u/TiktokTradax

The show is actually about a comic book stuart has wrote and then the last episode will be him writing it with the gang etc or as many as possible. Also a massive hint which could be hinting at us is that the series poster is a Comic Book?
Best one i’ve came up with so far and i back it tbh

Stuart fails to save the universe is actually a comic book he’s wrote. Then the last episode might be a scene of him writing it with the gang or something? Just a theory!!

Fluoextine 20mg for 3 weeks it started whilst on them had to stop cus of how bad it got. 16th day off it and still struggling so badly. I don’t know what’s right anymore. Don’t know if i’m in denial or what. I know i’m straight hence me reaching out and looking for answers and knowing me feeling like this is wrong. I just need help. I want to be me again.

Hey i’m a 18 year old who has been going through it the last few weeks. Few weeks back i started 20mg of a tablet called fluoextine for 3 week. In those few weeks ive gained awful intrusive thoughts about being gay, checking everything, checking attraction and who i’m attracted to and i just don’t know what to do now, 15 days off it and i still feel like shit. I’ve always thought i was straight always. The anxiety has like woken me up in side or something and is making me question everything. Intrusive thoughts are awful, brain fog just as bad. I’ve always had crushes on women, fell in love with 2 girls in my life so far never a man and never thought about a man in that way. As a kid i learnt to quickly growing up which made me a bit curious and doing that caused me to do some things i wasn’t proud of with other boys. I was only young, curious and didn’t have a clue what it meant, only about 7-8. Because of it my mind is like making me thing back and question whether it was a sign? I hate this though, i know it’s not me and i can’t deal with it any longer it’s so painful. Another thing that’s been bugging me is that i’ve never been THAT attracted to vagina, don’t think i’d ever lick one and the time i have touched one it stunk so put me off major, I’d still fuck one but never experienced it which is ANOTHER intrusive thought because my mind started wondering why i’m not that much of a fan of it . I’ve never properly experienced pussy so can’t really like make decions. Anyway i know im straight. I know thats me always imagined a woman always had crushes on women, the whole lot. I just want some help. i pray i’ll be okay and best of all Advice on how i can just be myself again as i can’t handle this any longer.

The Boy I Thought I’d lost. (Chapter 1-3)

**The Boy I Thought I'd Lost**
**Chapter One – Before Everything Changed**
If someone had asked me what my life was like before all of this started, I probably would've told them it was pretty normal.
There wasn't anything particularly exciting about it, but I don't think I wanted there to be. I was seventeen, living at home and trying to work out what I wanted to do with my life while pretending I wasn't thinking about the future as much as I actually was. Most days followed a similar routine, and I wouldn't have changed it for anything.
I spent a lot of time in my room, not because I hated going out or didn't have friends, but because it was where I felt comfortable. My PC was there, my Liverpool shirts were on the wall, and after a while it became the place where I naturally ended up once the day had settled down. Sometimes I'd spend an hour watching YouTube before deciding what to do. Other times I'd go straight onto a game without really thinking about it.
YouTube had become part of my daily routine. Most evenings I'd find myself watching the Sidemen or anything else that popped up on my feed that looked interesting. Whether it was just another Sidemen Among Us video or some guy camping, I'd still watch it anyway. If nothing was catching my attention, I'd usually end up putting on The Flash. Looking back now, I think there was something comforting about it. I'd watched it so many times that I already knew what was going to happen, but maybe that was exactly why I kept going back to it. It never demanded anything from me. I could just switch my brain off for an hour and enjoy it.
Most evenings, I'd check to see if anyone was online. Every now and then, one of my mates would be around and we'd play for a bit, but it was never a massive group. I actually preferred it that way. Usually it'd just be one person, and sometimes nobody at all. If nobody was on, I'd just play something myself. I never really minded my own company.
Rocket League was probably the game I played the most. I wasn't amazing at it, but I wanted to improve. I spent far too much time convincing myself that if I just played one more game, I'd finally rank up. Sometimes it worked. Sometimes it didn't, and I'd end up rage quitting, only to convince myself five minutes later that one more game would be different. There was always that feeling that the next match might finally be the one where everything clicked.
When I got fed up with Rocket League, I'd end up on something completely different. Every now and then, I'd load up Minecraft. I hadn't stopped playing it because I didn't enjoy it anymore. I think I'd just grown up and found other games. But every time I went back to it, it felt familiar in a way I can't really explain.
I'd load into a world, recognise places I'd built years before and remember exactly where everything was, even if I hadn't played for months. The music would start, I'd wander around for a while and, without even realising it, I'd start thinking about being younger. Life felt simple back then. There were no worries, no overthinking and no anxiety. The only thing on my mind was getting home so I could jump straight onto Minecraft. At the time, it felt like the most important thing in the world.
I didn't sit there wishing I could go back to being a kid. I just enjoyed the nostalgia it brought me. It reminded me of a time when life felt simple, when the biggest decision I had to make was what game I wanted to play after school.
Football had always been just as important as gaming. Supporting Liverpool wasn't something I did because they were winning trophies. It had become part of who I was. Every fixture mattered. Every transfer rumour felt like breaking news. I'd spend hours watching videos about who we might sign next or imagining what the team would look like if everything went perfectly again.
Going to Anfield was something completely different, though.
No matter how many times I went, walking up to the stadium never got old. I'd make my way to my seat in the Kop, look around and remember just how lucky I was to be there. Then the scarves would rise into the air and the first notes of You'll Never Walk Alone would echo around the stadium.
Even now, it's difficult to explain that feeling.
Hearing thousands of people singing the same words together gave me goosebumps every single time. It didn't matter whether you knew the person standing next to you or not. For the next ninety minutes, you'd sing together, celebrate together, complain about the referee together and talk as if you'd known each other for years. It felt like belonging to something much bigger than yourself. As kick-off got closer, the atmosphere would build and the excitement inside the stadium became almost impossible to describe. Those few minutes before the referee blew the whistle were some of the best moments I'd ever experienced. For ninety minutes, nothing else mattered.
College wasn't too bad either.
There was plenty of work to get through and plenty of times when we'd get in trouble or just mess about when we had the chance. What I remember most is spending every day with my mates. During breaks at college, we'd wander around the shops with no intention of buying anything, play football until the ball went in the river or ended up on some roof no one could get onto, take the piss out of each other and somehow make an ordinary Tuesday feel like one of the best days of the week, yet still manage to get our work done. Looking back now, I think those ordinary days were probably some of the best. At the time, they just felt normal.
The best part of college wasn't arriving in the morning.
It was leaving.
There was something satisfying about finishing the day. I'd eventually get back home, put some comfy clothes on, grab something nice to eat and a drink, and decide whether I was going to jump on my PC with one of my mates or spend the evening watching a film or another episode of The Flash. There wasn't anything extraordinary about those evenings, but I loved them anyway.
Pool became another part of my life before I even realised it.
The more I played, the more I wanted to improve. Every game taught me something new, and I could feel myself getting better over time. Before long, I'd become the one who could beat every single one of my mates, and I won't lie, it was a great feeling. It wasn't about showing off. It was the satisfaction of seeing the time I'd put into something finally paying off.
Looking back, there wasn't anything extraordinary about my life. It was made up of small things that probably wouldn't have seemed important to anyone else. Watching every Liverpool game. Sitting in the Kop singing one of the most famous anthems in the world. Spending evenings watching any YouTube video that caught my attention or any movie or series I fancied watching. Playing Rocket League until I promised myself, "just one more game." Getting lost in old Minecraft worlds. Playing pool with my mates. Finishing college and knowing I could finally go home and relax.
They were ordinary days.
At least that's what I thought they were.
I never realised how special ordinary could be.
As far as I was concerned, tomorrow would probably look the same as today.
And honestly, I couldn't have been happier about that.
I had absolutely no idea that my life was about to change overnight.
** **
**Chapter Two – The First Crack**
Looking back now, I've asked myself the same question more times than I can count.
On what day, and in what moment, did my mind begin to turn on me?
I wish I had an answer.
I wish there was one moment I could point to and say, "That's where everything changed." It would've made so much more sense. It would've given me something to blame.
But life doesn't always work like that.
Sometimes you don't notice your world changing until you're already standing in the middle of it.
If you'd seen me back then, you would've thought I was exactly the same as always. I still laughed with my mates. I still watched football whenever it was on and spent my evenings watching whatever series or film I fancied. I still spent hours on my PC, convincing myself one more game of Rocket League would finally be the one where I ranked up.
From the outside, I looked completely normal.
The strange thing was...
I thought I was too.
I had no idea that, over the next few weeks, my own thoughts would begin to feel completely different. Things that would've once passed through my head without a second thought started sticking around far longer than they should have.
At first, I told myself everyone probably had strange thoughts from time to time. What I didn't realise was how quickly one thought could spiral into hundreds more, and how difficult they would become to ignore.
Looking back now, I wish I'd treated that first thought the same way I'd treated thousands of others throughout my life.
Notice it.
Let it pass.
Instead, I did the one thing my anxiety wanted me to do.
I paid attention to it.
From as young as I can remember, I'd struggled with separation anxiety.
If my mum went somewhere without me, my mind always seemed to imagine the worst. It wasn't because I didn't trust her or because she wasn't capable of looking after herself. It was because my brain had an incredible ability to convince me that the worst possible outcome was the most likely one.
It wasn't easy.
It never was.
For years, Mum and I tried everything we could think of. Therapy. Different ways of coping. Different routines. Some things helped for a while. Others didn't seem to make much difference at all.
Eventually, as I grew older, I learnt how to live alongside it and manage it.
Even though I'd learned to live alongside my anxiety, there were still days when it got the better of me. Some mornings I'd wake up already feeling on edge without really knowing why. Other days I'd manage just fine. It was unpredictable, but after years of living with it, I'd accepted that anxiety was probably always going to be part of my life.
It never completely disappeared.
The difference was that I'd learned how to carry it.
I still went to college. I still watched every Liverpool game. I still spent evenings on my PC, laughed with my mates and enjoyed all the little things that made life feel normal. Anxiety hadn't beaten me. It had simply become something I lived alongside and had learnt how to manage.
I'd even been prescribed medication when I was younger. For a while, it seemed to help. Eventually, though, I stopped taking it because I wasn't convinced it was doing much anymore. If anything, I sometimes felt more on edge than before.
Life carried on.
Mum and I kept doing what we'd always done. We dealt with the difficult days together and enjoyed the easier ones. It wasn't perfect, but we'd learned to cope.
Then, after another particularly difficult period, my support worker suggested it might be worth trying medication again.
At the time, it didn't feel like a life-changing decision.
If anything, it felt like the obvious one.
I hoped it might make things a little easier.
I had absolutely no idea that the next three weeks would become some of the hardest of my life.
I can still remember picking the prescription up. It felt strangely ordinary. There wasn't some dramatic feeling telling me not to take it. No voice in the back of my head warning me to stop.
To me, it was just another attempt at getting a bit of my old spark back. I remember taking the first tablet straight away outside the pharmacy before we'd even driven home. It felt like another step towards getting my anxiety under control.
There was no fear. No feeling that I was making a mistake. If anything, I felt hopeful. I'd lived with anxiety for years, and if there was even a chance these tablets could make life a little easier, then it felt worth trying.
As far as I was concerned, this was just another attempt at getting back to living normally. I never imagined I'd spend the next few weeks feeling further away from myself than I'd ever felt before.
The first evening came and went without anything that made me stop and think. I went home, put the football on and settled down to watch the World Cup like I had done most days that summer. If you'd asked me how I felt, I probably would've told you I felt exactly the same.
I wasn't sitting there waiting for the tablets to suddenly change my life. In fact, after a few hours, I'd almost forgotten I'd even taken one.
The next morning didn't feel much different either.
I woke up, got on with my day and took my second tablet without thinking twice about it. It had already started to become part of my routine. Looking back now, I sometimes wish I'd paid more attention to those first couple of days. I wish I could tell you there was some warning sign I'd ignored or some feeling that told me something wasn't right.
There wasn't.
Everything still felt... normal.
At least, that's what I believed.
The third day started no differently from the first two. I woke up, got on with my day and carried on as normal. The World Cup was still on, which meant staying up until stupid hours of the morning just to watch the games. It didn't matter who was playing. Good teams or bad, I watched every single one because it was football, and football made me happy.
The summer holidays carried on like they always had, and there wasn't anything that made me think my life was about to change. If anything, I remember thinking the tablets probably hadn't done much at all. I'd only been taking them for a couple of days, and I knew they weren't supposed to work overnight. I carried on believing that, sooner or later, they'd start helping.
I wish I could tell you exactly when that changed.
I can't.
The rest of the day passed without me giving the tablets much thought. I watched the football, scrolled through my phone and spent some time on my PC like I always did. If you'd asked me then, I'd have told you everything was fine. Nothing felt dramatically different. Life still looked exactly the same as it had a few days earlier.
It must have been later that day when something happened that, at the time, didn't seem important.
A thought crossed my mind.
It caught me off guard. Not because it frightened me straight away, but because it felt so unlike the thoughts I normally had. It was one of those moments where I stopped, smirked and thought to myself, "Where the fuck did that come from?"
It wasn't something I'd ever sat and worried about before. It wasn't something that had occupied my mind in the past.
It was just... there.
I remember pausing for a second.
That was strange.
Then I carried on with whatever I was doing.
Or at least, I tried to.
A few minutes later, it was back again.
This time, instead of brushing it aside like I would with any other random thought, I noticed it properly. Something that should've been completely forgettable had managed to catch my attention, and once it had, I found it difficult to leave alone.
Like everyone else, I'd had thousands of random thoughts throughout my life that I'd never paid any attention to.
For some reason, this one stuck.
Not because the thought itself was louder.
Because I listened to it.
I wanted to understand why it had appeared. More than anything, I wanted the uncomfortable feeling it had created to disappear so I could get back to whatever I'd been doing before.
But the more attention I gave it, the harder that became.
Looking back now, I can see that was the moment everything started to shift.
Not because I'd had a strange thought.
Everybody has strange thoughts.
The difference was that I treated this one as though it needed my attention.
I couldn't have known it then, but from that moment on, trying to make sense of what was happening inside my own head only seemed to leave me more confused.
Without realising it, I'd taken the first step into a cycle that would soon consume almost every waking moment of my life
 
 
**Chapter Three – Inside My Own Mind**
** **
I wish I could tell you that I woke up the next morning and everything had gone back to normal, like it was just any other day.
I didn't.
Around the same time, I'd recently started taking fluoxetine to help with my anxiety. I'd been told it could take a few weeks to work and that things might feel worse before they got better. I didn't think too much of it at first. I just wanted to feel like myself again.
But when I woke up that morning, the thought was still there.
Not constantly. Not every second of the day. But it was there enough for me to realise that I couldn't quite forget about it.
At first, I tried to convince myself it was nothing.
Everyone has weird thoughts from time to time, don't they? They just move on, go about their day and forget about them.
That's what I told myself, anyway.
The problem was that the more I tried to reassure myself, the harder it became to leave the thought alone. Any relief I managed to find only seemed to last a few minutes before the uncomfortable feeling returned.
Back then, I thought I was just trying to make sense of something that didn't make any sense.
I kept telling myself to forget about it. I wanted everything to go back to normal, and I genuinely believed that if I stopped thinking about it, the thought would eventually disappear.
For a while, I convinced myself I'd already moved on.
I hadn't.
I kept asking myself why these shitty thoughts kept popping into my head for no reason.
It didn't stay as just one thought for long. Once I'd started paying so much attention to what was going on inside my head, other uncomfortable thoughts seemed to stand out too.
They would appear when I least expected them. Sometimes it was the original thought. Other times it was something completely different. What they were about mattered less than the feeling they created whenever they appeared.
I couldn't understand why my own mind was suddenly producing things that made me so uncomfortable.
So I kept trying to understand them.
Looking back now, I think that was what kept me trapped. I thought that if I could just make sense of everything going on in my head, I'd finally be able to relax. Instead, every attempt to find an answer seemed to give me another reason to keep thinking.
Before long, it wasn't just individual thoughts I was struggling with.
It was the constant feeling that came with them.
I felt permanently on edge. Even when there wasn't one particular thing bothering me, there was still this sense that my mind was running in the background, waiting for something else to grab onto.
There wasn't an off switch anymore.
I could be watching football, out with my mates, playing pool or sitting with my family and still feel it. Things that would've once passed through my mind without any importance could suddenly hold my attention for far too long.
That was what exhausted me most.
I'd spent my entire life having thoughts without needing to understand every single one of them. Now it felt like my brain had forgotten how to do that.
And the harder I tried to feel normal again, the further away normal seemed to become.
I'd wake up hoping the feeling had finally gone. For a few seconds, before I was fully awake, everything could feel normal.
Then it would hit me again.
As my brain woke up, so did the anxiety and that familiar feeling in the pit of my stomach.
I'd tell myself, just get through today. Maybe tomorrow will be different.
That became something I held onto.
As the days passed, I started noticing that this wasn't the anxiety I was used to.
I'd lived with anxiety for years. Normally, there was a reason for it. Something would happen, my anxiety would rise and eventually it would settle again. Even on difficult days, I still recognised myself underneath it.
This felt different.
It followed me everywhere.
Home. Pool. My PC. Around my family. Around my mates.
There wasn't one place I could go where I could completely leave it behind.
Then other things started changing too.
My appetite wasn't what it used to be. Some days I'd realise I'd barely eaten anything, not because I was deliberately avoiding food, but because I just didn't feel hungry. Even when I did eat, it often felt like I was doing it because I knew I had to rather than because I actually wanted to.
Sleeping became difficult as well.
Night used to mean the day was finished. I could get into bed, go on my phone for a while and eventually switch off.
Now, the quieter everything around me became, the louder my own head seemed to feel.
I'd lie there tired but unable to properly settle. There wasn't necessarily one thought keeping me awake. My mind just wouldn't seem to stop.
Then morning would come and I'd already feel exhausted before I'd done anything.
It wasn't the kind of tiredness that disappeared after a good night's sleep. It felt mental, like my brain had been working constantly even when the rest of me was trying to rest.
Around this time, I started wondering whether the fluoxetine had something to do with what was happening.
I'd started taking it because I wanted my anxiety to get better.
Instead, I felt worse than I ever had before.
I'd been told things could get worse before they got better, and I tried to believe that. Maybe this was just the difficult part before the tablets started doing what they were supposed to do.
But the timing was difficult to ignore.
Then another part of me would argue against it.
I'd taken fluoxetine when I was younger. It hadn't affected me like this then. In fact, I'd eventually stopped taking it because I didn't really feel like it was doing much.
So why would this time be any different?
I didn't know.
One minute I'd convince myself the tablets were responsible. The next, I'd tell myself I was overthinking that as well.
Even with those doubts, I carried on taking them.
I trusted what I'd been told. These things took time. They weren't supposed to work overnight.
So every tablet came with a small amount of hope.
Maybe this is the one where things start changing.
Of course, I knew logically that wasn't how it worked. But when you're desperate to feel better, you start looking for signs anywhere you can find them.
I was still trying to live normally too.
I'd turn my PC on because that's what I'd always done. Sometimes I'd sit there for a while trying to play something, but gaming wasn't the escape it used to be. I'd be looking directly at the screen while half my attention was somewhere else.
Some nights I'd manage a few games.
Other nights I'd turn the PC off almost as quickly as I'd turned it on.
My mind just wasn't there.
Pool started feeling different too.
Normally, asking me if I wanted a few games wouldn't require much thought. I'd grab my cue and go.
Now, even things I knew I enjoyed could feel like effort.
It wasn't that I'd suddenly stopped caring about them. That was what made it so confusing. I knew I liked gaming. I knew I liked pool. I knew I loved football.
I just didn't always feel the same connection to them.
Football probably came closest to breaking through.
If a game was good enough, I'd still get pulled into it. I'd complain about a decision, react to a chance or celebrate a goal without thinking about anything else for a moment.
Those moments were small, but I noticed them.
Then the game would finish.
The television would go off.
And everything I'd managed not to think about for a while would still be waiting for me.
When distractions weren't working, I'd usually end up on my phone.
At first, I was just trying to understand what was happening. I'd search for anxiety getting worse, strange thoughts, side effects from fluoxetine—anything that sounded remotely similar to what I was experiencing.
Eventually, I'd find somebody who sounded like me.
For a few minutes, that could feel incredible.
Someone else had experienced something similar.
Maybe that meant I was going to be okay too.
Then the relief would wear off.
I'd start feeling anxious again, so I'd search again.
Another post.
Another article.
Another few minutes of relief.
Then back to the beginning.
I didn't recognise it as a pattern at the time. I thought I was helping myself. Every search felt like I was getting closer to understanding what was happening.
Really, I was just desperate for somebody or something to tell me that I was going to feel normal again.
The days began to lose their edges.
Wake up.
Realise the anxiety was still there.
Try to get on with the day.
Distract myself.
Search for answers when that didn't work.
Hope tomorrow would be easier.
Then wake up and do it again.
All the while, I kept taking the fluoxetine.
I'd started the week believing I was giving something a chance to help me.
Now I was counting the days and wondering when that help was supposed to arrive.
Still, I kept going.
I'd been told it needed time.
And at that point, time was one of the only things I had left to give it.  

The Boy I Thought I’d lost. (Chapter 1-3)
\*\*The Boy I Thought I'd Lost\*\*
\*\*Chapter One – Before Everything Changed\*\*
If someone had asked me what my life was like before all of this started, I probably would've told them it was pretty normal.
There wasn't anything particularly exciting about it, but I don't think I wanted there to be. I was seventeen, living at home and trying to work out what I wanted to do with my life while pretending I wasn't thinking about the future as much as I actually was. Most days followed a similar routine, and I wouldn't have changed it for anything.
I spent a lot of time in my room, not because I hated going out or didn't have friends, but because it was where I felt comfortable. My PC was there, my Liverpool shirts were on the wall, and after a while it became the place where I naturally ended up once the day had settled down. Sometimes I'd spend an hour watching YouTube before deciding what to do. Other times I'd go straight onto a game without really thinking about it.
YouTube had become part of my daily routine. Most evenings I'd find myself watching the Sidemen or anything else that popped up on my feed that looked interesting. Whether it was just another Sidemen Among Us video or some guy camping, I'd still watch it anyway. If nothing was catching my attention, I'd usually end up putting on The Flash. Looking back now, I think there was something comforting about it. I'd watched it so many times that I already knew what was going to happen, but maybe that was exactly why I kept going back to it. It never demanded anything from me. I could just switch my brain off for an hour and enjoy it.
Most evenings, I'd check to see if anyone was online. Every now and then, one of my mates would be around and we'd play for a bit, but it was never a massive group. I actually preferred it that way. Usually it'd just be one person, and sometimes nobody at all. If nobody was on, I'd just play something myself. I never really minded my own company.
Rocket League was probably the game I played the most. I wasn't amazing at it, but I wanted to improve. I spent far too much time convincing myself that if I just played one more game, I'd finally rank up. Sometimes it worked. Sometimes it didn't, and I'd end up rage quitting, only to convince myself five minutes later that one more game would be different. There was always that feeling that the next match might finally be the one where everything clicked.
When I got fed up with Rocket League, I'd end up on something completely different. Every now and then, I'd load up Minecraft. I hadn't stopped playing it because I didn't enjoy it anymore. I think I'd just grown up and found other games. But every time I went back to it, it felt familiar in a way I can't really explain.
I'd load into a world, recognise places I'd built years before and remember exactly where everything was, even if I hadn't played for months. The music would start, I'd wander around for a while and, without even realising it, I'd start thinking about being younger. Life felt simple back then. There were no worries, no overthinking and no anxiety. The only thing on my mind was getting home so I could jump straight onto Minecraft. At the time, it felt like the most important thing in the world.
I didn't sit there wishing I could go back to being a kid. I just enjoyed the nostalgia it brought me. It reminded me of a time when life felt simple, when the biggest decision I had to make was what game I wanted to play after school.
Football had always been just as important as gaming. Supporting Liverpool wasn't something I did because they were winning trophies. It had become part of who I was. Every fixture mattered. Every transfer rumour felt like breaking news. I'd spend hours watching videos about who we might sign next or imagining what the team would look like if everything went perfectly again.
Going to Anfield was something completely different, though.
No matter how many times I went, walking up to the stadium never got old. I'd make my way to my seat in the Kop, look around and remember just how lucky I was to be there. Then the scarves would rise into the air and the first notes of You'll Never Walk Alone would echo around the stadium.
Even now, it's difficult to explain that feeling.
Hearing thousands of people singing the same words together gave me goosebumps every single time. It didn't matter whether you knew the person standing next to you or not. For the next ninety minutes, you'd sing together, celebrate together, complain about the referee together and talk as if you'd known each other for years. It felt like belonging to something much bigger than yourself. As kick-off got closer, the atmosphere would build and the excitement inside the stadium became almost impossible to describe. Those few minutes before the referee blew the whistle were some of the best moments I'd ever experienced. For ninety minutes, nothing else mattered.
College wasn't too bad either.
There was plenty of work to get through and plenty of times when we'd get in trouble or just mess about when we had the chance. What I remember most is spending every day with my mates. During breaks at college, we'd wander around the shops with no intention of buying anything, play football until the ball went in the river or ended up on some roof no one could get onto, take the piss out of each other and somehow make an ordinary Tuesday feel like one of the best days of the week, yet still manage to get our work done. Looking back now, I think those ordinary days were probably some of the best. At the time, they just felt normal.
The best part of college wasn't arriving in the morning.
It was leaving.
There was something satisfying about finishing the day. I'd eventually get back home, put some comfy clothes on, grab something nice to eat and a drink, and decide whether I was going to jump on my PC with one of my mates or spend the evening watching a film or another episode of The Flash. There wasn't anything extraordinary about those evenings, but I loved them anyway.
Pool became another part of my life before I even realised it.
The more I played, the more I wanted to improve. Every game taught me something new, and I could feel myself getting better over time. Before long, I'd become the one who could beat every single one of my mates, and I won't lie, it was a great feeling. It wasn't about showing off. It was the satisfaction of seeing the time I'd put into something finally paying off.
Looking back, there wasn't anything extraordinary about my life. It was made up of small things that probably wouldn't have seemed important to anyone else. Watching every Liverpool game. Sitting in the Kop singing one of the most famous anthems in the world. Spending evenings watching any YouTube video that caught my attention or any movie or series I fancied watching. Playing Rocket League until I promised myself, "just one more game." Getting lost in old Minecraft worlds. Playing pool with my mates. Finishing college and knowing I could finally go home and relax.
They were ordinary days.
At least that's what I thought they were.
I never realised how special ordinary could be.
As far as I was concerned, tomorrow would probably look the same as today.
And honestly, I couldn't have been happier about that.
I had absolutely no idea that my life was about to change overnight.
\*\* \*\*
\*\*Chapter Two – The First Crack\*\*
Looking back now, I've asked myself the same question more times than I can count.
On what day, and in what moment, did my mind begin to turn on me?
I wish I had an answer.
I wish there was one moment I could point to and say, "That's where everything changed." It would've made so much more sense. It would've given me something to blame.
But life doesn't always work like that.
Sometimes you don't notice your world changing until you're already standing in the middle of it.
If you'd seen me back then, you would've thought I was exactly the same as always. I still laughed with my mates. I still watched football whenever it was on and spent my evenings watching whatever series or film I fancied. I still spent hours on my PC, convincing myself one more game of Rocket League would finally be the one where I ranked up.
From the outside, I looked completely normal.
The strange thing was...
I thought I was too.
I had no idea that, over the next few weeks, my own thoughts would begin to feel completely different. Things that would've once passed through my head without a second thought started sticking around far longer than they should have.
At first, I told myself everyone probably had strange thoughts from time to time. What I didn't realise was how quickly one thought could spiral into hundreds more, and how difficult they would become to ignore.
Looking back now, I wish I'd treated that first thought the same way I'd treated thousands of others throughout my life.
Notice it.
Let it pass.
Instead, I did the one thing my anxiety wanted me to do.
I paid attention to it.
From as young as I can remember, I'd struggled with separation anxiety.
If my mum went somewhere without me, my mind always seemed to imagine the worst. It wasn't because I didn't trust her or because she wasn't capable of looking after herself. It was because my brain had an incredible ability to convince me that the worst possible outcome was the most likely one.
It wasn't easy.
It never was.
For years, Mum and I tried everything we could think of. Therapy. Different ways of coping. Different routines. Some things helped for a while. Others didn't seem to make much difference at all.
Eventually, as I grew older, I learnt how to live alongside it and manage it.
Even though I'd learned to live alongside my anxiety, there were still days when it got the better of me. Some mornings I'd wake up already feeling on edge without really knowing why. Other days I'd manage just fine. It was unpredictable, but after years of living with it, I'd accepted that anxiety was probably always going to be part of my life.
It never completely disappeared.
The difference was that I'd learned how to carry it.
I still went to college. I still watched every Liverpool game. I still spent evenings on my PC, laughed with my mates and enjoyed all the little things that made life feel normal. Anxiety hadn't beaten me. It had simply become something I lived alongside and had learnt how to manage.
I'd even been prescribed medication when I was younger. For a while, it seemed to help. Eventually, though, I stopped taking it because I wasn't convinced it was doing much anymore. If anything, I sometimes felt more on edge than before.
Life carried on.
Mum and I kept doing what we'd always done. We dealt with the difficult days together and enjoyed the easier ones. It wasn't perfect, but we'd learned to cope.
Then, after another particularly difficult period, my support worker suggested it might be worth trying medication again.
At the time, it didn't feel like a life-changing decision.
If anything, it felt like the obvious one.
I hoped it might make things a little easier.
I had absolutely no idea that the next three weeks would become some of the hardest of my life.
I can still remember picking the prescription up. It felt strangely ordinary. There wasn't some dramatic feeling telling me not to take it. No voice in the back of my head warning me to stop.
To me, it was just another attempt at getting a bit of my old spark back. I remember taking the first tablet straight away outside the pharmacy before we'd even driven home. It felt like another step towards getting my anxiety under control.
There was no fear. No feeling that I was making a mistake. If anything, I felt hopeful. I'd lived with anxiety for years, and if there was even a chance these tablets could make life a little easier, then it felt worth trying.
As far as I was concerned, this was just another attempt at getting back to living normally. I never imagined I'd spend the next few weeks feeling further away from myself than I'd ever felt before.
The first evening came and went without anything that made me stop and think. I went home, put the football on and settled down to watch the World Cup like I had done most days that summer. If you'd asked me how I felt, I probably would've told you I felt exactly the same.
I wasn't sitting there waiting for the tablets to suddenly change my life. In fact, after a few hours, I'd almost forgotten I'd even taken one.
The next morning didn't feel much different either.
I woke up, got on with my day and took my second tablet without thinking twice about it. It had already started to become part of my routine. Looking back now, I sometimes wish I'd paid more attention to those first couple of days. I wish I could tell you there was some warning sign I'd ignored or some feeling that told me something wasn't right.
There wasn't.
Everything still felt... normal.
At least, that's what I believed.
The third day started no differently from the first two. I woke up, got on with my day and carried on as normal. The World Cup was still on, which meant staying up until stupid hours of the morning just to watch the games. It didn't matter who was playing. Good teams or bad, I watched every single one because it was football, and football made me happy.
The summer holidays carried on like they always had, and there wasn't anything that made me think my life was about to change. If anything, I remember thinking the tablets probably hadn't done much at all. I'd only been taking them for a couple of days, and I knew they weren't supposed to work overnight. I carried on believing that, sooner or later, they'd start helping.
I wish I could tell you exactly when that changed.
I can't.
The rest of the day passed without me giving the tablets much thought. I watched the football, scrolled through my phone and spent some time on my PC like I always did. If you'd asked me then, I'd have told you everything was fine. Nothing felt dramatically different. Life still looked exactly the same as it had a few days earlier.
It must have been later that day when something happened that, at the time, didn't seem important.
A thought crossed my mind.
It caught me off guard. Not because it frightened me straight away, but because it felt so unlike the thoughts I normally had. It was one of those moments where I stopped, smirked and thought to myself, "Where the fuck did that come from?"
It wasn't something I'd ever sat and worried about before. It wasn't something that had occupied my mind in the past.
It was just... there.
I remember pausing for a second.
That was strange.
Then I carried on with whatever I was doing.
Or at least, I tried to.
A few minutes later, it was back again.
This time, instead of brushing it aside like I would with any other random thought, I noticed it properly. Something that should've been completely forgettable had managed to catch my attention, and once it had, I found it difficult to leave alone.
Like everyone else, I'd had thousands of random thoughts throughout my life that I'd never paid any attention to.
For some reason, this one stuck.
Not because the thought itself was louder.
Because I listened to it.
I wanted to understand why it had appeared. More than anything, I wanted the uncomfortable feeling it had created to disappear so I could get back to whatever I'd been doing before.
But the more attention I gave it, the harder that became.
Looking back now, I can see that was the moment everything started to shift.
Not because I'd had a strange thought.
Everybody has strange thoughts.
The difference was that I treated this one as though it needed my attention.
I couldn't have known it then, but from that moment on, trying to make sense of what was happening inside my own head only seemed to leave me more confused.
Without realising it, I'd taken the first step into a cycle that would soon consume almost every waking moment of my life

\*\*Chapter Three – Inside My Own Mind\*\*
\*\* \*\*
I wish I could tell you that I woke up the next morning and everything had gone back to normal, like it was just any other day.
I didn't.
Around the same time, I'd recently started taking fluoxetine to help with my anxiety. I'd been told it could take a few weeks to work and that things might feel worse before they got better. I didn't think too much of it at first. I just wanted to feel like myself again.
But when I woke up that morning, the thought was still there.
Not constantly. Not every second of the day. But it was there enough for me to realise that I couldn't quite forget about it.
At first, I tried to convince myself it was nothing.
Everyone has weird thoughts from time to time, don't they? They just move on, go about their day and forget about them.
That's what I told myself, anyway.
The problem was that the more I tried to reassure myself, the harder it became to leave the thought alone. Any relief I managed to find only seemed to last a few minutes before the uncomfortable feeling returned.
Back then, I thought I was just trying to make sense of something that didn't make any sense.
I kept telling myself to forget about it. I wanted everything to go back to normal, and I genuinely believed that if I stopped thinking about it, the thought would eventually disappear.
For a while, I convinced myself I'd already moved on.
I hadn't.
I kept asking myself why these shitty thoughts kept popping into my head for no reason.
It didn't stay as just one thought for long. Once I'd started paying so much attention to what was going on inside my head, other uncomfortable thoughts seemed to stand out too.
They would appear when I least expected them. Sometimes it was the original thought. Other times it was something completely different. What they were about mattered less than the feeling they created whenever they appeared.
I couldn't understand why my own mind was suddenly producing things that made me so uncomfortable.
So I kept trying to understand them.
Looking back now, I think that was what kept me trapped. I thought that if I could just make sense of everything going on in my head, I'd finally be able to relax. Instead, every attempt to find an answer seemed to give me another reason to keep thinking.
Before long, it wasn't just individual thoughts I was struggling with.
It was the constant feeling that came with them.
I felt permanently on edge. Even when there wasn't one particular thing bothering me, there was still this sense that my mind was running in the background, waiting for something else to grab onto.
There wasn't an off switch anymore.
I could be watching football, out with my mates, playing pool or sitting with my family and still feel it. Things that would've once passed through my mind without any importance could suddenly hold my attention for far too long.
That was what exhausted me most.
I'd spent my entire life having thoughts without needing to understand every single one of them. Now it felt like my brain had forgotten how to do that.
And the harder I tried to feel normal again, the further away normal seemed to become.
I'd wake up hoping the feeling had finally gone. For a few seconds, before I was fully awake, everything could feel normal.
Then it would hit me again.
As my brain woke up, so did the anxiety and that familiar feeling in the pit of my stomach.
I'd tell myself, just get through today. Maybe tomorrow will be different.
That became something I held onto.
As the days passed, I started noticing that this wasn't the anxiety I was used to.
I'd lived with anxiety for years. Normally, there was a reason for it. Something would happen, my anxiety would rise and eventually it would settle again. Even on difficult days, I still recognised myself underneath it.
This felt different.
It followed me everywhere.
Home. Pool. My PC. Around my family. Around my mates.
There wasn't one place I could go where I could completely leave it behind.
Then other things started changing too.
My appetite wasn't what it used to be. Some days I'd realise I'd barely eaten anything, not because I was deliberately avoiding food, but because I just didn't feel hungry. Even when I did eat, it often felt like I was doing it because I knew I had to rather than because I actually wanted to.
Sleeping became difficult as well.
Night used to mean the day was finished. I could get into bed, go on my phone for a while and eventually switch off.
Now, the quieter everything around me became, the louder my own head seemed to feel.
I'd lie there tired but unable to properly settle. There wasn't necessarily one thought keeping me awake. My mind just wouldn't seem to stop.
Then morning would come and I'd already feel exhausted before I'd done anything.
It wasn't the kind of tiredness that disappeared after a good night's sleep. It felt mental, like my brain had been working constantly even when the rest of me was trying to rest.
Around this time, I started wondering whether the fluoxetine had something to do with what was happening.
I'd started taking it because I wanted my anxiety to get better.
Instead, I felt worse than I ever had before.
I'd been told things could get worse before they got better, and I tried to believe that. Maybe this was just the difficult part before the tablets started doing what they were supposed to do.
But the timing was difficult to ignore.
Then another part of me would argue against it.
I'd taken fluoxetine when I was younger. It hadn't affected me like this then. In fact, I'd eventually stopped taking it because I didn't really feel like it was doing much.
So why would this time be any different?
I didn't know.
One minute I'd convince myself the tablets were responsible. The next, I'd tell myself I was overthinking that as well.
Even with those doubts, I carried on taking them.
I trusted what I'd been told. These things took time. They weren't supposed to work overnight.
So every tablet came with a small amount of hope.
Maybe this is the one where things start changing.
Of course, I knew logically that wasn't how it worked. But when you're desperate to feel better, you start looking for signs anywhere you can find them.
I was still trying to live normally too.
I'd turn my PC on because that's what I'd always done. Sometimes I'd sit there for a while trying to play something, but gaming wasn't the escape it used to be. I'd be looking directly at the screen while half my attention was somewhere else.
Some nights I'd manage a few games.
Other nights I'd turn the PC off almost as quickly as I'd turned it on.
My mind just wasn't there.
Pool started feeling different too.
Normally, asking me if I wanted a few games wouldn't require much thought. I'd grab my cue and go.
Now, even things I knew I enjoyed could feel like effort.
It wasn't that I'd suddenly stopped caring about them. That was what made it so confusing. I knew I liked gaming. I knew I liked pool. I knew I loved football.
I just didn't always feel the same connection to them.
Football probably came closest to breaking through.
If a game was good enough, I'd still get pulled into it. I'd complain about a decision, react to a chance or celebrate a goal without thinking about anything else for a moment.
Those moments were small, but I noticed them.
Then the game would finish.
The television would go off.
And everything I'd managed not to think about for a while would still be waiting for me.
When distractions weren't working, I'd usually end up on my phone.
At first, I was just trying to understand what was happening. I'd search for anxiety getting worse, strange thoughts, side effects from fluoxetine—anything that sounded remotely similar to what I was experiencing.
Eventually, I'd find somebody who sounded like me.
For a few minutes, that could feel incredible.
Someone else had experienced something similar.
Maybe that meant I was going to be okay too.
Then the relief would wear off.
I'd start feeling anxious again, so I'd search again.
Another post.
Another article.
Another few minutes of relief.
Then back to the beginning.
I didn't recognise it as a pattern at the time. I thought I was helping myself. Every search felt like I was getting closer to understanding what was happening.
Really, I was just desperate for somebody or something to tell me that I was going to feel normal again.
The days began to lose their edges.
Wake up.
Realise the anxiety was still there.
Try to get on with the day.
Distract myself.
Search for answers when that didn't work.
Hope tomorrow would be easier.
Then wake up and do it again.
All the while, I kept taking the fluoxetine.
I'd started the week believing I was giving something a chance to help me.
Now I was counting the days and wondering when that help was supposed to arrive.
Still, I kept going.
I'd been told it needed time.
And at that point, time was one of the only things I had left to give it.  

The Boy I Thought I’d lost. (Chapter 1-3)
\*\*The Boy I Thought I'd Lost\*\*
\*\*Chapter One – Before Everything Changed\*\*
If someone had asked me what my life was like before all of this started, I probably would've told them it was pretty normal.
There wasn't anything particularly exciting about it, but I don't think I wanted there to be. I was seventeen, living at home and trying to work out what I wanted to do with my life while pretending I wasn't thinking about the future as much as I actually was. Most days followed a similar routine, and I wouldn't have changed it for anything.
I spent a lot of time in my room, not because I hated going out or didn't have friends, but because it was where I felt comfortable. My PC was there, my Liverpool shirts were on the wall, and after a while it became the place where I naturally ended up once the day had settled down. Sometimes I'd spend an hour watching YouTube before deciding what to do. Other times I'd go straight onto a game without really thinking about it.
YouTube had become part of my daily routine. Most evenings I'd find myself watching the Sidemen or anything else that popped up on my feed that looked interesting. Whether it was just another Sidemen Among Us video or some guy camping, I'd still watch it anyway. If nothing was catching my attention, I'd usually end up putting on The Flash. Looking back now, I think there was something comforting about it. I'd watched it so many times that I already knew what was going to happen, but maybe that was exactly why I kept going back to it. It never demanded anything from me. I could just switch my brain off for an hour and enjoy it.
Most evenings, I'd check to see if anyone was online. Every now and then, one of my mates would be around and we'd play for a bit, but it was never a massive group. I actually preferred it that way. Usually it'd just be one person, and sometimes nobody at all. If nobody was on, I'd just play something myself. I never really minded my own company.
Rocket League was probably the game I played the most. I wasn't amazing at it, but I wanted to improve. I spent far too much time convincing myself that if I just played one more game, I'd finally rank up. Sometimes it worked. Sometimes it didn't, and I'd end up rage quitting, only to convince myself five minutes later that one more game would be different. There was always that feeling that the next match might finally be the one where everything clicked.
When I got fed up with Rocket League, I'd end up on something completely different. Every now and then, I'd load up Minecraft. I hadn't stopped playing it because I didn't enjoy it anymore. I think I'd just grown up and found other games. But every time I went back to it, it felt familiar in a way I can't really explain.
I'd load into a world, recognise places I'd built years before and remember exactly where everything was, even if I hadn't played for months. The music would start, I'd wander around for a while and, without even realising it, I'd start thinking about being younger. Life felt simple back then. There were no worries, no overthinking and no anxiety. The only thing on my mind was getting home so I could jump straight onto Minecraft. At the time, it felt like the most important thing in the world.
I didn't sit there wishing I could go back to being a kid. I just enjoyed the nostalgia it brought me. It reminded me of a time when life felt simple, when the biggest decision I had to make was what game I wanted to play after school.
Football had always been just as important as gaming. Supporting Liverpool wasn't something I did because they were winning trophies. It had become part of who I was. Every fixture mattered. Every transfer rumour felt like breaking news. I'd spend hours watching videos about who we might sign next or imagining what the team would look like if everything went perfectly again.
Going to Anfield was something completely different, though.
No matter how many times I went, walking up to the stadium never got old. I'd make my way to my seat in the Kop, look around and remember just how lucky I was to be there. Then the scarves would rise into the air and the first notes of You'll Never Walk Alone would echo around the stadium.
Even now, it's difficult to explain that feeling.
Hearing thousands of people singing the same words together gave me goosebumps every single time. It didn't matter whether you knew the person standing next to you or not. For the next ninety minutes, you'd sing together, celebrate together, complain about the referee together and talk as if you'd known each other for years. It felt like belonging to something much bigger than yourself. As kick-off got closer, the atmosphere would build and the excitement inside the stadium became almost impossible to describe. Those few minutes before the referee blew the whistle were some of the best moments I'd ever experienced. For ninety minutes, nothing else mattered.
College wasn't too bad either.
There was plenty of work to get through and plenty of times when we'd get in trouble or just mess about when we had the chance. What I remember most is spending every day with my mates. During breaks at college, we'd wander around the shops with no intention of buying anything, play football until the ball went in the river or ended up on some roof no one could get onto, take the piss out of each other and somehow make an ordinary Tuesday feel like one of the best days of the week, yet still manage to get our work done. Looking back now, I think those ordinary days were probably some of the best. At the time, they just felt normal.
The best part of college wasn't arriving in the morning.
It was leaving.
There was something satisfying about finishing the day. I'd eventually get back home, put some comfy clothes on, grab something nice to eat and a drink, and decide whether I was going to jump on my PC with one of my mates or spend the evening watching a film or another episode of The Flash. There wasn't anything extraordinary about those evenings, but I loved them anyway.
Pool became another part of my life before I even realised it.
The more I played, the more I wanted to improve. Every game taught me something new, and I could feel myself getting better over time. Before long, I'd become the one who could beat every single one of my mates, and I won't lie, it was a great feeling. It wasn't about showing off. It was the satisfaction of seeing the time I'd put into something finally paying off.
Looking back, there wasn't anything extraordinary about my life. It was made up of small things that probably wouldn't have seemed important to anyone else. Watching every Liverpool game. Sitting in the Kop singing one of the most famous anthems in the world. Spending evenings watching any YouTube video that caught my attention or any movie or series I fancied watching. Playing Rocket League until I promised myself, "just one more game." Getting lost in old Minecraft worlds. Playing pool with my mates. Finishing college and knowing I could finally go home and relax.
They were ordinary days.
At least that's what I thought they were.
I never realised how special ordinary could be.
As far as I was concerned, tomorrow would probably look the same as today.
And honestly, I couldn't have been happier about that.
I had absolutely no idea that my life was about to change overnight.
\*\* \*\*
\*\*Chapter Two – The First Crack\*\*
Looking back now, I've asked myself the same question more times than I can count.
On what day, and in what moment, did my mind begin to turn on me?
I wish I had an answer.
I wish there was one moment I could point to and say, "That's where everything changed." It would've made so much more sense. It would've given me something to blame.
But life doesn't always work like that.
Sometimes you don't notice your world changing until you're already standing in the middle of it.
If you'd seen me back then, you would've thought I was exactly the same as always. I still laughed with my mates. I still watched football whenever it was on and spent my evenings watching whatever series or film I fancied. I still spent hours on my PC, convincing myself one more game of Rocket League would finally be the one where I ranked up.
From the outside, I looked completely normal.
The strange thing was...
I thought I was too.
I had no idea that, over the next few weeks, my own thoughts would begin to feel completely different. Things that would've once passed through my head without a second thought started sticking around far longer than they should have.
At first, I told myself everyone probably had strange thoughts from time to time. What I didn't realise was how quickly one thought could spiral into hundreds more, and how difficult they would become to ignore.
Looking back now, I wish I'd treated that first thought the same way I'd treated thousands of others throughout my life.
Notice it.
Let it pass.
Instead, I did the one thing my anxiety wanted me to do.
I paid attention to it.
From as young as I can remember, I'd struggled with separation anxiety.
If my mum went somewhere without me, my mind always seemed to imagine the worst. It wasn't because I didn't trust her or because she wasn't capable of looking after herself. It was because my brain had an incredible ability to convince me that the worst possible outcome was the most likely one.
It wasn't easy.
It never was.
For years, Mum and I tried everything we could think of. Therapy. Different ways of coping. Different routines. Some things helped for a while. Others didn't seem to make much difference at all.
Eventually, as I grew older, I learnt how to live alongside it and manage it.
Even though I'd learned to live alongside my anxiety, there were still days when it got the better of me. Some mornings I'd wake up already feeling on edge without really knowing why. Other days I'd manage just fine. It was unpredictable, but after years of living with it, I'd accepted that anxiety was probably always going to be part of my life.
It never completely disappeared.
The difference was that I'd learned how to carry it.
I still went to college. I still watched every Liverpool game. I still spent evenings on my PC, laughed with my mates and enjoyed all the little things that made life feel normal. Anxiety hadn't beaten me. It had simply become something I lived alongside and had learnt how to manage.
I'd even been prescribed medication when I was younger. For a while, it seemed to help. Eventually, though, I stopped taking it because I wasn't convinced it was doing much anymore. If anything, I sometimes felt more on edge than before.
Life carried on.
Mum and I kept doing what we'd always done. We dealt with the difficult days together and enjoyed the easier ones. It wasn't perfect, but we'd learned to cope.
Then, after another particularly difficult period, my support worker suggested it might be worth trying medication again.
At the time, it didn't feel like a life-changing decision.
If anything, it felt like the obvious one.
I hoped it might make things a little easier.
I had absolutely no idea that the next three weeks would become some of the hardest of my life.
I can still remember picking the prescription up. It felt strangely ordinary. There wasn't some dramatic feeling telling me not to take it. No voice in the back of my head warning me to stop.
To me, it was just another attempt at getting a bit of my old spark back. I remember taking the first tablet straight away outside the pharmacy before we'd even driven home. It felt like another step towards getting my anxiety under control.
There was no fear. No feeling that I was making a mistake. If anything, I felt hopeful. I'd lived with anxiety for years, and if there was even a chance these tablets could make life a little easier, then it felt worth trying.
As far as I was concerned, this was just another attempt at getting back to living normally. I never imagined I'd spend the next few weeks feeling further away from myself than I'd ever felt before.
The first evening came and went without anything that made me stop and think. I went home, put the football on and settled down to watch the World Cup like I had done most days that summer. If you'd asked me how I felt, I probably would've told you I felt exactly the same.
I wasn't sitting there waiting for the tablets to suddenly change my life. In fact, after a few hours, I'd almost forgotten I'd even taken one.
The next morning didn't feel much different either.
I woke up, got on with my day and took my second tablet without thinking twice about it. It had already started to become part of my routine. Looking back now, I sometimes wish I'd paid more attention to those first couple of days. I wish I could tell you there was some warning sign I'd ignored or some feeling that told me something wasn't right.
There wasn't.
Everything still felt... normal.
At least, that's what I believed.
The third day started no differently from the first two. I woke up, got on with my day and carried on as normal. The World Cup was still on, which meant staying up until stupid hours of the morning just to watch the games. It didn't matter who was playing. Good teams or bad, I watched every single one because it was football, and football made me happy.
The summer holidays carried on like they always had, and there wasn't anything that made me think my life was about to change. If anything, I remember thinking the tablets probably hadn't done much at all. I'd only been taking them for a couple of days, and I knew they weren't supposed to work overnight. I carried on believing that, sooner or later, they'd start helping.
I wish I could tell you exactly when that changed.
I can't.
The rest of the day passed without me giving the tablets much thought. I watched the football, scrolled through my phone and spent some time on my PC like I always did. If you'd asked me then, I'd have told you everything was fine. Nothing felt dramatically different. Life still looked exactly the same as it had a few days earlier.
It must have been later that day when something happened that, at the time, didn't seem important.
A thought crossed my mind.
It caught me off guard. Not because it frightened me straight away, but because it felt so unlike the thoughts I normally had. It was one of those moments where I stopped, smirked and thought to myself, "Where the fuck did that come from?"
It wasn't something I'd ever sat and worried about before. It wasn't something that had occupied my mind in the past.
It was just... there.
I remember pausing for a second.
That was strange.
Then I carried on with whatever I was doing.
Or at least, I tried to.
A few minutes later, it was back again.
This time, instead of brushing it aside like I would with any other random thought, I noticed it properly. Something that should've been completely forgettable had managed to catch my attention, and once it had, I found it difficult to leave alone.
Like everyone else, I'd had thousands of random thoughts throughout my life that I'd never paid any attention to.
For some reason, this one stuck.
Not because the thought itself was louder.
Because I listened to it.
I wanted to understand why it had appeared. More than anything, I wanted the uncomfortable feeling it had created to disappear so I could get back to whatever I'd been doing before.
But the more attention I gave it, the harder that became.
Looking back now, I can see that was the moment everything started to shift.
Not because I'd had a strange thought.
Everybody has strange thoughts.
The difference was that I treated this one as though it needed my attention.
I couldn't have known it then, but from that moment on, trying to make sense of what was happening inside my own head only seemed to leave me more confused.
Without realising it, I'd taken the first step into a cycle that would soon consume almost every waking moment of my life

\*\*Chapter Three – Inside My Own Mind\*\*
\*\* \*\*
I wish I could tell you that I woke up the next morning and everything had gone back to normal, like it was just any other day.
I didn't.
Around the same time, I'd recently started taking fluoxetine to help with my anxiety. I'd been told it could take a few weeks to work and that things might feel worse before they got better. I didn't think too much of it at first. I just wanted to feel like myself again.
But when I woke up that morning, the thought was still there.
Not constantly. Not every second of the day. But it was there enough for me to realise that I couldn't quite forget about it.
At first, I tried to convince myself it was nothing.
Everyone has weird thoughts from time to time, don't they? They just move on, go about their day and forget about them.
That's what I told myself, anyway.
The problem was that the more I tried to reassure myself, the harder it became to leave the thought alone. Any relief I managed to find only seemed to last a few minutes before the uncomfortable feeling returned.
Back then, I thought I was just trying to make sense of something that didn't make any sense.
I kept telling myself to forget about it. I wanted everything to go back to normal, and I genuinely believed that if I stopped thinking about it, the thought would eventually disappear.
For a while, I convinced myself I'd already moved on.
I hadn't.
I kept asking myself why these shitty thoughts kept popping into my head for no reason.
It didn't stay as just one thought for long. Once I'd started paying so much attention to what was going on inside my head, other uncomfortable thoughts seemed to stand out too.
They would appear when I least expected them. Sometimes it was the original thought. Other times it was something completely different. What they were about mattered less than the feeling they created whenever they appeared.
I couldn't understand why my own mind was suddenly producing things that made me so uncomfortable.
So I kept trying to understand them.
Looking back now, I think that was what kept me trapped. I thought that if I could just make sense of everything going on in my head, I'd finally be able to relax. Instead, every attempt to find an answer seemed to give me another reason to keep thinking.
Before long, it wasn't just individual thoughts I was struggling with.
It was the constant feeling that came with them.
I felt permanently on edge. Even when there wasn't one particular thing bothering me, there was still this sense that my mind was running in the background, waiting for something else to grab onto.
There wasn't an off switch anymore.
I could be watching football, out with my mates, playing pool or sitting with my family and still feel it. Things that would've once passed through my mind without any importance could suddenly hold my attention for far too long.
That was what exhausted me most.
I'd spent my entire life having thoughts without needing to understand every single one of them. Now it felt like my brain had forgotten how to do that.
And the harder I tried to feel normal again, the further away normal seemed to become.
I'd wake up hoping the feeling had finally gone. For a few seconds, before I was fully awake, everything could feel normal.
Then it would hit me again.
As my brain woke up, so did the anxiety and that familiar feeling in the pit of my stomach.
I'd tell myself, just get through today. Maybe tomorrow will be different.
That became something I held onto.
As the days passed, I started noticing that this wasn't the anxiety I was used to.
I'd lived with anxiety for years. Normally, there was a reason for it. Something would happen, my anxiety would rise and eventually it would settle again. Even on difficult days, I still recognised myself underneath it.
This felt different.
It followed me everywhere.
Home. Pool. My PC. Around my family. Around my mates.
There wasn't one place I could go where I could completely leave it behind.
Then other things started changing too.
My appetite wasn't what it used to be. Some days I'd realise I'd barely eaten anything, not because I was deliberately avoiding food, but because I just didn't feel hungry. Even when I did eat, it often felt like I was doing it because I knew I had to rather than because I actually wanted to.
Sleeping became difficult as well.
Night used to mean the day was finished. I could get into bed, go on my phone for a while and eventually switch off.
Now, the quieter everything around me became, the louder my own head seemed to feel.
I'd lie there tired but unable to properly settle. There wasn't necessarily one thought keeping me awake. My mind just wouldn't seem to stop.
Then morning would come and I'd already feel exhausted before I'd done anything.
It wasn't the kind of tiredness that disappeared after a good night's sleep. It felt mental, like my brain had been working constantly even when the rest of me was trying to rest.
Around this time, I started wondering whether the fluoxetine had something to do with what was happening.
I'd started taking it because I wanted my anxiety to get better.
Instead, I felt worse than I ever had before.
I'd been told things could get worse before they got better, and I tried to believe that. Maybe this was just the difficult part before the tablets started doing what they were supposed to do.
But the timing was difficult to ignore.
Then another part of me would argue against it.
I'd taken fluoxetine when I was younger. It hadn't affected me like this then. In fact, I'd eventually stopped taking it because I didn't really feel like it was doing much.
So why would this time be any different?
I didn't know.
One minute I'd convince myself the tablets were responsible. The next, I'd tell myself I was overthinking that as well.
Even with those doubts, I carried on taking them.
I trusted what I'd been told. These things took time. They weren't supposed to work overnight.
So every tablet came with a small amount of hope.
Maybe this is the one where things start changing.
Of course, I knew logically that wasn't how it worked. But when you're desperate to feel better, you start looking for signs anywhere you can find them.
I was still trying to live normally too.
I'd turn my PC on because that's what I'd always done. Sometimes I'd sit there for a while trying to play something, but gaming wasn't the escape it used to be. I'd be looking directly at the screen while half my attention was somewhere else.
Some nights I'd manage a few games.
Other nights I'd turn the PC off almost as quickly as I'd turned it on.
My mind just wasn't there.
Pool started feeling different too.
Normally, asking me if I wanted a few games wouldn't require much thought. I'd grab my cue and go.
Now, even things I knew I enjoyed could feel like effort.
It wasn't that I'd suddenly stopped caring about them. That was what made it so confusing. I knew I liked gaming. I knew I liked pool. I knew I loved football.
I just didn't always feel the same connection to them.
Football probably came closest to breaking through.
If a game was good enough, I'd still get pulled into it. I'd complain about a decision, react to a chance or celebrate a goal without thinking about anything else for a moment.
Those moments were small, but I noticed them.
Then the game would finish.
The television would go off.
And everything I'd managed not to think about for a while would still be waiting for me.
When distractions weren't working, I'd usually end up on my phone.
At first, I was just trying to understand what was happening. I'd search for anxiety getting worse, strange thoughts, side effects from fluoxetine—anything that sounded remotely similar to what I was experiencing.
Eventually, I'd find somebody who sounded like me.
For a few minutes, that could feel incredible.
Someone else had experienced something similar.
Maybe that meant I was going to be okay too.
Then the relief would wear off.
I'd start feeling anxious again, so I'd search again.
Another post.
Another article.
Another few minutes of relief.
Then back to the beginning.
I didn't recognise it as a pattern at the time. I thought I was helping myself. Every search felt like I was getting closer to understanding what was happening.
Really, I was just desperate for somebody or something to tell me that I was going to feel normal again.
The days began to lose their edges.
Wake up.
Realise the anxiety was still there.
Try to get on with the day.
Distract myself.
Search for answers when that didn't work.
Hope tomorrow would be easier.
Then wake up and do it again.
All the while, I kept taking the fluoxetine.
I'd started the week believing I was giving something a chance to help me.
Now I was counting the days and wondering when that help was supposed to arrive.
Still, I kept going.
I'd been told it needed time.
And at that point, time was one of the only things I had left to give it.  

The Boy I Thought I'd Lost
Chapter One – Before Everything Changed
If someone had asked me what my life was like before all of this started, I probably would've told them it was pretty normal.
There wasn't anything particularly exciting about it, but I don't think I wanted there to be. I was seventeen, living at home and trying to work out what I wanted to do with my life while pretending I wasn't thinking about the future as much as I actually was. Most days followed a similar routine, and I wouldn't have changed it for anything.
I spent a lot of time in my room, not because I hated going out or didn't have friends, but because it was where I felt comfortable. My PC was there, my Liverpool shirts were on the wall, and after a while it became the place where I naturally ended up once the day had settled down. Sometimes I'd spend an hour watching YouTube before deciding what to do. Other times I'd go straight onto a game without really thinking about it.
YouTube had become part of my daily routine. Most evenings I'd find myself watching the Sidemen or anything else that popped up on my feed that looked interesting. Whether it was just another Sidemen Among Us video or some guy camping, I'd still watch it anyway. If nothing was catching my attention, I'd usually end up putting on The Flash. Looking back now, I think there was something comforting about it. I'd watched it so many times that I already knew what was going to happen, but maybe that was exactly why I kept going back to it. It never demanded anything from me. I could just switch my brain off for an hour and enjoy it.
Most evenings, I'd check to see if anyone was online. Every now and then, one of my mates would be around and we'd play for a bit, but it was never a massive group. I actually preferred it that way. Usually it'd just be one person, and sometimes nobody at all. If nobody was on, I'd just play something myself. I never really minded my own company.
Rocket League was probably the game I played the most. I wasn't amazing at it, but I wanted to improve. I spent far too much time convincing myself that if I just played one more game, I'd finally rank up. Sometimes it worked. Sometimes it didn't, and I'd end up rage quitting, only to convince myself five minutes later that one more game would be different. There was always that feeling that the next match might finally be the one where everything clicked.
When I got fed up with Rocket League, I'd end up on something completely different. Every now and then, I'd load up Minecraft. I hadn't stopped playing it because I didn't enjoy it anymore. I think I'd just grown up and found other games. But every time I went back to it, it felt familiar in a way I can't really explain.
I'd load into a world, recognise places I'd built years before and remember exactly where everything was, even if I hadn't played for months. The music would start, I'd wander around for a while and, without even realising it, I'd start thinking about being younger. Life felt simple back then. There were no worries, no overthinking and no anxiety. The only thing on my mind was getting home so I could jump straight onto Minecraft. At the time, it felt like the most important thing in the world.
I didn't sit there wishing I could go back to being a kid. I just enjoyed the nostalgia it brought me. It reminded me of a time when life felt simple, when the biggest decision I had to make was what game I wanted to play after school.
Football had always been just as important as gaming. Supporting Liverpool wasn't something I did because they were winning trophies. It had become part of who I was. Every fixture mattered. Every transfer rumour felt like breaking news. I'd spend hours watching videos about who we might sign next or imagining what the team would look like if everything went perfectly again.
Going to Anfield was something completely different, though.
No matter how many times I went, walking up to the stadium never got old. I'd make my way to my seat in the Kop, look around and remember just how lucky I was to be there. Then the scarves would rise into the air and the first notes of You'll Never Walk Alone would echo around the stadium.
Even now, it's difficult to explain that feeling.
Hearing thousands of people singing the same words together gave me goosebumps every single time. It didn't matter whether you knew the person standing next to you or not. For the next ninety minutes, you'd sing together, celebrate together, complain about the referee together and talk as if you'd known each other for years. It felt like belonging to something much bigger than yourself. As kick-off got closer, the atmosphere would build and the excitement inside the stadium became almost impossible to describe. Those few minutes before the referee blew the whistle were some of the best moments I'd ever experienced. For ninety minutes, nothing else mattered.
College wasn't too bad either.
There was plenty of work to get through and plenty of times when we'd get in trouble or just mess about when we had the chance. What I remember most is spending every day with my mates. During breaks at college, we'd wander around the shops with no intention of buying anything, play football until the ball went in the river or ended up on some roof no one could get onto, take the piss out of each other and somehow make an ordinary Tuesday feel like one of the best days of the week, yet still manage to get our work done. Looking back now, I think those ordinary days were probably some of the best. At the time, they just felt normal.
The best part of college wasn't arriving in the morning.
It was leaving.
There was something satisfying about finishing the day. I'd eventually get back home, put some comfy clothes on, grab something nice to eat and a drink, and decide whether I was going to jump on my PC with one of my mates or spend the evening watching a film or another episode of The Flash. There wasn't anything extraordinary about those evenings, but I loved them anyway.
Pool became another part of my life before I even realised it.
The more I played, the more I wanted to improve. Every game taught me something new, and I could feel myself getting better over time. Before long, I'd become the one who could beat every single one of my mates, and I won't lie, it was a great feeling. It wasn't about showing off. It was the satisfaction of seeing the time I'd put into something finally paying off.
Looking back, there wasn't anything extraordinary about my life. It was made up of small things that probably wouldn't have seemed important to anyone else. Watching every Liverpool game. Sitting in the Kop singing one of the most famous anthems in the world. Spending evenings watching any YouTube video that caught my attention or any movie or series I fancied watching. Playing Rocket League until I promised myself, "just one more game." Getting lost in old Minecraft worlds. Playing pool with my mates. Finishing college and knowing I could finally go home and relax.
They were ordinary days.
At least that's what I thought they were.
I never realised how special ordinary could be.
As far as I was concerned, tomorrow would probably look the same as today.
And honestly, I couldn't have been happier about that.
I had absolutely no idea that my life was about to change overnight.
** **
Chapter Two – The First Crack
Looking back now, I've asked myself the same question more times than I can count.
On what day, and in what moment, did my mind begin to turn on me?
I wish I had an answer.
I wish there was one moment I could point to and say, "That's where everything changed." It would've made so much more sense. It would've given me something to blame.
But life doesn't always work like that.
Sometimes you don't notice your world changing until you're already standing in the middle of it.
If you'd seen me back then, you would've thought I was exactly the same as always. I still laughed with my mates. I still watched football whenever it was on and spent my evenings watching whatever series or film I fancied. I still spent hours on my PC, convincing myself one more game of Rocket League would finally be the one where I ranked up.
From the outside, I looked completely normal.
The strange thing was...
I thought I was too.
I had no idea that, over the next few weeks, my own thoughts would begin to feel completely different. Things that would've once passed through my head without a second thought started sticking around far longer than they should have.
At first, I told myself everyone probably had strange thoughts from time to time. What I didn't realise was how quickly one thought could spiral into hundreds more, and how difficult they would become to ignore.
Looking back now, I wish I'd treated that first thought the same way I'd treated thousands of others throughout my life.
Notice it.
Let it pass.
Instead, I did the one thing my anxiety wanted me to do.
I paid attention to it.
From as young as I can remember, I'd struggled with separation anxiety.
If my mum went somewhere without me, my mind always seemed to imagine the worst. It wasn't because I didn't trust her or because she wasn't capable of looking after herself. It was because my brain had an incredible ability to convince me that the worst possible outcome was the most likely one.
It wasn't easy.
It never was.
For years, Mum and I tried everything we could think of. Therapy. Different ways of coping. Different routines. Some things helped for a while. Others didn't seem to make much difference at all.
Eventually, as I grew older, I learnt how to live alongside it and manage it.
Even though I'd learned to live alongside my anxiety, there were still days when it got the better of me. Some mornings I'd wake up already feeling on edge without really knowing why. Other days I'd manage just fine. It was unpredictable, but after years of living with it, I'd accepted that anxiety was probably always going to be part of my life.
It never completely disappeared.
The difference was that I'd learned how to carry it.
I still went to college. I still watched every Liverpool game. I still spent evenings on my PC, laughed with my mates and enjoyed all the little things that made life feel normal. Anxiety hadn't beaten me. It had simply become something I lived alongside and had learnt how to manage.
I'd even been prescribed medication when I was younger. For a while, it seemed to help. Eventually, though, I stopped taking it because I wasn't convinced it was doing much anymore. If anything, I sometimes felt more on edge than before.
Life carried on.
Mum and I kept doing what we'd always done. We dealt with the difficult days together and enjoyed the easier ones. It wasn't perfect, but we'd learned to cope.
Then, after another particularly difficult period, my support worker suggested it might be worth trying medication again.
At the time, it didn't feel like a life-changing decision.
If anything, it felt like the obvious one.
I hoped it might make things a little easier.
I had absolutely no idea that the next three weeks would become some of the hardest of my life.
I can still remember picking the prescription up. It felt strangely ordinary. There wasn't some dramatic feeling telling me not to take it. No voice in the back of my head warning me to stop.
To me, it was just another attempt at getting a bit of my old spark back. I remember taking the first tablet straight away outside the pharmacy before we'd even driven home. It felt like another step towards getting my anxiety under control.
There was no fear. No feeling that I was making a mistake. If anything, I felt hopeful. I'd lived with anxiety for years, and if there was even a chance these tablets could make life a little easier, then it felt worth trying.
As far as I was concerned, this was just another attempt at getting back to living normally. I never imagined I'd spend the next few weeks feeling further away from myself than I'd ever felt before.
The first evening came and went without anything that made me stop and think. I went home, put the football on and settled down to watch the World Cup like I had done most days that summer. If you'd asked me how I felt, I probably would've told you I felt exactly the same.
I wasn't sitting there waiting for the tablets to suddenly change my life. In fact, after a few hours, I'd almost forgotten I'd even taken one.
The next morning didn't feel much different either.
I woke up, got on with my day and took my second tablet without thinking twice about it. It had already started to become part of my routine. Looking back now, I sometimes wish I'd paid more attention to those first couple of days. I wish I could tell you there was some warning sign I'd ignored or some feeling that told me something wasn't right.
There wasn't.
Everything still felt... normal.
At least, that's what I believed.
The third day started no differently from the first two. I woke up, got on with my day and carried on as normal. The World Cup was still on, which meant staying up until stupid hours of the morning just to watch the games. It didn't matter who was playing. Good teams or bad, I watched every single one because it was football, and football made me happy.
The summer holidays carried on like they always had, and there wasn't anything that made me think my life was about to change. If anything, I remember thinking the tablets probably hadn't done much at all. I'd only been taking them for a couple of days, and I knew they weren't supposed to work overnight. I carried on believing that, sooner or later, they'd start helping.
I wish I could tell you exactly when that changed.
I can't.
The rest of the day passed without me giving the tablets much thought. I watched the football, scrolled through my phone and spent some time on my PC like I always did. If you'd asked me then, I'd have told you everything was fine. Nothing felt dramatically different. Life still looked exactly the same as it had a few days earlier.
It must have been later that day when something happened that, at the time, didn't seem important.
A thought crossed my mind.
It caught me off guard. Not because it frightened me straight away, but because it felt so unlike the thoughts I normally had. It was one of those moments where I stopped, smirked and thought to myself, "Where the fuck did that come from?"
It wasn't something I'd ever sat and worried about before. It wasn't something that had occupied my mind in the past.
It was just... there.
I remember pausing for a second.
That was strange.
Then I carried on with whatever I was doing.
Or at least, I tried to.
A few minutes later, it was back again.
This time, instead of brushing it aside like I would with any other random thought, I noticed it properly. Something that should've been completely forgettable had managed to catch my attention, and once it had, I found it difficult to leave alone.
Like everyone else, I'd had thousands of random thoughts throughout my life that I'd never paid any attention to.
For some reason, this one stuck.
Not because the thought itself was louder.
Because I listened to it.
I wanted to understand why it had appeared. More than anything, I wanted the uncomfortable feeling it had created to disappear so I could get back to whatever I'd been doing before.
But the more attention I gave it, the harder that became.
Looking back now, I can see that was the moment everything started to shift.
Not because I'd had a strange thought.
Everybody has strange thoughts.
The difference was that I treated this one as though it needed my attention.
I couldn't have known it then, but from that moment on, trying to make sense of what was happening inside my own head only seemed to leave me more confused.
Without realising it, I'd taken the first step into a cycle that would soon consume almost every waking moment of my life
 
 
Chapter Three – Inside My Own Mind
** **
I wish I could tell you that I woke up the next morning and everything had gone back to normal, like it was just any other day.
I didn't.
Around the same time, I'd recently started taking fluoxetine to help with my anxiety. I'd been told it could take a few weeks to work and that things might feel worse before they got better. I didn't think too much of it at first. I just wanted to feel like myself again.
But when I woke up that morning, the thought was still there.
Not constantly. Not every second of the day. But it was there enough for me to realise that I couldn't quite forget about it.
At first, I tried to convince myself it was nothing.
Everyone has weird thoughts from time to time, don't they? They just move on, go about their day and forget about them.
That's what I told myself, anyway.
The problem was that the more I tried to reassure myself, the harder it became to leave the thought alone. Any relief I managed to find only seemed to last a few minutes before the uncomfortable feeling returned.
Back then, I thought I was just trying to make sense of something that didn't make any sense.
I kept telling myself to forget about it. I wanted everything to go back to normal, and I genuinely believed that if I stopped thinking about it, the thought would eventually disappear.
For a while, I convinced myself I'd already moved on.
I hadn't.
I kept asking myself why these shitty thoughts kept popping into my head for no reason.
It didn't stay as just one thought for long. Once I'd started paying so much attention to what was going on inside my head, other uncomfortable thoughts seemed to stand out too.
They would appear when I least expected them. Sometimes it was the original thought. Other times it was something completely different. What they were about mattered less than the feeling they created whenever they appeared.
I couldn't understand why my own mind was suddenly producing things that made me so uncomfortable.
So I kept trying to understand them.
Looking back now, I think that was what kept me trapped. I thought that if I could just make sense of everything going on in my head, I'd finally be able to relax. Instead, every attempt to find an answer seemed to give me another reason to keep thinking.
Before long, it wasn't just individual thoughts I was struggling with.
It was the constant feeling that came with them.
I felt permanently on edge. Even when there wasn't one particular thing bothering me, there was still this sense that my mind was running in the background, waiting for something else to grab onto.
There wasn't an off switch anymore.
I could be watching football, out with my mates, playing pool or sitting with my family and still feel it. Things that would've once passed through my mind without any importance could suddenly hold my attention for far too long.
That was what exhausted me most.
I'd spent my entire life having thoughts without needing to understand every single one of them. Now it felt like my brain had forgotten how to do that.
And the harder I tried to feel normal again, the further away normal seemed to become.
I'd wake up hoping the feeling had finally gone. For a few seconds, before I was fully awake, everything could feel normal.
Then it would hit me again.
As my brain woke up, so did the anxiety and that familiar feeling in the pit of my stomach.
I'd tell myself, just get through today. Maybe tomorrow will be different.
That became something I held onto.
As the days passed, I started noticing that this wasn't the anxiety I was used to.
I'd lived with anxiety for years. Normally, there was a reason for it. Something would happen, my anxiety would rise and eventually it would settle again. Even on difficult days, I still recognised myself underneath it.
This felt different.
It followed me everywhere.
Home. Pool. My PC. Around my family. Around my mates.
There wasn't one place I could go where I could completely leave it behind.
Then other things started changing too.
My appetite wasn't what it used to be. Some days I'd realise I'd barely eaten anything, not because I was deliberately avoiding food, but because I just didn't feel hungry. Even when I did eat, it often felt like I was doing it because I knew I had to rather than because I actually wanted to.
Sleeping became difficult as well.
Night used to mean the day was finished. I could get into bed, go on my phone for a while and eventually switch off.
Now, the quieter everything around me became, the louder my own head seemed to feel.
I'd lie there tired but unable to properly settle. There wasn't necessarily one thought keeping me awake. My mind just wouldn't seem to stop.
Then morning would come and I'd already feel exhausted before I'd done anything.
It wasn't the kind of tiredness that disappeared after a good night's sleep. It felt mental, like my brain had been working constantly even when the rest of me was trying to rest.
Around this time, I started wondering whether the fluoxetine had something to do with what was happening.
I'd started taking it because I wanted my anxiety to get better.
Instead, I felt worse than I ever had before.
I'd been told things could get worse before they got better, and I tried to believe that. Maybe this was just the difficult part before the tablets started doing what they were supposed to do.
But the timing was difficult to ignore.
Then another part of me would argue against it.
I'd taken fluoxetine when I was younger. It hadn't affected me like this then. In fact, I'd eventually stopped taking it because I didn't really feel like it was doing much.
So why would this time be any different?
I didn't know.
One minute I'd convince myself the tablets were responsible. The next, I'd tell myself I was overthinking that as well.
Even with those doubts, I carried on taking them.
I trusted what I'd been told. These things took time. They weren't supposed to work overnight.
So every tablet came with a small amount of hope.
Maybe this is the one where things start changing.
Of course, I knew logically that wasn't how it worked. But when you're desperate to feel better, you start looking for signs anywhere you can find them.
I was still trying to live normally too.
I'd turn my PC on because that's what I'd always done. Sometimes I'd sit there for a while trying to play something, but gaming wasn't the escape it used to be. I'd be looking directly at the screen while half my attention was somewhere else.
Some nights I'd manage a few games.
Other nights I'd turn the PC off almost as quickly as I'd turned it on.
My mind just wasn't there.
Pool started feeling different too.
Normally, asking me if I wanted a few games wouldn't require much thought. I'd grab my cue and go.
Now, even things I knew I enjoyed could feel like effort.
It wasn't that I'd suddenly stopped caring about them. That was what made it so confusing. I knew I liked gaming. I knew I liked pool. I knew I loved football.
I just didn't always feel the same connection to them.
Football probably came closest to breaking through.
If a game was good enough, I'd still get pulled into it. I'd complain about a decision, react to a chance or celebrate a goal without thinking about anything else for a moment.
Those moments were small, but I noticed them.
Then the game would finish.
The television would go off.
And everything I'd managed not to think about for a while would still be waiting for me.
When distractions weren't working, I'd usually end up on my phone.
At first, I was just trying to understand what was happening. I'd search for anxiety getting worse, strange thoughts, side effects from fluoxetine—anything that sounded remotely similar to what I was experiencing.
Eventually, I'd find somebody who sounded like me.
For a few minutes, that could feel incredible.
Someone else had experienced something similar.
Maybe that meant I was going to be okay too.
Then the relief would wear off.
I'd start feeling anxious again, so I'd search again.
Another post.
Another article.
Another few minutes of relief.
Then back to the beginning.
I didn't recognise it as a pattern at the time. I thought I was helping myself. Every search felt like I was getting closer to understanding what was happening.
Really, I was just desperate for somebody or something to tell me that I was going to feel normal again.
The days began to lose their edges.
Wake up.
Realise the anxiety was still there.
Try to get on with the day.
Distract myself.
Search for answers when that didn't work.
Hope tomorrow would be easier.
Then wake up and do it again.
All the while, I kept taking the fluoxetine.
I'd started the week believing I was giving something a chance to help me.
Now I was counting the days and wondering when that help was supposed to arrive.
Still, I kept going.
I'd been told it needed time.
And at that point, time was one of the only things I had left to give it.  

Looking for a duo who’s not bad that they play like gold players. Always find someone who’s so bad and just bring my rank down, need someone who can handle it. Dm if interested

I started a new tablet for 3 weeks called fluoextine 20mg for anxiety and never had OCD in my life. Those weeks we’re the worst of my life, anxiety was through the roof, and then something else. Check-in my sexuality. I can’t stress how much this has affected me but it’s painful. I’m constantly checking every person i see every feeling seeing if i get a reaction etc and it’s painful. I’m at a point where i’ve forgot what normal feels like and the thoughts have happend that much idk what’s true anymore and it’s hurts because i know the thoughts of me being gay is wrong. After lots of research i think it’s something called HOCD. I’m 9 days off it today. Getting better by the day only in tiny parts but enough to be noticeable and know that i hope to be myself again. Any help is appreciated to get me out of this asap👍

I’m 17 years old and was prescribed 20mg of fluoxetine for anxiety. I took it for about 3 weeks, but I stopped it cold turkey 7 days ago because it seemed to make everything worse.
I started taking it for anxiety, but while I was on it my anxiety became much more intense. I also started experiencing what feels like HOCD with constant intrusive thoughts, even though I’d never had OCD symptoms before. On top of that, I developed severe brain fog, my sleep became terrible, and I started feeling emotionally numb.
It’s now been 7 days since I stopped taking it, but I’m still dealing with:
Severe anxiety
HOCD/intrusive thoughts
Brain fog
Emotional numbness
Not feeling like my old self
Has anyone else experienced something similar after only taking fluoxetine for a few weeks? How long did it take before you started feeling more like yourself again?
I’m not looking for a diagnosis—I’d just really appreciate hearing from anyone who’s been through something similar. Thanks.

I’m 17 and recently stopped taking fluoxetine after being on it for around 3 weeks. I’m now going into day 5 since stopping.
Since starting it, my anxiety and intrusive thoughts became much worse than they normally were, and I’ve also been struggling badly with sleep. Since stopping, my mood seems to be all over the place.
I keep having moments where I suddenly feel much more like myself again. I feel happier, have more interest in things and genuinely think I might finally be getting back to normal. The problem is, whenever these moments happen, they seem to last for only about an hour before everything changes again.
Then I go back to feeling low, anxious and emotionally numb, like I can’t smile or feel excited about anything. This isn’t what I’m normally like at all. It’s frustrating because during that hour I feel like me again, and then it feels like that version of myself just disappears.
I know fluoxetine has a long half-life, so I’m wondering if anyone else experienced this kind of back-and-forth after stopping it? Did you have short periods where you felt completely like yourself again before the numbness and anxiety returned? If so, did those periods of feeling normal eventually start lasting longer as things settled down?
I’m not looking for medical advice or planning to change my medication based on Reddit. I’d just really appreciate hearing from anyone who’s had a similar experience and whether things eventually settled down for you.