Inner Compass Medication Exploration Group

Preamble

Welcome to Medication Exploration, a mutual support group for people who are questioning or thinking critically about their current or past relationship to psychiatric drugs. The purpose of this group is to provide a space for people to explore their fears, faith, questions, and concerns regarding psych meds and listen to others do the same.  

Medication Exploration is a project of Inner Compass Initiative, whose mission is to help people make more informed choices about taking and coming off psychiatric drugs. This group is not a therapy or counseling service, and nothing that is said in this space should be taken as medical or personal advice. We respect the right of all people to decide for themselves what the next best steps are in so far as taking or withdrawing from drugs is concerned. We each have our own unique set of experiences, circumstances, resources, stressors, obstacles, understandings, and supports, and what makes sense for one person might not make sense for someone else.

This group is not anti-medication or anti-psychiatry, but rather, is pro-informed choice.

 

REQUIREMENTS FOR PARTICIPATION:

• ICE Full or Sustaining Member
• You are currently or have, in the past, been on psychiatric drugs

 

Participation Guidelines

• Confidentiality is key. What is said here stays here.
   
• Share only about your own thoughts, feelings, and experiences, and about the topic of this group, which is exploring our relationships to psychiatric drugs.
   
• No crosstalk. Please refrain from interrupting, responding directly to others, or asking for or offering up advice. Each of us is here to listen with care and intention to others and receive the same in return.
   
• No naming of individual doctors, therapists, coaches, consultants, healers, other practitioners or professionals, or courses, facilities, centers, programs, or other institutions. Unfortunately, there are far too many dangerous or otherwise exploitative entities out there seeking to profit off people’s struggles with psychiatric drugs, so it’s Inner Compass Initiative’s policy to avoid naming any at all. 
   
• Keep your share to 2-3 minutes. At 2 minutes 30 seconds in, you will hear a bell letting you know you have 30 seconds left. At 3 minutes, you’ll hear the bell twice, which means it’s time to wrap up. If you continue past 3:30, the group leader will gently interrupt and say it’s time to move on to the next person.
   
• After you’ve shared, please refrain from speaking again until everyone has had a chance to do so. If there is time left after everyone who wishes to speak has had the chance to, the group leader will open it up to a second round of sharing, with shares limited one again to 2-3 minutes.
   
• Sharing goes in order of who has selected the ‘Raise hand’ functionality in Zoom.