My one month old nightmare.
Let me tell you what I went through in the month of September. Pure and utter hell. My days were like this. I was taking 25 to 30 sleeping pills a day, sleeping 3 hours, badly I might add and eating chocolates and cookies obsessively, like I would die if I didn’t have a treat every 30 minutes. The sleeping pills obviously made me drowsy and high. I would play The Sims 2 all day and night and giggle every time a sim did something funny, I was high. By the second week of my binge my parents took notice. My father told me I looked sleepy all the time and that I spoke funny. I said it was because I was sleeping so badly. They had noticed that too. That I simply was not sleeping and I was obsessively playing The Sims all the time. I started to steal money too. I had to buy the chocolates and cookies somehow so I started stealing right off my Dad’s wallet. I was making weekly trips to the supermarket and the lady cashiers were always impressed by the amounts of junk food I would buy. Then there’s the pills.
I suffer from severe depression so before we came to Swaziland I visited my Psychiatrist and she gave us enough prescriptions to buy my medication for 6 months. So we bought thousands of dollars worth of medication for my depression before embarking on our trip to Africa. My parents found me in an ok situation to just keep the meds in my Mom’s closet. A third of the medications are strong sleeping and anxiety pills.
So September slipped in and I had a severed right ankle. I had fallen just a week before on our daily walking trips with my Mom. So I was house ridden and upset. Here I was an invalid and I couldn’t even go to the kitchen to get a glass of water, it hurt too much to walk.
One day I was limping outside having a cigarette when suddenly I got an anxiety attack. Mom was out walking and I was home alone. So I went to my little bag that contained 1 month’s worth of medication and found that I was out of my anxiety pills. So I went to my Mother’s closet and found bags and bags of pills. First I just took that one pill and felt ok afterwards. But I was curious and anxious. So I grabbed a handful of sleeping pills and hid them in my room. I took 3, just enough to feel sleepy but not enough to sleep.
That’s when it all started. I started taking more and more each day and I was sleeping less and less each day. I would wake up at 4am and take 5 anxiety pills and 4 sleeping pills. Then I would binge on chocolate and cookies till I was full enough to get out of bed and get dressed. I would limp to the dining room where the laptop is and I would start playing The Sims 2. I would drink 5 to 6 cups of coffee and cigarettes and eat chocolates every 30 minutes.
At 10am Mom was awake and ready to go out walking. She would leave and I would take 4 more sleeping pills and would drink at least 3 cups of more coffee. Mom would come home at 11am and I would still be on the computer.
By lunchtime I was obviously not hungry and shaking from all the coffee but I would have lunch with her none the less. A simple cheese sandwich and a mandarin. She would then go read in the living room and I would go back to The Sims. At around 12:30pm I would slip by my Mom and would go to my room and would take 5 sleeping pills and 3 anxiety pills. And the days go on just like this.
By last week my parents were already aware that something was totally wrong with me. I would have fights with my parents, they would scream at me as to why I was walking around high and I would yell back that it was because I wasn’t sleeping. Mom mentioned that my drugs for depression might not be working on me anymore and that was why I was so stoned. Dad insisted I was taking drugs and he insisted my Mother go check if any drugs were missing. On my drug induced haze I would steal once a day always careful that it wasn’t obvious I was taking the drugs from the closet. Mom refused to believe I was stealing so she wouldn’t check.
Four weeks had passed. I needed more pills and now it was painfully obvious I had taken them from the closet. So I needed a new plan. I found my prescriptions from Chile and stole a lot of money from my Dad and I planned that on one of my trips I would pass by a drugstore and just buy the drugs. That same night Dad grabbed his wallet and started counting his money. He noticed a grave amount of his money was missing. He asked me I said NO, I did not take your money. What for? What am I gonna do with so much cash? We started fighting, by then if I remember correctly that day I had taken about 30 sleeping pills so I was very very high. Mom couldn’t take it anymore so she went to my room and checked my wallet, there was the money missing. Then I had to confess to stealing it. I was so high Dad started telling my Mom to check on the pills because this wasn’t right, why would I take so much money? The pills were missing. Mom checked my closets and my drawers and there she found empty boxes for sleeping and anxiety pills.
The jig was up and all I could do was cry. My Dad said I was crying because I was high, I didn’t care I just cried and told them over and over that I was sorry that I would never do it again. They didn’t believe me. Mom almost cried herself, which I think she might have on her own later that night but by then the closets were closed with a key.
The closets are still locked and I am given my special medication bag (with a months worth of medication) daily and I arrange my medication for the next day in front of my parents.
Two days after being discovered I started to feel like shit. Pure and complete shit. I had not been this depressed for years. I slept for 2 days straight. Going through some sort of detox and I was so damn depressed. Once again I was thinking of suicide, obsessing on the fact that Kurt Cobain was my age when he committed suicide, obsessing on whether or not I was going to start hearing and seeing things again then crying scared because I did not want to have hallucinations, not ever again. I would cry and Mom was always by my side, holding my hand, telling me I was going to really really be ok. That I was going through this because I was going through withdrawls due to the fact that I had taken so many pills.
Then one morning I woke up and I was ok.
But I’ll never really be ok, not after this. Not after harming myself this way. Not after doing me so much harm. It’ll be a long time before my parents trust me again. So I take day by day seriously motivated to finally do good by my side. To finally start caring about myself. If no one else, who will?
I don’t think I’ll ever play The Sims 2 again…
I suffer from severe depression so before we came to Swaziland I visited my Psychiatrist and she gave us enough prescriptions to buy my medication for 6 months. So we bought thousands of dollars worth of medication for my depression before embarking on our trip to Africa. My parents found me in an ok situation to just keep the meds in my Mom’s closet. A third of the medications are strong sleeping and anxiety pills.
So September slipped in and I had a severed right ankle. I had fallen just a week before on our daily walking trips with my Mom. So I was house ridden and upset. Here I was an invalid and I couldn’t even go to the kitchen to get a glass of water, it hurt too much to walk.
One day I was limping outside having a cigarette when suddenly I got an anxiety attack. Mom was out walking and I was home alone. So I went to my little bag that contained 1 month’s worth of medication and found that I was out of my anxiety pills. So I went to my Mother’s closet and found bags and bags of pills. First I just took that one pill and felt ok afterwards. But I was curious and anxious. So I grabbed a handful of sleeping pills and hid them in my room. I took 3, just enough to feel sleepy but not enough to sleep.
That’s when it all started. I started taking more and more each day and I was sleeping less and less each day. I would wake up at 4am and take 5 anxiety pills and 4 sleeping pills. Then I would binge on chocolate and cookies till I was full enough to get out of bed and get dressed. I would limp to the dining room where the laptop is and I would start playing The Sims 2. I would drink 5 to 6 cups of coffee and cigarettes and eat chocolates every 30 minutes.
At 10am Mom was awake and ready to go out walking. She would leave and I would take 4 more sleeping pills and would drink at least 3 cups of more coffee. Mom would come home at 11am and I would still be on the computer.
By lunchtime I was obviously not hungry and shaking from all the coffee but I would have lunch with her none the less. A simple cheese sandwich and a mandarin. She would then go read in the living room and I would go back to The Sims. At around 12:30pm I would slip by my Mom and would go to my room and would take 5 sleeping pills and 3 anxiety pills. And the days go on just like this.
By last week my parents were already aware that something was totally wrong with me. I would have fights with my parents, they would scream at me as to why I was walking around high and I would yell back that it was because I wasn’t sleeping. Mom mentioned that my drugs for depression might not be working on me anymore and that was why I was so stoned. Dad insisted I was taking drugs and he insisted my Mother go check if any drugs were missing. On my drug induced haze I would steal once a day always careful that it wasn’t obvious I was taking the drugs from the closet. Mom refused to believe I was stealing so she wouldn’t check.
Four weeks had passed. I needed more pills and now it was painfully obvious I had taken them from the closet. So I needed a new plan. I found my prescriptions from Chile and stole a lot of money from my Dad and I planned that on one of my trips I would pass by a drugstore and just buy the drugs. That same night Dad grabbed his wallet and started counting his money. He noticed a grave amount of his money was missing. He asked me I said NO, I did not take your money. What for? What am I gonna do with so much cash? We started fighting, by then if I remember correctly that day I had taken about 30 sleeping pills so I was very very high. Mom couldn’t take it anymore so she went to my room and checked my wallet, there was the money missing. Then I had to confess to stealing it. I was so high Dad started telling my Mom to check on the pills because this wasn’t right, why would I take so much money? The pills were missing. Mom checked my closets and my drawers and there she found empty boxes for sleeping and anxiety pills.
The jig was up and all I could do was cry. My Dad said I was crying because I was high, I didn’t care I just cried and told them over and over that I was sorry that I would never do it again. They didn’t believe me. Mom almost cried herself, which I think she might have on her own later that night but by then the closets were closed with a key.
The closets are still locked and I am given my special medication bag (with a months worth of medication) daily and I arrange my medication for the next day in front of my parents.
Two days after being discovered I started to feel like shit. Pure and complete shit. I had not been this depressed for years. I slept for 2 days straight. Going through some sort of detox and I was so damn depressed. Once again I was thinking of suicide, obsessing on the fact that Kurt Cobain was my age when he committed suicide, obsessing on whether or not I was going to start hearing and seeing things again then crying scared because I did not want to have hallucinations, not ever again. I would cry and Mom was always by my side, holding my hand, telling me I was going to really really be ok. That I was going through this because I was going through withdrawls due to the fact that I had taken so many pills.
Then one morning I woke up and I was ok.
But I’ll never really be ok, not after this. Not after harming myself this way. Not after doing me so much harm. It’ll be a long time before my parents trust me again. So I take day by day seriously motivated to finally do good by my side. To finally start caring about myself. If no one else, who will?
I don’t think I’ll ever play The Sims 2 again…