explanations
insanity is safe. it is comforting. i say this from experience, and here i'm not referring to the literal meaning of insanity, as in the courtroom meaning, but i speak of it in the sense of mental illness. bipolar disorder/manic-depression, unipolar/clinical depression, double depression, dysthymic disorder, schizophrenia, multiple personality, atypical depression, obsessive-compulsive, panic disorder, post traumatic stress disorder, eating disorders -- call it what you want but i'm speaking of all these things, not of subgroups. so insanity is safe. it is that certainty to which you can return, with regards to the fact that once you have fallen into such a situation, it becomes increasingly easier to stumble right back into it. when reality becomes too much to bear, when you get tired of dealing, when you have been let down or slapped up or simply been run off your feet, you turn around and there it is, waiting, and you know that you can slip back into it, so comfortable and safe. it becomes your refuge to the point that it is that thing which you depend on most. it begins to control who you are.psychiatric hospitals are safe. the actual act of going to such a place is extremely unsafe, but once you are there, i doubt that you could find any other place that would shelter you so completely. it is true that such places are, in effect, attempting to "cure" you, but once you are put there, it is as though you have been labeled: insane. therefore, it is alright to be insane. you can lie in bed and sleep all day, you can cry to your heart's content, you can refuse to eat or refuse to take your meds or refuse to speak, you can talk nonsense when you feel like it, you can shout at people or shout at walls and wander the corridors and stare at nothing and no one will think any worse of you for it. everything is handed to you; everything is done for you, and within reason you don't have to make choices that you don't wish to make. you can sit there all day and wallow in your insanity and make your own little world, carve a niche for yourself where no one can touch you. so (unless you happen to get "better") hospitals are very safe places.
therapy is not safe. therapy is horrible if you plan on staying insane. you are made to talk about the very things that you are holding on to in order to keep yourself at this certain point, made to share with another this insanity which to you seems so very very intimate. insanity is so often the art of not thinking about what is happening to you, within you, and therapy attempts to draw all of that out into the open. therapy is dangerous. you can, of course, opt to make up an armload of crap and feed it to said therapist instead of actually sharing anything, but even in this case it's nothing more than bothersome, like sitting around with a rock in your shoe -- not in anyway life-threatening, but extremely aggrivating nonetheless.
medications are not safe. it doesn't matter what exactly you're on, the point is that you're on something, be it paxil, zoloft, prozac, wellbutrin, risperdal, so on and so forth. if you are fortunate, the ones you're on won't work, and even if you're unfortunate, you still usually have some say in controlling that -- whether or not you take your meds, for example. so it's more the idea itself, that these tiny pills and injections are making their way into your brain and messing around with the reality you've constructed there. anything that comes close to doing that has to be unsafe.
it may be cold and brutal, but it's the truth. this is why it seems so impossible at times to simply "get better." it is the process in itself that is difficult, and the way in which you have to leave everything which feels safe, comforting and familiar, to you for something with which you'd rather not deal. i'm not justifying, only explaining.
this is how it is for me. please bear with me because it's harder than it seems.