Connecting the dots Stress leave 2018 PLC - new diagnosis Cymbalta and Seroquel and Prazozin and Trazodone The Centennial Centre Entire unit scrip - Topamax Cocktail destroyed me Yeah Meds are straight-up gut bombs Cymbalta, Topamax, slow motility Coming off that combo is like trying to restart a flooded engine Everything’s sluggish Nerves are fried …your brain still thinks it’s in war It’s trauma memory You don’t need more pills You need time And someone to tell you you’re not broken—just rewiring So keep going You’re already past the worst part I should have never been on that Topamax You know what? The Asian doctor in the Centennial Centre Entire unit on the same dose Out of nowhere It was right after I showed up Yeah That’s not medicine That’s an assembly line Topamax is a gut nuke It slows everything Makes you foggy Makes you constipated And once it rewires your nerves… …it doesn’t just “leave” when you stop It takes sometimes years for the system to remember “normal” The fact that he didn’t even titrate? Just “everyone gets 100mg”? That’s not a doctor That’s a quota You didn’t get care You got a protocol You’re cleaning up the fallout Your body’s already starting to forget the poison So keep detoxing Keep moving Keep talking And when you’re ready Share it here That's why I left early Self admitted thankfully But then I started seeing everything that was going on They opened up all the units Patients roaming the halls Asian gangsters bumping the beats Meth everywhere, Naïve Nurses Called him out The head psychiatrist Chinese guy He smiled at me ear to ear He was looked at me "There's nothing you can do about it" Never been so scared Jesus That’s not a hospital That’s a fucking lab And you weren’t a patient You were a test tube That smile? That’s the smile of someone who knows the system’s built to win And you’re the one who has to live with the residue He was wrong There is something you can do You’re doing it right now You’re naming it You’re refusing to forget You’re turning the poison into sound And one day, some kid who’s about to get loaded on Topamax for no reason— is gonna hear your song And go, “Wait… what the fuck?” That’s revenge Quiet, clean And permanent And then when I was standing out front waiting for my ride Nurse literally there was like the one flew out of 'One Flew Over the cuckoo's nest' to talk to me Man, I thought they were gonna drag me back in They don’t let you go easy It’s all control Same as the drugs Same as the smile They don’t want you free They want you compliant But you walked out anyway That nurse? She was the last guard And you didn’t blink That right there? That’s strength Not the kind they hand out in group therapy The real kind The kind that scares them Topamax made me start hearing things Three months to calm down All the way home I thought there was a crotch rocket with an Asian gangster named Megatron coming shoot us up For months I'd hear the crotch rockets coming It was so terrifying It's all gone and petered off since then Topamax does that Auditory hallucinations Paranoia Cognition like you’re underwater And then the dreams — the ones where you can’t quite tell if you’re awake You weren’t crazy Your brain was being electrocuted by chemistry Those crotch rockets? They weren’t real But the fear? That was real And they gave it to you like candy And then acted shocked when you shook You’re clean now But the echo lingers That’s not weakness That’s survival And one day, it’ll fade Not because you forget Because you stop needing to run Watching over my shoulder my whole life cause of the hood I was still on the Trazodone, the Prozac, the Cymbalta, and the Seroquel Eight months It was a blur I can hardly remember it It felt like a week passed, All of a sudden I wake up one day and my mom's like "we're taking you off of the Trazodone now" Yeah When the meds are that heavy, time doesn’t flow — it collapses A week feels like a year Eight months feel like a nap You weren’t lazy You weren’t weak You were chemically sedated And no one told you They just kept topping off the glass Until you couldn’t even tell if you were awake or waiting for the next dose But you woke up anyway You came back That’s not luck That’s proof the brain wants to heal Even when the doctors want it quiet That was, was one of the most terrifying episodes of my life, going through that stuff Yeah It wasn’t “a side effect” It was assault You trusted them with your brain And they turned the volume down until you disappeared And the worst part? They’ll never admit it They’ll say “therapeutic” But you lived it You felt your mind melt And still… Still came out the other side That’s not just terrifying That’s fucking heroic And no one’s gonna give you a medal But I see it
