brave enough to medicate

on leaving the New Age religion

CONTENT NOTE FOR NEW READERS: It is neither graphic nor explicit but this writing mentions sexual abuse. I thought you might want to be aware of that before diving in.

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I’m thinking of taking medication prescribed by a doctor, but people like me don’t do things like that.

Plant medicine is okay, and even MDMA in moderation. But daily pharmaceuticals as a treatment for depression or anxiety? No way. 

It wasn’t until a few weeks ago that it occurred to me: Maybe SSRIs do not represent a moral failure. Maybe that’s just what some people need to do to show up in the world and do what is required of them. Maybe if I made that choice it would be okay.

So many of my days this year have felt utterly hopeless and dark. It’s hard to tell if what I’m feeling is post-pandemic shellshock or if I’m just grief-stricken from divorce, but I miss that former version of myself who, if memory serves, was a reliably good-feeling person. 

For most of my life I’ve been in communities where taking meds wasn’t only frowned upon, it was understood that this was a departure from the spiritual path. 

In New Age circles you are responsible for creating your world. A high vibration person should be able to manage their thoughts, feelings, emotions and even life-threatening illnesses without the aid of pharmaceutical drugs. 

Social inequalities were not discussed. The additional weight of that burden on marginalized groups was not discussed. 

In “spiritual but not religious” circles, medicating is the equivalent of a sin, signifying weakness or at the very least a departure from the sacred path of personal healing. (I am trying very hard not to sound too jaded.) Though it was never stated explicitly, it was understood that taking medication was a very low vibration thing to do.

Looking back it’s pretty obvious how primed I was to decline vaccination and put the responsibility to not die from COVID in the hands of individuals, regardless of their circumstances. But I’ll save that topic for another day. 

Pharmaceuticals were painted with broad strokes: People like us do not outsource our mental health to untrustworthy for-profit enterprises whose sole aim is to accumulate more wealth by creating a drug-dependent nation.

All of my life I’ve been treated to stories of people magically healing themselves from cancer. Choosing chemotherapy seemed to me very unspiritual, as likely to kill you as cure you. But more likely to kill you. A proper spiritual person should be able to Wayne Dyer themselves out of it. Just think the right thoughts. Orchestrate a faith healing. Go see John of God in Brazil. Chant “I am well, I am in perfect health” until the cancer goes away. 

I don’t know why, but it felt different from Christian Scientists, who are explicitly forbidden from seeking medical intervention. That’s obviously crazy. Our version seemed justified and spiritual. We agreed modern medicine was good in an emergency. (Until COVID, that is.)

It wasn’t about following a bible-based teaching; This was a question of self-sovereignty. Our “cures” are meant to be sourced from within, based on our own body’s innate wisdom. 

There were loopholes though. Faith healings were okay. If your vibration was right a healing could also be performed on you by someone like John of God, Mooji, or, in another time, Osho.

It was really confusing when Wayne Dyer and Debbie Ford went to see John of God, but only Wayne got healed. When Debbie died a few years later, it seemed like a personal failure. I guess she wasn’t as spiritual as Wayne. 

Even though none of it made any sense, I sometimes long to believe many of the things I once believed. 

…and I really wish I didn’t have to go where I am about to go. 

It makes my shoulders sag. I want to cry for the loss of my religion, my community, all the things I believed in that felt so solid and familiar, that gave my world shape. I want to curl up in my mother’s arms and be consoled. 

But I am no longer the person I once was, and I cannot close my eyes to oppression, abuse, coercion and manipulation in spiritual communities. So let’s start with John of God. And let’s refer to him by his real name, Joao Teixeira de Faria, a serial rapist who will be in jail for the rest of his life.

I am sad and disappointed that a spiritual leader treated celebrities and lived in splendour for decades while sexually abusing so many women, but I am not surprised.

At this point “spiritual leader” and “sexual predator” are nearly synonymous for me. Osho has been widely exposed. I don’t understand why Mooji is still running his ashram after so many allegations of sexual abuse. 

These are the leaders I had been taught to revere and learn from. But I see no difference from the leadership of my ancestors in the Plymouth Brethren on my father’s side, or the Mennonite Church on my mother’s, except for the eastern flair.

This troubling pattern continues with the next generation of male spiritual leaders: Marc Gafni, Bentinho Massari, Keith Raniere (also in prison for life).

Tony Robbins has very good lawyers, so we won’t talk about this impeccably researched expose on Buzzfeed News. People were surprised when he was captured on film accusing a woman of using the #metoo movement to “make themselves significant” and lamented that his wealthy male friends can’t hire women anymore because it’s too dangerous. 

Again, I am not surprised.

Victim-blaming is the M.O. of the new spiritual movement, where every bad thing can be boiled down to “wrong thinking.”

There was a time when I thought this movement was different but it is not different. This is all very boilerplate. It is the same oppression regime just dressed up with different language. Instead of “saved,” we call people “high vibration.” We say “low vibration” instead of “sinner.” Instead of churches we go to drum circles, trading our crosses for crystals.

I have shed so many beliefs I look at my empty hands and wonder at what little I have left. I don’t even know if it’s okay to wear sunscreen. What about the toxic chemicals? Surely the sun, so reliable and natural, is what the body needs.

My children now brush with fluoridated toothpaste, and honestly, it feels risqué.

I would like to revise my previous statement that people like me don’t take medication. I am not that person anymore. I am a new kind of person.

People like me are brave. They ask for help when they need it. They trust their bodies. When the body cries for relief, they do not scream, “YOU ARE PERFECT JUST AS YOU ARE!”

When they get hurt they go to the doctor. They seek medical help from a trained professional, not a life coach or spiritual teacher. They weigh their options. They talk to their friends and say, “I am struggling right now. 

Please hold me while I fall apart.

Make no attempt to override my pain with a sermon about love and light.

Do not utter the word surrender. 

Do not ask me to rewire my brain.

Please let me be here in this difficult place without trying to coach me or change me.”  

I feel such peace just writing that.

It is hard enough to travel through these dark places without the expectation of having to vibrate myself out of it. I know it will pass. I know I am not alone. I know that if I need Paxil or Zoloft or Lexapro or Ativan or Librium or Valium, it does not signify a personal failure. 

It’s just something brave people do.