I thought I'd share my story to those who need someone to listen to. I've shared bits and pieces in various posts throughout Bluelight but I'll condense it into one big post here.
I'm a 29 year old female living in Canada.
My entire life was one giant panic attack. From day one as a baby I was freaking out over small things. As I got older, I developed obsessive compulsive disorder. I also started complaining about very strange visual and emotional symptoms that I knew weren't right but no one took seriously. At age 10, I had a traumatic near death experience that left me with PTSD. Daily flashbacks and terror continued well into my teens and early 20s.
In fact, my teens were one giant panic attack. Everything terrified me, including talking on the telephone unless it was a good friend.
I somehow convinced myself that it would all go away when I turned 18. It didn't, and so I had a spectacular mental breakdown.
I because severely cutting my arms and legs and picked up quite the benzo addiction. I saw several very incompetent psychiatrists who diagnosed me with assorted things and shoved random drugs down my throat and started injecting them into my rump too. This went on for several years, by which point all my doctors and therapists all just waited for the call that I'd successfully killed myself.
I'm actually very shocked that I am alive today. It's because one teeny tiny part of insisted on slogging forwards and trying new meds, because I knew, for me personally, psychotherapy wasn't going to work.
I was also diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder and Asperger's Syndrome. Eventually I insisted a very good psychiatrist take me on and finally I saw progress with medications. That was about 4 years ago. 3 years ago I suddenly collapsed and had a tonic clonic seizure in front of my horrified best friend and brother. Shortly afterwards I was diagnosed with Right Temporal Lobe Epilepsy and finally we knew that those strange visual and emotional symptoms I was complaining about as a kid were a type of simple partial seizure.
As of 1 year ago I finally found the right medication combo and was shocked to discover what normal, non-depressed thinking is like. I have never been happy or content before in my entire life. Minor upsetting things no longer involve me having a psychotic episode and being hauled off to the hospital in handcuffs by the police.
I have shoved more than 60 types of medications down my throat, at least half of those psychiatric related. I now take 3 psych drugs, 2 epilepsy drugs that double as psych drugs, and several other unrelated drugs daily, totaling about 20 pills a day. I wear a medical bracelet and have a very prominent document in my wallet stating my medical conditions for when the paramedics need to attend to me during an emergency.
I say all this because I see so many depressed people try 2 or 3 drugs over the course of a few months and then stomp off in a huff and refuse to try any more, instead choosing to stew in their depression and suffering unnecessarily. They often use the excuse "I don't want to take pills the rest of my life". That's a pretty shitty excuse if you ask me. Modern medicine as created amazing drugs to keep people healthy and happy. So, uh, take them if they work? I will be on drugs for life. I don't give a shit because I'm finally healthy for the first time in my life (even if I swear I hear a rattle in my stomach when I do jumping jacks....)
Keep slogging forward. The old saying "two steps forward, one step back" very much applies here. *I* still have bumps in the road. Last xmas I had 4 cops and two medics in my livingroom because I was having a bad night and called the local crisis number and evidently said something very awful so they sent The Authorities to check on me. I was rather high at the time and I think I suggested we bake cookies and have a party (there were that many guys in black uniforms in my livingroom....)
I am going to live with psych issues my whole life. The point is, I fought off the depression that was going to kill me and refused to give up on meds (or psychotherapy if that works for you).
I have Been There and I know what suffocating depression is like. At the time I knew I saw the world how it really was and that I was more alive than everyone else. I couldn't have been more wrong.
Keep fighting guys.
If anyone would like to PM me your are more than welcome, as long as you're willing to fight like I did and still am.
I'm a 29 year old female living in Canada.
My entire life was one giant panic attack. From day one as a baby I was freaking out over small things. As I got older, I developed obsessive compulsive disorder. I also started complaining about very strange visual and emotional symptoms that I knew weren't right but no one took seriously. At age 10, I had a traumatic near death experience that left me with PTSD. Daily flashbacks and terror continued well into my teens and early 20s.
In fact, my teens were one giant panic attack. Everything terrified me, including talking on the telephone unless it was a good friend.
I somehow convinced myself that it would all go away when I turned 18. It didn't, and so I had a spectacular mental breakdown.
I because severely cutting my arms and legs and picked up quite the benzo addiction. I saw several very incompetent psychiatrists who diagnosed me with assorted things and shoved random drugs down my throat and started injecting them into my rump too. This went on for several years, by which point all my doctors and therapists all just waited for the call that I'd successfully killed myself.
I'm actually very shocked that I am alive today. It's because one teeny tiny part of insisted on slogging forwards and trying new meds, because I knew, for me personally, psychotherapy wasn't going to work.
I was also diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder and Asperger's Syndrome. Eventually I insisted a very good psychiatrist take me on and finally I saw progress with medications. That was about 4 years ago. 3 years ago I suddenly collapsed and had a tonic clonic seizure in front of my horrified best friend and brother. Shortly afterwards I was diagnosed with Right Temporal Lobe Epilepsy and finally we knew that those strange visual and emotional symptoms I was complaining about as a kid were a type of simple partial seizure.
As of 1 year ago I finally found the right medication combo and was shocked to discover what normal, non-depressed thinking is like. I have never been happy or content before in my entire life. Minor upsetting things no longer involve me having a psychotic episode and being hauled off to the hospital in handcuffs by the police.
I have shoved more than 60 types of medications down my throat, at least half of those psychiatric related. I now take 3 psych drugs, 2 epilepsy drugs that double as psych drugs, and several other unrelated drugs daily, totaling about 20 pills a day. I wear a medical bracelet and have a very prominent document in my wallet stating my medical conditions for when the paramedics need to attend to me during an emergency.
I say all this because I see so many depressed people try 2 or 3 drugs over the course of a few months and then stomp off in a huff and refuse to try any more, instead choosing to stew in their depression and suffering unnecessarily. They often use the excuse "I don't want to take pills the rest of my life". That's a pretty shitty excuse if you ask me. Modern medicine as created amazing drugs to keep people healthy and happy. So, uh, take them if they work? I will be on drugs for life. I don't give a shit because I'm finally healthy for the first time in my life (even if I swear I hear a rattle in my stomach when I do jumping jacks....)
Keep slogging forward. The old saying "two steps forward, one step back" very much applies here. *I* still have bumps in the road. Last xmas I had 4 cops and two medics in my livingroom because I was having a bad night and called the local crisis number and evidently said something very awful so they sent The Authorities to check on me. I was rather high at the time and I think I suggested we bake cookies and have a party (there were that many guys in black uniforms in my livingroom....)
I am going to live with psych issues my whole life. The point is, I fought off the depression that was going to kill me and refused to give up on meds (or psychotherapy if that works for you).
I have Been There and I know what suffocating depression is like. At the time I knew I saw the world how it really was and that I was more alive than everyone else. I couldn't have been more wrong.
Keep fighting guys.
If anyone would like to PM me your are more than welcome, as long as you're willing to fight like I did and still am.
