Category: Medication

  • Middle-Aged Expansion: Hope for the Future

    Middle-Aged Expansion: Hope for the Future

    I am 37, about to be 38. Antipsychotics have resulted in significant weight gain for me: I am 50 pounds heavier than I would be without them. But I exercise daily and find it almost comforting to not be flirted with constantly when I go out. Perhaps I’m also less of a flirt myself because…

  • On Becoming a Writer

    On Becoming a Writer

    I run a tutoring website (seahurstlearns.com) and have been an educator most of my life, but I was recently offered a job teaching Spanish at a prestigious high school and I declined it. Prior to that I was offered to be an adjunct at a local university. I declined that too. Even though my qualifications…

  • The Somatics Trap

    The Somatics Trap

    I’m still doing fine, but have had to go up on my medicine because I started doing “too” well, if you know what I mean (hello – mania!). I got really productive there for a couple of weeks, and then I got too excited about that to really enjoy the fruits of my labor. I…

  • Medication

    Medication

    I’ve recently gone way up on my medication, almost doubling my antipsychotic, and my life has returned to the normal it was 10 years ago. Who would have thought that going up on medicine could be so transformational. My mom got me a beautiful sapphire ring for Christmas and I have made a rule to…

  • The Haters

    The Haters

    There is a lot of wonder I have right now at how my life is playing out. I’m really grateful. But I’m also thinking about how neuroatypical people shame people like me, and how people like me tend to be writers or artists of myriad types of others who don’t fit in. Mental illness is…

  • Stretching Helps Combat My Medication’s Side Effects

    Stretching Helps Combat My Medication’s Side Effects

    I wrote several weeks ago about how I went up on my medicine because Spring is hard for me. I also mentioned that Spring is hard for a lot of other people with mental health conditions. In fact, it is one of the more dangerous times. A lot of people don’t realize this. One of…

  • Reading about Schizophrenia

    Reading about Schizophrenia

    I started suffering from schizotypal symptoms in 2011 after being traumatized by a man who was in authority over me. I didn’t realize that trauma could form such a lasting and hidden wound as delusions, which hide their medical reality from the sufferer and seem like life is something that it is not. That you’re…

  • Don’t Be Afraid to Take More Meds

    Don’t Be Afraid to Take More Meds

    I just did, and wondered whether I might not be alone, that winter’s end brings about mood swings. In fact, Kay Redfield Jamison writes about the particular danger of spring. So just take more medicine if you need. Accept that you need it if you do, and remember you won’t have to be on this…

  • A Relief: the Decline of American Exceptionalism

    A Relief: the Decline of American Exceptionalism

    Ten years ago at this time I was living in Russia, the result of my having won a Fulbright to study in Moscow and learn about Russian culture and perfect my language capabilities since I was teaching Russian at UC Davis. It was relaxing in Russia. The plants seemed softer, the light more vibrant and…

  • Re-learning Tact

    Re-learning Tact

    I can remember when I first began slipping how what I would say would still be politely framed, but it would be said at an inopportune time and would be repeated unnecessarily. My mind was literally coming undone. I became dependent upon whether people responded or not to my emails and read into it unnecessarily…