Workbook and Meditation for Psychiatric Drug Freedom

Over a year ago, I created a workbook and meditation for coming off psych meds. The workbook asks questions to help get at what the fears are, but more importantly, what the vision is on a deeper level.

This isn’t a WRAP (Working Recovery Action Plan) type of workbook, though I do recommend WRAP to some of my clients and friends. The purpose of the workbook and meditation for coming off psych meds isn’t crisis aversion or symptom management, but rather to delve into any deeper blocks to psychiatric drug freedom that might exist.

These are the intentions of this workbook and meditation for coming off psych meds. To see who you are once you are off of psych drugs, and who you were before. The questions in the Workbook for Psychiatric Drug Freedom are designed to help get to the essence of what this freedom means and looks like for you as an individual. It’s different for everyone.

After I wrote this workbook, it sat as a Word document on my hard drive for many months. Then one day, Sheryl Sitts, podcaster at Journey of Possibilities contacted me about doing a collaboration. She had interviewed me for her podcast several years earlier and we’d talked about psychiatric drugs and the possibility of freedom from them on her show.

I told her about the workbook I’d made and she suggested creating a companion audio meditation that folks could listen to. We worked to create a script for her that would be most effective in guiding the listener through a process of envisioning themselves free of psych drugs. I tweaked and re-tweaked it and got feedback from other psychiatric drug survivor comrades and Mad In America readers, who helped us make it more effective. We thought about what prompts would and wouldn’t be interesting, useful and digestible to those in withdrawal.

Sheryl recorded (and re-recorded) a beautiful meditation to envision yourself free from psychiatric drugs.

Both the workbook and meditation for coming off psych meds are designed to be able to be used repeatedly. The workbook questions can be revisited monthly and the meditation can be listened to as often as desired, even daily. For those who connect with audio mediation and guided visualization, practicing the daily meditation will be a great tool for reprogramming the mind and consciousness to open to greater possibilities.

Of course these tools are best used in companion with other peer supports, sound medical advice, nutritional and naturopathic counseling and careful tapering plans. The workbook and audio are in no way designed as a substitute for any other support, medical or otherwise. Rather, they are a supplement, and a powerful one.

I made this workbook and meditation for coming off psych meds because, for me and many of my comrades, it was in part my soul strength that got me through the hardest times in life, especially breaking free from psychiatry. It was something other than tapering protocols and supplement plans that was at the core of my ability to break free, though all pieces of the picture were and are important.

Here’s a video with more reflections on the workbook and its intentions.

In addition to the workbook questions, there are mixed media art pieces by Jessica Charity Wachtman which illustrate the document. It comes as a fillable PDF, which you can type in (or print out).

I released the workbook and meditation for coming off psych meds and audio softly a few weeks ago primarily to my newsletter subscribers and social media followers. A bunch of people bought it right away at the discounted launch price, which was less than half the standard price for the first couple of weeks only.

I’m planning, as well, to create some online and telephone support groups for those using the workbook and meditation and will write about those once they are established. Feel free to join my newsletter to be the first to hear and get the lowest prices (you’ll get a free e-book on alternatives to psychiatry when you join). My goal with this workbook has been to create something affordable that is also useful and will connect people with their own deeper longings and those of others. Creating ways to connect those who are using these tools will be the next step.

I welcome your suggestions and ideas for how to bring people using the workbook and meditation for coming off psych meds together to be companions for one another in withdrawal, in ways that are easy, practical, and meaningful.