blinking with incredulity Lonely? But you have us, your imaginary friends. 
ETA: Honest to God, that’s how my wife once described you people. So I stopped talking about you, and now have a part of my life she knows nothing about. shrugging Her choice, though I’ve tried to get her on an invertebrate paleontology board so she can get some imaginary friends of her own.
My husband is bipolar. When he’s not on meds, he can be his normal self until he begins to cycle. Then he turns into a charming, seductive, psychopathic, hateful son-of-a-bitch who endangers himself and others. If he lives through that, he faces a good three months of depression so profound he can barely wipe his own ass. When he starts to feel better, the suicidal feelings will start.
When he takes his meds as prescribed, he is his normal self and has been for ten years.
Basically, anyone who wants to get on the psychopharmocology is bullshit wagon can kiss my ass.
Apology accepted. Thank you.
Would you like to elaborate? (Perhaps an analogy would help clarify your views.)
And more broadly speaking, this is exactly what’s so stupid about ianzin’s little “I want to know the real you” rant. I’m not on any psychiatric medication. Heck, since last November, I don’t even do recreational medication anymore, aside from the occasional alcoholic beverage. You know what? 99% of the people who meet me aren’t going to meet the “real” me. There’s all kinds of shit about who I am, and how I feel, that I’m not putting out there for public consumption, and every single one of you, ianzin included, is the same way. The “me” I’m willing to show to other people is passing through a dozen filters before it hits the outside world. If some folk need help setting up the filters they need to function in society, there’s nothing wrong with that.
Would you care to explain? Otherwise that calls for the world’s biggest :rolleyes:
Hmm. In the original thread Ianzin claimed that 30-40% of people in England are on drugs that alter their brain chemistry. If that is true, I’m inclined to think that this is too high in respect to what is necessary or advantageous.
I’m not sure how to ask this, and I’m probably going to screw it up but I’m not trying to be offensive.
The first two words you used there were “charming” and “seductive”, so clearly there’s some positive aspects along with the whole bunch of negative. My question is do the drugs dampen the positive aspects too?
I’m not saying that “drugs are bad, mkay” I’m just wondering if your husband feels he misses some ‘thing’ when on the meds. Of course it’s not worth him not taking the meds because the bad outweighs the good, but I’m curious.
Hopefully that makes sense.
And anyone talking about drugs masking the real person has never seem someone drunk, in vino veritas and a’ that.
SD
Thanks for starting this thread, Auto.
I was not going to bother responding to the original thread to avoid a total hijacking, but the sort of comments you are making, ianzin, indicate that you have no real knowledge about mental illness or its scientifically-supported treatments and are pretty much talking out of your ass. Your paranoia about psychotropic drugs resonates with my schizophrenic uncle’s feelings on the topic. He has a lovely tinfoil hat he’d like to share with you.
The brain is a physical entity. Emotions, personality, your sense of right/wrong, your perception of your self, etc. are all products of physical happenings in the brain. The brain is as physical and real and scientifically measurable as your heart, your liver, or your asshole. There is actually a whole branch of science dedicated to understanding the physical organ that is the brain–neuroscience. Because the brain is such a complex organ, psychopharmacology is not nearly as precise a practice as we’d like it to be, but then, we haven’t quite figured out cancer yet either.
Some people have mental disorders. Contrary to popular belief, there are not some mental states that are rooted in ‘‘emotional’’ problems and others that are rooted in ‘‘chemical’’ problems. All emotions, healthy or unhealthy, are chemical–they all come from the physical entity that is the brain. That is NOT to suggest that every emotional state or mental disorder should be treated with medication, no – The interesting thing about brain chemistry is how profoundly it responds to environmental and behavioral changes. Even emotional disturbances like depression and anxiety can often-times be addressed without resorting to medication.
As Autolycus mentioned above, however, the single most effective treatment of depression and anxiety is a combination of Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy and SSRIs. This has been demonstrated countless times in countless scientific studies.
Psychotropic meds, like all medications, can have some serious side effects, therefore a decision to take any sort of medication should not be taken lightly. They should not (in my very vehement opinion) be prescribed by General Practitioners and, absent a psychological emergency, should probably not to prescribed right off the bat, without attempting other treatment first.
I’m sure it must feel very important to you to know the ‘‘real’’ person instead of the ‘‘medicated’’ person, but I’m afraid it’s quite irrelevant to the person who is suffering. Depression, to name one example I’m particularly familiar with, is hell. What most people call ‘‘depressed’’ when they’re feeling down is a joke compared to the sheer misery that severe major depressive disorder can induce. I’ve suffered depression all of my life, but it didn’t really control me until I got to college. If you think the person laying in bed all day, refusing to bathe or eat, missing months of class at a time and praying only for the sweet release of death is in some way the ‘‘real’’ me, that further underscores your ignorance on this topic.
The ‘‘real’’ me is irrelevant. I COULD NOT FUNCTION IN SOCIETY. ‘‘Real and true’’ is an arbitrary distinction. Is a person’s heart following a stroke any less ‘‘real’’ than the heart they had before the stroke? A more sensible ideal to strive for is good health. That, in my opinion, is what mental health professionals should be striving for, in conjunction with their patients. Not ‘‘Is this my most real self’’ (because this is meaningless) but rather, ‘‘Is this my most healthy self?’’
Is this my most healthy self?
That’s not always an easy thing to find an answer to, especially when it comes to mental health. Some medications can give you just as much hell as your mental illness. In my case, it took about 13 different tries before we found the right combination for me – and believe me, I’m not going to understate how much those first 12 attempts fucked me up. (This is not typical. My particular diagnosis, complex-PTSD , is one of the hardest to treat. Ultimately I ended up on atypical antipsychotics and you simply CANNOT use this example to generalize the average experience of a person on psychotropic meds.) However, when I finally got the mix right, medication prevented me from offing myself long enough to learn how to live again. The trade off is, I gained so much weight I was in danger of developing Type II Diabetes.
Once I was stable enough to actually be able to do such complex tasks as get out of bed and dress myself in the morning, then I made all those little environmental and behavioral changes that are so good for depression. I learned to live again, and then I learned to thrive. I decided it was time to say goodbye to meds. I lost 50 lbs in three months, but I also suffered severe anxiety that took a very long time to learn how to cope with med-free.
You couldn’t pay me to go back on medication. When I returned to therapy last year my new counselor was puzzled by my refusal to accept medication, but I would rather have things be just a bit tougher than deal with all those side-effects again.
The purpose of this story is to explain that medication is sometimes the only option available if we crazies are to have any hope of getting our lives back together. Medication was a temporary but necessary part of my treatment.
And that’s just depression. Schizophrenia and bipolar are two excellent examples of mental disorders that practically require medication if there is to be any hope whatsoever of normal functioning. I hope to hell you never have to deal with a family member who is schizophrenic–that will change your perception of what it means to be ‘‘real’’ pretty damn fast.
p.s. I hope the ‘‘tinfoil hat’’ remark didn’t hurt your feelings. It was intended in good humor. I can’t hope to change everyone’s perceptions about mental illness overnight, but the stuff you said really pissed me off, because mentally ill people suffer enough as it is without having other people judging them for being that way.
I once made some rude comments about taking mood meds. It was because they either didn’t work for me or the dosage was wrong. I tried several different types but to no avail. It sucks because stress messes with your body and mind. I know a job change would help, but old dog, new tricks. The sun rises every day.
I knew there was something different about you. Congratulations.
It was not my intention to make anyone think they are stupid or weak for taking psychiatric drugs. My goal here is to encourage people to talk to their doctors (and make sure it’s a good doctor, who will give you more than a prescription and shoot you out the door) and discuss things like Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) and long-term plans and make sure that if you do take psychiatric drugs longterm, that you have a condition that cannot be treated in any other way. If your doctor doesn’t know what CBT is or poo-poos it, seriously, find another doctor. Someone prescribing SSRIs or tranquilizers who does not know about CBT should not be prescribing them as she is obviously not keeping up with current medical treatments. As olives said, the combination of CBT and meds has been found to be very effective, and CBT alone can be highly effective for many people.
Terrific post, olives.
As I have mentioned previously on the Dope, I have an uncle and aunt with schizophrenia. My uncle has been institutionalized and on meds since his failed suicide attempt 35~ years ago. Because he is on meds, he can actually be talked to sometimes. When I was a kid, we’d go see him and he would be interesting to talk to and only rarely say something to make you go WTF*?
My aunt is unwilling to seek help; I have no contact with her anymore partly because she is scary as hell. She literally kicked** me out of her house once because she didn’t like something I said*** to someone else.
I live with a bi-polar husband. Before the meds, I watched him break with reality. He just…fell in upon himself. He could not function. He was having daily panic attacks.
As an added bonus, his ‘manias’ present as episodes of extreme irritability; he doesn’t even get to enjoy the ‘highs’ most people associate with a manic episode. We are still trying to find the best pharm cocktail for him, so medication tweaking continues. But without the meds, I wouldn’t be able to stay with him. As it is, I have to repeat my "it’s the bi-polar talking’ mantra more frequently than I would like.
I wish he was having more sucess with the CBT part of his treatment. He has a real problem with racing and intrusive thoughts, and the CBT is not helping yet. 
ianzin, I would just say that my husband as he is now is just as real as the person he was before he had the break. This is his reality. So I guess it’s good that you will never be in a position to meet him and judge him for not being real enough.
ETA: I forgot! I just had to go back on celexa myself due to the stresses of dealing with a fucked up workplace and a crazy husband. I’m hoping it will reduce the panic attacks I started having three weeks ago. And I’m going back to my therapist for some tightening up of my CBT skills. I was doing so well, but then the world crashed in…
*Such as: “Hitler had a point, but he should have concentrated on only letting attractive people have children and sterilizing the ugly ones.”
**As in, she grabbed me from where I was sitting on the floor and started kicking me as she dragged me to her front door and then she kicked me out said door.
***I was telling my boyfriend that I didn’t want him to give me flowers to say he was sorry; I wanted him to actually be sorry for what he had done.
‘‘Imaginary friends’’ is kind of harsh, don’t you think?
My husband just refers to you as my ‘‘cult.’’
Oooh, I like that. I’m going to start referring to y’all as the cult I belong to…
TWO schizophrenics in your family? That must be a nightmare. There is a tendency in families with severe mental illness for non-mentally ill family members to obsess and fear over becoming crazy themselves. My uncle is paranoid schizoaffective, which is Bipolar + Psychotic, and it’s really hard to detail all the little ways in which something like this impacts a family. My uncle is not stable. He has been frequently hospitalized and court-mandated to take his medications because of his violent tendencies. He is a brilliant, good man, but he is very, very sick. The pervasive paranoia in our family about becoming crazy (and denying mental problems when we have them) is tremendous.
Last month, my Bipolar uncle, who was just 30, died of a drug overdose. Suicide has not been ruled out. He left behind two young children, one of which had no mother to speak of. Obviously a very raw time for everyone involved–and I was one of the volunteers to break the news to my schizophrenic uncle. It is these little things people cannot comprehend unless they’ve been there. My uncle was so happy to see myself, my Mom (his sister) and my grandfather (his Dad), and somewhere in the middle of his stream-of-consciousness rantings about people poisoning his cigarettes and how good canned peaches are for his BMs, we have to break the news that his little brother is dead. Naturally, he immediately decided the government had killed him. Then he started vividly detailing the most inappropriate childhood memories you can possibly imagine. It would be offensive for me to repeat them here, so I won’t, but trust me, it was horrifying. And in the midst of their grief, my grandparents had to regularly field 3am phone calls from my uncle (he has been known to leave 20 messages in a single night) just obsessing over his brother’s death and dredging up every single inappropriate childhood memory he possibly can in vivid detail.
And this is my uncle medicated. When he’s not, he has a tendency to destroy physical property, get himself thrown out of his apartment for reckless behavior, and end up in isolation in the psychiatric ward.
He can’t help it. It’s the ‘‘real’’ him. :rolleyes:
I’m going to jump in here, since I have some experience with a loved one with bi-polar. When someone is manic, yes, they can be charming, sweet, the life of the party, have boundless energy. However, the loved ones know that’s going to come crashing down, and you’ll end up with a huge mess to clean up.
A psychiatrist friend of mine once told me about a woman patient who, in one of her manic moods, picked up three barely-legal boys in a bar, took them home, and had sex with all of them. Did she have a good time? Sure she did, but she hated herself the next day.
The emotions may be fun, but the aftermath is not. The drugs tend to “even things out” as it were, so there will still be good moods, but they won’t be out of control, and there will still be bad moods, but again, they won’t be out of control.
While we’re on the topic, it doesn’t make one weak to take drugs for mental health. That’s macho bullshit. It’s the strong person who admits when he needs help.
I’m not saying ianzin insinuated that; I just wanted to throw it out there in general.
This whole “real” vs. “fake” you is just complete bullshit. (As others have said before) Drugs can help people with real chemical imbalance be normal productive members of society. Your brain can seriously fuck you up and make you lose touch with who you really are. (Besides, if the so-called real you is some sort of fucked-up person unable to deal with the world or other people, just sitting in a corner of the couch rocking back and forth, what the fuck’s wrong with using drugs to help fix that!?!)
I’ve had minor bouts of depression throughout my life, started by some heavy-duty bullying in junior high, but mostly I’ve been lucky in that it’s been externally provoked and therefore could be fixed by changing circumstances or my reaction to them. However, a few years ago I got some drugs for my endometriosis which completely fucked up my brain. I was severely depressed, believed I was unworthy of every good thing in my life and unable to ask for help because, well, I was a hopeless person and didn’t deserve any better. Finally, my boyfriend realized what was going on, looked at the medicine and saw that depression was a potential side-effect. I quit the drugs (after talking to my doctor) and within a week I was starting to think like a sane person again. This certainly made me a lot more understanding of what depression really is.
So, if drugs can make you insane, I see no reason why they can’t help make you sane as well.
Umm, I’d edit that to say “those who refuse to believe in the possibility that at least some psychiatric issues are chemically based are just plain ignorant” if I were you.
There is sufficient reason to consider it a solidly reasonable hypothesis; but not one identifiable mental illness has been substantially demonstrated to consist of a biochemical condition, as opposed to tending to correlate with same with perhaps some other causal agent generating both the biochemical difference and the behavioral-cognitive differences.