The Order of the Third Star.

The Order of the Third Star...
is an award that you chose to give to yourself for surviving psychiatric intervention. It is for the people who are labelled as 'ill' and set out to recover from the situations that caused them to get that label, and from the treatment they received as part of psychiatric 'help'.

It is for all people who stand by the side of, and with those who are called 'ill'.

It is for anyone who dares to just drop the idea of disorder, dares to question the idea of chemical imbalances causing panic, anxiety, hearing voices, and psychosis as if these are a diabetes-like disease. It is for anyone who has gone through the hell of getting off psychiatric medication, and out of psychiatric 'help' either as a patient or as a supporter, as a friend or as an ally of a person who became a 'service user' and decided to leave the medical path behind.

As you know, the way out is tough, the journey may well be extremely difficult. It may ask of you more courage than you believe yourself to have. When my son decided to be drug free I felt as if I was without any map, at first I felt as if I'd fallen into in a country without a single star to guide me.

But as we worked our way through ending Risperidone, then Citalopram, then Lorazepam, each one bringing quite severe 'relapses' as the psychiatric profession would say - or more correctly each discontinuation syndrome - 'Service User' is now more able to deal with the traumas and pain that were running at full pelt under the drugs, under the cover of sedation, under the distressing side effects...and so I do not regret for a single second 'Service User's' choice, though it is a severe test to feel and recognise each and every emotion under the sun, seen my own weakness and lost and found strength and love a thousand times.

Why Order of the Third Star?
I remember a Scandinavian folk tale, about a soup made from a white snake. When this rare and sacred snake is boiled, three stars come up from the snake into the water. But the third star is one of three. The first star gives you wisdom, the second star gives you deep insight, and to get to those sometimes you will have to take on the third star as well... and the third star is the star that 'whirls round and round like a wheel and sends you mad'.

If you are walking this path into the mapless country and have taken on the challenge of the third star, please make yourself the badge, and use the design. We should be proud of ourselves, and we should not be alone!

One day we will meet and celebrate our courage..

On a small farm in Seljord there lived a woman who was skilled in witchcraft of every kind. And good teachers she had too! One time she found a white snake. It's a rare bit of luck to happen on snakes of that sort, and they have the power to heal all sicknesses. When you cook the white snake, three stars come up on the water it is boiling in. The first makes you wise, the second gives you the Second Sight, but the third drives you mad - and that one whirls around and around like a wheel!

So the woman began cooking the snake in the usual way, and in the middle she went out to the cowsheds to settle her cows in their stalls. Her little daughter Margrit went trotting about in the kitchen on her own. She saw the stew standing there and just being a child she thought it was some soup. She took a hunk of bread and dipped it in the stew, and happened to catch the star that gives Second Sight. As soon as she had swallowed that bread she could see right through thick walls.

So she went down to the cowsheds to her mom, and cried out cheerfully "Now I know what the calf our Goldie is carrying looks like!"

"Oh Lord help us, child, you've not been at that stew!" screamed her mother. She knew Margrit would be bound to suffer through the gift of the Second Sight.

And suffer she did. Everything bad that happened in all the district round about, she saw it all. When a man drowned off Sinnes Point Margrit saw it. She was almost besides herself with terror, screaming  and crying out that they must go out and help this man. she never slept a wink, night or day, because of everything she saw, and in the end she quite lost her wits. But by good luck a wondering Lapp came to the farm. When he found out what was wrong with the girl he took that thing out of her and threw it up to the four winds. From that day on, Margrit never had the gift of Second Sight.