Who has autism and is medication free?
About a couple years ago I started taking medication for anxiety to help with my blood pressure medicine. While it took the edge off my anxiety, I often felt fuzzy headed and dizzy-like in the mornings. After a year, I went off the medication cold turkey and didn't notice any side effects. I haven't gone back on it. My job is a little less stressful now, so that may have helped with my anxiety.
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"My journey has just begun."
I'm autistic and I don't take medication. But, around the time I was diagnosed they do prescribed me with some neuroleptics. To this day, I'm not really sure why would a psychiatrist thought prescribing antipsychotics to someone who is autistic is something adecuate. I took that medication for about a month and a half, before realizing how distressing was it, not only to my physical well-being, but also for my mental well-being. I was literally a zombie (I'm not joking, I even drooled and couldn't avoid it)
I'm pretty sure I didn't needed the medication, because I'm not taking medication right now, and I'm doing just fine. I used to feel anxiety at some given times, but It has reduced to almost something inexistant, since I started my own methodology of being who I am, and not trying to avoid who I am to evade that people think I'm weird. I have more energy now, and I don't feel that much anxiety now. But I think it is important to be clear in my position: even though I'm good without medication, I'm not againts medication when someone needs it.
goldfish21
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Age: 42
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When I was younger I was prescribed a few antidepressants which were very unhelpful. Zoloft turned me into a dead shell of a human being incapable of feeling anything. I was then prescribed Endep, which I promptly overdosed on after they sent me completely nuts. Avanza made me pack on lots of weight in a very short amount of time which added to my depression rather than alleviating it. I was also on the now notorious Stillnox. Who knows what I might have done in my sleep?
I haven't been on medication for many years and I'm very resistant to taking any kind of pills now. I eat a healthy diet, exercise, try to keep my whacked out thoughts under control through meditation/mindfulness and take herbal supplements and vitamins/minerals.
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It's like I'm sleepwalking
Nah I've never been on medication for anything of mental nature in my life. Probably should be on a slew of things for my crippling depression and severe anxiety but oh well Made it 20 years so far why not another 20.
I'll probably never seek it out on my own, frightened by the idea of altering my mental state. What's the point of living if I have to get stable emotions out of a pill. My parents for now think I'm too much of a special snowflake to try to get me help.
I'm an aspie, and med-free. Even upon diagnosis, I was suggested to, but never took it. Not even alternatives.
I never took any medications relating to my mental health. Not even once, even it relates to occasional anxieties.
On my own choice, I don't want to alter my state of mind and become dependent on it.
And I care any less on being an insomniac. I managed well without any medication since when I was 8.
Overall, I'm doing fine. Functioning enough without any maintaining medications.
Funny semi-out of topic: That my allergy meds never worked. I don't know why. Not even causing drowsiness. It doesn't change a thing except making my allergy symptoms worse.
I'm beginning to suspect I have non-allergic rhinitis instead. Or both non-allergic and allergic if that's even possible. Simply put it that I don't take it regularly. Took only once or twice when prescribed, then decide if it's not worth it. None of it is worth it so far. So I'll just deal with it.
Best part is that me sneezing frequently is making me less functioning and miserable than being an aspie at all. I would do anything to get rid of this allergy.
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androbot01
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A pill is what keeps me alive. However, the point of living still eludes me. Your comment above suggests to me that there is a stigma to medicating, that you somehow give up your identity by taking it. This is not true in my case. Freed from the symptoms of mental instability, I am more myself.
Thank you for all your replies. I just wanted to emphasize that I am not putting down people who are on medications. I did ask if medications were helpful for you. Just because they were not helpful for me doesn't mean that being on medication is bad. Everyone is different. For me, they didn't help me cope. They made me numb. But every experience is different.
I believe medical drugs are a major cause of anyone acquiring an illness.
That can't be true. People are now healthier than at any point in history, despite drugs being more widespread. Drugs treat and cure diseases rather than curing them. Anything that has side effects which outweigh the benefits isn't to be granted a license.
(Of course, some are, because drug companies hold back crucial information. But generally speaking, we're living longer, less likely to die of an infectious disease, surviving longer with cancer...)
A pill is what keeps me alive. However, the point of living still eludes me. Your comment above suggests to me that there is a stigma to medicating, that you somehow give up your identity by taking it. This is not true in my case. Freed from the symptoms of mental instability, I am more myself.
Exactly.
It's like saying, "What's the point of living if I have to use a wheelchair to get around?"
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"If we fail to anticipate the unforeseen or expect the unexpected in a universe of infinite possibilities, we may find ourselves at the mercy of anyone or anything that cannot be programmed, categorized or easily referenced."
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I have Asperger's, ADD, Generalized anxiety disorder and C-Ptsd. I take no medications at this point because in my childhood I was overmedicated with antipsychotics (thioridizine) and antidepressants. When I received my diagnoses listed above they prescribed me Ritalin which I took the generic form of and had a very hard time taking it due to the fact that I had to not only remember it every few hours but I felt so bad when it all wore off at the end of the day that I smoked a lot of weed to take the edge off. I recall wanting to literally murder people when Ritalin wore off. It did help me focus but at a great cost.
Now I am on a mission to overhaul my lifestyle and diet and wouldn't mind trying GF/CS for a while, maybe also cut down a bit on the amount of meat I eat. Also herbals are nice, however don't rely on them to be "safer" than conventional drugs. Remember most herbals have not been tested by the FDA (in the US) and long-term trials have shown negative effects especially in the case of such herbs as kava kava and St. John's Wort. Just because it's natural doesn't mean it's necessarily safe... amanita mushrooms come to mind...
Mindfulness has been what has really changed how I approach and react to circumstances. I know that any emotion that arises will also cease, I have to just let the energy of the emotion flow in me without me acting or speaking on it. It's hard and takes a lot of discipline, it's the opposite of what we are naturally inclined to do because of conditioning but once a bit of practice with it develops it gets a lot easier to ride out troublesome emotions.
Vitamin and mineral supplements: I'm sure there's a valid use for some of them, i.e. when the client has a known deficiency that's not simply down to a poor diet. I think that getting vitamins and minerals from proper food is generally a better way to go if it's possible. The purified form of these substances is often less effective, and can even be toxic. I think for vegans there's one vitamin that plants don't contain, but a lot of soya products have it added, which isn't the ideal way, but I think fortified foods are less likely to be harmful than tablets. I do wonder where they get the vitamin from for that purpose - presumably not from animals?
If I had to take a vitamin tablet, I'd crush it up and mix it with food. Just doing that with iron tablets can mitigate the constipation problem, for example. Tablets swallowed whole can cause an unnaturally high concentration of the active ingredient in the stomach or intestines, so I try to avoid that.
goldfish21
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Joined: 17 Feb 2013
Age: 42
Gender: Male
Posts: 22,612
Location: Vancouver, BC, Canada
I believe medical drugs are a major cause of anyone acquiring an illness.
That can't be true. People are now healthier than at any point in history, despite drugs being more widespread. Drugs treat and cure diseases rather than curing them. Anything that has side effects which outweigh the benefits isn't to be granted a license.
(Of course, some are, because drug companies hold back crucial information. But generally speaking, we're living longer, less likely to die of an infectious disease, surviving longer with cancer...)
Isn't this false? I've heard several times over the years that ours is the first generation that will have a shorter lifespan than our parents (specifically Americans) due to people not being as healthy/increased obesity rates.
Further, there have been plenty of pharmaceuticals that are harmful to people that have been approved for use. Plenty of people die from pharmaceutical use. Antibiotic resistant bacteria are on the rise, which may result in an increase in infectious disease deaths in the near future.. pharmaceuticals aren't quite miracles w/o side effects or negative results.
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No for supporting trump. Because doing so is deplorable.
...Me .
(I presume you mean psych meds .)
en"]Is there anyone who chooses to be off all medications? I used to take medication but I gave them all up because I didn't like how they made me feel. They weren't helping me cope anyway; they just made me dull and I wasn't as creative. So I thought, what's the point of these things? I went off cold turkey and had terrible side effects though-feeling very dizzy, mood swings but the side effects did go away.
Has anyone else had negative experiences with medication? Or perhaps, for you, meds are beneficial.[/quote]
Isn't false. What you heard were probably just naysayers. Life expectancy doubled in the past 150 years, and has growth even more.
http://www.slate.com/articles/health_an ... ad_to.html
There have been, no doubt. Antidepressants were one of them. They were approved without too much study, and when all of those distressing symptoms started to appear, like tardive dystonia, tardive dyskinesia, etc; they denied it. But up to this day it is pretty hard to do something like that, given that those events made the industry overall more skeptic of the damages it could do, and how it could backfire on them. It could still happen, but it is very improbable.
About the antibiotic resistant bacteria issue, that's something which pharmaceuticals have nothing to do with it. Pseudo-scientifics which are out there saying how vaccines are used to implant chips on your body to read your thoughts are the cause of it. There is a growing anti-vaccine movement, and they are precisely the result that that is happening. Vaccination is actually more of a public health issue, than an individual one. People needs to get vaccinated, to avoid carrying the bacteria an allowing it to mutate into a strain that could be fatal, and then passing that to other people that could even be vaccinated at that time, but not to that given strain that is at that time probably resistant.
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