Every once in a while, a person with bipolar disorder can get quite aggressive and violent. They may even go into a complete rage, and these aggressive outbursts can even be turned towards themselves in the form of suicide. And as psychiatry would have it, the reasons for these violent outbursts and suicidal tendencies are because you're mentally ill. But if that were the case, how is it that Cateria House was able to take care of over 200 people with acute schizophrenia over 12 years, leaving them completely unmedicated? In fact, the book Cateria reports that only 10 minor injuries happened over that time period among the staff members and no major injuries at all. And what on earth was John Weir Perry thinking at his clinic, The Abasis, where he created a rage room which encouraged people to get in touch with their anger and express it in a controlled and protective setting? So once again, I found myself a little confused. Did bipolar disorder cause violence, aggression, and suicide? Or was something else going on beneath the surface? So to get a deeper understanding of this problem, I went to my bipolar friends at newlightbeings.com, a social network, and I asked them, what do you think made you violent or aggressive and in another question I asked them, what made them think of committing suicide if they had it all? And what I found out from the responses was that, while yes, when the ego collapses and a person goes into psychosis, there is repressed aggression that can occasionally come out. However, for many bipolar people, our aggression doesn't rear its ugly head until we're in the hands of the system that is supposed to be taken care of us. And at least initially, it's usually the system that is a lot more aggressive with us than we are with it. I've never been violent unless you include struggling to get away from the police who are violent to me. Then once hospitalized, the person in psychosis will often find themselves in the middle of a violent absurd nightmare. The confrontation with the cold and violent reality of the hospital, restraining, chemical and physical prisons, was just not understandable to me. I only became aggressive when trying to defend myself from needles or other perceived threats. When I got to the hospital, I got strapped to a bed, and the doctor came in with a big needle. I started yelling really hard. You are killing me. You are bush. Speaking personally, I think that my aggression came out of the deep knowledge that I was experiencing something vitally important and sacred, and that my hospitalization was interfering with this process. Or as one new light being described. I believe this rage is some form of primal defense or warning. Try and remove a line cub from the pride, and the lioness will stop at nothing to kill you. She doesn't display this rage out of love for her cub. No. She's in a rage because you're fucking with evolution. Once through the initial trauma of hospitalization, the bipolar person then has to face their warm and friendly psychiatrist. I got angry in the MD's office with my husband and father. I was trying to talk to my husband and explain my paranoia when the MD told him not to listen to me. That was very insulting and frustrating. It's as if the psychiatric profession has no idea of how sensitive we are when we're in psychosis and how much in need we are of compassion and understanding. I was coming so far from that other dimension that my brain just couldn't manage the information of a world where bad and wrong exists. I was obsessed with the idea of spiritual freedom, and in my view I was being persecuted by the machine in an attempt to suppress me and imprison me in their narrow view of a bleak reality. I felt spiritually raped. And then if you're lucky enough to get out of the hospital, the medications have an effect all of their own, particularly when you're trying to withdraw off of them. I am certain that my anger, in fact my entire manic episode, was caused when my doctor reduced my meds without proper, gradual tapering. Riddlein is apparently something nobody should go on because it causes uncontrollable fits of rage when it wears off. Effects are an evil poison if there ever was one. The bipolar new light being also felt that medications had a very strong connection to the suicidal tendencies as well. Something like your poisoning yourself every time you put a chemical clump of crap into your mouth is a slow form of suicide in some ways, isn't it? It was for me. To me the reasons for wanting to kill yourself are much more complex, but the relationships to meds can be a hell of a good trigger. But it's not only the world of psychiatry that can make us violent angry in suicidal, it's the way we're received by our friends and family as well. Maybe one of my friends stuck around from that part of my life. What hurts me most is how they look at me like I'm the Frankenstein monster, and how they disregard everything I say because I'm crazy to them. Most of my family talks to me like I'm a dummy, and they're scared to be in the same room with me. Or for those who are more spiritual, they think I'm a witch and that's why I'm punished for life with this disease. Something that my family and friends would only accept me again if I would surrender to lifelong medication. I took an overdose of liquid anesthetic. So while it may not be this way for everybody, many bipolar people, once diagnosed, find themselves marginalized and pathologized by society. And with a much dimmer future than they had plans during them in the face, wouldn't you be angry, maybe even suicidal? I was helpless and alone and angry and pretty out of myself. And they tied me up to a bed to make sure I didn't try that again. Back in the 80s when I was at the University of Toronto, I did two research reports on why normal people commit suicide, not necessarily people with bipolar disorder. And what I found among these so-called normal suicidal people was that the main reason that they wanted to kill themselves was exactly the same as why a bipolar person would want to kill themselves. In the long run, the worst message you can give to a human being is to tell them that their psychological and spiritual problems are biochemical disorders or diseases because it disempowers them. Dr. Peter Bregan, author of your drug, may be your problem. So with this deeper understanding of why people are aggressive and suicidal, maybe we can start to understand this suicide note written by one of our new light beings. I beg for God to please have mercy on my soul. My soul is only the victim of my mind. Please release me of this world that shows no mercy to me and allow my body to lay in the ground. Float my soul to the sky. Forgive me of my sins. I have been an agonizing pain for 12 years. Unfortunately for all of us, especially your son, Allison survived that suicide attempt and actually attributes the survival to a new, more spiritual outlook on life. Allison, I hope you don't mind me stealing a few words from your page of new light beings. My internal suffering has saved my soul. I am deeply in madly in love with the soulful right I experience inside my human shell. So am I, Allison. So am I.