psych med stuffs

I hate that the con­ver­sa­tion on psy­chi­atric health care meds is so all or noth­ing.

You get peo­ple on the “psy­chi­atric drugs are harm­ful” end who want to make sure no­body takes them, and you get peo­ple on the “psy­chi­atric drugs saved my fuck­ing life” end who are cer­tain the peo­ple on the oth­er end are just able-bod­ied and don’t un­der­stand. Very few peo­ple want to con­sid­er that both ex­pe­ri­ences are valid and real.

About this time a year ago, I was go­ing through Zoloft with­draw­al. I had been at 150 mg for al­most a year. This is some­thing I have told mul­ti­ple med­ical pro­fes­sion­als or med­ical ad­ja­cents since, and the re­sponse is pret­ty uni­ver­sal­ly “Je­sus Christ, what fool put you on THAT MUCH Zoloft?!” And as I was on it, I fuck­ing  h a t e d  it.

Peo­ple that haven’t tak­en SS­RIs don’t know – there’s no rea­son to think about it – but with­draw­al from these drugs is un­pleas­ant, and Zoloft is par­tic­u­lar­ly se­vere for its lev­el of im­pact. I had symp­toms for two months. I couldn’t come off the drug un­til I didn’t have a job to go to any­more. With­draw­al turned to de­pres­sion. I came off the drug with worse pan­ic at­tacks than what I went on for. I STILL have cog­ni­tion prob­lems.

But you know what makes this dam­age es­pe­cial­ly ter­ri­ble? It was com­plete­ly and whol­ly avoid­able. Pro­fes­sion­als KNOW Zoloft dos­ing is about size, not sever­i­ty of symp­toms. Pro­fes­sion­als KNOW symp­toms go­ing from week­ly to rarely is good enough. This pro­fes­sion­al had my spit ge­net­i­cal­ly test­ed, and KNEW that Zoloft was not ge­net­i­cal­ly a good fit for me, but kept me on it any­way be­cause it wouldn’t make me sui­ci­dal. Just dead on my feet. Just dead be­tween the ears.

There are tools and re­sources to ad­min­is­ter these drugs prop­er­ly. When ad­min­is­tered prop­er­ly, they are life-chang­ing.

And I feel like – in the men­tal­ly ill com­mu­ni­ty – we only want val­i­da­tion for our own ex­pe­ri­ences with care and re­cov­ery. But each path is so unique and per­son­al. We would do bet­ter if we made space for peo­ple to dis­cuss their ex­pe­ri­ences, with­out dic­tat­ing from there what treat­ment oth­ers should seek.
 
 

—mel­ony ppenosyne

For mor on this top­ic, please lis­ten to Mel­ony – our guest – on FLoMM­CAST 8

Flom­mist Mel­ony Ppenosyne is a writer and weird artist type. In the last year alone, she’s trav­eled to Vir­ginia as a com­pet­ing poet, co-writ­ten a play on men­tal ill­ness that is present­ly be­ing pro­duced, and craft­ed a pub­lished es­say check­ing the priv­i­lege and scope of art gal­leries. Copy­right © 2017 Mel­ony Ppenosyne. Pho­to by Dan­ger Hol­ly.

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