My name is Helena.

I was a sensitive child and suffered from abuse, and by age 13, the stress of what had happened to me meant my jaw was locking tight overnight. The family doctor put me on Valium. I later worked as a therapist with kids for many years until I was forced out of my last job in 2020, labelled “anti-medication”. I was fighting for my life after cold-turkeying the sedative drugs I was on. I had 11 kids I was giving therapy to back then, 7 of whom were medicated for ADHD/ASD. Every single child told me they didn’t want to take the medication, because it didn’t make them feel good. In a way, this helped break the medical spellbinding I was under. For me, though, at 13, I guess I quite liked how Valium made me feel; it certainly took the edge off, and I was to take it periodically for the next 40 years. Not once did any prescriber ever tell me it shouldn’t be taken longer than a month or stopped suddenly if taken for any length of time.

Then, aged 22, battered and bruised from years of alcoholism, abusive relationships, physically unwell with something that wouldn’t be diagnosed until I was 40 as Fibromyalgia/CFS (I now call it “pharmamylgia”), it was suggested to me by my GP that I had a chemical imbalance in my brain, and that I should try a new antidepressant called Prozac. I wasn’t aware of the lawsuits being settled in America for the people who had then killed themselves taking it, and I was pleased with the weight loss Prozac gave me, given I was borderline anorexic at the time. However, it soon stopped “working”, and I developed terrifying panic attacks and daily headaches. Eventually, I was told to just stop taking it, and essentially, all hell broke loose.

I then entered the psychiatric system and became trapped there for the next 30 years, being cycled through every antidepressant drug there was. Getting sober at 26 probably helped save my life. The rehab I went into also took me off the antidepressants, but then at 4 months sober (after I suddenly and rapidly went downhill, known now as Post Acute Withdrawal Syndrome) a psychiatrist brought in to assess me, told me I had “clinical depression”. Back on the drugs I went. A few weeks later, I (surprisingly to all) drank a bottle of whiskey and subsequently took an overdose. That was my last ever alcoholic drink, but every time I tried to quit the antidepressants, I would spiral into worse states of catatonic depression. Doctors would repeatedly shout at me that there was no such thing as antidepressant withdrawal. That I was just a hypochondriac. “You’re like a diabetic who needs insulin”, I was told. “You will need these drugs for life”. But like the kids I ended up giving therapy to, I didn’t want to be on them; I hated taking them.

In my thirties, deciding that private psychiatry might be better than the NHS, I was then duly diagnosed as Bipolar, and the polydrugging started. As did the stints in private hospitals like the Priory. I could not hold down a relationship or a job. I ended up with further diagnoses of Major Depressive Disorder and ADHD. I also had several more suicide attempts (one after starting an antibiotic for a chest infection, where I had not been suicidal previously in the slightest). I suffered repeated and prolonged gaslighting from doctors over my physical ailments, which were increasing, including needing a total hysterectomy as I turned 40 and advanced osteoporosis at 45. My beloved only child, at age 15, cut off all contact with me for years as he didn’t feel safe. I couldn’t get out of bed, and I often slept 20 hours a day. I would wake up screaming in pain.

By 2019/20, I was on 2 antipsychotics,3 antidepressants, 2 benzodiazepines, sleeping pills, ADHD medication, and many other prescribed and OTCs for various ailments. I was obsessed with suicide, in contact with Dignitas, and I had big black holes where my brain was. The psychiatrist I had been seeing for 9 years booked me in for ECT to treat “drug-resistant depression” and “depression dementia”. I had started to question him about the chemical imbalance theory, and he had responded with, Well, most psychiatrists don’t believe in that anymore, but who cares, because the drugs work! So then, why had they never really worked, or only briefly, for me? Maybe it was the drugs, I thought, that were more the problem, not me? So instead of doing the ECT, I started taking myself off everything, in batches. In May 2020, desperately unwell during lockdown, I discovered the online support groups and words like “akathisia” and “aphasia” as well as the hyperbolic tapering method. That is how I came off the last drug I was on, Venlafaxine, taking the last crumb on May 17th 2021. I had a few trips to the hospital by ambulance in this period, to be told there was nothing wrong with me. For well over a year, I felt like I was dying every single second, 24/7, and I still, five years later, only sleep a few hours a night.

I fear I have been left with permanent debilitating neuropathy - I’m going for a good enough physical recovery. As a therapist, I’ve tried to support for free, many similar to me who have since taken their own lives. However, I have had no depression for nearly 5 years now, despite my dog dying in my arms and myself cheating death in a freak accident last year, which put me in the hospital for weeks. This was very challenging, given that I have developed “PTSD” around doctors. Trying to educate them initially and unsuccessfully about things like akathisia has left me re-traumatised. I have nearly finished writing a book about my experiences called “Medical Bondage” (after going back to university and getting a first in a creative writing MA), been featured in the Daily Mail, and, with another sufferer, intend to make a documentary about akathisia. All in the hopes of preventing what happened to me from happening to just one other person. I know now that going on and coming off Prozac in 1992 caused a traumatic brain injury, one that started with the Valium, and I was then unnecessarily medicated for the next 30 years. My story is a warning of what can happen. I don’t want my story to go to waste. And I also tell it for those who no longer have a voice.