/lit/ - Literature

>>15334490
The Deserts of the American Southwest.

After huge cataclysm hit my family and destroyed my health back in 2014 I gathered what I could and fled from the east coast, and found my way out here, in this place. The desert does not respect you, it does not want you, it does not even acknowledge your existence as it tries to kill you. And yet it is the most tranquil and healing place that I have ever known. The wind sand and water wears and softens the edges of men and stones alike, and if you survive the process you will come learn to live in peace with the things you cannot change. The wind is free in this place to fly in the way god intended, unfettered by the blockings of trees and cities, a great and powerful breath expelled by an orange-stoned body, out in this place where the blood of the planet races beneath its skin. At night the stars come out, and so high up and clear-aired and far away from the choking glare of city lights I see the Seven Lost Orphans of the Souix, Hopi Spiderwoman at her loom, and the hero Born For Water, in all their silent glory. There is a silence out there at night, a sacred quiet that allows a man to listen to the pattering feet of commuting stars. I love this place, it's people, those of us who have been here for thousands of years and none at all. It heals me and fills me to plunge into its great barren depths, to know its tranquil hostility, to glimpse it's beauty as my canteen empties and still come out of that alive. If I must have a muse as you say, then let it be the desert.

>>14230518
(1/5)

Yes. It happened out in the wilderness high on top of a mountain, and it saved my life. But there's a reason I got there in the first place.
When I was eighteen years old, I suffered from an iatrogenic brain injury due to a dangerous combination of psychiatric drugs that had been prescribed to me over the course of several years by a researching psychiatrist at Massachusetts General Hospital. Keep in mind, trying different combinations of prescription drugs without informed consent on children for the sake of collecting data is not illegal, and considered within the bounds of standard practice under American medical law. I grew up in a time and place where as a socially-awkward and incredibly anxious child with OCD-like compulsions, I was filled with and cycled on dozens of different prescription drugs and shoved off to school. This was done to me from the time I was seven until I reached the age of eighteen and was finally allowed to make my own medical decisions. It severely impacted my quality of life, and often I feel an enormous sense of dread, wondering what it did to my development. A combination of clonazepam (a Benzodiazepine which leads to heroin-like dependency after four weeks of use) Lyrica (used experimentally as an anti-anxiolytic), along with Buproprion (Wellbutrin), and Sertraline (the common SSRI known as Zoloft, which can cause aggression and was prescribed to one of the Columbine shooters). As my brain reached the end of puberty, the toxicity of all these intermingling compounds reached a certain tolerance threshold and my nervous system began to attack itself. The GABA pathway in my brain which Benzodiazepines (and therefore alcohol) act upon is now effectively crippled, and there are certain chemicals that I need to avoid now to stay alive. This physiological process, this poisoning via malpractice sent me careening into acute withdrawal, and I spent 2015 to early 2017 fighting for my life. It forced me to drop out of school, I could not work, it made friendships difficult, and destroyed my first real relationship with a wonderful woman. It was expected that I would not survive. Unable to eat, unable to think, unable to sleep or maintain my breathing and body temperature in waves, was in hell. I never prayed until I found myself in that survival scenario. To be in withdrawal, is to be caught in your own personal mass-extinction event.
Slowly, I rebuilt myself as the poison left my system and I tapered off the dosages by 1/1000 of a gram per day. The convulsions from the clonazepam withdrawal (it's a muscle relaxant) built up fibrous plaques in my muscles and twisted the sinews, misaligning my spine. I did a year of physical therapy to correct it. I was diagnosed with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, but I'm not sure how much weight I want to give that externally-imposed definition about myself.