Chapter 8 • Life Without Psych Meds.

I’ve been ecstatic not being on psych meds. I have been feeling great, my sleep is back to normal, I’m more social, and I’ve lost all the shame I felt having a bipolar diagnosis. I finally felt like I was myself again no longer consumed by a daily life of taking psych meds.

Looking back on this time of my life, I didn’t know what I now know about everything beyond a chemical imbalance impacting mental health. So my diet and lifestyle never became a focus.

I started hanging out with my best friend who went to Rutgers. She was not aware I wasn’t medicated anymore. I just felt great, so I didn’t feel the need to tell anyone.

She was concerned when we went out, and I drank, and she commented I shouldn’t drink while I’m on medications, and she worried how my mind and body would react when I did drink.

So, seeing she was so panicky over my mental health, I told her my psychiatrist recently took me off all my meds, and I’ve been off them for almost a month. She wasn’t too concerned because she thought if it was my drs decision then it must be ok.

It’s hard writing about this part of my life. Seeing my memory is a little hazy on everything. I will say I survived being off my medications, for I’d say 5 months. Looking back, like I said, I wasn’t focusing on my diet and lifestyle to even attempt to keep my mind and body healthy and stable. I’m now 40 at age 19. I wish I had taken better care of myself , because who knows, maybe I could have permanently lived without my medications.

One thing I want to say about hitting mania is I’m not aware of my behaviors as outsiders are. I don’t notice the rapid speech, the lack of sleep, high energy, delusional thoughts, or anything that comes along with experiencing mania.

Younger me during mania, I would become extremely argumentative and aggressive. I’m realizing that was the case due to what I’m now aware of as ptsd symptoms I suffered from living my traumatic childhood.

One thing I do notice before it turns into extreme mania is my focus is clear, I can read and obtain any information, my intellectual behavior is different, it’s hard to explain the pre-faze of mania leading up to the more life threatening and aspect of mania that leads to a psychotic break committing me to a psych ward. Prior to hitting psychosis it’s basically just like the absolutely best feeling of a happiness high.

My first manic episode was at age 18 in this part of my life I’m discussing I was now 19 years old. I clearly remember the hospital stay that was the consequence of my manic episode, but I do not remember what actually led to my family calling and ambulance and getting me committed. My assumption is that there must have been some type of extremely inappropriate behavior or argument between me and my family in order for them to need to call an ambulance on me.

I just remember is the extreme feeling of disappointed I felt that I couldn’t successfully live without needing psychiatric medications. It was difficult to accept the art reality that I’d most likely never be able to live without psych meds and it was just such a frustrating feeling and all I did was compare myself to my bipolar alcoholic mother and thought I’ve now turned into everything I hated about her.

To be continued….