27 years of psychoanalysis and medications. I am finally free. I never want to see a psychiatrist, psychologist, case worker, or psychiatric nurse again for as long as I live. I am genuinely doing so much better without their interference. My parents had me see a psychiatrist when I was 16. I was medicated the following year. I don’t hold that against them now — looking back I really was unwell. My mum once found a poem in my wallet she thought I had written about suicide; it turned out to be Kurt Cobain lyrics. I was smoking pot, failing every class when I was in year 9, and deeply miserable. They probably didn’t know what else to do with me. That must have been hard on them as well.
I barely scraped by on my report. The family made the move to Frankston, uprooting everything I knew. This was to become the hardest period of my life. I left a school where I was reasonably popular and had a good network of friends, trading country life on a large property for the cramped routines of suburbia. I was so unhappy and I became very unwell with something I didn’t understand at the time. I struggled through life for a couple of years after this. To give you an idea of where my head was at: I was self-harming in a big way, drinking and using drugs, listening to Marilyn Manson and other dark music, and there were some suicide attempts thrown into the mix. It was during this time that I saw my first psychiatrist, a professor who was well respected across the country (though that reputation was debatable to me). I was admitted to a psychiatric hospital in the city where I met him and he diagnosed me with schizophrenia, depression and anxiety, medicating me with psych drugs at doses that would have overwhelmed most people. Long story short, after eventually dropping him as my psychiatrist I saw another doctor, also a professor, who tapered me off those massive doses and put me on Clozapine — a last-resort medication when all else has failed. I remained on Cloz for the next 14 years, alongside a cocktail of other drugs. I’m pretty sure I helped keep the pharmaceutical industry in business.
The trip into the city every week was simply too far and took up too much time. I came across my next shrink, the one I ended up seeing for about fifteen years. Over that long period I was regularly put on and taken off medication and I saw him at steady intervals. It’s odd, and a little amusing, how much he came to know about me over that time, while the most I ever learned about him was the model of car he drove. This pattern really deserves more analysis and should be explored in another blog post.
About eighteen months ago I missed yet another appointment with him, which by then had become something of a habit. I never booked another consultation and, strangely, I never heard back from him. Suddenly I felt free from the world of psychiatry — it was an unexpectedly refreshing relief. More recently, when I was in hospital for non-psychiatric reasons, I was referred back to see this doctor. I wasn’t pleased about that prospect. Fortunately for me he was on extended leave, and I was instead referred to another psychiatrist whose first appointment I immediately cancelled. This new doctor wanted six hundred dollars for an initial forty-five minute session, which felt excessive.
Since all of this unfolded, my GP retired and I was assigned a new one, whom I get along with very well. I see him occasionally to collect scripts and to touch base, and that is about it. We might spend five minutes talking about how I’m travelling, but it’s so much easier than spending longer sessions with a psychiatrist and spilling my guts. I’m careful not to go too deep with my new GP because I don’t want him to feel that my problems necessarily warrant the more intensive attention of psychiatric care.
That, in a nutshell, is how it all went down — a very simplified version of a long, complicated journey. I could write a series of books about the whole experience. I have been hospitalized well over twenty times (I lost count) — and that is something I never want to put myself through again. I also went through rehab twice. Life is so much better now, and because I channeled my energy into art, I’m in a far healthier place. I never regret spending money on art supplies; it costs no more, in many ways, than therapy. A slight exaggeration, perhaps, but not by much. This post tool a bit of courage to write as it is somewhat personal. I left out 99 percent of the details out and kept it brief. The little bit that I gave of myself took some courage.