robertpfaff

Male

Charleston, SC

Literature, Theater, Research, Physical Fitness, Nutrition, Animals, Economics, Finance, Politics, Nonprofits, Progressive Politics, Charitable and Social Causes.

<p>Hello and welcome to my profile!</p>
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My educational background includes a bachelor's degree in English Literature and Theater, including training at Carnegie-Mellon's University's acting and theater program. I spent most of my career in non-profit and financial services, writing thousands of successful communications that included articles, newsletters, annual reports, web content, solicitation letters, brochures and proposals that raised more than $100,000,000.</p>
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I earned my Master's Degree in International Business with a concentration in Finance and Economics from an internationally top-ranked program. This degree required fluency in French, a second language I have studied for the past 35 years. I am semi-retired now and pursuing a second career as a freelance writer and novelist. I continue to stay involved in progressive charitable and political causes.</p>
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At Harvard University, an excerpt from a class in memoir entitled “Wild Life†was published in Alexandra Johnson’s “Leaving a Trace,†winner of the Penn/Faulkner Award for Non-Fiction. Another excerpt was published in “The Brattler,†the literary magazine at Harvard. This essay inspired my literary fiction novel "Wild Life" about my mother's career rescuing endangered species and how I became the one wild and wounded creature she could not embrace. I participated in the March 2015 NYC Algonkian Pitch Conference, where “Wild Life†secured the interest of a Senior Editor at a major publishing house and a major literary agent in California.</p>
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It requires an additional revision before I submit the manuscript.</p>
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In 2008, I was misdiagnosed “mildly†bipolar, placed on six-eight different dangerous and addictive medications. I should have died coming off of them when through the cognitive fog, I realized that the cure was worse than the disease. For some godless reason, another psychiatric team decided to remove me from these medications in less than five days, causing three months of cerebral shock - an intense, agoraphobic, obsessive-compulsive horror show which my doctor called "neurologically impossible," and then tried to dump me into a kindergarten for people with psychotic disorders. Three years later, I am medication free, tapered safely and humanely, with no symptoms of a major psychiatric illness whatsoever.</p>
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It's a brutal pseudo-science and the contempt that first inspired my horror novel “Schrodinger’s Ghost,†evolved into so much more when my research led me full circle to the study quantum physics and consciousness – and it became a healing, positive spiritual belief system, with a renewed devotion to meditation, nutrition, and physical exercise. That covers most of my current interests.</p>
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I am more than a psychiatric survivor. I am a psychiatric warrior.</p>
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I should not have survived. I do not know how I survived, but I have decided why I survived – to speak for those who did not. I read several articles each week about people who die from withdrawal or committed suicide on fewer medications than I was prescribed, some of them for years. Most recently, my article on “Protracted Benzodiazepine Withdrawal†on Pulitzer-prize shortlisted Dr. Robert Whitaker's Mad in America blog went viral, with a minimum of 10,000 views before it was picked up by Yahoo News and other news outlets.</p>