Healing Mental Illness Naturally

By eighth grade, I was battling depression and not wanting to leave the house. I approached my mother, but her response was that I had “nothing to be depressed about.” I learned from that day forward to keep such issues to myself. I remember feeling very lost, alone, sad, hopeless and confused. Daily tasks were incredibly difficult and I cried quietly in my room for months on end.

My diet growing up was considered healthy for its time. My mother was a wonderful cook and made most meals from scratch. My siblings and I were amply fed, but we were eating a lot of sugar, starchy foods and refined carbohydrates. I had trouble keeping my weight down the entire time that I lived at home. I loved toast, boxed cereals, sandwiches, pancakes, potatoes, pasta, pizza, french fries, perogies, cookies, muffins, pastries, and the occasional treat of a chocolate bar, potato chips and soda pop. Looking back, I was overfed and undernourished.

By the time I got to university, I learned to control my weight by calorie restriction, usually bingeing and then starving. I wasn’t overly concerned with the nutritional content of what I was eating. As long as I was thin, it didn’t matter how I got there. I was focused, hard-working and extremely ambitious.

After a failed first marriage and stressful career as a big city realtor, I decided to move to a small community in rural Ontario to raise my two and four year old daughters. I was thirty years old, exhausted, and hoped that a year away from the fast-paced demands of city living would be enough to regain my strength. In reality, I was completely burned out, nutritionally depleted, and had been running on empty for years. I was a single mom with few friends, living off savings and waitresing in the warm months, with two daughters in daycare, trying to keep ahead of the bills. It all came to a head a year after our move, and I suffered a complete nervous breakdown. A friend of mine from a nearby religious community came and lived with us for three weeks so that I could rest and get back on my feet. At this time, I was put on medication for major depression and referred to a psychiatrist. The medication made me feel temporarily better, but then much worse.

MEDICATION AND SIDE EFFECTS

I would spend the next fourteen years as a psychiatric patient. These were the darkest years of my entire life. In 2005, I found myself in a psychiatric hospital in Guelph, Ontario doing an 8 week stay for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. This was one of the lowest points of my life. Yet strangely, through the course of my stay I suspected that I was sane after all.  After that, in a never ending attempt to stabilize my moods, I was moved from one prescription to the next. None were ever effective in alleviating my depression. The terrible side effects the drugs I was prescribed far outweighed any benefits they were supposed to provide. I was told by several psychiatrists that I would be on these meds for the rest of my life.

ALCOHOLISM

Alcohol would gradually become my best friend. It eased the depression and lowered the anxiety and loneliness. It was the best remedy for post traumatic stress disorder. It would dull the pain of daily living in which I found myself. However, once I took a drink, I wanted another and then another. I had been a binge drinker my entire life, but had stopped drinking altogether when I left the city.  However, as things got worse, I gradually became a daily drinker over a three year period. I would start at suppertime and pick up in the evening after the kids were in bed. We were making and bottling our own wine, which meant that we always had an inexpensive supply on hand. Tylenol and coffee were part of my morning ritual each day. I eventually realized I had a problem, and found a permanent seat in a recovery group. My last drink was on November 30th, 2000.

BIPOLAR DISORDER

The meds prescribed for my depression never really worked for me. Over the course of my treatment, I had seven different psychiatrists and was put on almost every anti-depressant available. In 2003, I was put on a new anti-depressant and began having manic and depressive episodes. I believe this new medication led to a chemically induced bipolar disorder. To counteract this, I was then prescribed mood stabilizers combined with another anti-depressant. The side effects caused suicidal ideation that would not go away. Not long after that, I began having auditory and visual hallucinations – something I had never experienced before. I began to see or hear the devil on an almost daily basis. The terror and hopelessness brought on by this psychological torture was absolutely the worst experience of my life. I fully understand why people take their lives when the suffering gets to this level. It is a despair beyond comprehension.

ANXIETY AND PANIC ATTACKS

Crippling anxiety and panic attacks were some of the worst side effects of the medications I was given. Intense social anxiety was my a constant companion, and I was often unable to leave the house. There were times when I did go out, only to be suddenly paralyzed with panic, barely able to breathe, feeling as though I were having a heart attack. As the years on various medications progressed, so did these two side-effects. I am so grateful to this day that I was never encouraged to use benzodiazepines for extended periods of time. Benzos are very addictive, and after a taste of them during a very stressful period, I wanted more. I have my doctor at the time to thank for having discouraged me from using them. I then began researching herbal remedies and found some combinations which helped greatly with the anxiety and panic.

SIDE-EFFECTS

There are so many other side effects that I experienced while taking these drugs. These included unexplained anger, impaired sexual function, weight gain, increased constipation, depression, drowsiness, dry mouth, headaches, liver pain, mania, slow speech, memory problems, long uncontrolled periods of crying and a zombie-like demeanor. These side effects are what caused me to quit so many of these drugs and search for better solution in a new prescription.

WITHDRAWAL

Every time the drugs were changed, I would suffer through withdrawals that would last from days to weeks and sometimes months. Most of the doctors at that time were convinced there was no withdrawal from these meds. With perhaps one exception, they seemed to show little concern for the effects that stopping cold turkey and starting on another med would have on me. This was horrible beyond belief, and over a fourteen year period, it happened more times than I can remember. When dosages were missed or reduced, I would start going through the hellish symptoms of withdrawal.  These included electric-shock-like experiences – “brain zaps”, increased anxiety, shaking, sweating, dizziness, nausea, vomiting, debilitating migraines and severe depression.

DISABILITY

In the midst of all this, I again began working again as a realtor. However, after a seven week hospitalization, I was encouraged to apply for a disability. I applied and it was granted immediately. I loved my career and my dream was to open my own brokerage. This was a very dark time for me. It was a loss that hit me with incredible force. I was no longer able to work, and we moved out of our beautiful riverfront dream home in the country. We decided that I needed to be closer to urban services and the acute mental health unit at the local hospital.

Once again, ten years later, I was beyond exhausted. I had terrible body pain, chronic migraines, dangerously low blood pressure, dizziness and constant flu-like symptoms. Every time I went to the doctor’s office these were dismissed as side effects of my meds, or I was told I was depressed and that this was the way it was going to be. Anemia was a constant problem but doctors didn’t really seem concerned, and just blamed it on my menses. I was five years sober at this time, so I knew that it wasn’t caused by the alcohol. I was getting sicker and sicker and barely leaving the new house we were now in.

WHEN NOTHING CHANGES, NOTHING CHANGES

In the fall of 2007, I hit my bottom with the mental illness. I knew I had to do something differently. I had been reading on the internet about how Dr. Abram Hoffer and Dr. Carl Pfeiffer were treating and claiming to cure patients with psychiatric conditions using nutrients instead of drugs. For the first time in many years, I felt a glimmer of hope, knowing that it wasn’t possible to feel any worse than I already did. I had nothing to lose and possibly everything to gain from trying their approach.

I discovered a company offering a nutritional supplements and telephone support to persons who had purchased their product while discontinuing use of prescription drugs. With the support of my husband and the owner of my favorite health food store, I took the chance. Within a month of beginning on this new supplement and weaning myself off the prescription meds, was encouraged to discontinue the drugs completely. After I was completely off everything, I went through severe acute withdrawal with symptoms that lasted for weeks. What I noticed almost immediately, however, was that my anxiety levels and depressive mood had dropped about eighty percent, and my panic attacks were completely gone. It was one of the most hopeful times of my life.

“The doctor of the future will give no medication, but will interest his patients in the care of the human frame, diet and in the cause and prevention of disease. ~ ”
― Thomas Edison

After three months on these supplements, my constant fatigue and body pain were not improving. I was housebound at the time and extremely weak. I was told about a doctor who was prescribing nutritional change and dietary supplements rather than drugs when at all possible, and decided to give him a try.

Diet Change

At my first appointment I was diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia. I was so relieved to find this doctor, whom I believe saved my life and set me on a new path toward healing. He recommended several natural supplements to rebuild my vitamin and mineral deficiencies, and began testing for food allergies. I tested positive for gluten and cow dairy sensitivities, and was strongly encouraged to bring my eating habits in line with Elaine Gottschall’s Specific Carbohydrate Diet. Changing my diet was such a steep learning curve. There were many instances when I found myself standing in the middle of our kitchen not knowing what the heck I was going to eat. In time, it got easier but I wasn’t sure how I was going to survive without all of my addictive high carbohydrate foods.

My health began to improve slightly after about 2 months. I only had one final depressive episode. I went back to my new doctor and told him about this recurrence of depression. He asked which supplements I was taking and what I was eating. Then he asked what I was putting on my skin. I had been using a lot of moisturizer and was advised to use olive or coconut oil instead. He advised me not to put anything on my skin that I wasn’t willing to eat. That was the last time I have been depressed or manic. Such an incredible miracle.

I presently eat in keeping with a Paleo Diet, which has worked amazingly well to restore my health completely.

Food Matters

I have been medication-free since October, 2007. I have been completely restored to health after having conquered my nutritional deficiencies and chronic infections. I no longer suffer from depression, mania, anxiety, Lyme Disease, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Fibromyalgia, chronic migraines, hypothyroidism, adrenal fatigue or body pain. Once I began healing my gut, detoxing my body and flooding it with great nutrition, my body healed itself of all disease. I am currently in the best shape and health of my entire life.

Here is a more detailed article that covers everything that I did.

If you are interested in booking a consult, please go to this page for nutritional therapy and hair analysis.

Blessings and Best of Health!

Brenda

If you like this article, please feel free to share it!