The Ballad of the Bender: My Experience Going Off My Meds

A story of losing friendships and gaining insight.

I talk periodically about the time in my life that I call “the bender.” This was a point in college where I decided that I didn’t care for how my psychiatric medications were making me feel and quit taking them cold turkey without telling anyone.

Before I start, a disclaimer: never ever do this. You can do incredible damage to your body this way, and you run the risk of seizures and worse. If you want to stop taking a medication because of how it makes you feel, talk to your prescriber first. They will guide you through the process.

I had a friend in college named Michael. That was his birth name, anyway — everyone knew him as Xast (pronounced “zast” — he used to say “you’re not fully clean unless you’re Xast-fully clean). For this article, I’ll be calling him Michael, though. He’d hate it, but he’s not around to stop me.

Michael was a charismatic sort. Everyone loved him, and he commanded a room like a general commands an army. People bent over backward to do him favors, and he rewarded their favors with his favor. His ability to manipulate people was legendary.

Of course, when I was getting to know him as an awkward, unworldly teenager, he seemed like a messiah. This was a cultivated image — he had long blonde hair and wore a lab coat that had been custom-painted with his logo on the back, a broken infinity symbol (“nothing is forever,” he would often say). He did his best to look the part as much as he played the part.

None of this is to say that he was necessarily a bad or nefarious person. His general rule was to ensure that everyone was having a good time. He taught me how to work with people, whether through basic niceties or outright manipulation, and he taught me a lot about myself.

Michael had attended the same school for messed-up kids that I had, so we had a point of connection immediately. He was bipolar and on the autism spectrum, and I would later find out that his charismatic persona was just that: a persona. He spent high school building a character in the way one does in Dungeons and Dragons, and when he was done, he simply stepped into it and inhabited it, playing his character like he was reading his skills and abilities from his character sheet.

He was very much into Aleister Crowley and the premise of Will as a force of the universe. So, when he decided to go off his meds and move to Texas to be with some old flames, I supported him. He was so worldly and knew what he was doing, after all, and his sheer force of will would help him survive and thrive.

Eventually, he convinced me to follow his example by going off my meds as well. It was not hard to convince me — my meds made me feel like I was struggling through mental mud, and stopping them would free my mind to move at the speed it was meant to. That’s how the reasoning went, anyway. So, in the late summer months of the late aughts, I stopped taking the meds that were keeping me stable.

At the time, I had been spending much of my free time with my best friend and his fiance. Not long after going off my meds, a friend of the fiance turned up on her doorstep, and it turned out to be a young woman I knew from my early college days, who I will call Kay. Kay was a redhead with a fiery personality to match and had recently come back from the west coast where she had spent the past few years as a homeless drug addict.

Naturally, I fell hard for her. We got together in fairly short order and began a relationship that was, at best, ill-advised. I didn’t care, though — without the meds inhibiting my brain, I was in a manic state, and everything felt like the best idea ever.

Over the next several months, my life fell apart, even as it felt like things were fantastic. My relationship with Kay was very hot very quickly, and I started staying late into the night at her apartment. We’d talk about various things in between makeout sessions, just spending time together. Sharing a bed with her felt nice, as I’d never really shared a bed with anyone before. I don’t think I ever stayed a full night at her place, opting to leave late at night, but it was still liberating.

Still, it burned out almost as quickly, and within a few months, she had dumped me and was back with one of her exes. Around this time, my best friend and his fiance, along with a few other friends, had an intervention with me and convinced me to go back on my meds. We were into late fall at this point, and the weather was starting to turn, along with my mood. The manic high I’d been riding for a few months was fading into a cold depression as winter approached.

Michael didn’t take well to this news. I’d been tracking my progress with him over the phone, and the revelation that I couldn’t manage without meds was a hard blow to him. As he was encouraging me to get back on the horse and try again, I realized that his influence was not a good one. As much as I hated the meds, I needed them to be stable. He did not approve.

After a few phone calls and one long-winded email exchange, we broke off our friendship. Ending my friendship with Michael meant ending my friendships with quite a few people, as he had a bit of a (literal) cult, which he called the Cult of Xastism and may have been a joke (or maybe not). Either way, his followers took it seriously, and burning that bridge meant burning many other bridges as well.

I didn’t particularly care, though. I was at a major low point, and I needed to get stable more than anything, so I went meekly to my doctor with my admission and plea to help me get stable again. He tut-tutted me but prescribed me some new meds that helped stabilize me enough to get through college. I took those meds for many, many years.

As I started getting back on my meds again, several things happened around the same time. My friendship with Michael and his extended friend group was well and truly done. This, ultimately, was probably for the best.

I also realized that I was incredibly unhappy with my college major. I had been studying chemistry, but I wasn’t very good at it and was woefully behind in my coursework. Having the clarity of not being on meds helped me realize that I didn’t want to be a chemist, I wanted to be a writer. So, with the help and tacit acceptance of my parents, I dropped two classes that I was doing poorly in and threw myself into passing Organic Chemistry II so I could keep my financial aid.

(I wound up with a C, enough to keep me going.)

My parents were unhappy with my decision to go into technical writing as a major. My father told me later that, upon hearing that his son wanted to become a writer, he had expected that they would have to refinish the basement so I could live there for much of my adult life. Of course, changing majors wound up being one of the best decisions I’ve ever made.

One of the interesting upshots of my fallout with Michael was strengthening my relationship with the woman who would become my wife. She had dated Michael in college, but they had a messy breakup, which caused me to feel like I had to take sides. Because I was becoming fast friends with Micahel and didn’t really know her very well at the time, I chose him.

Later, after several years of dodging her phone calls, I eventually was convinced to answer one, and we met for dinner shortly thereafter. Getting to know her better during that time made me realize that things were more complicated than I ever truly understood, and ending my relationship with Michael gave her and me some common ground. We became close friends during that time, and her support helped get me through. I think it ended pretty well.

As for Michael, well, it turns out that being off your meds when you’re bipolar isn’t always great. He spent the rest of his time in Texas, working odd jobs and living with his romantic partners at the time. In the few pictures I saw, he cut his signature long hair and lost a lot of weight, possibly due to drug use. Eventually, he had a psychotic break and died by suicide.

While I did a lot of stupid stuff on my bender, I don’t regret it. Without it, I don’t think I would be as successful and happy as I am today. Going off my meds drove me away from a person who was, ultimately, toxic to me, while driving me towards a career and a life partner.

There were repercussions, of course. The Cult of Xastism didn’t approve of anything that happened, and I was excommunicated (despite never actually being a member — I had at least enough sense to not swear membership to a literal cult, however much of a joke it may have been). I also probably did some damage to my body in the process.

As for school, my GPA took a hit, and I had to take an extra class the following semester to keep my financial aid. It was a lot of work, but it was mostly writing, and I discovered how much I really enjoyed it. Even though I had five papers due in the span of a week during finals, I powered through them and did fairly well.

All things considered, I think that the bender and subsequent breakup with Michael was one of the best things that ever happened to me. I learned a lot, figured out who my friends really were, found stability, and discovered a career. While I understand that I was incredibly lucky in this case, I am not one to turn down a fresh start.

This article is a response to the Write Here week four writing prompt “It’s Not Me, It’s You” on Creators Hub.

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