(This blog post is about my personal experience with the pharmaceutical industry and the prescription drugs that I consumed for my supposed ADHD)

I remember it vividly, the conversations we had. I shared them with my lifelong friend Roin all throughout middle school until my sophomore year, when I left that town and that school that only left me upset, scared and broken. Not to mention insane. I started to dread it at this point, I would spend time sitting on the ground with my hands covering my face wanting to cry; wanting all the pain to stop. I just wanted it all to end, not my life, but the physical feelings. My heart would burst into a drumming fit, my chest would become compressed as anxiety filled up my lungs. My mind would race, one thought would lead to the next poison, and the poison would worsen that one thought as it raced to another. I was only happy when my mind was altered by the sunlight and the green grass and the trees of the outdoors, it was also happy when I was planning for my future but the rest of the time I was just a worrying, delusional freak. I would trespass on people’s property just to experience the clean wind of the forest, which I watch fall before me as housing for rich men and women replaced the once glorious savanna. I would spend hours, addicted to the internet, researching things that I found mysterious and interesting all while a chemical trespassed into my body causing mental fragmentation, anxiety, and bodily destruction. My deformed heart, beating like a war-drum and exploding like a cannon, fear increases the heartbeat as I start to think of all that is happening inside me, all because of a small orange and blue pill. “Take one a day,” read the label, “Do not operate machinery or consume alcohol.”

Once the neurosis started to kick in I worried even more. My family said I walked around like a zombie: I did. I did so that I could talk to the things inside me, so that I could love them and so that they could hate me. They showed up in my dreams, after all. These creatures, these lovely creatures. I saw them cry, I saw them love, I saw their blood shed at the touch of a knife, all in my dreams. The chemical inside me caused this and I knew it, but no one believed me. I even had proof: it was in my head, my heart, my chest. The way I stopped talking during a conversation so that these creature could invade my head. I felt their pressure, like they were sitting on me. Little did I know that these creatures was in part was not some mystical spirit, but a product of my mind on the very prescription drug that was said to help me.

I’ve heard stories of sleep deprivation. What happens when you didn’t sleep for so long. You saw things, you heard things as your body collected all the toxic chemicals that was normally flushed out of your system as you slept. It was like a huge psychedelic trip that lasted until the day your mind flooded into a state of deep sleep. I couldn’t sleep, and I was getting severely agitated. I swore under my breath, got out of bed and consumed a near-lethal dose of melatonin as one of the creatures cried in fear that I may turn out dead tomorrow due to the huge dosage I took. I didn’t care if I died, at least I would be asleep then. But I was always awake, “Symptoms,” read the label, “Having trouble sleeping.”

My sleeping habits for me was normal, as I knew no other person who had bad sleeping habits. What was a bad sleeping habit anyway? Sleep was sleep, right? I never knew that. So as I lost sleep, so did I lose my touch with reality. The pressure atop my head signalled that the creatures were near. This create, she was angry this time. Mad at me for whatever reason, was it because of the dream last night? I thought she wanted that, “Symptoms,” read the label, “Psychosis, talk to your doctor for any information regarding this symptom.” I knew I was crazy, to an extent. I did talk to my doctor about getting off the medication, but I was too nervous and devout to the delusions that plagued me to tell him about them. He said no, and proceeded to give me another drug which I was told to take only if I wanted. Recently I have stumbled upon a minor form of art in my current life, and I developed a love for it. I even went as far as to contact the artist and author of the art in order to help them gain resources to pay of their student loans and other things they may do to turn their pastime into a full job, which they planned on doing. The artist is the mastermind behind the comic Out Of Placers. I love the content, but upon obsessive reading of it my depression started to kick in. This is the problem I had long ago on this medication: As I fell in love with something or someone that I think about constantly I become hurt. This is not to say that love is not for me, but it goes to show that if I care about something too much I have to break away from it at all cost. While I was on the chemical that was troubling me, I had first hand experience with the creatures that plagued my futile mind. One attempted to fall in love with me, fighting my mind and harming it as it went along its merry way. I fought it back, I hated it and loved the hate it gave me. It was a haunting time in my life: It was when I realized that everything we experience is based in our mind. The world we see with our eyes, we process with our mind. Our mind contains our beliefs and our beliefs help explain the world. So what happens when you believe in the these delusions? The creatures that would haunt me, what would happen if I knew them, feel them? Neurosis would happen. The inability to process psychological illusions correctly leads to the suspension of disbelief, which can be a problem when the very chemical you are forced to consume against your will has as a symptom of psychosis. The world then, is not what you see, it is what you think.

A psychologist would agree with me on this one, as many studies have been provided as proof; and no matter how profound this sounds it is true: If a man who fears god sees a dying man stand up again in perfect health, he would say it was an act of his god. If a man of science sees a dying man stand up in perfect health, he would say that the glucose, oxygen and anti-bodies inside the man allowed him to fight off the disease. Our world is a product of our mind, not of our surroundings; therefore, the world is an illusion. A psychological illusion, and we have these illusions to protect ourselves from the truth of the world.

The truth that we are forced into this world without our permission, like I was with the chemical; we hid from the world behind books, technology and humor, when in reality this world runs off of natural order and that means nature is without mercy; while our family dies and the world rots because of environmental destruction and pointless bias, we are on Facebook or Instagram posting about how bad our day was at work because we were yelled at by our manager. But the world is also filled with love, hope and joy; and those things are emotions created to protect us psychologically. Love is more than just chemicals in your head, yet it is those chemicals that make us feel good inside while feeling it. This world then, is inside your mind and your mind is your shield from the world. Many would say that I’m nihilistic in nature, or that I am a misanthrope but the truth of the matter is this: You have not experienced your mind until your mind breaks right in front of your face. Our mind contains our whole world: Our beliefs, our joys, our hate, our lives. They are the libraries of experience and those experiences influence our future experiences.

In those days when I was poisoning myself because I was told that a drug would help me, I discovered insanity, I gained and I lost, I loved and I hated. Nothing can heal the wounds that I experienced: Both psychological and physical from a chemical said to help the problem that needed fixing. I have had time to heal, but relationships will never be the same; people won’t be the same and because of this I have grown. I have adapted and have become stronger in mind and body. The experiences I had taught me that our existence is fleeting, it is also a construct of our mind. To put it in more simpler terms, our life could end or change at any time. Our world is what we see in it, what we believe in. This is what I learned as a result of the suffering that I had because of it, and this is what I will take with me: this knowledge until the day I die.