Starting down the medication path for mental illness is an endeavor. Over the last fifteen years I have tried twelve different medications. Everything from antidepressants to antipsychotics. I’ve been on the gold standard for mood stabilizers, Lamictal, for a decade now. It doesn’t eradicate my bipolar episodes but it helps lessen the severity of them.

When I first tried Saphris (a new to the market antipsychotic) back in 2014, my insurance company was refusing to help cover the cost. My doctor had to fill out a form stating that I’ve tried all the other antipsychotics available at that time. It was disheartening to know how many medications I have tried to help me in my daily mental battle.

Why so many different medications? The three main issues are side effects that aren’t fun, the drug made my mental state worse, and those that had no effect at all. It’s scary starting a new drug and not knowing what laid in store. However, I kept at finding the best combination of medication for me because I have a need to lead as normal as a life as possible. My current regiment of three antipsychotics and a mood stabilizer doesn’t prevent the episodes from ebbing and flowing throughout my life but I now have weeks instead of minutes of calm in my brain. Since the field of medications for mental illness keeps growing and better drugs are being formulated, I have hope that one day I’ll get to know peace in my mind for months rather than weeks.

Once upon a time, about four weeks ago, I had a schizophrenic episode. There was a bit of a dauntingly massive stressful issue, that I handled just fine. As the drama was winding down, I began to feel flesh eating bugs crawling on my skin. Now, throughout the course of my life, I have felt bugs fill the air and water. The beginning of this schizophrenic episode was nothing new. What was new, was the intensity and duration of the sensation my skin was being eaten alive. I took to wearing long sleeve sweaters and hiding under blankets. I started taking Ativan, which helps calm me down in times of high mania and/or schizophrenic episodes. Then I started taking more Ativan on a continuos basis when I started to physically see the bugs eat away at my flesh. To say it’s disturbing to witness my skin disappear is to put it mildly. What makes it worse is I know it’s all in my mind.

My doctor felt the episode would pass, as all of my episodes had done before. There was really nothing to do but wait. I’m already on three anti-psychotics and I’m on a high dosage of all three. Bipolar episodes are a different beast than schizophrenic episodes. I’ve been having manic, depressed, and mixed episodes my entire life. They’re old hats that have become familiar. In a way, the flesh eating bugs was the same old story. Sometimes I can’t take a shower because of the paranoia of bugs in the water. I have covered myself head to toe because the air is attacking me with bugs. It was like my brain didn’t have the energy to come up with a new way to betray me. That is what hallucinatory schizophrenic episodes feel like- my brain is betraying me. I know what I’m experiencing visually isn’t real but I see it none-the-less.

The episode did pass and I’m feeling more like the sane person I know lives in me. I feel normal again. Well, normal until the next episode strikes. Who knows when, what type, and why that will happen. Okay, most of the time, the why can’t be pinned down (other than the obvious- that I live with a mental disorder). However, the when and what type isn’t certain. I try not to fall into the trap by playing the guessing game and simply enjoy the times of sanity. It’s what keeps me going when I’m in the middle of an episode.