Psychosis?

[Anarchy]

OK, you are only about 15 years from when ideas of being contrlled or of controlling others were probably quite normal. I'm very roughly twice your age, but it is still easy to find myself re-living stuff that happened over 40 years ago.

____________________________

I'm no fan of meds

when someone comes up with a med that teaches people how to do long division and calculus...

Then, I might be more open to the idea that one day there could be a med that could teach the far more difficult and complex skills of coping with trauma.

sure, meds might break down an absolutely impenetrable wall of rigid thinking, in order to open someone up to talking therapies, but the are not a substitute for therapy.

An ex of mine, who has never lived in britain long term, accused me of paranoia when I tried to tell them about all of the near neighbours in Britain who have had police raids on their homes.
They've absolutely no experience of that sort of police state shit, so it is far easier to deny it than it is to try to understand that it is actually true.

 

[Friday]

I was originally going to put this in my above post, but decided it might not be relevant, & took it out. Sounds like it might be :

Symptoms start piling on top of each other, each making all of the others worse, and everything can spin very rapidly out of control.

ETA... This is a big part of why self care is so crucial (eating, exercising, sleeping), and why sometimes the absolute best thing to stop an out of control cycle is a massive chemical reset (aka sedative -for instant healing sleep- or fast acting anti-anxiety med) to hit the driving force behind what pushing things up to the level of psychosis. NOT things a person wants to take every day to manage symptoms, but a chemical smackdown, in order to break a cycle.

 

[Anarchy]

there's really none that will cause long term damage in the short term

I'll disagree with that
permanently trashed sexual function
tardive dyskinesia (it does tend to be with long term high doses, but not always, and it is permenant)
aplastic anaemia (fatal in about 75% of cases)

I don't particularly know CMan,
but at present, he's not exhibiting impenetrable rigid thinking, so that all drugs will do to him at present is numb him and slow the learning process for dealing with the feelings that he is getting

to learn to deal with feelings, you have to be experiencing them. If you are numbed, you don't feel or learn

when people come off the drugs, they get both the un addressed feelings returning, and the exacerbated effects of withdrawing from medication - and those are both to deal with at the same time.

Far better to only deal with one of them

but, unlike medical practitioners, I don't get drugs company sales reps calling and offering me "CPD Conferences" at golfing resorts, if I prescribe their products.

I know that is cynical, but I have a step parent and step sib who are / were both quacks. It happens.

 

[mary1979]

Lol looks like the 2 of you are getting along famously there @Anarchy ill leave you with it.


Ps. I experienced the sexual thing from first gen meds in the 90's.
It went away when I stopped taking them, and I'm told second gen has eliminated the issue entirely?

 

[Anarchy]

I spent a long time with someone who had lost the ability to respond after being on SSRIs. It didn't return in 3 or 4 years after they eventually quit them. AFAIK it has still not returned.

There was a young Spanish guy here who'd also had the same experience. I haven't seen him around for a while to know if anything returned.

I'm out too

 

[EveHarrington]

IMHO it's a bit irresponsible to issue such statements about meds only serving to numb you out------to a person who experiences paranoia. I think this is just more paranoia influenced fear.

As paranoid people we shouldn't be fueling each other's paranoia. It's hard to watch this happening-----

These blanket statements are unfair as they are untrue (as blanket statements). Just because some may experience numbing doesn't mean that all will. There is no way of knowing if any one person will experience

I personally don't experience numbing on meds.

 

[Kailani]

I went through some psychosis wondering myself, found out its PTSD. Dissociative. I thought people could be influenced by my thoughts. I heard and talked to voices in my head but they go away with distraction, EMDR and grounding also lack of sleep makes everything worse and increased stress. Self care helps. It can be PTSD and it can be other disorders. Hope you get better!

 

[Anarchy]

I heard and talked to voices in my head but they go away with distraction,

Hi Kailani,
I'm guessing that you've probably seen me writing this before, I'm putting it out there for anyone that hasn't seen it yet, because (IMO) it can't be repeated often enough

Hearing voices is normal for about 10% of the general population.
Only about 1% of the general population ever get diagnosed as psychotic and some of those won't have experienced voices;
so, at least 90% of those who hear voices will never get diagnosed as psychotic

There is an international hearing voices movement, that was started by two Dutch psychiatrists. It seeks to end the false medicalisation of the experience, in just the same way that gay liberation largely ended the false medicalisation of homosexuality

 

[Anarchy]

Just because some may experience numbing doesn't mean that all will. There is no way of knowing if any one person will experience
I personally don't experience numbing on meds.

Hi Eve,
maybe "masking" would be a better word for me to have used.
The med takes the feeling away while the med is being taken, but stop the meds and the person is still no further forward in learning how to deal with the feelings.

I may be alone in having posted that view on this thread, but I'm certainly not alone in holding that view on the board.

I'm not going to tag them here (PM me - they did say it on an open forum, so I can certainly tell you their name) , but one of the people who has expressed the view that they had to begin learning to deal with feelings after the drugs had masked them previously, also said that they were getting "brain zaps" for about 7 months after they came off the med

so they had to get accustomed to feelings that they had become totally unaccustomed to, AND deal with crappy withdrawal effects too.

 

[EveHarrington]

@Anarchy

I find it amusing that you're pushing a view of which you have no immediate experience!

Really------honestly? I don't think you have any idea what it's like to have your system so completely out of whack that you'd gladly deal with a little numbing in order to have the system calm down so that it can get to a reset point. (It happened to me!)

I say this based on my own personal experiences. I'm not drug pushing. Rather I see a lot of myself in this poster and so I share my personal experiences. It breaks my heart to see others suffering and then see people trying to scare them away from treatment which could help. I don't honestly think you're being all that helpful-------remember, your breed of paranoia allows you to function at a certain level and not everyone is at that level so scaring them away from medicinal intervention isn't really helping, is it?

Remember, people complain more than they praise. If something is bad, people will whine about it but when something is good people are less apt to sing its praises. In this light, "data" about drugs that you've pulled from the forum is grossly skewed.

Yeah, I'm usually about taking what you want and leaving the rest, but given this posters apprehension about medication and paranoia struggles--------I just don't think it's good for others to be fueling the fear.

 

[joeylittle]

No they did not use those specific terms, although they can't seem to pin-point the reason behind some of my symptoms, I don't know why. They just looked puzzled then gave me a prescription for Risperidone and another for sleeping.

Just have to point out - you are mind-reading them. You said in a number of posts that they look puzzled, or don't appear to know what to do with your symptoms. Unless they've actually expressed that, then you don't know what they are thinking, and you should most definitely ask.

That specific batch of symptoms you are describing: thinking you can control or hear other peoples' thoughts, that you can influence their actions with your mind, or be influenced by their minds, that you are being brainwashed; and, believing in these things strongly enough, even temporarily, to verbalize your belief in them (rant) for periods of time...those are symptoms that can go with a number of different diagnoses. It could go with PTSD, it could be something else. You don't seem to have enough symptoms presenting to warrant a different diagnosis at this time. Mind if I ask how old you are?

What they are doing (right or wrong) is trying to treat the symptoms, to see if/how they respond to medication. If the symptoms diminish, then you at least have something that will keep them under control while you work on them, so that when you drop the medication, you will hopefully have addressed the root cause.

Not everyone needs or wants medication. Personally, I'd be lost without it - but that's just me.

Whether you decide to try the risperidone or not, you must get yourself into some good solid therapy, and I'm going to recommend CBT as the best place to start. It's not everyone's cup of tea but - for what you are describing - it's the only evidence-based treatment that we currently have. Simply put - it's the one that works, if you are willing to work with it.

You might find it very difficult to do without medication support, but if you want to give it a go, you should.

None of what you describe is going to solve itself, nor will it get solved in traditional talk-therapy.

 

[Deleted member 29311]

Just have to point out - you are mind-reading them. You said in a number of posts that they look pu...

I agree joeylittle.

I'm just confused about everything and I know out of personal experience that simply talking to a therapist does nothing for me, I've been there done that over and over and none of it has helped unfortunately, despite their best intentions and efforts which I appreciate.

I completely agree, so many disorders have common symptoms, it's very difficult to diagnose people at times. Even doctors and psychiatrists misdiagnose and make mistakes all the time and I'm sure there's many people who walk around thinking they have this or that, when in reality it's not it at all.

Some times the only way to heal is to try different medication which we take chances with. No doctor or psychiatrist can prove what anyone's chemical imbalance is, otherwise everyone would be given the right meds right off the bat and there'd be no guessing. No one can prove anything which is something that's always bothered me. With something like diabetes, they can measure your blood sugar and stuff and actually show you the exact numbers and what's wrong, although with mental illness they can't do that. No one can actually prove to you what's wrong or show you what's wrong, with concrete evidence.

I guess the only thing we can do is try different medication until one works like you said and try different therapy in hopes that everything works out in our favor. It's a bit of a scary and long journey.