By the time Topamax was added to my regimen in 2014, it no longer surprised me that another medication was prescribed from yet a different class of drugs known as anticonvulsants. During a one-year period, I was prescribed five add-on medications to try, with Topamax being the fifth.

Despite being told these medication changes were for the best, I rarely experienced anything positive from the drugs prescribed to me. My mental and physical health continued to decline, and the constant cycling of medications only added to the confusion and instability I was already living with.

It was at this time I started to recognize my entire treatment as a kind of drug roulette—one medication removed, another immediately added, often from an entirely new class. 

My memory of taking Topamax is essentially gone. According to my mom’s journal—one of the only reliable records from that time—I became sick almost immediately and was taken off the medication shortly after starting it.

Even though I was extremely unwell, my healthcare provider didn’t pause to evaluate what was truly happening with my health. Instead, she increased the dosage of my existing medications of Lithium and Abilify which she now referred to as my “base” medications. Around this same time, she also prescribed Xanax, a controlled substance, as a way to help me “get through difficult times.”

By early January 2015, exhausted and still searching for real relief, I made the decision once again to change healthcare providers. I hoped that somewhere, with someone new, I might finally find a path toward wellness.