I’m laying in bed and thinking about my life and my mental health. I’m currently not the happiest person in the world and that brings up difficult memories.

When I had my second psychotic episode I got sectioned and I got absolutely petrified that I’d be put in Home Group property to recover. Thank God, after a month I was sent straight home where I had to tidy up all the food I was throwing at policemen. My beautiful, patterned tiles were stained in a couple of places and the door had a big crack in the middle, plus, I wasn’t exactly a tidy person before the episode. That was when I was fighting with pregabalin withdrawal and was constantly exhausted. The exhaustion lifted quite suddenly shortly before the episode and I guess that was the reason I got it: I started thinking normally again but had no coping strategies for stress and no medication. A few misunderstandings at work and it was like someone flipped the switch: I was constantly ruminating on what happened and I couldn’t sleep. Possibly if I continued as normal or at least try some relaxing activity like going to the cinema, I’d finally calm down and the episode wouldn’t happen. But when I was in psychiatric hospital in Poland I was told that in case of any stress at work I need to call in sick. No one said what I had to do when off sick and it just sounded to me like I had to stress at home instead. So that’s what I did.

During those couple of days leading to my episode I saw 2 doctors and 3 nurses, I was complaining to everyone that I’m worried I’m going to get another episode. And yet, I got it anyway.

I was prescribed diazepam and zopiclone and neither of them worked. I don’t know why they didn’t, how come 7.5mg zopiclone didn’t make me sleep when I was exhausted? And because it didn’t work I became convinced I was given placebo (can you blame me for that thinking?) and from then everything happened very quickly.

Currently I’m not on any long term medication, only on as needed olanzapine. I tried another antipsychotic, arpiprazole, a few months ago but it made me unwell. Olanzapine can knock me down beautifully and stops my thinking from going in overdrive but I have nothing to regulate my emotions on a day to day basis. But then, inability to regulate emotions is an autistic thing, so should I be taking antipsychotics for that?

Perhaps pharmaceutical companies come up with meds for Asperger’s one day, something that helps us keep calm but doesn’t dull our thinking process. I’ll be really happy to test it, I’m not against meds at all.