<Photo 1>and I'm a victim of it, just like many many others. I'm not drunk right now, this is a serious post. I can't sleep because I feel the weight of a people in dire peril, and I'm completely helpless in the wake of it.
helpless is the best word I can use to describe the feeling. let me explain my situation as if you even fucking care.
hi, I'm a psychiatric patient. I take antidepressants and antipsychotics. many of you probably don't even understand what this means. many of you might even be thinking "wow, you must be crazy to be on meds like that!" in any event, you're an idiot. again, let me explain. this is my story.
I used to be depressed. I had a lot of reasons for being depressed. post my breakup with my first girlfriend, I was a wreck. it took me a long long time to recover from that. anyone that has truely ever been in love, and lost it because of circumstances completely beyond your control might understand where I'm coming from. as a result of the breakup I developed rejection issues. I was dealing with loss, grief, the whole nine yards. I was such a wreck I began, wrongly, blaming myself for the breakup that was going to happen anyway for very good reasons. (we parted on very good terms, by the way.) that negative thought process stuck for a while before I was able to really get over it. and it affected my life negatively.
2 years later, I experienced what can be called a relapse from the breakup. my mother explained to me that it's very common for feelings of loss and grief to resurface around 2 years after a big breakup of the magnitude mine was. this is part of your emotional self finally processing and releasing all that pent up feeling that's been there since the first episode. this is a natural process the body, mind and soul takes to cleanse itself. needless to say, I was depressed again. very badly so. the depression stuck around for a while and I fell into a world of mind altering indulgence. I began performing poorly in school, and as a rebound became almost manic. my mother saw these changes in me and had me see a doctor, who wanted me to try a number of alternative methods of getting better.
but we didn't get around to those methods because my mother stepped into the picture and suggested Effexor, an antidepressant, as a treatment for my "condition" to the doctor. who was reluctant, but willing to go along with this.
at this point, I'd like to point out that I was going through a phase. a phase that needed to be naturally processed and released. but, like so many in western society, it was seen as a Disorder. my mother, buying into the scare that is mental illness, took action because she was scared for me, and sought the easiest and most common treatment for a fake illness.
at this point in my story, I decided to move to portland, oregon. fresh on a psychiatric drug and ready for a new chapter in my life. one where I was literally leaving behind all the pain and agony I underwent over the past 2 years. this was part of me getting over it all. so I moved out west, transfered schools, changed my major, and started making new friends. these are all stressors, by the way, which affected me a little bit down the road. but I'm jumping ahead of myself.
this antidepressant wasn't doing anything for me. I was already getting over all the shit that I was feeling before, and the drug just fucked with me. it made me feel dizzy, sick, and I had heart palpatations. (sounds dangerous, doesn't it.) so when I came home for break I saw my family doctor, who put me on Lexapro instead, another antidepressant. I was on this drug for about 8 months. it didn't feel like it was doing anything to me, but I felt dirty for putting a foreign, synthetic substance in my body.
this is when things started to unravel. I got depressed again (even though I was on antidepressants) because I was wondering if I made the right choice for my life path (that is, moving to portland and changing schools). I was taking a full load at school, and those stressors I mentioned before? yeah, they kicked in. I went a little crazy. I had horrible anxiety, I was smoking a lot of pot, and I was starting to sort of lose myself. this is a result of the tremendous stress I was feeling but not actually realizing it was stress.
I freaked out. the best way I can describe it is a nervous breakdown. soooo much stress from a new school, with a new major, making new friends, living by myself in a new city across the country. that's a lot to handle, particularly when you're wondering if it was the right move (I think that's where most of my anxiety came from).
so when I went home, I told my mother about it. at this point I was put into therapy (at my mother's suggestion), so I told my therapist about it. his response was that I needed to see a psychiatrist. so, wrongly trusting this man who hadn't actually helped me deal with any issues at all, I went to the psychiatrist. I was so run down by this nervous breakdown that all I wanted was to be well again. I was desperate. in that desperation I listened intently and believed the psychiatrist when he said I had a thought disorder. he put me on antipsychotics and took me off the antidepressants.
now I was on a more dangerous drug. one that fucked me up royally. it was called Risperdal, and it's approved for the treatment of schizophrenia. I'd like to take a quick time out to educate all of you about schizophrenia:
schizophrenia is a "disease" that is poorly understood, and that's because it's not real. people with schizophrenia often have delusions, and hallucinate. most commonly they are paranoid or catanoic. schizophrenia can also be diagnosed when a person is having trouble putting thoughts together, or isn't feeling anything at all. or when they are experiencing social withdrawal. many times, a person will be diagnosed schizophrenic when they don't hallucinate, but believe things that society doesn't believe is true. a friend of a friend was diagnosed schizo-affective because he believed he could talk to plants.
some of you may be thinking "yeah, that's crazy alright. talking to plants? give me a break." once again, you're an idiot. if talking to plants means they are schizophrenic, then every person who believes in god is schizophrenic.
the point I'm trying to make is that schizophrenia is a disease with many theories as to it's cause in the brain, and many theories as to how it's defined and just what the hell it is. no one can fully agree with eachother on the issue. and powerful mind shifting drugs are prescribed to these people.
I was prescribed a drug used to treat schizophrenia because I was told I had a "thought disorder".
back to my story, I took the Risperdal and it fucked me up. I grew quiet. I didn't want to talk. I didn't feel like I could properly communicate, or felt apathetic towards it altogether. I slept often. often. I grew lethargic and had no energy, and constantly appeared to be "down in the dumps". this can be misinterpreted as the negative symptoms of schizophrenia. but let me tell you because I've been there, it's the drugs that made me that way.
so I went back to my psychiatrist and expressed my concerns, and he put me on another antispychotic called Geodon (literally meaning "down to earth"...that should give you a clue as to what the goal of this drug is). once again I was lethargic and slept a lot, but I was able to talk again after a while.
because I was so shaken by my nervous breakdown and the stress, I took a semester off school and stayed home. partly because I wanted to sort myself out, and partly because the drugs were fucking me up so much I couldn't function.
my mother saw how I was on the drugs and couldn't tell if the drugs were doing it to me, or if I was just fucked up. "sick" as some people say. it was the drugs.
I spent this time at home figuring my shit out. calming down from the stress, and trying to re-evaluate what I was doing with my life. all this time I was seeing a therapist, which, like I said before, wasn't helping me at all. I figured all this shit out on my own. therapy is a waste of money.
because the drugs fucked me up so much, and I was in the middle of a sort of existential crisis, my mother saw all this and thought I was depressed again. so what happened? I went back on antidepressants. this time it was wellbutrin, which has a stimulating effect that counter-acted the tiredness I felt from the geodon. I was more awake, more alert, and everything seemed much better.
let me take another moment to explain a little bit about the interactions between these two drugs. this is as my psychiatrist explained it, and it was a serious concern of his at first. geodon acts on the dopamine receptors in the brain. it blocks dopamine from acting on these receptors. a thought disorder is thought to be due to excessive dopamine activity in the brain. this is one of several theories, but it is the most commonly accepted one to date. wellbutrin acts on norepinephrine (the antidepressant action), but also stimulates dopamine activity. because of this, he warned me that I might start having strange thoughts or trouble thinking, and if I did to tell him immediately. in other words, I might get a little "sick" in the head.
guess what? nothing happened. I was fine. don't you think that's a clue that I didn't need the drugs to begin with? I think it is. but no one else sees it that way.
so I went back to school loaded up with antidepressants and antipsychotics. I was also very much ready to tackle school again, and was very eager to get on with my life. I had a tremendously successful semester, free of the stress I felt before. Aced my classes, had a ton of fun with friends, and simply got on very well.
not at this point some of you who are stupid and blind to the truth might be thinking "wow! the drugs must be why everything went so smoothly!" once again, you're an idiot. the real reason everything went smoothly was because I got over the shit I was dealing with before, and was totally ready to take it all on.
I'm sorry this is long, but bear with me. I'd like to talk about the negative impact these drugs have had on me. or, how they have fucked me up. I HAVE to take the wellbutrin to keep from feeling sleepy. I'm not depressed, I don't need it for any other reason. this is 1 drug. the geodon has caused something that's very common with antipsychotics. muscle stiffness and convulsions. my neck occasionally tenses up on the back of my neck, and the base of my throat, causing my head to shake a little and also causing a gag reflex that has made me throw up a number of times. antipsychotics can sometimes cause what's called Tardive Dyskenesia. it's a disorder where muscles contract uncontrollably. there is no cure and it's permanent. this is a fine example of BRAIN DAMAGE. this muscle contraction in my neck scares the shit out of me because I'm afraid I'm developing Tardive, and that I'm permanently damaging my brain. so what was the psych's response to this? MORE DRUGS! "here, take this drug that calms the muscles in the neck specifically, this will counter-act what the antipsychotics are doing to you."
wonderful. that's 3 drugs in order to effectively treat this so called "thought disorder".
now you might be wondering, how do I have a thought disorder? well...I do hold strange beliefs that puritan america calls taboo or false. I believe in spirits, and talking to plants and animals, and I believe in a lot of "new age" mysticism. I'm also a practitioner of the occult. most of you don't know what that means, and I'm not going to explain it here. I'll leave that for another note.
I want to get off these damaging drugs, and lead a drug free life. one that is healthy, because I believe I'm over all the shit I had gone through, and things are finally starting to stabalize around me. but I'm trapped. everyone around me believes that I'm better because of the drugs, not because I simply got over it.
now, what does this have to do with society being blind? you see, psychiatry has everyone fooled. all the people around me are fooled. fooled into thinking that once the body and mind get sick, it can't recover on it's own. fooled into thinking there is only christianity. fooled into thinking the puritan values our country was founded on are the only right values. fooled into thinking we need drugs to conform. fooled into thinking psychiatry is a science and not a pseudo-science. the drug companies are BANKING on our "illnesses" and they are constantly providing clinical studies to create and find treatments for "mental illness". there's a reason we're called the Prozac Nation.
society is so fucking blind, and I, like many many others, am a victim of this. and I'm desperate to escape it.
psychiatry is dangerous! don't trust it!
here are some resources for the curious:
http://www.antipsychiatry.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-psychiatry
http://youtube.com/watch?v=1n46ohBsrPI
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