
5150 and 5250 must be the statute in California. In Florida, our involuntary commitment law is known as the Baker Act. They can only hold you for 72 hours involuntarily but a qualified person could (based on their professional judgement/criteria) say that you meet the requirements for involuntary inpatient or outpatient services. So whether it was a 5150 or the Baker Act--I do think that sometimes these places do more harm that good and the committed person can end up being misdiagnosed or even having their rights taken away. When I was committed, I spent the entire stay trying to act as normal as possible (even though I was suffering) in order to ensure I was deemed competent enough to be in charge of my one life (voluntary stayed to more days thinking that acting "cooperative" would help). So I know how stressful it is and I am sorry this happened to you.
As far as the way you look goes, you can get all that back--it will just take time. Eat healthy, exercise, no alcohol or pot--depending on how overweight you are---in 6 months, 1 year, maybe 2 years, you can recover from this all. I have seen people who have been mostly unhealthy for most of their lives change their ways as late as their fifties, make serious progress, losing as much as 50 pounds which also has wonderful implications for their stamina and overall health. You CAN do this. You just have to be committed to eating healthy (no sugar), exercising every single day, and totally giving up alcohol and pot. I once drank frequently (only used pot a few times but it did make me lazy, hungry, more hypersexual, etc.) and I really am glad that I have mostly given these things up. I think that to much alcohol and pot can aggravate many mental health conditions making some people more unstable/less able to self regulate our reations to stress. As far as your meds go, I think sometimes they can be helpful but medications that make you gain significant weight have always been a "nonstarter" for me. I would rather suffer significant mental anguish than take a drug that puts pounds on me, month after month. So I agree that's an unacceptable side affect. Personally, I am taking a couple of psych drugs (they have been making me more stable) and have managed to lose 15 pounds while mostly taking them. Anyways, I am so sorry that the "support" provided to you by both mental health professionals and your family was mostly negative. Unfortunately, I think most patients have to figure these things out through trial and error and by looking back at past experiences in their lives. I mean, when you (and I) are not happy with our lives as we know them, we cannot expect things to improve unless we figure out the things we did wrong in the past and make the commitment to do things differently from now on. And I know it is not always easy to change things but I wish you luck and hope this post will encourage you in some way.