Wow, I just looked at the date to see how long it’s been since I last posted, and it just so happens to be my mom’s birthday. This was never a day of celebration; it was a day I dreaded. Warning: this article talks about suicide.

Does that mean I’m about to tell one of my sad stories? I’ll try not to, but I hate to skip on the important subject of mental illness. No one likes to talk about it, which is why it’s kept in the dark, has a bad reputation, and is considered taboo.

I grew up with a bipolar mom. I’m bipolar too, but it is different. For one thing, hers was severe. We both have/had bipolar 1. It’s hard to put bipolar 1 and 2 into strictly two camps because other things can be at play. Like, my mom also had borderline personality disorder, which complicated things. For another thing, Prozac (an SSRI) wasn’t invented until 1988. My mom started it in 1994. Before that, all we had was basically Lithium, Benzodiazepines, and eventually antipsychotics like Resperdal.

Until my mom got on Prozac, she threatened and/or attempted suicide very often. Her real attempts happened about once a year, but she threatened daily. As a smaller child, I was usually terrified of losing her. As I got into my teens, I resented her for holding it over my head all the time. I was no longer living at home by 1994, but that was her last attempt. It was on her birthday.

Her three favorite days to attempt suicide (when she made the true effort) were her birthday, my birthday, or Mother’s Day. Looking back, I can see why I was such an angry teenager. I also forgive myself for wishing she’d get it over with already. I suppose I was tired of the terror, the guilt trips, and the possibility of being crushed deep inside. I was good at masking.

In any case, in 1994, she took 2 full bottles of barbiturates (“downers”), and I had to call an ambulance. Just before she swallowed the pills, she left me a strange message on my answering machine (there was no such thing as voicemail back then). I knew what the message meant right away. I knew her. I lived a few miles from my parents, so I called 911 and headed over.

It was pretty bad, and the cops, as usual, showed up first, asking all kinds of questions to clarify whether or not it was a suicide attempt. All the while, I did whatever I could to hide the evidence. Luckily, I couldn’t find any note. The only real evidence was the phone message she made, which existed only on a microtape at my house.

EMTs came and tried to wake her, but could not. They took her to the hospital, and the cops followed. At the hospital, the head nurse was also trying to investigate the situation. She couldn’t get away with it; it was an obvious suicide attempt, and possibly a successful one.

They had to pump her stomach, of course. They used activated charcoal, which can be brutal on the body. Luckily, she survived, but the head psychiatrist at the hospital was ready to admit her to a ward. It was an ordeal to try to talk him out of it. When my mom woke up, she also begged to be discharged back home.

Finally, she had a choice: go on Prozac or get admitted to County. Of course, she chose the medicine. At that time, I was still in the cult of Scientology. They are vehemently against all psychiatry—even psychology. I, too, was against it. I’d been brainwashed for many years to think it was barbaric and evil. But her taking Prozac was the lesser of the two evils, and I had to support it.

I wasn’t too close to her at that age, but I saw both of my parents from time to time. One thing that was blatantly obvious: she never tried to kill herself again. She didn’t so much as mention it. Never. Not a peep.

She went back to work and even seemed nearly happy. I was happy for her, and I started to notice that the drugs were helping. This situation planted the first seed of doubt that Scientology wasn’t so correct about psychiatric drugs ruining people’s lives. It improved her life. However, it would take me another five years to leave the cult. I guess I needed more and more proof that Scientology was a bunch of bullshit, but that’s another story.

Deep down, I always knew I was a lot like my mother, mentally. But I did everything in my power to hide it—my depressive episodes, anyway. My manic ones manifested as bursts of overworking and laser-focused interest in various subjects, accompanied by paranoia. I have a schizo-effective “highlight” to my mental illness, which is a lot of “fun!” For me, it would take another eight years after leaving Scientology to finally seek help from a psychiatrist, whom I was still kinda convinced would ruin my life and spiritual eternity. I feared them like I can’t even explain.

After a month of starting Zoloft, I felt like a person. And not “again,” because I’d never felt like a person. I just felt crazy and ashamed. But that eventually went away, and I became quite the advocate for proper medication for mental illness.

I don’t feel like I told a sad, horrible story here. Since it has a happy ending, I hope I can get away with disclosing these things. I’m not ashamed of being mentally (or physically) ill. I’m not (too) ashamed of having been stuck in Scientology for decades. I escaped and became a better person for it. It was not easy. I lost every single friend—friends I made at 12 years old—never to speak to me again. I also knew what they all thought of me: an evil, degraded piece of shit. That was hard to swallow, but over the years, many of my friends eventually made it out, and I am close to them now (again).

And the more I educated myself about the real Hubbard, debunking all the tenets he taught, I’m better off for that too. Education has been a miracle in my life. I’m proud of myself and have come a long way. Yay for me.