Tell me about your path to alternative drug therapies.
I grew up as a competitive athlete. My parents were eager to get me into a sport and invested everything in this. I started training at five years old, was eventually training six days a week before and after school, and had multiple coaches. This was my life. And it is part of my cultural background—I am the first in my family to be born outside of Asia. Things like sports and music are pushed along with education to create a well-rounded individual.
When I was 13, I had a very bad back injury. I deal with chronic pain because the doctors didn’t do anything and my injury never healed correctly. I used to take ibuprofen painkillers so often I had stomach ulcers. I didn’t have a very stable childhood, moved around, and experienced violence at home, so having this injury that kept me from doing something so integral to my identity was like having an identity crisis along with a physical crisis at a very sensitive age.
That sparked a whole journey for my mental and physical health. The doctors kept maxing me out on high doses of anti-depressants, mood stabilizers and anti-anxiety medications that never seemed to work. I was constantly switching medications, dealing with side effects, and still didn’t feel like a lot of progress was being made. I’ve been hospitalized, in residential treatment, and had ECT (electroconvulsive therapy) which is done when there aren’t any more options. That’s where I was. I had run out of options.
The summer before sophomore year of college I relapsed, landed in the hospital, had ECT and was back on medications. I was dating my first significant other but had no interest in sex. Anti-depressants really screw with your libido! I’m not going to lie, that played a role. I was also fed up after going through the whole process again. I recognized all of this just wasn’t working for me and started to look at alternatives.
How did you decide what to do next? Did you have guidance?
In college there are plenty of drugs around and I didn’t really have guidance. I should have done more research and taken a smarter approach, but I did it in a very brash manner. At the time I was on a high dose of Zoloft and several other things which I quit cold-turkey, and that was not pleasant. I smoked weed to cope with the withdrawal.
I smoked marijuana socially in high school, but it wasn’t until college when I experimented with more drugs that I started to appreciate all of the different effects. There were profoundly positive effects I had never received from medication. Smoking marijuana became almost a daily thing as I realized how it could help with physical and mental symptoms.
A roommate of mine was into alternative drug therapies and introduced me to the world outside of conventional medicine, which validated the positive effects I had experienced. Another friend told me about their drug experiences and I dropped acid for the first time with them.
How did your doctor(s) respond to your experimentation?
I just stopped showing up to appointments with my psychiatrist and therapist. This wasn’t the best way to go about it. I never consulted either of them; I was just done.
I’ve had a series of bad psychiatrists who pumped me with medicine. Granted, I was a difficult patient: I spent two months in an intensive treatment center when the average patient stays a few days, was transferred to another hospital that didn’t know what to do with me, then to residential for a year, to day treatment, back to the hospital, an adult group home…I jumped from place to place and each had their own doctors looking at my medical records, seeing these labels and piling on more. It quickly evolved into a collage of all these different opinions and assessments and it was so muddled.
To further compound the problem, these doctors see you for such a short time that they are not getting the whole picture. They aren’t exploring your childhood or cultural background. Culture is a huge component of how I was raised, how I see the world and how it interacts with me. That is actually why I wanted to go into social work! I was frustrated there wasn’t more cultural humility and wanted to infuse that into the system.
How did your cultural background affect your experience?
My parents did not believe their child could have a mental illness. Mental health issues just mean you need to have better control of yourself. I was a very anxious child with outbursts and behaviors that I was punished for without any effort to understand why I was acting out.
I had my first suicidal thought when I was nine and my mom realized this was getting out of control, so she took me to a therapist. When the therapist said I had depression she said “No, you don’t know my child. We just need to fix our relationship,” and took me to one therapist after another with the same result. It was exhausting to keep recounting my problems to each new person.
Even after I ended up in the hospital my mom refused to accept what the doctors said and caused a lot of frustration for the doctors and staff. But some of them complained about my mom in front of me, which was highly inappropriate. Clearly whatever was going on with her behind the scenes was not good, but the fact that I knew about it was not good either.
How did your family respond?
I came clean to my mom and stepdad senior year. I told them about the drugs I had tried and my mom didn’t know what any of these drugs were, but was obviously very concerned about me and my health. My stepdad is white and grew up in America, so he was a bit more aware and, while he was concerned, he confessed that he had smoked pot a couple of times in his 20s. I didn’t want to worry my mom so I told her I wasn’t doing drugs anymore.
How did the transition from conventional to alternative therapies changed you or your life?
I feel like myself. On psychiatric medications I did not feel like me and it didn’t feel like the medications or the people prescribing them were treating me. I finally feel in control of my own body and treatment. I have enough experience now to know what works for me. That’s something I had to learn myself. There are great resources online to help with those things, like Erowid, but at the time I didn’t know about them.
There is a lot of body awareness in competitive athletics and I struggled with body dysmorphia. During my first acid trip I had this epiphany where my whole view of myself and the world changed. It was the first time I felt comfortable and proud of my body and recognized that it was sustaining me.
It’s like you’re experiencing the world from this brand-new joyful lens, but you also have the hand-eye coordination of a five-year-old. You get distracted, find wonder, and everything becomes beautiful and meaningful. Even now I see and appreciate the beauty in things. It didn’t cure me, but having this new way of thinking was pivotal.
All of this has made me more open minded. I’ve realized that you never know what a person has going on or has been through and that conventional medicine is so white-dominated. There are many different ways to treat yourself that are not talked about.
What are the challenges of your alternative drug therapy regimen? What works well for you?
Accessibility and reliability. Having access to drugs when I need them is a concern and I always worry if they are tainted. I am very scared of serotonin syndrome because I’ve had my serotonin levels messed with so much by other medications. It also costs a lot of money. Even medical marijuana is not covered by insurance, so I pay out of pocket. In Maryland you can’t buy in bulk, so you don’t get those deals and the amount they give you isn’t even enough.
I discovered this wonderful edible that is 50/50 CBD/THC, a combination that drastically numbs my back pain. CBD and THC by themselves help, but the combination is one of the only things that has relieved the pain. I usually smoke or take an edible, but smoking provides more immediate relief. In the evenings I take an edible so I can just melt. Sitting at the desk all day hurts my back so much I can’t get comfortable. I’m always in some twisted position or have to constantly adjust to relieve the pain. I’m not able bodied like I was before and have to depend on my partner for help.
I drop acid at least every three months. It’s like a mental refresh: my mind and body feel clear, like I am purified and re-energized. I am very lucky that I don’t have an addictive personality. I know friends who have experimented with drugs and have gotten dependent, but I never struggled with that.
Do you have support?
Recently I found a new therapist after being out of therapy for several years, not because I didn’t think I needed one, but for a time I was part of an organization that lacked mental health awareness. I had to keep everything under wraps and really leaned into my partner for mental health support.
After looking at my records, my therapist said these people had done me wrong and ordered a brand-new set of assessments so we could start from the beginning. This was a realization for me because, while I knew there were problems, I had still internalized what I had been told for so long. Now we’re talking about my childhood and I’m making all of these connections through my coursework, therapy, and my personal growth. The therapist is totally in support of using weed whenever I need to for my trauma.
My mom has gotten a lot more understanding about mental health. It’s so nice to finally be able to talk to her about it, but my support system is pretty small. It has been difficult to foster relationships with the pandemic, a recent move, and my history.
Why do you feel it is important to share your story?
If you interact with me in class, you would never have thought this was my journey. This is what worked for me and how I found success, but it’s not perfect and is not for everyone. I haven’t had the best journey or made the safest or best decisions. There are ups and downs, and in trying to figure out the perfect dosage and schedule there was a time when I was over-consuming and that wasn’t great.
It takes a lot of self-awareness and inner work to get to this point. I’m still working and have to make adjustments because my body is always changing.
We all have a story and have learned to cope in different ways. It could be any of us.