Gonzo: Sertraline 50mg chaos and withdrawal

[Gonzo]

My emotions and feelings were the logic behind my actions, the reason why I behaved the way I did and did what I did. They guided me towards my real needs. But psychiatry totally ignored them and forced me to disconnect from them for years, so naturally I forgot all the reasons and logic that made me do what I did. My postraumatic crisis was a huge cognitive dissonance, and it resumed when I finally stopped taking Sertraline.

[Gonzo]

Crisis are temporary and withdrawals are crises, substance abuse "disorders", addictions, they don't last forever. That should be our mantra.

[Gonzo]

Things are definitely going better in my mind.

 

But I want to say something.

 

I'm grateful that this website and withdrawal community exist, but the more I understand what happened to me and all the withdrawal thing the more I see that withdrawal community is not trauma informed for the most part, and it's a real shame, because in many ways it follows the same psychiatric mindset.

 

Withdrawal is an oportunity to heal everything that you couldn't before, because we are forced to face reality when we go through this when we quit the drugs.

 

Also, if you suffered withdrawal it means that you suffered a substance abuse disorder, in the vast majority of cases here it was unknown, lacking informed consent and accurate info, which means malpractice or a crime.

 

Withdrawal community needs to acknowledge this too, as soon as possible in my opinion.

 

When we are immersed in such waves we lost perspective, reality gets distorted and we can become crazy trapped in these (postraumatic) cognitive dissonances, this happened to me, I almost lost my mind.

[Gonzo]

I now understand that my retraumazating withdrawal started in late 2019, when I stopped taking the pills, and 2020, between april and august, when I resumed Sertraline, I just a brief break.

 

When I stopped Sertraline time went extremely fast for me, my perception of time got distorted, since late 2019. I was 23 back then, I'm now close to 28 but it doesn't feel like that to me, it's very scary, terrifying, disturbing.

 

I've been overwhelmed since I got hospitalized, brutally oppressed and infantilized there.

[Gonzo]

The emotional and mental hellish chaos that I've been describing since my first post is disappearing, even if I still feel pretty anxious, hypervigilant and stressed out most of the time.

 

Everything is getting into place, fitting in again, after so many years of confusion and loss of indentity.

 

Psychiatry and Sertraline really disordered my mind, deeper than I could have ever imagined.

[Gonzo]

Things are going better in my mind. I still have to recover my life and need to be "functional", but I haven't feel like this in a long time, and I'm not feeling very good, I'm still pretty anxious, stressed out, hypervigilant, etc, but much better than before, the brain fog is getting less and less dense.

[Kaylaq]

Glad you are experiencing a bit of window stage, build yourself up to get stronger each day! 💕🙏

[Gonzo]

Yes, thanks @Kaylaq, I'd say that my withdrawal is actually 4+ years old, and that in 2020 I just had a small break when I resumed Sertraline. So it's lengthy. I still consider myself lucky because I got into this and I got out in my 20s and I'm still young.

[Gonzo]

I'm having a good night, more peaceful, it has been a looooong time since I had a night like this. I'm even drinking a beer. I'm not a fan of alcohol, specially since Altrostata told me that alcohol can delay recovery, but it has been a lot of time since the last time I drink alcohol and I think I can do it safely at the moment. My mind is in a better place. There is a lot of work to do yet, I don't know what to do with my life anymore, but this peace feels great.

[Kaylaq]

So glad for you!! 👍🏼😎😊

[Gonzo]

Today it was a decent day again, I feel more connected, more relaxed, but also very lost. I've been living in survival/fight-flight mode for so long that I forgot how life is when calmer. So much **** happened in the last years of my life, non stop.

 

These past few days I think I've processed a lot of **** because I'm exhausted. I feel like I'm going to go crazy, somehow. I have spent the last 8 and a half years of my life living either overwhelmed by very intense post-traumatic emotions and feelings or in a chemically distorted reality, the Sertraline synthetic reality, trapped between those two realities. I'm going through a reality shock at the moment, reality is overwhelming.

[Gonzo]

After my psychiatric intervention my mind was shattered. I realize that I unconcioussly internalized the psychiatric messages that I was crazy and possesed by this malignant thing called "Pure O OCD" that made me act like a crazy person. That's what psychiatry told me, because my psychiatrist found no logic and meaning in my behaviors, actions and reactions, and the narrative that I internalized, unconscioussly. But I'm not crazy and I never was crazy nor weak. I was just brutally oppressed and alienated, going through a very intense personal crisis that psychiatry made a chronic condition (literally), and confused, overwhelmed, vulnerable. I need to realize that, to recover, to be the person I used to be and that I really am, to be myself again.

 

When I took Sertraline I was suffering a chemical cognitive distortion of reality, being disconnected from my real feelings, emotions and personal needs, it fooled me and my brain, and I was already suffering the cognitive dissonance of my postraumatic crisis, so the confusion was huge, devastating. What reality was the real one? The true reality, the present time shared reality, always has been the one outside of my postraumatic cognitive dissonance and Sertraline chemical deception/cognitive distortion. In addition I also had to fight the cognitive distortion of the psychiatric indoctrination/brainwashing that told me that I was possesed by the malignant thing called "Pure O OCD" that made me act like a crazy person. Psychiatry is pure madness, it caused havoc in my mind, but I couldn't even realize when I was drugged and when overwhelmed suffering withdrawal.

[Gonzo]

Psychiatry caused an internal civil war within me, reinforced, created and made chronic my problems by deliberately ignoring my trauma, my circumstances, what happened to me, my suffering, gaslighting me, it made me believe that I was crazy, and that my "craziness" was something intrinsecally wrong with me, without cure, unfixable, a chronic "condition" that made and makes me act like a crazy person, illogically, irrationally, inside of me but out of my reach, so it is internal but external at the same time, located in an unreachable dimension inside of me (like an evil spirit that possess me, my soul, at a spiritual level), that way it truly became a chronic mental and emotional state while I believed it and it consumed me.

 

That's the psychiatric explanation and cause for my suffering, behaviors, thoughts, feelings, emotions, reactions, beliefs, crisis, etc, I was/am possessed by the psychopathological evil spirit/entity called "Pure O OCD".

 

I did what I did and suffered the way I suffered because of what happened to me, because of trauma, before, during and after the psychiatric intervention.

 

It all has meaning and is logical, even if it's very difficult to accept, understand, painful and confusing sometimes.

 

After the psychiatric intervention and psychiatric trauma that caused me, I unconsciously assumed due to the inhumane treatment that they gave me that my post-traumatic crisis did not make sense, that it was illogical, meaningless, that I had been possessed by an evil entity, which is why I behaved that way, I did what I did, I thought, felt and believed those "dangerous", "incomprensible" and "crazy" things, I isolated myself for a year and a half, etc., and that if it possessed me again I would lose control of myself, my mind and my life and be arrested and imprisoned, oppressed and alienated, revictimized. That was my biggest fear after the psychiatric intervention, the fear of being revictimized again by psychiatry and of losing control once more.

[Gonzo]

I'd say that my withdrawal has been a reality shock, the coming back to reality not knowing that I was disconnected in the first place, and the coming back of my true needs and objectives together with my real emotions and feelings.

 

That's what I'm going through now, a reality shock.

 

I lost all my personal integrity with psychiatry, my dignity, because of how I was treated, it humiliated me.

[Kaylaq]

👍🏼😊🙏 I’m listening, … 

[Gonzo]

While I took Sertraline I was multiple layers of psychological detachment/dissociation: the first one was my original complex trauma and its cognitive dissonance, that was extremely intense during that postraumatic crisis I was immersed in and that never ended thanks to psychiatry. The second one was the psychiatric trauma. The third one was the chemical cognitive distortion/dissonance of Sertraline. And the fourth was the cognitive distortion caused by the psychiatric indoctrination/brainwashing that started in the hospital without me realizing it, and that became stronger when I started believing in my psychiatric "diagnosis" of "Pure O OCD" and psychiatry overall since 2021.

 

Once you believe that you're crazy, as psychiatry says, it's game over, you dettach and can't come back if you don't realize that you're not crazy.

[Kaylaq]

I think the best you could do for yourself now is rebuild a new life with the awareness you now have. At some point you have to forgive that horrible experience and forgive yourself also!! 
 

Im trying to rebuild new thoughts and a new future, scary as I don’t know what that looks like yet! 

[Gonzo]

Yes, you're right. Writing all this help me to resolve the trauma and to put its complexity in perspective. I also hope to be a source of validation to anyone who finds my story, making sure that he is not alone when going through the madness of withdrawal and trauma. I'm much more closer to overcoming this than I was when I started this thread.

[Kaylaq]

👍🏻😊🙏🏻

[Gonzo]

I think a lot of people misunderstand what there is after quitting the drugs. Sometimes there is only pain, suffering, the painful reality, truth, emotions and feelings that we have been disconnected from for years, consciouss or unconscioussly, it doesn't matter. Those are the emotions and feelings that we need to sort out, to make sense of, the truth and reality that we need to accept, the trauma. To validate. To heal. To recover.

[Gonzo]

Today I made a lot of progress. It's incredible. I hope next days to be like this. I feel less scared of myself, of my own internal experiences, of my feelings, emotions, thoughts, beliefs, behaviors, reactions...

 

I have been terrified for so long, of myself, of others, of reality, specially since that "breakup" happened, in the first days of 2021.

 

Now I feel more in control.

 

I'm not possesed by this "Pure O OCD" evil demon thing, I'm not crazy, everything that I experience is meaningful and logical, understandable, I'm in charge.

 

It's true, however, that trauma took control over my life. Trauma and what caused it are the real demons, the "illnesses" that need to be cured, erradicated, everything else are just reactions, trauma is a reaction in fact, and it can hijack your mind and life in a myriad of ways. It hijacked me.

 

How painful and difficult can be to accept the ugly truth, to identify the trauma, to face it, to suffer for the truth. Psychiatric diagnoses can be a way to deny all that, to live in denial, I certainly was in denial when I accepted my "Pure O OCD" "diagnosis", my "demon", my "madness", was a way to reject reality, the trauma that I suffered, the pain that was inflicted to me, the painful truth, the oppression, the alienation, the ugly and overwhelming reality, I was not ready to face all that, or that's what I felt, so I sought refuge in my "diagnosis", only to fall into the deadly trap of psychiatry, because it deliberately ignores trauma, so once you fall into it there is no turning back, you're stuck, unable to make sense of what happened to you, to find meaning and the way out, I think I'm lucky that I was able to, because I have the spirit to do so, but too many people don't have it and they get trapped by the madness and evil of psychiatry.

[Kaylaq]

So glad you are having a couple of good clear mental days! 👍🏻🙏🏻😊😊

[Gonzo]

I'm doing a bit better today. I feel more in charge of my inner experiences/world, more in control of my emotions and feelings. This happened faster once I noticed that I was seeing myself as a crazy person, the same way that psychiatry saw me, and I'm challenging that as much as I can, so I'm feeling better. You can't relax if you believe that you're crazy, that there is something intrinsecally wrong with you, evil, dangerous, that your experiences are meaningless, "pathological", because you carry the danger everywhere. So once you stop seeing yourself as a crazy person, as I've been doing specially since that traumatic "breakup" in early January 2021, you're forced to face reality, the painful truth, the trauma, and new doors open for you, new oportunities, but with them also comes the suffering of realizing what truly happened.

 

The world can be a very ***** up place.

[getofflex]

It's really a good thing that you are seeing yourself as just a regular normal person.  Some of us on here call this "unpatienting".  It really gives us a boost to our self esteem to do this.  I've also done this as well.  I believe that the world of psychiatry pathologizes normal human emotions.  

[Gonzo]

Yeah @getofflex, I'm still working on it, I don't fully believe it, because I'm still indoctrinated/brainwashed by psychiatry to believe that I'm crazy, disordered, abnormal, ill, it's persistent, and they mind doesn't like to get changed it's meaning framework/belief system.

 

How much did it take for you to fully believe it?

 

I also go back and forth to the sick psychiatric mindset, but I'm slowly getting out of it, I'm slowly depathologizing myself.

 

That's what it means to be pathologized by psychiatry, to be labelled as crazy/insane.

[Gonzo]

I realize now clearly that I've been suffering withdrawal since late 2019, when I finally stopped taking Sertraline. When 2020 started and during COVID-19 lockdown I was mentally and emotionally already in a pretty bad shape and very much depleted, the chemically suppressed postraumatic feelings and emotions were coming back and I became more reactive and unstable. Because I had been unconscioussly indoctrinated by psychiatry to believe that my 2015, 2016 and 2017 postraumatic crisis was something evil, meaningless and dangerous, and also because of the psychiatric trauma, once I started feeling my postraumatic  feelings and emotions again I panicked, I saw them as a sign that hell was being let loose again, so I ran to take my "medication" again, Sertraline, to stop the "madness" from hijacking me and my life again (and being arrested and locked down again, revictimized). All my trauma was unprocessed and aggravated by psychiatry. Then that narcissistic "relationship" happened and she destroyed me when I was the most vulnerable, suffering withdrawal, confused, overwhelmed, desperate, and searching for her validation, support, understanding, and help, maybe it was even more harmful than psychiatry, it shattered me, she was cruel, she played with me, used me and discarded me, she scammed me and revictimized me, making me feel like a crazy, dangerous, unstable person, just like psychiatry previously did.

 

There was and there is meaning in everything that happened to me, a reason, it's all logical, even if painful.

 

I really want all this to end soon, I'm tired, I don't want to loose more time, I want my life and my real identity back, because I lost them with psychiatry and that narcissistic "relationship".

[Gonzo]

This is the mantra I'm using to feel better, safer, and overcome what's left of the psychiatric indoctrination/brainwashing:

 

I am not crazy, I am not possessed, there is nothing wrong with me, my reactions are not wrong or bad, I am not abnormal, ill, disordered nor inferior, I am not a bad person, I am a human being and a normal person, my experiences have meaning, they are logical, real and valid, my reality is real, I am valid and worthy.

 

But if you're not crazy, as psychiatry says with its brain "illnesses", then what happened/is happening to you is real, so it's not like you're gonna feel suddenly better, now starts the time of grieving, trauma reprocessing and facing the real problems.

[Gonzo]

I think I also have an explanation for the emotional spirals that are mentioned in this website. If we learnt in the past that feeling and showing and sharing our feelings, thoughts and emotions is not safe, because of how we were treated, abused, shamed, oppressed for doing so, then we learn to fear and suppress them to be safe, our inner experiences, so when we start feeling our "neuroemotions" during withdrawal (i.e. our feelings, thoughts and emotions with an unusual intensity) that fear of being shamed, abused, oppressed, of being revictimized, becomes very intense, and we start trying to control our "neuroemotions", trying to suppress them, to resist, to avoid them, to reduce their intensity, to feel safe again, but in the process we obsess with them and make them extra powerful, distressing and overwhelming, we see them as dangerous, as specially dangerous during withdrawal because of their intensity, getting into these emotional spirals. What's the solution? To find external emotional validation, true support, and to tell to ourselves that our feelings, thoughts and emotions are not the problem, no matter how intense they're, but the reactions that other people have when we show them, so that way it become safer to be ourselves, in our skins, because we are not "crazy", there is nothing "wrong" with us.

[Kaylaq]

You are right! There is nothing wrong with us!  But we can’t change the past, all we can do is move forward, and there is where we have choices!  I have been relying on the following post to help me move forward, to recreate a new life of my own making. Maybe you can find something helpful there for you to heal!

https://www.survivingantidepressants.org/forums/topic/30565-baccateplayer-immediate-adverse-reaction-to-sertraline/?do=findComment&comment=680279

 

be strong 💪👍🏼😊🙏🙏

 

[Gonzo]

Yeah... I'm trying to recover the freedom and power that were taken away from me years ago, and my true identity, my true self, I lost all that when I internalized that I was "crazy".

[Kaylaq]

Lately, I don’t think it’s about recovering something from the past, as that is no longer who we are, we can only create a new perspective, a new persona, a new way of being.  Who do we want to be moving forward?  The energy source that is everything, this planet and everything on it is always moving forward, always creating anew, everything has a dying period then new growth comes forward, and is different then before! 
so I have been trying to change my perspective to a future self, not my old self, … thinking about who do I want to become now! How can I forgive the past, let it go, leave it to God,….start a new life, a new me, a new way of moving forward. 
 

anyways, these are my thoughts lately during the window days, I can’t fix the past, can’t change it no matter what, the anger, the pain, the regret, it just makes me feel worse. Where do I have a choice?? It’s in the now, in this moment, in this day, is only where I can make a difference for myself, for my healing!  The power is in our own hands, we can get that back to make a difference in our own lives!! 

Be strong moving forward for yourself and no one else’s! 

 

[Gonzo]

I like that reflexion and mindset @Kaylaq.  Agree.

[getofflex]

19 hours ago, Gonzo said:

How much did it take for you to fully believe it?

It's a long slow process, and I'm still working on it.   It's hard to say how long it took, probably a few years.  However, I was also told by members of my family that I was disordered from the time I was a child, so that is why it took a while for me.  It is a mindset I try to keep going, because I could fall back the old one of being disordered. 

[Gonzo]

Yeah, I understand. I fell down in this sick mentality because of a narcissistic relationship that I had in 2020. I started believing that I had gone insane, when I was suffering narcissistic abuse and a retraumazating withdrawal at the same time but I couldn't understand back then.

 

But to be honest the feeling of being crazy is related to oppression, alienation and traumatic shame, so psychiatry doesn't need to be involved to feel like a crazy person. Psychiatry just reinforces that toxic idea, the oppression, alienation and abuse. When I suffered that narcissistic abuse that person made me feel like if I had become insane, and because I was extremely vulnerable suffering this crazy retraumazating withdrawal I really believed it, then I got into the "Pure O OCD" thing and into psychiatry, when in fact my psychiatric diagnosis was pure gaslighting, a label that my psychiatrist used to "diagnose" me as insane, to say that I had lost my mind, just because he couldn't make sense of my story, behaviors, thoughts, beliefs and reactions, because he was a mediocre, stupid and narcissistic doctor.

 

This is how I really started believing that I was crazy. And when I got out of the hospital that idea was in my mind, but it wasn't until that devastating narcissistic abuse happened that that idea, the idea that I was mad, became dominant in my head.

 

I have experience fighting against the shame and stigma, I fought hard against them when I was a teen, so I believe that things will be okay.

 

She made me fall again into the shame/madness mindset.

[Gonzo]

None of my emotions and feelings are wrong, all of them, they are there to protect me, to help me survive, they make sense, but of course, like everyone else, I don't want to suffer. That's what the pain is for, to force you to make changes. But in this society we pathologize emotional suffering, so its messages never come through.

 

I guess that woman really sent me deep down to this postraumatic "madness" of mine and stigma that I've been desperately running away since I was 16 years old with her narcissistic abuse and the revictimizing breakup, postraumatic "madness" that psychiatry deeply aggravated too years ago with its traumatizing intervention.

 

I still haven't overcomed this postraumatic "madness" crisis because I never found the emotional validation that I needed to do so, to find closure, and since that revictimizing breakup happened I've been terrified of ever trying again.

 

She was my last (and catastrophic) try. After her I still had the same desperate, traumatic need to be loved, validated, to feel understood, seen, and safe, and I became very obsessive-compulsive, because, like psychiatry did she did, she actually made much worse those excruciating needs of mine, and I started to feel extremely unsafe, always in danger, I had internalized her toxic projections and I begun seen myself as an horrible, dangerous, unstable and crazy person. I think I have been tried to satisfy those unbearable needs since the breakup happened but not like the last time I tried with her, when we had that "relationship", so I never found closure and the already existing, complex and overwhelming trauma got worse and more and more disturbing for me.

 

So I have the same problem that I had 8 years ago and I ask myself the same question: why I can't feel safe and relax, why can't I rest?

[Gonzo]

At the end, I'm in the same spot that I was in before my psychiatric intervention, when I was 19-20 years old. Nothing changed. My needs are the same, so my objectives remain same as well, I needed to do the same things to survive in this society, to feel better, to live fully, to have inner peace. That's why I tried so hard to remember what happened to me, to make sense of all this hot mess. I just lost 7 years of my life for nothing. I don't want to sound pesimistic, I'm not, I'm just angry for this injustice. I'm actually hopeful and my mind is getting better and better, I'm moving out of the brain fog after years stuck in it.

 

If I tell to myself that my feelings and emotions don't make sense, like I did when this postraumatic crisis, cognitive dissonance and "madness" begun, I'm gaslighting myself and telling to myself that I'm basically "crazy". But they do make sense, and if you reject the idea of "madness" it doesn't take that long to start making sense of all of it. But first you must reject the idea that you're "insane" and stop the self-gaslighting. Easier said than done for multiple reasons, but it is what it is. If you're not crazy, then what happened or is happening is/was real, then you're forced to face the pain, and that is, well, obviously painful, and no one wants to feel the pain. Also can be a reality shock (like it happened to me?).

 

I never found the emotional validation that I needed so I never recovered and I was never able to become fully "functional" as a result but I never gave up, so, I got stuck, fighting to satisfy needs and achieve objectives that I completely forgot.

 

Until I find that external emotional validation, even if it comes from a single one person, I won't know peace in my mind. Maybe I'm better prepared now than before to search it again.

 

I've been trying to get rid or run away from my postraumatic "madness" since I was 16, but it never went away, because madness it never was, but reality, so I've been rejecting the painful reality for all this time, refusing the pain, without success, because reality is always stronger and imposes itself.

 

I think I never healed from that narcissistic relationship and her narcissistic abuse, because I believed the poison that she protected to me, that I was crazy, that I had lost my mind and control over myself and became insane, that I was basically a dangerous criminal very close to having been commited a crime, so when I believe all those things I blamed myself for all her abuse and what happened between us, for all the ugliness.