I have a longer piece in the works about my thoughts on psychiatric medication. The delay is due to the fact that I have a lot of thoughts on this topic, and I’m trying to pare them down from well over 2,000 words.
While editing continues on that front, I thought I’d share a prologue of sorts. The following is a journal entry I’d written months ago and just recently stumbled upon again. I would say the timing is uncanny, given the other post I’m working on, but it’s not really a coincidence when the dice seems to be weighted on this genre of thoughts.
The bias regarding medication here is clear — it was a journal entry, after all. Please check back for a more detailed and reasoned piece, coming soon.
The Medication Game
Late Winter/Early Spring, 2016
They are insisting on medicating me (again, more). They swear it will help. They swear they’ve witnessed me better off when I’ve been on the stuff. I’m running out of ways to say no. I’m starting to doubt my own resolve in the No I’ve been clinging to.
The thing is, I know what medication will do. It blunts emotions. And since my emotions are a part of who I am, this is akin to blunting me.
I know this is true — it’s the only thing, in fact, that I know about medication. That’s what psychotropic medications are designed to do — draw emotions in from the extremes so that they stay within an ostensibly normal range.
But what if nature put my emotions on this broader spectrum for a reason? Shouldn’t I try to make this work for me? The depths I feel indeed can be quite low, but the joys share this intensity, too. If you bring up my lows, you bring down my highs.
The extremes are where my creativity lives. They are the energies that beget artwork and poetry. They bring new people and places into my life.
Who are you to tell me that this is not where I should live? Who are you to say that this is not how I should be?
More to come…
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I'm a writer, a mental health activist, and a 20-something in recovery from an eating disorder. This blog chronicles my journey through the middle ground toward full recovery.
