What's Your Proudest Accomplishment?

Considering how much ugly chunks of plastic cost, I'd reckon so...
Buy Natural Loose Blue Sapphire Gemstones at AJS Gems
(that's not my link. Just randomly found with an Internet search)

Precious and semi-precious gems? Yes, they can be very lucrative. I know several people who make a living solely on stones. Of course, they also have lapidary equipment. I don't have any at the time, and it's spendy - but I have friends on my forums who cut the rock for me for part of the material, so it only costs me indirectly.

An agate might be worth 50 cents to hundreds of dollars depending on the stone, size, quality, etc. One fairburn agate (13 lbs) just sold for around $15,000 bucks. Needless to say - you have to be good at finding the stuff. If it were all that common and easy to find, it wouldn't be worth much.

Now take your average 5 dollar agate - you slab it into, say 4 slabs and suddenly you have 4 slabs worth 5 to 20 bucks apiece - now take those 4 slabs and make cabochons, and you are looking at up to 100 bucks a cab - most going for between 10 and 40 bucks each. Say you only get 2 good cabs out of each slab. That's still an expensive rock, huh? That's only agate (semi-precious). You can also find precious gems. . It's creative satisfaction - and if you are finding your own stones rather than buying or trading - that's a lot of outdoor adventure/treasure hunting.

Most people are only hobby collectors. Since that damned show ...something Treasures... came on,, people think they will become automatically rich if they find something and are destroying land at a crazy pace. A lot of it is getting shut down. So don't take my post to say "anyone can get rich at this". You most likely can't - but with enough time and expertise and a knack for either working or finding the stones, and good networking within the community, you can make a decent living.

Jonathan, not to be argumentative, but your premise for your conclusion is totally flawed. You will never find a mental health professional to ever use the word cured as it pertains to many, if not all, psychological disorders and that is because they rarely know the cause of such conditions. The general term used is 'no longer exhibiting the symptoms' of a particular disorder.

Additionally, you must understand that the actions taken to help you regain any semblance of normalcy may not be effective on any other individual, such as relying on a higher power. That you believe this is partially responsible for your 'cure' is nothing more than your assumption and your perspective.

I have been treated for wide range of psychiatric disorders, probably for longer than you have been alive. What has 'worked' for you has been worthless for me.

While I am quite able to function on a daily basis (though some would say that is highly debatable), that has been achieved by nothing more profound than a personal discovery about how to 'cope' with my condition.

I discuss this with my shrink on a weekly basis and we both agree that overcoming mental illness, unless rooted in an actual physical brain injury, is usually achieved through nothing more than living long enough to be able to learn how to live with one's condition. Granted, schizophrenia is one of the more serious conditions and will usually require a medication regimen, but the meds don't actually cure anything.

Of course there is a wide range of conditions and the degree to which they affect each person, but stating facts that can give hope to others can be harmful to those that you are hold out hope to. Some people will never 'get better' regardless of the medication and some people will show improvement, without meds. These are mysteries. There are no hard and fast rules, certainties and guaranteed outcomes. The clinical term is, 'managed.' This is also what is meant by 'developing coping skills.'

No one has ever been cured of any mental illness because the fact remains that although you may not exhibit signs of same for up to decades, a person can wake up one day to be as sick as they once were, regardless of the amount of time that has elapsed. It's very much akin to being in remission for cancer. That does not mean that a person does not have a strong likelihood of being stricken at any point in the future.

Blanket statements serve no one. Of course you want to make them to support your continued recovery, but if you think about it they should always be prefaced with, "As it relates to me," or, "In my personal experience," because in the end, it's just that - personal and has no true significance for any other person on the planet. If it did everyone suffering the debilitating effects of mental illness would simply follow your course of action and the entire world would be cured. To profess that belief is, well, I don't know how else to put this - delusional.

I truly wish you continued success with learning to cope. In reality, the ability to do so should afford you more hope and increased self-confidence than choosing to believe that it was meds or a higher power that is responsible for your improvement. Take some credit for being instrumental in turning your life around through the sheer force of your own will. You deserve it :-)

Cheers. - Frank

P.S. I realize that you did not mention a higher power in your post. I confused that with "higher self' but am too lazy to rewrite my post. I think you get my drift. :-)