'If carrots got you drunk, rabbits would be messed-up.'
- Mitch Hedberg
I used to have rabbits when I was young, two black and white ones called Thumper and Happy. Mum and I were living in the flat so we kept them in my Nana and Grandad's back garden round the corner and I'd visit often. Then they had babies and for some reason, killed them. They started fighting with one another so we had to give them away. I don't know if this has anything to do with what happens now but this is my point, when things happen later in life, things you can't understand, it makes you examine your past - your childhood, with a fine-tooth comb. You search and search for the meaning to your strange experiences and if something sort of fits the bill then you take it as the answer and drop the questioning. Stop the wondering.
I first saw rabbits as an hallucination about a year or so ago. I was on the bus coming back from the city centre near where I'm from and I started having a panic attack, I had lots of paranoid thoughts and saw a dead rabbit in the middle of the bus aisle. Not just dead though, squashed as though it were on the side of the road and had been hit at 50mph. It was horrible and I ran off the bus (not even at my stop) crying. I was sectioned by the police and taken to the local medical hospital for a psych assessment. I remember sitting with a female officer and her asking what I was looking at as I stared at this dead rabbit now under the chair beside her. I told her and she lifted the chair up and kicked at the empty (to her) spot until I said it'd gone. I was sectioned and put back on my anti-psychotic, after a few days the rabbits were gone and I was let home.
Since then, I started seeing the rabbits only when I was really poorly, I was so scared by them that just seeing them made me want to overdose to escape. I told myself that whenever they came it was a sign something bad was going to happen. Without medication, I see them daily and the more there is the higher the chance I'll be distressed. There'd be three for a few days and I'd get used to them then another would come along and I'd be frightened. But now, with the anti-psychotic, I don't see them as often.
They've been a bit worse more recently because of the change of meds and it takes weeks for my new tablet to build up in my system. Today, there were three this morning and over the course of the day more and more came along until, by tea time, there were seven. I tried to explain to staff that they weren't upsetting me but that I felt anxious at what bad thing might happen now and I was frustrated that they kept growing in numbers. We decided I needed my PRN (when required) anti-psychotic. It helped. The thing is, it doesn't matter how well I manage to describe them or how they're making me feel, seeing something that isn't really there is the most lonely feeling and experience.
They've been a bit worse more recently because of the change of meds and it takes weeks for my new tablet to build up in my system. Today, there were three this morning and over the course of the day more and more came along until, by tea time, there were seven. I tried to explain to staff that they weren't upsetting me but that I felt anxious at what bad thing might happen now and I was frustrated that they kept growing in numbers. We decided I needed my PRN (when required) anti-psychotic. It helped. The thing is, it doesn't matter how well I manage to describe them or how they're making me feel, seeing something that isn't really there is the most lonely feeling and experience.
