My Experience with Electroconvulsive Therapy (ECT) and Memory Loss

An incident happened when I was visiting relatives during Chinese New Year this year. When I considered that with what I read in my old journal, I decided I should write about my experience with electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) and my memory loss. I think I do have a little problem…

Trigger warning: I’ll mention self-harm and suicide ideation in this post. Please don’t read this if they are triggers for you.

What led up to the ECTs?

I’m a dysthymic. For those who are unfamiliar with the term, dysthymia or persistent depressive disorder describes people with chronic mild depression. I describe it as living with a constant grey shroud over my head. I could pass off as normal, but I know something’s wrong. Dysthymia is so persistent and pervasive that it often feels like a disposition, but it isn’t.

Sometimes, I get bouts of depression on top of the dysthymia, and this is known as double depression. And this was what happened between 2014 all the way to the end of 2015. Two long and miserable years.

I’ll be lying if I said I remember what happened, which is probably a good thing. I knew I was in a difficult place, but it took reading my old journals to remember how difficult it was. Let’s just say I was depressed, self-harming and suicidal. I drank more than usual and messed around with my wrist, always wishing I cut deeper.

So I sought help and the doctor put me on a bunch of medications. None of it worked, not even talk therapy. Eventually, things escalated and I checked in to the hospital twice in 2015 voluntarily. Since I wasn’t responding to the regular treatments, the doctor recommended ECT.

The ECT process, very briefly

They carry out ECTs in batches, so there’s a bunch of us all lined up in trolleys in a large room, waiting to be shocked during each session. When it’s almost our turn, they’ll stick electrode patches all over our head and torso.

I can’t remember if I had a mouthguard, but when it’s my turn, they wheeled me into the ECT room and hooked me up to the machines. Then the anesthetist injected me with whatever that puts me under general anesthesia.

When I’m unconscious, the doctor administered carefully controlled electric currents to induce a seizure in my brain.

The next thing I know, I was regaining consciousness in a room full of people also doing the same. Then the nurses made the rounds to ask each of us questions – what day is it? What’s your name? Who’s the president? And so on and so forth.

The process didn’t hurt, though I’ve had severe body aches after the first couple of times I had it. I don’t remember if I had headaches or how I felt afterward (sorry!), but I always had to sleep after a session.

The Memory Problems

After the ECT

My memory has been a little glitchy ever since I had the ECTs. I can’t remember things that happened around the time I was hospitalized and shocked. For a while, I didn’t realize my friends visited me in the hospital until my family mentioned it and I confirmed it in an Instagram post.

That was my first inkling that this memory loss is not simply forgetting. This is like you don’t know it happened, and when someone reminded you about it, you don’t remember what happened. When you try to think about it, what you seem to remember feels like an imagined scenario pieced together using fragments of what you know from that time.

I suppose this is normal for events that happened a long time ago, but it was a recent event when I lost that memory.

The faces I saw and the stories I heard in the ward have faded from my memory. When I read about it in my journal, I was surprised so many of them talked to me, they waved goodbye enthusiastically to me when I left the ward. I wish I’d remember it.

I can’t tell you how many ECT sessions I had. But I remember my mom always being there to take me home after the therapies because they can’t release us until a guardian signs us out. My poor mother.

I forgot important details at work – not like I remember what they are now. Sometimes I’m listening but nothing’s going in, sometimes I’m reading and not comprehending. I can’t tell you how frustrating it was to have to read sentences over and over to understand them. Thank god that has improved.

Often, words just vanished from my head. Or I’ll find it impossible to focus on conversations.

Some of these symptoms could very well be due to the psychiatric medication I was taking, it’s impossible to know for sure. But I’ve noticed that I remember words to songs I learned before the ECT better than the songs I learned after the ECT.

More recently

I learned that you don’t know what you forget. :p Chunks of conversation with people vanish from my mind without my knowledge. I found out this was happening after going to the States and Anth noticed it.

For instance, I was googling “talons” a couple of weeks ago and came across a picture of a large bird – the harpy eagle. They are out of this world! Amazed and impressed, I sent the link to Anth, telling him they reminded me of the Night King in Game of Thrones.

Guess what? Anth had sent me pictures of the harpy eagle before, and I’d told him the same thing, that they reminded me of the Night King. I could’ve sworn I didn’t know birds that large exist. Can you forget seeing pictures of such a magnificent creature? Apparently, you can. I did.

I don’t know if this is normal but I usually can’t remember what I wrote in blog posts after a while. It’s normal right? In general, I’m okay understanding things, I just can’t remember what I understood afterward, like baseball rules.

It’s also harder than it was to talk to people since my brain doesn’t run as smoothly. When I try to recall things I read, there’s a haziness around them.

Why I had the ECTs done

Anth often wondered why I accepted the doctor’s recommendation for ECT. Did I not know that it can screw with the memory? I couldn’t remember why I accepted it too. I told him I probably was so depressed I didn’t care what it did to my brain. Even though I cherish my brain.

Then I read my old journals and realized I did research on ECT. I knew about the memory problems it could cause. In fact, friends in the same ward told me ECTs are risky, it even made one of the patients violent. But I went for it anyway, because I felt that the choice was between ECT and self-destruction.

Why talk about it now?

It’s been 4.5 years since the treatment, and though I still forget chunks of conversations, my self-expression has improved a little since I started writing regularly.

So, even though I wonder about my memory loss, it’s harmless and even normal for the most part. I’ll be honest, I don’t know what’s normal and what’s not. Everyone forgets stuff. Where do you draw the line of normality?

Then a curious incident took place.

An anecdote

On the second day of Chinese New Year, my family and I went to my second uncle’s place as we always did. We’re not close, but he has always been good to me so I was low-key looking forward to seeing him.

Only their helper was home, so we stood around in the living room while she called my aunt. My siblings started offering incense to a tablet placed on a table – the typical set up for a home with a deceased loved one.

That’s when I realized he may have passed away.

I read the name on the tablet but I wasn’t sure. Could it be for an ancestor? I couldn’t have forgotten about something like that, can I? I could still hear his voice in my head and remember how he’s always nice to me in his distant, quiet way.

Yet I couldn’t remember if he’s alive.

When my aunt – his wife came home, alone and a little different. I knew. My last remaining uncle passed away while I was in the States. I was told about it. But I forgot about it.

The confirmation brought back ghosts of the memory of my siblings texting me. I probably expressed my regrets and sadness to Anth, but I can’t say when that happened. Those memories weren’t there when I stepped into the house. It was lost somewhere in my faulty brain.

I kept quiet about it and offered incense to his altar, but it bothered me for the entire day. How could I have forgotten the death of my uncle? I can only blame it on the ECT. What else can it be? And that’s why I felt the need to share about my memory loss from ECT. It’s just so weird.

Did ECTs help with my depression?

Reading my journal, it’s apparent that I was still depressed after the ECT, unless it helped me gradually and I didn’t know. I thought it gave me some clarity, but it obviously came with cognitive costs. If I wanted clarity, I could’ve tried mindfulness practice.

Eventually, since the meds didn’t help too, I stopped seeing the psychiatrist and weaned myself off of the psychiatric meds. I felt like the medications put a wall between me and who I am and I didn’t like that. Please don’t do this though, what I did wasn’t right. The withdrawal was bad, and it could’ve made me a lot worse. I had to deal with brain zaps, giddiness, nausea, and tremors, etc.

In the end, it was Vedanta (the ancient teaching about consciousness) that helped me. Now I coexist with dysthymia. I still get bad days, but I have mental tools to deal with them.

In conclusion

Do you think my memory loss is an issue? To be honest, I often don’t know what’s normal and what’s not. Everyone forgets stuff. Where do you draw the line of normality? Maybe I just don’t want to admit that I got brain damage from it.

I can’t say if ECT is good or bad. I’m only one person with one disorder, and everyone’s brains are different and will respond differently to it.

Besides, everyone’s situation requires different treatments depending on what they’re suffering from, how resistant to treatments their disease is, and how urgently the help is needed. 

My hope is that writing about my experience can help someone out there make a more informed decision. Memory loss associated with ECT is a real concern and needs to be taken into consideration when evaluating treatment options. 

On a lighter note, I’m glad my memory problems are manageable. Inconvenient, yes, my brain isn’t as efficient as before, but worst things could’ve happened so there’s that to be thankful for. 

Have you ever had an ECT or known someone who did it? How was it? Was their memory affected? Let me know in the comments!