Tariq Muhammad.

I am 22 years old. When I was 10 years old I was assigned a new social worker. This guy threatened my Mom. He told her that if she didn't put me in Pleasantville, a residential institution for kids, that they would sue her for medical negligence.

I was labeled as ADHD for daydreaming, and being unique, being different from other kids. I was a good reader, I was bright. I could do math in my head. The teachers didn't know what to do with me, because I learned differently. I was labeled with Oppositional Defiance Disorder. Later, after they had put me on a bunch of different drugs I was labeled with some type of Schizophrenia. From 1996 to 2002 I was in and out of mental hospitals, treatment facilities, and group homes.

I saw other kids get destroyed. I saw kids develop Tardive Dyskinesia. I saw beautiful girls deteriorate to the point where they were bloated and red and couldn't stop shaking. The psychiatric system fucked up my life. It damaged me. It caused sexual problems. It messed up my social skills. It destroyed the self confidence I had as a child. I don't ever want to be institutionalized again. I believe that the traumatic experiences and the drugs have been deliberately used to make me dysfunctional. I am ashamed of what I have been put through, so when I meet girls, I don't want them to get to know me. I just want sex. The drugs they gave me made me impotent, but now I am sexually compulsive.

I was abused. Techs would tackle and restrain me for no apparent reason. I was elbowed and hit. I was put in restraints and seclusion. When I tried to leave the Salvation Army Group Home I was restrained so forcefully that I thought I would be crushed. It broke blood vessels in my eyes and all over my face.

In Bellvue if one kid got in trouble everyone in the unit would be forced to take Benedryl to knock them out. Once I refused because it was not fair to punish all of us for the actions of one individual. They forcibly injected me in my ass. It caused uncontrollable muscle spasms in my neck, so they injected me again.

They forcibly injected me with Thorazine and other neuroleptics which caused weight gain, and vomiting, I was constantly coughing up little chunks of food. It was disgusting. My penis was burning, I was impotent. I couldn't get an erection. It was terrible. I had terrifying nightmares. I felt like a zombie. Numb. Emotionless. My mouth was dry and I broke out in skin sores. It was everything they talk about on the prescription label. My vision was blurry and I had muscle pain like someone was wrenching my arm out of it's socket. If I complained about these side effects then they said I was a hypocondriac and gave me more drugs. I was on Thorazine, Zyprexa, Risperidoll, and Haldol. The drugs caused hallucinations. I was so sick.

I did not want to take these drugs, but if I tried to stop I would be forcibly institutionalized again and again. My Mom would call the cops on me. She was physically abusive, and I used to blame her for the psychiatric abuse, but now I realize that although families have some responsibility, it is really the system in many cases that forces them. If my Mom had tried to take me out of the psychiatric system, the courts would have taken me away from her and kept me in the psychiatric system anyway.

When I was 14 I went to court. I refused to be force injected with a needle, but the City Hospital kept doing it. Then when I was 15 Mike Neville got me out of Brooklyn Children's Center State Hospital where I was being forcibly injected. I was independently evaluated, and this proved that I did not need to be forcibly drugged, but I was still stuck in group homes and stuff, where I had no access to education.

I wanted an education. I was denied an education. I was stuck in some group home, where all the kids wanted to do was chase pussy and smoke weed. The only school available was vocational stuff. Some of the kids that I knew in the institutions were smart kids too. Lots of them had so much potential. Who knows what they could have done if they had not been institutionalized and had instead gotten proper help for all the negativity in their environment? Most of these were Black and Hispanic kids. I am half Jewish and half Afghan. I used to get called a "dirty a-rab".

I cry sometimes thinking about those kids. This one boy could have been a comedian, but now he is probably a crackhead or something. A lot of kids were totally destroyed. I could see that their brains were not developing properly on these drugs. I cry sometimes thinking about what happened to them, and what happened to me, what was taken from us. You should have talked to me 5 years ago when I was first coming out of this stuff. I was really angry, and I had a lot on energy. I wanted to fight the system. I was interviewed by Douglas Montero with the New York Post in spring 2001. The article was called "The Drugging of Our Kids" He was a great guy, but it did not do anything. This stuff is still happening.

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