Today’s #SameHere
Hero: Igor Komissarenko (Igor is the first Hero to share his story publicly, while still deeply struggling through a dark period in his mental health battle. He can use your encouragement – but what a selfless person to share, all in the interest of letting many out there know, they are not struggling alone.)
“I was born in the Ukraine & my family moved here & settled in Brooklyn in ‘91. Though there was a history of mental health complications w/ distant relatives, I didn’t feel like I was affected at all as a child or even through college. I attended Baruch CUNY, graduated w a bachelors degree & went off to Korea to teach. Life was going along just fine.
Upon my return from Korea, I began to learn more about my religious roots, & decided to go live in a Yeshiva in Israel for an undetermined amount of time. In total I would spend 7 months there. The first stint was at a Yeshiva I felt comfortable at. However I decided to switch & go to another Yeshiva where the culture & environment of the staff and customs didn’t agree with me. I started feeling isolated & alone & began having major panic & anxiety. It felt like my sense of self was changing for the worse. I went back to the first Yeshiva & didn’t feel much better, so I decided to go back home to Bklyn, hoping a familiar environment would bring me back to baseline.
I saw my first psychiatrist, who prescribed me an anti-psychotic, believing I may have some form of bipolar depression. I felt awful on that drug. I came off it & felt better for a day. But quickly my life continued to spiral down. For 4 years I couldn’t hold a job due to my anxieties. I saw multiple psychiatrists who prescribed all different types of meds, to no avail. I checked myself isn’t psych wards 3x & stayed a little more than a wk each time, & got no better.
Working w a new psychiatrist, I decided to try ECT shock therapy – bilateral (shock to both sides of the brain), for 5 treatments & eventually decided to stop as my condition only got worse w each new treatment. That was a little over a year ago, & since then, I’ve felt things like agoraphobia in not wanting to leave the house, depersonalization/not feeling myself, a complete numbness to my feelings, & most scary an ‘empty brain’ where I wake up w/o any original thoughts & it stays that way throughout the day, every day.
Due to that last feeling, I found & joined a fbook group called: ‘Loss of Thought Process.’ It’s been nice to find others arnd the world I can relate to, but we are all so scared that our brains are permanently damaged.
Yesterday I was google searching & came across Eric Kussin’s original post back in the end of May about his 2.5 year Mental Health battle. So many of his symptoms hit home – & he got better! So, I reached out to him directly yesterday, we spoke for 2 hours & now I set him up with our fbook group members & a large # of us from all around the world – Slovakia, Amsterdam, NZ, Australia are Skyping with him to learn how we can get better, tomorrow. We can’t wait to hear ways to treat these conditions outside of the drugs alone that have been thrown at all of us. We will record that session & share it on our page as well as this Crazy page so others can watch. #SameHere, I & my group members are deep in the weeds of this. Please keep us in your thoughts & we hope tomorrow is the first step in our real road to recovery. Know you’re not alone & if you feel even somewhat similar, we are with you.