Venting about what has been taken from me… thanks to many years of being unfairly pressured to take drugs from GPs and professionals who never cared about me from childhood.
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My heightened empathy. I used to be able to feel people’s emotions intensely, if you were upset about something and hiding it behind a smile, I’d be able to sense that something wasn’t right. Friends of mine, if any of them needed help in any way, I’d spend time coming up with ways to support them. Caring about what makes them smile. I used to be brilliant at giving advice and explaining mental health in a way that was in-depth and informative. I could see the smallest changes in people’s emotions, things that were useful for my future career in psychology. I longed to be a psychologist since a child, now I can’t feel anyone’s emotions! How do you feel? I don’t know! And right now I’m studying psychology… and it’s hard now, it hurts knowing I had those tools and then a Speech and Language Therapist who never had any right being in my life, had to put that final nail in the coffin.
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I can’t drink tea, coffee, alcohol, fizzy drinks or energy drinks anymore. Before being pressured by those people, I was off Sertraline in 2019 without any side effects. It was a miracle, usually I’d experience irrational rage when missing a week worth of doses, BUT NOT THAT TIME! I was free and my body was beginning to metabolise things properly once again. My 21st birthday, I’ll keep going back to as a time where I could make choices as an adult. I drank my first bottle of Prosecco, things were looking bright. Now thanks to being pressed, I lost what my body was beginning to return to me. I even missed out on being 21 years old, as a month later I was thrown into horrible anhedonia, insomnia, brain-fog, confusion and it completely stole the last 3 years of my life.
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My heart beat races when I do light exercise or exercise I used to be good at. Walking fast over a bridge to catch my train? Heart beating fast, breathless. Going for a short 5m swim to the other side of the pool? Chest tightness, heart beating quickly, breathless. It worries me, because I don’t want to press myself… but back in 2019, I could do all of that without needing to recover. Thank you once again, professionals!
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I can’t play clarinet anymore. I picked this up in early 2019, after dropping it since childhood, my parents were happy. That Christmas I remember playing carols on my clarinet for my grandparents who visited. At times I’d decide to goof around by trying to teach my little sister how to play! Not anymore, my mind used to play effortlessly and I could spend an entire evening with tunes. But now I can only get 5 minutes in before my brain clouds over, I can no longer recall the song in my head and everything feels distant. Even the smallest things get ripped away! Brilliant.
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Hearing character’s voices in my head. I didn’t know this was the aftermath of antidepressants until recently, but as a child I had this stolen from me after using risperidone. And it… makes me want to cry, knowing after nights of daydreaming of my favourite cartoons before drifting off to sleep, the reason why I can’t recall a character’s voice in my head like others are able to do is because of a psych drug. Which especially stinks knowing it was a skill I had, taken away unnaturally… and that’s the theme, skills and abilities I had, my own ability to metabolise things, unnaturally altered by chemicals.
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My creativity. The last time I ever wrote a story was in my pre-medicated days at the age of 8! I used to love writing stories, being inspired by little things I see and do throughout my life… and recently I’ve discovered that small part of my brain who is eager to collect ideas is still there, it just needs stimuli but on the rare moments I can write stories, it appears as it did as a child. I was born to be creative, to visualise, to imagine. Art, music and writing stories. Daydreaming for hours on end. Why did those innocent joys be robbed from me?
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Feeling love and excitement. Ironically, I now have two of the very things that would’ve helped me overcome my depressive cage, things that the professionals overlooked. Moving out of my traumatic childhood town and finding a partner. Now that I have those two things, because it happened after losing my mind on SSRIs, going through horrible withdrawal, anhedonia, minor brain damage (3mm lesion) and high prolactin, I can’t experience the absolute joy and freedom. The professionals only looked at the depression, they didn’t see any external causes, they didn’t even see the times I’d smile and laugh and feel love and excitement. I don’t feel those intense emotions and at times… it feels like I’m missing out on life. Even my sex drive had been taken away from me, so that’s yet another human experience altered for me against my will.
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Having children. Back then, I used to have a maternal instinct and was great with kids. I’d volunteer my time at messy church, in Sunday school groups, and at clubs like Girl’s Brigade. When I’d take my little sisters and brother to the park, I’d often have other kids joining in and they’d rope me into their games too. It used to be brilliant! But now, that instinct isn’t truly there anymore, when I visit a park with my youngest sibling nowadays… I just can’t join in anymore, as there’s just no inspiration on what to do. Speaking of having kids in general, my prolactin levels are high thanks to a prolactin secreting tumour I never had until… well, the professionals pressured me to restart Sert again in 2020. They won’t remove it, unless it grows, no matter what hormonal disturbances I have and side effects. They just expect you to take meds forever and deal with it, unless it grows! It’s upsetting. It can cause infertility.
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Might as well add this too! Hormonal imbalances. Gone are the days my hormones are balanced and I know everything is right in my body.
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Finally, number 10. My ability to feel sleepiness when I wake up in the morning. You know that residual tiredness that feels awful and you want to shake it away? I miss it a lot. I miss the natural way my body would respond to things, I miss how I would stumble when trying to visit the bathroom at night because I was so tired. I miss falling asleep on my chair in the kitchen, knowing I have somewhere to be but it’s too early! I miss the daytime grumpiness I’d experience until the cup of tea kicks in. I miss it all…
I just wish people left my life alone…
2 comments
Stop seeing them. And get off all the drugs. Detox from them. You should slowly come back to yourself. At least some of it.
This is heartbreaking. Zoloft almost ruined me also, but I sensed the damage after 2 weeks and stopped immediately. I can’t imagine the devastation after years of taking it. This crap really needs to be taken off the market. I know of several suicides that occurred within weeks of someone being put on it. It cannot be overstated how much ssri meds scramble your brains. There are publications that say the residual effects can last years depending on how long you were on it. But the good news is eventually they say you’ll return to normal. With me I was on it for 2 weeks and it took about 6 months before I felt free of its cloud. All the things you described applied to me too, except loss of desire to have children since I never wanted that to begin with.
ESPECIALLY if you have a talent that requires dexterity or quick thinking like your clarinet, Zoloft will demolish that. With me it was sports, I suddenly turned into a clumy idiot like my muscles and nerves just quit. No even worse than that, it’s like I completely lost my skill at the brain level. Its a horrible feeling when you lose everything that was ever good about you. I’m glad you figured out the problem and you’re off meds. Based on how long you were taking them, I think you have a long road ahead of you but your brain will repair itself if you’re patient. Please don’t lose hope, the worst is over.