The Medicated Child

After finding a fast enough Internet connection to pirate, my housemate and I sat in my bedroom and watched The Medicated Child – a documentary about children who are placed on SSRIs, benzodiazapines and mood stabilizers to control various mental diagnoses. As a person who has been permanently altered by medications such as the ones above, it hit me a little bit too close to home to watch this documentary.

You can watch it online on the PBS website: The Medicated Child

My experience in the psychiatric drug system began at age 16. My mother was dying, I was trying to work full time and go to school, and I was sinking in teenage depression. We were on welfare, so my mother decided to find me some sort of mental health care at no cost – this is surprisingly easy in New Jersey.

I was placed on Zoloft, an SSRI, after a brief conversation with a doctor on my first visit to the free clinic. After a few weeks of therapy and more consultations, my doctor raised my Zoloft dose after coming to the conclusion that my depression wasn’t getting better. I was no longer able to fall asleep naturally due to the jitters that Zoloft gave to me, which affected my schoolwork greatly. My doctor then put me on Trazodone to help me sleep at night – this made it very difficult to wake up for school in the morning.

As my Zoloft dose continued to rise, so did my anxiety levels. When asking my doctor about this, he I would need another medication to counteract the side-effects of the SSRI. I was told to begin taking Trazodone in the morning with my Zoloft, and also begin an anti-anxiety drug called Buspar. It wasn’t long before I was too zonked out on medications to be able to do homework at night. I started failing my classes, got fired from my job, and I was told that I’d have to go to summer school in order to graduate.

My doctor told my mother and I that I needed to stay on the medication in order to control my depression and function normally. He said I had a chemical imbalance that made it so I would need medication for the rest of my life.

So I quit high school.

I found a full time job, but had trouble getting there on time. When I’d make it there, I would shake all day long and have trouble paying attention to my work. To the dismay of my mother and my doctor, I stopped taking my medication and was able to successfully work full time in the IT industry as a high school dropout at age 17. My depression remained, but in hindsight I realize that it was due to beginning of my mother’s death process, not a chemical imbalance. I was not offered therapy unless I was to take medication – I elected to drop out of the system completely and try to quell my pain through art and music.

I stayed off of medication for almost a year – until my mother told me she had full blown AIDS. I completely lost my mind that day, got really high on coke and told my mother I was going to kill myself. My aunt said she was taking me to “find somebody to talk to.” She really brought me to a hospital where I was told I’d have to sign myself in for a week or I’d be committed. I signed myself in and stayed in this hospital for a week and a few days, having been busted with cocaine in my system and pushed into dual diagnosis. While hospitalized, I was put back on Buspar and also given Paxil, which was a brand new SSRI. I was told I had Panic Disorder and Depression, and that these medications would be the only way for me to have a normal life. Desperate for a cure to the pain I felt, I succumbed. When a person in a position of power tells a teenage girl with a dying mother that she’ll never be normal unless she takes these pills, she will probably believe him.

After a few weeks on these pills, I started to feel psychotic. I never slept. I would pick at my skin compulsively and barely eat anything. I stopped taking them again.

I moved to DC, and then my mother died. It was intense. I needed therapy. I had health insurance for the first time, so I opted to go to a behavioral health clinic. I wound up being prescribed two medications before ever speaking to a therapist – Effexor and Klonopin. The Klonopin got me high so I loved it – and then became physically dependent on it. I was chemically dependent on Klonopin from age 19 to 25.

Effexor made me not eat, and I loved that too – when I ate I would get nauseous, so I tried to eat as little as possible. It also made me not sleep, which I didn’t love. Not sleeping made me start to become paranoid throughout the day, which made working difficult. That was when my doctor told me that I would need to take Seroquel, an anti-psychotic drug. She referred to my sleep-deprived daytime behavior as “psychosis” and said that was an indication that I needed a drug from that class.

Seroquel made me incredibly sluggish… I could not carry on a conversation at all. I would take my medicine at 9pm and not be able to wake up until 1pm the next day. Once awake, I could barely focus on anything or keep my eyes open at work. The romantic relationship I was in began to suffer from my lack of sex drive and general lack of disinterest in anything. I went back to my doctor after a few weeks, and she told me that I would need to start taking another medication called Wellbutrin – this would give me energy and a sex life again.

It would also give me extremely bad anxiety, as well as a skin condition called Psoriasis (that I still have all over my elbows and knees). My anxiety became so bad that I was completely unable to leave the house. When speaking to my doctor about this, she suggested I add another drug to the mix – Neurontin. Neurontin would lessen the anxiety that came along with Wellbutrin.

At age 20, I was on Effexor, Klonopin, Seroquel, Wellbutrin and Neurontin. My social life plummeted, and I was incredibly on edge and anxious. I was suicidal. My skin was a mess. I didn’t feel real – I felt completely detached from my body and was convinced that I was going to die. I became preoccupied with my early death, and started to live as though death was near. I was so tired and had racing thoughts. Seroquel would make me rock back and forth. My doctor said that the Neurontin didn’t seem to be working, so she prescribed me Gabatril in order to strengthen Neurontin’s effects.

I was on 6 different medications for a condition that I didn’t remember anymore. My doctor continued to prescribe me drug after drug to counteract effects of the previous drugs. I didn’t have anywhere else to turn – I trusted and believed her and credited her for keeping me sane. In reality, I was completely insane – and this was from the medication, not from my mental illness.

It was in 2002 that I started dating a new partner who thought it was strange that I was on so many medications. This partner challenged me to stop taking some of them. It seemed ludicrous – I needed these medications because of my mental illness! I’d need to stay on them for the rest of my life! But I was also curious – what would happen if I stopped taking my medication?

Over the course of a year I weaned off all of my medications with the exception of Klonopin, which I upped the dose of to counteract the side effects of coming off of so many drugs. My mental clarity improved. My sex drive returned. I rested well at night. I could cry, I could smile, I could love. I started making art and music again, and my writing started to make more sense. By 2004, I was completely off of all psychiatric drugs except for the one that made me high.

That process was perhaps the most difficult… I spent years faking mental illness I didn’t have in order to fill my Klonopin prescription. I would basically walk into any clinic, tell them I lost my prescription for “Wellbutrin with a Klonopin back” and be handed whatever I asked for. After Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans proved to be a difficult place to continue keeping up my scam. I started to wean off of Klonopin, and began the most horrifying detox of my life. I had a heroin stint previous to this, and it was a piece of cake to kick heroin compared to getting off of Klonopin. Heroin withdrawal took about a month – Klonopin took close to 8 months to leave my system completely.

My long-term effects from psyhchiatric medication: I have painful stomach ulcers that occasionally perforate, my liver has deteorated to the point where I can barely drink liquor, psoriasis on my elbows and knees, some forms of compulsive behavior that started when I began SSRIs, and occasional paranoia that is completely unfounded.

All in all, I believe that psychiatrists push pharmaceuticals more than they do therapy. This is for their own financial benefit. I feel as though I was abused by the psychiatric industry and controlled by medication for many years for no good reason. Nearly all psychiatric medicine studies are funded by the pharmaceutical industry – is that not a gigantic red flag?

Before you sign your life away to the psychiatric industry, please pay attention to what goes on. Were you given medication after only speaking to someone for an hour? Were you placed on psychiatric drugs at a young age for ADHD and then put on more drugs for illnesses that seemed to develop after you started those medications? Does your doctor give you a new medication every time you complain about a side effect? Does your doctor ever recommend things like excersize, a change in career, more social time, healthier foods, or naturopathic methods? Does your doctor raise your dose when you have a bad day?

When I think about what was pushed on me in my younger years I feel enraged… and after watching The Medicated Child, I’m outright terrified. There are children as young as 4 years old being diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder and placed on mood stabilizers. There are children who are put on dehabilitating anti-psychotic drugs at age 6 who develop uncontrollable ticks in their necks in their teenage years. These drugs were never tested on children – if you choose to put your children on these drugs, your child is a guinea pig.

Please watch this video.

I also welcome discussion about this, including private discussion. I also have successfully tapered off of a number of drugs and can help you end your psychiatric poison spiral. You can write to me at nikkimonster at gmail dot com.

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