My Story — Part 2: Gaslighting, 'Professionals', and Trying to Survive

I spent six days at my parents' house unable to sleep, hallucinating, with electricity running through my body — and nobody knew what to do with me. A senior psychiatrist in Israel told my mum I could "just stop" the clonazepam. She recommended a drug that turned out to not even exist in Australia. When my sister finally dragged me to Royal Brisbane Hospital, a young doctor diagnosed me with "hypnic jerks," printed me a Wikipedia-grade handout, and tried to send me home. I refused to leave until someone actually helped. What followed was weeks of agoraphobia, jelly legs, crying in shopping centre car parks, support workers who ghosted me, and a mental health system that couldn't even answer the phone before 8:47am. But I survived it. And slowly — painfully slowly — I started to come back.

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