TRANSCRIPT
[Music]
Interviewer: Do you think of yourself as a psychiatric survivor?
Speaker: Yeah.
Interviewer: Could you describe why?
Speaker: Because, uh, I kind of fought against it, uh, the system. You know, I just raised my hand and I’m not going to, uh, I’m not going to do what my, uh, doctor tells me to do. Yeah, and I just had to say, I’m going to let you off, dear doctor, and said goodbye.
Interviewer: What did they tell you to do?
Speaker: Take pills, and, uh, he said that I was going to be a schizophrenic for the rest of my life, that I would never recover.
Interviewer: What made him say that to you?
Speaker: I don’t know, per the, um, because I was hearing voices and, uh, seeing things, and I thought it was Jesus, and I shaved my hair off. But I said to him, uh, I know I can stop the pills. I know I can recover. But he said no.
Interviewer: He didn’t believe you?
Speaker: No.
Interviewer: Did you take the pills?
Speaker: Yeah, I did take them for many years. I did take them, but, uh, yeah, he just said you’re never going to be able to be, uh, well, normal. You’re never, you’re never going to be a normal person.
Interviewer: Did you believe him at all?
Speaker: Yeah, he’s a doctor. That’s why I believed him.
Interviewer: How old were you when he told you that?
Speaker: I was 19, 20, 21, 22, 23. And when I was like 23 or 24, I said to him, this is no good. I’m going to take it in my own hands. I’m going to stop taking the pills. And, yeah, that’s what I did. I just let him go.
Interviewer: So you were in the hospital?
Speaker: Yeah, first I was for, uh, 9 months, uh, 9 months in the reic, uh, hospital. And I didn’t know what I was going to do there. I didn’t take a toothbrush or anything. The door was just closed behind me, and, uh, I was there for 9 months, locked in.
Interviewer: Locked in?
Speaker: Yeah, going crazy. And I gained 30 kilos, 30 kilos, so, uh, 66 lb. Yeah, and, uh, I couldn’t speak because of the medicine, because of the pills. I just, I was like there was no one here. There was no one home. There was no one home in, in me. If you asked me a question, I was like, yeah, yeah, no, no. It was the only thing I could say. I couldn’t make a conversation to anybody.
Then after 9 months, I was sent to an asylum in the country where they only had like 50-year-old men.
Interviewer: And you were just a young woman?
Speaker: Yeah, I was 19 going on 20.
Interviewer: Yeah, and you took the pills the whole time in the hospital?
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, and nothing worked.
Interviewer: So you didn’t feel it helped at all?
Speaker: No.
Interviewer: So you were like a hopeless case or something?
Speaker: Yeah, uh, yeah, that was a hopeless case.
Interviewer: Is this common in Iceland? They tell this to people?
Speaker: I think so, yeah, yeah. So this, you’re not going to recover. You’re not going to be able to be healthy.
Interviewer: You look healthy to me today.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, yeah. When I say to people I used to be crazy, they don’t believe me.
Interviewer: Really?
Speaker: Yeah.
Interviewer: So you don’t feel crazy now?
Speaker: No, I don’t. No, well, well, just, uh, normal crazy like me. Yeah, happy crazy, spiritual crazy, or whatever. You need a little craziness in your life to be happy. That’s the thing. Lots of people are feeling so empty inside, and this is so bad. And I think, yeah, little, little madness is needed in this world to survive.
There came a time when I was like, I, I was in such a bad way that it was, you know, everything was impossible. I was a failure. Everything was, you know, and it had been for a very long time. And for many years, I was like, you know, just keeping my head above the water. It was a feeling of, of like dying a slow death. And I think many people are feeling this today, like, you know, this big void, this big emptiness.
Interviewer: Can I ask you, for how long were you like that?
Speaker: Probably like 10 years or something. 10 years? Well, 10 or 20 years. Like, well, it’s like, it wasn’t, it was also a gradual thing because maybe around at least 10, 15 years, yes.
And I went there, I went there, I went into the sidey W, and I was, and I was there. And I wanted to tell them because I also, I had this, you know, traumas that I had to, typical things. And I want to tell them my story, and nobody, people were not, they didn’t seem very interested in listening to what I had to say. They don’t have the tools, really. People have this, they want to help, but it’s not, I don’t believe it’s a medical condition, so you can medicate it away.
And at a certain moment, it was like also I said, oh, I must take like, I must take responsibility for my recovery. Nobody knows what to do except me. Well, better than me. Like, you know, people can, of course, they’re entitled to their opinion, but it’s my, it’s my thing.
I remember there was this woman who had a blog, you know, she was like, you know, in Iceland. Yeah, she was reading, writing about her experiences. I, I just, you know, looked her up in the phone directory and said, hey, can I have coffee with you? And then, and no little, well, experimenting with things. And I found this group of people in Iceland. They called mind power or H up, and I liked their ideology and some people that are like telling their experiences and saying this is, this is a human condition. It’s not going to, yeah, yeah, it’s not a medical condition.
And so I think it’s, it cannot be medicated away. It’s a journey of recovery from there and dealing with the shame and the stigma. And once that was through, life was starting to get interesting, you know. And in a very few years, from this feeling of being what, 45 years old, and everything is behind me, and everything is, I’m a failure, and life is, I’m not, you know, everything is impossible, it’s finished, and doom and gloom. And in a few years’ time, like something changed.
I took a lot of time to, uh, to like taper off. Yeah, taper me off. I took a lot of time to take me off, really.
Interviewer: But how long?
Speaker: 9 months. 9 months to come off the pill?
Interviewer: Yeah, so 10 years you’ve been off the pills?
Speaker: Yeah.
Interviewer: Have you been back to the hospital?
Speaker: No. Well, I told this doctor that I had, uh, I said, uh, I’m not going to have you in my life anymore. And I decided to go to another doctor, and I told him my plan. And he said, okay, uh, I will, uh, look for you like, uh, you can come and see me every two months or so, but I’m not going to help you with, uh, the tapering down. You’re going to have to do that tapering down.
Interviewer: Down?
Speaker: Yeah, and, uh, you’re going to have to do that yourself. And so I did. And, uh, at that time, I got pregnant again and had a baby son, and now I had two kids. And he said to me after 6 months, yeah, 6 months after I had completed the tapering down, he said, I can’t see that you are schizophrenic. I think you’re healthy, and you don’t have to come and see me again.
Interviewer: So he believed you?
Speaker: He believed me, yeah. And I walked away with my son in the stroller, and I looked up in the sky, and I was like, oh my God, I’m healthy.
[Music]