Do I believe in meds? Well, not in the same way that I believe in Jesus. Do I believe that they are necessary? I think often they are. Do I believe that some mental health consumers are overmedicated? Definitely. Undermedicated? Uh-huh. Is medication a life sentence? I have my doubts but I do not have the background, knowledge, education or professional experience to be able to make that call.
For me, medications were never necessary, or absolutely necessary. They might at times have been helpful, for example when my Thirteen Year Nightmare hit its most terrifying and depressing nadir and perhaps for a while after my shrink retired.
We agreed in the last of the four years of my therapy that I was already well into recovery and ready to start flying on my own. Still, when he announced to me that we would be working together for one more month and he would be retiring it felt somehow sudden and, yes, premature. I wasn't sure if I was ready but I also recall having had a dream, the details of which I have since forgotten, suggesting that yes, I was ready and that I had to learn to walk alone, that I had already become too dependent not on my shrink but the therapeutic process.
I did well enough for the first month and a half after my therapy was ended. Then the shit hit the fan. I had been assigned for the past year with a particularly difficult and challenging client who to put it mildly had really burnt me out. Then several things went wrong at once: my apartment door was broken, my printer broke down and then a male client in my building indecently assaulted me. I had my first PTSD relapse and I was all alone. I had to deal with the emerging and flaring symptoms of panic, anxiety, and emotional turmoil without help, without support.
I would have benefited from medications, as a short term salvo, but I don't think I would have made the progress that I made actually facing the emotions, the fear, and my shattered sense of reality. I refocused and reframed my reactions and my feelings, using the tools my therapist had bequeathed me. To my pleasant surprise it was working.
As I was making progress in my therapy my sense of normal had also changed markedly. I was feeling stronger, more confident and more secure and less vulnerable to manipulation and emotional blackmail. I had found within myself a real, clear and secure sense of personal integrity. It faltered only once one day when I was trying to get in touch with my father whom I hadn't spoken to in three years. My father, because he had sexually abused me when I was a child, was one of the primary reasons that I was suffering from PTSD and for being in therapy.
When I gave up trying to contact him I began to feel strong and whole again. And this baseline of feeling and perception continued uninterrupted and unabated. I only lost it after this other tenant touched me inappropriately. But I knew what it was like to feel whole, strong and secure, and I knew what to aim and strive for in order to pull myself out of this hole I had just fallen into. Primarily I chose to not perceive or experience any of this as a victim. Then I began to feel stronger.
I am very careful with my clients when the theme of medications arises. I would never encourage one of my clients, or anyone else, to go off their meds. I do wonder if maybe our strong reliance upon pharmaceuticals in the mental health professions needs to be reviewed and re-examined. I also envision a type of mental health recovery in which we actually will see at least some consumers either ceasing to need pharmaceuticals or even never needing them at all.
It only takes courage and love to find out.
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