Thanks for sharing your experience. It just sickens me to think of people like you, and the millions of others; men, women, and children who have also suffered from the mania, or will suffer when they try to come off the meds. I have read that the numbers of children on antidepressants is right now today in America one out of six. And the number of adults on antidepressants have been estimated to be one in three.
I will pray for a healing of your life and family. I was able to make it to the other side because of a wonderful, patient husband, educated professions, and well written books, articles, and information. Thank Goodness for my psychiatrist, Peter Breggin, Ann Blake Tracy, and the other authors who have heroically and courageously written the books.
I'd rather be addicted to cigarettes that experience manic-depressive hell. But I am grateful you made it through without killing anyone or yourself. Give you mind some time to balance out. It took me years to rebuild reality after experiencing the psychotic break. The shame and embarassment were huge. I can laugh about it now, but at the time, it was just so horrible. I was picked up by the police in my underwear.
The analogy I have come up with is reality being a sort of brick wall, and when one becomes psychotic or even just manic, that reality smashes the wall into individual bricks. The job of the person healing from this destruction is to carefully and consistently rebuild the wall.
You are already leaps and bounds ahead of the average psyche drug user in the sense that you KNOW it was a drug reaction. My greater concern is with the many people in our society who have no clue they are experiencing a mental side effect from the drugs.
Take Care!
Jenny Hatch
Thanks for the prayers.
It is amazing what the mind is capable can do when there is a chemical imbalance or an adverse reaction to drugs.
I had never experienced any close to what I went through with the mania.
My sympathy to those who suffer depression or are bipolar.
To this day my wife says I do not remotely resemble the man she married. I feel pretty normal but I guess I still have a long way to go.