Symptoms: Akathisia, Emotional blunting, Suicidal ideation, Severe anxiety/panic, Self-cutting, High sensitivity to sound and touch
I took quetiapine for about 1.2 years. I don't know if my situation was caused by quetiapine withdrawal; I can only suspect my situation felt like akathisia followed by psych med withdrawal. I'm an artist, and for decades I thought this is just my curse to my gift: self-cutting since middle school, a history of depression and a bipolar diagnosis in 2020, then a bad suicidal postpartum PTSD. Quetiapine was the only med prescribed to me since 2021. I stopped quetiapine on my own (yeah, this was on me) in 2022, because my body was tired of it, how tired and sleepy it made me feel. How flat my emotions were. I did not feel emotional pain anymore, my happiness was all flat, controlled by the med, no extreme emotions. Perhaps as an artist who relies on emotional creations, I simply felt WRONG and stopped for good.
The 5 years after that, there was a living Hell on Earth in my brain. I saw the suffering of people on earth, family conflict, war, rape, etc... my brain could not take the pain. I felt like my brain was witnessing the collective pain of humans on earth. It was too much. I could not continue my job as a 2D animator anymore. Too much inner stress. I threw things when that hell appeared in my brain. Shrieked out of fear. When that pain in my brain hurt, it drove me to kill myself uncontrollably. I had the urge to ride my e-bike full speed against traffic, hoping to get killed. I rode my e-bike to the wall to throw myself so that it could stop that pain in my head. I cut my arms, because physical pain would hijack the emotional ones, and the physical cutting felt a lot safer. When I'm triggered, once I felt numb and out of body, I did not recognise my husband. I could not tell who he was, only remember he is safe to be around. It's as if I lost some memory for 20 minutes or so. I did not ever descend that low for such a long time before I started taking quetiapine. I could not go to loud places, stopped watching films and animations (keeping up with new works was part of my career as an animator). To this day, I still take in very limited information. Try not to socialise, cuz the ignorance of most people would easily trigger me.
Thank you for giving this platform... I am taking traditional Chinese herbal medicine now, and following Buddhist teachings; these are enough to stop me from killing myself. I'm being mindful of my surroundings. At least I can live in relative peace.