My name is Alexey Kruglov. I was born in 1990 in a small town of Yaroslavl, 150 miles away from Moscow. During my mother’s pregnancy she got into a minor car accident and that may be the reason my brain doesn’t function as well as it should.
I was raised in a strict household and did my best to be a good boy which wouldn’t save me from violent behavior from my mother and indifference from my father. I used to get the best grades at school and later at the university where I studied to become an English teacher.
During my childhood I remember to have both psychological breakdowns out of nowhere and terrible headaches that would go away only if I made myself throw up. My parents thought it was because I have poor hygiene and punished me for this. Learning something was very hard for me, especially learning how to play the piano but I basically devoted my life to get higher grades.
When I was 18 I met the mother of my daughter and tried to be a good husband and father for the next 5 years suffering from constant headaches and depression. After 5 years my wife left me with my daughter, Agatha, who is now being raised by my parents. They have realised their mistakes and treat her as a little princess who she really is. Or maybe they just always wanted a girl?
Nevertheless a year after the divorce I quit my job as a mortician (my 13th or 14th job in 8 years) to fulfill my old dream – building strange gear. During that year I have produced and sold over a hundred wild pedals with the help of the kindest people on Earth – the gearfreaks.
Throughout the years I have visited a lot of doctors in Yaroslavl searching for help mostly for my anxiety and depression as by that time I got used to the headaches and just thought that feeling like crap all the time and not being able to remember things I experience visually is normal.
I had no luck with heavy tranquilizers and modern antidepressants so with the help of my friends I went to Moscow to see some top Russian psychologists and neurologist and in October 2016 I was diagnosed with bad vascular brain and neck conditions. Doppler ultrasound tests have shown that the bloodstream to my brain is slowed down to a half of a normal one, several in-brain connections are damaged and my intracranial pressure is way too high. My body tried to adopt which has caused tachycardia and breathing problems – but my brain was still suffocated. Other symptoms included problems with hypothalamus functions, bad memory, photophobia, anxiety, depression and insomnia.
I went to Moscow for a two week course of intensive treatment and everything I could think about was getting better and getting back to building pedals. The treatment seemed to have helped and a new pedal was finally released along with new orders, more PCB stuff etc.
Two months after I tried to hang myself in my workshop. It was my third attempt to end everything that was happening to me but luckily I was too heavy for the rope and fell on the floor crying and screaming for the next countless hours. When I stopped crying I decided to go back to the only working distraction – building pedals.
Summer meant hard work and a lot of new amazing ezhi&aka pedal users.
Unfortunately it seemed to drain too much from me and I faced a doctor again.
Simply put, I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. Apparently my brain damage affected my psychological state and this had a name. After that I was put into a mental institution.
Funny thing is though bipolar disorder has two polar conditions in itself Russian doctors only treat you from mania (tied to bed and being injected with high doses of meds) or from depression. No one addressed my anxiety issues and no one gave me any normotimics.
At first lovely psychiatrists from Yaroslavl State Hospital promised a two week stay, then a month stay, and then they just didn’t know (a year maybe), so I left to fulfill numerous orders.
For more than two years after that I’ve been visiting the single psychiatrist in Yaroslavl who seemed to take my problems seriously and wanted to help.
Unfortunately there is no recipe of treating bipolar disorder so these two years simply turned me in a guinea pig for myself, swallowing countless pills and tripping between super active nervous state and a dark dark depression.
In summer 2019 my doctor said I’ve reached a remission state so for the very first time in my life I more or less feel like I should have without the illness and brain damage.
That meant, it was a perfect the time to do my best and provide you with the most insane yet controllable pedals and finally release the new series pedals.
Unfortunately the remission lasted for only two weeks and I went back to being a guinea pig taking countless meds trying to balance my state.
Though it sometimes suffered from me not being able to cope with my illness, work has always been my best medicine and you – my friends in gear – my best doctors.
If not for you I would have killed myself already. Thank you for saving me numerous times.
Working with only one doctor has some negative sides too. Yes, decisions are made pretty quickly, yes, he seems to remember the whole course of your treatment but a doctor is a human being after all and not an all-knowing robot dedicated to treating you only. My psychiatrist finally was frustrated by the lack of decent improvements in my condition and the longer it went, the less he seemed to care.
2020 was a nighmarish year for most people, I wasn’t an exception. I somehow held on till August and fell into the deepest and the most painful depression of my life then. I stopped eating and sleeping, lost more than 30 pounds in a month, faced neglect from my current doctor and was 100% sure nothing would help me and my last chance was electric shock therapy.
This therapy is very costly even in Russia, not to mention long and scary, very scary with a pretty large chance of complications including memory loss. But I really wanted this hell to stop.
I’ve found two medical institutions ready to provide electric shock therapy in Moscow and Saint Petersburg. First variant was closer and cheaper so I went to Serbsky Clinic in Moscow to try and persuade them to treat me.
Being probably the best psychiatric doctors in Russia they didn’t even try to listen to me, almost immediately diagnosing me with heavy depression and benzodiazepine addiction from which they agreed to treat me, their way of course. I didn’t want to spend months in a mental institution again with no guarantee of anything and denied their kind offer only to be immediately threatened to be involuntary hospitalized. The only choice they gave me was hospitalization to their pretty nice Moscow clinic or our nighmarish soviet style institution in Yaroslavl. I somehow managed to escape promising everything they wanted from me and returned to Yaroslavl.
As I had nowhere to run, I decided to take my chances with a new private psychiatrist who seemed to care and prescribed some of the heaviest medications I have ever experienced.
My depression and desperation were too hard to bare and the very next day I mixed a lot of new heavy pills with as much alcohol I could drink and collapsed.
Some time after this I woke up to my surprise and since I’ve survived again I decided to apply every bit of energy and hope I had left to try and overcome my issues.
New tests showed I did have some brain damage in my right frontal lobe so I was prescribed some more vascular medication to help provide my brain with oxygen. New, carefully chosen antidepressants, normotimics and some additional pills were prescribed too and I started my new journey to remission.
After two months all the new pills started working and I literally jumped out of my misery becoming a lot more hopeful, strong and devoted to live a happy life than ever.
After some time my bipolar cycle continued dropping me into depression again. More new meds to come to try and fix it.
Autumn 2021 depression was one of the heaviest in my whole life. Still taking new meds after new meds with no particular improvement, being toxic to my closest people, being in debt with early preordered pedals, I finally decided to make the move – I sold my apartment, refunded the deposits and went to Saint Petersburg finally for electric shock therapy.
They checked me and were very happy to take my money – nearly 8k dollars – for 14 electric shocks. I don’t remember how I went there, don’t remember a lot of stuff from November 2021 to February 2022 due to the therapy. Literal electric shocks to the brain with a piece of something in your mouth so you don’t break your jaw or bite off your tongue. While I was receiving this treatment (the times I don’t remember) I seemed to become more aggressive and chaotic, managing to being toxic to my closest ones even via text messages I sent. I also did a lot of stupid things like trying to escape the clinic and buying two tickets on the same flight, even trying to fight another patient and losing a lot of the stuff I brought with me.
Luckily this effect wasn’t long, I was starting to think clearly again, but doctors wanted me to stay for another two weeks for more conventional treatment as I was unstable. They claimed they erased my fear and my anxiety which existed with me every day of my life poisoning it and making me miserable and weak. They were wrong. I was more or less ok at the clinic, but the day I returned home I woke up with the deepest and scariest anxiety in my life. I could feel it physically, like always, but this one, oh, this one was 10 out of 10.
I was basically unable to do anything and Saint Petersburg doctors left me with meds which didn’t help, as always. After two weeks of suffering I returned to my previous private psychiatrist and slowly with other new meds we stabilized me so I could return to work finally.
I lost relationships with some of my closest people, spent 50 days for 8k in a clinic and burned my brain 14 times just to get worse. From now on, no clinics, nothing, I don’t want anything like this happening to me any more.
WIth my current psychiatrist who is very interested in my case and seems to want to cure me a lot, we developed a new scheme, new meds, diet, new rules and are moving into the direction of complete remission and I’m very grateful for that.
My impulsive decisions, escaping into work and being a guinea pig for all types of meds, me trusting clinics and doctors led only to a fresh start where I need to change my life almost completely to get better. Hope new theory is correct and my organic bipolar anxiety disorder can be cured . I say cured because now we are trying meds and techniques to get to the source of my anxiety and mood swings. If we get there we can do something about it.
6 years of different types of therapy have brought me here. But I will keep fighting. Thank you all for being interested in what I do and helping me a lot with the financial part. I’ll always be grateful.
If you have any issues which make your life miserable, please search help and try not to lose hope. This might be a long journey, but every life is precious and is worth it. Feel free to contact me if you want to talk or share your pain and you don’t know who to talk too. I know how it might feel and I’m here for you if you need me.
Feel free to contact me alexey@ezhiandaka.art or DM me on instagram @ezhiandaka
Your friend,
Alexey