Electroshock
Aug. 6th, 2024 09:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
senashentaI've been thinking a lot lately about all the fuck ups that have happened during the course of my mental health treatment. All the incorrect medications and incorrect dosages, the misdiagnoses, the psychiatrists who would NOT listen to me about ANYTHING, but especially about the fucking ELECTROSHOCK THERAPY that one of them convinced me to try.
First of all, I should say that electroshock therapy is not like it is in the movies and on TV. It's very easy to go through. They basically knock you out completely for the procedure so you don't see or feel anything, you just wake up a while later and go home having had your brain minorly fried. I should also say that I know electroshock therapy works for some people for some conditions, not everyone has the shitty experience with it that I had. It's a legit therapy, but not for everyone, the same as any treatment or therapy.
But for ME...
Basically, I was scheduled for twelve sessions, one a week for twelve weeks, all of which were naturally at five am. Because reasons?? Anyway, I went to four of them before dropping out BECAUSE AS SOON AS I STARTED THE ELECTROSHOCK THERAPY I LOST THE ABILITY TO FUCKING SLEEP. To be clear, this is NOT, apparently, A SIDE-EFFECT OF ELECTROSHOCK THERAPY. Or so they say. But as soon as they started shocking my brain I stopped sleeping. I would stay awake for days on end, and then, as it later turned out, when I DID finally sleep, I wasn't going into REM sleep, so I wasn't getting any proper REST.
This went on for YEARS. At one point when I was going to the sleep lab, a lady was talking with Mom and Mom explained what my problem was and she went "oh, did she get ECT?" AND WE WERE LIKE !!!!! (The sleep lab just told me that I wasn't getting REM sleep, the same as the OTHER sleep lab had told me previously.) But the second sleep lab was able to prescribe me medication to get me to sleep, if not get REM, so that was a plus, even if that medication gave me horrible side-effects.
NOW I'm on a new med to help me sleep, just in the last few months, and it seems to even get me into REM because I'm having dreams again, which is cool. But I mean... the electroshock? Definitely not worth it. It didn't help with my bi-polar and just FUCKED ME in other important ways. If I could go back and do it again I would absolutely and emphatically say no when that stupid psychiatrist suggested it. =/
First of all, I should say that electroshock therapy is not like it is in the movies and on TV. It's very easy to go through. They basically knock you out completely for the procedure so you don't see or feel anything, you just wake up a while later and go home having had your brain minorly fried. I should also say that I know electroshock therapy works for some people for some conditions, not everyone has the shitty experience with it that I had. It's a legit therapy, but not for everyone, the same as any treatment or therapy.
But for ME...
Basically, I was scheduled for twelve sessions, one a week for twelve weeks, all of which were naturally at five am. Because reasons?? Anyway, I went to four of them before dropping out BECAUSE AS SOON AS I STARTED THE ELECTROSHOCK THERAPY I LOST THE ABILITY TO FUCKING SLEEP. To be clear, this is NOT, apparently, A SIDE-EFFECT OF ELECTROSHOCK THERAPY. Or so they say. But as soon as they started shocking my brain I stopped sleeping. I would stay awake for days on end, and then, as it later turned out, when I DID finally sleep, I wasn't going into REM sleep, so I wasn't getting any proper REST.
This went on for YEARS. At one point when I was going to the sleep lab, a lady was talking with Mom and Mom explained what my problem was and she went "oh, did she get ECT?" AND WE WERE LIKE !!!!! (The sleep lab just told me that I wasn't getting REM sleep, the same as the OTHER sleep lab had told me previously.) But the second sleep lab was able to prescribe me medication to get me to sleep, if not get REM, so that was a plus, even if that medication gave me horrible side-effects.
NOW I'm on a new med to help me sleep, just in the last few months, and it seems to even get me into REM because I'm having dreams again, which is cool. But I mean... the electroshock? Definitely not worth it. It didn't help with my bi-polar and just FUCKED ME in other important ways. If I could go back and do it again I would absolutely and emphatically say no when that stupid psychiatrist suggested it. =/
