Mental health care in America. Every time I try to make an appointment to see someone I have to wait months to get in. And even with insurance it's incredibly expensive. Then when I finally see them it never goes well. After trying 12 different medications for over 5 years I finally found a combination that worked and I could function. Prozac/Xanax. I held a job and started going to college and I could drive a car, it was amazing. I saved up thousands of dollars and i was doing really well for myself.

Then I had to get a new psychiatrist when I moved and they refused to prescribe benzos to anyone because of the xanax/fentanyl epidemic going on. There was a language barrier so I'm not entirely sure what went wrong. But to get me to come off of it they wrote down in my medical file that I'm a xanax addict so that nobody will prescribe it to me ever again. There's no way I can contest what they put in my file because it's my word against a doctors word.

Since then I've been marked as someone who's going to abuse medications and I can't be prescribed anything that could potentially be abused. I haven't been able to find anything that works. I lost my job and I had to stop going to college because I can't sleep or function from the amount of panic attacks I'm having. I'm trying to do CBT and DBT therapy but that still hasn't helped with chronic nightmares/sleep paralysis/and night time panic attacks.

My psychiatrist told me to find a sleep specialist and get a sleep study done. My insomnia couldn't be helped with any combination of psych medication. And I can't be prescribed sleeping pills because they can be abused. Then I turned 26 and lost my insurance. I waited MONTHS to get signed up for Medicaid. Then I had to find a primary care doctor and wait for that appointment to get a referral to a sleep specialist. I finally saw the sleep specialist yesterday. They said there's nothing they can do for me and they suggested that I see a psychiatrist.

My last hope is that when weed gets legalized in my state I can try some different strains that will maybe help with insomnia. Idk what else to do. I've been following all the sleep hygiene rules and working on CBT and meditation. Nothing over the counter works and it feels like no doctors will take me seriously after they see my file.