This is likely going to be the first of a series of posts. I am simply going to write about my personal experience of being on medication (I never have, except, now I am taking pills for my pituitary and my thryroid) and my reflections and observations from working in the mental health field for more than a decade.
I was recommended to go on antidepressants fourteen years ago before my PTSD was diagnosed. A prominent community care professional had befriended me and was trying to help me access social housing. I knew I wasn't well, given my inability to find or cope with stable employment and my tendency to isolate from people as well as the general emotional fragility that was very normal for me in those days. My professional friend also wanted to help me present as convincing an argument as possible to go on a disability pension. She convinced me that I was suffering from depression and that I should go on medications at once.
At that time I was attending my Anglican parish church of the day where the rector had cultivated a huge distrust towards me. She was on the vanguard of legitimizing same sex unions in the church and had become convinced that I was a homophobic bigot. Really all I'd told her, seven years before, was that I didn't feel I could entirely embrace gay marriage as a sacrament given my way of understanding Christian teaching in those days. When I returned to her parish I was broken and hobbled by PTSD and not in any shape for arguing. I was also on my own journey towards acceptance of gay marriage. She didn't seem at all interested in what I had to say but she did agree to tolerate my presence in her precious church.
I am mentioning this particular Anglican priest because as I began meeting with the lady who was supporting me towards housing she had confided to me that she was in regular contact with this priest. One day, at a social function in the home of the rector I was offered a glass of wine. When I politely declined the priest asked if it was because the alcohol would clash with my antidepressant medication. I replied that my family doctor didn't believe that I had depression and decided not to put me on medication. I did not like the look she gave me but I can honestly say that from that day she became completely unavailable to me.
To this day I am thoroughly convinced that the rector had been pressuring the community support lady to persuade me that I had a bogus diagnosis of depression and to get me on medication to silence me and shut me up so that I wouldn't say or do anything embarrassing in her church. My crimes against the faith? I was asking the rector to please give some attention to working with and for the homeless (I had been homeless but two years before, one of the causes of my PTSD diagnosis). I had also complained about being mistreated by her most beloved parishioners who had been working rather hard to make me feel unwelcome and excluded, treatment that given my fragility I was not needing, especially from alleged Christians.
I soon did find housing and when the community support lady learned that I did not have depression and that I was not going on medications, turned on me viciously and dropped me like the proverbial hot potato.
That was my first experience with medications.
No comments:
Post a Comment