Leading up to the time I returned, my psychiatrist claimed I was doing well enough that he gradually weaned me off my meds. But I returned in Fall of 2007 for my last quarter of undergrad classes. I needed the quarter off to mentally recover. I did not make it back to college in time to graduate in Spring 2007 like I planned. I stayed on my prescribed meds for the better part of a year. My doctor said it was probably a “one time thing.” At that time, it was diagnosed as a drug-induced psychotic episode, probably from drinking beer laced with PCP. It was at that point that I began taking the medicine and slowly started recovering. My mind had been racing at 200 mph for like four or five days and I didn’t remember that I had a home around the corner from this hospital with my family. Then she said, “Don’t you want to go home?” I thought, drugs got me into this mess, how can they possibly get me out? Then, for about the fifth time a nurse told me to, once again, take my medicine, and I said no. They started giving me daily medicine but for the first couple days I remember denying it. The only people I saw for days were the nurses and my doctor. It felt like I was in that room for months. Like, maybe I was in here because of a crime I don’t remember committing? My mind started playing tricks on me. I started to have paranoid delusions of grandeur. I was admitted into the local psychiatric ward.įor most of the time I was in isolation I wasn’t sleeping at all. I vaguely remember screaming religious statements in the crowded waiting room as I waited. Either way we knew something was wrong and they took me to the emergency room. My mom and her boyfriend thought maybe the green beer I drank was possibly laced. I got home and couldn’t sleep or sit still at all. I just wanted to get home and tell my mom what was going on and possibly go to the emergency room. The drive home took what felt like an eternity. The rush of adrenaline continued, the anxiety built up and I couldn’t sit still at all. The feeling continued on the drive home from Athens to Canton, for spring break. I struggled through the final because I physically didn’t feel right. I remember my hands shaking a lot, and a lot of anxiety for the first time in my life. I remember feeling a rush of adrenaline and like my arms were on fire. In reality, I didn’t even finish the pitcher. And not a blur in the sense of, “I got drunk and blacked out,” but a blur in the sense that when I got back to the apartment, my roommate said I looked like I had thirty beers. The rest of what happened that day is a blur. I witnessed the bartender mixing the green food coloring into the beer. During finals week, a classmate met me at a bar for a pitcher of green beer. I was second in my class in civil engineering. I was on schedule to graduate after spring quarter. I had one final exam left before spring break. It all was jump-started during finals week of my second to last quarter of college. I honestly can say that up until the end of college I had no discernible signs of a mental illness.
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