Shaping Countercultural Mental Health Narratives: From Anarchist Punk Rock Subculture To Radical Therapist Values
An Interview on Jazmine Russell's Depth Work Podcast
To watch or listen to the interview click here for Jaz’s substack:
I realized that crises people go through—psychosis, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder—are always attempts to heal and transform. I became allergic to the language of recovery because it implied returning to a previous state, whereas I believe people are transforming into something new.
“The language we have for describing mental health challenges and suffering can constrict or expand the realm of possibility for how we define ourselves. Sascha Altman DuBrul has spent his life challenging mainstream assumptions about mental health, what’s normal and abnormal, and built a community around shifting the narrative. Drawing from his personal experiences of getting locked up in a psych ward, he co-founded a radical mental health support group and media project (The Icarus Project) which proliferated the language of mental health concerns as ‘Dangerous Gifts,’ to be harnessed and worked with rather than obliterated and erased. Today we talk about lessons learned, the challenges and necessity of community organizing, developing ethical values as a provider outside the system, and visions for the future of mental health.”
Timestamps:
02:30 Sascha’s Story & The Icarus Project
07:53 From Punk Rock Subcultures to Radical Mental Health
11:11 Challenges and Transitions in Mental Health Organizing
17:14 Dangerous Gifts and other language
26:46 Using Internal Family Systems to Process Shame
42:35 Self-reflection in Community Organizing
51:30 A Vision for the Future
Excerpts:
Sascha Altman DuBrul:
When I was 18 years old, I got locked up in a psychiatric hospital for the first time. The police found me walking on the subway tracks, and I thought the world was going to end and I was going to be broadcast live on primetime television on all the channels. That's a moment in time right there.
Over the following years, I tried really hard to keep myself from getting locked up in a psych ward again because it was a horrible experience. It kept happening. In the middle of it, I did a lot of other things too. When I was 27 years old, I did this thing we could call writing a story, but it was also kind of like casting a spell.
I wrote the story about my life, and it got published in a place where thousands of people read it. This chain reaction took place where all of a sudden I went from being this lone crazy person trying to make sense of my experience to having all these other people who wanted to talk to me about their experiences too.
When I was 27, my friend Jacks McNamara and I, who I met through that experience, started this website called The Icarus Project. We said that rather than seeing ourselves as diseased and disordered, we see ourselves as having dangerous gifts, like the boy Icarus, who has wings and flies too close to the sun.
The Icarus Project grew and turned into an international network of peer-based mental health support groups. It became a media project where people talked to each other online and sometimes met in person, experimenting with different language and ways of talking about and thinking about themselves.
We got really interested in what it would look like if we created tools for people to support each other. Essentially, we were culture building, trying to create something different from what existed, and that went on for a good long time.
Jazmine Russell:
I realized something that I've never asked you before. I've heard you tell the story many times. When you talk about getting locked up and people finding you through the public story you wrote about your experience, I never really asked before how you came to understand your own experience. Clearly, you didn't get stuck in the mainstream narrative of thinking you must be crazy and that you were going to be like this for the rest of your life, always in and out of psychiatric hospitals. What gave you the worldview to diverge from that narrative?
Sascha Altman DuBrul:
Oh, well, the best way to answer that question is that I came of age in the punk rock scene in New York City. For those who don't know, I was part of this subculture in the late 1980s and early 1990s in New York, which was a very different place back then. There was a neighborhood with abandoned buildings that landlords had set on fire to collect insurance money, and a park filled with homeless people. Simultaneously, there was radical culture everywhere.
I stumbled into that world when I was 14 years old and having a really hard time at home. At the heart of that subculture was the idea that normal people were actually the ones with something wrong. If you wanted to be part of what we were doing, you had to be crazy. So, I was kind of inoculated with that subcultural understanding. When I was 18 and they told me I had a biological brain disease, I had a Suicidal Tendencies song in my head that went, "I'm not crazy. You're the one that's crazy." In many ways, that's the short answer to that.
I got locked up when I was 18 and then not again until I was 24. During those six years, I was acutely alive, understanding what freedom was because I had it taken away from me. I did things that a lot of people would never do because they'd be too scared. I rode freight trains across the country and lived in crazy collective houses. It really worked for me and for the others in my community, who were also running from ghosts of their childhoods but had a strong desire for freedom.
When I started The Icarus Project with Jacks, I wanted to take the best parts of punk rock, anarchist, traveler culture, and use them to create a support network for all kinds of people. I think we did that well, but we also brought all the problems from that world into what we were doing. We wanted it to be non-hierarchical so everyone could share power, but we didn't know how to talk about power, race, class, gender, and all that. So, for anyone out there wanting to start something, do your best to work out your own issues first because whatever you don't work out will come back as dysfunctional problems in your organization.
Jazmine Russell:
I can second that, starting the institute with Peter, on the heels of the lessons from The Icarus Project. When you mentioned 2015, it struck me that right as the transition with The Icarus Project was happening, I got involved in organizing in New York City, and Ida came out of that. We adopted some of those struggles and some new ones. Starting any kind of group or community organization means you grow up in public through the energy and essence of that organization.
At the heart of that subculture was the idea that normal people were actually the ones with something wrong. If you wanted to be part of what we were doing, you had to be crazy. So, I was inoculated with that subcultural understanding. When I was 18 and they told me I had a biological brain disease, I had a Suicidal Tendencies song in my head that went, ‘"I'm not crazy. You're the one that's crazy!’.
Sascha Altman DuBrul:
I definitely grew up through Icarus. It's challenging to put yourself out there. Going back to the first thing I said, when I was 18 years old, I got locked up in a psych ward. The police found me walking on the subway tracks, and I thought the world was about to end and that I was being broadcast live on primetime television on all the channels. I've learned to listen closely to what people say because whatever they say is reflected over and over again. It's like a fractal or a hologram; you can take one piece and see the whole thing.
My issues were about feeling watched by the entire world, and the pressure was intense. That describes how I felt as a kid: simultaneously being watched and totally alone, desperately trying to break through the wall between the larger force and my sense of being separate from it. Mania was smashing the windows of consensus reality and going over to the other side, but then I'd get kicked back down to depression. I would hold onto the ultimate truth I found in mania but get kicked back down to earth because I kept my ego on.
When you think it's about you, you're wrong. Maybe that's an interesting way to look at things, but for the most part, one of the big truths that has helped me in recent years is realizing that we should never take anything personally.
Dangerous Gifts
Jazmine Russell:
You know, with the Icarus Project, I think one of the most beautiful things about it is the development of the "dangerous gifts" analogy through the symbolism of Icarus, kind of like the canary in the coal mine analogy. For those who are not familiar with that, could you take us through it? I'd also like to hear if your ideas about mental health and mental difference have shifted from this dangerous gifts analogy.
Sascha Altman DuBrul:
I'm so glad you asked that question. What a great question.
Yeah, so when we started the project, we were both people diagnosed with bipolar disorder and told we had biological brain diseases and chemical imbalances in our brains. We were determined to reject that narrative and say, "Fuck you guys. That's not how we want to think about ourselves." We believed we could do better than that.
My friend, Sarah Belazikian, who had been my lover and traveling partner, had committed suicide the year before by jumping off a bridge. I had written a story about her called "Too Close to the Sun," and the Icarus metaphor emerged from that, soothing the pain of loss. When Jacks and I met, we talked about it and both resonated with the name. Sometimes things just fit at the right time and place, and we started using that language. It was very powerful.
The danger in how severe mental illness is perceived is the notion of using strong antipsychotic medication to keep people safe, preventing them from going through the process they need.
However, not everyone resonated with the "dangerous gifts" language. In our society, people diagnosed with serious mental illness are often considered dangerous, leading to stigmatization. People fear the mentally ill, thinking they might push someone onto subway tracks or say unsettling things in public. This perception often paints mentally ill people as dangerous because they don't play by societal rules.
Around 2007, we considered a national campaign using the "dangerous gifts" language. A colleague, Will Hall, suggested using "mad gifts" instead, focusing on the gifts from our own madness. This language was also appealing and punchy. The people who later took over The Icarus Project, who had different life experiences and were more marginalized, didn't like the "dangerous gifts" language. For them, being labeled dangerous was already a reality due to their race and economic status.
I went through a period where I didn't use the "dangerous gifts" language myself. However, while working at the New York Psychiatric Institute, I saw people struggling to describe the differences in those with severe mental illness. I realized I liked the "dangerous gifts" language because it was provocative and made people pay attention, similar to punk rock.
You asked how my views have evolved. In the public mental health system, there's often talk of recovery. My job title was something like "recovery specialist." However, I realized that crises people go through—psychosis, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder—are always attempts to heal and transform. I became allergic to the language of recovery because it implied returning to a previous state, whereas I believe people are transforming into something new. The danger in how severe mental illness is perceived is the notion of using strong antipsychotic medication to keep people safe, preventing them from going through the process they need.
Jazmine Russell:
Most of the time, people aren't even allowed to talk about their experiences because it's seen as pushing them deeper into their "psychotic" state.
Sascha Altman DuBrul:
Exactly, Jazmine.
We were actually on target. I'm almost twice as old as I was when we started The Icarus Project, and I think we nailed it. It's important to recognize that language is fluid. What one person understands isn't what another person will understand due to their associations with the words. But I still stand by what we did in 2002.
Jazmine Russell:
It's still radical to associate madness or mental health concerns with something generative, beneficial, or transformative. Even in academic settings, suggesting madness as a strategy or process of transformation is often met with resistance. People argue that romanticizing it ignores the pain. However, I've worked with many clients, both in private practice and the public mental health system, who experience psychosis. Every one of them had aspects of their experience they wanted to change and aspects they found generative.
So, whether you use "dangerous" or not, the concept of gifts trying to transform is still very beneficial today.
Sascha DuBrul is a writer and educator that has been facilitating workshops and community dialogues at universities, conferences, community centers and activist gatherings for more than two decades. From the anarchist squatter community in New York City to the Lacandon jungle of Chiapas, Mexico, to the Earth First! road blockades of the Pacific Northwest, Sascha is a pioneer in urban farming and creative mental health advocacy. He is the co-founder of the Bay Area Seed Interchange Library, the first urban seed library in North America, and The Icarus Project, a radical community support network and media project that’s actively redefining the language and culture of mental health and illness. He is currently working in private practice and raising two children in Oakland, California.
Sascha’s Website & Private Practice: https://www.saschadubrul.com/
Underground Transmissions Substack : https://undergroundtransmissions.substack.com/
The Icarus Project Archive and Resources: https://site.icarusprojectarchive.org/about-us
Icarus Project Archive Survey 2024: https://forms.gle/3EvDGq7NoyHa2Rzr9
if you’re interested in working with me here’s a link to my public/private practice:
