Symptoms: Brain zaps, Emotional blunting, Sexual dysfunction, Cognitive impairment, Insomnia, Depersonalization/Derealization, Suicidal ideation, Severe anxiety/panic, Vision problems
My experience with psychiatric medications began when I was just seven years old. At that time, my family had recently moved from the United States to Brazil, and the transition was very difficult for me. I suddenly had to adapt to a completely different country, language, culture, and school system while still being a child. At home, things were also stressful because my mother frequently had intense anger outbursts toward me and my father. The environment at home often made me anxious and emotionally overwhelmed, and many nights I could barely sleep properly.
Because of the lack of sleep and emotional stress, I would go to school exhausted. I had difficulty concentrating in class, my grades started to fall, and I became quieter and more withdrawn. I also cried frequently because I felt overwhelmed and emotionally exhausted. Instead of understanding that I was a child struggling with a major life change, emotional stress, and sleep deprivation, the school interpreted my behavior as signs of psychiatric disorders.
My teachers called my mother and said there was something wrong with me because I was not socializing normally, my grades were low, and I cried too much. Soon after that, I was taken to a psychiatrist. I was only seven years old when I was diagnosed with anxiety disorder and attention deficit disorder and prescribed Zoloft and Ritalin.
Looking back, what I needed most at that age was emotional support, stability, rest, and understanding. But instead, normal reactions to stress and a difficult environment were quickly transformed into psychiatric diagnoses followed by medication. From the moment I started taking those drugs, I felt different. Even as a child, I remember feeling emotionally strange and disconnected, as if I was no longer completely myself.
I continued taking psychiatric medications for years. During adolescence, I eventually decided to stop them. For a long time afterward, I managed to live a relatively normal life. Years later, after I started working, I noticed that I had some difficulty speaking during meetings and with public speaking in general. It was a limited and manageable issue, something many people experience. But once again, instead of being treated as a simple challenge to work through naturally, it became medicalized.
After talking to friends and family and searching online, I was encouraged to see another psychiatrist. This psychiatrist prescribed me fluvoxamine, naltrexone, bupropion, pregabalin, and topiramate all at the same time. I remember feeling scared by the amount of medications because it did not seem normal to me. When I expressed concern, I was told I was exaggerating and that I needed to trust the treatment. The psychiatrist himself was a long-term psychiatric medication user and insisted that taking all of them together was necessary.
Trusting the professionals, I followed the treatment exactly as prescribed. About a month later, I developed vision problems. Instead of seriously investigating whether the medications could be responsible, I was told to continue taking them. My symptoms worsened over the next two weeks until I finally decided on my own to stop everything.
The vision problems never went away.
What had started as a relatively small issue with public speaking had now become a life-altering health crisis. After the medications, I developed severe anxiety and depression because of the permanent changes in my vision and the fear that something serious had happened to my brain and body. I later went to a neurologist and was diagnosed with a lesion in the brainstem, although the cause could not be determined.
At that point, my life was already falling apart, but instead of questioning whether the psychiatric drugs could have contributed to what happened, everyone around me encouraged even more psychiatric treatment. My family, friends, girlfriend, and even the neurologist told me to see another psychiatrist to manage the depression and anxiety that appeared after the medication-related problems began.
So I went back once again.
This time I was prescribed vilazodone, clonazepam, metoprolol, and trazodone. After taking these medications together, I experienced one of the most terrifying moments of my life. I felt as if I was about to completely lose my mind. I developed extremely vivid dreams, constant panic, and an overwhelming sensation of imminent death. My body also started shutting down in ways I had never experienced before. My mouth stopped producing saliva, my eyes stopped producing tears, and I developed severe xerostomia, eye infections, and worsening vision.
At that point, I stopped all medications again, but the damage never reversed.
My mouth never returned to normal. My eyes never returned to normal. My vision never returned to normal.
It has now been almost three years, and my life has completely changed. What originally was only a manageable difficulty with public speaking was transformed into years of physical symptoms, emotional suffering, neurological problems, fear, hopelessness, and isolation. A small and common human difficulty became a nightmare after repeated psychiatric interventions and combinations of powerful medications.
Today I struggle with suicidal thoughts and a deep feeling of hopelessness because I no longer recognize the life I once had. I often think about how different everything could have been if my original problems had been treated with understanding, patience, and support instead of immediately turning them into psychiatric disorders requiring multiple medications.
I pray to God every day that I will somehow recover, that my vision will improve, and that I will one day feel like myself again. But after almost three years, nothing has returned to normal.