Happy med Monday everyone! I thought today would be a really good time to talk about medication‘s and what I have personally experienced. When I was 10 years old, I was hospitalized in the psych ward. I was a special case, considering I had been in a repeated manic episode that never stopped since I was about three years old. I was born with the chemical imbalance, and doctors would drop their jaws at just how my brain chemistry worked. In the beginning, they misdiagnosed me with bipolar I. They thought that just because I experienced manic highs that I also experienced depressive lows. This was nowhere near the case. Instead of feeling depressive lows, I would feel a hypomanic semi high.  I had never experienced a depressive episode before. To help though, they decided along with the consent of my father to try Seroquel. It was my third night in the hospital, and they gave me the medication. I had no idea what it was, and I genuinely didn’t realize how intrusively psychoactive it was. This was, of course, until I was in the meeting room and straight up the room started spinning. I started seeing stars, and realized that I needed to go lay down. I started having near psychedelic effects, and I literally saw the moon change colors. I mentioned these to my doctor, but they said that overtime it would just go away. On day four of taking this medication, I self harmed for the first time. I was only 10. Although I had never been at suicide or self harm risk before, the doctors brushed it off and just blamed it on my mental illness. Over the course of a year, the trip side effects went away, and I stayed stable for a little bit. Fast forward to middle school: I started suffering severe side effects. I felt like I was living in a simulation. I started acting out in school, and went into severe depression. I gained about 20 pounds, stopped doing things normally, and was also at high suicide risk. The doctors continued to not think it was the medication‘s. By the time I was in college, it had been 10 years on the medication. I eventually found out that seroquel was NOT recommended for long-term use, long-term use being 1 to 2 years. I had taken this medication every single day for 10 years. I at this point was almost obese. I had finally gotten old enough where I could take charge of my medication and medical records. Luckily for me, after moving states at the age of 16 I had a holistic psychiatrist who was still a typical psychiatrist, but he didn’t believe as much in medication‘s. I will never forget the psychiatrist because he’s the one who helped me get off the medication, at least for the most part. I began getting off Seroquel at the age of 19. Thus far, I have spent over a year trying to get off of it. I have had several times where I went into withdrawal because I went too fast, and other times where I would get depressed again because my dose was too high. I am now on 3 mg. That’s it. I have lost over 60 pounds in six months, my mood is stable, I’m happy, and I have no experiences of psychosis or severe delirious mania. However, I take clonidine as a substitute to help me sleep as I wean off the medication. But I am on the tail end of finally breaking the vicious cycle of medication, and I feel better than I have in a long time. The days of having my head in the toilet, having tremors to the point that my muscles were sore, and severe insomnia are finally paying off. If you detect a problem with a medication, don’t be like me and make sure you speak up! And if your doctor tries prescribing you an antipsychotic when you have no symptoms of psychosis, try your absolute best to not resort to it! I was done so dirty at a young age, and it set me up for a decade of pain, anguish, and not understanding the world around me. I do believe that medication can work, but medication‘s are not one size fits all. If you have a problem with your medication or are experiencing side effects that are affecting your day-to-day life, speak up! You are heard!