If I had to use one word and one word only to describe my experience of being a psychiatric patient for decades, it would be "humiliating". It was relentlessly humiliating. From being talked to and treated like I was an idiot from my first brush with "mental healthcare" and the sugar-coated lie that is "you're not crying because of the bullies at school- you're crying because you have a brain chemical imbalance" To every negative development in my life being attributed to my diagnosis (ie my faulty brain) and every positive development being attributed to "the paroxetine's clearly helping so why don't you stay on it for another six months" To the times I was laughed at- literally- by psychiatrists for daring to suggest stopping paroxetine can cause withdrawal symptoms and what I was experiencing was withdrawal. I was severely harmed by a psychiatric drug and the system as a whole, with physical, tangible consequences. But the way that harm was caused and then denied was utterly humiliating- and for me that sense of humiliation might be the most insidious and persistent harm of all.

Paroxetine killed my inner monologue, which all along was my imaginary friend: the character that was a sounding board for my ideas, the confidant for my worries, the reader of books to me, and the voice of reason and logic when I was trying to figure something out. It's back now and brighter than ever but you will never see things like this listed in a patient leaflet because healthcare and the research propping it up doesn't treat people as whole people- it treats them as a bunch of standardised, black-and-white symptoms. And, as with the loss of my inner monologue, it also doesn't and can't tell you about the possible repercussions of such adverse effects- especially unofficial ones like I describe here- and the unique ways they may play out for you as an individual. If you have an inner monologue I'm pretty sure you'll know it can be a pain in the arse. Mine still is at times but like every character in my life I love who pisses me off from time to time, I'm so grateful it's here with me and I wouldn't want it any other way.