Finding Freedom

A conversation with Meghan Murphy

Meghan Murphy first came across my radar when she was banned from the pre-Elon Musk Twittersphere simply for saying, “males can’t become female”. A forthright defender of freedom of speech and women’s rights, Meghan’s work taught me a lot about modern day censorship and the authoritarian streak in identity politics.

The endless expansion of mental health identities hasn’t escaped Meghan’s notice, and in this interview we talk about the liberation I found in letting go of my ‘bipolar’ diagnosis. We get into some of the dopier parts of the modern mental health industry (AuDHD anyone?), but in one of my favourite parts of the conversation we just talked about how much we both love our work.

Refining my skills as a writer and researcher has done more to improve my mental health than 20 straight years of psychiatric treatment did. Working on the issues I care most about is empowering and meaningful in a way that ruminating on my emotions wasn’t.

Thankfully, Meghan is now back on Twitter! Check out her podcast, The Same Drugs, and follow her on the links below.

And if you haven’t already, please subscribe to my Substack. I’m close to 700 subscribers and hoping to hit 1,000 by the end of 2026. I have another essay in the works, in which I hope to answer a question I’ve been asked a lot recently: what about serious mental illness? Understandably given tragedies like those in Southport and Nottingham, where UK authorities failed to protect the public from individuals who were seriously mentally ill, people have questions about public protection when it comes to mental health reform.

I’m looking forward to sharing my thoughts about how we might do things differently, so please subscribe and join the conversation in the comments!

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Links

Follow Meghan on Substack:

X: https://x.com/MeghanEMurphy

And visit her website, Feminist Current: https://www.feministcurrent.com/