God Wants Me Here, for Now

GOD WANTS ME HERE -- FOR NOW -- God’s Protection through Psychiatric Medication Adverse Reactions is an account of the psychiatric medication mismanagement I have endured and that difficult journey. Though a college educated, confident and involved, married mother of three, I learned the hard way to give grave respect to psychiatric medications. My travails have taught me to do my own research when accepting prescribed medications and not to trust the advice of doctors regarding the safety of the choice, the quantity prescribed, or the method to stop. I was totally unprepared for the level of suffering from antidepressant mismanagement (which was especially complicated by Gabapentin), the disbelief of doctors, or the judgment by family and friends. I had no idea that doctor training was so inadequate regarding those drugs or of the thousands of people, like me, who report their symptoms and are daily diagnosed as somatically preoccupied or with a conversion disorder. The pain caused by inappropriately prescribed drugs affected my jobs, my children, my finances, my public perception, and my involvement in life. (I have lost precious years of life because of psychiatric drugs.) My experience has awakened me to a desperate need in the medical community. I now advocate for informed consent of consumers, better training for doctors, insurance coverage for tapering, smaller manufactured drug quantities, penalties for doctors who cold turkey or fast taper a dangerous drug, and less flippant prescribing of those drugs.