You can order the new book here

So much has changed in the nine years since we originally published this book that we both wonder sometimes if our lives are a movie or a dream. The Icarus Project is no longer fueled by the obsessive energy of two people working at a frenzied pace and holding it all together with lithium and duct tape. These days the project is supported by a network of madfolks and allies all over the world.

Last Fall we celebrated our tenth anniversary with art shows, performance nights, and skillshares on both coasts. Our publications have been translated into Spanish, French, German, Italian, Hebrew, and Croatian. People are using Icarus materials in college classrooms and hatching plans for Madness Studies as an academic discipline. Our posters and info sheets are handed out as materials to youth advocates  and peer specialists around the country. There are local Icarus inspired groups in places as far flung as North Dakota and India.

The Harm Reduction Guide to Coming Off Psychiatric Drugs was recently translated in Bosnian!

Sarajevo's Metanoia group brings together visionary professionals, psychology students, and people diagnosed with extreme states to change mental health treatments and community response. Icarista Will Hall recently visited to support their work.

You can download the new guide here

Get in touch with the group in Sarajevo on facebook here

The Icarus Project~10 Year Anniversary Celebration

The Harm Reduction Guide to Coming Off Psychiatric Drugs, published by The Icarus Project and Freedom Center five years ago, is now available in a revised edition!

The new second edition has expanded Resources, scores of new collaborators and Advisors, new topics, more detail on the reducing and coming off process, and additional ideas for harm reduction and staying on medications.

Thousands of people worldwide have used this Guide to help themselves and people they know become more empowered around medications, including coming off. Even professionals and mental health agency staff have been downloading the free guide, to fill gaps in their own knowledge and give to their clients. Now the Guide in its second edition is even better, incorporating reader feedback and new ideas.

Download the Harm Reduction Guide To Coming Off Psychiatric Drugs

The Guide is Creative Commons copyright BY-NC-ND, meaning you have advance permission to copy, print, link, publish and share as much as you want! 

Alix LeClair wrote this beautiful paper for Brad Lewis' Mad Science/Mad Pride class at Gallatin last semester. She's interested in starting up a Campus Icarus group, in her words:

"I really want to take the icarus project into reality in new york. I've been asking around at Gallatin and talking to people in my Mad Pride class about it, but you can write something on the website about how myself and some others are trying to get the
campus icarus at NYU started again.They can email me AFL255@nyu.edu I
have a lot of ideas but I can't put it into practice on my own and I'm scared about being a "leader" of anything, and I'm sure others will be interested if they only knew the group was there."

I’ve been involved with Bay Area Icarus for over a year now.  In that time, not only have I watched internal conflict and miscommunications tear apart our group, but I have heard many stories from around the country of other Icarus Project groups falling apart over the years due to groups not knowing how to deal with conflict and disagreement. We all want to create a safe and supportive space, but unless we find a way to hold each other accountable and resolve conflict in a respectful way, it seems that we are inevitably just going to keep getting harmed.  If we want to develop long term, sustainable support networks we need to find ways to heal harm done within our communities so that everyone involved can feel respected and heard. 

"If madness isn’t what biopsychiatry says it is, what is it? If we don’t agree with what biopsychiatry says, then we probably don’t agree with the treatment practices. For us to have some kind of intelligible answer to a first-year psychiatry intern who can tell you: it’s a brain disorder and every minute that it’s not being medicated, there’s irreparable damage being done.  The people who fund the research are the big phama companies that psychiatry represents.  A psychiatrist now can see 30-40 clients a day. Psychiatry says: this group of Icarus folks can sing Kumbaya all you want, but we own it.  I don’t believe that."

This Wax and Feathers zine was a collaborative work by a group of super talented folks who post on the Icarus Project forums.

They write in the intro:

"In expressing our feelings, insights, and ideas about madness and the world around us we hope to inform and inspire others. The stories told by the psychiatric establishment, pharmaceutical industry, and the mainstream media all to often overshadow our own. By sharing our stories with others we can reclaim the right to define ourselves and our experiences. We choose to honor our uniqueness and complexity by letting our voices be heard."

Download it! Print it out! Share it with your peeps! Mad Love!

http://www.theicarusproject.net/files/waxandfeathers.pdf

Icarus member FaithRR is looking for submissions for a zine about madness and motherhood. See her thread here.

Icarus forum member maamyyrä curated a collection of writing about "depression" from this forum thread and put the words together with images. It's a big download, but worth it!

Campus Icarus student organizing materials are now available for downloading and printing!

Campus Icarus FAQ

Campus Icarus Guide-Cover

Campus Icarus Guide

Campus Icarus Postcard-Front

Campus Icarus Postcard-Back

Questions? Email: campus(at)theicarusproject(dot)net

Last week in San Francisco, local author Ethan Watters spoke to a packed room of Icaristas and friends at the California Institute of Integral Studies about his most recent book: Crazy Like Us: The Globalization of the American Psyche. Ethan's book has been a really successful mainstream critique of the Biopsychiatric model and it was a pleasure having him step into the cultural underground of the Icarus Project for the evening to share ideas. It was a lively discussion which you can listen to here (you might have to download Quicktime 7 if it doesn't work -- sorry for the technical difficulties!)