Your Personal Medicine

I would like to say that right now I am recovered. However, with mental illness (MI), recovery as an absolute may not be possible. Some of us are lucky and will have just one illness episode and never need worry about relapse. For many of us, we are ill for our lifetime. That said, this acknowledgment need not doom us to a dismal future. Recovery is a process; a journey that can provide hope.

It was only recently that I began to have hope for my future. I have been in the mental health system for almost half my life, and likely should have been for longer. I was undiagnosed for many years, and once I was diagnosed, I only went through the motions when it came to my health. I have tried over thirty medications. I have been in therapy for years. I have changed living environments. And with all that making little difference, I had lost all hope. Throughout that time, I did little actual work. It wasn’t really a surprise that my MI had not improved; life stressors fed into it, and vice versa.

Most of us don’t realize that being healthy means more than taking medication and going to therapy. I didn’t know. I thought I was trying to get better, but was just running in circles. I also had many misconceptions on my MI which didn’t help. The big turning point for me was admitting at a core level that I have a MI and I need help. Help included working towards health with the medication and therapy, and being a more active participant in therapy.

I began working with my professionals and attending groups. I drilled it into my head that unless I tried, I wasn’t going to get anywhere. I began using my support network as I should. The main changes came about with the prodding of a good friend, and a series of group meetings discussing recovery. None of these things helped immediately though; I was just beginning my own recovery journey. The first thing I learned about the recovery journey is that everyone travels it, and we are each at a unique place within it. It has no set timeline and no set path. We can all have hope. The recovery group I participated in focused partially on standard healthcare, and how we can use it fully to our advantage but the most important topic was that of personal medicine.

Personal medicine includes all the healthy things we do to take care of ourselves, more specifically the things outside of medication and therapy. It is individual and we each have our own activities that help our physical and mental health. My two previous articles included aspects of my personal medicine: pets and garage saling. Some other things I do are reading, walking, relaxation, talking with family, sitting in my back yard, ensuring I sleep well, doing chores and many other things.  Without my personal medicine, I find that medication and therapy are actually less effective. To be healthy, we need to have personal medicine, regardless of what else contributes to our health.