How medication can change the person you are

Living with physical or mental illnesses can be tough in life, especially if you are working a full-time job or even studying. I’m going to be sharing my experience with how the mental health services made changes to my medication and how I feel they have affected me in a negative way, not helping me like they are supposed to! 

The first type of medication I was introduced to was antidepressants. After the doctor did some tests on me he thought the best type of antidepressant to put me on was Fluoxetine. 
Fluoxetine is seen as the best treatment for bulimia nervosa, depression and obsessive-compulsive disorder. So, at the time I could see why he had chosen to put me on that type of antidepressant because I was diagnosed with an eating disorder, but to narrow it down it was bulimia I was suffering from.
 
So, from the age of 13, I would wake up every morning before school and take my medication and that carried on for a few more years until I started to experience seizures. The seizures started happening one day when I was travelling back home from a holiday in London, I went to visit my friends and have a break away from reality! We all had an amazing weekend at a Youtube event called Summer in the City. I got to meet some talented people like Mark Ferris, The Midnight Beast and Dodie, so throughout the weekend, I felt happy and no different to what I would usually feel! But it still puzzles me to this day why I had that seizure on the way back from such a magical weekend away with my friends. 
After I was taken into hospital, I was straight away referred to have more tests to find out what caused the seizure and to hopefully have some answers! 
‘Til this day I still do not know what causes the seizures but I have been having various different tests and trying out different types of medication to see if that helps stop my seizures. 

So, how can medication change the person you are? Well, after many years of being on Fluoxetine I was introduced to a new kind of antidepressant known as Duloxetine. 

This new antidepressant was supposed to help me reduce my dramatic mood swings and above all to see if they would help stop the seizures but it, unfortunately, did exactly the opposite!

I started to lose interest in the things I enjoyed doing like video editing and making Youtube videos on mental health. I also stopped socializing and I rarely went out into public because I was too scared to even leave the house. This made me think that I was not the person I wanted to be I was a totally different person. 

How did I resolve this problem? I phoned up the doctors to make an appointment to see them about what advice they had on how to help change this person who I became. 
When the day of the appointment came they said they are doing to send an email to my mental health team to ask them to see me as soon as they could because they could see how much my mental health was affecting me. A few days later I received a call from my mental health team saying they have a new therapist that I can come and see so I straight away agreed on a date and since then I’ve been taken off Duloxetine and put back on my normal medication, Fluoxetine. And I can tell you now, I feel like my normal self again!

So, medication can change the person you are! It may take a while to realise that but if you do please go to your local doctors or mental health team and get the help you deserve! 

Here are a few websites that can assist you further and provide you with more information and advice that you deserve; https://www.mind.org.uk/ 
                                               https://www.mentalhealth.org.uk/
                                               https://www.rethink.org/ 
                                               https://www.time-to-change.org.uk/ 

-Mel

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