The Psych Med Sanctuary
Emma's Story
in her own words
Where to begin?
As many people who have been through this know, no story is a quick telling, so I will try my best for this not to be a novel. However I also enjoy reading people’s stories and feel it’s important not to cull someones experience. I will certainly include the important bits.
So it’s 2021. We are in and out of lockdowns and I’d had covid when it first began. It did something to my sinus, there was a burning feeling across my head and for the months following I had vertigo and dizziness when I turned my head. This led to really loud tinnitus. I woke up with this the morning after my birthday in November 8th 2021. From that point I was became incredibly worried, stressed and very focused on trying to seek support for the tinnitus. It sounded like I had a whistle going off in my head as well as a wire circuit loudly buzzing with no moment of peace. It was intense and so I called around some ear nose and throat specialists, but as it was lockdown it was hard to get an appointment.
Then I thought about a private doctor my dad has used and always sworn by, who I had used once before. I thought ‘well, I could try him and maybe he can refer to my to an ENT that he trusts’. I get an appointment and the rest is history. He looks at my ears, no referral or suggestions there and then gives me Lorazepam saying that it is safe and that it will help me sleep and calm my tinnitus. If I don’t sleep he said everything will get worse, and I certainly did not want that. Naively I took it and did so for the next 6 months.
As the world was in lockdowns and things were far from normal the doctor said I should keep taking it until things get better in the world again. Within a month of taking this as prescribed once a day at 1mg a night for sleep, I started to decline and experience more anxiety. This started to become all day and then into the night, where I would struggle to sleep or I would wake up with a feeling of sheer terror at 6am, 5am then 4am.
This got worse and worse. I thought I was having some sort of breakdown, and looked for every therapist or treatment I could, cranial sacral, acupuncture, hypnosis, reiki, talking therapy and even equine therapy, to calm my system and relieve this building terror.
Nothing worked, I got worse and worse trembling all day, and started to look online, I found Angie Peacock and things started to click, the officially penny dropped. Of course no one around me believed me and it was like talking into an abyss of nothing trying to explain what had happened. Peoples faces change when you mention medication. ‘Don’t read Dr Google, don’t self Footer 1 diagnose your not a Dr.’ As I had been finding out very much the hard way, that the people who prescribe this don’t know anything about this, and flat out deny the possibility of prescribed harm or medication withdrawal.
Emma & Wicket before the pandemic
I stopped the Lorazepam after 6 months of use. The doctor said I could do this in 2 weeks, no mention of tapering, just cut in half then half again and you’re off.
At this point I had not found the tapering guidelines, and as people will relate I am sure, there is a lot of conflicting information out there. This led to being hit a week later will full benzodiazepine withdrawal. I experienced akathisia, pacing day and night, insane terror and fear over everything, zero ability to sleep and many other indescribable inhumane symptoms and sensations. I had friends and family become confused about what was happening to me. I had ambulances called around the house and paramedics be very judgemental over what medication I was taking, treating me like an idiot for taking it. ‘ You’ve got yourself into a pickle here haven’t you,’ one lady said. ME? As soon as I became erratic and in this withdrawal state I was seen as mentally unwell and almost like I was some sort of drug addict or liability. I had friends take me to narcotics anonymous in Notting Hill, thinking I was an addict, whilst I was in full blown benzo withdrawal, sitting there going through the ten steps thinking I don’t think I belong here. I think when you’re in this terrified state and no one knows what’s wrong with you you can start believing other peoples projections and judgements on you.
This state went on for 8 months and in this time I nearly lost my life. I was pulled through three psych wards. All of them battered me with high doses of antipsychotics, antidepressants and benzodiazepines. I lost the ability to stand straight, walk or at times even see. I was treated like I was vermin. How could I feel suicidal I have a lovely life? ‘What is wrong with you?’ That was the angle. Not, ‘I’m so sorry your struggling, what’s happening for you?’ I experienced a disturbing lesson on how many people around me were incapable of listening or simply jumping on the computer and doing a small bit of research. Instead I was shunned, locked up and abandoned. I became emaciated, pacing day and night, the polly drugging only made me worse, as it was firing up my nervous system, and adding fuel onto the fire of harm. I didn’t know this kind of suffering was even possible for a human being to feel or go through, with symptoms totally indescribable. At one point it felt like my bones were shattering into tiny pieces, and my insides were being ripped out of my body. It felt like my skull was being held in a vice, and I could hear the cracks as the vice pulled tighter. I lost the sense of gravity, and my body felt crushed by the weight of air. I would lie flat on the floor as if stuck to it, I lost the ability to use my limbs, I became incontinent. I was pacing so severely in a circle day and night, in moments I was running, as the need to pace took over, people day in day out kept saying ‘sit down for god sake.’
The reaction I got from others was an ugly truth that I was being shown every moment of every day. The doctors would come around and observe me, and ambulances would be called daily. This time was like nothing I could ever fully describe, other worldly. The list of medications I was given was endless, and still I don’t fully know all that was given to me. And this would be pages long if I went through every cross over, switch, dosage change or CT of medication in this journey.
TRIGGER WARNING
I tried to end my life many times; not because I wanted to, but because it truly felt like there was no other way out, no doctor helped me, no one believed me, the online withdrawal communities made me feel like I was a lost case. Being polydrugged and severely kindled, I had done everything ‘wrong’ in the books of prescribed harm. I had taken to chain smoking, even though I have never smoked, only in my teens/twenties would I have the occasional cigarette. I had lost all hope and each time I smoked I felt my system warp and the symptoms worsen, I was either pacing around a psych ward chain smoking or around my mum’s living room. I was either surrounded by patients who would try to attack me or friends and family would come to visit and witness this totally unbelievable state I was in. AStill to this day I know some friends and family don’t believe me, and I know they still think I needed the medication. Sometimes I think that’s easier than taking accountability for how those particular people treated me in that time. And for some really taking it in that medication can harm people seems to shatter something they are not willing to allow to be shattered.
I was technically in different stages of psychosis for 6 months, as the sleep deprivation caused more and more slipping of reality, the stress on my system and the eternal pummelling of more meds creating a total warping that got more extreme. It has since been diagnosed as a medication induced psychosis.
So how am I here? Well I had a miracle reinstatement of Lorazepam 8 months into all this, at the time I was on Mirtazapine and Quetiapine which were knocking me out for about 5 hours. Each night I took them I prayed I would improve or prayed they would kill me, these were force given on the psych wards. My dad had blocked me and ended up meeting a man called Hans on a sailing boat in the middle of the sea, who was tapering his medication and my dad asked him what he was doing. Finally the penny dropped as Hans explained that he had been harmed by these medications and that he has been tapering for years. When Hans heard I was in a psych ward he was surprised I was still alive. We started communicating and he said why don’t you try to reinstate a small dose of Lorazepam. This had not worked before, and when I think back it made me worse in the acute phase, however I do recall in the madness of it all, 6 months into the experience I was given Lorazepam on a psych ward one night and that evening I had a window of semi normality, as I chatted to fellow patients in there, who were all baffled to see me stop pacing and be able to have a conversation. A man who was having his own experience and had been labelled as a schizophrenic could see clearly what the problem was and said your dependent on that medication. But the doctors refused to listen every step of the way, it could never even be uttered through their lips that it could potentially be the medication. It felt like it was some sort of sin to ever utter it.
One morning at my mums, as I woke with torture seething through my veins, thought OK I either really try again to take my own life, or I try 0.5 Lorazepam, or I maybe take the whole lot and that’s how I will go. But I kept thinking of my dog Wicket. I didn’t want to leave him. I would walk around repeating his name over and over, praying to god. I have not been religious, I have had curiosity about christianity however I didn’t sign up. I have always been a seeker, experiencing different ways of life, learning and breaking ignorance and opening my mind to spirituality. I do believe that praying is sacred and special, so I would pray constantly as I paced. I stood with the bottle, wondering, in this awful predicament. I took 0.5 Lorazepam, I was too scared to do anything else, and within 30 minutes, I was standing still, my thoughts were my own it seemed, and I was hugging my dog who had come into my arms to sleep, which was unusual as he was otherwise terrified of me. He could tell when I wasn’t me, he would look at me terrified and distraught that I had slipped into pacing again each time. But when he nestled into me I thought I can feel love for him!? I stood up and I could stand still and walk, I went downstairs and said to my mum ‘I think I am back?’
From that moment there have been many twists and turns, gigantic obstacles and challenges to overcome to be where I am now.
I navigated how to survive, and taper off three medications, never knowing if I would suddenly slip into withdrawal again. I didn’t know this kind of bravery existed, this blind faith of taking another step forward. Finding the right psychiatrist to allow me to taper slow, to hear me, or try to, to keep a roof above my head, to try not to be taken advantage of, to accept that I lost friends, and to accept I saw parts of family and friends I can never unseen, to move forward simply for myself. And truly this platform I created has been part of my healing journey, to alchemise this experience feels like the only way I could have ever kept going. For the last 5 years I have been tapering, I have learnt how to survive this, from a very harmed place. I have changed my lifestyle, and I have done everything in my power to not let this experience be the end of me.
And as I proudly say I am off the Lorazepam after a water taper and that I am off the quetiapine which I dry cut and weighed starting at a whopping 400 mg and ending on 0mg. And now I am on my last 0.006grams of Mirtazapine which started at 30mg. I have learnt how to get out of a pollydrugged mess, that judging from the online forums meant I had no hope.
So I am here to spread hope, and as I changed my lifestyle, I also began studying in the more holistic, learning about humans and myself more, in a transpersonal counselling training. By hook or by crook with support from family and other sources I was somehow able to squeeze together finances for the training. (as let’s be real this journey strips you of everything ). I have trained on a level 3 and now a level 4 in counselling. I also have been healing my nervous system and have done this in a way that I could somehow manage, with symptoms coming in waves and at times feeling totally unable to go forward, but persisting with the mantra ‘it has gone before, it will go again,’ when symptoms got worse. My course was a psych spiritual, Jungian, talking about your dreams, active imagination, sand tray kind of training. I healed immensely on this course, it was not only me training in a skill, it was me really going within and doing some serious internal work. To really work through the trauma of this experience which I continue to work on.
To now reflect back on how I got here, what strategies, what helped, what did not and share that with others. I always knew I would become a healer of some sort, and this certainly has felt like a rather intense initiation into healing work. This area is neglected in such a dark and disturbing way, I am here to validate and support you, a friendly voice in the dark. Whilst also building awareness around this in anyway I can.
With love,
Emma
Emma, Wicket & Selkie in 2026
Where to begin? As many people who have been through this know, no story is a quick telling, so I will try my best for this not to be a novel.
However I also enjoy reading people’s stories and feel it’s important not to cull someone’s experience. I will certainly include the important bits.
So it’s 2021. We are in and out of lockdowns and I’d had covid when it first began. It did something to my sinus; there was a burning feeling across my head and for the months following I had vertigo and dizziness when I turned my head. This led to really loud tinnitus. I woke up with this the morning after my birthday in November 8th 2021. From that point I became incredibly worried, stressed and very focused on trying to seek support for the tinnitus. It sounded like I had a whistle going off in my head as well as a wire circuit loudly buzzing with no moment of peace. It was intense and so I called around some ear, nose and throat specialists, but as it was lockdown it was hard to get an appointment.
Then I remembered a private doctor my dad has used and always sworn by, who I had seen once before. I thought ‘well, I could try him and maybe he can refer me to an ENT that he trusts’. I get an appointment and the rest is history. He looks at my ears – no referral or suggestions there – and then gives me Lorazepam, saying that it is safe and that it will help me sleep and calm my tinnitus. If I don’t sleep, he said, everything will get worse, and I certainly did not want that. Naively I took it and did so for the next 6 months.
As the world was in lockdowns and things were far from normal the doctor said I should keep taking it until things get better in the world again. Within a month of taking this as prescribed once a day at 1mg a night for sleep, I started to decline and experience more anxiety. This started to become all day and then into the night, where I would struggle to sleep or I would wake up with a feeling of sheer terror at 4am, 5am, then 6am.
This got worse and worse. I thought I was having some sort of breakdown, and looked for every therapist or treatment I could. I tried cranial sacral, acupuncture, hypnosis, reiki, talking therapy and even equine therapy, to calm my system and relieve this building terror.
Nothing worked. I got worse and worse, trembling all day, and started to look online. I found Angie Peacock and things started to click. Of course no one around me believed me and it was like talking into an empty abyss trying to explain what had happened. People’s faces change when you mention medication. ‘Don’t read Dr Google, don’t self diagnose – you’re not a doctor.’ As I had been finding out the hard way, the people who prescribe this don’t know anything about this and flat out deny the possibility of prescribed harm or medication withdrawal.
Emma & Wicket before the pandemic
I stopped the Lorazepam after 6 months of use. The doctor said I could do this in 2 weeks, no mention of tapering, just cut in half then half again and you’re off.
At this point I had not found the tapering guidelines, and as people will relate I am sure, there is a lot of conflicting information out there. This led to being hit a week later will full benzodiazepine withdrawal. I experienced akathisia, pacing day and night, insane terror and fear over everything, zero ability to sleep and many other indescribable, inhumane symptoms and sensations. Friends and family became confused about what was happening to me. I had ambulances called around the house and paramedics be very judgemental over what medication I was taking, treating me like an idiot for taking it. ‘ You’ve got yourself into a pickle here, haven’t you,’ one lady said. Me? As soon as I became erratic in this withdrawal state I was seen as mentally unwell and was treated like I was some sort of drug addict or liability. I had friends take me to narcotics anonymous in Notting Hill, thinking I was an addict, whilst I was in full blown benzo withdrawal, sitting there going through the ten steps thinking I don’t belong here. When you’re in this terrified state and no one knows what’s wrong with you, you can start believing other people’s projections and judgements on you.
This state went on for 8 months and in this time I nearly lost my life. I was pulled through three psych wards. All of them battered me with high doses of antipsychotics, antidepressants and benzodiazepines. I lost the ability to stand straight, walk or at times even see. I was treated like I was vermin. How could I feel suicidal when I have a lovely life? ‘What is wrong with you?’ That was the angle. Not, ‘I’m so sorry your struggling, what’s happening for you?’ I experienced a disturbing lesson on how many people around me were incapable of listening or simply hopping on the computer and doing a small bit of research. Instead I was shunned, locked up and abandoned. I became emaciated, pacing day and night. The polydrugging only made me worse, as it was firing up my nervous system, adding fuel to the fire of harm. I didn’t know this kind of suffering was even possible for a human being to feel or go through, with symptoms totally indescribable. At one point it felt like my bones were shattering into tiny pieces, and my insides were being ripped out of my body. It felt like my skull was being held in a vice, and I could hear the cracks as the vice pulled tighter. I lost the sense of gravity, and my body felt crushed by the weight of air. I would lie flat on the floor as if stuck to it. I lost the ability to use my limbs. I became incontinent. I was pacing so severely in a circle day and night, in moments I was running, as the need to pace took over. People day in day out kept saying ‘sit down for god’s sake.’
The reaction I got from others was an ugly truth that I was being shown every moment of every day. The doctors would come around and observe me, and ambulances would be called daily. This time was like nothing I could ever fully describe, other worldly. The list of medications I was given was endless, and I still don’t fully know all that was given to me. The list would be pages long if I went through every crossover, switch, dosage change or CT of medication in this journey.
TRIGGER WARNING
I tried to end my life many times. Not because I wanted to, but because it truly felt like there was no other way out.
No doctor helped me, no one believed me. The online withdrawal communities made me feel like I was a lost case. Being polydrugged and severely kindled, I had done everything ‘wrong’ in the books of prescribed harm. I had taken to chain smoking, even though I have never smoked; only in my teens/twenties would I have the occasional cigarette. I had lost all hope and each time I smoked I felt my system warp and the symptoms worsen. I was either pacing around a psych ward chain smoking or around my mum’s living room. I was either surrounded by patients who would try to attack me, or friends and family that would come to visit and witness this totally unbelievable state I was in. Still to this day I know some friends and family don’t believe me, and I know they still think I needed the medication. Sometimes I think that’s easier than taking accountability for how those particular people treated me in that time. And for some, really taking it in that medication can harm people seems to shatter something they are not willing to allow to be shattered.
I was technically in different stages of psychosis for 6 months, as the sleep deprivation caused more and more slipping of reality. The stress on my system and the eternal pummelling of more meds created a total warping that got more extreme. It has since been diagnosed as a medication induced psychosis.
So how am I here? Well, I had a miracle reinstatement of Lorazepam 8 months into all this. At the time I was on Mirtazapine and Quetiapine which were knocking me out for about 5 hours. Each night I took them I prayed I would improve or that they would kill me. These were force given on the psych wards. My dad had blocked me and ended up meeting a man called Hans on a sailing boat in the middle of the sea, who was tapering his medication and my dad asked him what he was doing. Finally the penny dropped for him, as Hans explained that he had been harmed by these medications and that he had been tapering for years. When Hans heard I was in a psych ward he was surprised I was still alive. We started communicating and he said why don’t you try to reinstate a small dose of Lorazepam. This had not worked before, and when I think back it made me worse in the acute phase. However I did recall in the madness of it all, 6 months into the experience I was given Lorazepam on a psych ward one night and that evening I had a window of semi normality, as I chatted to fellow patients in there, who were all baffled to see me stop pacing and be able to have a conversation. A man who was having his own experience and had been labelled as a schizophrenic could see clearly what the problem was and said ‘you’re dependent on that medication’. But the doctors refused to listen every step of the way; in their minds, it could never be the medication. It felt like it was some sort of sin to even utter it.
One morning at my mum’s, as I woke with torture seething through my veins and thought ‘OK, either I try 0.5 Lorazepam, or I maybe take the whole lot and that’s how I will go’. But I kept thinking of my dog Wicket. I didn’t want to leave him. I would walk around repeating his name over and over, praying to god. I have never been religious; I have had curiosity about Christianity, however I didn’t sign up. I have always been a seeker, experiencing different ways of life, learning and breaking ignorance and opening my mind to spirituality. I do believe that praying is sacred and special, so I would pray constantly as I paced. I stood with the bottle, wondering, in this awful predicament. I took 0.5 Lorazepam as I was too scared to do anything else. Within 30 minutes, I was standing still, my thoughts were my own it seemed, and I was hugging my dog who had come into my arms to sleep, which was unusual as he was otherwise terrified of me. He could tell when I wasn’t myself. He would look at me terrified and distraught that I had slipped into pacing again each time. But when he nestled into me I thought ‘I can feel love for him!?’ I stood up and I could stand still and walk. I went downstairs and said to my mum ‘I think I am back?’
From that moment there have been many twists and turns, gigantic obstacles and challenges to overcome to be where I am now.
I navigated how to survive and taper off three medications, never knowing if I would suddenly slip into withdrawal again. I didn’t know this kind of bravery existed, this blind faith of taking another step forward. Finding the right psychiatrist to allow me to taper slowly, to hear me, or try to, to keep a roof above my head, to try not to be taken advantage of, to accept that I lost friends, and to accept I saw ugly parts of family and friends I can never unsee, to move forward simply for myself. And truly this platform I have created has been part of my healing journey. To alchemise this experience feels like the only way I could have ever kept going. For the last 5 years I have been tapering. I have learnt how to survive this, from a very harmed place. I have changed my lifestyle and I have done everything in my power to not let this experience be the end of me.
I can proudly say that I am off the Lorazepam after a water taper and that I am also off Quetiapine, which I dry cut and weighed starting at a whopping 400 mg and ending on 0mg. Now I am on my last 0.006grams of Mirtazapine, which started at 30mg. I have learned how to get out of a polydrugged mess, that judging from the online forums meant I had no hope.
So I am here to spread hope. As I changed my lifestyle, I also began studying, learning about humans and myself more, in a holistic transpersonal counselling training. By hook or by crook, with support from family and other source,s I was somehow able to squeeze together finances for the training. Let’s be real, this journey strips you of everything. I have trained on a level 3 and now a level 4 counselling course. I have also been healing my nervous system and have done this in a way that I could somehow manage, with symptoms coming in waves. At times I have felt totally unable to go forward, but when symptoms have got worse I’ve persisted with the mantra ‘it has gone before, it will go again.’ My course was a psych spiritual one, a Jungian, talking about your dreams, active imagination, sand tray kind of training. I healed immensely on this course; it was not only me training in a skill, it was me really going deeo within and doing some serious internal work. It’s helped me to really work through the trauma of this experience, which I continue to work on.
I reflect back on how I got here; what strategies worked, what helped, what did no, and I want to share all I’ve learned with others. I always knew I would become a healer of some sort, and this certainly has felt like a rather intense initiation into healing work. This area is neglected in such a dark and disturbing way. I am here to validate and support you, a friendly voice in the dark, whilst also building awareness around this in any way I can.
With love,
Emma
x
Emma, Wicket & Selkie in 2026
watch Emma discuss her journey
The Psych Med Sanctuary Podcast
a podcast for people harmed by or in withdrawal from psychiatric medication
