Inpatient Mental Health – Just Mai 2 Cents

First of all assume “crazies” is spelled with quotations. I jokingly said I wanted to reclaim the words “crazy”, “insane” and “nuts” the way some black people have reclaimed the “n” word. Of course it is meant to be understood that those words are in quotations. And can only be spoken by those who fall into the category of having “lived experience” with a mental illness. I hate the terms lived experience and consumer survivor. Call a damn spade a spade I say. I have since found out that my trailblazing mentor, who has since passed, was trying to reclaim those words as well! My grandmother always said “great minds think alike… and fools seldom differ” hahaha. My mentor was definitely a great mind. I use them jokingly among my village of supporters sometimes. It lightens the mood a little sometimes.

Anyway, when I was in the hospital there was a patient who didn’t speak the same language as me very fluently. I had issues with not having an appetite and not eating. They noticed and would often motion me to come closer and give me a piece of food and watch closely until I ate it. It was actually a beautiful exchange. One “crazy” person clear enough to see, in the midst of their own psychosis, that I would benefit from a piece of banana and not to offer me the whole thing because it was just too much at the time.

Sometimes that same person would motion for me to lie down because I was becoming too overstimulated and needed a break. That touched my heart.

We’re more than just our illness.

Take care my lovelies,

Naz

Well my friends it’s been a while since I’ve written. It’s been crazy literally and figuratively! I’m going to give an overview of what happened in this blog and then I’ll create other blog posts that are related to experiences that let up to this situation.

I’m not going to reread the previous blog posts at this point because I may find them painful or triggering. There may be some repetition. My grandmother always said “repetition is good for emphasis” so let’s pretend it’s deliberate and I’m emphasizing lol.

So I likely mentioned the fact that I was on a benzodiazepine called clonazepam. It’s fine when prescribed as PRN (take as needed) that how I took it for years. Sometimes only twice in a month sometimes twice in a year. But due to doctor prescribed discontinuation of another medication I ended up going through withdrawal starting June 2019. I’m still experiencing the effects to this day. My doctor left (a whole other blog coming on that later) after putting on 3 x 0.5 mg of clonazepam daily as opposed to 1 x 0.5 mg as needed. The reason for this was the withdrawal from the initial medication created chemically induced insomnia, anger, anxiety on steroids that I’d never experienced before, nightmares and “weird” dreams and my PTSD was in high gear as well.

Eventually, 7 months of taking the 1.5 mg of clonazepam daily (really not supposed to be more than 1-2 months (whole blog coming on that) a got with a psychiatrist that was slowly taking me off.

I ended up going to the hospital voluntarily not because I thought I was delusional but I knew things were off with my sleep and my meds. My pharmacist and the in patient psychiatrist both agreed that the psychiatrist had me on 2 little clonazepam and that was the cause for all of my symptoms. Had this been a bipolar episode I would have been in the hospital for months. Not 5 days. I experienced true psychosis and it scared me to death.

Sooooo much more to say on this and I will. But I’m super tired.

Take care my lovelies,

Naz (I’ll explain the name change later)

Category: Inpatient Mental Health

Compassion from the Crazies

Being Under-medicated is an issue too?!