Road to recovery. Chapter twenty five. Life worth living.
68Road to recovery
One of my main fears was to face all my demons without the aid of medication. I had been prescribed many anti depressant drugs and none of them had helped to lift my depression. I had tried to wean myself off medication in the past and had become too overwhelmed, without support, to deal with the intense feelings I felt. I believed that the drugs were just chemical straitjackets used to keep unhappy women, like me, quiet. I say women because I have found that more women then men are diagnosed with depression and are prescribed drugs. The latest drug on the market, at the time, Seroxat, one of a class of drugs known as selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitors (SSRIs), are meant to increase the brain’s levels of mood-improving serotonin. They seemed to have the opposite effect on me and my dark deep depression just went deeper. They did nothing to help my mood or lift my depression so I could not see the point in taking them. I also believed the drug was doing me more harm than good because my mental state deteriorated dramatically when I started taking them. I knew they were masking and numbing an emotion and memory within me and I did not want to be numb. I wanted to learn to deal with intense feelings I often felt, get to the root of those feelings and find a way to deal with them. As painful as my past was, I needed to go back and face it, to deal with flashbacks from my childhood and the constant state of fear that I felt. I felt that if I could find a way to help myself to recover from what my doctors' described as depression, without the use of mind altering drugs, then I could use my experience's to help others.
My gut instincts were telling me the drugs were doing me harm. I wanted to know the real me, the me I would have been if my mam had not been so cruel and loveless, and dad and the others had not sexually abused me. I wanted my mind back and was willing to deal what I found in there. I wanted to be me to feel fully connected to the people and world around me without feeling anxious. I was in the best position, with Martin as support, to deal with my past and the effects of abuse on my mind and body.
Convinced the medication, Seroxat, was having a detrimental effect on my already struggling mental state, I went back to the doctor and explained what had been happening. I was experiencing, what felt like electric shocks inside my head, had terrifying nightmares, hallucination, paranoia and I was afraid to leave my house because of over whelming panic attacks. I told him that I felt aggressive towards others and felt like a time bomb waiting to go off. I was afraid that I might hurt someone, especially if something happened while I was hallucinating. I told him I felt scared and suicidal for most of the time. His response was to increase my dosage and ignore all my fears. All the time I was explaining how I felt to this doctor, he looked bored and quite angry, like he usually did. I felt that he was not taking me seriously even though I was desperate for help. I seriously believed that because I had been labelled with mental health problems, false labels that have followed me all my life, he was never going to listen to me. A couple of days later, I received a letter from the doctor saying that he did not want to see me or my children again. When I received that letter, I was laid in bed, back in spasm so that I could not move and my legs in terrible pain. These symptoms, as claimed by the same doctor and other doctors, were part of the depression, Yet again, as it had been all my life, I was let down badly by the NHS who, ignored my pleas for help when I was in physical or emotional pain. prescribed me dangerous addictive drugs, and then, left me in serious distress to deal with it all on my own. I laid there, unable to move and in terrible pain and I cried. I contemplated suicide that day because I did not think I would find the help I needed and I felt that I would lose my sanity. I truly felt that I was slowly dying and no one would help me.
My mental health had deteriorated whilst taking the drug Seroxat and I felt that it was killing me. I spent many hours a day locked in my toilet, too afraid to come out and had constant loud arguments, in my head, with the doctor and others I believed had hurt me. I felt extremely aggressive in thought and action and knew that was out of character for me. I did feel very angry and always had done, but the added aggression was a warning to me that something was seriously wrong.
A week later, when I finally saw a psychiatrist, I was diagnosed with Serotonin Syndrome, a potentially life-threatening adverse drug reaction. My dosage was reduced very slowly over the next few weeks and my withdrawal was supposed to monitored by another doctor. The psychiatrist prescribed large doses of Valium, to help deal with the horrendous withdrawal symptoms from Seroxat which at the time was a the top of the table of difficult drug withdrawal. Every week I was to see another doctor, who was supposed to give me a prescription and give me support while I was weaned off Seroxat, but that never happened. I got one weeks prescription for Valium and then whenever I went to pick up another prescription, the doctor would have a reason for not giving me any. On the third time I showed up to get a prescription to deal with the horrendous withdrawal symptoms I was experiencing, the doctor smiled and said, "If you think bad thoughts, you will have bad feelings, so go and try thinking a bit more positively for a week, and we will see how you feel then". This time when my gut instincts were telling me something was wrong, I listened. I suspected something but did not know what. I made arrangements to read my psychiatric records before my next appointment with the psychiatrist. I found out that he was stealing my prescriptions and writing in my notes that he was prescribing 10mg valium, three times a day. I was fuming that he could do this but said nothing to anyone. On my next appointment with this doctor, I confronted him. 'What have you done with my prescriptions?' I asked him. I told him that I had read his notes and know that he has been lying about giving me valium. He went mad, slamming about and seething with anger and claiming he did not have a prescription pad. Fortunately for me, I had asked a witness to come in with me. Afterwards, I was grateful that I had listened to my gut instincts and taken someone with me to witness the doctor lying and prove that I was not mad and making it up.
I set a date April 3rd 2001 to stop taking Seroxat, prescribed for my depression. I had tried to tell all the doctors over the years the drugs don't work and were not helping me, and never had, but they would not listen. When my doctor found out that I was refusing to take the drug, he refused to see me or my children again, claiming a break down in trust.
I lost all faith in the medical profession when it came to my physical and mental health and at the time, trusted no doctor to help me. I knew I needed to cleanse myself of this drug quicker than the weeks that it was taking. I did not want to waste more weeks and months of my life while I waited for the right doctor to help me.
Within a couple of days of stopping taking the drug Seroxat, I experienced the usual electric shock feelings, to my brain and body. Hallucinations seemed to be one after the other and I was beginning to lose my grip on reality when I heard a voice coming from deep within myself, telling me to face my fears and follow my passion. At the time, I had no idea what my passion was. Stopping taking the drug seemed to open the flood gates to all my suppressed fears and now I had to deal with them all on my own. In my journal at the time, I wrote, 'I am terrified that I am not going to get through this. The terror I feel has me crying out with pain and fear and there is no escaping my fear this time. I know I need to be free to live and to be free I have to face my fears.
At times, during withdrawal, I became aware of sounds around me, I would hear the children talking or sound coming from the television and then the sounds would fade away and I would float deep down to a state of semi consciousness. Many demons were exorcised, but the experience drained me to the point of extreme exhaustion. Intense feelings came to the surface and had to be faced. Memories of my mothers abuse and the memory of the pain I felt came flooding back. I felt like a child reliving all those experiences that I had buried deep down inside. Each memory came like a wave, one after the other. I was sobbing with my heart broken one minute and the next lifted so high emotionally that I felt like I could fly. Emotionally I felt like I was on a very steep roller coaster, up to the top and the excitement climbing and then the deep descent back down to my internal hell. Days blended into night and back in to day and I would not know what day of the week it was. The whole experience, at that intensity, lasted just a few days but at the time, felt never ending. I knew it would all be worth the pain because I really felt that I was on the road to recovery.
