.png){kind=logo}
My story is about a teenager struggling with the reality of her mental disorder.
Opening the prescription bottle, popping out the pill, taking a big sip of water, tilting my head back so that the pill will run more smoothly down my throat. This became a habit, every night repeating the same gestures. My story is not a happy story, but it’s the real truth behind medication for mental disorder.
It was a September morning, the air was warm, and the leaves had started to fall slowly onto the streets. It was a typical Wednesday; we had gotten back to school about two weeks ago. I was steadily getting used to the school pace and my mom had booked me an appointment with a psychiatrist after a psychologist told me I might need medication. I got up early, gnawed by stress. How are you supposed to feel when someone you don’t know tells you, that you need medication? In the waiting room, classical music was playing. There were two leather armchairs, one small brown couch, an old Paris map, a lot of kid books, and the appointment fees mounted on the wall. The psychiatrist arrived. She was a small blond woman, wearing a grey shawl, monochromatic black outfit and high heels, which by the way is quite unusual. Psychiatrists, like psychologists, tend to feel the need to dress colorfully to brighten your dreadful soul.
We started with the typical questions, I had already heard them so many times that the replies were almost automatic: how was your childhood? what were you like? were you a happy child? were your parents there for you? and so on. The therapist asked my mom and dad to go outside, I was used to this practice. Then we talked about my anxiety and paranoia and how I manage to live my life. My mom and dad came back in, and it was my turn to go outside, I felt like a young child who was being punished for trying to express her uneasiness. They talked and talked and talked. How can you cope with the fact that your parents are talking behind your back? Then she called me back in, looked me in the eyes, and told me “As you know you need medication, we’ll try an atypical antipsychotic”. I got out of the expensive, 5th district office, unsettled and yet excited by the news. What I didn’t know was that this molecule was going to throw me over a precipice. My ordeal was just beginning
I started my meds on a Monday. The doctor had warned me about the side effects: gaining weight, the need for at least 2 more hours of sleep. A week passed and then another one. One day I would be fine the next I wasn’t able to get up to go to school, eaten away by anxiety and paranoid thoughts. Everything became torture; I couldn’t eat convinced that someone was trying to poison me, breathing or taking a shower tired me as if I had run a marathon. I lost five kilos in about two weeks, even though the medication was supposed to make me gain weight, my hips were showing like two mountains peaks. My jeans didn’t fit anymore, and I didn’t have the strength to do anything but sleep, I was sleeping for 15 hours a day. Lying in my bed, seeing the same scene every day: my window with the blinds closed and the darkness that was, at the same time around me and inside me.
After two weeks of being stuck in my destructive thoughts, the psychiatrist told me that we would try an antidepressant. The medication helped me. I wasn’t stuck in my Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), paranoia, or anxiety anymore. I could get up, eat, drink, laugh, and feel emotions again. But that was during vacation when everything was calm, and no pressure was being felt. My parents soon became led by the thought of me going back to school.
In France, due to the pandemic, the government announced a lockdown. The hope about school closing won me over. But schools weren’t closing, waiting for me.
The days before going back to school were awful. The anxiety got worse and worse up to a point where I couldn’t do anything all day. On the night before, I tried as calmly as I could possibly prepare my bag. The only thing that reassured me was my anxiety medication. I had taken it once before and everything suddenly feels alright.
Days passed, they felt like weeks
One week after my going back to school, on a cold morning, the ambulance siren was blaring. My psychiatrist was next to me, trying to keep me calm while I was squeezing her hand the tightest I could because I thought it would help me. We arrived at the hospital; I could only see white everywhere. The nurses' scrubs were white, the light was white, the walls were white, everything was white. I don’t remember anything from my episode, the only thing I can remember was the tiredness I felt after. I also remember walking in this long, very long, white corridor alongside a nurse. Then she stopped in front of a door, she opened it and let me enter. While putting my items on the only shelf that was provided, she said: “Welcome home…”.