Welcome back to The House That Trauma Built. If the first two tracks were about internalizing blame and the sting of external rejection, “A Medicated Mess” is where we look at the systemic attempts to “fix” the resulting chaos.
This song is a deeply personal chronicle of my journey through the psychiatric side of the care system. It’s about the years I spent as a passenger in my own body, watching the world through a chemical haze that was meant to cure me but often felt like it was erasing me.
Table Of Contents
The Chemical Storm at Seven
The song opens with a startlingly young age, highlighting how early the intervention began.
“At seven, a small white pill for ADHD, / They said it was to calm the storm inside of me. / But the quiet it brought, it wasn’t peace, you see, / Just a thief in the night that stole my sleep away, / So Melatonin came to try and make me stay.”
At seven years old, the “storm” inside me wasn’t just neurodivergence; it was the beginning of a trauma response. But the system’s answer was pharmaceutical. I used the metaphor of a “thief in the night” because that’s what it felt like—something was being taken from me (my natural rest, my spark) in exchange for a “quiet” that didn’t feel like true peace. This began the “prescribing cascade,” where one pill’s side effects required another pill to manage.
The Numbness of Twelve
As I hit puberty, the world didn’t get easier, and the medicine cabinet grew.
“By twelve years old, life’s road was a bumpy ride, / A nervous energy I couldn’t keep inside. / Anxiety, they called it, with nowhere left to hide, / So Serotonin came to level out the score, / But the numbness it left, I’d never felt before.”
The term “level out the score” is a nod to the clinical idea of chemical imbalances. But for a child in care, the “score” is already skewed by environment and history. The result wasn’t balance; it was a profound numbness. This connects back to the “turning to stone” I described in “The Thing.” If you can’t feel the bad, you often can’t feel the good either.
The Chorus: A Crisis of Identity
The chorus asks the central question that haunted my adolescence:
“Was it me, or the medicine talking / A ghost in my own body, walking. / They were trading my chaos for a chemical calm, / But did the remedy do all the harm / Just a name on a prescription pad, / For the frightened little lad, trying to not be sad.”
This is the heart of the “looked after” experience regarding mental health. You become a “ghost in your own body.” The system often prioritizes “calm” over “healing” because a calm child is easier to manage in a residential or foster setting. I was just a “name on a prescription pad,” a set of symptoms to be suppressed rather than a “frightened little lad” who needed to be heard.
Fifteen and the Label of “Bipolar”
The third verse takes us to the most clinical and cold environment of all: the psychiatric hospital.
“At fifteen, the sterile hospital’s cold embrace, / Risperidone was added, another pill to place. / A new name for the struggle written on my face, / And whispers of bipolar started in the air, / A label I refused, a weight I couldn’t bear.”
The “sterile hospital’s cold embrace” is a theme we revisit in “My Story to Belong.” Here, the struggle is given a “new name”—a diagnosis. For many kids in care, labels like “Bipolar” or “Borderline” are thrown around before we’ve even had a chance to process our trauma. I called it a “weight I couldn’t bear” because once that label is in your file, it defines how every social worker and clinician sees you for years to come.
The Bridge: The Real Storm Begins
The bridge is the most visceral and aggressive part of the track. It represents the moment of rebellion.
“I ripped the labels from my skin, / Decided I would let the real storm begin. / Withdrawal’s fire, a hellish, shaking phase, / Burning right through that medicated haze. / But through the static, breaking low, / I heard a voice from long ago… it was my own, you know.”
Ripping labels from the skin is both literal (the stigma) and metaphorical. The “withdrawal’s fire” describes the physical and emotional agony of coming off heavy psychiatric medication, but it was a necessary “burn” to find the “voice from long ago.” That voice was the authentic Lee, the one who had been buried under years of prescriptions.
Outro: The Lingering Questions
The song doesn’t end with a neat, happy bow because the impact of over-medication doesn’t just disappear.
“Many years have gone by now, and battles still remain, / But there’s a flicker of strength that’s easing up the pain. / The questions linger, the answers aren’t so clear, / Was it the illness or the cure that I was meant to fear / Yeah, the questions linger… but the path is growing near. / The path to just being… here.”
This is the ultimate reflection: “Was it the illness or the cure that I was meant to fear?” For many care-experienced people, the “cure” offered by the state can be as traumatizing as the original “illness.” But the song ends with the word “here.” Despite the haze, despite the ghosts, I am present. I am no longer a “medicated mess”; I am a man finding his way home.
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