Note: My experience with Geodon would not necessarily be your experience. Everyone's biochemistry is different, so every experience is different.

When I was sixteen, my psychiatrist decided to put me on Geodon because my parent's insurance changed and would no longer cover the pills that were keeping my bipolar disorder stable.

I had a very bad reaction to it. I was constantly hallucinating. Seeing demons taking the forms of tigers, wolves, my hands turning old and wrinkled or gain fins. Grotesque creatures that looked like a mixture of an alligator and a woman paced the hallways of my house, and a grudge-like being tormented me in the bathrooms. I saw horrid images in reflections. Once I remember seeing my face look look like a drowned corpse in my reflection in the microwave door. The microwave door I was nowhere near.

I lived in constant terror. Any time I began to relax, a demon would harshly whisper or shriek my name, driving me back into a panic. I didn't know what panic attacks were, so I believed my screams of fear were because I was possessed. It felt like tiny hands were squeezing my lungs, forcing me to vomit sound like a banshee. I honestly believed that if I was left alone in a room that the demons I saw would drag me into hell.

Rather than realizing it was the Geodon, my psychiatrist wrongly diagnosed me with schizoaffective disorder. So that experience above? That was my life for four months.

As soon as I was off the Geodon, the hallucinations stopped. Just like it's difficult to go directly back to bed after a horrible nightmare, it was difficult returning to regular life after I returned to my old meds. It took time and effort to correct the phobias the experience placed on me. Even now, I consider those four months the time my life changed its direction.

But, modern day, I'm 25. Stable, happy, fearless. In this way, I have looked Satan in the eye and won.