Tag: bipolar

Ask Me Questions About my Mental Health or How to be a More Effective Loved One.

by N.A.Z., posted in Ask a question about mental health

I can come at this from 3 ways. I have a mental illness. I graduated with a degree in psychology and I also worked in the mental health field for over 10 years.

I’ve seen my family struggle and the families of others. I’m trying to put purpose to my pain.

Please ask me any question about my experience and questions about how loved ones can be more effective and have a better understanding. Ask in the comment section below.

This does not take place of medical advice or therapeutic advice.

Have a wonderful week my lovelies,

Naz

Being Under-medicated is an issue too?!

by N.A.Z., posted in Inpatient Mental Health

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)