My name is Sara.

I had a successful career with a home based business and travelled with the rest of the top achievers every year. I had dreamed of perhaps going into real estate sales (like my mother did) or working in the school system. I was an avid gardener. I was a watercolor and chalk artist and painted murals for local businesses.

I loved church and working with children and helped with my sons school PTO. I looked forward to a time when my son was old enough to be his church camp sponsor and tall enough to take him to ride on rollercoasters. I looked forward to him being big enough to go on a river float trip.

I was the friend you called if you needed a hand. I was funny, loving, kind and thoughtful. I was normal and healthy. I woke up every day excited to get started on the project of the day or clean the house or just snuggle on the couch.

I adored my husband, my son and spending time with them. I loved date nights with my husband, my soul mate. I loved rushing home from work to tuck my son in and hang out with my husband on our porch as he played guitar, sitting in the dark and talking.

I don’t say these things to toot my own horn but to illustrate that I was healthy and fully functional. Make no mistake, this was all taken from me due to a drug I NEVER should have been prescribed.

Here is my story's "PG" version:

When I was about 36 I began having migraines. The first symptoms were very much like a stroke and very frightening. After undergoing CT and MRI scans I was told I had lesions on my brain.

The words the doctor spoke that day made me believe there was cause to be extremely worried. We had just lost both my mother and father in law to cancer that began as "lesions" and that is exactly where our minds went. The doctor did nothing to calm that concern. He did say "take 4 Ativan a day and 2 Klonopin to sleep at night and we will get you to a neurologist, but it will be a few months wait. This will keep you calm until then".

The funny thing is I had been calm. He had suggested I had something to be afraid of. I now know, from other former patients of this doctor, that he has a flare for over dramatizing diagnoses. Ironically I didn’t take the benzos because I knew they were dangerous and the amounts he suggested would surely create dependency.

Over the next 10 months I was put through the medical gauntlet of testing. One doctor called it a million dollar work up. They gave me frightening diagnosis after frightening diagnosis. Each one meant one thing: a dramatically shortened life. My darling son who was then 5 would be motherless; at least that is what doctors lead us to believe. I made the deadly mistake of crying at a few appointments. I was told that was a clear sign of depression and that taking an SSRI would help me to not care about the scary migraine symptoms and soften the stress of diagnosis.

I was put on the lowest dose of Zoloft and sent home. Looking back I should have stopped the drug as soon as it made me dizzy but the doctor said to just keep going and that my brain was trying to adjust to the increase in "good chemicals". So I did. Months later I found out it had all been a mistake, a complete misdiagnosis. But I was already on Zoloft so I was told to stay on it.

Over time I began to notice I couldn’t be sad, even in a situation where upsetting emotions were normal. My brother passed away Christmas morning. I paused long enough to have a little tear, then called to arrange his after life care and proceeded to make a very merry Christmas for my entire family. At the time I called that being strong... looking back I see it was medication spellbinding.

As time went on side effects began to show up. I’d wake every night absolutely drenched in sweat to the point my side of the bed was wet. I began drinking more and more and needing to drink more to feel an effect. There were sexual side effects, which I will leave private, but they were the typical ones associated with these drugs.

After becoming extremely forgetful I spoke to my doctor and was taken off Zoloft. I now know this was done way too fast. I was told the withdrawal would be flu like symptoms, if I had any at all, and would last a few weeks. I did indeed have flu like symptoms but they went away.

At about 2months off I began having scary intrusive thoughts. I had a hunch it was because of drug withdrawal. I tried to research this. My Google searches yielded nothing but "these drugs are safe and withdrawal is mild and short lived". It was 2017 and there was barely any truth out there online and, from what I understand now, the available sites were buried under algorithms and things that I don’t quite understand.

Even though I was still "me" and still working and functioning the organ in charge of decisions and figuring things out was affected. I was still trying to be mom, wife, homemaker, business woman... I needed help to figure it all out but was left to do it alone. My husband cared of course but he told me to reach out to the professionals and to talk to some of my friends.

I went back to our family doctor and asked him "could this be the drugs?" He said "This is just proof you need these meds for life and have an underlying mental illness." He patted me on the leg and said "God just wired you wrong". I left his office hurt, confused and angry. I was being gaslighted by doctors, family, church members and friends. Our pharmacist and his wife were dear friends of ours and he told us the same thing the doctor did - a good drug, just a bad brain. I was broken hearted. Being taken off Zoloft too quickly had caused this to rise up in me.

Try as I might I couldn’t find any proof to support what I suspected about the drugs. I went one more time to pray with my friend and wept and told her everything. A foolish and deadly mistake that would set in motion a series of events that would ultimately take my life from me and cause unspeakable torture.

After reaching out I was then told I had no choice but to go get help.
Now I know that I would have eventually healed if had I been wise enough to stay quiet. If I had just kept my prayers and thoughts to myself. If I hadn’t opened up and shared that I was afraid and heartbroken. Instead I was force drugged. Higher doses. More psychiatric drugs.

Over the next year I would still travel. I still worked. I still attend concerts and cub scout camps. Everything. By summer of 2018 I went to my doctor because things weren’t getting better. I was cold turkeyed off 50mg of Zoloft to a new drug that the doctor was so excited to try on me - Lexapro. It was this drug that would ultimately take my life from me.

In the next few days I was bed bound. I was shaking all over and with pains so sharp they would shoot through my head like an arrow. My family and I felt like I was just being used as an experiment.

Urged on by our pastor we spoke with a new doctor. She promised me a genetic test that would show us just what to try next by identifying what medication could cause an adverse reaction in me and that I shouldn’t take at all. She said the test would cost $100. The results came two weeks later and the cost was $1895. We simply didn’t have that kind of money to spend on a test. The doctor diagnosed me with Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder and told me to try Lexapro as it was, in her words, the safest and most gentle drug on the market. Let me assure you....it is not.

Within a month of taking this new drug I became more and more suicidal as well as having physical symptoms such as dizziness and blood pressure issues, as well as a sudden change in my menstrual cycle which, up until this time, was normal and like clockwork. I begged the doctor to help me come off Lexapro. Not only was I told no, I was told to double my dose and add another drug or face a visit from the police.

I knew I was on my own in this, stuck on a drug that was turning my world on its head. This was fall of 2018. I managed to continue working through late winter of 2019 which is when we went from having hope that things could still improve to literally all hell breaking loose.

A naturopath of national recognition told my husband to "get this woman a hysterectomy" and to taper off the Lexapro. We were so desperate that we listened. We went to an obstetrician-gynecologist recommended by our pharmacist friend and the naturopath. She was eager to proceed with the operation that would gut me of my precious organs. We still didn’t do it straight away.

As I began taking the last crumbs of Lexapro I developed life threatening Akathisia. It was like a nuke went off in my brain and body. I began hallucinating, developed severe depersonalization and derealization, suicidal thoughts and urges that were less like a thought and more like a desperate command from a drug-destroyed nervous system.

I developed approx. 300 symptoms overnight. The shock of it all caused me to make a feeble suicide attempt. I would be one of many to come. Anyone with severe akathisia will tell you suicide becomes a desperate means of escape and nothing we would have normally done. As I’ve said before I was healthy before all of this. I had never even had a suicidal thought in my entire life. Let alone....everything else.

I went on to be, in a word, tortured. Tortured alive by doctors in multiple hospitals and detox facilities. Laughed at, mocked and treated cruelly by friends and some family. Completely abandoned by my church, and most of my friends. Not allowed to speak of my injury or trauma to family as I would quickly be told I was selfish and that this couldn’t be the drugs, but rather just a choice I had made. As if I would ever exchange my beloved motherhood and life with my husband in exchange for watching my son grow from my seat in hell on earth.

I wasn’t just tortured alive, gaslit and butchered. I was also given false and severe diagnostic labels that I’d have to heal fully and require a court order to have removed from my record. I narrowly escaped ECT treatment as my husband absolutely would not sign off allowing them to do this to me and I was "too ill to consent".

They assaulted my delicate brain that I once loved using to create and explore life with, with over 26 poisons or varying types. I won’t list or describe the rest of my mental symptoms as, for now, I am still alive and trying to survive with my family.

I was held against my will 2000 miles away from my family and told repeatedly by doctors to abandon the thought of motherhood and one even said "Look at you. You need to forget being a mother, you couldn’t even care for a dead kitten". The only way I was allowed to come home was to allow them to declare that this was all because of my faulty hormones and to concede to the polydrug assault. I came back home on 7 drugs.

Upon returning home to my then 10yr old son and husband I was subjected to a radical, complete and unnecessary hysterectomy, throwing me further into hell. It robbed my brain and body of the few remaining hormones it had left. It was a surgery I had no capacity to agree to, but by then I was so injured and so desperate to be well I agreed to the procedure in the hope I could be well again for my darling son.

I finally found a doctor who was disgusted by everything was done to me and said "your original symptoms were drug withdrawal symptoms. This is 100% all the drugs and you had no business being on them to begin with."

I was then cold turkeyed off all 7 drugs. I was already too far gone and injured beyond words could describe. They figured it was the best choice in the circumstances.

This has been by no means an exhaustive retelling of all of the horrors and trauma I experienced and no explanation of what I go through daily.
I promised myself that if I ever healed I would write a book and, trust me, it would contain more than enough to fill the thickest novel and one that would make the most graphic horror novelist look like a nursery rhyme author.

It has now been nearly 5 years since I took my last SSRI poison. I’ve tried everything to be well - a complete diet overhaul, grounding, copious amounts of prayer and begging, as well as stem cells that absolutely drained us of all funds. I have been rendered disabled and non-functioning when before this I had days full of activity, hard work and a future full of promise and a heart full of love and joy.

I do have a few friends who have come into my life since this happened that love and believe me. True angels. But what could they do other than listen?

Others who knew me, prior to taking psychiatric drugs, just watched the flames burn me down and ran to the ladies bible study to share it all under the guise of "let’s pray for Sara". I was on fire and I needed to talk about the flames. I'll be punished for life for that I suppose.

This is what I feel in my skull every day. This is what I feel on my brain. Yes the nerves in the head can feel all of these things:

Facial nerve pulling
Ripping like a wild animal is tearing my skull apart
Twisting like an "Indian rug burn"
Exploded feeling
Divided up into sections that won't connect
Right side missing
Tight bands
Worms burrowing in my brain
Burning in acid
Feels like if someone pulled all your hairs hard at once but the hairs are connected to your brain
Feels full of concrete
Feels like my brain is being peeled and sliced
Sawn in two with a roughly toothed saw
Feels like I'm 40ft underwater and my ears won't pop
Jaw pressure

Needless to say my brain is destroyed. Cognitive function is extremely low. My memory of my life is like a movie I watched once but it belongs to someone else. The only thing that has improved is akathisia which left after 4 years drug free.

My son was 8 when my doctor stole my life. He's 16 now and driving his own car. He’s losing interest in spending time with his broke down mom. Those last precious years of mommy son dates stolen. I can't have them back and I grieve them daily as if he was stolen from me. I was just as normal and healthy as all of the rest of the mamas I know. My motherhood was my greatest accomplishment and my joy.

Thank you for reading my story.