i think one of the things that was most helpful for me in considering my own relationship with drugs prescribed by psychiatrists was meeting and talking to people who used those same drugs for fun. i was able to get a lot more accurate information on what those drugs actually felt like and what parts people liked and why they sought those drugs out. being able to know that people took xyz drug because they liked the way it was a downer, or that xyz drug was great for feeling relaxed and they liked the combination with other drugs they chose, was a lot more accurate and helpful information then anything that had been provided to me by a psychiatrist (pretty much exclusively the disease model of psych drugs, where psychiatrists told me that i was deficient/chemically imbalanced/etc and that this drug was manufactured for specific diagnoses and could target an underlying "disease process." none of which is particularly accurate or helpful information.)
and don't get me wrong, i don't want to take any of the psych drugs that have ever been prescribed to me ever again, i very recently was forcibly instituionalized and forcibly drugged due to my refusal to take meds. but talking about psych drugs like the other drugs i do choose to use was helpful for understanding the actual ways these drugs function and then identifying the multitude of harms within the prescription of psych drugs (forced drugging, coercion, lack of informed consent, misleading explanations of function, lack of explanation of side effects, low threshold for "effectiveness" on the research + development side of psychiatry, the ideology of cure as eradication, irresponsible polypharmacy/refusal to manage withdrawal, denial of prescriptions +labeling patients as drug seeking for wanting stimulants, etc etc etc).
anyway. solidarity between drug users of all sorts forever and always.
