My Story as a Survivor

“They are shuttled from institution to institution, hiding away in silence because they fear themselves so much they can't stand the possibility of opening up to society. This has to stop.”

My name's Nathan Foster. I am a survivor of the psychiatric system.

During my second year in college, for whatever reason, I became angry and upset about the world I lived in. All of the trauma, all of the pain, the diminishing George Bush economy, all the sexual abuse—it became too much. I couldn't stand how messed up everything was. I had had enough, and I decided I was going to make a change. My plan was to hitchhike to New York City, stowaway on an ocean liner, and spread my message in Europe.

Secrets.

Nothing could be told. Everything had to be secret.

Imagine that concept for a second. What is a secret? Who is allowed to know? When we lie, the human body gives invisible signals that trained professionals can read. I think this is because the body knows the truth, while the mind fabricates the lie. I knew this all too well at the time. How then can we talk about "paranoia?"

If I want to hide something, how do I do it? My body will know. Anyone who really needs to know will know. The process of holding a secret is the process of self-destruction and psychosis. There is no difference. The most logical response from the system would be to prove me wrong—that my secret was already open, and that I needn't destroy myself. The actual response of the system was to prove me right.

I never made it very far, hitchhiking. I ran out of money. After I returned to the area from the failed hitchhike attempt, I had a series of heated arguments with my family, culminating in my violent arrest at the hands of an undereducated police force. I was then forced to medicate, the official reason given to me being that "I didn't make eye contact enough." Which was a lie.

The mental hospital was the most traumatic experience I've ever gone through. I simply cannot describe the fear and humiliation. I came away from it with complete and total self-stigma programmed into me. I ditched my dream of being a filmmaker and wasted three years studying secondary education—a profession I'm simply not cut out for.

The only possible way to recover was to deprogram the experience of the mental hospital. First, I needed to regain my dream to be a filmmaker. Next, I needed to combat the problem of oversleeping. The only way to do this was to deny the "wisdom" of the psychiatrists, and realize that the medications did more harm than the "illness." Having reached that milestone, cutting my meds in half, I was finally able to graduate, and I am very much recovered.

But many people with mental diagnoses simply do not understand that they can recover. They are programmed by an ignorant psychiatric industry to dismiss their dreams, their efficacy as people, and their image as a human being. They are shuttled from institution to institution, hiding away in silence because they fear themselves so much they can't stand the possibility of opening up to society. This has to stop. My dream is for people with diagnoses everywhere to stand together, with a positive identity, and a positive self-image. Together, we can support each other. We can free ourselves from the ghost of stigma, and become visible members of society once more.

My hope is that Consumer Survivor Idaho will be a small step in this ongoing process.