Over the years I have come to the realization that I am haunted by many ghosts, plagued by problems that, if allowed to run their full course would lead to my demise, and struggle with self defeating and self destructive urges, desires, and behaviours.
It is for this reason that I have enlisted help from the medical community in an attempt to keep me safe, sane, and sometimes even happy. They have helped, some a lot more than others. The doctors I saw in the early years helped me about as much as my back up plan when they were unable to provide any relief, which was to self medicate with copious amounts of alcohol, marijuana, and whatever else I could occasionally get my hands on. Of course, this second course created a slew of new problems that I would later have to learn to deal with, but at least this plan of action provided some, albeit temporary relief from the pain and anguish, the horrible shyness, social phobia, and general anxiety, the deep depression and the terror of my nightmares.
Later, and till the present, I have found physicians, counsellors, and nurses that have been able to provide me with the means to deal with my problems in a much more effective, less dangerous, and in the case of my counsellor, some long lasting relief from the terror that is my mind at times.
However, in exchange for this, I have had to give up the only effective treatment I have ever found (besides drugs such as morphine and cocaine, and the most dangerous of them all, alcohol), and instead just grit my teeth, hold my self tight, and live with the horrifying attacks of anxiety that haunt me every evening. I had to once again sink into social anxiety and phobia’s to the extend that I am mostly stuck at home, other than the working day, have not made a new, close friend in many years, and have lost all but a couple of friends all together, and even they never call, I have to call them.
I have also learnt that every time I bare my soul to my so called “providers”, they offer me the advice I know they will, having gone through this many times, they also offer some compassion and somebody to talk to, but at the price of them acting, based on some misguided paternalistic instinct, on misguided ideas and placing restrictions on me in various ways. I may have to pick up my medication more often, instead of once a week, twice a week, maybe three times a week. Never mind that I need this stuff first thing in the morning, but having to pick it up more often means I have to slug through the first five hours of the day feeling subhuman, feeling sick, feeling like a prisoner to this medication regimen, and being reminded that I have lost a significant degree of freedom in my life. I frankly don’t know what to do about this situation, the only thing I can think of is to just keep things to myself as much as I can, at least till the point where things get so bad that I am desperate for help. I can’t imagine the other patients at this particular clinic being anywhere near as forthright and open about what is going on in their lives, are they cheating on their doses, buying dope on the street to supplement the program, etc.
I can’t even pick up my regular antidepressant a couple of days early over the course of a month because “the doctor has said so”. Mother fucking doctor, this is my antidepressant medication, I am not going to abuse it. Pharmacists usually tell their patients not to wait to the last day to refill their medication because then there is a much higher chance they may forget, something might happen and they will be unable to make it to the store, or something beyond their control may have shorted the number of pills they have. In my case, I spilt some water on 3of my tablets lying on the table without noticing, when I came home after work, both pills had totally crumbled.
Despite that, I had to wait to get my medication on the exact day it was due, what stupidity. Needless to say, I lost three nights of sleep, which lead to two days loss of work, I ended up on the verge of psychosis from sleep deprivation, and I could go on and on about how awful it was, but why bother, nobody really cares what a pariah on the margins of society has to go through. I am just another patient that needs to be told exactly how to live their life, to be punished when things go wrong, through fault of mine or not, rather than just offering some compassion and understanding (it is not like I have been gaming the system or trying to manipulate my way through the program).
I guess that even those whose job it is to help the addicted and depressed, the stigma and stereotype of the manipulative, scheming, always looking for a way to get more drugs in some vainglorious attempt to get high (on an antidepressant no less), and who only learn from being punished by some external authority rather than willing change on their own, still exists, is deeply entrenched, and I doubt that any of the professionals working in these areas see how acting upon this incorrect picture of those at the margins of society reinforces in the patient the feeling that they really are second class citizens, that they will never be trusted in any regard, and I am not talking about being trusted with drugs.
Better to just offer up the happy face, swallow my self respect and bow down and kiss the feet of those who walk all over me.