I'm Lucette Davies. For 37 years my mind had been chemically suffocated with psychiatric drugs until one year ago when I finally stopped them all.

Initially when I first accepted ‘help’ for my distress I was feeling totally lost and frightened. I was relieved to find a doctor that appeared to care and understand what the problem was. The tablet he offered me muffled my distress, muted the pain and calmed me.

For nearly 40 years I then considered myself to have been ill. The tablets didn’t really make me better. Slowly more were added. I was sectioned and held in various hospitals often a long way from friends and family. I was told I was ‘treatment resistant’ and as the tablets mounted up, I was forced through countless ECT treatments and eventually psychosurgery.

Those years were dehumanising and degrading. I lost all sense of self-worth and my mind felt like it was filled with a thick fog. The intensity of my distress was dampened down by medications but so were all my other feelings. I existed in the harsh environments of psych wards while becoming increasingly estranged from who I really was as a person. The flatness and emptiness of life was excruciatingly painful and made me question my own reality.

Fast forward many years and I was out of the system after two years in a therapeutic community which had ditched all the ‘scientific’ notions of chemical imbalances and took the radical step of talking to people. But I left that unit still taking three different medications.

Although this was a fraction of what I had at times been taking my head was still in the fog. I was still exhausted and my view of the world clouded. That was until about five years ago when I read the books Cracked and Sedated by Dr James Davies and became determined to quit all my medication.

I approached doctors for advice on how to do this but quickly realised they knew nothing about the true nature of psych drugs. I knew I had to take the reductions very slowly but aside from that I relied largely on trial and error with a smattering of guesswork thrown in.

I began seeking help for a whole catalogue of physical problems that arose. None of which were ever adequately explained until I started to realise they were withdrawal symptoms from the drugs.

Emotionally I started to feel like I could see the world with greater clarity. The fog began to lift and thinking became easier. But without all the chemical interference dampening emotions my mind began to race. Overthinking was my norm. At times I was terrified as I felt I had landed in a whole new world I had never experienced before. I didn’t even recognise the person I was becoming.

I feared what was happening to me. I felt frantic to not go anywhere near psych services again. But my emotions were all over the place and intensely strong. Particularly after I had hit the point of taking no medication at all.

But then I read the book Crossing Zero by Anders Sorensen, which offers guidance on how to successfully taper off medication and help yourself through withdrawals. I began to see my problems as a sign my nervous system was healing from the chemical assault I had endured for so long.

I can still suffer some withdrawal symptoms now, although far less than I did a year ago. Our minds and bodies have an unbelievable capacity to heal when we simply give them the chance. I followed the advice of Anders Sorensen to ‘do less’ when withdrawal symptoms are most troubling. Our minds and bodies need us to stay out of the way and let the healing happen.

The chemical imbalance theory of mental illness has been disproved. Mental distress is a normal and healthy part of human existence that prompts and motivates us to make positive changes to our lives.

Without my emotions being chemically suffocated I have had to learn how to regulate my own emotions. And it is with such happiness that I am able to fully feel if a particular action calms me, or lifts my mood. My world is changing rapidly and life feels so much easier than it ever did before. These last few years have been some of the hardest I have ever been through but I feel I am emerging into a better world where I can live as my true self.

I had no idea how much better I could feel by giving up medications when I started the whole process of cutting back. I believe the appalling effects of medications on my ability to think and feel were the reason why I couldn’t see the harm they were doing me.

I look back at my years in the psychiatric system as simply abusive. I was gas lit into believing I was the problem, not the system I lived in that just didn’t work for me. I am now filled with anger at how the system has destroyed so much of my life.

I was left alone to battle through this process of cutting out psychiatric medications from my life. In England, just one South London NHS trust runs a taper clinic to help people withdraw from psychiatric medication. The true nature of psychiatry is carefully concealed from patients, their families and even many in the medical profession. I was lucky to come across books that finally helped me realise that I had spent a lot of my life being lied to.

Not all psychiatry is harmful, but it is based on a completely false hypothesis that labels people as sick rather than distressed. Our society has swallowed this message entirely and so the abuse continues. The profits of big pharma continue to pour in and our government fails to consider changing the system we all live in to reduce the number of people suffering such mental distress.

I have chosen to tell my story with the hope I can help others break free from the clutches of psychiatry and rediscover life.