the whole neighbourhood. What a spectacle I must have been! I was living in a suburb full of packed together prefab houses so there was quite the crowd. Thankfully, one of the neighbours just picked me up and carried me to her house and put me in bed. I was a bawling mess and in shock.

So, funtimes.

After what happened I was sent to a psychiatrist at the hospital in order to make some sense out of what I was feeling and what happened. I didn't really feel like being open, nor did I know how to because I learned from the best, my mother, how to bottle things up and not share feelings. That doctor didn't last.

I ended up living with my father for the first time in my life who was living in Alberta at the time. The CAS flew me out there and I stayed because I thought anything must be better than living in a group home full of fuck-ups.
I only lasted six months with him as we didn't know each other, I was a wreck and we both had the same temper. I ended up moving back out here to Ontario and in with my grandparents again.

This time I was sent to "The Best Child and Adolescent Psychologist in the City!!" and I thought maybe I could learn to be open with her. She immediately diagnosed me with depression (no shit), and ADD! Well, this I did not know I had but ok, she must know best, right? I was put on Prozac and Ritalin. We never did do much talking about the real issue and that is what I needed most. I have heard countless people who had dealings with her in the past tell me now that she pushed pills on all the kids. Got an eating disorder? SSRI!! Having trouble concentrating because all you can think about and picture is your dead mother? Ritalin for all!! Later I would find out that it's not recommended to put anyone under the age of 18 on these meds.

Anyway, that's the back story. I kept seeing her until I was 18 when she could no longer see me because I wasn't an adolescent any longer and sent me out into the world to find my own adult psychiatrist. That was a giant FAIL. All the time I was on the drugs, anger and resentment, confusion and guilt, shame and self-hatred was growing and seething within me. I felt everyone else had given up on me, so why should I give a flying fuck, right?

I had family that could have intervened at any point during my teens for it was painfully obvious that shit was fucked up. No one did. That's fine. My grandparents were trying their best to look after the headcase I had become but unfortunately, they liked to get drunk a lot too. Bad scene. I hated booze at this point in time because of what it turned my mother into and I couldn't understand why in the FUCK they would want to drink the same shit that contributed to their daughter's death. I didn't understand addiction at this point in time.

I have been on countless SSRIs for over 16 years. Prozac, Zoloft, Effexor, Celexa, Paxil..to name a few. All of these had the same result. I would get a tolerance and they would have to be upped. I felt like a freakin zombie most of the time and I was doing drugs and at 18 I started drinking that very same booze I hated.
I would go on and off the SSRIs because it was not helping. I was getting the prescriptions from my GP who had no psychiatric training.


I just wanted the pain to go away. Cutting was helping a bit but nothing could take away that all-encompassing darkness that grew inside me and festered there until I was a walking dead person. No emotions other than hatred and anger, but even those were slightly subdued by the SSRIs I was on.

Withdrawal symptoms are the worst. I have been trying to come off my latest drug, Celexa and it's freakin hard. Not as hard as Paxil was because that shit is pure evil. I do feel similar symptoms coming off the Celexa though, they just are not as intense. I have chills, buzzing or electric shock type feelings, my brain doesn't know what to do with these emotions that were being suppressed and so for now, I am just taking my Clonazepam. Ok, that is not entirely true. I have been cutting my dose down for months now and I was on 10mg every other day for a couple of weeks. Now it seems like I get to the third day without the stupid drug and I get crazy feelings like I described above. It's like coming down off of really bad E. I get to a point where I can't stand it anymore and I resort to taking that 10mg again and it starts all over again.

This is frustrating. I want to see what I am like without the drugs as I have a sneaking suspicion that most of the actual depression came as a result of what happened with my mom. I probably do suffer from it to a certain degree but so does everyone from time to time.

Anyway, I am having feelings that I haven't felt in a really long time. I am starting to remember a small bit of my childhood which I so cleverly managed to block out as a defense mechanism against the pain of remembering having a mother.
It's sad, I really don't remember ever having a mom. I know I did, but I can't retrieve many of my early childhood memories of her. I really wish I could.

I have learned to forgive her and find compassion for her instead of resentment and anger. How can I resent someone who did what I have thought about doing a million times since but never could? She was mentally ill. Plain and simple.

Now please, PLEASE go the eff away you stupid withdrawal bullshit. GAH!

On Nights Like Tonight

On nights like tonight when no one's around
I put on the record, the record I found
When I was a kid and the world was a town
And Heartbreaker weren't nothing painful

Carry me, Mother Mary, I'm faithless
Like Sister Theresa, canonized, faceless
The press release leaves the plagiarist nameless
And all is forgiven

On nights like tonight when no one's around
I sit in the dark on my hands on the ground
And I smile like the devil smiles, unseen but proud
Truth be told, I don't know who's at the helm
Just sit tight and I'll make my way to you
And I'll make my way to you

If I'm not on time
Remember that I tried

Carry me, Mother Mary, I'm faithless
Like needles in haystacks that we just replace
It's all the same monster that nobody faces
Where all is forgiven

On nights like tonight when no one's around
I turn off the lights and I float off the ground
And I smile like I used to when you were around
But truth be told, I don't know who's at the helm
Just sit tight, I'll make my way to you
I'll find a way to get to you

I don't know who's at the helm
Just sit tight and I'll find a way to get to you



Matthew Good off of his latest album "Vancouver"


Now here is a guy who thinks very similarly to myself. If you have not yet read his blog/website you should check it out. He says a lot of things I think and he's open about his mental illness. Far too little celebrities are open about mental illness and there is no doubt, what with the way we have insights into their lives now (internet, paparazzi, celebrity obsession) that many of them suffer from it. Amy Winehouse, Brit Spears, Mel Gibson ect. easily all have some sort of brain malfunction as it's painfully obvious but they try and chalk it up to "stress" ..yeah I sure wish I could blame all of my erratic behaviour on stress! That would mean I am normal, right?

This is his website, enjoy.

The Church Experiment

For a long time, I have tried to understand religion. I have studied different ones from around the world. I was doing so in hopes to find somewhere to fit in. I always feel like I am just on the surface of fitting in with the "normies" out there but never completely. The closest religion I have found that I can actually wrap my head around, is paganism.

I have this tendency to be very analytical and scientific in my thinking and that had lead me to where I stand today.

With paganism, I can "worship" the earth in all it's glory. I can see nature working every day, right under my nose. This I can grasp.

What I cannot grasp is this notion that god is one gender and that gender is male. We see it in nature over and over again, to sustain and create life, we need both female and male DNA. I wonder then, how it is that one would come to the conclusion that god is a man and only a man.

I have seen forces at work which I cannot explain. I know there is a higher being (for lack of a better term) out there, something with more power and capabilities than a meager human can possess. I am certain however, that this life force must be a duality. In order to create, it would need to be.

There is the pagan way of thinking that there are Gods and Goddesses but I know deep down that back in early life for humankind, we created beings from our own image in order to make some sense out of the world. Humans need something to believe in for without it, a lot are lost souls and no one likes to be a lost soul. People like to fit in, to feel a sense of camaraderie with others. I don't blame us one bit, for being alone is not pleasant, especially if you think too much and over-analyze everything as I tend to do.

I cannot wrap my mind around these Gods and Goddesses either. What held power over us, we decided must have the same qualities as us in order for us to not fear it. I believe fear is the basis of most organised religions today. Fear and control. Humans have always had a need to control or feel as though they are making an effort to control and that is why we created these Gods and Goddesses. For if we could make sacrifices and pray to them, maybe their wrath would not be as catastrophic the next time.

You hear it time and again in the Christianity and Catholic religions. Fear of God. To put the fear of God in them. I believe this was done in order to control the general populace. Without governing forces and those to enforce them, there would be chaos and anarchy. That is simply the way we as human are, for we are but animals. Highly intelligent and highly arrogant by nature.

They say paganism is the oldest religion. I believe that to be true. It is very evident in my readings and studies of this that they were taken over by Catholics by force, for the whole island of Ireland was once pagan. When the "new religion" came it came with force and an ultimatum: "Join us in what we believe or die." When the person would not submit, they were marked for death. We can see evidence of this in the old churches which still stand in Ireland. When the stonemasons and carpenters were forced to covert to Catholicism and they were ordered to build churches, they secretly craved symbols know of paganism into the woodwork and stonework so as to not feel like they were betraying their Gods and Goddesses.

That is appalling in my opinion and no loving God would want that to ever happen. It was all about control and the fear that some (men) would lose it that drove them to promote an organised religion in order to scare the underlings into submission. I can wrap my head around that. Killing, wars over religion, they all sound so very primitive.

I think the bible was created as a set of rules for all the (now) sheep to follow, those who were free-thinkers were killed or banished from their homeland.

A lot of it sounds really fishy don't you think? If we are all sons and daughters of Adam and Eve, we are all products of incest. No thanks. I don't wish to label myself as that! That is pretty gross. For as the story goes, Eve was created from Adam's rib bone. Right there, creates an imbalance of power between men and women. Of course God (he) created a man first! For the man is all powerful and we must respect that. Alright so, they were the first and since you need both a male and a female (apparently God did as well) in nature to create life he created Eve to make babies in some Utopian society. Oh that's wishful thinking but not the reality of our nature nor will it ever be. We could try but you can only suppress the animalistic thoughts and behaviours for so long. Anyway, leave it to a woman to go and screw things up, right? Eve ate the apple which screwed all of humanity for eons. What a stupid woman eh?

I do believe Jesus lived. I think he was a man with very forward thinking. I think he questioned the wrong people and was put to death. Plain and simple. There have been instances of this throughout humanity. I also believe that people did a lot of opium back in the day and it produced some very interesting and neat-sounding stories with which to fill a bible up with. Have you ever heard of the game of telephone? I also believe it's entirely possible that that has happened in this case, to some degree. It's plausible. How many years old is that thing anyway? ;)

Those are some of my thoughts on religion and where I stand with what I believe in. It's not truth for I have no solid evidence to base these thoughts on, but it's the result of a lot of analytical thinking on my part and a lot of questioning.

I attended a church session this past Sunday because my husband is Christian and he was not able to make it out over to his parent's church. I was awake and I wanted to go support him and so I did. Well, as a person who is not big on musicals at all I didn't like all of the off-key singing. Sit down, stand up, sit down, stand up. That must be bad for someone with low blood-pressure...such as myself. The minister said some words that were good in my opinion, the message was not one of fear but of love which is a lot better than some church sermons out there, that's for sure. Of course, it was still under the pretense that God is a he. Oh well, I think most of these people mean well but are slightly misguided. That's all.

I do have one question though.

If God is in heaven and heaven is supposedly up above us, why then when they pray, do they bow their heads to the ground. Is that not where their evil lives? An evil they have dubbed Satan? It would seem more logical to me that one should look in the face of whom they are speaking to in such a manner with grace and glory.

I believe there is evil in all of us, just some are not able to control it as well as others.

You Are.......

FAT!!!!!!!! FATTY FAT FATS MCFATPANTS. Look at you, you lardass, you'd like to think you are a size 12 but you have a feeling the clothing companies are just being nice. FAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT..

Jiggle jiggle.

*SHHHHHHUT UP!!! I DON'T WANT TO LISTEN TO YOU ANYMORE!!!***

When I was about 5 years old, my first incident with feeling larger than the general populace came from a girl my own age. We were seated in the back of her mom's car, it was summer so we were in shorts. She looked at my legs which had spread out onto the seat and exclaimed "Wow! Look at how fat your legs get!!" She was thin to begin with and I just had baby fat. I wasn't even fat!!

That's when the shame kicked in and I started to loath my body. I would purposely sit hunched over at my desk at school so you couldn't see my little rolls. I thought I had it under control. No one could see that I had baby fat or skin that I had yet to grow into and I was alright.

Fast forward to 1993. I was 14 and my mother had died the year before. I was going through a hard time and I was appointed the "Best Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist in the City!!" Well, that was a joke. She may have been the most popular at the time but she was also a great pusher of drugs upon teens. I was pretty angry at the world and at my mother for what she did. I don't remember much discussion on that however, I do remember much discussion on which drugs would make all of my problems go away.

I was diagnosed as having depression and attention deficit disorder. That was very popular at the time. As was Ritalin. Ahhhh Ritalin. You turned me into a super-focused zombie with zero appetite. At first I didn't notice the changes in my eating habits, I had never been one to take a lunch to school with me anyway. I continued on Ritalin because I trusted my doctor to do what was best for me. I started to notice the weight loss within a couple of months. I was about 110 lbs when I started on it. I was 5'3. That's a pretty decent height to weight ratio.

I kept getting thinner and thinner. I was loving it. Finally, I would look like Kate Moss!! I hated models at this point but it was a love-hate relationship I suppose. Actually you can just chalk it up to being heavily influenced by the media despite hating what they stood for in the first place.

My Nanna and my psychiatrist were worried about my weight loss. I decided to become cunning and I would come home from school, grab a couple of yogurt containers and proceed to empty the contents into the sink as if I had eaten them and then I would make sure my Nanna would see the empty cartons. I had also cleverly become vegetarian. She said she didn't know how to cook sans-meat and used that as an excuse to not eat the meals she would cook for my Grandfather, herself and I.

I made it down to 89 lbs at my lowest. The only reason I started eating again is that I was threatened with hospitalization should I not gain some weight. That scared me a bit as I was already used to being locked up (hospital suicide-watch and group homes in the CAS) and I did not want my freedom taken from me again. I remember visiting my best friend's place and her dad made a comment on how my back looked "Like a dinosaur!!" when I would bend over to do up my shoes etc. That comment maybe have saved me a hospital visit. I started to look closely in the mirror, something I was not doing but I sure did look closely at the scale on the floor. I saw what my friend's dad saw and I didn't like it as much as I thought. I thought to myself that I was becoming like the models I couldn't stand because of what they stood for. I had to use a lot of pillows in strategic places just to sleep semi-comfortable at night.

I slowly started eating again and gained weight back. I once again fell into the eating disorder trap and I could not see how lovely my body actually was, what I saw was a horrible 200 lbs whale when I looked in the mirror.

That is when I started to make myself throw up. I would feel so guilty for eating, that I would go and vomit. I would alternate between this and starving. It seemed to work alright and no one threatened me with hospitalization again. I moved out on my own at 17 and partying and drugs became more important than food. I was eating maybe a bagel a day if I was lucky. Sometimes maybe a can of tomato soup. This whole time, I was beautiful and I couldn't appreciate it at all. I just didn't see it.

I wore baggy clothes to hide what I thought was fat. I don't think I had much fat, it was skin. I didn't see it that way. I had somehow allowed outside forces to shape who I was and what I thought of myself all the while loathing the industry that promoted thinness in the first place.
I picked up a nasty drinking habit and gained a bit of weight from that but still, I was nowhere near fat. I was maybe 120 at my highest before I got pregnant at 22.

I gained a lot of weight with my pregnancy and I am still fighting it to this day. I gained over 60 lbs and have not been able to reach my pre-pregnancy weight of 120. It bothers the hell out of me and I keep reverting back to binge, purge, starve. I also become very angry at food and decide that it is not my friend and that certain foods I once loved gross me out for whatever twisted reason my mind can find.

I know this is wrong and that the media and fashion industries have influenced these unhealthy choices I keep making. I had been to counseling for this and I have read books. I am fully aware of what I am doing yet, I cannot stop. These days I am into binging and starving. I am trying so very hard to shake these old ways of thinking but it's fucking hard being a woman these days and seeing all the clothes that are made for skinny little things who probably have eating disorders of their own. The worst thing about it is that they make these clothes in bigger sizes too but when I put them on, they look noting like the do on the mannequins and I get depressed and leave. I have continual closet-meltdowns where I can't seem to find anything in my closet that I want to wear. At these hysterical times I am only thinking one thing: "No matter what you put on Andie, you will look fat in it so you might as well give up!"

I fucking hate myself for thinking this way and being easily influenced my the media. I am smarter than that. I also know that eating disorders are not just only about being skinny, but about control. I feel I have no control over myself sometimes and that is what leads up to an episode. I suppose it's time for more CBT therapy only this time instead of focusing on anxiety and panic, it shall have to be my unhealthy body image and unhealthy eating habits.

FAT FAT FAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT FATTY!!

These thoughts go through my mind almost on a daily basis. I can't control them when they come and they scare me. I don't like having little fights inside my head. I also don't like the fact that if I let it show, if I let it slip and lose control that my daughter could very well pick up these same nasty habits.

Sometimes I just want to take a knife to my fat and stab at it, slice it off. That would be quite messy I would imagine.

They say if you question your sanity..

You are still sane. I hope there's some truth to that but what is sane anyway. A set of rules and morals instilled in us for generations via mind control methods such as religion? What exactly constitutes a proper way of thinking anyway? Who decided on these rules and morals in the first place? We as humans are nothing but glorified animals. I find it odd that one would think they could control this aspect of our very being, fully and completely. No ill thoughts towards others? No animalistic need to mate even for pleasure?

I ask myself if I am sane just about every day and most likely more than once. I feel a pull to nature not to some "all loving God" created in man's own image. I believe in what I can see, what is tangible. Some things I cannot explain but that doesn't mean there is no explanation, maybe it's out of my reach to do so.

When I think of all the seemingly easy and logical ways we could abolish poverty and hunger, of all the good we could be doing to better our society as we'd all seem to want, I can't help but think of the animals in us yet again. The territorial pissing contest between nations and governments. The struggle for ultimate power and recognition that takes place every second of every day. No, we are not all equal and we certainly aren't Stepford wives now are we?

I wonder why then, that we should strive to become something that is not within our reach. To become what society deems as normal. There will never be a normal so long as we, as humans remain animals.