My personal journey
Most days I struggle. It’s hard to sleep beyond first light, but even harder to force my body out of bed. The drugs have changed the way my brain functions, and the neurons and chemicals are valiantly trying to find their way back to natural balance. I have come far, I realize. From a high …
My early success with coming off the medications, led me to become more curious about psychiatry and its biological approach to emotional distress. If I could do so well for so long without the medications that someone with bipolar disorder “needed”, was I really bipolar? Did any of the psychiatric diagnoses I had been given …
As I pondered ceasing my medications, I knew that the best idea would be to find a doctor with experience tapering people off, but I didn’t have an inkling of how to find one. MadinAmerica.com, a website designed by Robert Whitaker as place to continue questioning the prevailing wisdom about modern psychiatry, had a list …
For years I had been operating under the assumption that eventually I would return to work, focus on my own business or find something meaningful to do as soon as I found the right combination of medications, nutrition and exercise and got “better”. There Iwas in August of 2015 taking my second nap of the …
After receiving what I thought was the “correct” diagnosis from the psychologist, I sought out a new prescriber to get the “correct” treatment. Turns out finding someone to poison you is harder than you might think. I felt uncomfortable going to the doctor I had been seeing because by going to someone else for a …
In spite of all these great ideas I had about going into business for myself, I had a hard time focusing on any one long enough to make anything happen. I wanted to write a novel. I wanted to help non-profits discover the power of newly emerging social web. I needed to organize my house …
The inability to concentrate at work and the complete loss of interest in what I was doing took me back to the doctor who had prescribed the Lexapro. I didn’t recognize these as a side effects and neither did my psychiatrist (even though it’s right on the drug insert). Instead, he added another diagnosis, Adult …
I had been working as a real estate agent, making no money and getting deeper into debt. I had been off the medication for nearly two years when I landed a full-time job, benefits included, at the University of New Hampshire. The job was part of a grant the state had received to help people …
Not long after I left Scott, I had my first visit with a psychiatrist. I was having a hard time getting out of bed and was struggling to care for my infant daughter who was quickly becoming a toddler. Something had to be done. After less than ten minutes explaining what was happening, the doctor …
When I graduated from college I was lost. No job. No prospects. The predictable schedule and the safety of school was suddenly gone. I felt like Wiley Coyote with my legs spinning over empty space. My parents had moved from our home in Pennsylvania to a retirement village in Florida where I knew no one …
