#11—Vent session: it's critical
Creation Date: 2022/12/08
I am going to need that pep talk before moving forward with writing about the second inpatient stay. However, I feel like I need to vent a little about my time back home - back in the workforce, in-home care management, and pharmacology drug sid-effects.
Here goes.
Back working—
I didn't realize how being back in the workforce was so satisfying. Knowing there was employment waiting for me when I returned home gave me hope as I approached discharge from the inpatient long-term psychiatric hospital. I felt kind of like people actually wanted to help me be a better man.
Work wasn't always glits and glamour. But over the next few years, the people I worked with helped me feel that multiplicity I have been writing about. Although I was reluctant to get back to a social life, family and co- workers truely relieve some of my burdens, but I knew I wouldn't have the will to confide in them my newfound experiences in the mental health field. It's to stigmatized. I kept all of that to myself.
But, working again, the amount of interaction I experienced in the workforce I didn't feel a singularity it unless it required learning a new task.
Although the struggle with the side-effects of the pharmacology drugs was not desirable, I tried to work as if I had never entered the mental health system's revolving door. I tried so hard to be normal, when I feel as I write this now, I could have helped relieve stigma of the system with my experience. I mean I did live a pretty wild lifestyle prior to my emotional breakdown, and people in the community knew me from athletics, academia, church affiliation, and from places of businesses I had worked at since leaving University life one year after I had received my high-school diploma.
ACT & outpatient—
I was in a dark place emotionally when I broke down, but I know what I feel now and that is relief by writing this blog. I have 10+ years of lived experience with pharmacology drug use and the Office of Mental Health's affiliated programs, services, and facilities, and I can share my experience doing something I love to do. Make a custom website.
I know the assertive community treatment was protecting the psychiatric center from the liability of discharging me. I just wish they would have let me participate in pharmacology drug use. I can't blame them because they were doing what they were and are trained to do. I did enjoy the chats from visit-to-visit about life experiences I was having working again. They did empower my outlook when I described my work experiences. They did do the social work to get me ready for discharge to the outpatient mental health clinic in my town I wanted to get into. But, I felt they had trust issues most likely because of their own experiences with other clients, and I have to respect that aspect of their humanity.
Socializing—
When I got back into the workforce, I was socializing a little again. I was meeting people. I was interacting. The experience of socializing again, although skewed because of pharmacology drug use, was pleasant. I had kind of the mentality that the people I was interacting with knew nothing of life in behavioral health programs, services, or facilities, and I wanted to ease it into conversation if I could. There has to be a way to destigmatize the experiences. I hope this blog of mine helps spotlight the revolving door.
Now, socializing involved work and playtime. And the playtime was great stress relief. It's just that the more I held back talking about mental health, the more I was living disingenuously to others; myself included. I have got to find better ways to get involved in mental health programs, like how I want to bring my life experience to the Peer Support Specialist field someday. This, my blog, seems like a great way to prep for such employment opportunities.
Inpatient ever again?—
Would I ever find myself going to the emergency room again after getting out and back into the workforce? During this time, back in the workforce, I never wanted to see an emergency room again. But the pharmacology drug dosages were so strong I would need to.
The outpatient clinic that the assertive community treatment helped me get into would discharge me after roughly a year in their program. They left pharmacology drug use up to me, and believe you me, I stopped taking them and felt that after the pharmacology drugs were cleansed from my body I could do anything! I ended up in employment where I was working anywhere between fifty-five hours a week and 75 hours a week. My second week with this company after discharge from the hospital-affiliated outpatient program I ended a week with ninety-two hours worked and never felt drained. I had control over my eating habits again and I made weight back down to where I had always been before the pharmacology drug use, one-hundred and fifty pounds, and I had my wind back! Before coming off the pharmacology drugs, I could make it through roughly two hours of work before I lost cognitive functions. I would shut down.
The work I was doing when not on drugs was mainly a life on the road, working abroad. I became homesick, and eventually left the company and returned home. I knew once again what life was like with emotions and swagger. I had my wind and confidence back. But, because I had the full range of my emotions when I returned home, I ended up back in emotional turmoil once again reliving visually and auditorily the physical and emotional trauma of my past that I still hadn't dealt with in the Office of Mental Health's affiliated programs, services, and facilities because I felt so abused by the system I ended up counting them out of the possibility they could help me deal with it all. Like, the diagnosis seemed off. The drugs made me feel like total worthlessness. I became distraught, I lost trust with the system.
My family saw my turmoil like they had seen me go through three years ago landing me in the emergency room. They knew I was no longer taking pharmacology drugs, and to them, I was "out-of-line" because I wasn't on the drugs. So, they once again had a police officer come to visit, they learned the diagnosis the hospital had told my family members and that I had stopped medication. They dragged me down to the emergency room once again to get me back on the pharmacology drug regiment.
Should I trust them again?—
I love my family and I want to trust the system, but the drugs I have to take for a diagnosis that doesn't fit the meld of what I am going through is terrifying everytime I think about it. I can't be at my best, without the burdens of all of the traumatic experiences I have had if people won't help relieve my burdens. Why people do not want to live in the light of the world is beyond my comprehension. Love should be able to conquer anything, shouldn't it? I suffer death in life when I have take medications. I can barely function, my emotions are restricted, and I can't critically think. But, I have to believe that people just need time to understand and read up about lived experience to get a better understanding of just how pharmacology drugs interact with a person's body.
The more that I write in my blog about my lived experience is the best step forward towards a goal of lessened stigmatization for any and all who share experience with singularity in the revolving door of the mental health system. I want to help others and I have to help myself first, by creamating this trauma.
A leap of faith was and is in need. So I write here my experiences to share with humanity.