Once you have entered a psychiatrist’s office, a psych unit, or a mental health center intending to find help for your emotional suffering, a process begins. At first, it appears organized, as you relate your feelings, history. A diagnosis, or diagnoses, are assigned to your condition, drugs and other treatments recommended, a schedule and appointments set, some reassurance offered. And now you are in the mental health/psychiatric system.
That’s where I found myself as a teenager and continued to find myself into adulthood, but it wasn’t ever the carefully laid out treatment I’d expected. Caregivers, facilities, doctors changed aimlessly, as did psychiatric medications, as did the quality of care I received. I was my diagnostic labels, and after a time, called treatment-resistant, noncompliant, frequent flyer, danger to self. How could my behavior not spin out when my care—care that I trusted, that told me I would always wear the cloak of mental illness, need it for stability—was itself inconsistent, volatile, and reckless at its core?
Yet, I still had vision during all those years, would gather my strength, try to make my life actually happen. I held a few jobs, earned a fine-arts degree, maintained a couple of rocky relationships, relocated to a new city. But those ended each time as my fears crept in and doubts about who I really was fanned the flames. All would go under, shadows of who psychiatry claimed me to be dancing around the wreckage. Still, in all that, a small light remained inside me, always glowing, always signaling to me, “You are more than what these systems have put you through.”
“Out of control” reasonably describes me the final three years I spent under psychiatric care. Between periods of some calm, I self-harmed and spent time in psych units, mostly on temporary detention orders, almost monthly. Police, ER nurses and doctors, psych nurses, and psych doctors all knew me well.
Tranquility during these years eluded me, though I kept a few friends, went to therapy, remained clean and sober, and visited family. Usually, however, I felt I was grasping at the ropes holding me above water, and then I’d lose my grip. Thinking sped up, ideas and words flowed out at a higher volume, at inappropriate times. Anxiety and a low-level anger about people, being with people, permeated my waking moments. An overriding feeling of needing to get away, find sanctuary filled my awareness. Was I the problem, or were they?
And I’d wonder if I just belonged in psychiatric hospitals. How could I navigate life, make a living, have a home?, I’d ponder, and that thought rolled over and over in my mind. Overwhelmed, the pot boiling over, I would find relief in self-injury, knowing that act would lead to a brief period of dissociating, then the distraction of changing up whatever therapy had become, a time of steadiness, and a dim hope that perhaps after climbing up from this dive, I might embrace the world despite its quirks, spikiness, uncertainty, ups and downs.
But you can’t put the lack of control all on me, and not just because I have bipolar and borderline personality disorder diagnoses. My psychiatrist was adding more psychotropic meds, then meds to deal with the adverse effects of those meds, all too often. Psychiatrists at hospitals would change, subtract from, and add to the regimen. Some meds set off IgA vasculitis, causing spotty red rashes (blood vessels bursting under my skin) that were unbearably itchy. I gained 70 lbs., had restless leg syndrome, and other health issues.
Between 2016-2019, in addition to psych-unit staff injecting me with Haldol, Ativan, or Geodon to tame my behavior, I’d been prescribed Vraylar, Cymbalta, propanolol, naltrexone, Mirapex, Pristiq, Cogentin, Neurontin, lithium, and Seroquel. By 2019, I took the last seven meds on that list daily. Then something startling happened that August. During a regular check-in with my main psychiatrist, I asked if I was on too many drugs. Without much comment, she told me to stop taking Seroquel, Cogentin, and Neurontin, and to turn in whatever of those I had remaining at home to the nurse the next day. As usual, I complied.
Within days I fell ill, so sick, with vomiting and diarrhea, confusion, exhaustion. I received services at a mental health center and couldn’t call the doctor directly, only the psych nurse. He noted my symptoms, spoke with the psychiatrist, called me back, and passed along her assessment that I probably had the flu. But that wasn’t right, and an internet search on Seroquel withdrawal matched all the symptoms I had. I dug in my fingernails and held on to the toilet and my bed. The next day, sicker still, I called the psych nurse again, and he sent EMTs to my home who quickly transported me to the emergency room. Then I was rapidly taken up to ICU for two days of monitoring. The attending doctor wrote that I was in withdrawal from the sudden stop of the three meds and that this had caused all the symptoms, including temporary encephalopathy, explaining my confused, muddled thinking.
Back home, I was left to deal with the remaining withdrawal illness by myself, as I live alone. Friends I had had for years offered no assistance and my dad, way across the country, could only listen and encourage. The next week, I limped into the mental health center, the psych nurse measured my vital signs and weight (I’d lost 20 lbs.) and I saw the psychiatrist again. Still woozy, exhausted, I only said I no longer had two of the adverse effects from Seroquel (restless legs while sleeping and joint pain) and so she cold-stopped the meds treating those, Mirapex and Pristiq, which should also be titrated when discontinued.
My case manager, who I met with briefly days later, advised that requesting a different psychiatrist required that I try working out issues with the current one before a switch would be considered. That was the rule of the department overseeing the mental health center. So I stopped seeing the psychiatrist and filed a request with the human rights department, sending them documentation of the psychiatrist’s having cold stopped meds, the ICU doctor’s report that my illness was from withdrawal, and waited, sure that I’d made a good case for being reassigned. All of this I did while quite sick, struggling to get out for food, learning to sleep again amidst horrible nightmares, and on my own. And I waited. I waited through the center director investigating the psychiatrist’s actions and reporting back that she hadn’t stopped the meds; a psychiatrist at a psych unit had discontinued them in July. I waited while the board of the mental health system mailed me a letter summing up that I hadn’t handled meetings properly with the psychiatrist after drugs were stopped, thus my claims of rights violations were unsubstantiated.
So I waited and endured psychoactive symptoms of withdrawal, intense and psychotic manic states that prompted a therapist to send out the mobile crisis unit. They put me under an emergency custody order, police took me to an ER for labs necessary before detainment in a psych unit, and there I was placed under guard. I wanted to use my phone to call my dad. The guard said no, I no longer had any rights. I tried to get my phone and ended up handcuffed to the bed, injected with tranquilizers, then came to in a psych unit 30 miles away. The psychiatrist there ignored my ongoing withdrawal, had me injected with Haldol and Ativan for a few days, then sent me home.
And I waited still for a psychiatrist switch. With no prescriber, I was forced to stop taking naltrexone, then ran out of lithium too. Surviving day-to-day was hard, but I’d found the only help I got through withdrawal. I discovered others online in various stages of psych drug withdrawal and those people are my rock to this day. Not only did they give me suggestions for handling withdrawal, but they also comforted me, kept me company during dark nights of fear, pain, and uncertainty.
Even with some help from understanding people, withdrawal wore me down. The mental health services, the people there I’d previously relied on and trusted, glossed over my withdrawal struggles. Still having so many physical symptoms, and at this point feeling terribly invalidated, I drove to the ER, explaining to the intake tech that I might have a UTI, again, but said I also felt suicidal. The ER doctor ordered labs, wrote a prescription for an antibiotic because I did have a UTI, but there was no discussion of my suicidality. The nurse told me to go home. The burly, tattooed tech ordered me out of the ER. I yelled toward the ER nursing station, and as I passed the intake people, and as they watched me walk to my car, that I was going to kill myself. Nobody stopped me.
But I stopped in at the all-night grocery down the street and I bought a knife. This was not an attempt to get back at everyone in anger. I simply felt like I no longer existed. People around me acted as though I wasn’t even there.
Back home, I sat staring at the knife. Then I looked at my cat. “My only confirmation of existence is that this cat depends on me caring for her.” I repeated that in my head several times. Reluctantly, I dialed 911, deciding to give one last person a chance to hear me. Thankfully that operator did listen to me, all that I needed to say, and I began to feel validated, maybe even seen. I did land in a psych unit, again, and was injected with drugs to keep me manageable for staff, again, and released within a few days without mention of withdrawal problems, again.
I waited, then all the sudden my case manager called to say I’d been switched to a different psychiatrist. My appointment was scheduled for January 13, 2020. I held such faith that I’d have help with my continuing withdrawal problems. But that didn’t happen. This new psychiatrist called my withdrawal a resurfacing of my mental illness, known as discontinuation syndrome. She said my chemical imbalance necessitated starting lithium back up, and adding clozapine maybe, since IgA vasculitis ruled out using “all the good drugs.” I left her office deciding to leave the mental health center, and psychiatry, for good.
In the following months, as my body and mind cleared the drugs, the worst of the physical problems passed, and the psychoactive symptoms ceased, I noticed that I never really thought about self-harm any longer. Manic states failed to gather much steam, feeling down or sad didn’t open the door for depression to visit, spreading grey and heaviness into my world. My desire to make art, asleep all these years under the cover of numbness and turmoil, was awakened, brightening my days, providing a way to make sense of all these recent experiences.
I realized I know my own mind, my opinions, what I need, better than anyone. Confidence and self-esteem—which therapists tried drilling into me with coping skills, DBT, distraction and activity lists, and rating feelings while I was heavily poly-drugged—already lived within me, and I found them as I shook the dust off. It was appearing to me that much of my supposed mental illness had been set off and prolonged by the very psych medications meant to treat it.
So now, I come back around to the idea of me being out of control, of me needing medication and psych units and behavioral training to maintain any semblance of functioning. Psychiatric and mental health treatment I received from 2016-2019 was so often random, a reaction to a moment, a failure to discuss with me my actual experience and needs, invasive, coercive, lacking in humanity. It was as if mental health services had given me a car to drive, which various mechanics at different shops had then tinkered with—brakes unreliable, bugs in the electrical system, a different tire on each rim, unwieldy steering—then told me I should be able to take it on the road. Each time I careened into a ditch, nobody looked at the car, just at me, the driver, to assess what I’d done wrong.
I’ve been in and out of psychiatric care for longer than those three years. It’s been decades of having this and that medication, being urged to have ECT because I was treatment-resistant, being locked away. If any of these mental health professionals had bothered to unwind the trauma history, the causes of my anxiety, let my mind have the clarity to view it, give it place and context, I’d have come to mental healthiness long ago. Mental healthiness: this haven so precious to me now, free of mental health systems’ mechanisms and psychiatrists’ tampering.
Thanks for sharing your story, Lisa. It’s similar to what happened to me, I’m glad you too escaped. And, yes, covering up trauma or distress, and mostly covering up child abuse, by making people ungodly sick with the psychiatric drugs, is what psychiatry is all about, despite this being illegal.
And they do like to attack us artists. My artwork is so “too truthful” that it terrifies the psychologists and psychiatrists I have worked with at this point, especially since the truth is attached to my work now, instead of psychiatry’s lies.
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First of all—great article. I can relate to so much as well. Thank you for sharing and I’m so sorry you went through that.
I think the treatment that Lisa described are legal. I don’t think most of what psychiatrist do is illegal. Prescribing neurotoxins and/or abruptly stopping them isn’t illegal in the United States. Isn’t that precisely how they get away with the inhumane, unethical and immoral treatments?
Because they have convinced society and government that these treatments are curative to what they believe mental patients to be, these drugs are legal.
We need to change the perceptions of mentally diagnosed people first and then we have a chance at changing the laws around how they are treated. That is how to stop psychiatry’s unethical, inhumane and immoral practices.
How that’s possible, I really don’t know. Seems hopeless…
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Their constant failure to provide true informed consent ought to make almost all of them vulnerable to malpractice charges!
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No one cares what happens to mental patients. If one has no money, no social or moral standing and the general public just wants you to be kept away; how can one take a rich doctor, the epitome of respectable; to court???? Much less WIN? Malpractice is not really a fear. In order for ex-patients to protect ourselves, we need to first change how the “Neuronormals” see us.
No one is ever going to believe much less care about “crazy, delusional, violent, totally incompetent” people. (I AM NOT CALLING ANYONE THOSE NANES. Just pointing out that general public sees us this way. It’s the stigma)
We need to figure out how to make people see us as HUMAN and stop “other-ing” us!
We are ALL beautiful and ALL ugly. No one is better or worse. If I hadn’t been a victim of psychiatry; who knows? Maybe I would have been a perpetrator?? Oops! I meant prescriber????
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Lisa, I am so sorry for how you were treated, and I’m grateful that you are here and that you had the strength to write this. Your last few paragraphs give me hope. Someday, I hope to have the courage and the strength to tell my story — there are many, many parallels — including that I was punished in various ways on multiple occasions for committing the “offense” of trying to advocate for myself. I want to re-read your post and will probably have more to comment, but for right now I just wanted to say thank you.
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Thank you for sharing your experiences. The drugs are neurotoxins which disrupt so many bodily systems and side effects are ignored and withdrawal is hell. I commend you for your determination. I find it disturbing that “care providers” will not acknowledge the side effects/withdrawal effects of these drugs. Of course, if they did, they would have nothing left in their tool box except to actually listen to their patients. In psychiatric hospitals, this is almost impossible when someone is going through extreme withdrawal and so, once again, they are poly drugged until they no longer cause disruptions on the ward.
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Thank you. You are so right. Thank you for bringing that up. It needs to be addressed!!! Many times when I’ve tried to stop taking psych drugs in the past, my withdrawal symptoms were seen as the return or as worsening mental illness symptoms. In response, I was given more psych meds.
This happens all the time. Making it almost impossible for people to stop taking their psych drugs long term.
It turns into a vicious cycle.
Thank you!
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Hi Lisa; thanks for sharing your story with us. Unfortunately many of the same kind we hear from patients and ex-patients. I think it’s hard to believe that there are still doctors who don’t know about withdrawal.
Maybe it’s more likely they don’t have a clue how to help their patients coming off their psychotropic medication in a safe way. We must tell them there is a worldwide possibility to prescribe taperingstrips containing pouches with very small dosages of the medication.
http://www.taperingstrip.org
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Unfortunately, the ignorance/denial of the horrors of psych drug withdrawal is just one symptom of much larger problem: the predisposition of the large majority of treatment providers to discredit/deny the experience of the patient, as reported by the patient. The diagnoses – especially borderline, which I received after “failing to respond” to electroshock treatments, after trying advocate for myself upon learning that a psychiatrist who’d been drugging me for 6 years kept no records – are another symptom of the same problem:. the predisposition to discredit the patient. The denial of the impact of childhood trauma – yet another symptom. That psychiatry continues to deny the debilitating effect of both being on psych drugs and of withdrawing from these drugs – is really just par for the course.
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This is a very well written article that accurately conveys a portion of the frustration encountered while believing in the current mental health system to make one healthy.
A system that is for many anything but “healthy”. A system quick to prescribe multiple drugs, that contrary to public belief, have little more effect than placebos for many people and can actually be the cause of mental health issues worsening.
A system that doesn’t listen to the individual because they have been labeled with a diagnosis and discounts their voicing “something isn’t right”.
A system that doesn’t hold mental health professionals fully accountable, rather places the blame on the client whose input is discounted because they have been non-compliant in their reluctance to continue down the path of least resistance.
A system that rarely considers that perhaps medication isn’t the only answer and forces the brave to navigate the torment of withdrawal alone while being labelled “non-compliant” and refuses to acknowledge or investigate the successful outcomes of those who have navigated this particular pathway to health, most often alone.
You are an inspiration Lisa! You are one example of meds making mental health worse. And I am another. And we aren’t all alone.
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” I find it disturbing that “care providers” will not acknowledge the side effects/withdrawal effects of these drugs. Of course, if they did, they would have nothing left in their tool box except to actually listen to their patients.” (Temple 1234)
The good news is, that we have accessibility to small dosages for more than 44 psychotropic medicine, which are not only very helpful to come off your medication, because they prevent withdrawal symptoms, but also seems to be successful in case of protracted withdrawal. For example; it’s possible to come off your effexor from 37,5 mg to 0 in e.g. 3 months. The smallest tablet contains 0,5 mg. When you experience protracted withdrawal symptoms afterwards, you can use e.g. 1 mg during a month. We see good results with this treatment.
http://www.taperingstrip.org
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I’m from the USA. I’ve clicked your link tapernurse. I’ve tried to use the email link on your website. My email’s always returned. I’m disappointed.
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Very well written Lisa and thanks for sharing your unnerving story. Psychiatry pulls a great con job having people believe they have superior knowledge and are genuine about “helping” people who deal with difficult life circumstances. More people need to be aware if you step into the world of psychiatry it’s like going down the rabbit hole and getting sucked into a vortex of ever increasing harm.
It’s chilling and telling to read how cold and distant these people are that when they ordered you out of the ER and you left telling them you were going to kill yourself they didn’t care and no one tried to stop you. It is exactly as you say, once they have labelled someone they are no longer considered a human being, instead they are simply a “label”. I’m so glad you had the strength and courage to stay the course being cold stopped off their toxic drugs and to free yourself from psychiatry. Also glad you have your adorable and entertaining cat Iris by your side for great companionship. Wishing you the best on your healing journey.
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I read your story with great interest. It is tragically ironic that there are so many similarities in the stories presented on the MIA Website. I, too, was abruptly discontinued from my drugs. I, now, strongly believe the reason was bogus. However, my complete withdrawal symptoms didn’t actually occur until two years later. i think that’s because first, it really took me two years after that until I was sufficiently awaken to what had happened to my brain and body and it was the drugs that caused all the problems. During that two year time, I still let them experiment on me until it actually became clear that I could never swallow even a Tylenol pill ever again. In fact, I can take any drugs now for any reason. I read a lot about tapering. Back in the nineties, I did taper myself off of Lithium. But, I had quit alcohol a couple of years after college cold turkey, so maybe for me not tapering may have worked. I should note that I had to abruptly stop drinking alcohol; because my body rejected it, as I had developed an intense severe allergic reaction. I was never put into a hospital. But, until, this day I am so allergic to alcohol, even a thimble full is dangerous for me, even in cooking, mouthwashes, etc. For anyone else, it could very well be extremely hazardous. Each of us, although sharing similarities, is still so individual. I also love the picture of your cat. Like you, my cat has been my constant companion through most all this. The last point I want to make, however, is that even after whatever withdrawal used, especially, if you have been subject to long-term psychiatric drug poly-pharmacy like I was, you must live with the brain injury that these drugs did to you. Please keep up your art and writing. If your art and writing brings you joy, it must be good for you. Thank you.
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Lisa, Mm-hmm!
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Hi Lisa!! I feel such a bond with you and I’ve never even written to you yet. However, you read my story, “I Can Barely Breathe” and now I’ve read yours. Your story blew my mind! I’ve been around the horrific psychiatric block, so to say, and your story still made my jaw drop!!! I can’t decide if the doctor who took you off THREE meds AT ONCE cold turkey was just plain stupid or just plain evil. I’d love to chat with you online. I’m planning to come to DC to start shaking trees on Capitol Hill writhing the next 18 months. Have you heard of inner compass initiative? Find me there if you want to meet. We can chat. I’m a member. https://www.theinnercompass.org/
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Lisa, thank you for your powerful story. I hope and pray for continued healing for you and Lori and everyone who has been pulled through the psychiatric mill.
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Psychiatry the criminals. Yes that is what they are.
Labels, they ARE the “stigmatizers” It is stigma in itself to slap a nasty label on you.
ALL people that encounter their traumas will have to live through it, it can take years and it needs it’s time and age. Meeting and being with the wrong people will intensify reactions. It takes years to recognize the dance.
Psychiatry and a host of other “help” people make it all worse because the trauma is lack of power and control, or the feeling of it.
Best way to deal with clients is to try and label them with a host of labels, and labeling people with “PD” is really reflective of just how unscientific psychiatry is and always has been.
They have learned nothing, yet many of their xclients have.
I have warned my kids SO much to NEVER EVER set a foot into psychiatry, and to NEVER reveal info to even a physician that has nothing to do with what they need to know.
It is incredible how society is taught that they have to answer questions asked of them.
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Some may say there are no permanent records but it seems like USA mental health institutions use a health record system that seems permanent.
Doctors may start labeling patients. I notice I tend to label other people without being asked.
Then, I notice when I start listening to what people have to say it makes me understand it better. Usually the labels are not true or don’t provide the full story.
This led me to conclude that it’s prob better to avoid hearsay, when someone (person A) says someone else (person B) said something.
Anyways, I was about to check myself into a mental health institution and I’m so glad I didn’t. It seems that people who disagree make it feel like I’m mentally ill. But I feel like people who don’t seem to be open minded as possible mentally ill. As they say, we usually notice the loudest ones and tend to not hear as many perspectives as possible.
To the OP, I pray for the best for you.
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Who are the OP?
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