When I decided to discontinue use of the psych meds, I tried to do the responsible thing and called my psychiatrist. It was my intention to taper off the meds under doctor supervision as had been recommended to me.
I had only seen this psych on two other occasions…both times he prescribed new medications based on a 50 minute interview. When I needed to see him this time he was on vacation and I was referred to another psych. I came armed with my list of side effects and other information I had gathered regarding the possibility that I did not need to take these medications. After 30 minutes of talking to me, this new psych tried to diagnose me with a new disorder. This time it was borderline personality disorder. When I asked him why he was jumping to that conclusion he said often times people are misdiagnosed with bipolar disorder who actually have borderline personality disorder and I seemed agitated to him which was a symptom.
Here I was trying to explain that I thought I had been misdiagnosed with bipolar disorder due to a reaction to Prozac, spent the last 8 years suffering from the side effects of more than 15 different meds and believed I didn’t need any medication. He was fast on his feet trying to keep me popping pills. It was the same old thing. The drugs aren’t working? Must be something else wrong with you we didn’t notice before.
I left angry with a script for a reduced amount of my medications. I did not fill that script. That visit was the final straw. I decided to quit cold turkey and hopefully never see the inside of another psychiatrists office.
both this and your last post tells such a classic story in psychiatry. I can understand why you had had it.
Your history is very much suggestive of iatrogenic illness…
Thanks for the comment Gianna. I haven’t done much research on iatrogenic illness. I shall.
Hi Tessa!
I haven’t visited a shrink for a decade. I used to go into his office, full of the joys of spring, and come out profoundly depressed, and with an ever longer list of drugs to take.
I remember the last few times he summoned me.
The waiting room was tiny, full of tension, bursting with chronic cases, rocking back and forth, coughing out acrid cigarette smoke to hasten death.
By contrast, the shrink’s office was spacious, well lit, cool and airy.
It was only years later that I came to realise how the nerd had carefully laid out his room to intimidate.
The room was big, but barely furnished. he sat like a demi-god behind a grand wooden desk, spinning himself on a black leather director’s chair.
I entered the room, and greeted him. No reply. He simply gestured me impatiently towards the patient’s chair, a cheap plastic moulded thing.
Things were arranged so the patient was positioned awkwardly in a gulf of No Mans Land between the door and the doctor.
As I sat in the chair, there was an embarrassing eight foot space all around me. He didn’t speak as he slowly roved his eyes up and down my body.
Then he glanced up at the PC screen to remind himself of my name.
“So, erm, err, Sloopy. Are you still hearing voices?”
“I never did hear voices, doctor”
“I think you do, and I think you’re depressed about it. I’m prescribing you Seroxat. It’s a first class anti-depressant.”
“Thanks”
I took the script and left. A thirty minute wait for a 30 second consultation.
That’s how these goons can clock up a patient base of 5,000 and a salary of GB£100,000.
For months, I collected the Seroxat from the pharmacist and promptly flushed it down the lavatory (apologies to those who drink tap water).
The months past and I was summoned to return, to go through the same motions.
The death-filled waiting room. The patient chair positioned just as before. The absence of greeting. The impatient gesture to sit down. The roving eye. The flippant diagnosis.
He glanced at his screen.
“Errm, errm, Sloopy. That Seroxat is working well?”
“Oh, yes, doctor! It really lifted the depression. Thanks so much”.
“I knew it was your drug. It had your name on it”
That was the dawning. The point I finally realised he was a total fraud, a whore of Big Pharma.
perhaps I’m guilty of using a big word when a little one would do just fine…
iatrogenic illness means drug induced…
that is my story too. it all started with drugs.
cheers!
Sloopy,
Thank you for your story. It is so vivid and reminiscent of many of my experiences.
I now find it hard to believe that I ever placed so much faith in all those men in leather chairs. (All my psychs were men)
Some did show genuine concern but most of them may as well have been replaced with pharmaceutical vending machines.
This sounds so much like my story, it’s scary!