Medicated for my own good
14 years, 15 psychiatric medications.
Pills I took with breakfast, originally prescribed by a psychiatrist who knew me as an anorexic 15-year-old who stared at her hands as her father spoke for her.
No one explored my problems, just the antidepressant I was being prescribed.
Which I took, because I was used to obeying orders.
But soon, I was worse.
I knew, but the psychiatrist never guessed that his pill was contributing, because he didn’t ask about side effects. That drug dulled my reflexes. Meaning at home, I was less able to outrun him, his flying weapons, or groping hands.
Up against ongoing trauma, that pill never had a chance.
The dosage was increased.
I started self-medicating; illicit little Panadeine overdoses.
Compared to Prozac, it was a more effective psychic painkiller.
At school I wandered around, eyes glazed, challenged by teachers who, identifying a drug problem, assumed illicit. “You look”, they whispered, “drugged”.
The psychiatrist agreed.
The antidepressant was switched, increased, switched.
And every few months my GP issued repeat scripts. A country town, she could only offer a psychiatrist 200km away, community mental health (said I was too mentally ill), or medicate and hope pills would work, eventually.
So, four years on I was still taking my ineffective ‘upper’ with breakfast.
The only differences year to year, the drug, dosage, and psychiatrist. Medication was the easiest option: on a pension it was cheaper and more accessible than therapy.
A problem though, was that I required a psychiatrist to prescribe the drug/tweak dosages, the GP to issue repeats and referrals, and someone to counsel me (psychiatrists didn’t counsel).
No one could do all three, or even two of them, so my mental health crumbled as I clocked up 100s of kms for scripts. Driving and male psychiatrists stressed me.
Telehealth and electronic prescribing. If only.
Nevertheless, I was compliant for years until, noticing friends withdraw when I mentioned antidepressants, I concluded that my ineffective pills were shameful. Already ashamed about my abuse, I didn’t want the add on shame of medication.
So, I ditched it.
And the psychiatrist rapidly reinstated it, insisting that medication was “the only way to stop” me self-harming; the less depressed/anxious I was, the less likely I would want to slash/burn myself. It was for my own good, he explained.
And I complied, fearful of what the doctors might do to me if I didn’t.
Temazepam, Diazepam, Oxazepam, Lorazepam, and alprazolam, were variously added to my antidepressant.
The Lorazepam had a rebound effect, making me agitated, which (combined with panic attacks), made the sedative effects of the others very enticing. Particularly after they were abruptly removed, a GP suggesting that I shouldn’t be taking them in case, often suicidal, I overdosed.
Plagued by nightmares, I really missed my sedatives, but tipped off by a new (unwitting) GP, easily replaced them with over-the-counter codeine: (“Mersyndol is good for migraines but makes you drowsy”).
With no need to obtain scripts for Mersyndol, my addiction flourished for years, because bouncing between health professionals, failing to ‘bond’ with anyone, no one asked me how I was coping. Just if I was taking my antidepressant. Which I was. Combined with codeine and Scotch.
Everyone agreed that I was ‘troubled’, but no one guessed why. I was reluctant to disclose my childhood abuse to local GPs because they knew my family, and psychiatrists never asked. Only the counsellor (when I finally had one) knew any of my history. However, not even she realised that, still in survival mode when I left home, the full impact of trauma would only surface years later, and when it did, tormented by flashbacks, my self-harming skyrocketed.
This gained me a new psychiatrist who, at our only consult, saw a thin 28-year-old, both arms bandaged wrist to elbow, who stared at the floor and barely spoke.
We didn’t explore my problems, only the “additional layer of protection against [my] self-harmful urges” that he was prescribing.
Having tried most of the antidepressants, antipsychotics, he explained, would sort me out.
I was not actually psychotic, but with their heavily sedating properties my flashbacks would disappear, along with the urge to self-harm, he promised.
So, antipsychotic + antidepressant and months later I was a slow-motion fog-head slumped on the lounge, 10kg heavier, reading novels, and making up excuses for my sluggishness because of the stigma of being on an antipsychotic.
Feeling vulnerable because of my lethargy, the flashbacks increased, and my quality of life decreased because the half-life of the antipsychotic gave me the briefest window in the day to do anything meaningful - spent on shopping, eating, and self-harming.
In fact, the higher the dose, the more I self-harmed, because the sedation-spaciness of the medication bled into the symptoms of dissociation, increasing my tolerance to pain. Worse, the drug altered my vision, objects appearing far away or alarmingly close, their too-bright colours smeared, adding a surreal element to my flashbacks.
And there was no longer much point in ‘talk therapy’ because, floaty, I couldn’t ‘get in touch with’ any deep emotions or thoughts, let alone ‘explore’ them.
And that is the exact reason why the good intentions of my psychiatrist unravelled.
Hampered by our typical miscommunication, in his attempts to stop me self-harming, he hadn’t placed enough value on the fact that, despite my issues, pre-antipsychotic I’d been doing a university degree (distance education), which I wanted to finish.
However, heavily medicated, clearly there would be no graduation.
I wanted off the drugs. Or lower doses.
I got an outright refusal.
And that’s where it could have ended.
However, battling with a psychiatrist who insisted I was “too much a risk” to myself and would “be on medication for life”, failing to compromise and desperate to graduate, I finally realised that, no longer a controlled teenager, I didn’t have to obey.
So, I ditched him and threw his pills down the toilet (relying on the advice of Dr Google to wean myself off them, because my GP had ditched me for self-harming).
Then, clearer headed, I graduated.
And as I walked off that stage, “life with PTSD is ploddingly hard”, I decided, but unmedicated, it’s in a way easier.
Especially with a bottle of wine
Postscript:
Medication free, within months I stopped self-harming because, clearer headed, my injuries horrified me.
I stopped abusing Paracetamol/Panadeine after an overdose in my 20s, warned by a doctor that “overdosers don’t make the liver transplant list”.
I ‘self-medicated’ with alcohol for years. Drinking kept me safe, I figured; the less awful I felt, the less likely I would engage in ‘real’ self-harm, and the better I would function. Just like the psychiatric medication, it was for my own good, I rationalised. And, as several friends pointed out, I was lovable when drunk.
But predictably, a glass or two became drink-until-I-vomit-and-then-sleep-on-my-freezing-tiles-because-I’m-too-drunk-to-walk, each sodden year trickling into the next as I swilled ‘’love’’ and ‘’peace’’ from a bottle.
That was until, in my 40s, a sudden death led to an unexpected relationship which provides some security and stability in my life.
With stability comes the ability to wade into ‘healthier’ things - music, church, birds, plants, friendships, kindness, whatever. With the anchor of a secure human connection comes the ability to help others - and that becomes purpose.
Those things fill drink-craving spaces.
So, after 26 years under the influence of mind-altering substances (tablet and liquid, prescribed and not), hand shaking, one afternoon I tipped the alcohol down the sink.
We all need stability, security, purpose, things that bring joy, and a someone who stays.
No doubt that is what I needed, age 15.
I grieve those years lost on my chemical road.