You know how I realized the psychiatric drug harm community is unlike any other?
We count our injuries in months…

Think about that. You never hear someone with cancer say, “I’ve had cancer for 39 months.” They’ll say three years, or since 2021. Time for them is measured in years. But in our world, time fractures. It shrinks down into months. Why? Because every month is survival. Left alone every minute. Every month feels like a sentence we didn’t deserve. Every month is its own death and somehow a resurrection.

When you live with psychiatric drug harm, a month isn’t just 30 days on a calendar. It’s 30 days of being left alone in your body. It’s your own private hell—counting the seconds, the minutes, the hours, like hash marks carved into a prison cell wall.

The only other place I’ve seen people measure their suffering in months? Jail.
Inmates.
People who have had their freedom ripped away and are counting down until something changes.

Except in our case, the bars aren’t metal. They’re our own skin. Our nervous system becomes the prison. The white walls aren’t external… they’re inside of us. They move with us. There’s no escape.

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The Prison of Your Own Body

We don’t just exist in our bodies after psychiatric drug harm- we are trapped in them. Our body is a house where all the wiring is fried. Every room flickers, sparks, and burns you when you touch the walls. Every step is dangerous. Every sound, every light, every bit of stimulation can electrocute you…

And what makes this twisted: you don’t get to move out of that house.
You crawl through it. Sometimes literally crawling on the floor, dragging your body from one room to the next, praying to just make it through the day.

It’s not just discomfort or illness– It’s confinement with slow suffocation. A punishment you never signed up for…

The Brutal Comparison

And here’s the part that shocks even me when I say it out loud: I would have taken jail time any fucking day over this.

You give me 30 years in prison, behind bars, cut off from the world? I’ll take it. I’ll take it over seven years of antidepressant injury and benzo injury. Because prison—at least prison—doesn’t hijack your nervous system. Prison doesn’t convince you your own skin is the enemy. Prison doesn’t turn your thoughts against you or burn your nerves from the inside out.

At least prison offers you the possibility of sleep without your brain feeling like it’s on fire. At least prison doesn’t take away every sense of safety inside your own body.

That’s what psychiatric drug injury does.

Why We Count in Months

This isn’t an illness you simply “have.” This isn’t a condition you “manage.”
It’s a confinement you endure. A prison sentence without walls, without trial, without justice.

Every month we survive is another tally mark scratched into our skin. Another unbearable scar on our nervous system. Another reminder that we’re still breathing inside a vessel that feels like it’s burning alive.

We count in months because months are the only language that comes close to describing this kind of suffering.

Surviving another month isn’t just surviving. It speaks to the soul one has, as most could never walk it.   

Maybe the rest of the world will never understand why we count in months. But for those of us living it—every month survived is a revolution.

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One Love, 

Malissa