I want to share some tools I use to survive and integrate my experiences, compared to what the mental illness industry offers. After the non-consensual surgery, my nervous system desperately needed support to regain a sense of safety. Instead, the so-called “healthcare” system harmed me further. That’s why I started using medical marijuana. It became one of the few things upon which I could depend.
Medical marijuana works for me because it supports what my body and mind actually need. If my anxiety is high, I use enough to calm down and safely approach difficult memories. If my anxiety is lower, I don’t need any. I can increase or decrease the dose based on real-time needs, and I can stop without the brutal withdrawal process with psych meds. That’s self-directed support. That’s regulation. That’s integration in action.
Integration is not about therapy appointments that don’t work. I don’t rely on therapists. Only one has been able to help me. Most of them don’t understand the physiology of trauma; they don’t attune, and I’ve learned the hard way that paying even a supposedly specially trained psychologist out of pocket doesn’t make them effective. Instead, my primary method of integration is writing. I process what comes up, make meaning, and shape my experience into something I can hold and live with. My blog posts are not just words. They are my nervous system telling me, “I can survive this. I can integrate this. I can connect it to the rest of my life.”
Social media adds another layer. When I share my experiences online, people respond with empathy, validation, and support. Strangers across the world recognize what I’m doing, verify my strengths, and offer connection. That relational feedback is a real, living resource. It’s part of my integration. It’s proof that connection and attunement are not limited to a therapist’s office. They exist in the relationships we can access and trust.
Contrast this with psychiatric medications. I tried antidepressants and anti-anxiety medicines prescribed in response to my severe Complex PTSD. I took Lexapro for five weeks. It caused intensifying suicidal ideations and landed me in an abusive cuckoo’s nest for a week! There, they piled on the psych meds, because polypharmacy is the hammer they have. Still, I was desperate enough to try another. I quit after 3 doses because the effects were unbearable. I don’t need those pills, and I will never go on them again.
Psychotropic medications don’t support nervous system regulation, create supportive environments, shift attachment survival adaptations, or change a person’s relationship with their lived experience. They just dull the feelings to make them seem more tolerable. But we don’t need to learn to better tolerate stress and trauma. We need recovery support. A nervous system sufficiently supported will find balance.
The drugs are not biologically necessary for anyone’s nervous system. They are imposed, fixed, and coercive. They create dependency under the guise of treatment. Meanwhile, the system lectures people about “overdependence” on coping tools, even as it manufactures dependence on its own products. That’s hypocrisy.
Medical marijuana and writing are self-directed, flexible, and context-sensitive. They support my body and mind. They help me regulate and integrate. That’s real survival work. That’s adaptation. That’s the work the mental health industry fails to provide.
The lesson is clear: what the industry calls “dependence” is often just survival intelligence. People use the tools they have, and that work because other supports are missing. I use what I can rely on. I integrate through writing and relational feedback from my community. That is the real work of staying alive, of processing trauma, and of building a life that can hold what has happened. And it’s entirely in my control, unlike the medications the mental illness industry pushes, which treat dependency as a virtue and my survival as a pathology.
