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Online vs. Face-to-Face Support Groups

 

Which type of support group would work better for you?

 

 

 The advantages to the online groups are:

  1. They are always there (there's not a guarantee that someone else is in a chatroom, which I despise anyway, but the fora are always there, so you can read and type and read and type so it's like there is someone always there).  You can also come and go as you please.  While there are often chat schedules, for a forum you can log on at 2:00 a.m. for 45 minutes and then again at 7:00 p.m. for two hours.  Or do ten minutes here, 15 minutes there, whatever works best for you.

  2. It's a lot more difficult for someone to follow you home. It's not impossible, just much, much harder.  Put it this way: 99% of potential stalkers are incapable of following you home.

  3. By the same token it's much more anonymous. Not that I'm Mr. Anonymity, because I'm all about breaking the goddamn stigma, but for all of you who wish to remain anonymous, it's easier to remain anonymous when no one has to see your face. Again, a truly determined person of above average skill and intelligence can still break the veil of anonymity, but it's just harder to do.

    4.    However with many groups if all you do is read as a guest no one, not even the most determined hacker-stalker, would ever know that you were there.  You can lurk and lurk, just reading, never participating, being very quiet.  That isn't the most helpful use of a support group, but sometimes it's the only way someone can participate for some time, if at all.

  4. No one can punch you in the face after you say something stupid and hurtful.  You can get quite the online bitch-slapping, and it's up to you to learn from your mistake or decide to go all martyr on everyone.

  5. Moderators can make your stupid and hurtful things disappear. Dangerous words and phrases can be altered to be less dangerous or warning signs can be put up.

    6.    It's also easier to segregate online support groups into sections where triggering words and subjects can be used and discussed and place where they cannot.  Only the larger face-to-face groups can schedule sub-groups where the difficult things can be talked about if the agreement is to avoid triggering material most of the time.

  6. It's easier to ignore particular people through the wonders of filtering technology.

  7. No driving to across town or to another town.

    8.   This is especially important if you have some really obscure ailment.  There may be barely enough people in the state / province where you live to form a support group for some disorders.  Also a lot of places are refusing to host support groups for the mentally interesting, so more and more we nutjobs are being forced into the online world anyway.

  8. No perfume assaults.

  9. Less intense psychodrama. There's plenty of psychodrama, you just don't get  the full effect.  Believe me, if all you know is the online version, you haven't experienced real psychodrama.  While the psychodrama is absolutely required for the person whose demons are being exorcised, not everyone can handle witnessing it.  On the flip side, the person who is letting stuff out can yell, scream, cry, pound on things and all sorts of stuff like that in front of computer after typing something especially painful without worrying about who might see it or how it might affect other people.  So in that regard there is more intense psychodrama as required.

  10. Access to the vast amounts of information referred to is just a mouse click away.  People are always mentioning this book or that movie or even a website or two.  Hey, if the support group has their shit together, you can just click on something and you're there!  Plus there's a record of what everyone has said in a blog or forum-style support group going back for months, if not longer.

  11. There are zillions of online groups.  They spring up all over the place, often as little subcultures of other online communities.  They don't have to have the formal structure of a support group with hosts or moderators who are trained in the nature of a disorder or even the mechanics of a support group.  Nope, you can fuck that shit and go totally Pabst Blue Ribbon with your support groups.  While I think you'll get better quality of support and, more importantly, much higher quality of information at the more formalized ones, what is most important is your own comfort level.  Get the support you need where you're the most comfortable.  Find the culture where you fit in the best.  You can also check out the others for information.  That's the beauty of online groups, you can read invisibly without hurting anyone's feelings as you move from one to another to another until you find the place where you feel the most comfortable.

 

 

 

 

 

The advantages to the face-to-face groups are:

  1. The warmth and fuzziness of human contact, if you're into that sort of thing.

  2. Body language and tone of voice play a huge part of human communication, for those of you who pick up on them.

  3. Hugging. Again, if you're into that sort of thing.

  4. Dinner.

  5. Group activities.

  6. More cathartic experiences, both in quantity and quality.

  7. Once you ban someone, they can't come back because you know who they are. You ban someone from an online group, they just get another e-mail address and they're back to stir up shit.

  8. Med exchanges. Hey, as long as you have a prescription for the medication, it's perfectly legal to receive free medications from someone. As for giving away meds you no longer use to someone else, that could technically get you into a lot of trouble. But as long as you're giving your own unexpired meds to someone who has a prescription for those very same meds, you don't have much to worry about.  In these fucked up times what else are we going to do? It's when you do something like sell meds you got cheap for a profit, or distribute meds to people who don't have prescriptions for them that you have to be concerned about the FDA and/or DEA swooping down on your support group.  Along the same lines you can exchange information about local doctors more readily.  While many online groups have doctor locators

    9. , a local face-to-face support group is really superior when it comes to getting the dirt on local doctors.

  9. Better chances for dating. Look, it's still pretty damn lonely for a lot of us.  And, really, who else is going to understand one nutjob as well as another nutjob?

  10. Endless amounts of free coffee.

  11. When you really need someone to help you do something and all of your family and old friends are just too freaked out to be around you because of your brain cooties  - your support group people are there to, you know, support you.  Like when you need to move.  It was great that everyone online was all supportive of my moving, but no one could really help me pack.

 

I personally think the online support groups are superior to the face-to-face support groups, but I'm mildly autistic and had a truly messed up childhood so I don't play well with others.  I come across well online, but trust me, I don't do half this well in person.  And there's no way I could put up with so many people all at once if you were all in one room.  It would be freak-out city for me!  Oddly enough, I could give a speech with no problem at all.  But I can't mingle.  I can have a dialogue with one person, or I can give a speech to a roomful of people (of any size), but that's it.  There is no middle ground with me.  That's why I can't deal with chatrooms.  It's too much like talking with more than one person.  Plus most people can't type as fast as I can, which is often faster than I can talk, and I lose patience.

 

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Take care of yourself, and keep taking your crazy meds!

If you still have unanswered questions about this or other medications, including which one is, or combination of meds are the best for you, your best bet is to ask on Crazy Meds Talk.  Better yet, if you want to let the world know how they worked out for you and want to help out others in their quest for the correct meds, join the party.
If you  want to discuss your issues, I suggest checking out one of the various support groups online.  
Otherwise, if you're letting me know about how much you like or hate the site, or  need to let me know about medication effects in private, then just drop a note to jerod23 at gmail dot com  Honestly, I usually don't have a lot of time to answer e-mail these days.  The snide autoresponse message that may or may not hit your mailbox is going to tell you the same thing.
Another problem is that you may not get a response even if I wanted to send you one.  You see, so many dickweeds with malicious intents and too much time on their hands have appropriated the crazymeds.org domain name to use for their spam, viruses and the like.  Subsequently some lazy-ass e-mail protection software authors just go by the domain name, and not the IP address.  So I've been blacklisted because of the actions of others.  Or the software just doesn't like the domain name because of the "crazy" and/or "meds."  Or your question about a particular medication will set off spam flags.  So the e-mail just wouldn't go through regardless.  Sorry.

 

 

Hey, did you find this page all by itself through Google or some other search engine? Great! But to really appreciate the entire site, you need to start here.

 

 

Created Monday, November 29, 2004

Last updated Saturday, May 15, 2010

 

Copyright © 2003 - 2007 Jerod Poore. All rights reserved.

 

Almost all of the material on this site is copyright © 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006 and 2007 Jerod Poore. Except, of course, the PI sheets, those are the property of the drug companies who developed the drugs the sheets are about.  And any documents that are written by other people which may be posted to this site will remain the property of the original authors.  You cannot reproduce this page or any other material on this site outside of the boundaries of fair use copying without the express permission of the copyright holder.  That's usually me, so just ask first.  That means if want to print out a few pages to take to your doctor, therapist, counselor, support group, non-understanding family members or something like that - then that's OK to just do.  Go for it!  Please.  As long as you include this copyright notice and the following disclaimer, I'm cool with it.

All rights reserved. No warranty is expressed or implied in this information. Consult one or more doctors and pharmacists before taking, or changing how you take any neurological and/or psychiatric medication. Your mileage may vary. What happened to us won't necessarily happen to you. Nobody on this site is a doctor, therapist, or a pharmacist. We don't portray them either here or on TV. Only doctors can diagnose and treat an illness. Some doctors tend to get pissed off by patients who know too much about medications, so tread lightly when and where appropriate. Diagnosing yourself from a website is like defending yourself in court, you suddenly have a fool for a doctor. Don't be a cyberchondriac, thinking you have every disease you see a website about, or that you'll get every side effect from every medication. Self-prescribing is just as dangerous.  All information on this site has been obtained through personal experience, the experiences of my friends, the experiences of people reported on online support groups, and from sources that are referenced throughout the site.  Know your sources!  As such the information presented here is not a substitute for real medical advice from your real doctor, just a compliment to it.  No neurologists, psychiatrists, therapists or pharmacists were harmed in the production of this website. All brand names of the drugs listed in this site are the trademarks of the companies listed after them in the pages about the drugs, even though those companies may or may not have been acquired by other companies who may or may not be listed in this site by the time you read this. Always read the PI sheet that comes with your medications and never ever throw them away.  If you didn't get a PI sheet, demand one.  Loudly.  Crazy Meds is not responsible for the content of sites we provide links to.  We like them, or they're paid advertisements, or they're something you should read to make an informed decision about a particular med.  Sometimes they're more than one of those things.  But what's on those sites is their business, not ours.  Very little information about visitors to this site is collected or saved. And from time to time I do look at search terms used to find it in an effort to make the information I present more relevant. Use only as directed. Void where prohibited.

 

"Everything is true, nothing is permitted." - Jerod Poore