Author’s Note: A quick content warning for this post. This article contains frank discussion of mental health including discussions of medication (including a rare but dangerous response to it), self-harm, eating disorders, and hospitalization. Readers particularly sensitive to these issues may prefer to forgo this text. Additionally, while I would always request that my paywalled content is not reposted publicly, I am asking you- as a fellow human being- to avoid forwarding this post, as well as detailed or directly quoted discussions of this post in public forums and would request that, should you see this discussed in detail publicly, you report the thread (but kindly do not send it to me). If you’d like to read it and cannot afford the subscription, you are always free to send me an email. Many thanks and much love, Hannah.
If you or someone you know is struggling with thoughts of self-harm, please contact a crisis hotline or dial 911. There are so many resources available and you are so valuable to this world.
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2009 was the most difficult year of my life. (I think, 2022 is certainly doing a number.)
I started college severely bulimic and depressed. I came from a neglectful home, rotten with emotional abuse. I didn't realize the extent of some of those horrors until I moved to New York and, free from the embarrassment of sharing the grizzly side of my home life with people who knew my parents, started speaking about some of the things that happened.
There was a period where my mother, each day after school, told me to take my shirt off and spin in a circle in front of her, so she could tell whether I was losing or gaining too much weight. When I made her angry, she used to punch my right arm with her left fist, while I was sitting in the passenger’s seat of her car. “Princess” she called me, full of venom, when she was angry. “You’ll be prettier when your face isn’t so round.” While my weight dropped, my face swelled more and more, from the purging. Seven, eight, ten times a day.
A few weeks into my freshman year of college, I spoke with a classmates mom— a child psychologist— on the phone. I don’t remember the details of that discussion but I remember I came out of it realizing that many things about my home life (and mental health) were deeply imperfect. That several of my experiences were not normal.
I made an appointment with the student health center and was prescribed an SSRI. I did not hesitate to begin the medication. I had it filled that day and began taking it religiously. I had never (and have not since) had a manic or hypomanic episode. I began one almost immediately. (AN: antidepressant-associated hypomania (AAH) is quite rare- my googling won’t tell me exactly how rare, I am speaking about my experience. I am not a medical professional, please don’t decide not to take life saving medication because of this unique incident. If you feel something is off with you or a medication, speak to your physician.)
I, brand new to New York, got out of bed at one AM nearly every night and walked for hours through the streets. I stopped sleeping. I sweated constantly. I wrote pages and pages of gibberish. My eyes felt especially open, even when I tried to rest. I didn’t feel less depressed, I still could not get out of bed before noon (on a good day), I was still bulimic, I was just (hypo-I believe) manic as well. I did not realize any of this was abnormal or that I should alert the prescribing doctor.