On Some Real Shit: When My Antibiotics Sent Me into A SPIRAL

Let’s drop the polished, perfect language for a minute and talk about real .

If you’ve been following along with Mindful Pause, you know this space is all about micro-mindfulness and finding calm in the chaos. But last week? Last week was pure, unadulterated chaos.

I went through a full-blown manic episode.

Now, I’ve had my share of ups and downs, but this felt different. I was driving myself absolutely crazy, and worse, I was driving my elderly parents crazy. At one point, I was getting so many calls from nurses that I literally asked one of them, "Damn, how many of you am I going to talk to today?"

Her response? "Well, medication-induced mania is very serious."

Oh. Great. Thanks.

It turns out the culprit was Clindamycin—an antibiotic I’ve taken plenty of times before with zero issues. But here’s the wild thing about body chemistry: your body can decide to react differently to something at any time, as long as you've been exposed to it before.

When you’re in the middle of a manic state, your brain feels like a motor stuck at 10,000 RPM. You can’t think, you can’t rest, and your nervous system is completely hijacked. I desperately needed to bring myself back down to Earth so I could sleep.

So, what did I do? I literally shoved my face into a bowl filled with ice water.

It sounds extreme, but in Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), using extreme cold to stimulate the vagus nerve and crash-land your nervous system is a legitimate distress tolerance skill (the TIPP skill, specifically the T for Temperature). In that moment, sticking my face in ice wasn't some fancy, peaceful meditation—it was survival. It was a rapid, physical mindful pause when my brain refused to slow down.

I’m DEFINITELY not giving medical advice here, and I’m definitely not telling you what to do if you’re struggling. I’m just sharing what helped me pull myself back to reality during a terrifying moment.

Mindfulness isn't always sitting on a cushion with incense burning, talking in a soft, correct voice. Sometimes mindfulness is just doing whatever raw, practical thing you have to do to ground your body when everything feels like it's spinning out of control.] like my psychiatrist always tells me anxiety is always gonna be there. It's not about what you can do to get it to go away, its about integrating it into your life so integrate mindful exercises into your life to keep you grounded I'm telling you it does work.

Or, yet better yet become a beta test for mindfulpause.app, and let me know what features.you'd like to see in the app.

SIGN UP HERE