''I can see you're sad, even when you smile, even when you laugh
I can see it in your eyes, deep inside you want to cry''
There are millions of people in the world, just like me, that find themselves caught up in the web of psychiatric sorcery. A spell, that for some, can last a lifetime. We are told to“take our medication“ and that we have a“chemical imbalance“. They tell us “they will heal you“, “they will save your life“. We start to view ourselves as flawed and vulnerable and that our well being is dependant on artificial means.
THE STIGMA
We live in a society that preaches normality for people who suffer from mental illness. We are told to seek help. “Go to therapy”, “take medications”, “don’t be ashamed of your conditions”, “it’s a chemical imbalance.” Yet theres still so much stigma associated to them.
The stigma of mental health issues is making us sicker. Isnt so easy to say things such as ”change your mindset” ”You can choose what thoughts control your life”? What you need to understand, however, is that people with BPD, Depression, Anxiety, and countless other mental illnesses, do not have the luxury of picking and choosing which negative / positive emotions affect them on a day to day basis. Its often hard in depression because we tend to develop bad habits of being addicted to our sadness, like it has became a part of us, something we can’t no longer live without. Theres all this misunderstanding about people who struggle with mental health issues, but little do you know, it can happen to anybody. You never know when life is going to hit you hard enough to break you. And when it does, trust me, you dont want to be demonized by society. We dont need that, we do it enough to our own selves.
ANTIPSYCHOTICS AND ANTIDEPRESSANTS // MY EXPERIENCE WITH THEM
Antidepressants and antipsychotics damaged my life to a degree. I believe they are helpful for some of us, but you need to be put on the right dosage and monitored closely by a psychiatrist. According to me, they are given out too quickly. If I look back on my life 3 years ago, Im not going to lie, I was in such a bad place mentally that there was no doubt I needed serious help, which I did, but to what cost?
7 pills a day for 2 years. I was numbed by drugs 24/7 and it killed the soft and kind hearted person who I once was. My medication ruined many of my relationships. It seemed to limit my ability to feel any emotion at all. I became completely indifferent to people who mattered to me. I was able to make cold, blunt, logic driven decisions much more easily and it did help in a pure buisness-like transactional kind of way. It helped to deal with the day-to-day managements aspects of life, work, buisness. Simply put, I just didnt give a fuck. The last thing I needed, after losing all of my friends and cribbling in debts, was other health problems. From sexual dysfonction, to lost of appetite, I started thinking that these problems were going to stick with me forever.
I look at the time I was on medication as a very lost period of my life. Very limited recollection of memories. I cant recall the experience or re-live it in my mind, I simply feel nothing, only emptiness.