Saturday 18 October 2014

Drug War

Every day that I was in the ward I was getting better. That meant that I was swimming closer to the surface, regaining consciousness. The better I got the harder I found recovery. I could see what had happened. The evidence was all around me. It was like being the lead detective in the murder case of myself.

I was still on a massive cocktail of drugs, but I was finding out that psychosis was not my ideal holiday destination. I started to hate and resent the medication. I resented how they made me feel, and I hated that I had to be on them. I knew they had bought me back to reality, but it was not the reality I wanted. It was a reality I had to try desperately hard not to fight.

I was in the midst of a drug war and my body was no man's land.

It's 10pm, I've just taken my medication and I can already feel the sedating effect moving down my limbs. I am holding my crying son, trying to soothe him so I know he is calm and happy before I have to leave him to go to bed. It's not going to happen. Again. Again I will have to leave him with staff, agitated and upset, reflecting my emotions as only a baby can. Again I will have to listen to him cry and not be able to go to him, and again I will wake up without him by my side.

I hate these drugs. I hate what they're doing to me and what they are turning me into. I don't care if they are what's helped me and what's helping me, they are ruining me. I can hardly speak, everything's numb and I feel like I'm locked into my body. My mind can't live here. I need them to sort out my levels. I'm not on the right levels. I can't live like this. I can't be this person. I can't be a mother. Not like this.

It would be weeks and weeks of ongoing reviews, level alterations, blood tests and ward rounds before my intake would be reduced to just one drug, rather than 3 or 4 and months of alarms going off every few hours to remind me to take them. 

I can honestly say that I've been miserable only a few times in my life, and this was the single most miserable time of them all. I felt like I was being punished for a crime that I hadn't committed. I was desperately trying to stay positive when everything around me felt soul crushingly bleak. 

I felt like I was walking a tightrope in wellies. I wasn't equipped for this. I knew I needed to get off the medication, but didn't know the full extent of what would happen to me if and when I did. I knew I had to trust the professionals around me, but I was sick of feeling like everyone else was in charge of me. I longed to be the boss of me again. I wanted to get out. Desperately. Painfully. I needed to get out, and although I didn't know it at the time, it was going to happen. Sooner that I knew.

Love and Lithium,

Mutha Courage X

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