On Tuesday night I finally caved in and took my antischizophrenia pills. My head has been going increasingly crazed ~ in the literal sense of cracked into zigzaggy shards, like crazy paving. I don't "hear" many "voices" nowadays in the way you might expect: that someone is talking when nobody is there. These days I hear random syllables, and they push and pull through my brains shaking them up as they go in a pneumatic kind of way. They feel sometimes distract me quite a lot. Sometimes I hear my name over and over. Sometimes they say "doo-doo-daa-be-do"; or random things like "trotter donkey". Sometimes they sound like something muttered, and I only catch the last word or two. I also heard my own thoughts spoken by strange voices in my head. Sometimes they echo around, as if I think them and somebody else repeats the last. The "hallucinations" if I can call them that, are much lower grade than they used to be. It took a few weeks off the antipsychotic pills to get as loud and as distinct as they are now. The longer I continued not taking them the more the voices came back. Which is depressing when I think about it in my rational self as it means I'm still mad and I don't like being crazy. I don't like having to take pills just to be more sane than mad (they never worked 100%). And I don't know when I would ever get a life back; on them or off them.The pills are so powerful I was in bed before 11pm. I slept right through and woke up feeling like it was 6 or 7am; but it was half past eleven. But I did't feel any saner than normal. Random syllables were echoing around and I sat in my blue velvet armchair and pondered where on earth my life is going.
I don't feel so terribly depressed now (or manic). I feel a kind of scattered distraction. If my dr hadn't told me I had a schizophrenic sort of thing going on I'm not sure I'd have been able to match what he told me with what I've read with what I've experienced. I don't think I'd be able to explain. I was never quite sure that what happens doesn't happen to everyone. I don't remember it ever happening to me before some point in my mid 20s, when Prozac originally set it off. A psychiatric person told me that one of the phenomena is a common symptom in certain mental states; it's called "thought echo".
No illicit drugs have ever caused anything like that, by the way. I only "heard voices" on drugs three times that I know of (you can only know that happeed by reviewing your experience and realizing that something you took to be real at the time could only have been a hallucination, which takes quite some concentration and insight to achieve).
So this is what's been happening. I've given in and taken psychiatric meds again. I know at least one person in NA would consider that "using" if I told them. NA can take a hike. In their collective experience hallucinations only occur when you're on drugs but in the past years I've hallucinated much more off drugs than on them, and the hallucinations have a different quality. LSD, for example, typically evokes intricate geometric designs, not voices. It makes you see abstract things, not actual objects, as I did in my manic swings. It's mania that made me hallucinate floridly. Mania lights up the brain like a christmas tree ~ brain scans have shown this. In that state just about anything that happens happens to you more vividly. I say "just about" because in that state I was impervious to cold. I never noticed my windows were wide open in January until my hands seized up enough to cause difficulties typing.I got up too late to go to NA last night. I got to my methadone chemist just minutes before they closed. The post office was shut already so I couldn't have withdrawn "B money" (gear money) even if I'd wanted to.
Those antipsychotic tablets have really done me in. I feel heavy-limbed and unsteady and I very nearly got the bus 2 stops to my methadone chemists because I couldn't handle the thought of walking there.So that's today for ya. I just want to go to bed again. I hate being on pills. It's bad enough being on methadone which keeps me physically OK, without having to take something else to be mentally OK.
Most people are mentally fine on methadone ~ so why I shouldn't be too..? Does anybody know enough about this to comment? I don't get why I of all people should be more sane on heroin than off it.I've got to go now. That awful game show where people pick boxes with random amounts of money inside is on and I've got to change channels. Cheery-bye now...
;-)
THE ROYLE FAMILY: Baby David's Christening Party
This is my favourite Royle FAmily episode of all. Everyone is drunk:
PSYCHOPHARMACOLOGY OF RISPERIDONE
by a risperidone-prescriber
RISPERIDONE
by a risperidone-taker; she describes 4mg as far too much ~ 4mg is my dose!
also she does look a bit manic, despite all those meds she talks about...
12 comments:
I heard a bunch of people talking on the radio a few nights ago. They were talking about the legalisation of heroin. There was a retired magistrate, an ex-cop, a lawyer and a human rights person. One of the things they raised in the discussion which made a lot of sense was that heroin could be produced in Australia by the government for fifty cents a shot. I wonder what Valerie would make of that? Safe journey. Paul.
Valerie would go nuts!
Did you know diamorphine costs the British NHS just under £5 for 100mg which is somewhere between £10 and £15 worth of good quality heroin. Not a good discount when you think of it. I think the suppliers are taking the piss with the price. Like you say it could easily go down to 50p a shot. If they cultivated opium poppies as extensively as coffee is grown nowadays I'm sure the price could come down to 50p a shot :-)
ps isn't the Royle Family so much more interesting than my borig old post ha ha ha!
You don't like Deal Or No Deal? I love it! I love the Royle Family too - especially the Xmas episode - cup-a-soup with a twist. LOL
I once had a kind of Thai cup a soup that was lemon grass flavoured. It was so good, you'd think the Chinese takeaway had made it (ie not v good at all, ha ha ha!) ... but v authentic!!
no Deal or No Deal does my head in!!
i would take anti d's but my gp willonly prescribe me prozac the first time it helped greatly the last time i tookit i could not tolerate the agitation, paranoia and panic so i stopped - he wont give me anything else as i used to be an addict
what a bastard! if you were an opiate addict you could point out that benzos are nothing like opiates. to be honest i don't understand why people abuse benzos ~ they don't get you high. taking Valium because you're stressed isn't abuse, any more than taking aspirin for a headache is drug abuse.
prozac isn't for everyone: it peps you up. there are some better ones that dope you down and so are easier to deal with: mirtazapine is one
i have heard voices outside myself but only on very intermittent occasions, and mostly when i was a youngster.
i have subsequently been told by creepy superstitious aunts that this was the spirit of my departed relatives getting in touch. also, as a child, i had visual hallucinations a lot. these have continued up till now, and leaving out those times i haven't slept in 3-4 days, the visual hallucinations happen quite a lot. it also happens that when i don't sleep for 2 days or more, usually due to some type of seldom mania that will occur within me/binging on uppers/drinking the hallucinations are very intense, both aurally and visually and are quite frightening. one time while i was on the mainland i was on a coach that was sitting in a car park waiting to depart, the engine turning over, and the noise of the engine turning over, rumbling away there was interpreted by me as a garbled monologue full of cynicism and threat. then, on the plane on the way home, my pals face was superimposed onto the back of his head the whole way, and a pigeon was flying round the cabin making the noise of a bluebottle fly.
those times i can't sleep due to the seldom mania that occurs, i will have rushing and profound (to me) thoughts, concepts and ideas that i know generated within my psyche but to all intents and purposes FEELS like it is originating from an alien source and i am simply the conduit through which these strange notions are being channelled.
i am with you on the badness of anti depressants. a good place to go and read about all the harm they can do is www.nomorefakenews.com
all the best gledwood
Wouldn't it be better to stick to a regular program of meds and try to give them a chance? You seem to chop, change, self medicate, you're all over the shop. Didn't your doctor tell you what to take and when, not just when you 'feel' like it? Psychiatric drugs need to be given a chance and used as prescribed. I don't know about these things, just curious.
as I made my first coffee this morn 6.45 the words tonkie ears were clearly in my head, no idea why. I wouldn't say i hear voices, but words/phrases defo just appear randomly and usually I say them out loud.
so, Anchovy was one of the 2 original "male" robos that i bought, the other one being Reginald. Then Anch mysteriously produced,Laddio,Samuel,Olive,Jack & Peach.
Two "friends" wanted a couple each, so I put Reg & Anch back together and sure enough 3 pups appeared, Ali (3legs), Brian & Frankie(girl). I had to keep Ali (obviously) and that left boy & girl so couldn't give them away as a pair. was happy to give up and send them (the people who wanted some) to the pet shop, but by the time the 3 pups were 4 wks old . . .5 more appeared!!! (I had left Reg in with Anch for four days after the birth, as advised by a website that said he would "help" with the pups!! ha bloody ha! yes he did help . .he helped make some more!! so two(females) of those 5 have gone next door, 2 females, dumpling & raggety have stayed with Anch & Frankie. One male, Bandulu is living with Reg., (keeping up?)
Now, Samuel & Laddio ("males") have lived together since last dec (peacefully)until I cleaned them out last week and found . . .yes u guessed it . . . 5 new born pups!!
So laddio gone back to live with his dad Reggie (who is now grandad)
I have now got two to give away (in a few weeks) and 3 spare! ;-).
They are notoriously difficult to sex, hence the shop selling me one of each. I keep saying if any more appear,they will have to go back to the pet shop . . .but I dont really trust the Pet shop . . and I think, well they r so small and so so cute . . there is always room for "one" more.
Sorry, you only asked who Anchovy was, you might have known I couldn't stop there ;-)
I can identify them all (bar the 5 new ones as they too young at the min) but they r gorgeous, their heads and tiny ears are like those of a baby otter, ok I gotta go get leccy for the meter, or freezer will defrost.
with love as always
take good care
di
x
Danny: That all sounds remarkably inconvenient. All I know about psychiatry (if you want to call it psychiatric) is that there are a lot of phenomena that don't fit the criteria for "psychosis" drs like to use. I knew someone who suddenly started hallucinating the day before he was to be released from the nuthouse. He was only in there for alcoholism nothing "psychotic"... I do believe he was telling the truth, but it's just one of those weird things that fits into no accepted category or box. "That's life"... I got ill once in India and had really weird delirious dreams on a coach about a woman walking through with fruit on her head. The ceiling of the coach was far too low for anyong to walk through without stooping, let alone somebody with fruit on her head!
I know what you mean about the face superimposed on the back of his head. When I was mad I saw a purple face emerging from somebody's neck, which wasn't as freaky as it sounds as everything felt unreal (so that felt unreal too).... ukkkk
Baino: I do take them every day NOW but I stopped for a while. They don't work properly if you chop and change and the side effects are always intense the first few days so I have to just take them take them take them without thinking about it.
Best thing about them is they let you sleep right through without waking up in the night.
Buggerlutz: I was convinced Itcgy Roborovski was a boy as she kept trying to climb on Spherical's back... I bought them from one of those pet superstores in an industrial unit and it turns out they did sex them properly as when she was older Itchy started spraying blood up the side of the glass, a kind of scent marking.
All I know is you look for 2 pink dots and near=female far away=male. I'm sure you know that now.
Doesn't Mummy Robo shoo all the others away from her nest?... If I can find it I will put the baby robos film up where they feed it's really funny.
Yeah words in the head, aren't always an "hallucination" but certainly aren't ordinary thoughts either. They get as loud as a hallucination but I can tell they're not real (somehow). I think the pills are taking them away again, whoopee !!~ not that they were horrible but inconvenient and I knew I was supposedly mentally ill when they happened which made me despair of ever being "normal". Not that I actually want to be "normal" but you know what I mean.......
I wish you had someone non-judgemental, not an addict, a friend who could come alongside you and be there. (Oh, George just chased a pigeon!) I know it would be for the long haul but I feel you need a friend more than anything.
Where o where will I find one Liz...????
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