PSA: Medication May Alter Your Thoughts
A lot of you are probably thinking, āduh, itās listed on the side effects.ā
But hereās the thing. You might be imagining those weird, medicine-induced thoughts as something you can recognize. That the moment you start wigging out youāll be like, āYup, thatās the medication!ā and youāll stop worrying about it.
Sorry, itās not that easy.
The truth is that those whacked out thoughts are going to look and sound exactly like your normal thoughts. Itās not the medicine talking in a cartoon villain voice. Itās you. Itās your own voice. And unless you know yourself well enough to see past the deception, youāre going to fall for it.
Iāve been taking strong antibiotics for the past five days. Theyāve really helped my throat! But on the second day or so, things started happening. I walked out of my apartment and was halfway down the street before I realized I hadnāt locked my door, or even taken my keys. I wondered why everyone around me was speaking Korean (Iām in Japan). I drifted all the way to the train station, half an hour from my campus, while everyone who could have helped me was out of town.
And then my brain started bullying me, telling me I was an attention seeker and a drama queen. Trying to get me to shut up about what was happening. Isolating me. Leading me away from help.
But because I know myself, and because this has happened to me before with other medication, I recognized immediately that I was in an altered state of mind. Even though the voice in my head sounded like me. Even though every destructive and horrible thing it said seemed agreeable, even truthful.
Iām harping on this because itās important, yāall. If youāre taking medications that may alter your thoughts, tell someone. Your parents, your friends, your teacher, your coworkers. Make sure someone is looking out for changed behavior in you.