I have severe anxiety about my medications. It borders on OCD-style anxiety. Every single month I’m convinced something will go wrong with my prescription, and that this will lead to catastrophic consequences. Consequences I still feel superstitious about even naming, as if saying them out loud might make them real.

And to be fair to my brain, things do often go wrong. Despite taking the same medication every month for over a decade, there is frequently a problem: a communication error between the pharmacy and my GP surgery, a repeat prescription not authorised because I “need a medication review” even though I just had one, phones not being answered, the pharmacy having to loan me medication to cover the gap. Every time it happens, I lose my last shred of sanity over it – because it feels like proof that my anxiety was right all along.

Over time this has turned into something almost paranoid. Part of me feels like these disruptions are tests. That medication reviews exist not to help me, but to check I’m actually taking my medication. As if they’re waiting to catch me out. The ridiculous part is: I take my medication religiously. I have no reason to feel guilty. And yet the feeling persists.

No coping strategy has ever touched this anxiety. I believe it completely. The only relief I get is in the week immediately after I’ve collected my prescription – and then I slide straight into anticipatory anxiety about the next one. Counting tablets. Checking calendars. Re-counting tablets. Checking calendars again. Rinse and repeat.

Until recently.

Because my medication was increased, and something strange happened. My brain simply… forgot to be anxious about it.

The Night We Meds

It was bedtime. I was in bed, about to take my meds, rustling through my bedroom drawer – a disaster zone of empty medication packets and biscuit wrappers, because quetiapine makes me inexplicably hungry immediately after taking it.

At the back of the drawer, I found one stray 300mg tablet in a packet I thought was empty. I took it alongside the new 100mg tablet my psychiatrist had authorised so I could increase my dose immediately, without waiting a month for the prescription change.

I didn’t think anything of it. I assumed the problem was simply that my drawers were a mess. The possibility that I’d actually run out of medication didn’t even cross my mind. I told myself I’d tidy the drawers tomorrow and find the rest. I hadn’t checked a calendar. In my head it was still about the 15th of January – because my best friend’s anniversary felt like only two days ago.

After a rubbish sleep – despite increasing my sedating medication – I woke up groggy. It was already late. I drank coffee and started cleaning the drawers.

Only there were no meds. Just empty packets and a shrine to Biscoff biscuits. I checked the date on the last box. 18th December.

But it’s the 15th… isn’t it?

I checked my phone. 21st January.

OH NO.

My anxiety snapped back instantly. I ran into the living room and announced to my son:

“I have to go to town RIGHT NOW. I DON’T HAVE MEDS.”

He didn’t look shocked. Or surprised. Honestly, this is very on-brand for my particular flavour of chaos.

I asked if he wanted to come with me – hoping he’d say yes, but giving him the option not to. He said he wanted to. So we got ready fast, because it was already late, and I didn’t want to end up in the situation I always fear: the pharmacy closing and being told to come back tomorrow when I’ve completely run out.

Anxiety sharp and shaky, I somehow got us out the door. I asked my son whether I’d checked the front door lock the same number of times I’d actually checked it. Then we marched into town at speed, Cyberpunk boss music blasting in my noise-cancelling headphones, my feet moving to the beat like I was about to fight a final-level enemy.

Until finally, we reached Boots.

WAIT, WHAT?

Queues in Boots give you a lot of time to think. Unlike Lidl, speed is not a concept that exists in a pharmacy. They still have those printers that are so loud and so slow that watching a prescription print feels like witnessing a small historical event.

So I thought. And suddenly my brain went:

WAIT. How did I forget? How did I not know what the date was, when I usually obsessively check it in the weeks leading up to my prescription? How was I not anxious until I had actually run out?

WAIT, WHAT? Is the increase working?

You mean to tell me all those coping mechanisms I tried for years… and all I needed was a medication increase?

OH NO.

I forgot what this feels like. I forgot that I am forgetful when I’m not anxious. I forgot to be anxious. And then I got anxious about forgetting to be anxious.

My thoughts felt too big for the Boots queue. I felt like I should be sitting by a rainy window instead, staring dramatically into the middle distance. But eventually, I was interrupted from my Deep Thoughts by the Pharmacy lady saying it was my turn.

There was immediately a problem. Staff huddled. Whispered. Looked at screens. Looked at each other. Looked back at screens. I leaned toward my son and whispered:

“Oh no. They have not done it.”

But the whispering ended. A bag was handed over. Medications were inside. Crisis averted. I said to my son:

“Let’s get the F out of here.”

And we began to leave the pharmacy… only for me to remember I needed hair care, so we headed straight to the shampoo aisle.

Quetiapine has done a number on my scalp. And in a moment of questionable judgement, I recently dyed my hair while my scalp was already upset. It is now a burning, dry, sore disaster, and my hair pulling on it feels personally offensive.

Luckily, the internet had been serving me very precise targeted adverts for Head & Shoulders DermaCare, starring Claudia Winkleman and her famously shiny fringe. I chose to believe she was not exaggerating scalp benefits for sweet Procter & Gamble corporate money. There was only one way to find out.

So shampoo. Conditioner. E45 scalp treatment.

Finally, we were free of Boots.

I should have checked my medication before leaving.
But I just wanted to escape.
And once again, I forgot to be obsessive in my checking.

The Pyjamas of Healing

We decided to go to Primark, because clearly one sensory-overload environment wasn’t enough. We also needed the screaming neon disaster that is Primark.

I needed another pair of pyjamas. I’m slowly adding more clothes that fit me in recovery, which is complicated by two things: money being tighter now that I’m actually eating enough food, and quetiapine making my body insist on lying horizontally at every available opportunity.

I found Miffy pyjamas.

Lately I’ve really fallen in love with Miffy. The day before my best friend’s anniversary, my son bought me a tiny Miffy keyring along with my favourite protein bars to cheer me up. He also bought me a little Miffy plush for Christmas – and I bought him one too. Now every time I see Miffy, I’m reminded of how sweet he is. So of course I needed the pyjamas.

They were incredibly soft. And after a day of life-changing realisations, impulsive pharmacy missions, and nervous system whiplash, I felt like I needed to lean fully into softness. I was done in. Exhausted. Wiped out. The sedative hangover is still pretty heavy. Another excellent reason to invest in clothing that supports my new lifestyle of frequently being horizontal.

Somehow, we still made it to Lidl to pick up dinner. I chose a Thai Green Chicken Curry from their high-protein range – a dupe for the £7 Marks & Spencer version, except this one was £2.50. I did, naturally, have a rant in the middle of M&S at some point in the day about the audacity of charging £7 for a ready meal. It made me want to go full Johnny Silverhand and storm corporate HQ.

“I’ve seen them strip farmers of land,” I muttered internally, “and charge £7 for a ready meal, V.”

Pyjamas. Cheap curry. Chocolate in my backpack. We headed home.

Won’t the Real Slim Shady Please Stand Up

At home, my son and I chilled out and talked about life, the universe, and everything. He said “Omg that’s so funny” to me about four times in a row, and I thought: Oh. I guess I’m funny again.

I’d found a ridiculous coat in The Long Dark, so I said:

“Look at this coat. It looks like a Primark coat.”

He replied,
“Oh, got that for a tenner did you?”

“Absolutely not,” I said.
“It’s worn and second-hand. Astrid does not agree with fast fashion, even when she’s freezing to death.”

“That’s so funny,” he said, laughing.

And suddenly I remembered who I am. Or more accurately – I remembered that I exist.

It’s strange how, when you’ve been mentally unwell for a long time, you start to believe that version of you is the real you. You forget there ever was another. You forget being quick-witted. Forget being playful. Forget being forgetful in a normal way, not an anxious way. You forget the self that looks outward instead of being trapped inside a loop.

The only thing I recognised from before was that my thoughts had stopped being external. I’ve always found comfort in being an insignificant atom in a vast universe – being small in systems much bigger than my own. I love physics. I love games. I love connecting those to meaning. I love making my son laugh. I love talking about everything outside of myself.

There were echoes of this person on my blog – like I was trying to hold onto someone who had left the chat. But now I’m here. I’m present. Rhio is online.

Present enough to think about the universe again. Present enough to build meaning in a survival game. Present enough to make Astrid collect plushies in a permadeath run because merely surviving isn’t living. Because that’s what I’ve been doing for years – surviving – while remembering a self I could no longer reach.

And now I can feel her again.

Food tastes different. My pyjamas feel softer. My interests feel alive instead of forced. I laugh at my own deadpan jokes again. I enjoy The Long Dark instead of needing louder, faster stimulation to outrun intrusive thoughts. Coping mechanisms work because there is now a nervous system capable of receiving them. A bath feels grounding instead of futile. Clean pyjamas feel comforting instead of performative.

Sometimes, no amount of candles or self-care can compete with what’s actually needed:
a sedative shovel of chemicals quieting a brain that has been attacking itself for years – like an immune system misfiring in an autoimmune disorder.

None of the other Slim Shadys were me.

The intrusive-thought me.
The constant-anxiety me.
The depressed me.
The eating-disorder me.
The survival mode never feels safe me.

But whenever I called for the real me, they all kept standing up. So no wonder I couldn’t find myself after I lost my best friend. The wrong ones kept answering the call. But right now? The real Slim Shady is standing up.

I Am Not Fixed

I am still in the quetiapine dose-increase adjustment phase.
Things are still unstable.

I still get hit with a shovel of sedation so hard I struggle to do much.
I still feel down sometimes and hope the me of yesterday is coming back.
My emotions are less muted now that I’m no longer living in constant survival mode – which means I feel things deeply again. Love for my son. Grief for my best friend. Sometimes so intensely that I cry because it feels like too much, and I can’t remember how I used to carry it and still do things everyday.

I still have bipolar disorder. I still have anxiety.
I am still not what people would call “normal”, and I never will be.
Medication turns down the dial. It doesn’t silence the system.

My scalp burns from dryness.
My hunger has increased and complicates my ED recovery.
My routine – the one that kept me stable – is currently impossible while my body adjusts to this dose.

None of that is fixed. But what I feel right now, in this moment? Is worth every bit of the chaos of this adjustment.

The actual real slim shady –