To take or not to take: anti-depressants?

This has been on my mind a lot lately. Numerous people are on these drugs, and my General Practitioner has decided that the low neutraphils in blood (as they have been for 3 years, usually the result of a bad viral infection, which I have had) and the high liver enzymes (only a “mild vital illness” she tells me) have nothing to do with my body being unwell and everything to do with my mind being unwell.

How this connection has been made when I have seen her 3 times in 3 years is BEYOND me. I have shown the GP’s emails (blood test results and recommendations of how to proceed) to a couple of friends and colleagues and ALL of them have told me I need to see another General Practitioner and that the psychologist ‘prescription’ (the GP literally gave me a prescription with the psychologist’s details on) makes no sense in relation to the blood tests. Fair enough. I have a stranger telling me that I have to add chemicals to my brain and make it change, and a few people who know me well telling me that her prescription is illogical.
So who should we trust? ‘Trained’ practitioners or our friends?

I guess it doesn’t really matter which, I could choose either path, but the thing that has knocked me is: The Seed of Doubt. This has been horrendous to deal with and has made me incredibly angry with the ‘doctor’. I told her in the appointment to deal with the fluid (literally) in my ears and the cold and a horrifically itchy rash, that I had already been to see people to ‘investigate’ my brain and they said I was ok. At 16: Psychologist One, to whom my mother sent me to ‘be checked on’, saw my parents as well as myself, and decided I was the ‘most normal one in the family’.

At 31: my mother once again sent me to a counsellor ‘to be fixed’, and the guy told me to stop thinking I was Jesus, go out and be naughty and then use Grace to get back into God’s good books, because that is what Grace is for, as he laughed like a hyena between sentences… The book I was reading at the time was: “What’s So Amazing About Grace”, which had Philip Yancey writing about if he fell in love with a German lady, he would learn the language very quickly and be completely passionate about her and live life loving her. The Grace ‘language’ is not there for abuse, upon marrying her you don’t say on your honeymoon night “Ok my love” (in German, if you’ve learnt it by then 😉 ) “This has been great, but I’m just going to go out and sleep with some other women now, and when I get back you have to forgive me and give me Grace” … this was literally what the ‘counsellor’ was suggesting I do. I passed a photocopy on to the ‘counsellor’ and his only comment at the end of my second and last session with him was, randomly, “That Philip Yancey is a good writer.” Amen! That ‘counsellor’ told me to take a mild sleeping tablet in the evening if I needed to, and/or a calming tablet in the day to help with my anxiety, post-traumatic stress and depression.

At 33: The third psychologist, also connected to my mother, told me I dress like a spinster, and I’m really fine because it’s not like I’m a drunkard or mass murderer or anything. He told his very personal tale about his abusive parents and that he’d had a very difficult childhood. Yet, why is a professional confessing their story to me? Same happened with the homeopath I went to by a suggestion of a massage specialist. The homeopath said there’s nothing wrong with me, not even the gluten-intolerance that I’ve only recently managed to deal with (read “Eish! London” for that story), nor the dairy-intolerance that can still knock me into sinus hell with a teaspoon. Turns out her childhood was worse than Psychologist Three’s, and I got her whole story too, she reckons I’m fine and I must move on and stop hating myself.

Body Talk Therapy, I tried that too, at the advice of a friend who said that the woman had helped her daughter. With nothing to lose and an interest in the process and what people are getting up to, I went along. First session was insightful, second worrying and by the third I passed her my diaries and high-tailed it out of there. No colour on her walls, she was an ex-banker, she continually spoke of ‘other professionals’ and their brilliance, at no point did she uplift herself or show me that she was confident in her own abilities. Her mind was full of other people’s words and experiences, nothing of her… she also told me I hate myself and I need to start loving myself…

So that’s 5 ‘professionals’ and 3 of them (I wasn’t paying attention to the first one) had HECTIC personal journeys and issues that they kept showing me they ‘hadn’t’ recovered from, forgotten or forgiven, even if they ‘told’ me they had. They showed me that they were overflowing with insecurities. How could I assume this? Because I had completed “The Artist’s Way” and spent a few months being up front with my insecurities, seeing where my anger and stress sources were and dealing with my self-hate. Yes, that had all been there, but by the time I got to them I was aware of it and working through it, and way more confident in myself than ever before… yet BAM: “Seed of Doubt”… The second ‘counsellor’ with his “go get drunk and shag guys” approach as he laughed like a hyena about everything, just doesn’t count.

“Seed of Doubt”. This world around us just fills us all with Doubt. The General Practitioner (the second one to tell me to take anti-depressants) had originally told me she was Christian and she prayed with me and told me to keep my faith and pray through it, all prayers are answered. From that she moved to it’s been a few years now, go take anti-depressants…

I sit back and ask: Where is the line between faith that God knit me in the womb, He has a plan for me and I must live that plan, no matter how challenging, on faith and trust in HIM and that HE will heal me… and God now wants me to trust man and take drugs so that may or may not be targeting the right chemical set-up in my brain as directed by human guess-work? When do I stop trusting that God gives me the strength to cope with anything, and say: “Ok God, Your strength must be in man-made chemicals now.”? It’s easy to argue that. God made man with brains to make chemicals to ‘fix’ us… but isn’t that then saying that God made us incorrectly in the first place? Would God make a plan where He created us in a way where chemicals were needed because He “didn’t get the brain waves quite right”? Or the ‘devil’ has so much control that we need chemicals to undo what the ‘devil’ has done?

I have journaled and prayed over this… and what has resulted is this (NB – This ONLY refers to me and IS NOT written as an ‘answer’ for anyone else): People want you to join them, because they take the drugs and they don’t want to be alone in their dependency. The more people taking them, the more it can rationalise that they/drugs are “ok”, when their Souls know that it is not “ok”. Their Souls know that the anti-depressants are merely blocking out their Truth and their Strength, for they do not believe in their strength, or Mine. What one believes becomes one’s mental truth, but it cannot be the Soul-Truth, because the Soul’s Truth is that you are all loved beyond comprehension, you are all stronger than you could ever know and that you are all connected through the beautiful energy of humanity. Yet this energy entails responsibility to love, to give, to forgive, to be honest, to be open, to share, to be quiet, to feed the Soul on good things and show kindness, tolerance and live peacefully.

Sadly, this is a broken world, and in this broken world people have decided to be led by their Ego’s and their bodily desires to ‘be healthy’, without knowing what ‘healthy’ is. To “be happy” without knowing what “happy” is. To be “normal”, without knowing what “normal” is. To “love”, without knowing what “love” is… In not knowing that old Chinese Truth of Yin and Yang, the Ego wants only ‘the good’ and it will fight with chemicals, drugs, distractions and everything else to extinguish ‘the bad’, yet this is not ‘natural’ or ‘normal’, even if media and other lost ‘powers’ and people portray it as such.

It is not ‘right’ to have ‘dark without light’, it is not ‘normal’ to have ‘birth without death’. You can’t have hope, if you have had no tragedy, you can’t know ‘strength’ if you have not known ‘weakness’. You cannot know ‘happy’ if you have not known ‘sad’. People of the world have not been educated or advised to know this Truth of the Yin and the Yang, they do not accept that the intensity of their experiences on earth will be matched on both levels of the spectrum of “Life”, and not only on one side. To only experience “one” “Happy” side of life is imbalanced.

The chemicals placed in the brain will switch off the life experiences, will dull the passion for living, will ‘calm’ you to a point where the intensity of your experience of life will be limited in both the glory and the depression. The two must be together, until the Soul reaches the point where it knows and has lived through it all and thus realises that it has all only been experience. At the end of each and every experience you were still again and knew that GOD WAS THERE. Live it all, and then be still and know…

Anti-depressants take away the roller-coaster emotions and experiences and make them easy kiddie’s-train experiences. This is the gift of choice at work. You may choose the raging river and waterfalls, or the paddling pool as your place to be. Ideally, you should experience both the rapids and the paddling pool, but you should not stop or stay at one point. Taking the anti-depressants is an option, and so is not taking them. It is your choice as to what you believe in and what you want to experience. BUT, if you choose Me, God, Love, Knowing and PEACE in My presence every day, then you do not need any chemicals, for I have an INCREDIBLE PLAN for you, I did knit you in your mother’s womb, I created you for this time, with the skills you need, connected to the people to see you through, with the experiences you need, with My Love and Grace in bountiful measures. Choose Me, and you choose LIFE. Choose Me and you choose STRENGTH. Choose Me and you choose LOVE. Choose Me and you choose HOPE.

Choose man, choose chemicals, choose to use and follow what is offered by a broken world, full of broken people who have not chosen Me, and you too will have to be broken and hurting and lost. This is no grand thought, or difficult equation, it is the most logical outcome and consequence possible.
Choose God and Love and you choose LIFE and LOVE. Choose the world and you choose broken and hurting.
It all depends on your questions: how you phrase them and how answer them… Is ‘easier’ what you want on your gravestone?
Is a deadened mind what you want? Is a faithless life what you want? Is a drugged up Soul what you want? Is ruling by your body what you want? Is trust in a broken world what you want to choose?
It’s freedom of choice. It’s up to you… but, really, think about it… really think about it… before you decide.

PLEASE PRAY FOR THE RETURN OF OUR LEARNER & against Human Trafficking

I know I’m not supposed to post this. I know it’s supposed to be hush hush, but I’m SICK of hush hush. I’m sick of rapists being allowed to rape, Islamists being allowed to kill, drug-dealers having a clientele, prostitutes having a clientele, child-porn creators having an audience, alcohol being abused and the people in control of it all carrying on like it’s as healthy as making a salad, and those buying it, like it’s as acceptable as buying that salad. It makes me sick to emotional drainage, nausea and Soul-destruction. Sick that I live in a world where people are not active against destruction and simply don’t care, so long as they are ok and it’s not effecting them. Sick that people cry ‘ubuntu’, yet have 4 houses when others have none; have stores of food and feasts, when others are starving; earn hundreds of thousands, even millions, by exploiting others who have so little. I’m sick of it all.

It’s a good thing hardly anyone reads my blogs {except for one guy who has mocked and made a joke out of most of my writings over the years (I’ve now come home to the third bee corpse I’ve had to dispose of  ghosts… & I can’t stand cats), I’m not even going to read what he mocks about this blog}. I type ‘a good thing’, because the chances of the people concerned ever reading my blog, on what I’ve been told to “keep quiet about”, are slim.

THE POINT OF THIS – Our Drama teaching community is small and when one of us suffers we all suffer. The latest horror: In our area, one of our matric learners has been abducted into a large, prostitution trafficking ring. I know this happens throughout the world, but it’s always strangers, it’s never hit me so near home. This time it is one of OUR GIRLS. I know Barak Whatever has kidnapped and shipped off girls from middle-Africa and nothing has been done about it, they are just allowed to. But this time, one of our girls went to visit her family in Gauteng, South Africa and was abducted during the April 2015 Easter Holiday. Now her teacher has to mark her absent every day on the register. Why? Because some men are evil, immoral, corrupt and depraved, those are the only words that I can use, none others will fit into this horror. Because these so-called ‘men’ drug and kidnap young girls, and then force them to open their legs so that strangers can stick their filth inside the vagina of poor, under-aged, innocent girls. To me, this is: HORRIFIC!!! And even more loathsome because there are men who see that this is something they should do with their lives:
1) Make Money off God’s beautiful women through deceitful, nasty, predatorial, manipulative, selfish and ghastly means. It is abhorrent to me in every single way, from every single angle.
2) Be so consumed with their greed, power and penis satisfaction that they have NO IDEA what love is, and NO IDEA how much they are hurting other human beings, because they haven’t evolved from the fascination of standing up for the first time before they were one year old and seeing a dangling bit in front of them, which later goes hard.
3) Not learn to protect other human beings, not learn that their role as a “MAN” is to protect – i.e. DO NOT HURT! DO NOT HARM! DO NOT DAMAGE women or children, with their natural, so-called ‘manly’, physical strength.

Why is there a desire to hurt, harm, ‘prove’, use and abuse women when everyone ALREADY KNOWS that many MEN ARE PHYSICALLY STRONGER??? How is supporting prostitution, supporting the drugging and smuggling of innocent women “MANly”? How is it possible to look at yourself in the mirror and say “I’m a man because I can pay money for my penis to be satisfied”? IT IS ABSURD!!!

Our learner who was abducted by these thieves, and is currently being searched for by her mother and the police task force who are trying to get the ring closed down, is a funky girl. She has lived through a lot, was desperate to get her matric certificate (Grade 12), and was ready to enjoy her life with only a few months to go, and now… now we have a mother in agony, we have her friends in tears, a distraught teacher and a society that says we must just keep quiet and let the police get on with their job! When did protecting our own, fighting for our rights, our safety, our children become only a problem for the police? When was it ok that one woman was captured, never mind dozens and dozens?

Why do we live in such silence and desire to be ostriches? Why is the school not doing anything other than communicating with the police? Surely, as it claims to be a “Christian School”, the school should have everyone on all night prayer vigils, or prayers in assembly, or prayers at break, or prayers on this D6 communicator that schools have been sold into for a lot of money… Why are they, we, me, stuck in this horrid system that is suffocating us?

Money… money for kidnapping the girls and selling them… money for the pimps and madams selling out these girls… money for the drugs to keep them stuck in some foreign country as slaves to the pimps and madams selling them… no family, barely any way to keep their faith, treated as trash… for bits of paper, bits of the remnants of once beautiful trees, now just a few square centimeters with the pictures of dead people on them… all this pain and suffering to make and gather pictures of dead people… it makes me so sick!

I feel so helpless, so held back, so angry, frustrated, hurt and beside myself that I have to call myself ‘human’ alongside the vile creatures who have chosen to live a life so wretched that my mind cannot compute it on any level; other than the culprits must live in deep, dark fear or deadness within themselves; are truly the ultimate form of “WEAK” and are so deprived of life and love that hurting, abusing, using and manipulating others means absolutely nothing to them… LORD HELP THEM, PLEASE…

I’m blogging this to ask that anyone who reads it please pray for the success of the police-task force in this situation, and all others. That our learner be returned home to those who love her and will look after her and help her heal. That the women out there who voluntarily choose prostitution, will be the only ones used for the purposes of the job. That Human Trafficking and involuntary drugging will stop.

Please pray that whatever our learner, the police and/or her family need for her escape and/or rescue will be provided by Our Almighty Father in Heaven in Perfect Timing. That whatever needs to change in her abductors will change for the better, for their realisation that harming and destroying the lives of others, without the victim’s permission, is beyond heinous, horrific, selfish, weak and shameful.

Please pray for everyone to wake up and stop letting these marginal little groups create and dictate the fear of the masses and destroy a world that we should be guardians of, and not destroyers of. That we would all stop living in the inertia of fear and inability to act.
My colleagues, the learners, the family, the guys out there in the frontline and I, all thank-you for every prayer you whisper and/or cry out in this regard. Please keep praying. PLEASE.
Thank-You!
May God bless you and yours, keep you safe, and never let you have to live through this horror. Amen.

Dealers and Users

Had an experience that I wish I hadn’t. Was on my drive back from shopping, turned into my road and there was a beat up old yellow VW and about 200 metres in front of it was a smart pale blue metallic Hyundai… it was odd as the offices that they were parked outside of are closed. As I reached the stop street ahead the VW guy got out of the beat up car and into the back seat of the smart car, a few seconds later he got out again, hands in pockets and the smart car drove off, then VW drove off. I wish I had have been close enough to get the license plate number of the smart car! I would’ve taken it straight to the police station. I was miffed, so miffed about it.

Why? Why are there people in this world who are ok with dealing drugs? Why are there people in this world who are happy to destroy the lives of other human beings to make money? Why are there people stupid enough to waste their money on crack, heroin, cocaine and all the other shit that gives them one little high for a whole lot of money and creates NOTHING of value? Why, when schools teach the nastiness of the stuff, posters warn of the destruction, when hospitals are full of addicts, when there are penniless guys at the robots who have lost everything for ‘the habit’, why with all the OBVIOUS evidence of how it stuffs up your life, why go there? Where does the “it won’t happen to me” thinking come from? What is so messed up in these people’s lives that they – the dealers and the users – choose the most blatant path to: “fucked up life”? Why?

There is so much in this world that I don’t get, that I do not understand: rape, violence, drugs, prostitution, pornography, manipulation, power games… all of the things that the conscience SCREAMS at us is going to HURT, is going to CAUSE PAIN, and people do it anyway. Why?

Then I flip the coin… I was on my way back from purchasing my annual Christian Motivational stuff for the year… 150 bucks and I’m set for the year with a bit of motivation and goodness for everyday to make sure I am surrounded by healthy, focused and inspirational stuff… why? Why did I turn out as someone who goes to the Spirit and Love to get my fix, but my school mate Jason went to drugs? And even though he had kicked the habit to become the top student in his medical studies class (he was highly intelligent), he had a relapse and the dealer decided to sell him a combo with rat poison that killed Jason. A top medical student who could have saved and changed lives, now dead because someone wanted to take a shortcut to make more money!?!?!?!

WHY!?!?!?!? How did I come to value life and live next door to people who value getting materialistically ‘rich’? How did I come to care and want to help, when I’m surrounded by apathy and people who couldn’t even be bothered to use a paper recycling bin properly? Why? Why is there a great grand canyon between my values and those of my neighbour? Why do people choose hell when the grace of heaven is free and so incredible? Why?

How? How do the dealers and users sleep at night? How? Nightmares and guilt, do they even exist in their headspace? How can they be ok with their choice to openly, slowly, kill… maybe because they don’t know any different… maybe because they place no value on life… maybe because they are so used to it they are numb… even so … the dealers have the smart cars and the users don’t. Personally, I wouldn’t ever be the voluntary funder of a poison distributor’s luxurious ride, when it leaves me without. Stupid!

How I see it: If you wouldn’t write what you are doing on a billboard for the world to read about: why?