Travels Through Psychiatry

These days, I'm more balanced, self-assured, and stable. Continuing on, hopefully in a forward motion, allows for slowly resolving past issues and establishing a satisfying quality of life. Treatment with a conscientious and caring psychiatrist (truly caring, not just claiming to be so in an internet blurb) benefits me and gives me faith in the profession, for once. I'm glad I had the opportunity to clean out seven meds I was previously prescribed, with time on my own to know myself better, and to gradually find a progressive, trustworthy psychiatrist. Now I'm a partner in my own care, a contrast from having treatment done at me, often in harmful, dismissive, insulting, or outright abusive ways. I'm grateful, but I'll never shake the imprint bad experiences have left on my mind and body. In the need to keep revisiting these awful times of years past, so they don't creep into my psyche and overwhelm me, I've put together a brief, illustrative window into what...

  After over 3 years off psychiatric medications, letting my body clear them, coming to terms with my hurt and anger over that last psychiatric stopping 5 meds without taper, and working on my issues in isolation, free of irritation from others’ interference, I came to realizations. My mind is definitely clearer (7 different meds daily clouded everything) and I’ve learned so much more about my personal issues through writing and art. I’ve also tightened up my finances, providing more of a sense of independence. This is all good, helps me tremendously, but it’s not enough. I still experience too many lows tinged with suicidal thoughts, resistance to stepping out of my apartment (or off my sofa most days), mired in life’s pointlessness and drudgery. And then there’s the flip side. When I do get moving, I’m propelled into some sense of never stopping, sure I have all the answers, and happy like I’m high, flitting from one thing to the next, whirling about until I drop back into exha...

  Almost every day I wake up and I hate it, sorry I’m conscious, resenting the hours ahead of thinking and being in this apartment box, and even that the cat needs food, and doing my own basic care, and that I feel this way again, again, again. Even on rare days, when I come to with optimism, some excitement about the day, I don’t trust it. It’s probably an upswing, the start of an overly active period that will shrink away into darkness. Or, I’ll   hit a wall, break into a million pieces, once more to pick up, once more to glue back into some fashion of myself. Some would advise that I need psychiatric assistance. I’ve been through that already. Not that I don’t run that around my pessimistic mind, head still on my pillow, trying to convince myself that helpful psychiatry exists, in my geographic area, that accepts my current healthcare coverage. Make a plan! Make a budget and start leafing through who is out there and calling and making appointments and before you know...

  In this post, which is about my early psych drug withdrawal, I present my notes, doctors' notes and an administrative letter which I scanned to image form. I call it "the raw account", because it documents what was going on then, over 3 years ago, rather than how I've filtered it through my experiences since. That's important. I provide a brief explanation of each record, and if you'd like more detail, please see the article I wrote for Mad in America at this link:   Reckless Psychiatric Treatment Spun Me Out of Control , which contains more about my psych history and drugs the psychiatrist discontinued without taper. My main point in this post is to show how withdrawal not only ravaged my mind and body, but also my relationships. Furthermore, medical professionals refused my account of what happened. The beginning months were soul-crushing, and recovering is difficult, even a few years on, even with better insight. These are my own notes, written as part of...

  Please note that this piece is available on another site, as a guest post, at this link: Guest Post: A Psychiatric Survivor Comes to a Place of Understanding

You might wonder, if you’ve read much of my blog, if I support psychiatry, if I believe in its pursuits. I do. But I reserve my hopes in psychiatry for those clinicians who undertake the trust each individual puts before them in good faith. I admire psychiatrists with interest in the full scope and picture of each in their care. They see and hear, even feel, what each person tells before administering treatments for symptoms, treatments they recognize as limited in many ways, and so they apply them with care and great regard for effects both positive and negative. When I’m watching documentaries about discovering the universe, over time how people have sought to understand the sun, moon, stars, and Earth’s place, ranging from assigning them godlike qualities, through gradually realizing in committed, repetitive observation that all these rotate, then that Earth is not the center, risking heresy to say so, yet maintaining their course of further learning, I think of psychiatry. I ev...

Psychotropic medications, that I’d been a long time, some for 2 decades continuously, were suddenly stopped by the psychiatrist. I shouldn’t happen this way, ever, no matter the reason. But here’s how I can best estimate that it did happen. At a psych unit 2 weeks previously, the inpatient psychiatrist discontinued quetiapine because he said I was too sleepy. I was off it for a few days, then at home, I started taking it again right away. Shortly after, within a week, I met with my regular psychiatrist. I reported to her about the quetiapine being stopped briefly and that the other psychiatrist had concerns about me being on it. She decided, right then, that I should cease taking quetiapine and 2 other meds, benztropine and gabapentin, and to bring in what I had left for disposal the next day, so I did. Several days later I was sick, mostly with intestinal problems and dizziness, and unable to think clearly, but did manage to make a call for transport to a hospital. I was in seve...