A few weeks ago I made a video preliminary to this post on my youtube channel.

Recently after catching up on one of my favorite blogs Furious Seasons I encountered yet again the mental health doomcallers of the internets. These doomcallers have a singular belief that major mental health problems, namely personality disorders and Axis 1 spectrum diagnoses are incurable diseases.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

In March of 1995 I made good on a promise I made a year earlier. Namely that once I got my life back to a minimal standard, I would kill myself once and for all, and do it right.

Since I was seven years old I had been in love with death. Between the ages of 14 and 20 I had made five major suicide attempts and several minor quasi attempts. The only genuine cry for help attention getting suicide attempt was the first. I reported my survival of a suicide attempt to my grandparents and was promptly hospitalized. My life changed from bad to worse soon after and every suicide attempt afterward was *for real*.

So it was that in March of 1995 I shut down my life in a calm and orderly fashion. I quit my job, closed my accounts, paid some bills, packed all my earthly possessions and wrote a detailed last will and testimony. For a week I drove around the coastal and forest country roads enjoying my last days to the fullest. Finally I collected my suicide kit and took myself to a reasonably isolated area at night and euthanized myself. Despite my best planning, I botched the job in a classic how-not-commit suicide blunder. I was dying….slowly. I had failed to get the plastic bag and rubber band around my head. Thus daylight came, exposing my vehicle through the trees and a passing police patrol car investigated.

I woke up in a hospital with tubes coming out of me days afterward having been in a brief coma. That earned me a seven day stay at the hospital psych ward. I signed myself out and planned on trying again soonest.

Several factors stayed my hand for the first week. I was recovering from my failed suicide attempt on my own. Only my brother and my best friend knew what I had done and I had sworn them both to secrecy. I had a documented history of teenage bipolar and schizophrenia and I feared my family being involved in any way.

So I literally hid from the world at my friends house in a rural area. This was actually the beginning of my healing although I did not wholly perceive this at that time.

I needed rest, a long rest from my life and my existence. One way or another it all had to change because the life I lived in the outer world as well as my own inner world were both unacceptable.

Here at my friends house I was permitted to be left the hell alone. I had a outdoor bench swing positioned underneath a pair of giant pine trees with an enormous, expansive view of cornfields and woods. The house was set back about 500 feet off the main road on a long and bending dirt driveway. My friend lived here and he took care of me. Basically he kept me in cigarettes, pot, coffee and frozen dinners. No pressure. He left me alone as I requested. I spent my first day back from the hospital like that. All day I sat on this swing and stared into the distance seeing everything and nothing.

The place was magical. So far off the road, acres in all directions before the nearest house it was deeply quiet. No human voices, no sound of cars. Just the buzzing of the bees, the songs of birds, the wind in the corn. Peaceful. I had my back to the house and faced forward. I felt safe. No one knew I was here. That felt safe. No one bothered me. I survived that day and did much the same again the next day. Then again the day after.

One day at a time. A simple ritual to remain alive.

Wake up, get up. Take my coffee and cigs out to the swing and sit quietly. Stay in the swing all day, all afternoon, all evening. Nothing to do. No where to go. No responsibilities. I sat and stared.

I did this for two weeks straight. It was perhaps one of the most therapeutic things I had ever done. I was deeply calm and centered with the afterglow of my near death experience. Mentally and emotionally, I was calm and quiet. Something I had never before truly achieved in my life. One day at a time I simply existed. I harmed no one. Day by day went by with no stress, no arguing or fighting, nothing to trigger me or set me off. Nothing to do but relax and take stock of what to do.

Eventually I became in tune with the rhythms of nature. My life cycled with the day. I gave myself over to watching both the dawn and the sunset every single day.

I realized that I could stay alive, if I could recreate this ritual every single day. It was a formula for staying alive and taking some pleasure out of life without adding stress to my life. Although I did not fully realize it at that time. I had discovered the most important thing about stress. Namely that by dodging all stress voluntarily, I had escaped life and all the things that set me off. That lack of accumulating daily stress was gradually healing me.

I made a simple goal. Live one day at a time and try to engineer a situation where I could recreate this lifestyle until further notice. I could not stay here forever so I formulated my plan. I would re enter life only so much as needed to maintain a standard of living.

There was nothing I had to do and nothing that needed to be done. There was no way I could be a productive member of society when I had no reason to live. Planning for a future was not even a remote possibility for me. Careers and families are what people who have lives do. I did not have a life worth living and so it made no sense that I could possibly aspire to such lofty goals.

Hard decisions needed to be made and I made them. The results of those decisions and the trial and error methods of self therapy that I undertook out of sheer desperation can be distilled in 12 steps

In this post I will outline 12 steps to permanent recovery from mental illness. Not just bipolar, but also schizo affective disorder with narcissistic tendencies and PTSD.

Here we go.

Location:

The first hard but necessary decision I made was to leave my home state. Within 200 miles of the city I was born in lay most of the places I had grown up in with all the memories and triggers that come with them. The family that had harmed me, and the family that I had harmed were all within this zone. The cops knew me by name on site here and there. I had been fired from two dozen jobs within this zone in less than two years. All my Exes and friends, most everyone that had ever harmed me, or I them, lay within this zone. This zone was the in the center of New England. A place with a bipolar climate with rapid cycling weather.

I was triggered by the entire state. The places the persons and the weather. It all weighed on me. So, I needed to escape. I could not face another winter while I was this vulnerable. Where was I written that I had to stay in the area I was born in? Just because most everyone on both side of my family did, did not mean I had to. I had no compelling reason to stay. Everyone had given up on me. With few friends and no family support there was nothing for me here except more of the same.

The first thing I did was work through the spring and summer. I saved my money and sold off my possessions. In the fall of 1995, just as the leaves were turning colors, I escaped and moved to California.

Although I remained suicidal I persevered through extreme poverty until I was once again gainfully employed and the first thing I did when I had enough money was move into a simple apartment by myself in modest and moderately quiet neighborhood.

More than anything I needed to be alone as much as possible. I had a responsibility to society as an *unmanaged and untreated mentally ill person* I sequestered myself from society for everyone’s good. The task was made infinitely easier that I was now 3000 miles away from all family and friends. I swore off relationships indefinitely. Really as a self harming, self hating deeply suicidal individual I had no business suckering people into relationships with me just to comfort myself. Nor did I have any business having children. I am the child of abusive parenting and the juvenile mental health system. In no way was I capable of being a parent. I knew better than to even think about it. It was all I could do just get through the day.

I reasserted as much of my daily ritual as I could. Namely I got up, sat in the dark smoking my cigarettes and drinking my coffee in silence while watching the sun come up. After an eight or ten hour workday, I came home and repeated the ritual until the sun went down. Bolstered by the far superior climate, free of the stress of relatives and friends and all social life bit by bit I relaxed in my solitude. I stayed alive, one day at a time. My only goal, to repeat my ritual every single day until further notice.

Living:

After choosing a better climate and earning my solitude I focused on simplicity. Since most of my income went to rent, food and drugs I had little to spend on anything else. I had arrived in California with a few bags and boxes containing my one real treasure. My books.

I worked a blue color lifestyle, living paycheck to paycheck. I walked, bussed and biked to work. I needed no car and could not afford psychologically or financially, the nickel and dime maintenance of the purchase of a heavily used car. One less stress, deliberately dodged. The net effect was that I spent more time in commute but stayed healthier physically and financially. My apartment was sparse consisting of lucky sidewalk sale finds or abandoned furniture. I slept on the floor in an empty bedroom. I had a couch, an easy chair, some lamps, my book shelves and books, a coffee table. A simple and sparsely equipped kitchen to match. With few possessions it was easy to keep everything clean and neat and tidy. I had a large amount of space to move and breathe. I kept my apartment much like a zen monastery. I became quite happy living simply and humbly, poor and alone. It was all I wanted. It was all I could handle.

Entertainment:

With no spare cash it was hard to afford entertainment. I lived without Tv, cable, videos, computers. All I had was my CDs and my books and my drugs. I enjoyed all three, every single day. I forgot about the world. Stopped reading the news. Stopped caring about anything else other than myself and staying alive and calm, one day at a time.

Diet:

As time went by I gained more confidence, more control and more stability over my life. I found myself in a space where I could experiment with food and supplements. After reading numerous books on diet and nutrition it finally dawned on me that I was never taught how to take care of myself and that the American food system is severely compromised in many ways. So I played with my diet. I tried eating all meat diet before anyone had ever heard of Atkins. I ate macrobiotic, vegetarian, vegan, took up fasting. Once I learned what the RDA actually meant on foods, I began taking supplements convinced that since I had left State’s custody two year earlier, I had been malnourished. I had stopped drinking plain water after my lithium nightmare at age 14. The effects of taking vitamins and supplements and drinking water as well as eating fruits and vegetables was immediate and profound. Within a week I looked and felt better.

Body:

In 1996 my body betrayed me while at work. My right arm became paralyzed while I was moving heavy objects over my head. Since I had no marketable skills and used my body for manual labor tasking, having one arm malfunction was an immediate emergency.

I had no insurance and little money so what could I do? As luck would have it I met a chiropractor who was also a Reiki practitioner and we were a good match. He took some upper body Xrays and he showed me what was wrong.

Under the years and years of muscular and neurological tension, the combination of the strain of the years, untreated physical problems form car accidents and injuries and perhaps even congenital birth defect. My overall body balance was warped. I was twisted and tortured internally by my own structure. My first ribs on both sides were migrating towards my clavicle, the right side rib was nearly touching my collarbone. My floating ribs were fused to the ribs about them. I had cervical vertebrae degeneration from whiplash and neck injuries. My entire torso, starting from my shoulders and all the way to my pelvis was torqued and twisted.

Without health insurance and a small fortune I could not afford complicated secondary testing procedures, consultations, specialists or surgeons. With limited finances I had to turn to a self therapy modality that offered the hope of healing my body holistically.

For that we turn to…

Exercise:

There is an awful lot of things you can do to quicken your pulse but not all of them reduce stress while building physical, emotional and mental strength. Skating, snowboarding, jogging, karate, weight training can all work out your body. Each of them contains possibilities of damaging your body suddenly or over time. Each of them requires their own gear or special facilities. None of those things will necessarily rehab your mind and body and emotions.

I turned to Tai Chi and Qi Gong. After reading several books on the subject I chose to start training in Taoist Energy Arts. I saved my paychecks and took seminars, retreats and classes with Master Bruce Frantzis. I studied his Qi Gong, Tai Chi, Hsin I and Ba Gua. Once I had a basic working understanding and instruction the next step was to practice as much as I could. Gradually I began with fifteen to thirty minute workouts. As I became stronger I worked harder and longer. Eventually I could practice for an hour, then two. Then eventually three, then four, five and six hours.

In 1996 my life was now focused entirely on my practice of self healing.

4 am, wakeup

4:30 am, bike down to the river and warm up with qi gong and move into tai chi. Greet the sun as it came up.

Work out until 7:30. Bike to work.

From 8 am to 4 pm, monday through friday, punch a clock at the warehouse.

4:30 pm, I am home. Take 30 minutes, smoke a joint. Bike back down to the river.

5:oo pm, I begin again, qi gong for an hour, tai chi for two hours. Watch the sun go down.

8:30, bike home

9:00 pm, dinner.

9:30 go to bed

4 am, start all over.

On weekends without work, I simply got up at 5 am instead and spent the entire day down in the park working out in shifts. 2 hours of tai chi, hour long break, another 2 hours of tai chi, take an hour off, repeat until dusk.

Gradually I trained myself to relax. I repatterned my body’s soft tissues and structures.

Gradually I developed a smooth, agile, sensitive, alive and graceful movement with power and precision.

The act of tasking the mind to command the body down to precise movements inside myself strengthened my focus and my will. Gradually, the chemical imbalance caused by 20 years of depression slowly rebalanced, a little bit each day, the same way I fell out of balance.

With my diet, stress and body now under control. I was changing. I was in a new space with a new resolve built off success and practice. It was time to take the next step.

Detox:

For years I was fiercely dependent upon and habituated to several chemicals. I was now willing to experiment with removing the crutches I depended on for so long to cope with myself and my life.

It was time to detox. I had been a heavy smoker of both cigarettes and marijuana. I drank 40 plus ounces of coffee a day and drank a two liter bottle of pepsi a day. I was dependent on nicotine, caffeine, marijuana, and sugar.

I detoxed cold turkey in one of the most mentally, physically and emotionally agonizing self inflicted treatment I have ever done. The first time around I failed to quit cannabis, and instead, relied upon it even heavier to deal with the multiple withdrawals occurring at once.

Much the same way as heroin users are given methadone or benzos to deal with the multilevel pains of heroin detox I relied on massive doses of cannabis. I could not practice meditation during that time and instead, I suffered in solitude. I stayed away from everyone not wishing to burden my few acquaintances with my problems and moods while engrossed in my own suffering.

I did learn a lesson from the sheer agony of the withdrawal and when it was time to detach from my cannabis addiction I tapered myself on my own until I was capable of relying only on tai chi and meditation for my support.

Distance:

Some of distance I covered before here and there and it is worth mentioning again. Misery loved company. When I was in my late teens I was unable to find and attract healthy people to me. Instead I tended to gravitate to the wounded and the damaged personalities. Other mentally ill people with problems like mine.

There is all sorts of distance to be maintained for myriad reasons.

Distance from maternal family. Not hard. Most everyone on that side has severe untreated mental illness and a history of physical and psycho emotional violence and drama. I could not save them, they could not save me.

Distance from paternal family. Most of that family is of the WASP cast. Self sufficient and distant. I had only access to my grandparents. I abused and used them terribly while humiliating them with my mental health problems and criminal activities. I chose to exile myself from them in the hopes of minimizing the danger of my personality to them.

Distance from mentally ill friends. Necessary. Can not save them. Am not responsible for them. Can not make the changes I need to in my life, when all my friends are users, depressives, borderlines, deadbeats, neurotic welfare cases. Painful but necessary to cut them loose and focus on my survival and not maintain sick relationships with sick people.

Distance from society. With the exception of work, once a week shopping and martial arts classes, I exiled myself from the warp and woof of humanity in order to stay stress free and uncomplicated. Nothing was allowed to derail or interrupt my self imposed mind body discipline and asceticism.

I maintained my distance to distraction. You can not be focusing six hours a day on self therapy if you are out roller blading with your girlfriends or making the scene at the clubs. You can’t. Like wise you can not focus six hours a day on only you if you have a girlfriend, boyfriend or a child. You can not give those people the necessary attention to forge and cultivate relationships. You have to have undisturbed dedicated me time.

In a narcissistic twist, you have to acknowledge your selfish investment in your own life. You are the most important person in your world. Your whole life revolves around you. That is exactly how it should be. If you are not dragging dependent or expectant people around, no one will be harmed by your necessary selfishness. You know you are not capable for forging relationships with others when you can not spare the time to deal with them. So stay away from them. Besides, now that you are changing as a person, you may find you are no longer attracted to those broken and hollow people that you were before.

Beliefs:

Your beliefs about your life and your condition have everything to do with whether or not you can take over responsibility for your life and your recovery. Although I am reluctant to scapegoat religion, religion poses a serious threat to your spiritual wellbeing.

Take these examples.

My Bipolar mother, convinced that there is nothing wrong with her, believes that her depression is a burden of life. It is cross she was given to bear from God himself. She truly believes that if God did not want her depressed, He would shine His divine countenance on her and remove the depression. In the meantime, all she can hope for is to cling to her cigarettes and rosary, pray every day to make sure she goes to Heaven and wait for the afterlife to enjoy peace and joy. That is a self destructive belief that will never render a cure.

Likewise, I take personal issue with several of the Alcoholics 12 steps to recovery as well.

Talk about a recipe for helplessness

• Step 1 - We admitted we were powerless over our mental health diagnoses - that our lives had become unmanageable
• Step 2 - Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity
• Step 3 - Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood God
• Step 5 - Admitted to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs
• Step 6 - Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character

• Step 7 - Humbly asked God to remove our shortcomings

Let us look at this closely. The person that came up with these steps to *serenity* quite probably never knew about Yoga and yogis. Those mind and body masters of the Far East capable of controlling their body, their mind, and their emotions to a level unthinkable by most Westerners. Just to be able to sit still for hours at a time without distraction or idle thinking is a practice beyond most people in this culture. It requires mental discipline to control your mind and body to that extent.

We are not worried about sitting naked on a block of ice or sleeping on a bed of nails. We just want a basic level of impulse control and thought control. To do that, we must do the opposite of those  serenity steps you must

Admit to yourself that yes, your life had become unmanageable but deep inside us all lies the power to make major changes and that power means we are far from helpless.

You can not wait around forever hoping some deity will take time out of running the universe just to visit you and make your life a little more bearable whilst ignoring the other billion inhabitants on this earth that lay claim to needed help just as much you. You have to say this is the time and place that I chose to regain control of my life.The only person capable of restoring sanity to you in your lifetime is you.

Again I take personal offense at the inspired selfishness and helplessness that goes into these serenity steps. Why are you so important to the functioning of the universe that god most come answer your humble call to remove the shortcoming that He in his divinity saw fit to give you to strengthen and humble you? Why do you deserve god to help you personally and not again the other billions of people with a need as well? What have you done with your life that has earned divine intervention?

Those steps to serenity are basically selfish affirmations of helplessness and disempowerment. If God could not spare me and my brothers and sisters the years of abuse, why should God come along and spare you from your alcoholism? Why do you deserve God’s interference and we do not? I asked. I begged and prayed for intervention back when I believed and it never happened. Now you want God to come and pluck your defects away because you can’t handle it anymore. What ever happened to God helps those that help themselves?

I gave up on God a long time ago. When I chose to undertake self healing it was because I knew, it was up to no one, mortal or immortal to heal me for me. The only person capable of healing me is me. I finally wanted it bad enough to make it happen no matter the cost.

That is why I say, reviewing your beliefs is majorly important if you want to heal yourself. You can’t heal yourself if you are waiting for God to do it, or if you think your mental problems are your burden in life. Those beliefs are useless to the person that is bent on recovery. You agree that you take full responsibility for your behavior. It is not your astrological sign, your karma, your genes, or your cross. It is entirely up to you whether or not you want to spend the rest of your life mentally ill. It is that simple. Accept no beliefs that pass the buck off to agencies or deities. Your behavior is controllable and you will do it. It is that or suffer until you die.

Meditation:

I have written much about meditation already. This post covers everything I have to say about meditation. Meditation, mental health and the brain.

Meditation was the Rosetta Stone, the real cure for my brain.

Self Love:

Some people never give it a thought. Many people, if asked are not entirely sure one way or the other. I knew though. I loathed myself. I hated myself since I was a child. I felt like an alien. I hated my existence, my life, my body, everything about myself.

The most powerful meditation experience of my life occurred towards the end of my 25th year. I had become more and more comfortable with myself and my life by sticking to my regimen. I had learned to relax and let go. I had mastered stress management. I had control over my life. I had not been depressed in years. Thousands of hours of meditation had stilled my racing thoughts. Until that experience, I did not truly love myself. After this meditation experience I did. Once I gained true unconditional, unambiguous and total self love, I no longer wanted to die. I now had a reason to live. I knew I would never self injure again. Indeed, ever since then, I have been in balance and free of suicidal depression.

Labels:

Once you have achieved recovery, what use is the label? No matter what is it. Once I had resolved all my triggers, I was no longer suffering from PTSD. The label no longer accurately described my behavior so I dropped it. Once the delusions and egocentricity as well as the Voices had left me, I was no longer Schizoaffective. One the depression and mania had left me. I was no longer Bipolar. It was time to move on and get over having ever been mentally ill. One of my personal secrets is this. I never believed I had a lifelong disease in my mental health problems. I was indoctrinated into believing I had various chemical imbalances beyond my control due to genetics.

Certainly, if you look at my bipolar mother and sister, the hereditary disposition is undeniably obvious. My mother was the head bipolar vampire who manufactured one mentally ill child after another. Of her first four children I alone am recovered. My mother is incapable of believing she has any problems so, she remains untreated and symptomatic. My sister, now in the clutches of the mental health system, is currently being programmed to believe that like the alcoholic, she is powerless over her genetic mental health problems. She is receiving the standard dual therapies of medications and counseling. She lives in an adult group home, disabled by her mental problems. She is not recovering. She is, in the psychiatric jargon, learning to accept her diagnoses and the treatments. With one brother in jail and the other with his periodic cycling depressions, family mental illness is endemic. How is it I am no longer mentally ill? I took the path least traveled, and it made all the difference.

As a teen and as an adult, I knew I had problems. I was never in denial that I was mentally ill. When you are living on the street homeless, addicted, penniless, with bench warrants for your arrest for petty crimes. When your family has given up on you and you have given up on them, When you try to commit suicide every other year and destroy your own relationships and employment. It is hard to deny the evidence before your eyes. I was clinically insane for a long long time. Now I am sane. The steps I took directly led to that sanity. No one in my family has taken those steps.

To summarize in no particular order.

Step 1 distance, distance from anyone that is toxic or abusive or anyone that will not facilitate your recovery. In short, if they have worse mental health problems than you, stay away from them.

Step 2 location, where is it written that you have to suffer the climate you were born to? Who said? I was raised in New England, and New England is depressing. So I moved to sunny California and staved off SAD and felt genuinely better to have more sun and blue skies than than I had grown up with.

Step 3. Lifestyle. Our American lifestyle is stress overload. Who said you have to participate? Get off the stress track. Quit your job if you must. Live simply. I became quite happy living poor and alone. Much like the Taoist sages of ancient China.

Step 4. Diet. When you hate yourself it is much harder to make motivated healthy choices and take up good healthy eating habits. You have to experiment with food and how it can support your mental health through augmenting your physical health.

Step 5 detox. Toxins abound in our society. All of them we can do without. The caffeine, the alcohol, the uppers and downers, the psych meds, cigarettes, sugars, processed foods. Seriously, get rid of all that, and see how healthy you can become.

Step 6 Body. Back problems, weight problems, structural problems, congenital birth defects, diseases, all that stuff complicates and exacerbates stress and mental health problems. All those things must be addressed in order to find yourself underneath it all.

Step 7 Exercise. A walk around the block is just not enough to get your body to burn off weight and raise seratonin levels. There are many sports and activities that just add stress and require specialized equipment or having repetitive risks associated with them.

Tai Chi requires nothing but the clothes on your body and decent shoes. With yoga, people still crave comfort in mats, spaces and outfits. Tai Chi is simple. Stand up and do it. In your home, in your backyard, at a park. Once learned, you never need other people around you or a special area. You can do tai chi and it will both strengthen and relax, your body, emotions and mind. It really is the most brilliantly engineered exercise ever created.

Step 8, check your beliefs. If you believe you truly have a cross to bear in your mental problems or you are waiting for the day God comes down and fixes you, you will never recover. If you believe you have in incurable genetic disease, you will never recover. Both beliefs must go.

Step 9, Meditate. When I started meditation, I could not sit still for more than ten minutes. Today, I can sit for days at a time without interruption, easily. Meditation builds that circuit in your brain which controls mental and emotional processing. I have that circuit, as does any serious meditator whether they be yoga, buddhist, zen, taoist, whatever. I built that circuit and chances are, you have not. Work on it.

Step 10, self love. Once again, without it, you are bound to self injure or self destruct sooner or later. With it, you will not be depressed, even if you are poor and alone, you will be content.

Step 11 entertainment. Say have you seen the news lately? Depressing isn’t it? Frustrated by politics, sports, absorbed in the lives of others? If your spare time amounts to getting emotionally worked up by reading horrible psychiatry nightmares or watching war footage in Iraq, how is that reducing stress and putting you in a calm state? That is not to say you can never do those things. I am just saying, in the initial stages of recovery, when your sanity is literally a house of thin cards swaying in the breeze. It is unwise to burden yourself with stress by constantly exposing yourself to stressful entertainment or research until you are emotionally stable

Step 12. Lose the label. Do it first or do it last, either way, you are not your diagnoses. It is not you. It may describe your behaviors when you are symptomatic, but do not identify your personality as being diseased or there is no hope for you. When you are no longer symptomatic, lose the label, really it no longer matters, it has no power over you.

For years after my recovery I simply moved on. I no longer needed to meditate six hours a day to stay clear and calm. I had built mental stability into my system and was now capable of re-entering society and doing the things I had put off since age 20. I was able to make friends, have fun, be social, keep a job, have romantic relationships, make career plans. I could add stress to my life, and not become manic or depressed. I was normal. I could handle *normal mainstream life* again. I put the past behind me and moved on. Eventually I got back onto the internet and discovered that while I was curing myself of manic depression, bipolar had morphed into an epidemic and I realized the time had finally come to speak up.

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