hsphaven

This isn’t going to be a long post as it’s 1:10 AM and I need to try and sleep. The past few nights I’ve been sitting up all night shopping online. My shopping addiction has reached an all time low. Only people who have suffered addiction would understand how crazy and out of control you feel. It’s reached a point where what was initially something that made me happy is now destroying my health, destroying my bank account and destroying my life. My eyes were blood shot. I fell asleep around 10 AM today and when I woke up at 3 PM there are no words for how dreadful I felt physically and mentally. On top of all my other issues such as my tremor I was breathless, nauseous, in pain, my eyes were burning and my nerves were buzzing. I knew I had to do everything in my power to turn this around. I just feel so hopeless about all the damage the mental health system and psychiatric drugs have done to me that I just let myself go. It’s now been half a year since my overdose and I’m still suffering. I can’t lie on my right side as my pulse pounds like a ticking clock in my ear. I feel a great deal of sadness about what I did to my body that night. If I could take it all back I would. I really beat myself up over it. But I try to tell myself that it wasn’t my fault. That I can’t help this. That I’m unwell, and the mental health system let me down. The overdose may have been prevented if I had of been admitted to hospital when I presented to the emergency department earlier that week. But unfortunately I have a diagnosis in my file that I wish I’d never received. Once you are diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD), you are discriminated against by hospitals and mental health professionals. People don’t want to work with you or give you an admission, even when we have many other co-morbid physical and mental health issues. If you do get an admission they won’t let you stay more than 48 hours. You receive substandard care. This is something that’s been documented in research literature. One study by Gemillion (2003) looked at those with eating disorders.  After being marginally, physically stabilized, patients who also had a diagnosis of BPD were removed from the ward in favor of caring for other patients who were seen to be truly sick rather than manipulative. These patients with BPD met all of the same markers for anorexia as other patients, but their anorexia was labeled as a form of acting out for attention, rather than a form of sickness, as it was for other patients. Despite identical physical markers, patients labeled with BPD were then denied care because they weren’t actually sick, even though the diagnosis of anorexia was otherwise made based on physical markers. Patients with BPD must meet standards of illness above other patients. Continue reading “Shopping addiction: rock bottom” →