IV. Psychiatry’s Mirror – Anonymous 41
Contents of the PDF are below.
To give some context to my experiences with medication and psychology, I need to begin with how I got to the point of wanting it. I’ve preferred being alone my entire life and was given the freedom to be so. Consequently, my social skills and real world experience were heavily lacking. School relationships stayed at school and any that crossed over would find a way to burn. I had no commitments, no reason to be presentable, empathetic, or modest, because there were never any consequences. And after an interaction which I believed caused someone’s suicide, my mind was filled with pure self loathing. Solitude became a lonely hell, but stayed a habit. Without anything to disrupt my solitude besides school, whatever desires or impulses I had reigned supreme to drown out my deteriorating mental state. Days died in sleep and video games and porn. Thinking and reflection were lost in ever dominant distractions. There was never a need to change the formula, even when it led to numbness. My childhood had rotted away.
In high school, I tried to treat it with weed. Getting high was a good, but temporary escape. Depression and pleasure were my puppet strings. Lack of life experience bred anxiety. The anxiety kept me from truly experiencing life. I was bed-locked. School was the only reason to leave my room. I found a brief respite in drawing and developing a thin story narrative. Thoughts of creating a cartoon or graphic novel brought inspiration and excitement back into my life. For a time, it was all I cared about. Until it ultimately fell to the wayside. My inspiration flared too quickly and died in overwhelming darkness. Commitments were too difficult at the time. Anything outside of pleasure seeking habit felt too difficult to sustain. Weights hung from every limb by then. It was difficult to move. To wake up. To see any reason to keep trying my losing battle. I considered suicide a few times then. I knew where my dad’s gun hid. But my body couldn’t move to take it. The thought of making my caretaker as a child and the only bridge I refused to burn, my maternal grandmother, grieve without reason was too much to handle.
I couldn’t stand the constant inner turmoil so I sought out therapy in sophomore year. It was supposed to help clear the grief of the suicide I still thought was on my shoulders. It was supposed to fix me. Fix something. Anything. It was difficult to open up. I found it cringy. My problems seemed stupid when spoken out loud. Eventually, I’d come to talk about the suspected suicide. I was told to meditate, introspect, and forgive myself. But, I didn’t know how, nor did I know how to ask. Beyond that, I waited for the therapist to tell me something I didn’t know. She wasn’t much of a talker. To say more than a few words between statements between bi-weekly appointments.
If I’d been more accepting or curious, she might’ve been the emotional support I desperately needed then. She was well in tune with the type of spiritual healing I’d later come to find. In hindsight, my emotional turmoil could’ve ended with her. Her office was empty a year after I’d left and I never bothered to find where she moved to. I was stubborn and made it hard to change. Part of me wanted to stay miserable. Another part wanted a pill to do the work instead. So I switched to a more clinical setting. Psychiatry. It was a much different setting and much slower. I learned logical reasons to not be depressed and clinical names for the patterns of thought that would lead to depression like catastrophizing. It lacked any emotion or forgiveness. Quick to strip you down to a diagnosis and nothing more. I remember listening to explanations and analyses with little care. Problems with commitment made at-home practices like reflection undesirable to carry out.
The most frustrating issue both therapy experiences shared was how long I had to wait between appointments. An hour every two weeks. Nothing more, but always open to less. The structure was cold, unsupportive in the time needed most. Like a mother too busy to help when you break a bone. I now realize the fault lies in overbooked scheduling and the knowledge that professionals are all too human. The only difference between the two is I left psychiatry with a prescription. A low dosage of Citalopram. The dosage fluctuated until I could comfortably say, “I think I feel better.” But my idea of “better” was further burying my problems in a sea of fog.
I started college in another state sometime around then for creative writing. My old flame for drawing was reignited, then doused by the tsunami of bliss in the creation of my first short stories and poems. Yet, as assignments, they stayed delegated to school time. I was a master at compartmentalizing. So when I got a car to drive myself to school, rumination and the long drives would bring out my worst thoughts. I remember thinking about swerving into oncoming traffic or letting go of the wheel, hoping a tree would be my break. I tried making new friends at university. It was a dejecting experience. I wanted to change and get better. To finally deliver some effort in making it happen. Maybe if I’d find a group to confide in or fall back on, people to strip my loneliness away, maybe I’d find a way to escape my head. The anxiety of talking to a stranger and becoming vulnerable. Hiding my undesirable self and putting up a hollow facade. The uncomfortable idea of injecting myself into another friend group like a pathetic leech. I didn’t want to let my internal misery spill out and infect others. The few people I tried to befriend rejected my efforts. It felt like betrayal. It was the loneliest period in my life. As though the world was eternally rejecting me from ever experiencing companionship or love. I couldn’t see from their perspective my strange desperation and unreasonable expectations. I thought I was doing everything right. Though, I wasn’t thinking much beyond the first thoughts to enter my head.
Rumination became the devil in my head. I’ve come to describe antidepressants as another mind invading a weak consciousness, pushing it into a deep fog. I changed prescriptions to Duloxetine around then, but the effects were mostly the same. The overtaking of impulse led me down some confusing paths. Suicide and survival. Hate and love. Destroying and saving myself. The looming deadline of the future. My yet undecided career path. How would I make the money to survive away from my dad? Is that a future I’d even want to try? I spent little time acknowledging it all in favor of games and long periods of sleep. When, in the brief time of nothing between suns, I could feel the peace of an empty head. But, it was never long enough.
In my second year of college, whispers of Covid were being tossed around. I didn’t care though. In the first half of 2020, I made some major changes. I was introduced to psychedelics and sex. My first experience with mushrooms was on 4/20/20 with a few old high school friends from my home town. We explored an abandoned water park on a lake. Patterns of color shifting ivy and graffiti. Playful balance. Orange and blue prismatic sunset hues. The way life returned to the perspective of a child. When wonder filled the world and the smallest of details could contain infinity. My second time on mushrooms locked me in the darkness of my own mind, literally, as my senses faded on a bed where two people played a board game. Their voices hushed and bodies hid in black. It was completely isolating. My consciousness hovered in the void where I thought I’d remain forever. A sense of peace eventually found my mind. This is death with a consciousness. Someday, even consciousness will fade and I’ll never realize. And I’m okay with that. I woke up to the sound of returning voices.
I later moved away from my dad and into a trap house to grow weed. The change in scenery was a fresh welcome. Being able to stand on my own legs and experience the raw responsibility of caring for myself was paradoxically freeing. Though, the added solitude brought me a step back. A high school friend moved in shortly after. He was vocal and upfront. Quick to an argument and anger, but incredibly intelligent. There, he made everything known. Pointed out exactly why I had a hard time keeping friends and making new ones. The source of my confusion. I was annoying, avoidant, and lacked any and all self awareness. It was the most profound piece of information I’d ever been given. If I hadn’t acknowledged its truth, I never would’ve sought change. I snowballed into constant self improvement. My consciousness literally shifted. I could see the world from a new perspective. Consciousness expanded outward, taking in parts of the world I’d never considered. Myself included. No longer was I at the center of my misery or the world. I was a tiny piece of a tiny piece of the world in a tiny piece of the universe. All my problems shrunk in scale and importance. I began to let my past go. Curiosity began to stir. I wanted to know more about the world I’d shied away from for so long and metamorphize into something competent enough to take it on. I dropped out of college and quit taking Duloxetine cold turkey. I was lucky it didn’t have negative consequences.
The change was life saving, but not completing. I still struggled with rumination, self-deprecation, and a poor work ethic. I was finally ready to understand the causes of my thought patterns the psychiatrist tried to teach me years ago. My work improved after finally letting go of weed, again, cold turkey. Evening walks and simple pleasures carried me through long hours of work. They’d become ritual and in them sprung awe and gratitude that’d felt beautifully alien. It was like experiencing the childhood I’d missed.
Most of these moments I’d share with myself. Reclaiming solitude and silence is one of the best favors someone can do for themself, especially in the digital age. To allow yourself to enjoy and indulge in mundane or overlooked details and grander displays, to soak in the wonder of our magnificent universe in the present moment slows life down enough to properly live. In the present is when we experience joy, love, peace, gratitude, excitement. It’s only then can we face our dread, sorrow, grief, fear, uncomfortability, hopelessness, anger, the negativity that accelerates time into a blur of burdens. To strengthen oneself enough to dance with one’s demons alone and find peace with the past and futures they drag into the present, harsh perspectives, and despair of hard times, to reclaim an overtaken mind, is a greater victory than any pill could ever give.
This isn’t to say I’m some wise sage who holds the secret to escaping the prescription hell so many are wrongly put into. I’m still young, inexperienced, and ignorant. And for some, prescriptions are needed and help for the better. My experience doesn’t reflect the genuine help people receive from the mental health industry. And by no means do I intend to invalidate or simplify their medical or psychological needs.
I was lucky enough to stumble across the right conditions to save me from myself. If what worked for me may save someone else, allow me to share some ideas I learned along the way:
Logic and prescriptions aren’t always a cure for your depression or anxiety. They are irrational conditions and feed off of emotion. Even the most logical computer person can still feel sad or betrayed or angry. Coming at them in scientific manners overlooks the very nature of emotional problems. Healing comes from dealing with the source of our turmoil. Stacking a medication on top of your preexisting traumas doesn’t always guarantee them being resolved. They will continue to gnaw at your mind. At least in my case, medication made me disregard or escape from the problem.
Prescriptions to antidepressants are incredibly easy to get. In my experience, I received little to no resistance in getting a prescription. Even as a high schooler, a demographic known for emotional problems, I was never warned or driven away from medication. Hospitals are businesses and are incentivized to write scripts. It’s up to you to do research, ask questions, and be on the side of caution. So many are wrongly prescribed these medications that alter brain chemistry. Some need them for legitimate medical reasons. But emotional problems with a clear source should be dealt with in other ways.
Acknowledgement is the first step towards change. To admit to the reality of what needs to change motivates the brain towards action. To acknowledge a problem requires awareness and the proper perspective to notice what needs changed to begin with. To turn that perspective inward and view the self from a perspective outside of oneself is self awareness. By cultivating self awareness, you train the mind to spot what harms the self and others, its causes, one’s inner deficiencies, limited perspective, train of thought. Overthinking and hyper-focus trap us within a fixed perspective. Calm is required to expand. You can’t win a war if you have no knowledge of the enemy. To accept that you won’t win without knowledge is the first step to accepting and respecting the knowledge as it comes.
To find meaning and purpose in life is to dedicate oneself to an earthly cause. It becomes a tether with which we find solace and light in our darkest moments. Meaning proves that life has plenty of reasons to live. In them lies beauty, inspiration, and challenges that promote growth and strength. Just as God is the head of spiritual purpose in a religious sense, any meaning can head spiritual purpose in a secular sense. They’re humbling. We all need a reason to live for something other than the self as well.
Spend less time in your head and more in the moment. The present is fleeting and so are its beauties. For depression, anxiety, and more existential fears, dwelling on them and locking oneself away in the mind is like caging oneself with a hungry lion. Part of me argues that in the mind is where most progress is found, but great progress can be found in the act of simply being in the moment. To fully express the senses and investigate the world leads to experiences wherein lessons are learned. These emotional hardships are difficult to think your way out of, especially when lacking the experience needed to think outside of their constraints. Even in the most mundane or simple of things can lessons be learned.
We all fight a constant battle against despair and chaos. Entropy is a fundamental law of existence. Everything inevitably expands into disorder over time. We work to reverse entropy, but it only staves it off temporarily. Entropy always wins. This shouldn’t be a reason to despair, however. We can save ourselves in the future fight against entropy, to give ourselves a world worth living in. There is one way to do so, and that is to work.
This concludes Anonymous 41’s submission.
The next chapter:
Psychiatry’s Mirror II
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