Coming Off Psychiatric Medication

One person's experience

The post we made earlier this week with part 1 of the transcript from Episode 34 helped me realize that I should say more about my experience of stopping medication. Please know that everything in this post is based on my lived experience as a former patient. I’m not suggesting that anyone else should do what I’ve done.

As a high school student, I wanted to be put on medication for my perceived mental illness. In retrospect, I can tell you that my experience of overexcitabilities and unilevel dynamisms, such as ambivalence and ambitendencies, often led me down the wrong path.

The first diagnoses I received as an adolescent were depression and depersonalization disorder. I spent years dissociating as a teenager and as a young adult, and I was disconnected from my body. I felt like an observer who was watching my other self regularly go off the rails.

My emotional intensity is what led me to think I was mentally ill. When I felt things, I seemed to feel them so much deeper and more intensely than other people did. I experienced dramatic mood swings and explosive outbursts of anger. I had no capacity for emotional regulation.