let's talk about stigma

"I am confused... So I don't take any medication, and in return I have evenings where I get moody and don't want to talk to people, get occasionally irrationally frustrated but cope, and find it harder to concentrate than most....
You have been heavily medicated, have regular panic attacks, sleeplessness, lethargy, low amounts of energy, and now are suffering similar withdrawal symptoms as a heroin addict... What am I missing out on?"

This is the conversation I was having at 1am one night this week. And they're not wrong. This past week has been one of the most physically and mentally awful experiences I have ever been through in my life and it's had me doing a lot of thinking about the way mental health professionals deal with their patients and how we as a society are so desperate for an easy fix that we will put ourselves through this awful process over and over again. How often does a psychiatrist just plug your data into the computer and tell you what it spits back out instead of really listening to what you're telling them? How many people would cope better from a good therapist instead of having heavy prescriptions that make you fat and miserable tossed at them with a reminder to come refill out your GIFTs every six months? And how many people have gone through these horrible night sweats, vomiting, numbness, tingling, heart racing awfulness over and over again just looking for the thing that will make them feel the least awful? And why aren't we talking about this more?
As I logged awful update after awful update, the one thing that became clear to me is that I am very much not alone in this experience but the stigma around talking about it in public is still very very real. Why are we so ashamed by our own brain chemistry? Why do we automatically assume it makes us weaker? There is nothing wrong with saying, "Hey, I'm a little short of spoons today, can I get some encouragement?" or delaying plans because you just can't handle doing anything else in public for the day or admitting that the horrible things you've experienced and seen have caused you mental trauma. By not talking about it, we are allowing it to become shameful and we need to share our stories if we can ever start to move forward.