Autumn Stringam

Better Science, Better Treatment

Somewhere in the archives of American History is the story of the birth of psychiatry. It’s not a pretty beginning. It involved lobbying and coercion and deceit. It involved a whole lot of assumptions about why people behaved poorly, or hallucinated, or couldn’t get out of bed and function.

It has been decades since the frontal lobotomy was the treatment of choice. Twenty-two years since the first research proving the addictive nature and crippling effects of benzodiazepine drugs came to light; and sixteen years since the discovery of the connection between mental illness and multiple micronutrient deficiencies. 

The discovery, made by a couple of Canadian laymen and confirmed initially by hard-core psychiatric patients on multiple medications – people like me, has now been studied in independent medical research more than any other formulation in history. There are currently 17 medical journal publishings the world over.

The discovery is changing every assumption that modern medicine has made about mental illness.

It is changing the way scientists defend the “scientific method”. It begs questions about the demand to look at one element at a time. Can we accept the notion that nature provides multiple elements that work synergistically in order to achieve a positive effect in the complex chemistry of human neurological function?

We are complicated beings, but, it turns out, the answer to the compulsions and behaviors of mental illness is not so complex.

The world is changing. The earth is not flat, and new ideas and better science prevails with each rising generation.

Here’s to the miracle of discovery and the evolution of psychiatry!

You can read about the discovery of the pig inspired micronutrient formulation in my book, ” A Promise of Hope”.

Waking Up Haunted?

 

Every once-in-awhile I wake up haunted by the things I used to do or say when I was really sick with bipolar. Does that happen to you too? Waking up remembering might be haunting, but it is one of the most beautiful parts about true Second Stage Healing. Heck, I remember times when I was heavily medicated and unable to wake up at all. I remember the days when I had to take a drug to get to sleep and another to clear the fog and another to take me off a mountain top mania and then another to scoop me off the floor and then another to get me to sleep again… and on and on it would go. But it was always without feeling.

Now, I might dread the early morning wake-up remorse, but I love the feeling of being real, remembering clearly and knowing that today I will choose to do better, choose to feel better and choose to live my life any way that I want to. Because I can. Because the out-of-control side of bipolar chemistry has been resolved for me by using the EMPowerplus micronutrient formulation instead of a fistful of medications.

For all of you EMPowerplus users who are hoping for utopia over reality; the next time you wake up haunted, remember that waking haunted is a sign that you are here now, and able to feel and choose and be deliberate about the day ahead of you!

Hooray for Second Stage Healing and all of the brave people who are going after real life and real health!

 

 

Image: Evgeni Dinev / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

 

 

Have You Hit Rock Bottom?

I know you are out there.

You are the girl who couldn’t get out of bed today. The one who lay in bed until 3pm only to wake for a toilet break and stumble back to the blankets. You ate cold cereal and took a handful of meds and you wondered why you keep trying at all. The meds probably squashed that voice that keeps telling you to end it. You think about your own death once in awhile, but part of you remembers that mania is just around the corner, and maybe that’s worth living for.

They call it rock bottom.

I’ve been there. Fifteen years ago, I was exactly where you are today. Bipolar 1 with rapid cycles and schizophrenic tendencies. Nice label. Terrible, unpredictable, miserable life punctuated by moments of hope. It was the hope for something better that kept me from killing myself the way my mother and grandfather did. Then, along came my miracle, and yours…the discovery of that micronutrient formulation from Canada, (they call it EMPowerplus now,) changed everything.

I don’t know why micronutrients work to change this stuff for people like you and me. Scientists are working hard to figure it out, but there are over 80,000 people like us who have used EMPowerplus to make a change that the meds weren’t making for them. You can do this. You can learn about a ‘new’ discovery, that for your grandkids, will be the first line of defence against mental illness.You don’t have to wait. Do your homework, or have a loved one do it for you.

Decide how you will live your next fifteen years.

Is It Too Late To Be A Healthy Mom?

Today was photo day for my boy, James. He’ll be leaving in two weeks. He’ll be gone for two years to Nicaragua. Today I watched him sitting in his suit, posing, and smiling. His whole life is ahead of him and the worst of the world is behind both of us. 

I remember a time when I wondered if he’d be okay. I wondered if he’d be messed up because of my bipolar swings between suicidal fury, delusional mania, and black velvet depression. I wondered how he’d ever grow to be ‘normal’ when all I could do is confirm to him that nothing in the world is certain…nothing predictable, nothing safe, nothing joyful.

Thank Heaven for the miracle of discovery! I started the turn around when James was three-and-a-half. His earliest developmental years were certainly a mess of inconsistency on one level, neglect on another, but it wasn’t too late to make things different. I tried through both stages of healing to make things right.

It’s never too late embrace healthy.

If you are a mom who has struggled with moods and manias, don’t lose hope. It’s never too late for your kids to have a healthy mother. You can follow thousands of others and use the principles of first and second stage healing to get healthy, find balance, forgive the illness and become who you really want to be.

James gave an interview on the weekend. He sat, lit up, with cameras rolling and told about how he has watched me grow, over our nineteen years together, into a healthy person. My twinge of guilt for the first years was quickly overridden with happiness for the years that we have shared, after my illness. Healthy did not come all at once, but James has witnessed the worst and the best of me. In a way, we have grown up together…

It’s okay to grow up with your children…

I would never have signed up for that either, Grandpa.

I am the third generation of a mood swing mess, peppered with paranoia and salted with a stigma so smothering that it killed my mother and grandfather.

When Grandpa was diagnosable, in his early twenties, America was in the shameful throws of sterilizing ‘mental deficients’ and performing frontal lobe lobotomies for mood swing resolution. I would never have signed up for that either, Grandpa. Grandpa kept his illness a not-so-well-kept secret until he finally, in an act of shame and desperation, used medication to kill himself. He was about 50 when he died.

My mother suffered in silence and with the delusion that she was alone with her tortured self. She tried drug treatments off and on but an admission of illness was more than she could bear. Being “a Manic-Depressive” marred her family name and shamed her with the fear that all the world would know they were “not right in the head.” She was medicated when she committed suicide. She was only 40 years old.

I accepted a diagnosis of bipolar as soon as my doctor said it. I was twenty, a new mom, and out from under the family influence. My mother was angry with me for doing it, but I took all the medications that my doctors prescribed and fared no better. After my mother died, I tried 13 different meds, some long term hospitalization, and was told to go have my tubes tied because I would never be well. Then, mercifully and miraculously, I took my place in the unravelling of an incredible medical discovery, made by my dad and another layman from Southern Alberta, Canada. I was torn from the grips of stigma and shame and lifted off the mood swing when micronutrient deficiency was discovered as the source of my symptoms. 

People are still dying for shame over what the world thinks is an incurable disease. But, what in Grandpa’s generation was once worthy of torture and sterilization, then in Mom’s generation, managed with life-long benzodiazepine addiction; what was once a shameful death sentence, is now a manageable issue of micronutrient balance and mood control. My generation will deal with post-acute-withdrawal syndrome as we overcome our addictions to benzodiazepines. We’ll go through the messy discontinuation syndrome as we give up our SSRI ‘happy pills.’

I did it for my children.

The world is changing once more. My children talk about mood swings and mental health with about as much shame as the common cold can wield. In our home, we know what to do about the mood swings…still working on that cure for the common cold!

 

You are a new generation.