Perfect Chaos

A couple of months ago, I changed the medication I take for my mental health. I had been having a monthly injection for several years and the side effects were making me feel really unwell. In addition to that, I was experiencing severe stress episodes and other unpleasant states of mind and it didn’t seem the medication was really helping. After discussions with my psychiatrist, we agreed that I would switch to a different medication, this time tablets.

I was warned that the new medication could affect my heart and my psychiatrist asked me to have a series of ECGs during the transition to the tablets. The results were all fine, but I did miss one ECG because I have been finding it really hard to travel to hospitals due to the stress and intensity of being out in public these days. I have also experienced a lot of negative feeling towards me from staff in the health service and this made the thought of going for tests especially daunting.

After a few weeks of taking the tablets, increasing from one to two each day, I was relatively stable in my mental health, but began to suffer from new side effects. I was experiencing uncomfortable feelings around my heart and was having palpitations. This happened to such an extent that it made me seriously worried I might suffer damage to my heart.

Around the time this was happening, there were various stresses related to the accommodation where I live. The other two tenants, who both suffer from mental ill-health, were both attacking me in various ways on a daily basis. In addition to this, one of the tenants kept leaving the front door to the property resting open, sometimes overnight, which needless to say was a serious safety issue and caused a lot of anxiety. I reported all of these issues to the landlord, but with mental ill-health of the kind my neighbours experience, highlighting issues such as these rarely seems to work and can often make matters worse.

Around three weeks ago, I decided to travel out of the city to escape all of the accommodation-related stress. I stayed away for a few nights, and thought about the possibility of relocating, though it wasn’t the will of God for me to do this and I ended up returning to my accommodation in London. Due to being away, I had to cancel an appointment with the psychiatrist. I tried emailing her twice to arrange another appointment, but didn’t receive a reply. Psychiatrists sometimes don’t like to email patients directly; they prefer to be contacted via a care coordinator. However, I have for some months been experiencing issues with my care coordinator acting in an unkind, unhelpful, and sometimes abusive way, so I didn’t feel I could contact her to ask for help with arranging a medical review.

This situation left me feeling rather helpless, and due to the severe side effects of the tablets I made the difficult decision to stop taking them. I knew that if I did this I was likely to experience troubling states of mind, but in the situation I was in this felt like the lesser of two evils.

I stopped taking the tablets around two weeks ago and after a few days I did indeed start to experience quite intense fluctuations in mood. The problems in my accommodation were ongoing, and I took to sitting on the street not far from a 24-hour newsagent to enjoy what felt safer than being in my home. I started to drink alcohol quite heavily to help with my states of mind and to relax. I was not eating healthily at all, generally one meal every day from the same chicken and pizza shop. Some of the states of mind I experienced were extremely joyful, but there were also spells of desperation and hopelessness. The whole time I experienced God talking to me continually, sometimes in a way that was very intense and frenetic, at other times in a wonderfully comforting and uplifting way.

A few days ago, I started to really feel like I needed a change of plan and a positive way forward. I felt reluctant to go to A&E as I feared a hospital admission would likely make things harder rather than easier. I remembered that I had some tablets of a different medication at home in my medicine drawer from a previous prescription, and that this particular medication had been effective in the past and from what I recalled had less severe side effects than the tablets that had been affecting my heart.

Sitting in a park and contemplating all of these things, a wave of sickness came over me, and I thought about how much alcohol I had been drinking and pizza I had been eating in recent days. It was a horrible feeling but God mercifully caused it to pass quickly and comforted me. I drank three bottles of water and decided I would return home, start taking the medication in my medicine drawer, and try to make contact with the mental health team as soon as possible.

The medication had an impact almost immediately and I had a fairly good night’s sleep, though was still experiencing God talking to me in a highly frenetic way at times. As I am writing this today, I have been taking the medication for a few days and things are much more stable. I have regained some peace of mind. God is still talking to me throughout the day, as He always does, but in a much more peaceful way. I resumed contact with my care coordinator, which wasn’t easy, but felt like the best thing to do, but as yet I have been unable to organise a medical review. I am planning to try again on Monday.

I am deeply thankful that after coming off medication I didn’t experience severe stress episodes or suicidal thoughts and I am thankful for the wonderful experiences I had and that the hard times weren’t worse. It’s good to be taking a medication I am more comfortable with and a relief to feel more grounded. Things also seem to have settled down somewhat at home, which is another development for which I am very thankful.