The medication journey begins
When I first walked into the office of the psychiatrist that I continue to see to this day, it was the most humbling experience of my entire mood journey. I needed him and that really pissed me off. I was a psychiatrist committing a patient against his will to treatment but awfully, that patient was me. Seeing him for the first time felt like I was a top gun pilot suddenly forced to sit in coach. Ugh…I had to submit to care and I felt humiliated. Before I went, I prayed that he was going to be inept or have the demeanor of nurse Ratchett so I could quit after the first session. But he was surprisingly competent, respectful and understanding. I hated him for that. The bumpy medication road to mood triumph surprised me.
I cringed when he recommended the dreaded “L” word, lithium, in the first session. It didn’t surprise me. The first words out of my mouth when I sat down in front of him were “I have Bipolar Disorder”. Down the road when he added a fourth medication to my regimen, an anti-psychotic, I had to surrender yet again, this time to the reality of my lack of reality. That it was being used as an antidepressant and mood stabilizer, didn’t matter. I now fell into the category of those who had stepped over the line that separates the insane folks like me from everyone else. I had apparently indeed just flown over the cuckoos nest. Swallowing my pride was much more difficult than the handful of pills I did each day.
A medication trip of mood triumph
My moods were in a good place as the fog lifted. This took a year and a half and I was prescribed two mood stabilizers, an anti-psychotic and an antidepressant. It was a stunning experience to be living a life where I wasn’t cycling anymore…it was the first time ever. My neurochemical mood story turned out to be one of triumph. And you know what? For 30 minutes at a time, flying coach ain’t so bad.
Has your medication journey been difficult? relatively easy? Please share