Matt

Posted: January 8th, 2010 | Author: youareb1 | Filed under: Psychotropic Drugs | No Comments »

i was a normal teenager, minding my own business, on my way to becoming a perfectly
obedient consumer… when something happened which would change my life forever.

my best friend disappeared off of the face of the earth for 2 whole weeks!

this was a boy i spoke to on the phone several times a day. he lived up north at college. and suddenly he was nowhere to be found. i must have left a hundred messages and sent a hundred texts. i tried him over and over every single day. it wasn’t until 2 weeks later that his phone finally rang and somebody answered.

i could hardly recognize the voice on the other end.

his speech was fast and confused. he stuttered. he couldn’t formulate a complete sentence. he went off the subject and blurted out nonsense. i kept repeating over and over again “where were you?! where have you been?!”. it took about 15 minutes to get my answer.

turns out my friend got into an argument with another boy on the campus basketball court, a girl watching from the crowd called the hospital psych ward, accused my friend of acting crazy and he got committed. just like that.

he was held for 2 weeks. he was placed on lithium. and now….. he really was crazy.

it only got worse after that. he stopped sleeping. he began calling me incessantly during the night, speaking only gibberish. i had to put my phone on silent and day after day i would wake to 50 or more missed calls. he starting becoming self destructive. he told me the drug made him want to die.

this is when i realized that something had to be done. i started researching lithium and it’s side effects. turns out mental depression and unusual excitement are side effects of the drug, as well as, confusion and lack of awareness. what???

i started reading the side effects of similar psychiatric drugs. I found
“suicidal thoughts or attempts” as a side effect to ritalin!

most of the conditions that were supposedly being treated by these drugs could also
be found in the drugs very own list of side effects!

agitation, anxiety, depression, irritability, persistent crying, unusual sadness,
aggression, hostility.. just to name a few!

my first thought? how could these drugs be approved by the FDA?

this was a question that would take me further than i ever could have imagined. and as for my friend? to put it simply, i never got him back.