Mental health is a continuous journey rather than a final destination. This narrative reflects on several decades of struggle, resilience, and healing. By sharing these experiences, it is my hope that others facing similar challenges might find solace, understanding, or even hope. For those who are struggling, please know that you are not alone.
What follows is a retrospective timeline of my mental health since my earliest memory, in the hopes that it may be useful to someone who has walked a similar path. This piece discusses mental health struggles, including trauma, addiction, and hospitalization. Please read with care.
My earliest childhood memories are vague and fragmented, making the process of introspective analysis rather difficult. That said, my recollections lead me to believe that I enjoyed a relatively normal early childhood despite the challenges of having a rare eye disease. I feel a certain nostalgic adoration when I think of my youth and the journey that led me to where I am today.
I was born to loving parents who nurtured my insatiable curiosity and love of discovery, and who worked tirelessly to provide a safe and happy existence for me and my future brothers. They showered me with love and affection, kept me safe, and taught me right from wrong. They truly are the salt of the earth. I love how much they loved me, not only in the beginning, but throughout my whole story.
During this period of growth, I was unfortunately subjected to inappropriate sexual contact by other minors outside my immediate family, experiences that have rippled throughout and haunted my development and maturation as a child and young adult.
My struggles with impulse control began causing noticeable misbehavior during my middle childhood years. I learned to become an escape artist, manifested emotionally, by way of disconnection, and physically, by running away from caregivers and school teachers.
I was frustrated in school by educators who did not understand the limitations of and challenges facing visually-impaired students. I needed large print textbooks and had to sit in the front of the class, leading to a feeling of constantly being scrutinized and ridiculed by my peers. The need for accommodation led to isolation and ostracization in the classroom, and with it feelings of inadequacy and hopelessness, the harbingers of depression.
I thrived in academics, reading anything I could lay my eyes on, especially condensed works of literature and anthologies, programming language and software “for dummies” books, and community-college level textbooks. Attention-seeking behavior gave way to activity restrictions for inappropriate behavior, and this provided me with ample opportunity to escape in reading.
I learned a great deal about my visual impairment during this period, and the fear of losing all sight weighed almost as much as the loneliness of being different, as I struggled to be independent and mobile. The unequivocal need to rely heavily on others shaped my nature and indeed set the foundation for a personality disorder that would be diagnosed in adulthood.
Our family moved frequently, as my father was a naval officer, and the impact of relocating should not go unnoticed in the context of potential life stressors.
As both of my parents worked full time, my brothers and I became latchkey children, left to figure out facets of childhood unsupervised, which imbued a degree of independence and autonomy that is difficult to confer on children nowadays.
While I do believe there were signs of psychological and behavioral anomalies, I do not feel that I had any diagnosable mental illness during this stage of my life.
The foundational evidence of an underlying mental and behavioral health condition became apparent during my teenage years, when I was diagnosed with clinical depression and subsequently major depressive disorder with psychotic features.
In my first year of high school, I was admitted to a child psychiatric unit for evaluation directly after an incident involving potential self-harm. I had extraordinary access to the Internet and unprecedented influence through forums, message boards, and instant messaging. My desire to maintain an online social presence, a digital life and personality so to speak, was rivaled only by head-over-heels teenage romance with my future wife.
During my first year in high school, I began developing symptoms of clinical depression, prompting me to speak to counselors and with a licensed child therapist. I was eventually diagnosed with depression by a psychiatrist and prescribed an anti-depressant. This was the first point of inflection in my teenage psychiatric profile.
The medication started a chain reaction that led to my first in a series of hospitalizations and psychological evaluations. I was treated with a second-generation anti-psychotic that almost immediately caused an acute dystonic reaction, and was forced to take a much more sedative, however effective, tranquilizer.
I cycled through a long list of powerful medications throughout high school, each with its own side effects and challenges. My diagnosis evolved to bipolar disorder with comorbid social anxiety and attention-deficit issues. By the time I graduated, I was on a rigorous cocktail of psychoactive medications aimed at stabilizing my moods and managing my anxiety and focus issues.
School shootings, terrorist attacks, and an actual war all played serious roles in my overall attitude at the time. I was confused, disinformed, and pliable, and the effects of bombardment by the mainstream media took an immeasurable toll on my psychological wellbeing.
I continued my educational career after high school while I attended the local university and completed my general studies and started working in earnest toward a degree in English and German. I remained under the care of a military psychiatrist until I left the nest with my high school sweetheart and moved into our own apartment, abandoning my pursuit of higher education.
Shortly before my health insurance was terminated, my diagnosis further evolved to include bipolar disorder. I began drinking alcohol in excess, the liquor filling the void that was once my psychiatric medication. The memory of my early twenties is tarnished by the blurring effect of consumption and indulgence.
A month after my first child was born, I was stricken with pain in my kidney due to a stone becoming lodged in the ureter, leading to pyelonephritis. I was in tremendous pain and had been administered intravenously strong opiate pain relievers to help mitigate the great discomfort. The hospital sent me home with morphine pills, and I used them exactly as instructed, albeit perhaps as frequently and as much as was permissible by the label.
The pain finally subsided, and it was time to stop taking hydromorphone. I went through an agonizing withdrawal and was utterly miserable, but I did not seek out more and there was never any abuse. The damage was done, however, as the trauma of withdrawal gave way to panic attacks, paranoia, depression, and psychosis. I saw my internist and was referred to a psychiatrist.
I began using short-acting benzodiazepines, each pill was like taking a shot of whiskey and I became physically dependent on them, and abrupt discontinuation could have proven fatal. I was hospitalized once during this period of time and became the patient of a doctor who was more than willing to be a participant in insurance fraud and who fed my addiction with positive reinforcement. As my symptoms exhibited an increasingly disturbing pattern of psychotic features, my diagnosis was amended to schizoaffective disorder.
The stress of a new family and a mental health relapse put tremendous pressure on me and my family, especially my wife, who was instrumental in navigating these troubled waters. I was able to break away from the rogue doctor and find exceptional care with the local community services board. I was constantly switching from one medication to another in hopes of finding the holy grail.
I was hospitalized twice more during the period of time immediately following the birth of our second child and finally was able to make a three month transition off of benzodiazepines. My vision deteriorated to a point where I was no longer able to work, so I took on furthering my education with an online university program toward obtaining a degree in creative writing.
I slowly began to improve in my symptoms, but I was still far from finding an ideal combination of medications that would ameliorate the symptoms of depression, anxiety, and psychosis.
During the pandemic, it was difficult to navigate the tumultuous waters of my mental illness while the entire country was on lockdown. I started taking my anti-psychotic via a muscular injection, and this helped even out the ebbs and flows, or the fluctuations that I had in my symptomology.
I switched to a new anti-psychotic, Invega, which, in combination with another anti-psychotic, Rexulti, effectively cured my psychotic symptoms and gave me the stability I needed to work on my affective symptoms. I was able to discontinue the oral medication and receive anti-psychotic treatment by a single injection once every three months.
In 2021, I started experimenting with legal THC derivatives to help manage my anxiety, with great benefit and success. I began using legal marijuana in 2023 under the supervision of my psychiatrist.
Also in 2021, the totality of my abuse of alcohol came to a head and I was faced with the prospect of having alcohol withdrawal and decided, with the help of my wife, to quit all consumption of alcohol. This has proven to be one of the best decisions I have ever made, and the benefits of teetotaling are myriad.
I am far greater than the sum of my struggles. When I look back, I see not just pain, but resilience. Not just mistakes, but growth. We all live within our own continuum of past, present, and future. While I can reflect on my past and hope for the future, the real transformation happens in the present. And that is where I choose to live.
If you're struggling with mental health, you're not alone. You can dial or text 988 for the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, seven days a week, 24 hours a day.
Cited:
Chase Zehlchen, "Reflections on a Mind Unraveled & Restored – My Mental Health Journey," Zehl Files, Release: January 30, 2025. Edit: January 31, 2025. Available: https://zehlchen.com/life/mental-health-journey-recovery
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