Just Mercy, a movie about an innocent black man placed on death row in Alabama and the black attorney who fought for his freedom, makes a powerful statement about freedom, justice, and racism.
After immersing myself in the pain and suffering of Walter McMillian and the struggles of Bryan Stevenson, I became much more empathetic and aware of the evils of racism and the cruelty of discrimination. As an Asian woman raised in Utah, I thought I knew about discrimination and racism, but their story showed me that I have much more to learn.
Afterward, I reflected on the parallels between McMillian's incarceration and those caught in the web of psychiatry's current treatment approach, unable to free themselves from their dependency on their medications.
It doesn't matter if the medication is a small dose, or that it successfully eliminates the symptoms. No one wants to be a patient for life when there is a path to freedom. If you have ever been labeled with a psychiatric diagnosis, put on a psychotropic medication, and expected to take it month after month, you will know what I mean.
It takes empathy to understand the value of mental and emotional freedom. Read on for further reflections!
Finding the Path to Freedom from Medication
Helping patients who feel trapped
Recently, a woman whom I have never met wrote a moving letter to me. In it, she shared her struggle to come off her medication and how she suffered (some words are altered to help maintain anonymity). She wrote:
This past spring, at the most terrifying moment of my life, after withdrawing from (a medication) and unable to get any answers or tools from my doctors, for the first time in my life, I prayed. I prayed that my grandmother would send me help, or a sign or any kind of protection that there was for me. And I vowed that [if] I could be shown the sign of what I needed to do to heal myself, I would do it and devote the rest of my life to making sure that this information and resources were available to anyone who needed them. Two days later, I remembered that I had bought a book that had referenced orthomolecular medicine but had not read it yet. I read it and then started googling and found your site. That day everything changed. Your site and your recordings became my allies and guides, two things I never found in all my years of therapy.
And the fact that you made reference to Harriet (Tubman) is remarkable, because every time I tell someone about your work, I say, "It's like the Underground Railroad. She saved my life from the drug industry, and I've never even met her."
After reading her letter, I felt seen and deeply affirmed.
In the past, however, I thought I was doing my patients a favor by putting them on psychiatric medications. I was taught that it was the best treatment available, and I felt a sense of pride in applying medications to alleviate suffering.
But not anymore.
By integrating information from functional medicine and energy medicine, I found a path that led patients away from being patients. Though I couldn't save every patient, I have saved many.
I have wondered how my lack of talent with memorization and haphazard acquisition of holistic interventions could lead me to this outcome when other psychiatrists far more intelligent than I barely bother to consider the possibility. The answer, I believe, is because I empathize with my patients' suffering.
Life's lessons transformed me by helping me understand how it felt to be in my patients' shoes and walking the same path they walked. Just like Bryan Stevenson, the attorney in Just Mercy, could empathize with those he helped because he grew up in the same neighborhoods and experienced the same discrimination and racism, life showed me how it felt to lose my mental health, become dependent on a medication, and experience severe medication withdrawal symptoms.
Like Harriet Tubman, once I was free, I wanted to go back to free others. It is no surprise that the field of holistic and integrative medicine is filled with physicians who once suffered from conditions that medicine could not cure. Once they cured themselves, they wanted to go back and cure others.
It is possible, though not easy, to heal mental illness and safely withdraw from psychotropic medications. This, I know to be true. The information for doing so is available. The field is ripe and ready for harvest. Who will come and help those trapped in this field reap their harvest of freedom?